Cobra Traitor, page 36
part #3 of Cobra Rebellion Series
“You were the one in charge in Archway when you weren’t keeping things so nonlethal,” Corwin pointed out. “As far as I know, you’ve never offered an apology for that. They may be here to ask for one.”
Reivaro looked up at the circles again. “I hope they’re not being that foolish,” he murmured. “Still…Sergeant, deploy to contain. You and I, Governor, will step back here out of harm’s way.”
He took Corwin’s arm and wove him through the maze of cots to the food-storage wall. As he did so, the Marines formed a circle about halfway out from the center, far enough back for their epaulet lasers to target the Cobras the moment they breached the ceiling.
Corwin watched, his heart racing. He could only hope Lorne knew what he was doing.
* * *
Below Lorne, the rest of the Cobras had halted their descents, hanging from their ropes a couple of meters above the warehouse roof as they continued to blast away at the tiling. Another thirty seconds, he estimated, and they would break through.
He reached a spot just above the other Cobra hanging on his rope and pushed off, arcing past the man’s head and landing on the roof well to the side of the laser activity. Werle and de Portola were already down, sprinting toward the side of the building where the three doors were situated and where the main part of the street battle was taking place. Lorne put on a burst of speed, caught up with them, and then shot past.
From above, two of the Dewdrop’s landing lights flicked on, marking two spots ahead and about two meters back from the roof’s edge. Lorne glanced back to see Werle and de Portola adjust their vectors to aim at those spots, then turned forward again, setting his own vector for a point directly between them. He reached the edge of the roof and leaped off, giving himself enough of a sideways spin to achieve a one-eighty as he hit the street.
Which left him on the pavement and facing the two Marines standing guard in front of the two human-sized doors.
He’d half expected that by now the door warders would have left their posts and joined in the melee taking place on the street in front of them. But they had a job to do, and undoubtedly also had the supreme confidence Lorne had seen in every other Dominion Marine, from Reivaro on down.
Lorne’s sudden appearance in front of them did seem to startle them, though. Their faces were unreadable behind their helmet visors, but they each gave a small twitch of surprise, probably as they also locked their autotarget systems on him. Keeping his arms at his sides, Lorne straightened up from his landing crouch.
Just as Werle and de Portola, the Marines’ positions pinpointed for them by the Dewdrop’s lights, landed feet-first on their shoulders.
The four of them went down in a pair of tangles. The Marines didn’t get up.
Neither, immediately, did the Cobras. Rolling off the Marines and onto their backs, Werle and de Portola fired their antiarmor lasers at point-blank range into the doors’ lock mechanisms and then, for good measure, into the hinges. Leaping back to their feet, they slammed into the doors, sending them crashing in onto the warehouse floor. Charging forward, they disappeared inside.
Lorne was right behind Werle, sparing a quick glance at the two unmoving Marines as he passed. There was no time to pause and see if they were badly injured, and he could only hope any broken bones or internal injuries could be successfully treated once they were back aboard the Algonquin. Turning his eyes and thoughts away, he ran through the door and into the warehouse.
Just as three circular sections of roof collapsed and the nine Cobras from above dropped through the openings, sending a diversionary volley of mudballs at the circle of waiting Marines as they fell toward the floor.
From the look of the Marines’ circle, they’d been prepared only for the overhead assault. The sudden appearance of Lorne and his friends through the doors had clearly surprised them.
But again, they were prepared for an unexpected change of plans and tactics. The four closest Marines spun around to face this new threat.
Without slowing, Werle and de Portola angled off to their respective sides, still heading for the Marines. Lorne continued a more straight-line path, shifting to a dodging stutter-run as he reached the first line of cots and lockers. Across the room, the mudballs had drawn the other Marines’ fire long enough for the main Cobra assault group to hit the floor and take cover behind the electronic equipment, desks, and lockers scattered around the center. The whole area was blazing with laser fire as both sides blasted away.
All except the four Marines facing Lorne, Werle, and de Portola. For the first two crucial seconds they just stood there, watching the Cobras bearing down on them, unmoving, not firing. Then, abruptly, their epaulets opened up, spitting fire at their attackers.
