Timothy Zahn - Cobra 01 - Cobra

by Cobra(lit)

  He had a targeting lock established and lasers tracking before his conscious mind caught up with two important details: the figure was human, and it had not been traveling under its own power. Looking back at the door, he got just a glimpse of two body-armored Trofts as they slammed the heavy steel plate closed again. The thud reverberated like overhead thunder in the tiny room, and a possible shot at escaping his cell was gone. Slowly, Jonny got to his feet and stepped around the table to meet his new cellmate.

  She was on her feet when he reached her, bent over slightly as she rubbed an obviously painful kneecap. "Damn chicken-faced strifpitchers," she grumbled.

  "They could've just let me walk in."

  "You all right?" Jonny asked, giving her a quick once-over. A bit shorter than he was and as slender, maybe seven or eight years older, dressed in the mishmash of styles the war had made common. No obvious injuries or blood stains that he could see.

  "Oh, sure." Straightening up, she sent a quick look around the cell. "Though I suppose that could change at any time. What's going on here, anyway?"

  "Tell me what happened."

  "I wish I knew. I was just walking down Strassheim Street, minding my own business, when this Troft patrol turned a corner. They asked me what I was doing there, I essentially told them to go back to hell, and for no particular reason they grabbed me and hauled me in here."

  Jonny's lip twitched in a smile. In the early days of the occupation, he'd heard, it had been possible to fire off multiple obscenities at point-blank range, and as long as you kept your face and voice respectful the Trofts had no way of catching on. With the aliens' advances in Anglic translation, though, only the truly imaginative could come up with something they hadn't heard before.

  Strassheim Street. There was a Strassheim in Cranach, he remembered, down in the south end of the city where a lot of the light industry had been. "So what were you doing there?" he asked the woman. "I thought that area was mostly deserted now."

  She gave him a cool, measuring look. "Shall I repeat the answer I gave the

  Trofts?"

  He shrugged. "Don't bother. I was just asking." Turning his back on her, he hopped back up on the table, seating himself cross-legged facing the door. It really wasn't any of his business.

  Besides which, he was starting to get an uncomfortable feeling as to the reason for her presence here... and if he was right, the less contact he had with her, the better. There was no point in getting to know someone you would probably soon be dying with.

  For a moment it seemed like she'd come to a similar conclusion. Then, with hesitant footsteps, she came around the edge of the table and into his peripheral vision. "Hey-I'm sorry," she said, the snap still audible in her voice but subdued to a more civil level. "I'm just-I'm starting to get a little scared, that's all, and I tend to bite heads off when I get scared. I was on

  Strassheim because I was hoping to get into one of the old factories and scrounge some circuit boards or other electronics parts. Okay?"

  He pursed his lips and looked at her, feeling his freshly minted resolve tarnishing already. "Those buildings have been picked pretty clean in the past three years," he pointed out.

  "Mostly by people who don't know what they're doing," she shrugged. "There's still some stuff left-if you know where and how to find it."

  "Are you part of the underground?" Jonny asked-and instantly wished he could call back the thoughtless words. With monitors all around, her answer could lose her what little chance of freedom she had left.

  But she merely snorted. "Are you nuts? I'm a struggling burglar, confrere, not a volunteer lunatic." Her eyes widened suddenly. "Say, you're not, uh-hey, wait a minute; they don't think that I-oh, great. Great. What'd you do, come calling for Old Tyler with a laser in one hand and a grenade in the other?"

  "Old Tyler?" Jonny asked, latching onto the most coherent part of that oral skid. "Who or what is that?"

  "We're in his mansion," she frowned. "At least I think so. Didn't you know?"

  "I was unconscious when I was brought in. What do you mean, you think so?"

  "Well, I was actually taken into an old apartment building a block away and then along an underground tunnel to get here. But I got a glimpse through an unblocked window as I was being brought through the main building, and I think I saw the Tyler Mansion's outer wall. Anyway, even without fancy furniture and all you can tell the rooms up there were designed for someone rich."

  The Tyler Mansion. The name was familiar from Ama Nunki's local history/geography seminars: a large house with a sort of pseudo-Reginine-millionaire style, he recalled, built south of the city in the days before industry moved into that area. She'd been vague as to the semi-recluse owner's whereabouts since the Troft invasion, but it was generally believed he was holed up inside somewhere, counting on private stores and the mansion's defenses to keep out looters and aliens alike. Jonny remembered thinking at the time that the Trofts were being uncommonly generous to leave the place standing under those conditions, and wondering if perhaps a private deal had been struck. It was starting to look like he'd been right... though the deal was possibly more than a little one-sided.

  But more interesting than the mansion's recent history were the possibilities inherent in being locked inside such a residence. Unlike a factory, a millionaire's home ought to have an emergency escape route. If he could find it, perhaps he could bypass whatever deathtrap the Trofts had planned for him. "You say you came in through a tunnel," he said to his cellmate. "Did it look new or hastily built? Say, as if the Trofts had dug it in the past three years?"

