by Timothy Zahn
Matavuli gave a low whistle. “Nasty stuff,” he said. “Face and hands?”
“Probably just face,” Lorne said. “It should leave enough red puffiness to confuse their facial-recognition algorithms.”
“I hope so, for your sake,” Matavuli said dryly. “A prison cell’s bad enough without your skin trying to itch its way off your body.”
“And I won’t exactly be looking for trouble, either,” Lorne said. “Even in Archway I imagine Reivaro’s men are spread pretty thin.”
“Should be,” Matavuli agreed. “Though with Yates’s plant shut down he might have shifted some guards from there to the gates.”
“I wouldn’t if I were him,” Lorne said. “If it is just a temporary stoppage he won’t want to risk more permanent sabotage while they’re not paying attention. Either way, I’ll just have to risk it. Okay if I borrow one of your bikes?”
“Sure, if you can hotwire it,” Matavuli said. “I don’t want Reivaro coming after me for giving it to you.”
“Good point,” Lorne agreed, wincing. He hadn’t thought of that angle. “Unfortunately, I don’t know how to do that.”
“Kids,” Matavuli said reproachfully. “Fine; I’ll show you.” He looked around and pointed to a beat-up Road Racer motorbike that had seen quite a few better days. “Come on—the Racer will be the easiest. So you’re heading to Archway? I thought you and Pierce were going to wait for your uncle.”
“I figured I’d wait someplace where I might be useful,” Lorne said as he wove his way through the garage to the Racer, resisting the urge to point out that Cobras usually didn’t need to borrow vehicles without the owner’s permission. “But thanks for the reminder. Did Uncle Corwin think he could do it?”
“He said no promises, but that he’d enjoy the challenge,” Matavuli said as he collected his tools. “Personally, I think it’s a hell of a long shot.”
“Long shots are all we’ve got right now,” Lorne said. “Speaking of which, I also need to find a place for a little target practice. Any suggestions?”
“I thought you Cobras already came with all that targeting stuff.”
“This is a little different,” Lorne told him. “I need to learn how to throw bombs with some semblance of accuracy.”
“Fun,” Matavuli said with a grunt as he came up to Lorne’s side. “That what’s in the backpack?”
“Don’t worry—they’re safe enough,” Lorne assured him. “The problem is that throwing things isn’t part of the standard Cobra repertoire.”
“You mean like walking a tightrope?”
Lorne frowned at him. “Are you saying we do have target-throwing ability?”
“Not saying you do; not saying you don’t.” Matavuli gestured toward Lorne’s head with a screwdriver. “But that programming’s a hundred years old, right? Who knows what might be in there that everyone’s forgotten?”
Lorne pursed his lips. Matavuli had a point. Aside from a few tweaks that had been added to the opticals, arcthrower, and audios, the nanocomputer programming was the same as it had been for his great-grandfather Jonny Moreau and the rest of the First Cobras.
And even then, the only adjustments the Cobra Worlds had made had been additions. As far as he knew, none of the original programming had been deleted. There could be whole blocks of hidden data and techniques that no one knew about, simply because no one had needed to use it.
If Lorne could unlock those hidden techniques, maybe he could find something that would help even the odds.
“Okay; pay attention,” Matavuli said, pointing to a curved plate on the top of the Runner’s engine cluster. “Under here is the starter . . .”
* * *
It took Matavuli five minutes to hotwire the bike. It took Lorne, under the rancher’s watchful eye, closer to twenty.
But by the time he was done he had the technique down cold.
“Good,” Matavuli said, wiping his hands on a rag and gesturing toward one of the other vehicles, a two-seater. “Now get in the crawler.”
“Why?”
“You wanted target practice, right?” Matavuli reminded him, crossing to the main doors and shoving them all the way open. He gestured. “Oh, and you can leave the bombs here.”
“I’d rather take them with me,” Lorne said. He slipped off the backpack as he got into the crawler and set it on his lap. “Don’t want someone else finding them. So where are we going?”
