Cobra Strike

Chapter 6

The Council-along with an ever-expanding ring of agents/confidants-kept the secret of the Troft proposal remarkably well for nearly four weeks longer; but at that point Stiggur decided to release the news to the general population.

From Corwin's point of view the timing couldn't have been worse. Still in the midst of detailed financial negotiations with the Trofts, he was abruptly thrust into the position of being answer man for what seemed sometimes to be all three hundred eighty thousand of Aventine's people. Theron Yutu and the rest of the staff were able to handle a lot of it on their own, but there were a fair number of policy-type questions that only he and Jonny could answer; and because of his private commitment to keeping his father's workload as light as possible, Corwin wound up spending an amazing amount of time on the phone and the public information net.

Fortunately, the reaction was generally positive. Most of the objections raised were along the ethical lines the Moreau family had discussed together in their own first pass by the issue, and even among those dissenters support for the

Council ran high. Virtually no one raised the point Corwin had been most worried about: namely, why the Council had waited nearly two months before soliciting public feedback. That one he would have found hard to answer.

But all the public relations work took his attention away from the mission details being hammered out-took enough of it, in fact, that he completely missed the important part of the proposed survey mission team until the list was made public... and even then Joshua had to call and tell him about it.

"I wondered why you were taking it so calmly," Jonny said when Corwin confronted him a few minutes later. "I suppose I should have mentioned it to you."

"Mentioned, my left eye," Corwin growled. "You should have at least discussed it with the rest of us before you went ahead and signed yourselves up."

"Why?" Jonny countered. "What your mother and I do with our lives is our business-we are old enough to make these decisions for ourselves. We decided we wanted a change of scenery, and this seemed a good way to get it." He cocked an eyebrow. "Or are you going to suggest neither of us would know how to handle an alien environment?"

Corwin clamped his teeth together. "You're a lot older than you were when you came to Aventine. You could die out there."

"Your brothers could die on Qasama," Jonny reminded him softly. "Should we all sit here in safety while they're out risking their lives? This way we're at least in a sense sharing their danger."

A cold shiver rippled up Corwin's back. "Only in the most far-fetched sense," he said. "Your danger won't diminish theirs."

"I know." Jonny's smile was wry but clear, without any trace of self-delusion in it. "That's one of the most fascinating things about the human psyche-a deep subconscious feeling can be very strong without making any logical sense whatsoever." He sobered. "I don't ask you to approve, Corwin; but grant that I know enough about myself and my wife to know what I'm doing on this."

Corwin sighed and waved a hand in defeat. "All right. But you'd both darn well better come back safely. I can't run the Council all by myself, you know."

Jonny chuckled. "We'll do our best." Reaching over to his phone, he tapped up something on the display. "Let's see... ah, good-Council's discussing Cobra contingent this afternoon. That one we can safely skip. How would you like to see some of your father's practical politics in action?"

"Sure," Corwin said, wondering what the other was talking about.

"Good." Jonny tapped a few more keys. "This is Jonny Moreau. Is the special aircar I ordered ready yet?...Good. Inform the pilot we'll be lifting in about twenty minutes: myself and two other passengers."

Signing off, he got to his feet and stepped over to the rack where his heated suit was hanging. "Go get your coat," he told Corwin. "We're about to give a customer the Aventine equivalent of a free sample... which, with any luck, won't turn out to be exactly free."

The third passenger turned out to be Speaker One.

Corwin watched the Troft in a sort of surreptitious fascination as they flew high above the Aventinian landscape. He'd seen plenty of Trofts in his life, but never one so close and for so long a time. The back-jointed legs and splaytoed feet; the vaguely insectoid torso and abdomen; the arms with their flexible radiator membranes; the oversized head with its double throat bladder and strangely chicken-like face-all the gross anatomical features were as familiar to him as those of human beings or even spine leopards. But there were fine details which Corwin realized he'd never so much as noticed. The faint sheen of the alien's skin, for example, was a more muted version of the same shimmer shown by its leotard-like outfit. Even at a meter's distance he could see the tiny lines crisscrossing its skin and the slender hairs growing out of each intersection. Seated on its specially designed couch, the Troft moved only occasionally during the flight, but whenever it did Corwin caught a glimpse of wiry muscles working beneath the skin and-sometimes-a hint of its skeletal structure as well. The large main eyes were a different color than the three tiny compound eyes grouped around each one. The main eyes, he'd once read, were for good binocular vision; the compound eyes permitted both night vision and the detection of polarized sunlight for cloudy-day solar navigation. The alien's short beak remained closed during the trip, which Corwin regretted: he'd have liked to have seen what Troft tri-cuspid teeth really looked like.

