Cobra Traitor, page 11
part #3 of Cobra Rebellion Series
Jody leaned toward him to peer around the door. Half of the cabinet’s rows of shelves were empty, probably consumed by the gunbay’s previous occupant. The rest of the space was taken up by orderly rows of meal bars and bottles of a pale red liquid, everything clamped to the back wall. Distantly, Jody wondered what kind of violent maneuvers the ship was capable of making that would require such precautions. “The different packaging indicates different flavors,” Plaine said, pointing at the bars. “That red stuff looks scary, but it’s just water with a broad spectrum of added vitamins and minerals and a little added taste. Want one?”
“I’m fine,” Jody repeated.
“You can see how much longer Herczeg could have held out,” Plaine commented, popping one of the bottles from its clamps. “He’s the Marine you nabbed on the way to Qasama. But we figured that if we distracted you enough we might be able to get the Squire turned around. Didn’t work, but it was worth a try. Hey, you want to see a magic trick?”
Jody frowned. She’d never seen Plaine bounce around so many topics in so short a time before. Had he been dipping into some secret stockpile of drugs or something? “No thanks,” she said. “Can we just get back to—?”
Right in the middle of her sentence he lobbed the bottle gently over her head and out the hatchway.
Automatically, Jody’s eyes flicked to the arcing bottle. An instant later, her brain caught up, belatedly warning her that the bottle was probably a diversion and wrenching her eyes back to Plaine.
Too late. She was still refocusing when he gave the back panel of the cabinet a sharp jab with the heel of his right hand. The panel split down the middle and flew open with spring-loaded speed, revealing another, equally shallow compartment behind it.
Only instead of food and water, this compartment held a row of compact handguns fastened to the back with more of the quick-release clips.
Jody gasped, her brain freezing. Betrayed! Just as Smitty had predicted, Plaine had taken advantage of Kemp’s absence to turn the situation to his advantage.
As Smitty had predicted, and Kemp had warned, and Jody had confidently dismissed. She was a Cobra now, she’d assured them, and she could handle anything Plaine could throw at her.
But in that first second, caught completely by surprise, Jody’s whole mind and body had gone paralyzed. Reflexes that Kemp and Smitty had—reflexes she’d thought she’d mastered, as well—simply weren’t there. She tried to put a target lock on Plaine’s forehead, changed her mind and decided to aim for the weapons instead, then realized that she had no choice but to shoot to kill and tried to focus on Plaine again.
But it was already too late. With a single smooth motion, the Marine grabbed one of the weapons, swung around toward Jody—
And spun the weapon a hundred eighty degrees around, pointing the muzzle at his own stomach and pressing the grip into her hand.
For a long, painful moment neither of them moved or spoke. “Is this what you were trying to prove?” Plaine asked quietly. “That the minute I had a chance I would grab you as a hostage and force a standoff?”
“There was some thought of that,” Jody conceded, her voice shaking with adrenaline reaction.
“We tried that, remember?” Plaine said. “It got Herczeg hammered and halfway to dead.” He snorted. “Besides, I thought we all agreed that we’re in this together. My life depends on you, and vice versa.” He considered. “Well, maybe not so much the versa. Your Cobras do pretty well for themselves. How does that feel?”
Jody blinked. With so many right-angle turns coming in such rapid-fire she’d completely forgotten that her hand was currently wrapped around the grip of a gun. “Okay,” she said cautiously, consciously relaxing her fingers. “Finger grooves are a little too far apart for my hand.”
“No problem.” Plaine was still gripping the laser’s barrel. Now, he let go. “Hold it up.”
Jody did so. The weapon was heavier than she would have guessed just by looking at it. “There’s a little indentation on the upper curve of the grip, just above the vee of your thumb and forefinger. See it?”
With an effort—was he trying to distract her again?—Jody lowered her eyes from his face to the laser. “Here?” she asked, pointing to the spot with her left forefinger.
