Cobra Gamble (11 page)

Harli turned a frown onto her. "What?"

"You asked me if I was here for the circus or the Biblical epic," she said. "What circus?"

"Oh. Right." He gestured to her and started walking again toward the gap in the wall. "I just got the word—I was heading to see it myself. This way."

They passed the line of sentries, maneuvered carefully over the crushed wall with its torn and twisted edges and past the equally hazardous wreckage of the downed warship. Some of the Trofts gave them baleful looks as they threaded their way through the work parties, but most of the prisoners ignored them entirely.

And as they approached the last two parties, Jody finally saw what Harli had been referring to.

Standing fifty meters off to the side, his gray combat suit in sharp contrast with the Cobras' muted white silliweave outfits, was Freylan.

Jody rolled her eyes. Freylan knew better than this. Even with all those Cobras on hand to watch for trouble, he really should have known better than this.

He was fighting with a section of support beam twice his size, trying to get it up onto his shoulder, when Jody and Harli reached him. "Freylan, what in the Worlds do you think you're doing?" Jody demanded.

"Oh—hi, Jody," Freylan said, puffing with exertion as he got the beam up high enough to rest on his shoulder. "Hi, Harli. You two are up early."

"All the best shows start early here," Harli said, craning his neck as he looked up at the end of the beam towering over them. "The lady asked you a question."

"What?" Freylan frowned, then his face cleared. "Oh. You mean what am I doing?" He gestured to the beam. "I'm trying out the suit. Wanted to see how much strength the servos have, how the power curve plays out—you know. Try it out."

"You couldn't have done this back at the house?" Jody asked.

"Yeah, I suppose," Freylan said with a shrug. "But I figured as long as I was going to be lifting stuff, why not lift stuff that needed lifting anyway?"

"Except that out here we have to protect you," Harli reminded him. "I don't suppose that occurred to you."

"No, you don't," Freylan said brightly. "Organics don't stick to the suit, remember? And the giggers and screech tigers seem to be avoiding the area—"

"I was thinking about them," Harli said patiently, nodding back toward the toiling Trofts.

Freylan's eyes flicked over Harli's shoulder. "Oh," he said, sounding a little deflated. "You don't think they'd—? But there are Cobras all around them. They wouldn't try anything."

"Who knows what they might try?" Jody said, trying to keep her tone gentle. It wasn't Freylan's fault that the universe and its inhabitants didn't always behave according to his idea of logic and rationality. "Harli's right. You need to move your experiments indoors."

"Okay." Making a face, Freylan carefully eased the beam off his shoulder and lowered it back to the ground. "But you can see how strong these suits—"

"Quiet," Harli snapped, twisting his head around toward the broken wall.

Jody froze in place, her eyes darting back and forth as she searched for signs of trouble. But the Trofts were still working, the Cobra guards were still at their posts. There was nothing she could see that might have caught Harli's attention.

And then, even as Harli hissed out a curse, she spotted one of the Cobras on the distant wall with his hands cupped around Chis mouth. Clearly, he was calling something that only Cobra enhanced hearing could pick up. She opened her mouth to ask Harli what the problem was—

"Damn!'
Harli spun halfway around, his head jerking back and forth as he looked around them. "Where's that woman gotten to? The Qasaman woman—Rashida Vil. Either of you see her? Quick!"

Jody felt her breath catch in her throat. Rashida Vil had been the main pilot on the Qasaman team's trip to ask for the Cobra Worlds' help in fighting off the Troft invaders. Siraj Akim had decided that she should stay behind on Caelian, where her Troft language skills would be useful in helping the Caelians work with their prisoners.

"I think she's in there," Freylan offered, pointing to the more intact of the two warships. "I saw her a few minutes ago with a couple of techs—"

He was still in mid-sentence when Harli took off at a dead run toward the ship.

"What is it?" Jody called after him. But there was no answer. "What were they doing?" she asked, grabbing Freylan's arm. "Could you tell? Who was she with?"

"Just a couple of the city's techs," Freylan said, confusion and apprehension stuttering his words. "You don't think—because she's a pilot—?"

"Stay here," Jody ordered him, and took off after Harli.

