Cobra Traitor, page 22
part #3 of Cobra Rebellion Series
All eyes were on her, as she’d expected. A number of mouths were hanging open, as well. “Everyone all right?” she asked.
“Who are you?” a woman asked, her voice shaking a little. She hadn’t been one of the people who’d been running, Jin noted, which meant she was one of the ones the Marines had snatched from the crowd at random.
“Who cares?” an older man cut in. “He’s a Cobra. You’re getting us out, right?”
There was another explosion, and Jin took another look at the door. There was a lot of laser fire going on out there, most of it not directly visible but inferred from the flickering reflections off the neighboring buildings. The explosions had settled into an almost rhythmic pattern, one coming every ten seconds or so, and from the sound and reflected light pattern she could tell that particular attack was coming from the right side of the door. If the four Marines who’d taken off through the far door were trying to counterattack at the Cobras’ rear, they should also have gone down that side of the building.
Which should, logically, leave the other side of the building unguarded.
“You’re getting us out, right?” the man repeated. “The back door, right?”
“No,” Jin said. “Follow me. Quick and quiet.”
She stepped over the two Marines she’d stunned and headed toward the wall. Along the way she noticed a patch in the floor that probably marked the access shaft that Lorne had used in his own earlier escape. For a moment she was tempted, but this really wasn’t the sort of crowd she’d feel comfortable taking down a rickety ladder. She passed it by, throwing a quick look behind her to make sure the rest of the prisoners were following.
They were. The older man had taken the lead, while the woman who’d apparently been too confused or startled to realize she was facing a Cobra was bringing up the rear. Jin reached the wall and swung her left leg up and around in a sweeping arc, activating her antiarmor laser and slicing an opening in the wall.
She slipped through, fingertip lasers at the ready, wincing at the sudden arthritic pain the maneuver had sent throbbing through her hip joint. She’d guessed right: the narrow space between the garrison building and the walkway was deserted. Stepping to the side, she gestured the prisoners to join her. “There,” she murmured to the leader, pointing to a service alleyway leading off the street a few meters to the side, her words punctuated by another explosion from the front of the building. “Get them to the next street and then send them all home.”
“Aren’t you coming with us?” he asked, frowning.
“I’ll see you out,” Jin said. “Then I have other work to do.”
The man’s eyes flicked over her shoulder toward the flashes of reflected light. “Right. Good luck.” He gave her a brisk nod and then headed at a fast jog toward the alley.
The rest of the prisoners followed, a couple of the older men and women being helped along by some of the younger ones. Jin set her back to the garrison building wall, turning her head back and forth and up, watching tensely for the inevitable counterattack. Even if Lorne had all the local Marines pinned down, the techs must have called for help by now. Reivaro surely had a fast-response team standing ready to be airlifted anywhere in the city.
For that matter, even the local Marines might be free soon. The explosions were becoming increasingly sporadic, suggesting the battle was coming to an end, one way or another. As soon as the last civilian was out of her sight, she would fire off the prearranged triple antiarmor laser shot off the edge of the garrison building, and she and Lorne’s team would do their best to get the hell out of here.
Hopefully, they would all get out alive. This whole thing had been a risk, and a potentially disastrous one. But it had been important to show Capitalia’s citizens that the Cobras weren’t going to let the Dominion simply walk all over them.
Back on Qasama she’d seen how important civilian support was to a fighting force. It was a road that went both ways.
“Cobra?”
Jin turned. The woman who’d been at the rear of the line was standing in the opening in the wall, a pained expression on her face. “What are you doing?” Jin demanded, glancing at the alley. The last of the line of prisoners was just disappearing. “That way. Go on. Go.”
“I’m sorry,” the woman said.
Before Jin could respond, the woman’s collar exploded into a cloud of cold, sweet-smelling mist.
Jin threw herself backward, her leg servos turning the panic jump into a full five-meter leap. But it was too late. Already her vision was wavering, and as her feet hit the ground her legs collapsed beneath her. She stretched out her hands to break her fall.
