Cobra Outlaw

by Timothy Zahn

  And for no other reason, he told himself firmly. No other reason at all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Archway, Lorne thought with grim satisfaction as he gazed across the city, was coming to a boil.

  And that was good. Because Reivaro, the Marines, the Dominion of Man itself needed to know that the Cobra Worlds were not to be trifled with, or the wishes of its citizens ignored.

  Governor Chintawa had tried diplomacy and civility, only to be ignored. If violence was the only thing the Dominion understood, then violence was what they were going to get.

  And if Lorne was the only Cobra in DeVegas still able to deliver such messages, he was more than willing to take on the job.

  He smiled. And when, he wondered, had he started thinking to himself in history-book-style quotes? Maybe that kind of mindset came with the territory.

  Territory that was turning out to be a full-time occupation. His first attack had been just four days ago, when he’d hit Dominion Marines’ headquarters, knocked over a pair of guards with a concussion grenade, and littered Colonel Reivaro’s office with shards of glass. Reivaro hadn’t been there at the time, but the message had been abundantly clear.

  Two days ago Lorne had struck again, slipping into a section of the city the Marines were busy searching, and wrecking one of their aircars. That had gotten him a lot of media exposure, plus a fifteen-minute, teeth-clenched broadcast statement from Reivaro that had included a warning about what would happen to anyone caught in the act of sabotage.

  But those attacks, visible though they’d been, had been merely pinpricks. They’d been designed to get Reivaro too mad to think straight, and to get the Marines jumping at their own shadows. It was time now for Lorne to give Reivaro a solid gut-punch.

  In this case, Yates Fabrications.

  The factory was a good half-kilometer from the rooftop where Lorne was currently crouched, surrounded by a swath of open parkland and a couple of dozen Dominion Marines. Matavuli had said the place had shut down, but apparently Reivaro had gotten it up and running again.

  Lorne’s mother Jin had successfully sabotaged the plant once. Now, it was Lorne’s turn.

  He keyed up his telescopics another notch, studying the guard pattern. The number of men on duty over there had steadily decreased as Lorne’s raids elsewhere in the city had forced Reivaro to redistribute his forces. If Lorne was lucky, there might be a gap where he could slip through without being spotted. Once he was inside—

  “There you are,” an all-too-familiar voice came from behind him.

  Lorne felt his whole body go rigid. Reivaro?

  “Don’t,” Reivaro continued, his voice casual. “Whatever you’re thinking about trying, just don’t. All possible avenues of escape are covered, and trying to make a fight of it will just get you killed.”

  Lorne took a deep breath. The man might be bluffing. “I suppose I can’t complain,” he said, keeping his voice light. “I had a good run.”

  Reivaro snorted. “Hardly. Stand up and turn around. Slowly.”

  Bracing himself, Lorne obeyed.

  Reivaro wasn’t bluffing. He was standing in the center of the roof, twenty meters away, a dozen combat-suited Marines spread out at his sides.

  “I’m almost sorry you got ambitious,” Reivaro continued. “As long as you were running around Archway making noise and not much else, I was more than happy to let you play.” He nodded toward the distant factory. “But now you’re looking to damage something with real value, and I can’t let you do that.”

  “Nice try,” Lorne said, determined not to let the other’s jibes get to him. “But I heard your broadcast the other night. You were ready to spit nails.”

  Reivaro gave another snort. “You don’t know the first thing about population-control psychology, do you? Let me give you a short lesson.”

  “Sir?” one of the Marines murmured. “We really should finish this.”

  “Relax, Sergeant,” Reivaro said. “Cobra Broom’s not going anywhere. Lesson one: a population that sees itself as being occupied or oppressed starts getting restless and angry. If you don’t do something about that, it tends to erupt in acts of violence.”

  “And so you work harder to suppress it,” Lorne said.

  “Or you can be clever,” Reivaro said. “Because you see, if there’s one lone person making trouble, especially big and flamboyant trouble, it acts as a safety valve for everyone else. The rest of the people will just sit back and let him do it for them.”

