The Cobra Trilogy

by Timothy Zahn

  The older Cobra nodded, his attention clearly elsewhere. " . . . All right. If you're ready, so are we," he said toward his pendant. "You'll get outrider-one moving? . . . Good. Justin's here; I'll just go ahead and take charge of him. ETAs? . . . Fifteen and twenty; got it. Good luck."

  "Well?" McKinley asked.

  "The Dewdrop's on its way," Winward said tightly. "It'll drop into the central square in about fifteen minutes."

  "The Dewdrop?" Justin frowned. "Why's it coming down?"

  "Because the Menssana would take longer to get here and be subject to attack the whole way." Winward turned to McKinley. "All the sensor collars off?"

  "And packed for loading, along with the rest of the gear." The other picked up a small box that had been resting on the low table. "This is the last of it right here."

  "Okay. Get your people to the square." Winward tapped his pendant as McKinley headed for the door. "Dorjay? It's a go. . . . Right; fifteen minutes. Get the people out and set up a perimeter to protect it. Watch out for Moff particularly—he's not nearly as impressed as the rest of them, and there are guns lying around he might pick up. . . . Good. Diversion's due in just under twenty—we'll need to be ready to go then. . . . Okay. Out."

  Dropping his hand, he looked at Justin. "Let's get moving—you and I are going to be part of the helicopter defense, and we need to be at the wall when they figure out what's going on."

  "And then what?" Justin asked quietly. "The Dewdrop can't possibly carry all of us."

  Winward gave him a tight smile. "That's sometimes what rearguards are for, you know: to stay behind. Come on, let's hit the wall and find some good positions to shoot from."

  * * *

  "Okay, start easing back," Pyre murmured into his mike. "No noise, and be sure you're out of sight of the Qasamans before hitting the road."

  There were answering murmurs in his ear, and Pyre shifted his attention to the knot of troops facing him twenty meters away. He'd agreed to stay within sight as a sort of exchange hostage while Moff was in the village . . . which meant that when the timer ran down on this one he would have to be gone before the Qasamans decided to start shooting. Activating his auditory enhancers, he tried to listen for the excited voices that would mean the Dewdrop had been spotted.

  The shouts, centered on the Qasamans' lead car, erupted barely two minutes later; and Pyre was racing through the trees before anyone thought to take a shot at him. With the need for stealth gone, he made straight for the road, where better footing would let him use his leg servos to best advantage. From behind came an explosion as the Qasamans destroyed the tree that blocked their path. Slowing as he passed the last of their prepared trees, Pyre sent it crashing down behind him, a move that should put the ground troops out of the game for good. Pushing his pace to the limit, he watched the sky for both the descending Dewdrop and the Qasamans' inevitable aerial response.

  From his vantage point the events occurred simultaneously. Far ahead the glittering shape of the small starship dropped rapidly against the blue sky as, overhead, three small helicopters screamed southward to the attack. A hard lump rose into Pyre's throat as he watched them disappear behind the treetops. They were, as York had predicted, modified civilian craft . . . but the Cobras' brief tangle with them had showed them well worth taking seriously.

  He kept running. Far ahead the roar of the helicopters' engines changed pitch as they reached the village. Small explosions came faintly over the wind in his ears and, once, the sort of blast he remembered from the helicopter they'd shot down over the barricade. He wondered who had pulled it off this time, and whether the Cobra had lived through it. Blinking the tears from his eyes, he squinted against the wind and kept going.

  And suddenly it was all over. A great roiling pillar of black smoke rose above the trees; and seconds later the Dewdrop shot out of it like a missile from its launcher. The two remaining helicopters climbed after it, but their weapons weren't designed to fire straight up and the Dewdrop's gravity lifts were more than adequate to maintain the starship's lead. The three craft became points of reflected light in the sky . . . and then were just two spots.

  The Dewdrop, gleaner-team's scientists aboard, had escaped. Leaving the Cobras behind.

  Ahead, someone stepped from the trees along the road and gave Pyre a quick wave before retreating to cover again. Pyre slowed and joined him. "Any trouble?" the other Cobra asked.

