Cobra Outlaw - eARC (4 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

Merrick Moreau had been a Troft slave for only a little over three weeks. Most of that time had been spent aboard the transport that had brought him and Anya Winghunter from Qasama to Muninn, which had meant he hadn’t had to do any genuine slave-type labor. Still, even without the work, and with only that brief exposure, he’d easily come to the obvious fact that being a slave was a terrible thing.

What
hadn’t
been so obvious, and which Merrick had only learned over the past few hours, was that being an
ex
-slave was nearly as bad.

Of course, maybe that conclusion only applied to self-freed slaves. Officially freed slaves might be given food and water for the road, or at least a polite word of dismissal.

Officially freed slaves certainly wouldn’t have their former masters scouring the deep Muninn forest in search of them.

The Trofts were definitely out there. Merrick knew it as he gazed out into the starlit gloom of the night. His trick with the crashed hang glider hadn’t fooled them. They knew he was still alive, and they were going to get him back. Alive, or otherwise.

But if they were nearby, they were keeping quiet about it. Merrick’s enhanced hearing was alive with strange noises, but there was nothing he could identify with Trofts or Troft vehicles. His enhanced vision, both infrared and telescopic, showed nothing but small- to medium-sized animals and birds going busily about their lives.

There were larger predators in the forest, Merrick knew, creatures of muscle, claws, and teeth that even Cobra weapons and programmed reflexes would be hard-pressed to deal with. Luckily, like the Trofts, so far they seemed to be keeping their distance.

There was a rustling in the leaves to his left. Reflexively, Merrick tensed, his hands curling into fingertip-laser firing positions.

But it was just Anya, shifting position in her sleep.

Merrick exhaled a silent sigh. Not that she was supposed to be asleep. Not now. Certainly not here. She was supposed to be leading them to a secret hideout where she’d said they would find her parents, who’d allegedly been hiding out ever since their failed revolt against Muninn’s Troft overlords.

But he and Anya had stopped to rest, and Anya had fallen asleep, and Merrick had decided that a ten-minute nap couldn’t hurt anything.

Especially since this whole scenario was still flying a whole forest of red flags in the back of his mind.

The idea of a hidden refuge and possible allies was certainly an alluring one. It was exactly what he and Anya needed if they were to catch their breath, regroup, and figure out their next step. They’d been sent here by Commander Ukuthi of the Balin’ekha’spmi demesne in hopes of finding out what the Trofts of the Drim’hco’plai demesne were up to in their private slave preserve. But so far the two humans hadn’t made much progress.

The problem was that the abortive revolt her parents were supposedly on the run from had happened twelve years ago. Twelve
years
. Merrick couldn’t figure out why Anya assumed the hideout even existed anymore, let alone that anyone was still using it.

In fact, the more Merrick thought about it, the more dangerously ridiculous the assumption became. If
he’d
been in charge of that long-ago revolt, he would have instantly abandoned any known shelter the minute the Trofts quashed the rebellion. After all, a victor’s first step in that situation was usually to root out any surviving pockets of resistance, and part of that rooting would be to drag the location of every bolt-hole from the survivors. If the Trofts knew about Anya’s refuge, even if that knowledge was over a decade old, simply strolling into it would not be a smart thing to do.

Yet Anya, who seemed clear-headed enough in other areas, seemed to have missed that piece of logic completely. More than that, she seemed convinced that her parents would still be waiting when they arrived.

Could it be simply a matter of her
wanting
her parents to be there? She’d implied that they’d run off after the revolt failed, leaving their twelve-year-old daughter and the other villagers holding the bag. She’d also admitted that she still harbored some not unreasonable resentment over the fact that she’d ended up as a slave under Commander Ukuthi’s control.

But even the hottest angers tended to cool with time. After twelve years maybe Anya was ready to offer her parents the chance to mend fences.

Or else she was looking for them in order to exact some sort of revenge. Merrick had known Anya barely a month, and he couldn’t begin to guess all of what was going on behind those clear blue eyes.

He needed time to think, and he really hadn’t had any. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to let Anya sleep as long as she wanted and in the process buy himself a little more time to ponder.

