Cobra Guardian: Cobra War: Book Two (15 page)

"Trying to get their attention," Lorne told her. He notched up the weapon and fired again.

This time, he saw the glass vibrate a little. He keyed the sonic up one final notch and lowered his opticals' enhancement back to normal. "Help me watch the windows," he told the woman. "Let me know when you spot someone." Trying to watch the whole side of the building at once, he fired three short bursts.

Nothing happened. He fired the triple burst again, then again, then again. Vibrating windows were a fairly subtle signal, he knew, but they were perfectly noticeable to anyone paying even a modicum of attention to their surroundings. Certainly anyone who'd spent any time in the expansion regions would know that vibrating windows were often an indication that Cobras were tackling spine leopards nearby.

"There!" the woman said suddenly. "Top floor, second in from the right."

Lorne found the window. An old man was standing there, peering down at the street. A moment later, a younger man joined him, also scanning the area below. Lorne gave another triple burst with his sonic, and this time the young man looked up. His body seemed to twitch, and he tapped the back of his hand against the older man's arm and pointed at Lorne's sign.

The other looked up, too, and for a long moment both of them just stood there, staring. Lorne pointed at the sign, then lifted his hands in silent question.

The younger man said something inaudible, his eyes still on the sign. The older answered, glancing at his friend and then looking back at the sign. The younger man said something else--

"They're going to betray you," the woman beside Lorne said suddenly. "They're talking about it right now."

Lorne frowned. "What makes you say that? Do you know them?"

"No, but I know that look," she said. "They heard the Trofts' offer, and they're going for it. They're just trying to figure out how to collect."

Chapter Eight

Lorne stared across the street at the two men, a cold feeling knotting itself into the pit of his stomach. If they'd been in DeVegas Province he would have told the woman she was imagining things. The people out there would never betray their guardians, no matter how much the Trofts offered them.

But they were in the city now. Here, Cobras weren't associated with safety, but with dress uniforms and governmental pomp and ceremony. And no one here had ever seen a spine leopard, much less had any idea of how to deal with it.

No, he realized, the Trofts had figured the psychology of the situation perfectly. For way too many people, the chance to escape deadly danger at the cost of someone they didn't even know would be an easy decision to make. Especially when they could rationalize it by telling themselves they were doing it for their children, or spouse, or parents.

"What are you going to do?" the woman asked.

"Not much I can do except keep going," Lorne told her. "I was already planning to make as much noise and chaos as I could anyway, to try to get you all through the store and into the crowds on the other side before the Trofts could identify you and gather you together for a closer look. Now, I'll just have to make sure that wherever I finish up at the end of that is far enough away that it'll be hard for anyone in our group to point me out."

"Sounds dangerous."

Lorne shrugged. "The original plan wasn't going to be a whole lot safer."

Across the street, the two men finished their conversation. The younger caught Lorne's eye, pointed to the message in the window, and gave a thumb's-up. He touched the older man's arm, and together they left their window.

"I guess we're on," Lorne said, gathering up the banner and folding it up.

"You're still going to go through with it?" the woman asked.

"It's either that, or we give up and settle down here," he pointed out. "Let's take another look at that map of yours."

They stepped over to her schematic of the street. "Okay, so this is Hendrezon's," Lorne said, indicating the long building. "How tall is it?"

"Four stories," the woman said.

"What about the buildings on either side?"

"The one to the east is--let's see--I think it's five stories," she said. "The one across Mitterly Street to the west is four, the same as Hendrezon's."

"What about the two to the west of that?" Lorne asked.

"The first is also four stories, and the next one is three," she said slowly. "I think. Yes, it's three."

"Are all three of the buildings on that block connected to each other?"

"No, there are service alleys separating them," she said. "Not very wide, maybe one normal street lane each."