But not the deadly accurate fire Lorne had become accustomed to. These shots were irregular, almost hesitant, often missing completely as the Cobras did their jerky in-out around or over obstacles as they closed the gaps. Even the shots that connected were often grazing rather than solid hits, the heat barely stinging through the layers of ablative material under the Cobras’ outer clothing.
A movement off to the side caught Lorne’s eye. Reivaro and Great-Uncle Corwin were standing together, well back from both parts of the battle, their backs against a group of storage cabinets lining the wall. To Lorne’s mild surprise, Reivaro wasn’t standing behind Corwin, using the old man as a shield against the Cobra assault, but was instead actually standing in front of him.
Though that could change at any moment. Even that quick glance showed a taut expression on Reivaro’s face as he watched Lorne, Werle, and de Portola moving in against his Marines’ totally ineffective fire. The rest of the Marines were doing better, pinning down the main Cobra force hunkered behind their barriers.
But the Marines facing Lorne and the other two were part of that greater containment circle. If those four were overrun, that could have unpredictable consequences for the rest of the group.
Reivaro had so far resisted the temptation to use his ultimate weapon. But Lorne could sense that his restraint was running out. Already Lorne was nearly to arcthrower range—
A brilliant flash lit up the room, brighter even than the crisscrossing laser fire at the center of the warehouse. One of the Marines jerked as de Portola’s arcthrower blast took out his left-hand epaulet.
“Stop, Broom—damn it!” Reivaro shouted. “Stop or die!”
At Lorne’s other side Werle answered with an arcthrower shot of his own, while de Portola finished off his Marine’s other epaulet with a second shot.
“Damn you, Broom!” Reivaro snarled over the chaos. “Damn you to hell for making me do this. Rache!”
There was a brief succession of small explosive pops from the center of the circle. The Cobra laser fire faltered and died. The Marines likewise halted their attack, and a few of them started to take a step inward.
“Take him!” Reivaro ordered. His voice was black and angry and bitter. “Take him, or kill him.”
And then, with the suddenness of an ocean wave breaking over a rock, the nine supposedly dead Cobras leaped from their concealment and charged their attackers.
The Marines were caught completely off-guard. For a pair of seconds they just stood there as the Cobras jumped over obstacles and raced toward them. The earlier flicker of laser fire was replaced by the brighter, more ragged flashes of arcthrowers as the attackers targeted the Marines’ epaulets.
Two seconds was all the Cobras got before the undamaged Marine lasers once again opened fire. But it was too late. The Cobras dodged the uncoordinated shots with ease, and kept going.
And then Lorne had reached his own target, and he had no more time for watching anything else. The Marine tried to fight back, but without his epaulet lasers the fancy defenses of his combat suit were useless. He threw a gauntleted punch at Lorne’s head; Lorne’s programmed reflexes took over, snapping his arms up to catch the arm and pinion it between them. Some pressure from his arm servos, and the Marine was forced to bend over at the waist. Lorne’s left arm closed and tightened, locking around the Marine’s wrist at his elbow, while he snaked his right arm over the other’s shoulders and yanked off his helmet. A quick low-power electrical jolt from his stunner, and the man went limp. Lorne let the Marine drop to the floor, keeping his grip on the arm as he fell to keep his head from hitting too hard, and fired his arcthrower into the next Marine’s epaulet—
“Hold!”
Lorne looked over. Reivaro was still standing by Corwin, but had taken a step forward. He was gripping his laser by the barrel, holding it high above his head like a flag of truce.
“You talking to us?” one of the Cobras in the main group demanded.
“I’m talking to all of you,” Reivaro said, his voice tight but controlled.
“We don’t take orders from you,” the Cobra bit out.
“I think he’s trying to surrender,” Lorne said.
“Sure,” someone else said sarcastically. “Now that he’s losing.”
“I’m trying to avoid any further bloodshed,” Reivaro said, looking hard at Lorne. “Are you in charge of this force, Broom?”
