Cobra Alliance-Cobra War Book 1 (20 page)

And then all was silence.

For a long minute Merrick just hung there, listening to the indistinct sounds of activity overhead. It was hard to tell through the thick floor, but he couldn't hear any of the extra urgency that might mean his escape had been spotted. Within half a minute, all of the sounds had faded away. The hunt, apparently, had moved elsewhere.

Merrick took a deep breath, painfully aware of how close he'd just come to his own death. Something else that hadn't entered into his calculations when he'd volunteered to join this war. He took a few more deep breaths, sternly ordering his heart to calm down, then keyed his light-amps to full strength.

It was a waste of effort. The shaft extension stretching down around him was completely and utterly dark, without a single bit of light coming in from anywhere that even his optical enhancers could detect. He shifted to infrared, hoping his own body might be radiating enough in that wavelength that he could at least see
something.
But aside from giving him a view of the two or three square meters of false floor directly above him, that didn't work either.

Switching back to his light-amps, he let go with one hand and aimed his little finger into a random section of the darkness. He touched his thumb to his forefinger nail—the laser's lowest setting—sent up a silent prayer that he wasn't aiming at anything important, and fired.

The shaft below him stretched deep enough that even the laser flash wasn't bright enough to show where it ultimately ended. But it was more than adequate to show the semicircular platform five meters below the spot where he was hanging. Bracing himself, he let go.

He hit the platform with a solid, metallic thud, bending his knees as he landed to absorb some of the impact. The shaft was still pitch black, but his glimpse of the platform had also shown a door in the shaft wall across from where he now stood. Moving carefully forward, one hand extended in front of him, he made it to the wall.

He pressed his ear against the metal and held his breath, his auditory enhancers keyed to full power. The wall was alive with the hums, thumps, and rumblings of distant machinery, but there were no sounds of human activity that he could detect.

Still, Akim had said there would be Djinn down here somewhere. Turning his enhancers back down again, he tried the knob and found it unlocked. Pushing the door open, he stepped through into a space filled with the soft mustiness of dust and age and long neglect. Unlike the shaft, this place had a little light, a faint glow coming from somewhere to Merrick's left. Closing the door behind him, he started to activate his light-amps.

And suddenly, a blazing white light exploded in his face.

He jerked back, squeezing his eyes tightly against the blaze as he reflexively threw one arm up to protect his face. "Well, well, well," a voice growled from somewhere behind the light. "What have we
here
?"

The Troft stepped into the elevator behind Merrick . . . and to Jin's stunned horror, the doors closed behind him, leaving her, Akim, and the other five Trofts still outside.

Wait!
Ruthlessly, she stifled the word before it could make it past her lips. She was a woman in a patriarchal society, and it would look suspicious if she spoke up instead of Akim.

Only Akim wasn't speaking up. He was just standing there, not even looking at Jin, apparently without a single shred of concern that their little group of infiltrators had just been split up. One of the Trofts gestured toward the right-hand elevator, and Akim merely nodded and stepped inside, leaving Merrick to whatever fate the Trofts had planned for him.

But whatever those plans were, they were about to be canceled. Glancing casually around, Jin set a targeting lock on each of the five Trofts' foreheads. Her fingertip lasers were useless against their faceplates, but a drop onto her back and a sweep of her antiarmor laser would leave her free to pry open the elevator doors and either drop onto the top of Merrick's car if they'd taken him down or else to jump up to the underside if they'd taken him up. Either way, another blast from her antiarmor laser would get her inside—

"Niora Kutal."

Jin jerked out of her frantic train of thought. Akim was standing in the elevator, gazing at her with the mix of authority and aloofness she'd seen on so many Qasamans as they dealt with female subordinates. "Yes, Miron Akim?" she managed.

"Attend," he said, making a small gesture toward his side.

But what about my son?
"Of course," she said instead. Lowering her eyes like a good Qasaman woman, her jaw tight as she fought to control her pounding rage and fear, she stepped into the elevator. Akim was right. Whatever the Trofts had planned for Merrick, blowing their cover now wouldn't do him any good.

And he wasn't seven years old anymore, either, she reminded herself firmly. He was a competent, capable adult.

And a Cobra.

She stepped to Akim's side. The five Trofts piled in behind her, lasers leveled and ready, their sheer numbers and bulk forcing the two humans all the way to the rear of the car. The doors slid shut,

one of the Trofts punched a button, and they headed up.

"To whom do you take us?" Akim asked into the silence.

No one bothered to answer. In the close confines, Jin heard a faint voice coming from somewhere, and keyed up her auditory enhancements. [—of his presence,] the cattertalk whispered. [A full search of the elevator shaft, it is being made.]

Jin felt her muscles tense. Were they talking about Merrick? Had he escaped?

