by Timothy Zahn
"Maybe they just don't feel like talking to anyone in the Dome."
"Or maybe they aren't out crying in the wilderness at all," Chintawa countered brusquely. "They're with your great-uncle Corwin, aren't they?"
Lorne blinked, the sheer unexpectedness of the question bringing his mad scramble for a good defensible position to a skidding halt. "What?" he asked.
"No games," Chintawa said sternly. "I've been keeping track of Corwin Moreau's work over the years. I know that right now he's trying to develop a type of bone laminate that might ease some of the long-term anemia and arthritis problems. The fact that your mother and brother have suddenly disappeared tells me he's reached the point where he's ready to do some field tests with actual Cobras."
"That's ridiculous," Lorne said with as much dignity as he could drum up on the spur of the moment. It was ridiculous, actually--Uncle Corwin had been working on and off on the Cobra medical problems for most of Lorne's lifetime, and as far as Lorne knew he'd never gotten any traction with any of them.
But Chintawa obviously didn't know that. And in fact, the more Lorne thought about it, the more he realized the governor-general's suspicions made for a much better cover story than even the one he, Merrick, Jody, and their dad had come up with.
"It's not ridiculous, and I frankly don't care what any of them is doing," Chintawa said. "The point is that I need your mother here, and I need her here now."
"What for?"
"Something important and confidential," Chintawa said. "Also something I think will help put your family in a better light than it's been in for the past several years." He smiled faintly. "She's not in trouble, if that's what you're wondering."
If you only knew, Lorne thought grimly. "It would certainly be nice to have the record set at least a little straighter," he said, "though it would probably be terribly confusing to people like Nissa. You say you need her right now?"
"By noon tomorrow, actually," Chintawa said. "If absolutely necessary I could probably postpone the ceremony a couple of days."
Lorne frowned. "Ceremony?"
Chintawa smiled faintly. "You'll know when your mother knows," he said. "Until then, it's my prerogative to be mysterious."
"In that case, it's my prerogative to take my leave," Lorne said, standing up. "If I hear from her, I'll be sure and let her know you're looking for her."
"Just a minute," Chintawa said, his voice darkening as he also stood up. "That's it?"
"What do you want me to say?" Lorne countered. "That I'll bring my mother in whether she wants to be here or not? I can't promise that. If you want to tell me something that'll sweeten the pot, I'll be happy to hear it."
"You want the pot sweetened?" Chintawa rumbled. "Fine. Tell her that if she isn't here, other people will get all the credit and she'll get nothing. And they'll get to put their own spin on it, which will leave the Moreau name right where it is. In the historical gutter."
Lorne snorted. "With all due respect, sir, my family stopped caring about who got credit for what a long time ago. And unless you're planning to nominate my mother for sainthood, it's going to take more than anything you can do to put our family name back where it deserves."
"Certainly not if you aren't willing to make some effort of your own," Chintawa ground out. "If you can't see that, why should I waste my time trying to help?"
"I don't know," Lorne said sarcastically. This was probably not the direction his mother or father would take the conversation, and certainly not where Uncle Corwin would go. But he didn't have their verbal finesse, and he simply couldn't think of anything else to try. "Maybe because you see some political gain in it for yourself?"
Chintawa's face darkened like an approaching thunderstorm. "How in the Worlds did you grow up in the Moreau family without learning anything about politics?" he demanded. "It's not a zero-sum game, you know. What's gain for me can also be gain for you."
"And all you need for that gain is to put my mother up on a stage like your private sock puppet?" Lorne suggested.
Chintawa muttered something under his breath. "Get out of here," he ordered. "Just get out."
"As you wish, Governor-General Chintawa," Lorne said formally, starting to breathe again as he stood up. It had actually worked. He'd made Chintawa so mad at him that he didn't even want to see Lorne's mother anymore.
