Cobra Guardian: Cobra War: Book Two (28 page)

She might have gasped something, but with the roar of the fire he couldn't be sure. Turning to Poole, he got the same grip on his belt and leg as he watched Nissa hit the top of her arc and start down again. "Open!" he shouted.

There was no way to tell if she had actually opened her eyes or, if she had, whether she could even see the net sweeping toward her amid all the smoke. Lorne held his breath as the mesh slammed into her, slapping out of her ballistic path. Her hands scrambled wildly for purchase, and then her fingers slipped into the net and she was hanging on for dear life, her body bouncing wildly in the wind. An instant later Poole was flying through the air after her, and half a second later he also had grabbed solidly onto the mesh.

And as the freighter and net shot past overhead, Lorne turned and charged after them, driving his leg servos as hard and as fast as he could. Five seconds later he'd closed the gap enough to make a leap of his own for the netting. He caught the edge of the mesh, wincing as the full blast of heat from the fire burned momentarily into his skin. The freighter cut sharply to the left and angled up toward the sky, and as he again squeezed his eyes tight against the sudden roar of wind he felt the vibration of the net being reeled in. He held on tightly, watching Nissa and Poole, wondering if either of them would lose their grip as they were buffeted around and wondering what he could do if that happened.

But they didn't, and he didn't, and a handful of long, terrifying, agonizing seconds later they were hauled up onto the ramp and through the hatchway into a large airlock vestibule. As they sprawled on the deck, the hatchway closed behind them, and they were safely aboard.

"Lorne?" Nissa breathed, her reddened, squinting eyes staring at something behind him. Blinking some moisture into his own smoke-burned eyes, Lorne turned to look.

Behind them stood a semicircle of silent Trofts, each armed with a hand-and-a-half laser.

All of them leveled and pointed at the three humans.

[Your hands, you will raise them,] the Troft in the middle ordered sternly.

"I don't think that will be necessary," Poole said calmly. "It certainly won't be very effective."

For a moment the Troft eyed him. Then, gesturing to the others, he raised the muzzle of his laser to point at the ceiling. [The
koubrah
-soldier, you are he?] he asked Poole.

"No,
this
is the Cobra," Poole said, pointing to Lorne. "Cobra Lorne Moreau Broom, as your shipmaster requested."

[The
koubrah
-soldier Lorne Moreau Broom, you are he?] a new voice asked.

Lorne turned around again. Another Troft had stepped into the vestibule from the door leading forward toward the freighter's bridge and control areas. The newcomer was clothed in the same style of leotard as the others, but wrapped around his abdomen was the distinctive red sash of an heir of the Tlossie demesne-lord. [Lorne Moreau Broom, I am he,] Lorne confirmed in his best cattertalk as he climbed to his feet. The task was harder than he'd expected, and he had to use his servos to keep from dropping back to the deck halfway up. Clearly, the ordeal of fire and water had drained him more than he'd realized. [My deep and humble thanks for this rescue, to whom do I owe it?] he asked.

The Troft inclined his head. [The language of the Trof'te, you speak it well,] he said approvingly. [Ingidi-inhiliziyo, second heir of the Tlos'khin'fahi Demesne, I am he.] He gave a sort of clicking laugh. [
Warrior
, instead you may call me,] he added. [My full and proper name, it is difficult for humans to pronounce.]

Lorne bowed, his servos once again keeping him from falling onto his face. [Graciousness, it is yours,] he said.

Warrior's gaze brushed past Poole and settled on Nissa. [Three passengers, there were to be,] he said. [But males, they were all to be.]

"There was a last-minute alteration in the plan," Poole said, his voice low and strained. Unlike Lorne, he and Nissa weren't even trying to stand up. "Senior Governor Treakness was unable to join us." He gestured to Nissa. "This is Nissa Gendreves, assistant to Governor-General Chintawa. In Governor Treakness's absence, he's given her full diplomatic authorization."

[Authorization, we know not for what,] Lorne put in. [This mystery, will you not explain it?]

Warrior gestured at Poole. [The explanation, Dr. Glas Croi will provide it.]

Lorne frowned at Poole. "Who?"

