Cobra Guardian: Cobra War: Book Two (13 page)

Unfortunately, the trip wasn't nearly so easy for the others. The hunched-over, bent-knee postures they had to adopt quickly changed from awkward to uncomfortable to agonizing. By the time the group had covered their first half kilometer they were having to pause every few minutes to stretch aching backs and knees. The conduit's interior was also somewhat slimy, making footing treacherous, and as knees and backs began to give way, the number of slips and tumbles increased dramatically. Eventually, all of them except Koshevski and Lorne were forced to walk with their hands pressed against the ceramic at both sides, their palms walking across the repulsive surface in an effort to maintain their balance.

They had been underground for three hours, and had covered a little under three of the four kilometers to Koshevski's brother's apartment building, when they heard the faint sound of the Troft loudspeakers wafting down from overhead. Lorne keyed up his audios, and despite the confusing echoes in the conduits he was able to get most of the message.

"Well?" Treakness asked when the voice from above had faded away.

"They've finished the fencing and people are now being allowed outside," Lorne relayed. "And they again reminded everyone that there's a bounty on patrollers and Cobras."

"That it?" Koshevski asked, an odd expression on his face.

Lorne looked at him . . . and it occurred to him that, working in the conduits all these years, the bulky maintenance engineer had probably learned how to sift through the confusing echoes and decipher what was being said in the streets above. "They're also now specifying the bounty," he said evenly. "Anyone fingering a Cobra gets a transfer into one of the safe zones for themselves and their family, plus a week's worth of food. Anyone who assists a Cobra gets transferred the other direction,
out
of the safe zone."

"Yeah, that's what he said, all right," Koshevski said, a grim smile twitching briefly across his face. "Thought you might try to pull a fast one and skip that part."

"Why would he?" Treakness asked, eyeing Koshevski. "It's not like anyone here would ever think of betraying him. Right?"

"Of course not," Koshevski said. "We ready to get moving again?"

Treakness inclined his head. "After you."

Another hour had passed, and they were nearing Toyo Avenue, when the faint sound of another Troft announcement came distantly from above them. "What did they say?" Treakness asked when the loudspeakers fell silent.

"I couldn't tell," Lorne said, shaking his head. "It was too faint for me to get anything."

"We're between access points," Koshevski said, looking around. "I didn't get any of it, either."

"He sounded mad, though," Nissa murmured uneasily.

Lorne thought back. Now that she mentioned it, there
did
seem to have been a harder edge to that particular communiqué.

"You're imagining things," Treakness said brusquely. "We're almost there, right?"

"That's our exit, right there," Koshevski said, pointing to a faint sheen of diffuse light about fifty meters ahead. "We should probably let your Cobra go up first, of course."

"Of course," Treakness said.

Three minutes later, Lorne was climbing back up to street level, wincing a little as he was finally able to stretch his back and knees fully straight again. He reached the top of the shaft, pausing there for a moment with his audios at full power. But if there was anything moving up there, he couldn't hear it. "Seems clear," he whispered down to the others. "Stay there while I take a look." Bracing his feet on the rungs on the opposite sides of the shaft, he got his hands beneath one edge of the cover and eased it upward.

He found himself looking down a narrow street lined with medium-sized apartment buildings, a double row of neatly trimmed trees, and a handful of parked cars. He could hear the murmur of people in the distance, but they were too far away for him to pick anything out of the sound and from his vantage point he couldn't see them. Easing the cover back down, he turned himself around to the other side and again lifted the cover.

And nearly lost his balance as a spine leopard snout jabbed suddenly through the opening squarely in his face.

"Whoa!" Lorne jerked back from the snapping teeth, reflexively dropping the cover onto the predator's snout and pinning the creature in place.

The spine leopard was still struggling to free itself when Lorne's fingertip lasers, cutting zigzag paths through bone and flesh and brain, finally destroyed enough of the predator's decentralized nervous system to kill it.

"What the hell is going on up there?" Treakness called tautly.

Lorne took a deep breath and flicked a fingernail sharply against the spine leopard's nose, just to make sure. "I found the block patrol," he called back.