  Lorne stared, his brain suddenly feeling like it was trying to run on ice. “You’re bluffing,” he insisted. “You’re making all that up.”

  Reivaro shrugged. “You’re welcome to believe that if you want. But do you really think that ridiculous disguise actually fooled anyone? No, you didn’t register with the city databanks we downloaded; but the fact that you didn’t register with any database was the most obvious red flag of all.”

  He shrugged. “Still, I imagine Polestar Productions will get their money’s worth out of it. At the very least, you’ll probably rate your own mini-series someday. Certainly couldn’t be as absurd as that ridiculous Anne Villager program.” He gestured. “Hands behind your back, please.”

  Lorne glanced up, seeing now the distant dots of hovering aircars. Another glance down the side of the building showed a group of ground cars waiting for him to try a wall-bounce.

  And meanwhile, a dozen Marines had their epaulet lasers pointed directly at him.

  “I can kill you,” he warned Reivaro, trying one more time. “And killing me will make me a martyr.”

  “You can try to kill me,” Reivaro said calmly. “That’s not the same thing as actually doing it. And martyrs aren’t nearly the powerful rallying cry that most people think. In fact, most martyrs aren’t accorded that lofty status until long after the event.” He smiled thinly. “And then only if their side wins. Yours hasn’t. Nor is it going to.”

  Lorne stared at him . . . and for the first time in his life he found himself genuinely and passionately hating another human being.

  But Reivaro was right. Lorne had lost this one. His only hope was to surrender and hope to fight another day.

  The cuffs the Marines had brought included flat pieces that ran along his palms, preventing him from activating his fingertip lasers. Lorne half expected them to put a bag over his head to prevent him from seeing where he was going, but the colonel apparently wasn’t worried about that.

  Not that Lorne could blame him. With loyalty collars around the neck of every other Cobra in DeVegas, the only other one still free was Lorne’s mother Jin.

  If she was, in fact, still free. For all he knew, Reivaro had taken her, too.

  Aventine’s Cobra program had always included rigid psychological testing and assessment, with the result that there was seldom any reason why a Cobra had to be locked away for a crime or misbehavior. But such incidents did occasionally happen, and Commandant Ishikuma’s response had been to construct a Cobra-proof holding cell in the basement of their HQ building.

  With Lorne’s hands safely cuffed behind him, Reivaro had relaxed somewhat, and as they reached the building he dismissed all but two of the Marine escort, ordering them to secure Lorne in his new quarters. With one each holding one of Lorne’s upper arms, they walked down the stairs toward the building’s main storage and sleeping facilities. They reached the bottom of the steps and walked around them toward the cell—

  “About time,” Badj Werle growled, standing up from one of the two chairs that had been placed along the wall beside the cell door.

  “Come on, come on, let’s get this over with,” Dill de Portola added as he stood up from the other one.

  The two Marines holding Lorne’s arms came to an abrupt halt. “What are you two doing here?” one of them demanded.

  “What do you think?” Werle countered. “Reivaro wanted a couple of Cobras to help secure the prisoner. We’re the ones Ishikuma assigned to the job. End of story.”

&nbs
p; “No, end of story is where we get to go to bed,” de Portola put in, digging a finger behind the red loyalty collar, half hidden behind his jacket collar, as if trying to relieve some of the pressure on his neck. “So move your butts, will you?”

  Neither Marine answered. Lorne looked sideways at the one holding his left arm, wishing he could see the man’s expression through his helmet. From the lack of response, he guessed both Marines were accessing the Dominion’s information network looking for the orders.

  “’Course, if you’d rather do it yourselves, that’s fine with us,” Werle said into the silence. “Could be really entertaining to watch you try to lock a Cobra into a small room.”

  “Yeah, some other time,” the Marine said. Apparently whatever he’d found had confirmed Werle’s statement. Releasing Lorne’s arm, he gave him a little shove forward. “Just be sure he’s inside before you take off the cuffs.”

  “Yeah, thanks, we got the procedure memo,” Werle said as he and de Portola came forward. “We’ll take it from here,” he added, stepping up to the Marine still holding Lorne’s right arm. As the Marine finally let go of the arm, De Portola walked around Lorne’s left side, moving behind him, and both Cobras reached toward the prisoner.