Harli was long gone by the time Jody reached the ship. But one of the other Cobras, a man named Kemp, was on guard in the troop guard room just inside the door. "What's going on?" Jody panted as she charged in. "Where's Harli?"

"Communications room," Kemp told her, his voice grim. "Deck one—top of the ship. Traffic Control's spotted a Troft ship on its way in."

Jody felt her pounding heart try to seize up inside her. "One of
these?"
she asked, gesturing at the mass of the warship around them.

"Harli doesn't think it's a warship," Kemp said. "Too small. More likely a courier here to check on the situation."

Jody winced. A courier wouldn't be as bad as a full-fledged warship. But it would be bad enough. "We can't let it see what happened here."

"No kidding," Kemp growled. "He's up there trying to see if that Vil woman can wave them off."

Jody nodded. "I'll see if I can help."

The warship had nine decks, which meant eight flights of narrow stairs between her and the comm room. Coming on top of that hundred-meter sprint, Jody's legs felt like rubber by the time she finally emerged from the stairway onto Deck One. Following the sound of voices, she stumbled her way down the corridor to the comm room.

There were three people already there. Rashida was seated at the main console, with Harli and another man standing stiffly behind her. Harli looked back as Jody came in, a warning finger at his lips.

Jody nodded. Like she had extra breath to spare for questions right now anyway.

[The proposed landing area, it is not on our schedule,] a Troft voice was coming from the speaker. [The primary attack site, it is elsewhere on the planet.]

[The primary attack site, it is secure,] Rashida replied in fluent, flawless cattertalk. [The site, you may visit it afterward. But the scouting party, it is in danger. The soldiers, they must be first retrieved.]

Frowning, Jody beckoned to Harli. He hesitated, then silently crossed to her. "What?" he whispered.

"Kemp said you were going to try to wave them away," Jody whispered back. "But she's inviting them down?"

Harli's eyes narrowed. "Is
that
what she's saying?"

"You don't understand cattertalk?"

"Not a word. What's she saying?"

Jody focused on the conversation again. "It sounds like she's telling them there's a scouting party somewhere else on Caelian that needs to be picked up," she said. "She's insisting they do that before they swing by here."

Some of the tension smoothed out of Harli's face. "No, okay, that's good," he said. "She convinced me there was no way they were just going to go home without a look, so I told her to try to stall them. A little side trip into Wonderland ought to do the trick."

At the console, Rashida looked back at Jody, her face tense, her eyes desperate. "I hope you've got a Plan B," Jody warned. "Because it doesn't look like they're going for it."

"Hell," Harli muttered, turning back to Rashida. She shifted her eyes to him and gave a small shake of her head.

"Plan B?" Jody prompted.

"Yeah, yeah, hold on a second," Harli said, his eyes darting around the room as if searching for inspiration. "Okay. If they insist on coming down, tell them fine, come ahead. Then shut down the comm."

Rashida nodded and turned back to her board. [The primary attack site, you may come to it,] she said.

[The instruction, I obey it.]

Rashida touched a switch, and a row of lights went out. "I'm sorry," she said, turning to Harli again. "He insisted."

"That's all right," Harli said, pulling out his field radio. "No—wait a second," he said, stepping back to Rashida's side and running his eyes over the board. "I remember there being some kind of external loudspeaker system that keys in here somewhere. Find it for me, will you?—it'll be a lot faster than using the radios."

Rashida peered at the board, pointed to a set of controls. "There."

"Turn it on," Harli ordered. "How long before they get within eyeshot?"

"Not long," she said, keying the controls and handing him a slender mike. "Five or ten minutes."

"Terrific." Pursing his lips, Harli lifted the mike. "This is Harli," he announced. "We're about to get some company. All Cobras, find yourselves some spots where you'll be out of sight but still able to control the prisoners. Renny, Bill—make it clear to Captain Eubujak that if his people step out of line we
will
shoot to kill."

He covered the mike and gestured at Rashida. "Where did you tell them to land?"

"On the rectangle to the south of the village," she said. "I told them we were doing repairs on a downed ship, and that there was no room for them to land anywhere nearby."