“More or less,” Lorne said, looking across at the head of the Capitalia Cobra group from the Dewdrop. The man’s lip was twisted with scorn, but he gave Lorne a reluctant nod. Lorne returned the nod and turned back to Reivaro. “Order your men to take off their helmets and power down their lasers. The ones outside, too.”
Reivaro nodded, his own expression still rigid. “Putting it in the data stream now.”
The Marines in the warehouse were already complying, popping their helmets and setting them aside, then starting on the rest of their combat suits. Lorne caught de Portola’s eye, gestured behind them. De Portola nodded and headed back to the door they’d entered by.
Reivaro was walking toward Lorne, his laser lowered but still held by the barrel. Corwin was trailing at a respectful distance behind him. “I trust you’ll comply with the Dominion Articles of War regarding the treatment of prisoners?” the colonel asked.
“You mean like with dog collars?” one of the other Cobras countered.
“We’ll treat your men as prisoners of war,” Lorne promised. “Which of course requires you to acknowledge the Cobra Worlds as our own nation, and not part of the Dominion.”
Reivaro snorted. “You know I don’t have the authority to make that kind of political statement.”
“No,” Lorne agreed. “But it’s a foot in the door. For now, that’s enough.”
Reivaro’s eyes flicked to the main Cobra group. “How did you do it?” he asked quietly.
“These,” Lorne said, touching the band around his neck. “We deciphered the IFF microengraving code in the epaulets and were able to duplicate them. Once your autotargeting systems refused to fire at us—” He shrugged. “We’re pretty good at evading enemy fire.”
“For archaic hundred-year-old technology, anyway,” de Portola added as he walked up. “Looks good outside, Lorne. The Marines have surrendered and Emile and the others are disarming them.”
“Tell them to snap it up,” Lorne said. “There are probably fighters already in the air.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” Reivaro said. “You still have the Dewdrop with you as a shield, and its armor is strong enough to fend off anything a fighter can throw against them.”
“Yes, thanks for that,” de Portola said over his shoulder as he headed again toward the door. “We’ll still snap it up.”
“My congratulations to you, too, Governor,” Reivaro added, turning to face Corwin. “We really did think we’d taken all your collar-defense factories.”
“Something we learned from the Qasamans,” Corwin said. “Always build your defenses in layers. That way the opposition is never sure they’ve gotten everything.”
“And their—?” Reivaro stopped, nodding in understanding. “Of course. They were wearing their IFFs underneath their loyalty collars.”
“Of course,” Lorne confirmed. “Otherwise the chokers would have been destroyed when you triggered the explosives.”
“So if I hadn’t triggered the collars…?”
“You’d probably have killed us all.”
Reivaro smiled lopsidedly. “Well,” he said. “If you know nothing else, you Cobra Worlders do at least understand irony.”
“Oh, we understand a lot more than that.” Stepping up to him, Lorne took his laser with one hand and his upper arm with the other. “We also understand the concepts of hostage and prisoner exchange. Come on, let’s get you out of the data stream and inside a Faraday cage, and then give Captain Lij Tulu a call. I’m sure he’ll love to hear from us.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Jody hadn’t expected a parade or twenty-gun salute for her role in rescuing her brother. She would have been satisfied with a pat on the shoulder, a warm handshake, and a sincere well done.
She didn’t get them.
She also didn’t expect to be taken aboard the Dorian under full Marine guard and marched to a conference room to face criminal charges.
Those she got.
“…pursuant to the Dominion of Man Unified Military Code, Section Eight, Sub-Section Three,” Acting Captain Filho said, “you are hereby charged with sedition, theft, and felony treason. Have you anything to say before you’re remanded into custody?”
Jody looked at the others. Kemp and Smitty were standing stolidly at something resembling military attention, their faces hard. Only their eyes moved as they looked around, assessing the situation and no doubt searching for options. Merrick, with no context for any of this, was wisely keeping his mouth shut. Rashida stood beside Smitty, her eyes on the floor, the perfect image of a quiet and submissive Qasaman woman.