"Trofts?"

"Spine leopard." Setting his feet again, Lorne lifted the cover and peered out. "It's clear--come on up." Sliding the cover over onto the pavement beside him, he climbed the rest of the way out of the shaft.

Koshevski was the next one out. "It's that one over there," he said, pointing to the building to the left of the one directly across the street from them.

Lorne glanced both ways down the still-deserted street. Apparently, the spine leopard he'd killed had had this block to himself. "Go," he told Koshevski. "Get the door open, then stay there and keep it open for the others."

Koshevski nodded and took off, running as fast as his bulk would allow. By the time he reached the door and started pounding on it, Treakness was also out of the shaft and following after him. Poole had joined the group, and Nissa was nearly there, when the door was finally flung open and they all piled inside. Lorne slid the cover back into place over the shaft, then scooped up the dead spiny's carcass and sprinted to the apartment building.

Koshevski was still holding the door as ordered, his eyes wide as he watched Lorne approach with his burden. "What the hell are you doing?" he asked.

"Can't leave it out there for the Trofts to trip over," Lorne explained as he slipped past the other into the relative safety inside. "Is there a trash bin or shed or something where I can dump it?"

"Yeah, there's a bin out back," Koshevski said, pointing down the hallway.

"Thanks," Lorne said. "Go tell your brother to get his family ready to go. Which apartment is it?"

"Four-oh-two," Koshevski said, heading for the stairs. "The door'll be open for you."

"Right," Lorne said, turning around carefully in the cramped space. "I'll be up in a minute."

"I'll go with you," Poole volunteered, ducking gingerly past the spiny's snout and stepping out in front of Lorne. "I can get the doors and lids and stuff."

"Poole--" Treakness began threateningly.

"I'll be all right," Poole said quickly. "I mean, if it's all right with you."

Treakness grimaced, but then nodded. "Be quick about it," he growled. Turning, he headed up the stairs. Nissa gave Poole a quizzical look of her own and followed.

"Thank you, sir," Poole called after them. "I'll get the door," he added to Lorne, and hurried down the corridor.

Lorne caught up with him at the rear door. "Thanks," he said as Poole unfastened the lock. "Push it open, but stay inside, just in case. I'll go first."

"Yeah, just a second," Poole said, leaving the door closed and peering down at the dead spine leopard in Lorne's arms. "I'd like a quick look here, if you don't mind."

"Sure," Lorne said, frowning. "First one you've seen up close?"

"No, not really," Poole said absently as he began probing the fur between the animal's shoulders with his fingers. "I was just wondering . . ."

He trailed off, his face suddenly tightening. "What?" Lorne asked.

Poole took a deep breath. "Did it occur to you to wonder," he asked, "how the Trofts managed to sneak onto Aventine for the hours or days it would take to collect all the spine leopards they've been dumping in Capitalia this morning?"

"I--" Lorne paused. With all the more immediate problems to deal with, he suddenly realized he
hadn't
gotten around to wondering that. "So how did they?"

"They didn't." Poole touched the section of fur he'd been studying. "The skin under the fur here is heavily calloused, over a region fifteen or twenty centimeters square. I'm no expert, but it seems to me these are the kind of calluses an animal could only build up if something with sharp claws routinely hung onto the skin there."

Lorne stared at him. "Are you suggesting . . . ?"

"I'm not
suggesting
, Cobra Broom," Poole said bitterly. "I'm
saying
it. This spine leopard came from Qasama.

"The Qasamans and Trofts have made an alliance."

Lorne looked down again at the carcass in his arms, his head spinning. No--that couldn't be right. Qasaman paranoia coupled with their awareness of how the Trofts had tried to manipulate their world thirty-two years ago would surely make such an alliance impossible.

Or would it? Even a culture as heavily steeped in its own past as the Qasamans' could change. Could a new generation of Shahni have decided to break with their traditions, to work with the distrusted Trofts in order to strike back at the hated Cobra Worlds? Was that the crisis situation the mysterious message from Daulo Sammon to their family had been referring to?

Was that alliance the crisis situation that his mother and brother had flown right into the middle of?

"Broom?"