"Good." Harli raised the mike again. "They should be putting down in the landing area," he continued. "Smitty, grab a team from town and get into attack position down there. If and when we get them to open the hatch, you take them out. There's no time for questions—they'll be here in five minutes. Play it by ear and do the best you can. And keep in mind that once they're down we do
not
want them leaving again."

He keyed off the mike and tossed it back to Rashida, his eyes again darting around the room. "Is there any way to see what's happening down there?" he asked.

"There's the drone control room," Jody offered. "Deck Four. That's where—"

"Yes, I know," Harli interrupted. "Except that all the wing cameras on that side of the ship are gone. Plus half the controls got slagged when your brother and Carsh Zoshak ran amok through the place."

"Right," Jody said, wincing with embarrassment. She should have remembered that.

"I was hoping there were some extra cameras somewhere tied in up here," he continued. "But I don't see anything." He snapped his fingers. "But the drone hatchways should still be open. Get down there and see if everyone's doing what I told them to."

"What do I do if they aren't?" Jody asked, backing toward the door.

"Pretend you're their mother and yell at them," Harli growled. "Just get them out of sight."

Jody grimaced. "Right."

The Stronghold techs had finished their checks of Deck Four a couple of days earlier, and the entire area was quiet, dark, and deserted. Fortunately, there was enough light coming in through the open drone hatches for Jody to pick her way across the battle debris and through the damaged barrier to the portside drone hatch. The rectangular opening was a little above her head; getting a grip on the lower edge, she pulled herself up and looked out.

Wherever the Cobras had found to disappear to, they'd done a terrific job of it. The Trofts were still laboring away, but she couldn't see a single white silliweave tunic anywhere among or around them.

No white tunics, but there was still one gray one. Freylan had obeyed the general order to hide, but he'd done it by crouching behind a clump of pankling bushes between Jody and the Troft work groups.

Which left him nicely hidden from the latter, but completely visible from overhead.

Jody ground her teeth. But then, Harli hadn't actually said where the company was coming from. She raised her eyes from Freylan and gave the sky a quick look, wondering if she still had time to shoo Freylan to a better hiding place.

But no. She could see the incoming ship now, a small silvery dot glinting in the sunlight as it approached across the western sky. It was still too far away for Jody to make out any details, but it surely had telescopic cameras already trained on Stronghold and the damaged warships.

Which meant that any movement on Freylan's part would be instantly visible. Awkward and risky thought it might be, at this point Freylan would probably do better to just stay put and hope the drab color of his combat suit would keep him from being noticed. Suppressing a curse, Jody looked back down at the ground.

And blinked in surprise. The Troft prisoners had obviously spotted the incoming ship as well. But instead of continuing their work, they'd dropped their tools and were waving.

Not just normal waving, either. They were putting their whole arms into it, swinging them over their heads like parade float-masters trying to be seen from the back row.

Jody chewed at her lip, indecision tearing at her. Should she stop them? Or, rather, should she order them to stop, which might or might not be the same thing?

Or was it perfectly natural for Drim'hco'plai soldiers on the ground to salute a group of fellow soldiers flying over their heads? Worse, was it
required
that they do so? Without knowing more about the demesne's cultural rules, there was no way to know. If it was a form of military etiquette, ordering them to stop would be a dead giveaway to the courier that something was wrong.

But if it
wasn't
something they were supposed to do, wouldn't that be equally likely to arouse suspicion? Feeling sweat popping out on her forehead, Jody stared down at the gesticulating Trofts, trying to figure out what she could do.

And then, abruptly, she caught her breath. The waving arms...

She took a deep breath and stuck her head as far out of the hatch as she could. "Cobras!" she shouted. "Stop them! They're signaling the ship.
They're signaling the ship!"

For a long, horrible moment nothing happened. The Trofts continued their waving and the Cobras remained out of sight. Could they not have heard her? Or had they simply decided that Harli's orders superseded hers? A movement from beneath her caught her eye, and she looked down to see Freylan rise from his inadequate concealment, take a couple of quick steps forward with his right arm cocked over his shoulder, and then throw something as hard as he could toward the prisoners. The object arced across the group and disappeared somewhere into the mass of upstretched arms.