  But she was frowning again, a hard look in her eyes. "Who the hell are you, anyway, that you never heard of Old Tyler? He's been written up more than every other celebrity on Adirondack-even volunteer lunatics can't be that ignorant. At least, not those who grew up in Cranach."

  Jonny sighed; but she did have a right to know on whom her life was probably going to depend. And it certainly wouldn't be giving away any secrets to the

  Trofts eavesdropping on them. "You're right-I grew up quite a ways from here.

  I'm a Cobra."

  Her eyes widened, then narrowed again as they swept his frame. "A Cobra, huh?

  You sure don't look like anything special."

  "We're not supposed to," Jonny told her patiently. "Undercover guerrilla fighters-remember?"

  "Oh, I know. But I've seen men masquerade as Cobras before to impress or threaten people."

  "You want some proof?" He'd been looking for an excuse to do this, anyway.

  Hopping off the table, he stepped closer to the rear wall and extended his right arm. A group of suspected sensor positions faced him just below eye level.

  Targeting it, he turned his head to look at the woman. "Watch," he said, and triggered his arcthrower.

  A discerning eye might have noticed that there were actually two components to the flash that lit up the room an instant later: the fingertip laser beam, which burned an ionized path through the air, and the high-amperage spark that traveled that path to the wall. But the accompanying thunderclap was the really impressive part, and in the metal-walled cell it was impressive as hell. The woman jumped a meter backwards from a standing start, mouthing something Jonny couldn't hear through the multiple reverberations. "Satisfied?" he asked her when the sound finally faded away.

  Staring at him with wide eyes, she bobbed her head quickly. "Oh, yes. Yes indeed. What in heaven's name was that?"

  "Arcthrower. Designed to fry electronic gear. Works pretty well, usually." In fact, it worked quite well, and Jonny didn't expect to have to worry about that particular sensor cluster again.

  "I don't doubt it." She exhaled once, and with that action seemed to get her mind working as well. "A real Cobra. So how come you haven't broken out of here yet?"

  For a long moment he stared at her, wondering what to say. If the Trofts knew he was on to their scheme... but surely her presence here proved they'd already figured that out. Tell her the truth,
then?-that the aliens were forcing him to choose between betraying his fellow Cobras and saving her life?

  He chose the easier, if temporary, solution of changing the subject. "You were going to tell me about the tunnel," he reminded her.

  "Oh. Right. No, it looked like it'd been there a lot longer than three years.

  There also looked to be spots where gates and defensive equipment had been taken out."

  In other words, it looked like Tyler's hoped-for escape hatch. And already in alien hands. "How well were the Trofts guarding it?"

  "The place was full of them." She was giving him a wary look. "You're not planning to try and leave that way, are you?"

  "What if I am?"

  "It'd be suicide-and since I plan to be right behind you it'd leave me in a bad spot, too."

  He frowned at her, only then realizing that she'd apparently figured out more about what was going on than he'd given her credit for. In her own less than subtle way she was saying he need not burden himself physically with her when he chose to escape. That he shouldn't feel responsible for her safety.

  If only it were that simple, he thought bitterly. Would she understand as well if he stayed passively in the cell and thereby sentenced her automatically to death?

  Or was that option even open to him anymore? Already, despite his earlier resolve, he realized he could no longer see her as simply a faceless statistic in this war. He'd talked to her, watched her eyes change expression, even gotten a little bit inside her mind. Whatever it cost him-life and data too-he knew now that he would eventually have to make the effort to get her out. The Trofts' gambit had worked.

  You'll be proud of me, Jame, if you ever find out, he thought toward the distant stars. My Horizon ethics have survived exposure to even war with all their stupid nobility intact.

  On the other hand... he was now locked up with a professional burglar inside what had to be the most enticing potential target Cranach had to offer. In their eagerness to hang an emotional millstone around his neck, it was just barely possible the Trofts had outsmarted themselves. "My name's Jonny Moreau," he told the woman. "What's yours?"

  "Ilona Linder."

  He nodded, knowing full well that with an exchange of names he was now committed. "Well, Ilona, if you think the tunnel's a poor choice of exits, let's see what else we can come up with. Why don't you start by telling me everything you know about the Tyler Mansion?"

  "This is hopeless," Cally Halloran sighed, gazing across the urban landscape from the vantage point of an eighth-floor window. "We could sneak in and out of deserted buildings for days without finding any leads."

  "You can quit whenever you want to," was Deutsch's predictable answer. Sitting on the floor, the other Cobra was poring over a prewar aerial map of southern

  Cranach.

  "Uh-huh. Well, as long as you're being so grateful for all that we're doing to help, I guess I'll stick around awhile longer."