And to maybe to come up with a Plan B if and when Anya’s Plan A didn’t pan out.

There was a quiet rustling in the undergrowth to Merrick’s right. Carefully, he turned his head to look.

This particular animal hadn’t yet shown up on his brief tour of Muninn’s wildlife. But it was a good meter and a half long, it had the short neck, wide jaws, and long teeth of a predator, and it was moving stealthily in their direction.

If it had been broad daylight, Merrick would simply have fired a double burst from his fingertip lasers into the creature’s half-open mouth and been done with it. Unfortunately, with Troft aircars presumably still flitting around up there, a flash of even muted artificial light would be dangerous.

Something a little more subtle was called for. Watching the animal’s infrared signature closely, Merrick fired off a short burst from his sonic.

The IR pattern changed, and for a couple of seconds the creature seemed to stagger. Then the pattern returned to its original form, the animal regained its balance, and with only a brief hesitation it resumed its stalking approach.

Merrick grimaced. Unfortunately, that was the more or less what he’d expected to happen. Cobras had two sets of implanted sonics: one designed to shatter glass and other resonant breakables, as well as interfering with listening devices; the other tuned to stun or disorient Trofts. The former would be of no use against an animal, and he’d now confirmed that the latter wasn’t hitting any of the predator’s vulnerable frequencies.

Merrick’s gear also included a current-based stunner, which would almost certainly put the predator down for the count. Unfortunately, the stunner worked off Merrick’s arcthrower, which would flash even more brightly than the fingertip lasers.

All of which, even more unfortunately, only left Merrick one option.

Reaching into his jacket, he pulled out the control bar he’d taken from his hang glider and got a grip on one end. The animal paused, as if evaluating this new move on the part of its prey, then continued inching forward. Merrick waited until it was just within reach, then leaned over and tapped the tip of the bar lightly against the top of its snout.

The animal snorted, twitching against what its brain probably registered as an annoying insect. Merrick tapped it again, and this time the predator snapped its head up and grabbed the end of the rod.

And with the animal’s jaws partially open, Merrick swiveled around on his hip, pressed his left heel against the gap between the upper and lower teeth, and fired his antiarmor laser down its throat.

He’d been concerned that, even with the blast mostly contained, enough of the light might leak out to create a danger. Fortunately, the sharply back-angled teeth had put his heel well inside the jawline when he fired, and the only visible flicker was off the tongue and roof of the mouth. The creature collapsed and lay still.

“Is it dead?”

Merrick looked over at Anya. She hadn’t moved, but her eyes were open. The variegated IR pattern of her face was still changing—clearly, she hadn’t been awake very long. “If it isn’t, it will be soon,” he said. “How are you doing?”

“Well enough,” she said, reaching up and briefly rubbing her eyes. She lowered her hands, and Merrick saw that her IR image had again changed with the newly altered blood flow. “Why did you let me sleep?”

“You seemed to need it,” Merrick told her. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone conk out so soundly lying on leaves and half-buried roots. Though after sleeping on a mat on the Sollas subcity concrete, I suppose even tree roots are an improvement.”

“As you say, I was tired.” She hunched her shoulders and pulled herself up into a sitting position. “Shall we go?”

“In a minute,” Merrick said. “I need to ask you a couple of things first.”

“Questions can until we’re safely in the refuge.”

“The questions are
about
the refuge,” Merrick told her.

Her IR pattern changed subtly. “Ask, then.”

“Let’s start with your parents,” Merrick suggested. “Tell me about their rebellion twelve years ago.”

Another shift in the pattern. “What do you want to know?”

“What exactly happened?” Merrick asked. “I assume they didn’t just pick up rocks and charge into battle.”

“They
did
use rocks, where it was appropriate,” Anya said, a little stiffly. “Not held, but catapulted. They also used arrows, blowgun darts, and weapons dropped by winghunters upon the masters’ positions.” The IR pattern changed again. “But in the end, it all came to nothing.”

Not surprising, if they were attacking laser-armed Trofts with bows and arrows. Sometimes, Merrick mused, there was a fine line between raw courage and ill-considered stupidity. “What kind of weapons did the winghunters drop?” he asked. “Homemade explosives? More arrows?”

