Cobra Slave-eARC (38 page)

“It will work,” Anya insisted. “For I will not simply take to wing and sky and leave the masters with time to give chase and capture me.” Her eyes flicked over Merrick’s shoulder. “First, I will kill them. It will be their fellow masters, those who certainly now watch from afar, who will give chase and drive me to my death.”

Another chill ran up Merrick’s back. He hadn’t realized just how far she was willing to go with this plan. “Does that also mean your plan for putting me out of action won’t stop at simply damaging my wing?”

“I’m sorry,” Anya said, her face glistening with tears. “Please. Free my world.”

Her hand darted beneath the jacket and reappeared with her knife. She hesitated a fraction of a second, then jabbed the tip straight at Merrick’s left forearm.

The blade never reached its target. Moving like a blur under his nanocomputer’s control, Merrick’s left hand snapped up from his side, lightly slapping the back of her hand to deflect the attack, then grabbing her wrist in a lock-fingered grip.

For a second he just knelt there, ignoring her struggles to free her arm, his full attention on her face. Slowly, the twisting and pulling stopped, and the fear and frustration faded from her face. “It won’t work,” Merrick said when she finally stopped struggling, “because I won’t let it.”

She shook her head, her throat working. “You must,” she said, her voice pleading. “If you don’t let me do this, they will kill you.”

“I won’t let them do that, either,” Merrick said. “Neither of us is going to die today.”

“But—”

“Neither of us can die today,” he continued, “because I need you.”

She shook her head. “You need no one,” she said. “You are powerful beyond my strongest night imagination.”

“But I’m a stranger here,” Merrick reminded her. “This is your world. These are your people. We do this together, or it doesn’t get done.” He tried a small smile. “And I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to give up.”

For a long moment she stared into his eyes. Then, she lowered her gaze to the knife, and to his hand still gripping her wrist. “I’ll go first,” she said at last. “Watch how I assemble the wing, and do the same. When we jump, watch how I use my control bar.”

“I will,” Merrick said, finally releasing her hand. “Don’t worry—I’ll be fine.”

[A problem, is there one?] the first Troft called from behind Merrick.

[A problem, there was a small one,] Anya called back, holding up her knife for the aliens to see before putting it back beneath her jacket. [The problem, it is fixed.]

[The hunt, you will then begin it.]

[The order, I obey it.]

Anya had run Merrick through the assembly method the night before, and though the hut hadn’t had enough space for him to actually practice it, the procedure had sounded reasonably straightforward.

In his experience, things in life that promised to be simple seldom were. But in this case, the theory actually matched the reality. If anything, the wing came together even easier than he’d expected.

The jattorn net was only slightly trickier. The flexible ring at the mouth of the long, silky tube was attached to two smaller elastic rings that Anya secured around Merrick’s upper thighs. Once in the air, the rings were designed to slide down to his ankles, which would then allow him to control the size of the net’s mouth by spreading his legs or bringing them together.

It seemed an unreasonably awkward design, but Anya assured him it was how the nets had always operated. The only way Merrick could rationalize it was if the jattorns were so powerful and aggressive that even with their wings pinioned they could fight their way out of the net unless the hunter kept the mouth closed. He made a mental note to take a close look at the first group of birds Anya managed to snare before he went after any himself.

And with that, it was time to go.

Anya went first, leaping off the end of the cliff like a high-diver hanging beneath a giant arrowhead. For a pair of heart-stopping seconds she fell straight down, the net catching the air and stretching out into a long tube behind her. The drag of the net tugged the anchor rings down to their proper position around her ankles, and only then did she pull up from her dive and settle into horizontal flight.

Merrick swallowed hard. She’d never mentioned that as being part of the winghunter technique. For a brief second he considered trying to pull the same maneuver, but common sense quickly intervened. He would go horizontal as quickly as he could and trust that the net would deploy anyway.

[The hunt, you will begin it,] the first Troft called from the aircar hovering behind him.

Taking a deep breath, settling his grip on the control bar, Merrick took a few quick steps to the edge of the cliff and leaped.

