Cobra Gamble

by Timothy Zahn

  But there was no way he was going to change his mind and ask the Trofts for a ride. Not now. Especially not when he had a sneaking suspicion that the alien commander was hoping that he would do so.

  Besides, the leisurely pace forced by his restraints gave him a better opportunity to study the layout of the maze of corridors as they passed through it.

  And for the first time since his capture, he finally knew beyond the shadow of a doubt where he was.

  The Trofts had indeed locked him in the Sollas subcity. And not only in the subcity, but in the southwest area, the part of the labyrinth he was most familiar with.

  Like Merrick himself, though, the place was no longer in pristine shape. The walls and ceilings showed signs of stress or battering, as if the Trofts had been at them with giant sledgehammers. Or, more likely, that someone had been busy at ground level with explosives and bulldozers, pummeling the subcity with random shock waves and toppling buildings across areas that hadn't been properly prepared to take that kind of weight.

  Finally, after fifteen minutes of plodding through increasingly familiar territory, they arrived at their destination: the very arena where Merrick and the Djinn had planned and trained for that final attack on the invaders' warships.

  The battle in which Merrick had nearly been killed.

  He looked around the room, the memories of those long hours of practice mixing with the remembered stress and agony of the battle itself. The arena was good-sized, fifty meters by thirty, with an eight-meter-high ceiling. The walls were lined with doors of various sizes, six of them exits, the others leading to storage for the equipment, ramps, and prefab structures that could be used to turn the empty room into a duplicate of whatever the Djinn would be facing on their next mission. Near the ceiling were a set of catwalks and projectors that could handle lighting and other optical and audio effects. Lower down were display screens that could add further visual details and cues that the team might need to know.

  The arena hadn't escaped the general subcity damage. One of the catwalks had lost its supports at one end and was hanging at an angle, its lower end suspended in midair about three meters above the floor. Two of the exit doors had been shattered, with the pieces still lying nearby, and the walls near all the other exits were pitted with laser marks. Behind the broken doors he could see stacks of rubble that blocked any chance of movement in those directions. In the center of the room the entire ceiling had been bowed downward, with several square meters of the concrete broken away and the exposed rebar hanging open like a strange abstract sculpture.

  More ominous were the dark stains of dried blood scattered across the floor. Whatever had happened here, the Qasamans hadn't given up without a fight.

  [Ten more steps, you will take them,] the unseen Troft ordered, his voice coming now from one of the speakers in the arena's upper walls.

  Merrick grimaced. Another ten steps with this stupid rig he was wearing? [The Games, what do they consist of?] he called as he obediently set off toward the center of the arena.

  [The Games, they are from Anya Winghunter's culture,] the Troft said. [Their purpose, she will explain it.]

  Merrick focused on the woman still walking in front of him. The Games were her idea? "Anya?" he prompted.

  "Commander Ukuthi speaks truth," Anya said over her shoulder, "The Games are the way my people test our young ones."

  "I thought you said you were slaves," Merrick said. At least now he had a name for the Troft who'd been running him in rings ever since he was brought here. The question was, how did Anya know him? "What do you test them for?"

  Anya stopped and turned around, her eyes cool and measuring as she looked at him. "For skills of combat," she said, as if it was obvious. "Our masters enjoy watching us fight."

  Merrick was still trying to find a response to that when there was a multiple snick from his wrists and ankles. The cuffs popped free and dropped clattering to the floor, the three connecting rods dropping with them.

  He turned around, flexing his arms and fingers, just in time to see the last of their two Troft escorts hurriedly disappear through the doorway they'd entered by. The door swung shut with a thud, and he heard a double click as it was locked.

  Locked; but not for long. Merrick's cell door had been specifically designed to keep people from getting through it. The arena's doors hadn't. Flicking a target lock onto the bolted side, he shifted his weight onto his right leg—

  [The exits from the room, explosives have been attached to them,] Commander Ukuthi's voice drifted down from the ceiling. [A devastating blast, it will occur if you attempt to escape.]