  It happened so fast that Lorne almost missed it. Werle’s right hand, straying casually toward the Marine’s shoulder as he reached for Lorne, suddenly erupted in a flash of light and a muted thunderclap as his arcthrower fired a skin-tingling blast of current into the inner edge of the Marine’s left epaulet, frying the laser cluster’s sensor and control system. Simultaneously, de Portola’s arcthrower fired from behind the Marine into the right-hand epaulet, destroying the control area there. Even as Lorne jerked reflexively away from the twin blasts, de Portola followed up his shot with a hard forearm blow to the back of the Marine’s helmet; and as the man dropped limply to the floor, Werle gave Lorne a hard shove to the side and flopped backward onto his back, his leg swinging up to try to bring his antiarmor laser to bear on the second Marine.

  But the move was slow, and the Marine was fast, and the shot never came. “Rache!” the Marine snapped.

  And with a muffled pop like the breaking of a pair of bones, the loyalty collars around both Cobras’ necks exploded in twin flashes of brilliant yellow fire. Without so much as a yelp of pain, the two men collapsed and lay still.

  “Fools,” the Marine snarled under his breath, hurrying to Lorne and grabbing his arm. “I thought they might try something stupid like—”

  The last word came out in a strangled yelp, and he let go of Lorne’s arm and grabbed for the floor as de Portola’s limp legs inexplicably came back to life and kicked his feet out from under him. The Marine got one hand beneath him, too late to do anything more than slow his fall slightly and tip him over onto his shoulder. He rolled over onto his stomach—

  And was knocked half a meter sideways as the sole of Werle’s foot slammed hard against the side of his helmet. He hit the floor again, and this time, didn’t get up.

  “So the damn things are vocally triggered,” de Portola commented as he got back to his feet. “I wondered about that. Come on, Broom—wake up. Show me your hands.”

  “Yeah,” Lorne said mechanically, feeling a little sandbagged as he swiveled his back toward the other. “Did your collars just—?”

  “So if we can stuff a sock in their mouths, we can bypass the whole thing?” Werle suggested as he grabbed the two Marines by their ankles and dragged them into the cell.

  “I’d hate to count on that,” de Portola warned. “They’ve probably got one or two other triggers set up. I sure would.” There was a brief sizzle of laser fire against the skin of Lorne’s wrists, and suddenly his hands were free.

  “And to answer your question, yes, they went boom,” Werle said dryly as he emerged from the cell and closed the door behind him. “Very effectively, too. The Dominion sure knows how to keep their slaves in line.”

  “Luckily, we Cobras have always been a stiff-necked lot,” de Portola said, coming around in front of Lorne. Reaching up, he tapped his neck behind the shredded edges of his jacket collar where the exploding loyalty collar had tried its best to take off his head.

  Almost hidden behind the shredded cloth was yet another collar, this one thin and flesh-colored and showing a pattern of spiderweb cracks across its surface. It was pressed up against de Portola’s neck, right behind where the loyalty collar had been.

  Lorne raised his eyes to de Portola’s smile and gave the other a smile of his own.

  Great-Uncle Corwin, who’d been forced out of his governorship and had subsequently dedicated his free time to the ridiculous goal of developing better ceramic laminae for some future generation of Cobras, had come through.

  “Come on,” de Portola said, tapping Lorne on the back. “There should be a car waiting.”

  “They’re going to figure out pretty quickly what happened,” Lorne warned as the three of them hurried to the stairs.

  “I don’t think so,” Werle said grimly. “They’d have to have a Cobra to examine first . . . and sometime in the next hour there will cease to be any Cobras in DeVegas province.”

  Lorne stared at him. “You’re kidding. Where are they all going?”

  “Underground,” de Portola said. “Some literally. Others are heading to Capitalia and other towns and cities.”

  “But—” Lorne broke off.

  “What about the people here?” Werle finished his question. “Yeah, I know, and we don’t like it any better than you do. But the Dominion wasn’t really letting us do our jobs anyway. As of right now, public safety’s the Dominion’s problem. Let’s see how well they do at it.”