And the world went black.
* * *
The first explosion had caught Lorne completely by surprise. From the reflexive backward jerking of the Marines, it seemed the blast had taken them off guard, as well.
Luckily for them, their defense didn’t depend on their attention or lack of it. Even as a second object came hurtling in from the side, the air once again was filled with a blazing fury of laser fire.
Unluckily for them, Lorne’s response also didn’t depend on him knowing the details of what was going on. With the Marines’ autofire once again fixated on whatever the explosion had unleashed toward them, they were vulnerable to attacks from all other directions. Putting on a burst of speed, Lorne charged toward them, target-locking all the epaulet control edges in his field of view. There was another blast as a laser shot hit the latest flying object, followed by two more of the objects and two more explosions.
It was as Lorne reached range and threw himself onto his back in laser-firing position that he finally got the last piece of the puzzle. Even as his antiarmor laser blasted the Marines’ epaulets something hit his leg, sending a flash of pain through his calf. He finished his firing, rolled up into a crouch, and checked the spot.
Sticking out of his leg was what looked like a small metal nail.
He looked up again as another explosion thundered across the area, swearing softly under his breath as he pulled out the nail. So that was what Emile and his fellow city Cobras had come up with. Instead of another form of mudball, they’d created shrapnel bombs.
But this wasn’t the time or the place to deal with the complications of such a weapon. The first three Marines out of the garrison were disarmed and Werle and de Portola had sent two of them to the ground with arcthrowers blasts. But that left five Marines still standing, their epaulets blazing at the renewed barrage of shrapnel bombs, and there were undoubtedly more behind them. The Cobras had to draw out the whole garrison if Jin was going to have her chance to free the prisoners.
“Incoming!” someone shouted from Lorne’s left. He glanced that direction, just in time to see more reflected laser fire coming from the far side of the building’s corner. More Marines, probably having come from the garrison’s far door to try a sortie at Emile’s rear.
Briefly, Lorne wondered if he should send Werle to assist Emile’s group, decided he and his team would do better to keep the Marines on this side tied down. Another Marine had appeared through the door, jumping to the side and opening up with a flurry of laser fire, much higher power this time. His first shot sliced through Lorne’s ablative insulation and burned across his rib cage, but his programmed reflexes managed to dodge the others. There was no chance for Lorne to target anything as small as epaulet control edges while in violent motion; instead, he did a quick lock on the Marine’s helmet and threw his last mudball.
For half a second the incoming threat took over the Marine’s firepower, redirecting the lasers toward the ball bearings instead of Lorne. Lorne took advantage of the momentary reprieve to target-lock the Marine’s control edges and fire. The epaulets’ fire faltered, then resumed toward Lorne at a slower rate as the Marine switched to manual targeting—
An arcthrower blast split the air, and the Marine dropped to the ground.
“Come on!” someone shouted.
Lorne jumped back to his feet, looking around. The street was littered with Marines, some of their epaulets trailing wisps of smoke. Presumably all unconscious, though there was no way to know if there’d been any fatalities.
The Cobras, unfortunately, were another story. Two of them lay unmoving, crumpled on the ground.
“Come on!” the order came again, more urgent this time, accompanied by a shake on Lorne’s shoulder. This time he was able to identify the voice: Emile. “Come on, Broom—we got aircars coming in.”
“What about the signal?” Lorne asked, looking up toward the building’s corner. There was no sign of his mother’s laser fire, or any evidence she’d sliced through the material there. “Anyone see the signal?”
“I didn’t,” de Portola said. “But he’s right. We have to go.”
Lorne clenched his teeth. If his mother hadn’t gotten the prisoners out…but Emile and de Portola were right. Getting the rest of them caught wouldn’t gain anyone anything. “Go.”
Steeling himself, he reached down and picked up one of the dead Cobras. Emile already had the other and was heading for the nearest access shaft. The rest of the Cobras, Lorne noted, were dispersing toward the various shafts they’d mapped out for the escape.