  Merrick hesitated, still balanced on one foot. The Troft might be bluffing, though from what Merrick had seen of him so far that didn't seem likely. But even if he wasn't, Merrick and Anya were a good five meters back from the door. There would have to be a hell of a lot of explosives back there to reach them at this distance. The gamble was probably worth taking.

  He looked up at the cracked ceiling. On the other hand, he had no idea how much damage this part of the subcity had taken. It was conceivable that an explosion of any size would bring the whole arena down on top of them.

  His programmed Cobra reflexes might still get him safely through a catastrophe like that. But they wouldn't help Anya.

  He'd promised himself that he wouldn't get in any way emotionally attached to this mysterious woman. But whether he liked it or not, she was a fellow human being, and he couldn't risk her life so casually. Certainly not on a plan that had such a limited chance of ultimate success anyway.

  "Fine," he muttered. "Whatever." He raised his voice. [The Games, begin them.]

  There was a short pause. Then, across the arena, one of the storage room doors opened, and a razorarm strode into the room. It caught sight of the two humans and broke into a loping run toward them.

  Merrick frowned. Was Ukuthi kidding? Razorarms had decentralized nervous systems that made them tricky to kill, but Aventine's Cobras had long since learned the necessary tricks. Targeting three of the easiest kill points, he waited for the predator to get closer.

  And as it closed to within ten meters and threw itself into an attack sprint, he swiveled his left leg up and fired his antiarmor laser. There were three brilliant bursts of light, and the spine leopard slammed into the floor and skidded to a halt at Merrick's feet.

  Merrick gave it a few seconds, just to make sure, then looked up at the speaker. "Is that it?" he called. "Can we go home now?"

  "There will be more," Anya murmured into the silence, her voice odd. "They will not stop with just one."

  Merrick looked at her, frowning. The oddness of her voice, he saw now, was matched by the oddness in her face. In place of the wooden, distant expression he'd become accustomed to was a mixture of surprise, disbelief, and a touch of fear.

  Only then did it occur to Merrick that she'd probably never seen what a Cobra could do.

  "Don't worry about it," he said as soothingly as he could. There was something disconcerting about being looked at in that way. "Whatever they throw at me, I can handle it."

  [The next predator, it will not be the same,] Commander Ukuthi's voice came over the speaker. [Concussion charges, they will be attached to its hide. Detonation of the charges, your lasers will cause. Understanding, do you have it?]

  Merrick looked at Anya again. This one seemed new to her, too. [Understanding, I have it,] he called. [Danger to us, do the charges possess it?]

  [Danger, they certainly possess it,] Ukuthi assured him. [The charges, they are shaped to spread their force outward. The predator, it will not be harmed.]

  [Understanding, I have it,] Merrick repeated sourly. In other words, if the concussion charges were close enough when they detonated, they would stun or otherwise disable Merrick and Anya but not the razorarm, leaving the predator free to maul them at its leisure.

  But that shouldn't be a problem. He knew at least four different ways to kill a razorarm, and if this was Ukuthi's way of lea
rning the full range of Merrick's Cobra weaponry he was going to be disappointed. All four ways involved his lasers, which the Trofts had already seen.

  To Merrick's left another of the storage room doors swung open and a second razorarm bounded out. This one, he saw, was noticeably more agitated than the first had been.

  Small wonder. Attached to its head, looking like some sort of strange lily pads floating on a misshapen pond, were three cuplike devices about ten centimeters across.

  And they were positioned precisely over the three spots where Merrick had shot the first razorarm.

  This time Merrick didn't bother to let the predator find and identify its potential prey and launch itself into a charge. With three more rapid-fire laser shots, he dropped it where it stood.

  "Amazing," Anya murmured from his side.

  "It's all in the wrist," Merrick told her, glancing around the room. The rest of the arena's doors were still closed. "Stay here," he ordered. Warily, he crossed to the dead razorarm and squatted down beside it.