  It was Deutsch's turn to sigh. "All right, all right. If it'll ease your smoldering indignation any, I'll admit I went a little overwrought in selling this to Borg and company. Okay? Can you drop the little digs now?"

  "I can drop them any time. But eventually you're going to have to face what you're doing to those people, not to mention what you're doing to yourself."

  Deutsch snorted. "You mean undermining morale, while driving myself too hard with unrealistic goals and standards?"

  "Well, now that you mention it-"

  "I'm not pushing myself any harder than I can handle-you know that. As to the underground-" He shrugged, the movement rustling his map. "You just don't understand the position Adirondack's in, Cally. We're a frontier world, looked down on by everyone else in the Dominion-for all I know, by the Trofts as well.

  We've got to prove ourselves to all the rest of you, and the only way to do that is to throw the Trofts off our world."

  "Yes, I know that's the theory you're working under," Halloran nodded. "My question is whether or not that's the achievement people will remember most."

  Again Deutsch snorted. "What else is there in a war?"

  "Spirit, for one thing. And Adirondack is showing one hell of a fine spirit." He held up a hand and began ticking off fingers. "One: you haven't got a single genuine collaborationist government anywhere on the planet. That forces the

  Trofts to tie up ridiculous numbers of troops with administrative and policing duties they'd much rather leave to you. Two: the local governments they have coerced into place are working very hard to be more trouble than they're worth.

  Remember when the Trofts tried conscription from Cranach and Dannimor to repair the Leeding Bridge?"

  Almost unwillingly, Deutsch smiled. "Multiple conflicting orders, incompatible equipment, and well-hidden deficiencies in materials. Took them twice as long as the Trofts would have if they'd done it themselves."

  "And every one of the people responsible for that fiasco risked their lives to pull it off," Halloran reminded him. "And those are just the things that plain, relatively uninvolved citizens are doing. I haven't even mentioned the sacrifices the underground's shown itself willing to make, the sheer persistence it's demonstrated the past three years. Maybe you're not impressed by your world, but I'll tell you right now that I'd be proud as hell if Aerie did half as well under these conditions."

  Deutsch pursed his lips, his eyes on the map now folded over his knees. "All right," he said at last. "I'll concede that maybe we're not doing too badly. But potentials and maybes don't matter in this game. If we lose no one's going to care whether we did the best we could or the worst we could, because no one's going to remember us, period. Only the winners make it into the history books."

  "Perhaps," Halloran nodded. "But perhaps not. Have you ever heard of Masada?"

  "I don't think so. Was it a battle?"

  "A siege. Took place in the first century on Earth. The Roman Empire had invaded some country-Israel, I think it's called now. A group of the local defenders-I'm not sure whether they were even regular military or just guerrillas-they took refuge on top of a plateau called Masada. The Romans encircled the place and tried for over a year to take it."

  Deutsch's dark eyes were steady on his. "And eventually did?"

  "Yes. But the defenders had sworn not to be taken alive... and so when the

  Romans marched into the camp all they found were dead bodies. They'd chosen suicide rather than capture."

  Deutsch licked his lips. "I would have tried to take a few more Romans with me."

  Halloran shrugged. "So would I. But that's not the point. They lost, but they weren't conquered, if you see the difference; and even though the Romans wound up winning the war, Masada's never been forgotten."

  "Um." Deutsch stared off into space for another moment, then abruptly picked up his map again. "Well, I'd still like to come up with a better ending than that for this game," he said briskly. "Anything out there look particularly promising for our next sortie?"

  Halloran directed his attention back out the window, wondering if his pep talk had done any good. "Couple of very obviously gutted buildings to the southwest that might make good cover for a guard house or hidden tunnel entrance. And there's a genuine jungle behind a security wall a little further on.

  "The Tyler Mansion," Deutsch nodded, marking locations on his map. "Used to be very nice gardens and orchards surrounding the main house before the war. I suppose all Tyler's gardeners ran off long ago."

  "Looks like you could hide an armor division under all that shrubbery. Any chance the Trofts could have taken the place over?"

  "Probably, but it's hard to imagine how they'd do that without an obvious battle. That wall's not just decorative, for starters, and Tyler's bound to have heavier stuff in reserve. Besides, no one's ever seen any Trofts going in or out of the grounds."

  "That reminds me-we should find a secure phone and check in before we go anywhere else. See if the spotters have anything in the way of Troft movement correlations yet."

  "
If they haven't found anything in four months they're not likely to have anything now," Deutsch pointed out, folding his map. "All right, though; we'll be good team players and check in. Then we'll hit your gutted buildings."

  "Right." At least, Halloran thought, he's got something besides simple win-loss criteria to mull over now. Maybe it'll be enough.

  Only as they were heading down the darkened stairway toward the street below did it occur to him that, in his current state, talking to Deutsch about self-sacrifices might not have been the world's smartest thing to do.

  Ilona, it turned out, was a walking magcard of information on the Tyler Mansion.