“Trust me,” Matavuli said, smiling tightly as he got behind the wheel. “I’ve got just the place.”
The place turned out to be an irrigation ditch.
“You’re kidding,” Lorne said, eyeing the ditch as he and Matavuli climbed out of the crawler. It was about three meters wide, two deep, and eighty meters long, mostly straight but with a couple of small bends in it.
“What kidding?” Matavuli countered. “It’s deep enough to make you invisible except from straight overhead, and it’s long enough to give you some distance to play with. Best of all, it’s dry right now.”
“Yeah, that’s a nice plus,” Lorne agreed, frowning as they walked toward it. “Getting in and out could be a trick.”
“Not really—there’s a ledge midway down that runs the whole western edge.” Matavuli eyed his backpack. “You weren’t planning on using actual bombs for this, were you?”
“Not at all,” Lorne assured him. “I was hoping to dig up some stones or something.”
“Not many big stones around here.” Matavuli dug into his hip kit and came up with three large box-end wrenches. “These do?”
“Perfect,” Lorne said, taking them. They were a bit lighter than his bombs, but close enough for practice. “Isn’t two meters kind of deep for irrigation?”
“One: string grass grows deep roots,” Matavuli said. “Ergo, the deeper the ditch, the better they get watered and the more the sheep and cattle get to eat. Two: you know as well as I do that the rains can be iffy in the summer. That means that in a pinch we can also use the ditch as a water-storage tank.”
“Sounds to me like excuses,” Lorne murmured.
“Exactly,” Matavuli said, nodding. “All of which I’m ready to trot out if the Dominion asks the same question. Because . . . ?” He raised his eyebrows expectantly.
Lorne smiled as he finally got it. “Because what the ditch really is is a slit trench.”
“Bingo,” Matavuli confirmed. “A bunch of us dug these back when the DeVegas Cobras were irritating the hell out of the Trofts and we figured that sooner or later they’d give up on that whole minimal-damage war philosophy and start full-range bombings. I had plans to do five or six more in other parts of the ranch, but the invasion ended before I got to them.”
“Sorry it was wasted effort,” Lorne said.
Matavuli gave him a sideways look. “You’re sorry the Trofts got kicked out too soon? Seriously? Anyway, it’s nice to finally get some use out of the thing. Watch your step.”
Lorne had assumed that the ledge Matavuli had mentioned would be a carved section of the wall, like a normal stairway step. It turned out to be considerably more sophisticated: a meter-wide metal shelf sticking out from the wall, overhanging a third of the trench’s floor area. “Shrapnel protection?” he hazarded as he hopped down to the shelf and then to the floor.
“Of course not,” Matavuli scoffed as he followed more slowly. “Mineral enhancement. String grass grows better if it’s got extra trace metals. The water leaches zinc, manganese, and iron off the plate.”
“You’ve got an answer for everything, don’t you?” Lorne commented, slipping off his backpack and setting it down on the ledge.
“That’s how you stay alive,” Matavuli said, joining him on the trench floor. “Okay. See that tree root sticking out of the wall about fifty meters away? See if you can hit it.” He held out one of the wrenches. “What do you do first?”
Lorne took the wrench. “Well, for a lot of our maneuvers we start with a targeting lock to give the nanocomputer the distance. So . . .
” He peered down the trench at the root and did the lock. “And now I suppose I just throw.” Cocking his arm over his shoulder, he threw the wrench.
It thudded to the ground ten meters short of its goal.
Grimacing, Lorne tried again. The second shot landed about two meters closer. “Any thoughts?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m thinking I should have brought more wrenches,” Matavuli commented as he handed Lorne the last wrench.
“Cute,” Lorne growled, glowering at the distant root. He’d given the nanocomputer the distance; it could presumably figure the object’s weight from the heft of his arm servos. What else could it need?
“Maybe you have to do more like a forty-five degree arc,” Matavuli suggested. “You’ve been throwing closer to thirty.”