“Yes,” Plaine said. “Left thumb on the indentation; left fingers curled around the top of the chamber; right hand with fingers and thumb spaced however feels comfortable; right forefinger alongside the trigger. Got it? Now, press with your left thumb.”
Jody squeezed the indentation. To her surprise, the grip softened beneath her right hand, then reformed to fit the positioning of her fingers. “When it feels good, let go with your left hand,” Plaine instructed.
Jody eased back on the indentation and felt the grip solidifying again. She lifted her right-hand fingers away from the weapon, then tried moving them to different parts of the grip. The grip remained solid. “Nice,” she said, letting her fingers settle back into the newly reshaped grooves. “I guess this one is mine now?”
“Once you learn how to shoot it,” Plaine warned. “I mean that. If you’re not willing to put in the necessary work, I don’t want you carrying it around. I doubt any of your friends do, either. Giving an amateur a gun is about the most stupidly suicidal thing you can do.”
“I’ll remember that,” Jody said. “Speaking of which…?” She hefted the gun, which was still pointed at him.
“No worries—the Dominion teaches stupid-suicide avoidance,” Plaine said. “No pack.”
Jody turned the weapon over. Sure enough, the power pack slot in the grip was indeed open and empty. “Ah,” she said.
“But these do have packs,” he continued, gesturing to two of the other weapons in the hidden arsenal. “So your little catch-release experiment is still valid, since I still could have proved your friends were right about me if I’d wanted to. I just didn’t want to get shot during the demo. You ready to learn how to shoot one of those things?”
“I thought we were going to start with the big guns,” Jody said, nodding toward the gunbay control board.
“What, you think we can’t do both?” Plaine countered. “Lower deck’s probably the best place to set up a range—nice straight corridors, and no one’s down there.” He pursed his lips. “Except me, of course. Lucky for me I can’t accidently walk out of my cabin into the line of fire.”
Jody eyed him closely. Was he hinting that he wanted the lock removed? Because she knew Kemp would never agree to that. “If you’re looking to have that changed—”
“Not at all,” he assured her. “I’ve seen nervous Cobras. I’d rather you keep me tucked away, nice and secure, where you won’t always be jumping at shadows.” He leaned back to the control board and tapped the intercom switch. “Whoever was waiting to jump me once I proved how dangerous and stupid I am, you can relax—we’re done here. Ms. Broom now has a request.” He gestured toward the mike. “Ms. Broom?”
Jody took a deep breath. She didn’t need to learn how to use any of these Dominion hand weapons, of course—she already had plenty of her own firepower at hand. But it couldn’t hurt to have another string to her bow. “We need to find something we can use as a laser target,” she said. “Sergeant Plaine is going to teach me how to shoot.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“No,” Merrick said, shaking his head. “They’re not coming out. Probably because they never went in.”
“I do not think that conclusion, you can yet make it,” Kjoic disagreed. “On what is it supported?”
“On the fact that nothing has changed over there in the past three days,” Merrick said, nodding in the direction of the Troft building. It wasn’t visible through the trees, of course, but he knew exactly where it was. Not to mention every tree, shrub, rock, and Troft guard around it. “Plus the additional fact that they’re still going nuts searching the forest,” he added. “If they had Anya and her parents, they would know that once they were conditioned they would be able to find me. Anya would, anyway. Once they have her, all of their flying around is a waste of time.”
“You assume they will have learned that such prisoners were associated with you,” Kjoic pointed out.
“Of course they’ll know that,” Merrick said. “Remember Dyre Woodsplitter? He’s the one who betrayed me after a couple of shots of their juice, even knowing that it could hurt Anya.” Who he was betrothed to, and clearly cared a great deal for. Merrick tried not to think too hard about that part. “He’s sure not going to go shy on them once they’ve actually got her in hand. Especially since the alternative to the war drug is probably some kind of torture.”