Jonny said virtually nothing during the 20-minute flight, beyond giving the pilot their destination. Apparently he and Speaker One had worked this out in advance and neither felt the need to discuss anything further. Corwin considered pressing his father for information, but decided reluctantly that Jonny's silence was a cue to be followed. Splitting his attention between the Troft and the view out the window, he cultivated what patience he could muster.

They landed at last near a large, squarish building nestled inexplicably out in the snowy forest far from any village Corwin was familiar with, A two-man escort was waiting as Jonny led the way out of the aircar... and it was only then that

Corwin began to get an inkling of what his father had in mind.

High on each man's chest was a patch with the words "Training Center"; beneath it was the stylized hooded-snake emblem of the Cobra Academy.

"Governor," one of them nodded at Jonny. "You and your guests are cleared for monitor room access. If you'll all follow me...."

Together they headed through an armored door and down an exceptionally drab and anonymous corridor, footsteps echoing oddly against the metallic walls. Their guide led them into an elevator; thirty seconds later they exited into a large, unevenly lit room and a scene of muted tension. In the darker areas along the wall at least thirty people sat before banks of small display screens, working away at keyboards and joysticks, while in the center a large semicircular console with larger displays was the focus of attention for a half-dozen men in the red and black diamond-patterned tunics of the Cobras, One of them headed over to meet the newcomers, and as he approached Corwin recognized him as Cobra

Coordinator Sun himself. The royal treatment, indeed, he thought.

"Governor," Sun said, inclining his head briefly to Jonny as he neared the group. "Speaker One; Mr. Moreau," he added with similar nods to the Troft and

Corwin. "If you'll step this way, the team has just penetrated the outer perimeter section."

"Is there an attack taking place?" Speaker One asked as they followed Sun back toward the crescent-shaped console.

"In a manner of speaking," Sun told it. "The Cobra team who'll be going to

Qasama is practicing their building assault techniques. Let's see how they're doing."

The displays showed various degrees of activity, and Corwin scanned them quickly in an effort to make sense of it all. Despite the multiple camera angles shown, it was soon apparent that there were actually only a total of four Cobras involved: Almo Pyre, Justin, and two more Corwin knew only from pictures and

Council reports, Michael Winward and Dorjay Link. The latter two were moving stealthily down a corridor, while Pyre and Justin huddled before a formidable-looking door.

"Those two," Sun explained, pointing at Pyre and Justin, "are blocked by a blast door with an electronic lock. They could probably force it open with their antiarmor lasers, but at this point there's been no general alarm and it's worth the time to see if they can get through more quietly. Looks like one of the

Qasamans is about to surprise them, though." He tapped a display whose rolling image showed the gait of a mechanical remote-

The camera turned a corner and stopped, the blast door and Justin framed in its view. Justin alone? Corwin thought. But Almo was there, too.

The screen flared abruptly and went black. Corwin shifted his gaze to the fixed-camera monitors just in time to see Pyre drop from the ceiling to land in a crouch beside the disabled remote, hands curled into fingertip laser ready position. He checked around the corner, then lifted the remote and carried it back to the door. "All clear," he whispered to Justin.

"Just about ready here," Justin whispered back.

"Inside," Sun said, "is a key missile control tracking station." He leaned over to touch a switch, and a vacant display came to life with an overhead schematic of the entire test area. Corwin quickly located the dots representing his brother and Pyre... and with a stomach-wrenching shock saw that the room they were about to enter was far from unoccupied. "You'll note," Sun continued in the same emotionless voice, "that there are eight Qasamans on duty in there. All are armed, but the Cobras ought to have the advantage of surprise. Let's see...."

Justin stood up and pulled on the door... and an instant before it began its swing the tense silence was shattered by the blare of alarm bells.

Corwin would later learn that Winward and Link had accidentally triggered the alarm, but for that first instant it seemed horribly obvious that Justin and

Pyre had walked into a trap. The two Cobras seemed to believe that as well and, rather than charging through the open door, they hit the wall on either side.

Beside him, Corwin heard Jonny mutter something vicious... but by the time it seemed to dawn on the Cobras that they'd make a mistake it was too late. The remotes in the tracking room were on guard, and when Pyre risked a glance around the door jamb he nearly caught a laser blast for his trouble.

Corwin's jaw was clenched hard enough to hurt; but the figures on the monitor wasted no time in recriminations. Pyre sent Justin a half dozen quick hand signals, got an acknowledging nod, and seemed to brace himself. Both men took a second to fire apparently random fingertip laser shots through the doorway... and then, gripping the jamb for leverage, Pyre hurled himself into the room.

Into and up. The tracking room monitors caught a perfect view of him arcing spinning into the air like an oddly shaped gyroscope coming off a jump board, the antiarmor laser in his left leg carving out a traveling cone of destruction.

He'd just reached the peak of his jump when Justin came in behind him, the younger Cobra's flat dive and somersault landing him on his back in a sort of spinning fetal position... and his antiarmor laser, too, began its deadly sweep.