"Me," Poole said gravely. "I'm sorry, Broom, but I couldn't let you know my true identity. Neither of you," he added, nodding to Nissa. "We couldn't take the risk that the invaders would capture us and figure out who I was. That's why Governor Treakness and I came up with the plan for me to play the part of a kicked-around aide. We hoped that if we were caught they would concentrate on him and ignore me."

"How clever of you," Lorne growled. "It never occurred to you that it might be useful if the man who was supposed to be guarding you knew exactly who he was guarding?"

"It did, and we decided against it," Croi said evenly. "My life, in and of itself, wasn't important. What was important was that we delay my identification long enough for Ingidi-inhiliziyo and this freighter to get safely off Aventine."

Lorne looked at Warrior. "I thought you had diplomatic immunity."

[To a point only, my safety lies there,] Warrior said.

"And still does," Croi said. "Tell me, Broom, how long did it take the surgeons to turn you into a Cobra?"

Lorne frowned at the sudden change of subject. "What?"

"Your Cobra surgery," Croi repeated. "How long?"

"Same as everyone else's," Lorne said. "Two weeks."

"How much of that was actually spent on the operating table?"

"I don't really remember," Lorne said. "Something like ten hours a day for eleven of those fourteen days. Call it a hundred-ten hours, I guess."

"Actually, it's a hundred and twelve," Croi said. "How would you like to have had it all done in five days, and only forty hours on the table?"

"Not possible," Lorne said flatly. "They're tricky operations. Even experienced surgeons like those at the academy hospital can only work so fast."

"Agreed," Croi said. "But that assumes human beings doing the surgery."

Beside Lorne, Nissa inhaled sharply. "Isis," she breathed.

"What?" Lorne asked, frowning again.

"It was a reference in one of Governor-General Chintawa's reports," she said, staring wide-eyed at Croi. "It's an acronym for Integrated Structural Implantation System."

Lorne looked back at Croi, a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. "What exactly are you saying?"

"What I'm saying is that we're sitting on a huge technological breakthrough," Croi said quietly. He gestured past the circle of Trofts toward the freighter's stern. "Back there, tucked away in a hundred packing crates, is our brand-new prototype, Isis.

"The world's first fully automated Cobra factory."

Chapter Fourteen

For a long moment no one spoke. Lorne looked at Croi, then at Nissa, then at Warrior, then back at Croi. "You're not serious," he said at last.

"Deadly serious," Croi assured him grimly. "And you see now why it was vital that we get it off Aventine before the invaders caught wind of it. All of our Cobra equipment and weaponry, with no fail-safes or self-destructs in place, just waiting for someone to come along and take it apart until they learn everything about it and every single way to defeat you."

"Right," Lorne said, looking back at the circle of armed Trofts and putting a targeting lock on each of the aliens' foreheads. A probably useless gesture--an heir's ship would be teeming with Tlossie soldiers--but if this whole thing fell apart he would have to at least try. "No, we wouldn't want the Trofts getting hold of the stuff, would we?"

Croi snorted. "Relax, Broom. The reason Isis is aboard this ship is that Ingidi-inhiliziyo helped develop it."

"He
what
?" Lorne demanded. "Who authorized
that
?"

"I said
relax
," Croi said, starting to sound annoyed. "He hasn't been allowed to see or study any of the actual equipment. He just helped me create the robotics systems that Isis uses to implant it."

"He helped
you
," Lorne said catching the pronoun's significance. "So you're a robotics expert, too?"

"Hardly, though I do dabble a little," Croi said. "I'm actually a surgeon by training, which meant our areas of expertise intersected quite well."

"Handy when that happens," Lorne said, eyeing Warrior. [Your robotics expertise, it impresses me.]

[Surprises you, it in fact does,] Warrior corrected calmly. [Yet surprised, you should not be. A useless parasite, an heir is not one.]

[The truth, so it would seem,] Lorne said, turning back to Croi. "So that's the
what
. Let's hear the
why
."

"You mean why create Isis in the first place?" Croi asked. "Actually--and you're going to laugh--it was Governor Treakness's idea."

Lorne raised his eyebrows. "
Treakness
?"

"Governor Tomo Treakness of the loud rants against the whole Cobra project," Croi confirmed. "Now suggesting a new project costing even more money, at least at the outset. Ironic, isn't it?"

"I imagine he feels a bit differently about the Cobras now," Lorne murmured.