“Here they come,” Emile muttered.
Lorne looked up.
Overhead, the Dominion aircars were starting to appear.
And suddenly, the high-minded demonstration of Cobra support for the citizenry was about to turn into a slaughter. Lorne winced, his stomach twisting, waiting for the barrage to begin.
But to his surprise, it didn’t. The aircars’ occupants merely watched as he and Emile reached the shaft unhindered and escaped back underground.
Perhaps Reivaro was hoping to find their headquarters by mapping the locations of their bolt-holes. Perhaps he or Lij Tulu had decided to be content with delivering yet another lesson in Dominion superiority. Perhaps their goal now was simply to drive the enemy from the field.
Having first, of course, killed two more of them. Part of the whole superiority lesson.
“You all right?” Emile grunted as they reached the bottom of the shaft.
“Yeah,” Lorne said. There was no light at all down here, and he keyed in his infrareds. Emile and the two bodies gave off the usual glow, lighting the couple of meters of concrete immediately around them but leaving the rest of the area in darkness. “You?”
“Mostly.”
“Good,” Lorne said as they headed off down the conduit. Moving in the cramped space with a body on his back, he quickly discovered, was a whole new level of difficulty than doing it alone. “What the hell were those?”
“You mean our little distractions?”
“I mean your damn shrapnel bombs,” Lorne shot back. “In case you hadn’t noticed, there were civilians in the area.”
“Oh, relax,” Emile said scornfully. “They were shaped charges. The only ones in danger were the Marines.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Lorne growled. “You can’t make a shaped charge that you throw.”
“You can if you’re throwing at Dominion Marines.” Emile huffed out a sigh, and Lorne had the annoyed impression that the other Cobra was rolling his eyes. “Look. We coat the bombs with a hard shell. Well, hardish, anyway. We throw one at a Marine, and his laser punches through the shell, igniting the explosive. The intact part of the shell holds things together just long enough to direct the main blast and shrapnel through the hole straight back at him.”
“Most of the shrapnel, anyway,” Lorne muttered. “I got one of your nails in my leg.”
“Yeah,” Emile said. “Well, it was our first try.” He threw a look over his shoulder. “What’s your excuse?”
“My excuse for what?”
“This whole boneheaded stunt,” Emile bit out. “Two more Cobras dead; and for what? Reivaro would have let all the civilians go in a few hours anyway.”
“And what would have happened the next time we asked Capitalia to help us out with something?” Lorne retorted. “We can’t do this alone, Emile. We need the whole planet behind us if we’re going to get the Dominion off Aventine.”
“If you think we can get rid of them on our own, you’re dreaming,” Emile said flatly. “The only way to do that is to get the Trofts in on the job.”
Lorne felt his mouth drop open. “The Trofts? Are you crazy?”
“Oh, relax,” Emile said. “I’m talking about our Trofts. The Tlossies and Hoibies. If we can get them to push back against the Dominion, even Lij Tulu might be persuaded to go home.”
Lorne shook his head. “Not a chance. Whatever they’re here for, they’re not going to go away just because a few Trofts ask them politely.”
“Who said anything about asking?” Emile countered. “We know Captain Moreau took the Dorian to the Hoibie homeworld. I can’t see their demesne-lord being happy that there are alien warships in his neighborhood.”
“I can’t see him being stupid enough to line up with the group fighting at the other end of the Assemblage,” Lorne said. “Especially when he probably has no independent way of knowing how their side of the war is going.”
“I guess we’ll see which one of us is right,” Emile said. “Starting…oh, about a week from now. Maybe less.”
“What happens in a week?”
Emile threw a sly smile over his shoulder. “You’ll see,” he said. “Here’s a hint: it’ll start in DeVegas province.”
Lorne frowned. DeVegas was where the first shots had been fired in this simmering resistance against the Dominion. It was where the first blood had been drawn. Was Commandant Ishikuma planning something dramatic?
He caught his breath. “The Dewdrop?”