“Trof’tes do not use torture,” Kjoic said. “Still, chemical truth evokements are said to be very unpleasant.” For a moment he seemed to ponder Merrick’s analysis, his radiator membranes fluttering. “If we accept this as working truth, what do you propose as our next action?”
“Nice term,” Merrick said. “Working truth. I’ll have to remember that one. Well, logically, if Anya isn’t in there, she’s somewhere else. If we want to get any help from her or her parents, we need to find her.”
“A self-evident statement, it is one,” Kjoic said, a little dryly. “Yet the forest and the planet, they are very large.”
“But we can assume she’s not just wandering around at random,” Merrick said. “She’ll want to find me as much as I want to find her. That means she’ll go someplace where I’m likely to look.”
“Such as the spacecraft wreckage?”
“That’s one possibility,” Merrick agreed. “Or there’s the spot where you and she camped out while I went ahead to Svipall. I assume the shelter she made for that night is still there?”
“It was intact when we left,” Kjoic said doubtfully. “But both journeys are long. Would she be able to safely travel that far?”
“Probably depends on whether she and her parents are still together,” Merrick said. “Regardless, those are the two best places to start.”
“Perhaps.” Kjoic peered at the trees blocking their view of the warehouse. “Do you propose that we leave immediately?”
“I propose that I leave immediately,” Merrick corrected him. “One of us should stay here and keep an eye on the building.”
Kjoic’s radiator membranes gave an extra-large flutter. “Joined forces, it was done for a reason,” he reminded Merrick. “Breaking the alliance is not a useful plan.”
“We’re not breaking it, just bending it a little,” Merrick said. “We may be at a dead end here and should try something new.”
“Then let us travel together.”
“No, because we may not be at a dead end,” Merrick said. “If I’m wrong, and Anya or her parents come out, one of us needs to see what they’re up to. They could start hunting for me right away, or they could pause to set up a trap. Either way, we need to know about it.”
Kjoic digested that one. “If we do this, how do we later find each other?”
“We’ll use this spot as our rendezvous,” Merrick said. “If I find them, I’ll bring them here. If they leave the base, you follow them, find out where they’re going, and then return here. Whoever gets here first waits for the other.”
“This forest is not safe,” Kjoic pointed out. “Especially for you, who will likely be traveling the greater distance.”
“I’ve spent a fair amount of time here,” Merrick assured him. “I’ve got a good feel for whatever it can throw at me.”
Which wasn’t even close to the truth, of course. There were undoubtedly many nasties lurking in the shadows that he and Anya hadn’t yet run into.
But he was confident that his Cobra equipment and reflexes could successfully take them on.
Kjoic’s membranes flared once and then settled back onto his upper arms. “I do not think this is wise,” he said. “But I agree that both objectives are important, and there are only two of us to accomplish them. If you are convinced that you must seek Anya elsewhere, you may go with my permission.”
“Thank you,” Merrick said, resisting the urge to point out that he didn’t really need the Troft’s permission to do anything. “I’ll be back as quick as I can.”
“Travel with caution.” Kjoic pointed to the laser in Merrick’s belt. “And be wary of firing at night. The flash, it can be seen for a great distance in darkness.”
“I’ll remember that,” Merrick promised. “You be careful here. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”
The patch of bambus spikes in Dewer’s Hollow where Anya had built their last shelter was several kilometers west of Svipall and the Troft warehouse. Merrick traveled that direction for about two kilometers, just in case Kjoic decided to follow him. But there was no hint that anyone was back there, and a quiet hundred-meter backtrack at the end of the two kilometers turned up no sign of Kjoic or any other tail. A distinctive tree towering over an equally distinctive hollow log made a convenient place to stash the laser, which Merrick didn’t especially want to lug around and which he definitely didn’t need.
And with that, he was ready to head for his true objective: the underground rebel hideout to the north where he and Anya had slept for a few hours after their hang-glider escape from the Trofts nearly two weeks ago.
Back then, the hideout had been deserted and empty. Now, Merrick suspected he would find things to be a bit different.