A second later, he was soaring through the cool air, gliding like a bird over the forest far below.

“Huh,” he breathed, the gasp a mixture of released tension and unexpected exhilaration. He was flying. He was actually, literally flying.

No—he was actually, literally falling. Clenching his teeth, he pushed the control bar forward.

Pushed it too far. The wing above him angled up toward the position Anya had warned would put him into a stall. Hastily, he pulled back on the bar, again overcorrected, and eased it a little bit forward. A couple of jerky tries later, he finally got the wing flying smooth and steady.

Blinking against the wind blowing across his face, he took a moment to look around. Anya was paralleling him fifty meters to his right, watching him closely. She raised her eyebrows, and he gave her a quick nod. She nodded back, and pointed ahead and a few degrees below them.

He turned to look, careful not to move the control bar. About half a kilometer away a large flock of birds was floating lazily through the sky below them. Giving his wing a quick look to make sure he was still flying level, he keyed in his telescopics.

He’d never seen a jattorn before, but the birds definitely fit Anya’s description. They were large and majestic, with plumage done up in a complex pattern of blue and white, with hawk-like beaks and V-split tails. Their legs were tucked beneath them out of his sight, but given that Anya had tagged them as raptors he imagined the feet included impressive sets of talons.

And he was supposed to fly into the middle of the flock, let those things get right up beside his legs, and scoop them into a net?

Apparently so, because that was clearly where Anya was headed. She had dropped the nose of her wing and was heading down toward the flock, pulling ahead of him as she converted her drop in altitude into extra speed. Wincing, Merrick shifted his attention to the control bar. If he pulled it back just a little…

[The enemy who sent you, who is he?] the first Troft called.

Merrick twisted his head around. The Troft aircar was sitting practically on top of him, pacing him from three meters back and two meters up. The Trofts had lowered their side windows, and the first Troft was leaning out the left-hand window toward him.

The wing jerked as Merrick’s movement again shifted the control bar a little too far. He spun back to face forward, fighting to get the fragile aircraft back under control. [The enemy who sent you, who is he?] the Troft called again, more insistently this time.

Merrick turned back again, shaking his head and taking the risk of lifting one hand off the control bar to give a gesture of confusion at the question, a gesture he could only hope the Trofts would understood.

The alien seemed to get the idea. He also clearly didn’t believe it. [A lie, do not make it,] he said sternly. [A winghunter, you are not one of them. A spy for our enemies, you are one of them. The enemy who sent you, who is he?]

Merrick again shook his head, trying desperately to try to think of something else he could do to persuade them.

An instant later the wing again jerked as a laser flashed twice from the aircar, gouging out a pair of tears across the center of the wing directly above his head. [A winghunter, you are not one of them. The enemy who sent you, who is he?]

Of course I’m not a winghunter, the protest boiled up through the bubbling panic in Merrick’s throat as he fought to bring the damaged wing back to level flight. We told you that back in Gangari. I’m only a winghunter assistant.

But he couldn’t say that. He couldn’t say anything in his defense. He was a mute, and a sudden recovery of his voice would do nothing but confirm to the aliens that he and Anya had been lying to them all along.

And even if he could somehow persuade them to accept such a miracle cure, his accent alone would instantly brand him as an outsider.

Another pair of bolts sizzled through his wing. [The truth, you will give it,] the Troft insisted. [Or death, it will find you.]

They were baiting him, he knew. They weren’t out here alone—even Anya had realized they had backup and observers somewhere close at hand. This pair was the bait, pushing the suspected spy to see if and how he would react.

And if he wasn’t a spy, but merely an innocent slave, they would probably continue to fire and push and fire some more until his wing disintegrated above him and he fell to his death. No great loss, and they would move elsewhere in their search.

Merrick clenched his teeth. Letting them kill him just to maintain his cover would be the ultimate in futility. But revealing his true identity would be equally disastrous. If the Drims realized there was a Cobra loose on Muninn, they would turn the whole planet upside down looking for him, and probably kill untold numbers of innocent slaves in the process.