  “You realize what might happen,” Lorne warned. “Not even counting the people who might get hurt while we’re gone. This might push the Dominion into open warfare against us.”

  “If it does, it does,” Werle said. “At least then they’d have to give up the pretense that everything they’re doing here is for the good of the human race.”

  “Besides, Santores is smarter than that,” de Portola soothed. “He knows he can’t take and hold this many planets. Not with the force he’s got.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Lorne said.

  “Of course we’re right.” Werle grinned suddenly. “We’re always right. Come on, let’s see what kind of fine and elegant transport Ishikuma has laid on for us.”

  “Right now, I’d settle for a cattle transport,” Lorne said.

  “Don’t say that too loudly,” de Portola warned. “You might just get it.”

  * * *

  In some ways, Jody thought as she headed through the darkened streets toward Azras’s First Hope Hospital, it was rather like the first time she’d tried walking in high heels.

  Not that it was hard, or that she felt in danger of falling. Far from it. Not only was walking with Cobra servos quite easy, but there was a sense of balance that she’d never had before.

  But that very sense of balance could turn around and bite her. If she let her body fall too far out of vertical, her new nanocomputer might decide she was falling and take over her servos to compensate. She still wasn’t familiar enough with her gear to allow it to do so without fighting it, and the resulting minor chaos of muscle versus servo would be awkward, not to mention embarrassing. Worse, if it happened in sight of any of the Dominion Marines guarding the hospital, they might recognize the telltale signs and her advantage would be gone.

  But Kemp and Smitty had run her through this part of her training a lot in the past few hours. She would make it through.

  The doctors and hospital staff they’d contacted had been unable to offer any information on the Dominion patients, mainly because Captain Moreau had been careful to withhold their names and ranks. But Moreau had also asked Omnathi to allow a few of his Marines to help guard his patients, and Omnathi had agreed, and two of that handful of men were now stationed outside one of the recovery rooms. All logic suggested that an important officer was in
there, which was exactly the person Jody needed.

  All her enquiries had by necessity had to be quiet and subtle, lest Omnathi hear she was snooping around and wonder why, and one of the questions she hadn’t dared ask was whether or not the Marines were wearing combat gear. As she rounded the last corner into the final corridor, she saw to her relief that they were instead in the burgundy-black dress uniforms she’d seen back on Aventine.

  Of course, they still had their laser-equipped epaulets, with their lethal sensor-controlled targeting. In contrast, Jody barely knew which end of her own weaponry was which. But she and the two Cobras had worked up a couple of possible strategies for her to use.

  She felt her lip twitch as she walked toward the Marines. No: the proper phrase wasn’t Jody and the two Cobras anymore. It was, instead, Jody and the other two Cobras.

  Because Jody, too, was now a Cobra.

  That was the new reality of her life. She still wasn’t entirely sure how it made her feel.

  But such soul-searching would have to wait. One of the Marines turned his head toward her as she approached, and from the sudden change in his expression she guessed he’d realized who she was. He opened his mouth, presumably to clue in his fellow guard—

  “Is he awake?” Jody asked briskly as she came up to them.

  That was apparently not a question either of the Marines had been expecting. “Ah—” the first one began hesitantly.

  “Never mind,” Jody cut him off. “Tell him Jody Moreau Broom is here, and that I need to talk to him.” Without waiting for an answer, she started to walk between them.

  The Marines might not be very quick with words tonight, but their actions were more than adequate. Even as Jody started toward the door the men moved toward each other, blocking her path. “Not so fast,” the first Marine growled.

  “Are you deaf?” Jody demanded. “I said I need to talk to him.” She put her hands on their chests, as if attempting to push them back out of her way. Not surprisingly, given the difference in relative mass, the push got her nowhere.

  “You’re not seeing anyone for a while,” the first Marine said as he grabbed her wrist. The second Marine did the same, and a second later Jody found herself with her arms upraised as if she was surrendering, her hands locked in their twin grip at the level of their shoulders. “Cuff her,” the first Marine added.