Now if Chintawa would just stay this mad long enough for Lorne to get out of Capitalia and back to DeVegas Province, this whole thing might blow over. Or at least quiet down long enough for his mother and brother to finish up their mysterious errand on Qasama and get back home.
He'd made it halfway to the office door when Chintawa cleared his throat. "And where exactly do you think you're going?"
Lorne stopped but didn't turn around. "I'm going back to my duty station," he said over his shoulder. "As per your orders."
"I've given you no such orders," Chintawa said. "But since you bring it up, let's do that, shall we? You're hereby relieved of all other duties and tasked with the job of finding Cobra Jasmine Moreau Broom and bringing her to the Dome."
Lorne turned around, feeling his mouth drop open. "What?"
"You heard me," Chintawa said. The thunderstorm of anger had passed, leaving frozen ground behind it. "Until your mother is standing in front of me, you're not going back to Archway or anywhere else."
"This is ridiculous," Lorne protested. "I have work to do."
"Then you'd better persuade your mother to come in, hadn't you?" Chintawa said. "Otherwise, you'd better get used to living in your parents' house again."
"This is illegal and out of channels. Sir," Lorne bit out. "Barring a declared state of emergency, you can't counteract standing orders and assignments."
"You're welcome to appeal to Commandant Dreysler," Chintawa said. "But I can tell you right now that the orders will be cut before you even reach his office."
For a long moment the two men locked eyes. "Fine," Lorne said stiffly. It was clear that Chintawa had his mind made up. It was also clear that Lorne himself didn't have the faintest idea of what to do now.
But he knew who might. "I'll need a way to get to Uncle Corwin's house," he continued. "Cobra pay doesn't stretch far enough to cover car rentals."
Chintawa reached over and touched a switch on his intercom. "Nissa, come in here, please."
He straightened up again, and the staring contest resumed. Thirty-two seconds later by Lorne's nanocomputer clock, the door opened and Nissa stepped inside. "Yes, sir?" she asked, a slight frown creasing her forehead as her eyes flicked back and forth between the two men.
"Until further notice, you're assigned to Cobra Broom," Chintawa told her. "Check out a car and take him anywhere in or around Capitalia he wants to go. If he wants to leave the city, call Ms. Oomara first and have her clear it with me."
"Yes, sir," Nissa said, her forehead clearing as she apparently decided whatever was happening was none of her business. "Cobra Broom?"
Lorne held his glare another second and a half. Then, turning away from Chintawa, he stalked across the room, past the girl, and out the door.
It was going to be one of those days, all right. And then some.
* * *
Corwin Moreau listened silently as Lorne described the morning's events, occasionally nodding in reaction to something his great-nephew said, his fingertips occasionally rubbing gently at the arm of his chair in response to some inner thoughts or musings of his own.
"And so I came here," Lorne finished, looking briefly over at Aunt Thena, who had listened to the tale in the same silence as her husband. "It might not have been very smart, but I couldn't think of anything else to do."
"No, you did fine," Corwin assured him, looking questioningly at Thena. She gave a slight shrug in return. "Is the young lady still waiting out there? We should at least invite her in for lunch."
"I don't know if she's there or not," Lorne said. "Probably not--I told her I'd be here for a while, and she told me she has family a couple of block
s away. Maybe that's why Chintawa gave her the job of carting me around in the first place. He probably figured I'd go to ground here, and she might as well have someplace of her own to wait for me."
"Or else she got the job because he thought you might open up to someone who wasn't a hardened politician," Thena offered. "It's an old trick, and not beneath Chintawa's dignity."
"Certainly not if lying isn't," Lorne growled.
Corwin cocked an eyebrow at him. "What did he lie about?"
"Oh, come on," Lorne scoffed. "This whole secret ceremony thing? How obvious can a lie get?"
"Well, that's the point, isn't it?" Corwin said thoughtfully. "It's such an obviously ridiculous cover story that one has to wonder whether it might actually be true."
Lorne frowned. "Have you heard something?"
"No, not a whisper," Corwin said. "But I'm hardly in the official gossip ring these days."