  The devices fastened to the animal's hide weren't anything he was familiar with. But the trigger mechanism did indeed look like a temperature fuse, which meant Ukuthi hadn't been lying about the risk if Merrick's aim went awry.

  What was interesting was that a temperature fuse would also be triggered by Merrick's arcthrower or possibly even the lower-intensity current of his stunner. Yet Ukuthi had only warned him against laser misfires. Did that mean Ukuthi didn't know about those weapons? Or had that been a test to see if Merrick was smart enough to extrapolate to such conclusions on his own?

  He was pondering that question, and trying to figure out what he might be able to do to the concussion charges without setting them off, when a third door swung open across the room. This time, the razorarm sported six of the concussion-charge lily pads, the collection covering both sets of Merrick's earlier kill points.

  Merrick sighed as he got back to his feet. Now it was just getting ridiculous.

  He killed the razorarm, and the one after that, and the one after that. Each time, the next predator emerged with more and more of the concussion charges in place, until the last one came out looking like some high-fashion satire.

  But there was nothing amusing about the fact that all the predator's best target zones were now off-limits. Merrick wound up lasering its legs to bring it to a halt, then moving right up beside it and carefully lasering three shots into its head beneath the charges. Once again he confirmed that the predator was dead, then returned to Anya's side to wait for whatever Ukuthi and the Games had planned for him next. Another door opened, much earlier than Merrick had expected, and he turned to face it.

  And felt his mouth drop open. It wasn't a razorarm this time, but a creature like nothing he'd ever seen before.

  Its basic shape was that of a tapered cylinder, five meters long and half a meter in diameter at its largest, heavily scaled, with no legs and a barely discernible head with tiny eyes and a wide slit of a mouth. It rippled its way out of the storage room onto the arena floor in a fluid, snake-like motion, its movement accompanied by the muted crackle of hard scales against concrete floor. Its front segment swayed back and forth a few times, as if the creature was surveying its new territory. Then, with almost arrogant leisure, it turned to face Merrick and Anya.

  "What the hell is that?" Merrick muttered, taking Anya's arm and backing them slowly away from the creature.

  "It is called a jormungand," she said, her voice trembling. Merrick spared her a quick glance, his stomach tightening at the sight of her wide eyes and suddenly pale face. Whatever this thing was, she was very unhappy to see it. "How did he find—?"

  "Save it," Merrick cut her off. The armored snake was on the move, rippling toward them with deceptive speed.

  There was no time for finesse. Swiveling on his right leg, Merrick brought up his left and fired his antiarmor laser into the creature's head. The shot sent a burst of thick green smoke from the impact point, momentarily hiding the jormungand from sight.

  The smoke cleared away to reveal the creature still slithering toward them as if nothing had happened.

  "You have to kill it!" Anya said frantically. "Please."

  "I'm trying, I'm trying," Merrick snarled, wrinkling his nose as the fetid odor from the smoke reached him. He fired again, still targeting the head, then again, and again. The results were the same: clouds of smoke, some charring of the scales where the shots hit, but no serious damage and no obvious effect on the jormungand's ability to function. The scales were ablative, Merrick realized with a sinking feeling, the first microsecond of the laser's heat vaporizing a thin layer, with the resulting smoke then diffusing the rest of the shot and probably also carrying away most of the energy. If the scales were thick enough, he could probably pump fifty shots into the damn thing and still not kill it.

  He didn't have time for fifty shots. And he definitely didn't have time to experiment. Angered or stung by Merrick's useless attacks, the jormungand had picked up speed and was now coming at them at the pace of a brisk jog. "Go," Merrick told Anya, giving her a push back behind him. "Go. Run!"

  "Run where?" she asked, taking a few steps and then stopping.

  Merrick glanced around. Aside from the dead razorarms the arena was bare, with no cover anywhere. The catwalks would be safe enough from something that couldn't jump, but they were all too high to reach.

  Except for the broken one hanging precariously from one end.