  Pyre shook his head. "They're at least ten minutes behind me. Any sign of our escort yet?"

  The other grinned. "Sure. Just listen."

  Pyre notched up his enhancers. In the distance he could hear a low rumble, accompanied by a well-remembered snuffling. "Right on schedule. Everyone ready?"

  "This end is, anyway. I presume gleaner-team's Cobras made it out while everyone was blinded by the smokescreen."

  "And were all busy assuming the Cobras were going inward instead of outward," Pyre nodded. This would be a whole lot easier if the Qasamans thought everyone had escaped in the Dewdrop.

  The rumbling was getting closer. . . .

  And then, across the road, they burst out of the woods: a bololin herd, running for all it was worth. A big herd, Pyre saw, the far end of its leading edge lost beyond a curve in the road and the dust of its own passage. Maybe a thousand animals in all . . . and among all those warm bodies, hidden from sight by all that dust, forty Cobras would hardly be noticeable. Even if someone thought to look.

  The leading edge had passed, the herd's flanks perhaps twenty meters away. Turning, Pyre and the other Cobra began to pace them, drifting closer to the herd as they ran until they were perhaps four meters away. Glances ahead and behind showed the rest of outrider-one joining the flow. At the herd's opposite flank, if all had gone well, the gleaner-team Cobras were doing likewise.

  And for the next few hours, they should all be reasonably safe. After that—

  After that, the Menssana lay three hundred kilometers almost dead ahead, presumably still unnoticed by the planetary authorities. If it could stay that way for the next six hours, the Cobras would be aboard and the ship in orbit long before any aircraft could be scrambled to intercept it.

  Theoretically, anyway. Pyre settled his legs into a rhythmic pace, letting his servos take as much of the load as possible. Personally, he would be happy if things even came close.

  And in this case, they did.

  Chapter 30

  They listened in silence as McKinley went through his presentation, and when he was finished Stiggur sighed. "No chance of an error, I don't suppose."

  McKinley shook his head. "Nothing significant, certainly. We had enough test subjects to get good statistics."

  Across the table from him, Jonny pursed his lips, the bittersweet taste of Pyrrhic victory in his mouth. He'd been vindicated, his "crazy" theory about the mojos more or less confirmed.

  But the price of that victory was going to be war.

  He could see that in the faces around the table. The other governors were scared—more than they'd ever been after the Dewdrop's first mission. And even though some of them might not know how they'd respond to that fear, he understood human nature enough to know which way most would eventually go. Fight and flight were the only basic options . . . and the Cobra Worlds had no place to run.

  Fairleigh cleared his throat. "I still don't understand how the mojos can be doing all this. I mean, you've established their brain capacity is too small for intelligence, haven't you?"

  "There's no particular need for intelligence in this," McKinley said. "It's the mojo's symbiont—either human or krisjaw—who actually assesses the situation. The mojo simply picks up that evaluation and pushes for the response that is in the mojo's best interests."

  "But that takes judgment, and that implies intelligence," Fairleigh persisted.

  "Not necessarily," Telek shook her head. "Straight extrapolative logic could simply be part of the mojo's instinct package. I've seen instincts in other animals that appear to take as much or more i
ntelligence than that would require. You'll notice that the Chata spookie seems to manage the same trick with only a slightly larger cranial capacity."

  "It could be even easier, at least for the mojo," McKinley added. "Presumably the human comes up with his own list of possible responses, including—on some level—how each response would affect the mojo. Choosing among those takes no more intelligence than any animal needs to survive in the wild."

  "Could you be reading the data wrong, somehow, then?" Stiggur asked. "We need to be absolutely sure of what's going on."

  "I don't think we are, sir," McKinley shook his head. "We didn't get as many details out of Moff as Winward was hoping we would, but I think what he did say pretty well confirms this interpretation."

  "Not to mention the krisjaw incident," Roi murmured. "There's no rational explanation for their behavior if the mojos weren't in at least partial control."