"Besides being obvious, the story's also pointless," Thena added. "As a Cobra, your mother is still a reservist, and hence subject to immediate call-up by the governor-general for any reason. He can order her to appear at the Dome, or order you to go get her, with no explanation needed."
"Maybe," Lorne said. "But right now it doesn't really matter why he wants her. What we need is a way to stall him off. And I can tell you right now, he didn't look to be in a stalling mood."
"Not if he's willing to pull a Cobra in from frontier duty," Corwin agreed heavily. "Especially right after a major spine leopard attack in the same general region. Any chance he could be persuaded to accept the story that she and Merrick are off on a retreat somewhere?"
"No," Lorne said. "And in fact, he pointed out the logical flaw in it: that they wouldn't go off without leaving some way of contacting them."
"Yes, that was always the weak spot," Corwin said heavily. "I should have come up with something better."
"You didn't have much time," Thena pointed out. "Besides, there was no way to guess that anyone would take more than a passing interest in their absence."
"I suppose," Corwin conceded. "So now what?"
"Well, we can't pretend they're hiding here," Thena said slowly. "If Chintawa is determined enough to get a search warrant, a few patrollers could pop that balloon within half an hour."
"So again, they're somewhere else," Corwin said. "Someplace where Lorne presumably can try to call them."
"Right now?" Lorne asked, pulling out his comm.
"Yes, this would be good," Corwin confirmed, looking at his watch. "You've been here just long enough to have consulted with us, and for us to have decided together that this is worth breaking into her solitude. Go ahead--your mother first."
Lorne nodded and punched in his mother's number. "I presume this is purely for the benefit of anyone who might decide to pull my comm records later?"
"Correct." Corwin hesitated. "It'll also put all the rest of us in a slightly better legal position should the worst-case scenario happen."
Lorne felt his throat tighten. That scenario being if his mother and brother got caught sneaking back onto Aventine from Qasama and were brought up on charges of treason.
At which point, of course, all of Uncle Corwin's caution would go scattering to the four winds, because Lorne was absolutely not going to hunker down behind legal excuses while two of his family stood in the dock. He would be right up there with them, as would his father and sister. And probably Uncle Corwin and Aunt Thena, too.
At which point Chintawa and the Directorate would have to decide whether they really wanted to risk the kind of political fallout that could come of prosecuting the whole family.
Lorne almost hoped they did. He would use the occasion to make sure the true story of his mother's original mission to Qasama got brought up into the open from the shallow grave where Uncle Corwin's political enemies had buried it.
"Hello, this is Jasmine," his mother's voice came in his ear. "I'm not available right now, but if you'd care to leave a message . . ."
Lorne waited for the greeting to run its course, recorded a short message telling her to call as soon as it was convenient, and keyed off. "Now Merrick?" he asked.
Corwin nodded, and Lorne went through the same charade with his brother's voice stack. "That sound okay?" he asked when he was finished.
"Perfect," Corwin said. "Another half hour, I think, and it'll be time to try again." He squinted toward one of the windows that looked out onto the walkway leading between the front door and the gate at the edge of the grounds. "Meanwhile, let's put our heads together and see if we can come up with a plan."
"We can do that while we eat," Thena said firmly. "If we're all going to end up in jail tonight, we might as well have a good meal first."
* * *
Lunch was, Lorne assumed, up to Thena's usual culinary standards. He didn't know for sure because he didn't really taste any of it. His full attention then, and for the rest of the afternoon, was on their conversation and brainstorming.
He continued to call his mother and brother at half-hour intervals, leaving messages that under Uncle Corwin's coaching gradually increased in anxiety and frustration. It would take a preliminary indictment and court order to tap into those messages, he knew, but at this point he wouldn't put anything past Chintawa.
Late in the afternoon the governor-general himself called, looking for a progress report. In complete honesty, Lorne told him that, no, the missing family members weren't at Uncle Corwin's, and that he hadn't been able to get hold of either of them by comm. Chintawa ordered him to keep trying, and hung up.