  It would be dangerous, Merrick knew—the supports might be in bad enough shape that any extra weight would bring the whole thing crashing down. But it was all they had. "Over by the catwalk's lower end," he ordered, jabbing a finger toward it. "Go there and wait for me."

  "Be careful," Anya said, and took off running.

  Merrick turned back to the jormungand slithering toward him and tried to think. Distance shots weren't working. Maybe something a little closer would be more effective.

  The problem was that closer also meant more dangerous. He hadn't seen what kind of teeth the thing had, but he had no doubt they were as formidable as the rest of it. But he had to risk it. Bending his knees, he stretched out his right hand toward the creature and braced himself.

  And as the jormungand got to within two meters he fired his arcthrower, sending a bolt of high-voltage current into the creature's head. As the thunderclap echoed across the arena he shoved off the floor, leaping up and over the armored snake.

  He nearly died right there. The entire lower half of the jormungand's body whipped upward like a thick, scaled whip as he jumped, barely missing him as he soared past overhead. He hit the floor and spun around.

  To find that the arcthrower hadn't done any better than the laser.

  Or maybe it had, just a little. The jormungand seemed fractionally more sluggish as it turned around toward him again. Fifty shots with the arcthrower, maybe, would do as well as fifty with the antiarmor laser.

  Across the room, Anya had reached the hanging catwalk and turned back to watch the drama. Merrick gave the jormungand a wide berth and sprinted over to join her.

  "Are we going up there?" she asked, pointing at the catwalk as he braked to a halt.

  "You are," Merrick said, crouching down in front of her and holding his hand, palm-upward, beside her foot. "Step on my hand. Come on—do it."

  Hesitantly, she did as ordered. Merrick straightened, hearing the faint whine as his servos took the woman's weight, and lifted her up to the catwalk. "Grab the rail and pull yourself up," he instructed. "If it feels safe, try climbing another meter or so—we don't want the snake thinking you're close enough to be worth making a snatch for."

  "What about you?" Anya asked as she eased herself onto the catwalk. The structure swayed ominously, but the anchors at the upper end seemed to be holding.

  "I'll be back soon," Merrick said, giving the catwalk one last look and then turning back around.

  And leaping instantly to the side as his nanocomputer took over, he jormungand's sn
apping jaws nearly catching his leg as he flew way out of its reach. It had teeth, all right, lots of big, sharp ones, Merrick hit the floor, rolled, and came back up onto his feet.

  His first fear was that the jormungand might decide to try for the low-hanging catwalk and the stationary prey clinging to it. But apparently it was smart enough to recognize that Merrick posed the more immediate threat. It had already turned again and was slithering toward him, its beady eyes barely visible beneath the scaled brow ridges. Briefly, Merrick considered trying to blind it, decided his better option right now would be to get the hell out of there, and took off running.

  He reached the far wall and again turned around. The jormungand was still charging toward him, but his sprint had opened up a wide enough gap to give him some breathing space. Time to breathe, and time to think.

  The snake could be killed. Everything could. He just had to find the right way to do it.

  Glancing up at the ceiling, wondering if Ukuthi was enjoying the show, he keyed his infrareds.

  The facial-mapping system his generation of Cobras had been fitted with had been designed mainly to study human faces, with the goal of detecting stress, fatigue, and possible bald-faced lies. But it should work equally well on large armored snakes. Warm spots, Merrick knew, would indicate places where the scaling was thinner, or where the jormungand's blood vessels were closer to the surface, which might give him a clue as to where his weapons would be most effective.

  Only there weren't any such warm spots, not anywhere on the creature's head, back, or sides. There was heat there, certainly, but it seemed to be radiating pretty uniformly across the whole of the jormungand's hide.

  But there had to be someplace that was less protected. At the very least, the snake had to have an opening for dumping its wastes. Probably somewhere in the tail area, either underneath the animal or otherwise blocked from Merrick's current vantage point. He waited for it to slither closer, then leaped over it, making sure this time that he went high enough to avoid its lunge.