But maybe there was a small patch of middle ground. If he could reveal that he was a spy, but not that he was a Cobra…

Another laser shot cut through his wing, and this time no amount of maneuvering could keep it flying level. Merrick was going down—not too steeply yet, but he was definitely going down.

His final fate was sealed. But the Trofts apparently weren’t interested in the gradual approach. Peering back over his shoulder, Merrick saw the aircar move lower, and to his stunned disbelief the Troft on that side began gathering in double handfuls of the net tied to his ankles. [The truth, you will give it,] he shouted. He pantomimed yanking back on the net. [Or the net, I will hang you from the sky from it.]

And with that, Merrick no longer had a choice. Glancing back at the aircar, flicking targeting locks on both Trofts’ foreheads, he shifted his grip on the control bar, curling his right hand over the top and pressing his little finger awkwardly along the bar, aiming it toward the bar’s outer end.

The Troft was still gathering in the net, but so far hadn’t attached it to anything inside the aircar. Wrapping his other fingers around the bar, Merrick settled his thumb against the right ring-finger nail, the trigger for the fingertip laser’s highest setting. Taking a deep breath, he twisted the bar violently around to his right, swinging the end toward the aircar, and fired.

The two flashes weren’t as bright as the ones that had sliced all those tears in Merrick’s wing. But they were more than powerful enough to kill the two aliens where they sat.

At least Merrick hoped they had. His nanocomputer had barely fired off the second shot when the world erupted in a dizzying spiral as his wing went completely berserk.

He twisted back forward and grabbed the bar again, this time in a proper grip. But his ninety-plus-degree turn to line up the control bar with the Trofts had completely wrecked both his stability and his forward momentum. An instant later the spin abruptly became a three-dimensional spiral roll as the now driverless aircar shot past, catching the wing’s tip as it arced toward the forest below.

For an eternity of seconds Merrick tried everything he could think of, every maneuver and trick Anya had taught him. Finally, finally, he managed to dampen out the spin and roll.

But it was only a temporary victory. The Trofts’ laser shots had damaged the wing far beyond Merrick’s ability to compensate. He was falling, and there wasn’t a single thing he or his weapons or his fancy Cobra programmed reflexes could do to stop it.

He was still trying to regain some altitude, wondering what it would feel like to die, when he was abruptly jammed into his harness as the wing was jerked upward. Somehow, the nosedive had been halted, or at least slowed.

He looked over his shoulder, expecting to see the aft end of a Troft aircar behind the edge of his tattered wing. To his surprise, what he saw was a trailing jattorn net.

He craned his neck to look straight up. A pair of hands were sticking through the flapping tears in the fabric, holding tightly to the support struts.

A flood of relief flowed through him. There was no way Anya could keep them in the air for long, and any chance of a hunt was completely out of the question. But if she could hold on long enough she should at least be able to bring them to a more or less smooth landing. Certainly a landing that would leave them both alive. “Thank you,” he shouted toward her. “Your timing is perf—”

“They’re coming,” she cut him off, her voice rigid. “There—to the left. They’re coming.”

Merrick turned to look. To the south, just above the range of mountains, a fast-moving speck had appeared. Snarling under his breath, he keyed in his telescopics.

It was an aircar, all right, the same design as the one he’d just sent on a power dive into the forest. Unlike that one, though, this model came equipped with a pair of hood-mounted weapons. Lasers, or something equally nasty.

His plan to convince them that he was a spy had worked, all right. And the backup crowd had come loaded for bear.

What in the Worlds were the Drims up to on Muninn that the possibility of a lone spy could prompt this kind of violent response?

“Merrick Hopekeeper, what do we do?”

“Take it easy,” Merrick said as soothingly as he could as he searched for inspiration. Below them, the forest seemed to stretch forever in all directions, with Gangari and a handful of other villages forming the only sizeable open areas. The main road they’d come in on was visible, as were a network of narrower side roads, some of them running alongside narrow but fast-looking rivers or streams. More mountains were visible in the distance to the north, possibly part of the same chain as the one they’d just jumped from.