“Yep,” Emile said with obvious satisfaction. “The armor plating that Santores insisted on—”
“And got by wrecking every metal-working machine in Eion Yates’s factory.”
“If it makes you feel any better, it’s nothing personal about Yates or DeVegas,” Emile said. “Lij Tulu’s in the process of wrecking two other factories in Willaway province to get armor plate for the Mensana and Southern Cross.”
“Terrific,” Lorne said, making a face. Three factories wrecked. Even if by some miracle the Dominion left tomorrow, the consequences and costs would linger for years to come.
His stomach tightened as he focused on the body slung over Emile’s shoulder. Not to mention the costs in human life. “So Chintawa’s plan is to send the Dewdrop to the Hoibies to beg them for help? And you really think Lij Tulu will be careless enough to let it get out of the system?”
“Don’t worry—we haven’t forgotten your big plan,” Emile soothed. “The idea is for it to wreck the Dominion’s relay satellites on the way out. That was what you wanted Chintawa to do, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, about five days ago,” Lorne said. “I’d say events have kind of passed that one by.”
Emile snorted. “Events like sacrificing more Cobras so that civilians can run around thinking they’re helping us? Not to mention your bellwether back there?”
“What are you talking about?” Lorne asked, frowning.
“Bellwether,” Emile repeated. “That’s a sheep that leads the others—”
“I know what it is. What do you mean, not to mention?”
“That hundred-year-old guy you sent in to lead the civvies out of there,” Emile said with clearly strained patience. “I assume he was one of your DeVegas Cobras under a kilo of makeup?”
“No, he was my mother under a kilo of makeup,” Lorne bit out. “What happened? Did something go wro—?”
Emile stopped short, spinning around so abruptly that Lorne nearly ran into him. “That was your mother? Jasmine Broom?”
“How many mothers do you think I have?” Lorne shot back, a sudden horror jabbing through him. Even with just infrareds the shock in Emile’s expression was clear and terrifying. “What’s happened?”
“She didn’t make it out,” Emile breathed. “My east-side spotter signaled that the last two civilians got caught in some kind of gas trap and didn’t make it out.”
Lorne hissed out a curse as he dropped to one knee and slipped his burden onto the conduit floor. “I have to go,” he said. “Sorry—you’ll have to get him back on your own.”
“Hold it,” Emile said, grabbing Lorne’s wrist. “There’s no point. By now they’re long gone.”
“You don’t know that,” Lorne countered, shaking off his grip.
“Of course I do,” Emile gritted out. He grabbed Lorne’s wrist again, and this time locked his finger servos in place. “Reivaro’s not going to kill her—she knows too much stuff about us. But he’s also not going to sit her down and question her here. They’re long gone, probably straight back to the Algonquin.”
“You don’t know that,” Lorne repeated.
But down deep, he knew Emile was right. The civilian grabs had been a trap all along, designed by Reivaro and Lij Tulu to draw out someone they could pump for information.
“Of course I do,” Emile said. “So do you, if you’d be honest with yourself for two seconds. You go back now and odds are they’ll grab you, too. Though you they might just kill.”
Lorne stared down at the body he’d unceremoniously dumped on the cold conduit floor. Its infrared glow was fading as the residual body heat slowly radiated away. Emile was right on that score, too. “So what do I do? Just sit here and do nothing?”
“No, you get your butt back to your base and start clearing everyone out,” Emile said, releasing Lorne’s wrist. “Sooner or later they’re going to get its location out of her, and you need to be gone before then.” He hissed out a curse. “I guess you can bunk in with us until you can find a new place of your own.”
“You don’t seem thrilled by the prospect.”
“Eggs and baskets,” Emile said as Lorne picked up the dead Cobra again. “Nothing personal. I was going to take us back to our place and deliver the fallen, but I think we’d better head to your people first and get them started packing. Which way?”
“Straight ahead,” Lorne said. “There’s a junction about fifty meters ahead where we can switch places if you want me to lead.”