"Knowing the governor, I wouldn't bet on it," Croi said. "Regardless, Isis was an idea he and Governor Ellen Hoffman cooked up between them a few months ago. The prototype was supposed to be unveiled with all due pomp and ceremony sometime in the next day or two, then shipped out to Donyang Province for its trial run. The ultimate goal was to scatter these things all around the expansion areas and new worlds, where they would not only save costs but would also shift the center of Cobra operations completely away from Capitalia and putting them where most of the actual needs are."

"And where most of the recruits are coming from, anyway," Lorne said, a stray memory suddenly clicking. "Was that the ceremony Chintawa wanted my mother to come into town for?"

"Exactly," Croi said, nodding. "You know how politicians think: the woman who redefined the Cobra profile thirty years ago, on hand to offer a send-off to the next stage of Cobra redefinition, and all that."

Lorne grimaced. Except that no one in the Dome had allowed his mother's redefinition of the Cobra profile to stick, and moreover had actively concealed what she'd actually done for the Cobra Worlds. She would have been little more than a figurehead at Chintawa's big show, someone to extol and ignore at the same time. "Well, we're for sure not going to Donyang now," he said. "So what's the new plan?"

Croi's cheek twitched. "There's currently a lack of agreement on that point," he said. "Ingidi-inhiliziyo wants to head straight back to his demesne and bury Isis as fast and as deeply as possible."

"Really," Lorne said, flicking a target lock onto Warrior as well.

"Yes, really," Croi said. "And before you start leaping to paranoid conclusions again, Cobra gear won't work on Trofts. Their bone structure, the way their ligaments work and are attached, even the available body cavities--just trust me, they can't use the gear. Neither can any other Trofts."

[Yet as a way to destroy the Tlos'khin'fahi Demesne, it would serve well,] Warrior put in grimly. Behind him, the door leading to the control areas opened and another Troft strode quickly in and stepped to Warrior's side.

"What do you mean?" Lorne asked.

Warrior didn't answer, his full attention clearly on the newcomer murmuring in his ear. Lorne notched up his audios-- [is here,] he caught the tail end of the Troft's words. [In person, do you wish to speak?]

[In person, I will,] Warrior agreed, his voice tight. Without even a glance at the three humans, he and the other Troft turned and walked quickly from the vestibule.

Lorne looked back at the ring of silent Troft soldiers, their weapons still pointed at the ceiling, then turned back to Croi. "Fine," he said. "I'll ask
you
, then. What did Warrior mean about someone using Isis to destroy the Tlossies?"

"Because its very existence is proof they collaborated with us," Croi said, frowning for a moment at the door where Warrior had disappeared. "In the past, their trading relationship with us has been a pretty good thing, for both sides. At the moment, though, all the political pressure is going the other direction."

"So I noticed," Lorne said. "Okay, Warrior wants to bury the project. What do
you
want to do with it?"

"Use it, of course," Croi said. "I think we should take Isis to Esquiline or Viminal, make a whole bunch of Cobras as fast as we can, then bring them back here to Aventine."

Nissa stirred. "You assume the Trofts haven't already landed on those worlds," she said, her voice limp with fatigue.

"You also assume you'll be able to convince enough psychologically qualified people to go under your robotic knife, knowing they're going to be thrown immediately into a war," Lorne added. "That may be harder than you think."

"The Dominion of Man had no trouble finding recruits a hundred years ago in
their
war with the Trofts," Croi pointed out.

Lorne shook his head. "Unfair comparison," he said. "The Dominion of Man had seventy worlds to draw from. We have five.
And
that still ignores Nissa's point that if the invaders have any brains at all they already have troops on
all
our worlds."

"I guess that's just something we're going to have to risk, isn't it?" Croi growled. "You have a better idea?"

A wave of sudden tiredness washed over Lorne's mind. "I can't even think five minutes ahead right now," he conceded.

Croi took a deep breath. "You're right, of course," he said. He took another breath and gestured to the soldiers. "Is there some place we can go and rest for a while? Maybe clean up a little, too?"

One of the Trofts gestured toward the door leading aft. [A place, it has been prepared for you,] he said. [Though the place, it was designed for three males.]

Lorne looked at Nissa. "It's all right," she said. "We'll manage." Gathering herself, she climbed to her feet.