“Or I need to tell it the angle I want to throw at,” Lorne said, looking up at the sky. Open sky, with nothing for his opticals to lock onto, so it couldn’t be another targeting lock. Kinesthetic feedback from his arm servos, maybe?
Hefting the last wrench, he target-locked the root and then pantomimed a slow-motion throw, arcing the wrench through the same thirty-degree angle he’d already tried twice. Bringing his arm back again, he threw.
Again, no good. “I’ve still got a couple of screwdrivers, if you want to try one of them instead,” Matavuli offered.
“We’ll save them for later,” Lorne growled. He jogged down the trench, retrieved the wrenches, and returned.
Matavuli was trying out some odd posturings, moving his arms around like a confused living statue. “Try this,” he suggested, holding up his left hand and pointing like a hunter marking a flock of game birds. “Point your left arm at the throwing angle you want while you throw the wrench with your right.”
Lorne tried it. It didn’t work. “Anything else?”
“Hey, you’re the Cobra,” Matavuli said. “Fancy moves are your business, not mine.”
“So they are,” Lorne said, a thought suddenly striking him. The targeting lock’s primary purpose was to let the nanocomputer aim Lorne’s lasers and arcthrower. It also worked to give range for the wall-bounce, but only when the lock was followed by a jump instead of weapons fire. He’d already tried a lock and a throw, without success.
But the jump was normally just a straight-on leap, with no further data needed. As he and Matavuli had already noted, to calculate a throw the computer needed not just the distance but also the desired initial angle. And it needed the angle first, because different types of throws required different angles.
Or if not first, then perhaps simultaneously?
He lifted his left arm to a forty-five-degree angle in the direction of the root, holding the pose while he put a targeting lock on the root. Again cocking his arm over his shoulder, he started to throw.
And to his surprise and relief, he felt the familiar disconnect as his nanocomputer and servos took over from his muscles, shifting his arm’s position and speed and sending the wrench flying down the trench to bounce squarely off the root.
“Whoa!” Matavuli said. “I hope that wasn’t just a lucky shot.”
“Let’s find out,” Lorne said. Lowering his arm to a thirty-degree angle, he again target-locked the root and threw a wrench.
The servos had to work harder this time, whipping his arm faster as dictated by the physics of a shallower throw. Again, the wrench nailed the root dead-center. For his final throw, Lorne aimed high, seventy or eighty degrees from horizontal, and watched in satisfaction as the wrench flew its high parabolic arc and again hit the root.
“I think you’ve got it,” Matavuli said. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” Lorne said, a shiver running through his sense of satisfaction. So easy . . . and yet no one had ever suggested the programming was even there. “I think we’re done here. Let me go get the wrenches and—”
“Hold it,” Matavuli said, grabbing his arm. “I hear an aircar.”
Lorne keyed up his audios. It was an aircar, all right, approaching from the east. “Sound like one of the Dominion’s.”
“No kidding,” Matavuli growled, hopping up on the ledge and climbing back to the surface. “Get under the ledge—come on, move it. And don’t forget your backpack.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ten seconds later Lorne was lying on the ground, wedged between the floor, the ledge, and the trench wall, his backpack in similar concealment at his head. The aircar reached them, and from the sound he guessed it was making a leisurely circle around Matavuli. Then, it came closer, and a careful look past the edge of the ledge showed it settling to the ground on the eastern side of the trench, opposite the point where Matavuli had climbed out. The engines spun down, and he heard the sound as two doors opened. There was the faint crunching of footsteps on string grass— “Morning,” a helmet-filtered voice called. “Dushan Matavuli, right?”
“You’ve got my face on file,” Matavuli called back. “You want something, or are you just going around crushing people’s grass?”
“We thought we saw something fall onto your ranch,” the Marine said. “Wanted to check and make sure everything was all right.”
Lorne winced. They must have spotted that last, high-arc throw.
The big question was whether they’d seen it clearly enough to tell that it was a wrench. If so, he and Matavuli were in deep trouble. If not, maybe they could be bluffed back out of here.