Of course, Jody remembered her projecting that same image—along with a hefty dose of feigned terror—just before she and Smitty took down the Squire’s other Marine gunner shortly after they left Caelian.
She scowled to herself. Fine. If no one else was willing to take Filho up on his offer, she’d just have to do it herself.
“Yes, I have a couple of points,” she spoke up. “Let’s start by you telling us where Captain Moreau is.”
One of the Marines standing against the briefing room hatch stirred but didn’t speak. “Why exactly do you think that’s any of your business?” Senior Commander Castenello spoke up before Filho could respond.
“How about Commander Ling Garrett?” Jody persisted. “Or Lieutenant Meekan?”
“I repeat: why do you want to know?” Castenello asked.
Jody nodded to herself. Filho might have taken over as acting captain, but it was clear that Castenello was the man in charge. “Because I submit that this whole thing is ridiculous,” she said. “We didn’t steal the Squire. We were authorized to borrow it to go look for my brother.” She raised her eyebrows. “And considering that in the process we uncovered a Troft plot the Dominion didn’t have a clue about, I think trumping up a bunch of unfounded charges is going to be more embarrassing than helpful.”
“Do you, now,” Castenello said, his voice going unexpectedly silky. “So you’re saying Commander Garrett and Lieutenant Meekan were part of the plot?”
“They were part of the conversation,” Jody said, frowning. “I don’t know what you mean by a plot. It seems to me that if you call someone commander it should follow that he has the authority to command.”
“It should, and it does,” Filho said, a little stiffly. “But only within the bounds of that commander’s mission parameters. In this case—” He shook his head.
“But up until now we’ve assumed Captain Moreau and Commander Ling Garrett were solely responsible for this breach of orders and mission,” Castenello added. “Thank you for adding Lieutenant Meekan’s name to the list.”
A muscle in Filho’s cheek tightened, and Jody felt fresh anger and frustration boiling up inside her. So her attempt to defuse this whole thing had accomplished nothing except to throw another of Captain Moreau’s allies under the wheels. “Is this how the Dominion does things?” she demanded, trying to cover up her chagrin. “Rumor and innuendo are all it takes to kick a captain over the cliff and steal his ship?”
“Hardly,” Filho said. “You and your friends will be giving your testimony to a full Enquiry Board as soon as we’ve finished our mapping orbits and return to hyperspace.”
“Have you spotted any Troft warships, sir?” Plaine spoke up.
“No warships, no flights of fighters, no ground-based weaponry,” Filho said, sounding relieved to be back on purely military ground again. “Nothing has lifted except that single armed transport you mentioned, and that was very definitely going the other direction as fast as it could.”
“Yes, sir,” Plaine said. “The reason I ask, Commander, is that—”
“Acting Captain,” Castenello interjected.
“Acting Captain,” Plaine corrected himself. His voice was polite enough, but there was a subtle edge to it. “The reason I ask, sir, is that according to Cobra Broom the project down there is of extreme value to the Drim’hco’plai Trofts. I find it highly unlikely that they would leave it unprotected. The fact that there’s been no response strikes me as dangerously suspicious.”
Filho and Castenello exchanged looks. “You think they’re waiting in ambush?” Filho asked. “Because we’ve seen no indication of any staging area within easy strike range.”
“We certainly haven’t seen evidence of an ambush,” Castenello added.
“Well, you wouldn’t, would you?” Jody said scornfully. “That’s the whole point of an ambush. What Gunnery Sergeant Plaine is saying is that the Drims are somewhere planning something. It would be a really good idea for the Dorian to be an entirely different somewhere when they make their move.”
“Fine,” Filho said between stiff lips. “Commander Castenello, make this mapping orbit our last and then get us underway. Sergeant Bleys?” He beckoned to one of the Marines by the hatch. “You and your squad will stand guard over the three Cobras here until the full board is ready to convene. Gunnery Sergeant Plaine, you’ll report to sickbay for a full physical exam. Corporal Kai—” he nodded to another Marine “—you’ll escort Ms. Broom and Ms. Vil to the Women’s Section.”