Lorne started. "Sorry," he apologized. "I was just wondering if that's really possible."

"Looks pretty possible from where I'm standing," Poole said heavily. "And if it is, we're in worse trouble than we thought. As Koshevski said, Dominion history says that Troft soldiers don't go in for random killing. We have no idea whether the Qasamans will be that restrained." He hissed out a sigh and stepped back to the door. "Let's dump this thing and get upstairs. Governor Treakness needs to hear about this as soon as possible."

"And no one else?" Lorne suggested.

"Absolutely no one else."

The trash bin behind the building was only half full, leaving plenty of room for the dead spiny. "So how long have you been with Treakness, anyway?" Lorne asked as he slid the carcass through the opening into the bin.

"Not long," Poole said. "Don't know how much longer I'll be with him, either. He's . . . difficult sometimes."

"Or some might say criminally abusive," Lorne said bluntly. "I'm surprised you didn't walk out your first day on the job."

"Governor Treakness has his own way of doing things," Poole said diplomatically. "You just have to understand him." He shrugged. "And as you know, sometimes you have to put up with something you don't like in order to get something you want."

Lorne cocked an eyebrow at him. "Are you talking about Treakness? Or about you?"

"Maybe a little bit of both." Poole lowered the lid on the bin. "Come on, we need to get back."

Koshevski had said he would leave the apartment door open. What Lorne hadn't counted on was that every other door on the fourth floor would also be open, and that every resident from behind those doors would be standing in the hallway, gazing at the visitors in silent pleading. "What's going on?" he asked as he and Poole eased gingerly through the silent throng to the doorway of 402 where Nissa was waiting, her face troubled as she surveyed the crowd.

"The word spread," she said quietly. "They're asking if we'll take all of them across to the Trofts' safe zone, too."

Lorne winced. "What does the boss say?"

"Governor Treakness is against the idea." She smiled wanly at Lorne's expression. "Don't worry, they've all already recognized him." Her smile faded. "Which is another problem. That Troft announcement a few minutes ago, the one we couldn't understand? It said that Governor Treakness had missed the meeting at the Dome and announced a bounty for his capture."

"Terrific," Lorne growled. "Same one they've put on the Cobras?"

"Better, actually," Nissa said. "Two weeks' worth of free food instead of just one."

"That's stupid," Poole murmured. His face had gone rigid as he, too, eyed the silent crowd. "Cobras are far more dangerous to them than politicians."

"Your boss might think otherwise," Lorne said.

"Especially when that boss has important work to do," Treakness's voice called from inside the apartment. "You three, stop jabbering and get in here."

They found Treakness standing in the middle of the living room talking quietly with Koshevski and a somewhat younger man with a distinct family resemblance. Seated on a chair to one side was a woman with a lined, strained face and the slight trembling in her legs that was the sign of Jarvvi's Disease. Three teenagers--two girls and a boy--stood behind her. All four were listening closely to the conversation, their faces taut and nervous. "This is Mr. Koshevski the Younger and his family." Treakness introduced them briefly as Lorne and the others came up. "They're packed and ready to go."

"What about the people out there?" Lorne asked.

"What about them?" Treakness asked. "The deal was for Mr. Koshevski's family."

"I'm not talking about the deal," Lorne said. "I'm talking about basic humanity."

Treakness shook his head. "Sorry, but humanity doesn't enter into any of this."

"Maybe not to you it doesn't," Lorne said, feeling the first stirrings of anger. "But it does to me. I'm a guardian of the people of Aventine--the oath I took specifically used that word."

"So did mine," Treakness agreed. "We also took an oath to obey orders given to us by our superiors, in this case Governor-General Chintawa himself."

"But we can help them," Lorne said.

"We can help them more by completing our mission," Treakness said firmly. "We can't do that unless we can get out of here without attracting Troft attention." He waved a hand in dismissal. "Discussion closed. Now, the nearest fenced street appears to be three blocks to the north. If we go with Ms. Gendreves's building-hopping idea, that means we'll have three streets to cross--"

"The discussion is
not
closed," Lorne interrupted. "We can't just walk away and leave them here."