Also back then, it had taken him and Anya a solid three days’ worth of travel time to get from the hideout to the wrecked ship and then to Svipall. But their speed had first been limited by Anya, and later by the even slower Kjoic, whose speed had later been further reduced by his self-inflicted leg wound.
But this time Merrick was alone, with no civilians to protect or Trofts to hide his true abilities from.
Those first two kilometers, the ones heading west, had taken him thirty minutes. The next two, heading north at full Cobra servo speed, took him five.
It was risky, and not just because he might run squarely into some nest of predators before he knew they were there. The vegetation was nearly as hazardous, with thorns, snarls, hidden insect nests, and other obstacles. On top of that, there were still Troft aircars wandering around, and while the earpiece Kjoic had given him provided some early warning, Merrick was hardly ready to put his full faith and trust in the device. That meant having to split his attention between the ground and the sky, leaving open the possibility that a threat from one direction would nail him while he was focused elsewhere.
He’d gone barely ten minutes when the odds caught up with him.
He had just passed through the edge of a small clearing and was giving the bit of open sky above him a quick look, when he ran smack into a group of raccoon-sized animals with long claws and quill-covered backs. He raked his legs across the quills of the first two before he even knew they were there, and the next pair managed to take a swipe at him before he could leap up into the nearest branch out of their reach.
Fortunately, the animals seemed as surprised by the encounter as he was, which slowed their response to his sudden presence. The pack seemed to be fairly small and contained, but Merrick nevertheless traveled the next hundred meters in the air, jumping from tree branch to tree branch, just in case the first group was part of a bigger herd. Just as fortunately, though that bit of luck didn’t occur to Merrick until later, the raccoons didn’t seem to have any particular tree-climbing skills. That could have been trouble, given that naturally arboreal creatures would have little trouble overtaking a human who had to pause on each branch to locate the next likely tree and limb.
As it was, he nearly ran into a group of fafirs before he dropped back to the ground. Three of the hairy ape/wolf creatures started after him, but a low-power fingertip laser burst into each discouraged them from further pursuit.
Merrick’s boots had taken most of the damage from that first group of quills, and his speed, agility, and weaponry had gotten him through the rest unscathed. Still, there was a lesson there to be learned. From that point on he made sure to travel slowly enough to keep an eye on what was ahead.
It was the middle of the afternoon when he reached the hideout.
He stayed at the edge of the clearing for several minutes, not moving, his infrareds and audios at full strength as he watched and listened for any sign of human or Troft activity. But he could see nothing, and all the animal and insect sounds seemed normal. Finally, he eased his way to the hollowed-out rock that hid the entrance and moved it carefully out of the way. Again he paused, this time crouched at the edge of the shaft, watching and listening. Still no signs of life. With one final look around, he set his feet on the ladder fastened to the side of the wood-lined shaft and climbed down.
The hideout’s construction was very basic. There were two short tunnels leading off in opposite directions from the bottom of the shaft, each tunnel leading to a smallish room. Both rooms had full wood-plank ceilings, but only partial wall shoring, which gave the impression that the place had been abandoned before it was fully completed. Both rooms were empty, with any equipment or food stores long gone, all of it looking exactly like it had the last time he was here.
But this time wasn’t last time.
With a final look at the second room, Merrick returned to what he had mentally tagged as the main room: the larger one where he and Anya had caught a few hours of restless sleep on the hard dirt floor. He gave that room a final, careful survey, then stepped to a part of the side wall that had been more completely shored with the floor-to-ceiling wooden planks than most of the rest. “Hello,” he said conversationally. “I’m Merrick Hopekeeper. I know you’re there, and I assume you’re listening. Please open the door so we can talk.”
Nothing happened. It was, he thought, with a touch of dark humor, like talking to a wooden wall. “If you don’t come out, I’ll open the door myself,” he continued. “If you have doubts that I can do that—and you probably do—I suggest you ask Anya Winghunter.”