It was a classic high-low maneuver Corwin recognized from his father's stories of the war. Between Pyre's sensor-guided air attack and Justin's lower horizontal spray, effective cover simply ceased to exist, and in the space of maybe a second and a half all eight of the remotes' displays went dark.

Corwin suddenly realized he was holding his breath and risked a quick look to see what Winward and Link were up to. They'd split up since he'd last seen them, with Link at what was obviously an open outside door and Winward standing guard with fingertip lasers ready at the intersection of two hallways. Between them, the overhead schematic showed an impressive number of disabled remotes.

A flash and thunderclap jerked Corwin's attention back to the other displays, and he was just in time to watch as Justin aimed his right fingertip laser at one of the control panels in the tracking room and triggered his arcthrower.

Corwin's hands curled into tight fists as the second flash and crash came; he had been burned once by a faulty electrical outlet as a child, and the arcthrower with its high-amperage current flowing along an ionized laser path made his skin crawl in a way the far more powerful antiarmor laser never did.

But he forced himself to watch as Pyre and Justin worked methodically around the room, destroying every scrap of electronic equipment in sight. Pyre paused once before a large shielded display, and a low hum abruptly filled the room. "Sonic disruptor," Sun murmured, presumably for the Troft's benefit. A few seconds later Corwin thought he detected a muffled crack, and the hum disappeared as

Pyre moved on.

Their escape from the room, two arcthrower blasts later, was so straightforward as to be anticlimactic. Link and Winward, it now became clear, had spent most of their time clearing the exit route, and Pyre had to take out only two more remotes. Winward joined them as they passed his crossroads guard post, and by the time all four headed into the woods through Link's door Corwin's heartbeat was almost back to normal.

"And that," Sun said, "is that. All remotes, shut down; signal the team to return."

Corwin glanced beyond the central console as, in the darkened areas around the room, displays went uniformly black and the remote operators began to stretch and stand up. Beside him, Corwin felt his father's hand grip his shoulder. "I'd forgotten what it was like to see Cobras in genuine combat situations," Jonny said, his voice showing lingering traces of his tension.

"Amazing how much adrenaline the human body can put out," another familiar voice said. Corwin looked past his father in surprise. So engrossed had he been in the displays that he'd never even noticed Jonny's old teammate Cally Halloran was among the group Sun had assembled. Halloran nodded a greeting in Corwin's direction and then shifted his attention to the Troft standing silently beside him. "I understand the Baliu'ckha'spmi demesne feels the cost of this initial expedition is too high, Speaker One," he said. "Having now seen Cobras in action, do you agree?"

Speaker One stirred, its arm membranes stretching out like bat wings for a moment before resettling against its upper arms. "The Tlos'khin'fahi demesne has always been aware of koubrah-warrior fighting skill," it said.

Which wasn't exactly an answer, Corwin realized. His father wasn't fooled by the evasion, either. "But not sufficiently impressed, I gather, to absorb the extra costs the Baliu demesne isn't willing to pay?" the elder Moreau suggested.

"Perhaps your demesne-lord would like to see a tape of this exercise."

"It would be likely to interest him," the Troft agreed. "Presuming the price is reasonable."

"Quite reasonable," Jonny nodded. "Especially as you'll be able to recover some of the cost by selling a copy to the Baliu'ckha'spmi demesne. I think perhaps your two demesne-lords will be able to come to a new agreement afterwards on how much each is willing to spend to have our services."

"Yes," Speaker One said, and Corwin imagined he could hear a note of thoughtfulness in the flat translator voice. "Yes, I think that likely."

The prediction proved correct, and within two weeks the financial quibbles from the Troft side of the negotiation table suddenly ceased. It made little difference to the actual planning groups, which had already committed themselves to the twin goals of not scrimping on vital equipment while simultaneously keeping costs to a bare minimum. But emotionally, the tacit carte blanche was a big boost to all concerned; and politically Corwin found in the action a not-so-subtle enhancement of the Cobra Worlds' general reputation. A good thing, to a point... but he still had vivid memories of the days when the Trofts considered the Worlds a threat. The closing of their connection with the

Dominion of Man had ended the Troft's fears in that direction, but it was easy to see how a rumor of power could wind up being as disquieting to the aliens as the real thing. For the first time he began to understand that part of his father's twin-edged reluctance to demonstrate the Cobras' true war-making capabilities. But it was far too late to back out now.

Three weeks later-barely eleven since the Council's approval of the project-the

Cobra Worlds' two long-range spacecraft headed out from Aventine. On the

Dewdrop, bound for Qasama, were Justin and Joshua Moreau; aboard the Menssana, destinations as yet not officially named, rode Jonny and Chrys Moreau.

Corwin watched the ships leave, and was left to wonder how a planet with nearly four hundred thousand people could suddenly feel so lonely.