  The room fell silent. Stiggur glanced around the table, then nodded at McKinley. "Thank you, Doctor, for your time. We'll get in touch if we have any more questions. You'll be able to give this presentation to the full Council tomorrow?"

  McKinley nodded. "Two o'clock, right?"

  "Right. We'll see you then."

  McKinley went out, and Stiggur turned back to the table. "Any discussion before we vote on our recommendation?"

  "How could something like this have happened?" Vartanson asked, his tone almost petulant. "Symbionts don't just swap partners whenever they feel like it."

  "Why not?" Roi shrugged. "I'm sure Lizabet could come up with dozens of other examples."

  "Nothing like that many, but there are some," Telek nodded. "In this case, I think, you just have to look at the krisjaw's characteristics to see why humans look so attractive as partners. First off, the mojos need good hunters to kill bololins for them; but the viciousness that makes krisjaws good hunters also means a returning mojo probably has half a chance of being eaten itself until it reestablishes control. You saw the films of the attack—the mojos were barely off their krisjaws' backs before the animals went berserk."

  "And their range is longer with humans?" Hemner asked.

  "It seems to be, yes, but that may be only incidental," Telek said. "The real point is that humans with guns are simultaneously safer hunters and better hunters. That also means the humans seldom if ever lose the fight and get killed, by the way, which saves the mojo the trouble of finding and getting used to someone new."

  "The training period being especially dangerous if it's breaking in a new krisjaw instead," Vartanson said, nodding heavily. "Yeah, I see now. What you're saying is that the Qasamans have made the planet a little slice of mojo-heaven."

  Telek snorted softly. "Hardly. It may have been so once, but the mojos are rapidly heading down a dead-end street." She keyed her display, and an aerial map of the Fertile Crescent region appeared. "Down here," she said, tapping white spots onto the image with a pointer. "Here, here, and here. The Qasamans are adding on to their chain of cities."

  "So?" Vartanson frowned.

  "Don't you see? Cities are lousy places for a predator bird to live. They've got to fly long distances to do their own hunting or accept the equivalent of pet food from their masters. But the human population is increasing, and their cute little underground communication system requires them to stay in the same reasonably limited area of the planet. And that means cities."

  "But I thought the cities were laid out expressly for the mojos' benefit," Roi growled. "That was your whole argument for the second study trip, remember?"

  "For their reproductive benefit, yes," Telek nodded. "But not for their feeding benefit. I don't think we ever actually got to see a mojo hunting, but their usual prey is probably small birds or large insects; and no matter what the bololins and tarbines do, small birds are not going to venture into the cities in great numbers. The city design is essentially a compromise, and if I were a mojo I think I'd be feeling definitely cheated by it."

  "Then why don't they switch back?" Vartanson demanded. "They did so once—why not do it again?"

  "Switch back to what? Practically since they landed the Qasamans have been shooting every krisjaw that poked its head out of the grass. They must have the entire Fertile Crescent nearly cleared out by now, and they still pull people off work to go hunt the things every month or so. It's crazy."

  "Maybe not," Jonny put in. "As you said, the Qasaman leadership knows what's going on. What better way to insure their bodyguards' continued loyalty than to make sure there's nowhere else for them to go?"

  Telek shrugged. "Could be. They're certainly devious enough to come up with something like that."

  "Which would imply, in turn," Jonny continued, "that they recognize the benefits of having mojos around to keep down interpersonal friction. If they consider that factor to be that important, perhaps instead of considering war we should instead be concentrating on getting rid of the mojos."

  "How?" Telek snorted. "Kill them all off?"

  "Why not? Whole species have been exterminated before, back in the Dominion. Species-specific pesticides can be made for any animal, can't they?"

  "Theoretically, once enough is known about the animal's hormone sequence during breeding. We haven't got anything like that much data on mojos."

  "We've got the time, though," Jonny persisted. "The tech assessment puts them at least fifteen years away from a stardrive."

  "Won't help," Roi murmured. "The cities, Jonny. Any animal that would prefer a good breeding setup to a good feeding setup is going to be incredibly hard to kill off."