“The winghunters dropped powder of freshly-harvested bersark,” Anya said. “It was hoped it would confuse or otherwise disable them.”

Merrick winced. Unprocessed bersark, he’d been told, was a highly poisonous substance. Chemical warfare at its finest. “And if the bersark didn’t get them, crazed kilerands would?” he suggested.

“That was another hope,” Anya said, nodding. “Though kilerands normally eat bersark accidentally, when it’s mixed in with their other foods. There was no promise that they would eat the powder that was dropped.”

“Though even if they did, you’d still need the Trofts to make loud noises,” Merrick pointed out. “That’s what draws them, right? Loud noises?”

“There was no fear of that,” Anya said bitterly. “The masters continually make loud noises. They shout when they want us to work. They shout when they want us to cower.” Her throat worked. “They shout when they want us to die.”

“I gather the bersark approach didn’t work any better than the rest of it?”

Anya shook her head. “It was my parents’ best hope. The masters had spent much of their rule in their own areas, isolated from the forest villages, and the rebels hoped they hadn’t learned the nature of all our plants and animals. But they knew bersark well enough to know how to avoid it or counteract its effects.”

“So the rebellion failed,” Merrick said. “And your parents fled to this hideout? The one we’re currently headed for?”

“Yes,” Anya said. “It was secure, unknown to the masters.”

“
Was
,” Merrick said, leaning heavily on the word. “That’s the operative word here.
Was
. What makes you think the Trofts didn’t have every local bolt-hole and hiding place identified and raided two hours after the last rebel surrendered?”

The blood flow in Anya’s face again changed. “I don’t understand.”

“They would have interrogated their prisoners, Anya,” Merrick said patiently. Was she really that naïve? “I know your people are brave, but a good interrogator can—”

“There were no prisoners,” Anya said. “The masters killed them all.”

Merrick frowned. “What are you talking about? There are
always
prisoners.”

“Not here,” Anya said, her face suddenly blazing with heat. “Not us. We do not surrender.”

Merrick stared at her, a sudden chill running through him. He’d read about warrior cultures, mostly on Earth but some on other Dominion worlds, where surrender in battle was simply not an option. But neither the Cobra Worlds nor the Qasamans had any such military conviction.

It seemed unbelievable. Still, maybe he’d already seen a hint of that philosophy in action. Yesterday, high up on the cliff, Anya had been prepared to sacrifice her life to keep Merrick’s secret from the Trofts. Maybe that readiness to die had been part of her culture, a part he’d never even suspected.

And as the new reality sank in, the conversation in Gangari on the previous day suddenly took on new meaning.
[The dark memory of years past, you still have it?]
one of the Trofts had asked.

[The dark memory, we still have it,]
the man Anya had named as Henson Hillclimber had answered.

At the time, Merrick had assumed the alien and the human had been talking about the same thing. Now, he realized they hadn’t.

The Troft’s
dark memory
had been the insurrection itself. Henson’s
dark memory
had been the shame of Anya’s parents surviving the rebellion instead of dying with the other fighters.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand,” Merrick said in a low voice. “So they’ve been hiding out here all these years?”

“I don’t know what they’ve been doing,” Anya said, a little stiffly. “Whether hiding or continuing the fight. But if they’re still alive, they’ll be here. There’s nowhere else for them to go.”

“Ah,” Merrick said. It seemed a rather dogmatic statement, given that they were sitting in the middle of hundreds of square kilometers of forest. But there was clearly a lot he still didn’t know about Muninn and its people, and he didn’t feel like arguing from ignorance twice in the same conversation. “Just the same, it might be better if I went ahead and checked things out.”

Anya gave a short, rather hollow laugh. “And you think you can find it without my help? A hidden sanctuary which the masters have undoubtedly searched for years to discover?”

“I thought you said they didn’t know it was out here.”

“They know there was a rebellion,” Anya said. “They will surely be on the watch for future trouble.”

And the forest was the obvious place for disaffected elements to meet and plan, away from prying eyes. The Trofts would have to be blind
and
stupid to miss that one. “All the more reason for me to go first,” Merrick said. “Make sure there aren’t any hidden watchers or search equipment.”