“Probably a hawk,” Matavuli said. Evidently, he was going to give option two a try. “They dive at rats and ground squirrels all the time.”
“Really,” the Marine said. “A hawk.”
“Or a peregrine or a swallowtail shrike,” Matavuli said impatiently. “There are a lot of vermin in grass fields. Vermin attract predators. Do I have to draw you a flow chart?”
“No, we’re familiar with vermin,” the Marine said acidly. “Mind telling us what you’re doing out here?”
“It’s my ranch,” Matavuli said irritably. “I have to go places on it.”
“Your nearest cattle are over half a klick away,” the Marine countered. “What are you doing here?”
“One of my workers lost some tools yesterday,” Matavuli said. “I’m looking for them.”
“Someone else lost them, but you’re the one looking for them?”
“Yeah, because I’ve got him cleaning the half-track’s treads,” Matavuli said. “Trust me; I’d rather hunt lost tools.”
Lorne clenched his teeth. It was a nice story, with a nice snappy punch line to it.
The problem was that it could also be easily checked out . . . and once the Marines caught Matavuli in a lie, Reivaro could have him hauled in for further questioning or imprisonment. Or worse.
“Considering the stuff you probably drive through, I can’t blame you,” the Marine said, a little too casually. “What did you lose, some wrenches?”
“Three of them, yeah,” Matavuli said. “Why, you got some spares?”
“They’re over there,” the Marine said. “Forty-eight meters, down in that—what is this thing, anyway?”
Matavuli launched into the irrigation and water storage story he’d spun for Lorne earlier. But Lorne wasn’t listening. Something in the Marine’s voice told him that they didn’t believe a word and were simply feeding the rancher extra rope in hopes that he would eventually hang himself.
And if they concluded Matavuli’s presence by the trench was somehow significant and decided to search it . . .
Carefully, making sure his arm didn’t show around the edge of the ledge, Lorne reached up to the backpack lying above his head and eased it open. This was going to be tricky, not to mention dangerous. But he could see no other option. Right now he was below the Marines, where their epaulet lasers couldn’t easily target him. But the minute they jumped into the trench, it would all be over. Not only would Lorne be in their sights, but being squeezed in beneath the shelf gave him exactly zero maneuverability.
Matavuli was talking about the province’s variable weather sys
tems and their effect on rainfall by the time Lorne had pulled out one of the homemade concussion grenades. He’d included a timer, but had designed them so that the main activation mechanism would be the impact of intense laser fire. If he could get the grenade close enough to the Marines, their combat suits’ auto-defense systems should do the rest.
No battle plan survives contact with the enemy, his Qasaman commanders had often warned him. Briefly, Lorne wondered if the saying also applied to battle theory versus battle reality.
Matavuli was running through the metallic-element-leaching bit when the listeners apparently decided they’d had enough. “Okay, fine, shut up,” one of the Marines cut him off. “We’re going to need you to come with us.”
Wedged beneath the ledge, there was no way for Lorne to use his new pinpoint throwing skills. He would just have to throw naturally and hope for the best. Leaning out from the shelf as far as he dared, he lobbed the grenade upward toward a spot midway between the two Marines, then ducked back, pressing his face and chest against the side of the trench.
The grenade was more powerful than he’d expected, the concussion ricocheting around the trench and slamming into his back. For a brief moment his whole body seemed to spin as the shockwave temporarily scrambled his sense of balance. Then the dizziness passed, and he rolled back out from under the ledge.
The two Marines were no longer visible at the edge of the trench. But he could see a pair of motionless feet. Grabbing his backpack, he leaped up to the surface.
The Marines were stretched motionless on the ground, angled backward from the direction of the blast. Lorne glanced at the other side of the trench, noting to his relief that Matavuli was getting shakily to his hands and knees, then stepped up to the first Marine and sent an arcthrower blast into the inner control edge of his left epaulet. A second blast went into the right epaulet. He moved to the other Marine, giving the arcthrower capacitor a few seconds to recharge, then similarly burned out the control edges of the second man’s epaulets.