  "Especially when the Qasamans will be on their side," Telek said. "Remember, whatever input the mojos had on the design of the cities, it was the humans who put them up. Could be that they actually didn't need much prompting after all—this arrangement encourages a steady supply of mojos for their growing population while at the same time keeps them on a short enough food leash that they won't just give up and go look for a krisjaw to team up with."

  "And unlike the aviary approach, this looks more natural to the mojos," Roi mused. "Suckers them into thinking things are going their way while the Qasamans kill off every krisjaw for a thousand kilometers around."

  Stiggur tapped his fingers gently on the tabletop. "The ultimate, crowning irony: the puppets conspire to keep the puppeteers with them."

  "The crowning irony?" Hemner shook his head. "No. The crowning irony is Moff's last warning . . . and the fact that, given their cultural paranoia, they might very well have cowered there on their one little world forever, afraid to venture into space where they might run into something they didn't like. If the Trofts hadn't poked at them, and persuaded us to do likewise, they might never have become even the smallest threat to either of us. Consider that when you're tempted to congratulate yourselves on how well we've handled this."

  A long, painful silence settled on the table. Jonny shifted quietly in his chair, the dull ache in his joints echoed by the bitterness in his mind. Hemner was right; had been right, in fact, all the way from the beginning. And now the threat they'd worried and argued about was on its way to becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy.

  And it was far too late to go back.

  Stiggur broke the silence first, and with the words Jonny knew he would use. "Does anyone have a recommendation to make?"

  Vartanson looked around the table, compressed his lips, and nodded heavily. "I do, Brom." He took a deep breath. "I recommend we accept the Baliu demesne's offer of five new worlds in exchange for eliminating the Qasaman threat."

  Stiggur nodded. "Anyone else?"

  Jonny licked his lips . . . but in his mind's eye he saw the Qasamans and their mojos moving on Chata, Kubha, and Tacta . . . and from there to the Cobra Worlds themselves. We will come and find you, Moff had said, and Jonny knew he'd meant it . . . and the objection he'd been about to raise died in his throat.

  The others may have seen similar visions. Certainly, none of them spoke.

  Three minutes later, Vartanson
's recommendation became official.

  * * *

  It had been a long time since Justin had been in his Capitalia apartment. Standing at the living room window, gazing out at the city lights, he tried to count how many times he'd been back here since beginning his Cobra training . . . four months ago? Five?

  The train of thought petered out from lack of interest. Sighing, he stepped back to his desk and sat down. The clean paper and magdisks he'd put there an hour ago were still untouched, and down deep he knew they were going to remain that way for a while longer. Tonight he could see nothing but the faces of the three men who'd been buried this morning, the Cobras who'd died getting the Dewdrop off Qasama. He hadn't even known there'd been casualties in the confusion of that time; hadn't known until they all arrived at the Menssana and he saw the bodies being carried by their friends.

  Tonight was not the night to begin preparations for war.

  The doorbell twittered. Governor Telek, most likely, come to check on his progress. "Come in," he called.

  The door unlocked and opened. "Hello, Justin," Jonny said.

  Justin felt his stomach tighten. "Hi, Dad. What're you doing out this late?"

  "In the cold rain?" Jonny added with a half smile, shaking the last few drops off his coat before stepping into the apartment and letting the door close behind him. "I wanted you to come by the house tonight and your phone was off. This seemed the logical alternative."

  Justin dropped his eyes to his desk. "I'm sorry, but I'm supposed to be working on . . . something."

  "A battle plan?" Jonny asked gently.

  Justin grimaced. "Governor Telek told you?"

  "Not in so many words, but it wasn't hard to figure out. You've already shown yourself to have a surprisingly good tactical ability, and she was bound to want something to show the full Council tomorrow."

  "Tactical ability," Justin said bitterly. "Oh, sure. A great plan, wasn't it?—except for the minor fact that Decker and Michael had to improvise an ending just to get us out. And even at that we lost three men."