"And the other side of that third building runs up to Ellis Avenue," Lorne said slowly, trying to visualize the area and fit the terrain into the modified plan forming in his mind. It would be tight, but it should work. "We'd better get downstairs now, before they wonder if we got lost." He turned and headed for the door.

"Wait a second," the woman said, crossing in front of him and angling over to a free-standing wardrobe beside the kitchen nook. "They say Trofts aren't very good at picking out human faces," she continued as she flipped through the clothes inside, "but even they can remember someone's clothes." She pulled out a long, brown coat and held it out to Lorne. "Here--put this on. Once you get away, you can slip it off and melt into the crowd."

"Thanks," Lorne said, frowning as he took the coat. "How do I get it back to you?"

"You don't, genius," she growled. "You kick it under a parked car and get the blazes out of there."

"Ah," Lorne said, eyeing her closely. "You sure you want to do this? If the Trofts catch you helping me, they're going to kick you right back into the spine leopard zone again."

"Let them," the woman said firmly. "No, I mean that. You Cobras are our best chance of getting them off our planet. Whatever we can do to help you, that's what we need to do. And whatever
you
need to do, you do that, too. Okay?"

"Okay," Lorne said, slipping on the coat. The bulk of his belt bag made the garment too tight around his waist to seal, and he had to settle for sealing it only from neck to stomach.

He looked back at the woman, feeling a fresh sense of determination. Whether or not those two men across the way were planning to betray him, there were still people in Capitalia worth fighting for. "Thanks," he said.

"Thank me by staying alive," she countered. "And by getting us out of this."

The crowd in the downstairs hallway had grown considerably in the time that Lorne and the woman had been away, the word of the mass escape apparently having spread to the entire building. The murmur of conversation stopped as Lorne appeared, the people melting away to either side as he headed toward the far end.

Treakness and Poole were waiting by the door when he arrived. "There are a couple of men inside the door over there," Treakness said, eyeing Lorne's new coat. "Looks like they're set to open it for us."

"Good," Lorne said. "Here's how it'll work. I'll lead us to about the middle of the street, then stop there and watch our flanks while you take everyone the rest of the way."

"What if a spine leopard attacks before we reach the middle?" Poole asked.

"Then he'll stop a little earlier," Treakness said acidly. "Sounds good." He turned to the crowd. "We're heading out," he called. "Here are the rules. You will not spread out--no more than three people abreast. You will walk--
walk
--as quickly as you can without stepping on the person in front of you. You will stay close together, and no matter what happens you will
not
run. Running leads to chaos and panic, and we will not put up with either."

"And keep as quiet as you can," Lorne added. "I need to be able to hear trouble coming."

"Right," Treakness said. "Everyone understand?"

There was a general murmur of agreement. Treakness turned back to Lorne and gave him a sharp nod. "Go."

Taking a deep breath, Lorne pulled the door open and once again headed into the sunlight.

He'd hoped to make it halfway across the street before stopping. He had in fact covered no more than half that distance when the spine leopard attacked.

It came from above, from the branches of one of the neatly trimmed trees lining both sides of the street. Unfortunately for it, Lorne had caught the quiet rustling of leaves as it prepared for its attack, and was already pivoting up onto his right foot as the animal leaped into sight. There was no time for a proper target lock, but he had his leg up in time to slash an antiarmor laser blast across the spiny's flank as it arrowed toward the line of people behind him.

The creature was already dead when it slammed limply into a man and woman a few meters behind Lorne, tumbling all of them onto the pavement.

"It's all right," Lorne barked over the bubbling of reflexive screams as the two would-be victims scrambled madly to get back up on their feet and away from the predator. "Don't worry--it's dead. Everyone keep calm and keep moving."

To his mild surprise, they obeyed. There were a few muffled sobs of released tension, but for the most part the long line of people continued quickly and silently on their way. A hint of movement on the other side of the column caught Lorne's eye, and he made a quick rolling leap over the crowd. But it turned out to be merely a large squintal loping across the street on its way from one tree to another. Lorne stayed on that side, alert for more trouble, until Nissa and the Koshevski brothers appeared, bringing up the end of the line. Lorne fell into step behind them, and a few seconds later they were all safely inside their target building.