The three of them were sitting down to dinner when Nissa called to ask Lorne if he would be needing her to drive him anywhere else. Lorne assured her that he would be staying the night, and that he'd be sure to call her if and when he needed to go somewhere. She reminded him that she was always available, should he change his mind, slipped in a subtle reminder that wandering off without her would get both of them in trouble with Chintawa, and wished him a pleasant good evening.
"You'd better watch that girl," Corwin warned after Lorne relayed the conversation. "She may come across as a wide-eyed ingenue standing high above the political mud, but she clearly knows how to find and push a person's buttons."
"What, because she told me she'd get in trouble if I ditched her?" Lorne scoffed.
"Exactly," Corwin said. "Take it from someone who once played on that same field. She's got your profile down cold, and I don't think she'd hesitate to bring the lasers to bear if she was ordered to do so."
They finished dinner, which Lorne again assumed was excellent, and continued talking well past sundown and into the night. A hundred plans were brought up, discussed, and ultimately discarded, and by the time Lorne said his good-nights and headed to the guest room they were no further toward a solution than they were when they'd started.
He slept fitfully, waking up for long stretches at a time. Probably the city noises, he told himself, which he was no longer accustomed to after all the time he'd spent fighting spine leopards at the edges of civilization.
It was still dark, and he'd finally fallen into a deep sleep, when he was jolted awake by the trilling of his comm.
He grabbed the device and keyed it on, his first half-fogged thought that Merrick and his mother were back on Aventine and were returning his calls. "Hello?" he croaked.
"It's Nissa," Nissa's voice came, quivering with tension. "Get dressed--I need to get you back to the Dome right away. I'll be there in five minutes--"
"Wait a second, hold on," Lorne interrupted, his brain snapping fully awake at the simmering panic in her voice. "What's going on?"
"There's no time," she said. "An astronomer at North Bank picked up a fleet of ships--Troft ships, they think--heading eastward towards Capitalia from orbit. And none of the ships register on radar."
Lorne felt his muscles tense as the full implications of that fact blew away the last wisps of sleepiness. "I'll meet you at the gate," he said, and keyed off. Dropping the comm on the bed
, he grabbed for his clothes.
He'd been afraid the call was bad news about his mother and brother. It was far worse . . . because there was just one type of ship designed not to show up on traffic control's radar.
Warships.
A century ago, the Dominion of Man had set up the Aventine colony, ostensibly as a way to get rid of the Cobra war veterans, but also as a deterrent to the Trofts against launching future attacks on Dominion worlds. Barely twenty-five years later, the colonists' connection to the rest of humanity had been closed, but the deterrent effect of the Cobras' presence had remained.
Until now. It was unbelievable. It was insane. But apparently, it was also true. The Cobras' century-old bluff had been called.
Aventine was under attack.
Chapter Two
"The secret to a contented life," Paul Broom commented sagely as he scraped bits of green spore off his silliweave tunic, "is to find a comfortable morning routine and stick with it."
Jody Broom paused in the process of scraping her own tunic and gave her father one of the disbelieving stares she'd worked so hard to master during her teenage years. "You really want to be saying things like that when I have a razor in my hand?" she asked.
"But I thought this was the life you'd always dreamed about," he said, turning innocent eyes on her. "Out here in the wilds of humanity's frontier, degrees in animal physiology and management firmly in hand, cutting an impressive swath through--" He indicated the tunic in his hand. "Well, through tiny little creatures growing on silicon clothing."
"Oh, this is the life, all right," Jody said sourly, turning back to her work. "It's also been occurring to me more and more lately that I could just as easily have turned my impressive animal management degree into the field of hamster breeding."
"Hamsters? Pheh," her father scoffed. "Where's the fame and glory in that?"
"You ever see a hamster go rogue?" Jody countered. "Or worse, a whole herd of them?"