The two men were still holding the door open. "Thanks for your help," Lorne said, nodding to them. As he did so, he activated his opticals' infrared, creating a patterned red haze across their faces. "Nice to know there are still people you can rely on."

"No problem," the younger man said. His infrared pattern changed subtly, indicating an increase in heat output that might have been merely the result of the extra blood flow to his facial muscles as he spoke.

But there was no such innocent explanation possible for the rush of heat into the older man's face. His heartbeat had suddenly increased, the irrefutable mark of either exertion or emotion. And given that he was just standing there, it clearly wasn't exertion.

The woman had been right, Lorne realized with a sinking feeling. The two men were indeed planning to betray him.

Unless, maybe, he preempted that treachery by offering them the most important part of the Trofts' bribe himself. "We're heading over to the safe zone," he continued, nodding toward the people crowded into the hallway. "You two want to tag along?"

"Yes," the older man said without hesitation. "Thank you."

The younger man gave him a startled look, and his lip twitched. "Yeah," he said, with considerably less enthusiasm. "Sure."

"Good," Lorne said. "You've got five minutes to get anything you want to take with you."

The hallway here was narrower and more tightly packed than the last one had been, but again the crowd managed to move aside enough to let Lorne pass. "That went well," he commented to Treakness as he arrived at the governor's side.

"If you liked that, you're going to love this," the governor said sourly, gesturing through the door toward the gathering area beyond it. "There are at least two spine leopards back there."

"Probably even more than that," Lorne agreed, keeping his voice calm as he peered out the door's window. There were several trees back there, a couple of stands of bushes, a reed-and-flower patch big enough for a couple of spinies to hide behind, plus several benches and a children's play apparatus. "I'm guessing a family's moved in there. I'll need a few minutes to clear them out."

"You need any help?" Poole asked.

"Like what?" Treakness growled. "You offering to be bait?"

Poole grimaced. "No."

"Just wait here," Lorne told them. "Keep everyone calm and ready to go."

Dealing with spine leopard families came with both plusses and minuses. The big minuses were that there could be up to ten of the predators in a comparatively small area, and that they would move against their prey with the kind of close coordination that a similarly sized group of individual spinies never achieved. The chief plus was that the pattern those coordinated attacks normally took was straightforward and well known.

In this case there were eight of them, stalking him from the trees, bushes, and benches. They attacked in the standard twos and threes, and as Lorne gradually but steadily wore down their numbers, the stalking time between attacks increased, requiring him to make a turn or two through the gathering area in order to persuade them to move out of their concealment.

The whole thing took nearly ten minutes. In the end, Lorne got them all.

He was standing in the middle of the gathering area, breathing heavily as he scanned the treetops with his infrareds just to be sure, when the glow of grav lifts drifted into sight from behind the line of buildings to the east.

He dropped into a crouch beside a bench, keying in his telescopics. The incoming aircraft was a civilian-style transport, the same type as the ones the Trofts were using to bring in their spine leopards. But this particular transport wasn't showing any of the brisk determination he'd seen in others that morning as they went about their tasks. On the contrary, it was just wandering lazily across the sky, as if it had nothing in particular to do.

Or as if it was looking for the source of noises that might have caught the attention of the Trofts two streets away. Like, perhaps, the screams of dying spine leopards.

Grimacing, keeping an eye on the hovering transport, Lorne hurried back to the apartment building.

"Interesting technique," Treakness commented as Lorne rejoined him inside. "Very different from the robot spine leopard and Troft battles they run trainees through at the Sun and MacDonald Centers."

"You should try seeing the full range of those tests sometime," Lorne said. "We need to get going. There's a transport wandering around that's clearly looking for something."