[The other humans, under close guard hold them,] the voice continued.

None of the five Trofts stiffened, gasped, or showed any other visible reaction to the report. But it seemed to Jin that the ring of lasers moved perhaps a centimeter or two closer to her and Akim.

She took a careful breath, feeling her heartbeat slow a little. But only a little. Merrick had apparently escaped, and escaped alive. But had he taken that action on purpose, as Akim had ordered, so that he could go warn the Djinn of the change in plan? Or had he panicked, as his grandfather Justin had when facing an eerily similar situation?

There was no way for her to know. She could only hope that either way, he would make it safely to the subcity.

She raised her eyes to one of the Troft faces gazing at her above his leveled laser. The double sets of eyes gazed back through the faceplate, the main eyes a dark blue, the three tiny compound eyes grouped around each of the main ones largely colorless in the elevator's artificial light. She lowered her gaze, taking in the vaguely chicken-like beak, the double throat bladders, and the flexible radiator membranes on his arms. The Troft's outfit was similar to the usual leotard-like garment the traders on Aventine wore, except that his was festooned with various equipment pockets and hooks and was clearly armored.

Why were they here? The Qasamans had had contact with the local Troft demesnes—that much had been obvious fifty years ago, when the Trofts had provided the Worlds with a Qasaman translation program prior to their first mission here. Had the Qasamans annoyed someone enough to invite this kind of response? Had some Troft demesne decided it was running out of room, and Qasama offered the most convenient and attractive expansion?

The elevator came to a stop at the topmost floor, and the doors opened to reveal another group of five Trofts with weapons at the ready. Apparently, the aliens weren't taking any chances that their other two human visitors might make a break for it. The Trofts in the elevator filed out, the two groups of aliens forming themselves into a sort of double receiving line out in the corridor. It was, Jin thought as she and Akim passed between the lines, very much like the honor guard she'd sometimes seen at official Aventinian receptions.

Except for the drawn weapons, of course. And the way the lines re-formed into a guard behind them.

"To whom do you take us?" Akim asked again.

Again, the Trofts ignored him. The two humans were escorted through a couple of turns and arrived at last at an open door. At a gesture from one of the aliens, they went inside.

The room was clearly an executive office, complete with a large expanse of carpeted floor and a panoramic window that opened out onto the city of Sollas stretching out to the south. But unlike most offices, the only furniture here was a pair of metal armchairs sitting back to back across the room by the window.

Armchairs with wrist and ankle shackles attached and ready.

"Sit down in the chairs," one of the Trofts ordered.

"What is this?" Akim demanded, not moving from the doorway.

The muzzle of a laser prodded against the small of his back. "Sit down in the chairs."

"I was sent to speak with your commanders," Akim insisted as he moved with clear reluctance into the room.

"You were sent to spy," the Troft countered. "Sit down in the chairs."

"This is a breach of all proper diplomatic protocol," Akim continued stiffly as he seated himself with strained dignity, nodding to Jin to do likewise. "Do you now propose to interrogate us like common criminals?"

"No," the Troft said him as four of the aliens moved in and fastened the shackles around their wrists and ankles. "If you are high enough in your leaders' counsels to negotiate, you are high enough to be sorely missed by those same leaders."

His arm membranes fluttered. "You are no longer negotiators. You are now hostages."

"Get that light out of my eyes," Merrick snapped. "You trying to ruin what little night vision I have left?"

The light didn't waver. "Who are you?" the voice demanded. "What are you doing here?"

"My name is Merrick Moreau," Merrick told him. "I was sent with Miron Akim—"

"Merrick
Moreau
?" a new voice cut in, the source moving as someone apparently came forward from the rear of the group. "What are
you
doing here?"

This
voice Merrick recognized. "Greetings, Carsh Zoshak," he said. "As it happens, I'm on a mission for Miron Akim. Come on—vouch for me and get them to turn off this light."

"Not so fast," the first voice said darkly. "If you're Merrick Moreau, you're supposed to be at the Palace."

"Unfortunately, the Trofts didn't get that memo," Merrick said. "They intercepted us outside the Palace and sent us here to the airfield."

" 'Us'?" Zoshak asked. "Is Miron Akim also here?"

"Yes, somewhere up in the tower," Merrick said. "At least, I think he's still there. The Trofts separated us."

"Where did they do this?" Zoshak asked. "At the elevators?"

"Yes, but I don't know if Miron Akim and my mother were put in the other one or just taken somewhere on the ground floor."

"The other elevator is currently on the top floor," a third voice reported. "That's probably where they were taken."

"Is that where the Troft commanders have set up their headquarters?" Merrick asked.

"The supreme commanders are not here," the first voice said. "Only local commanders."

Merrick grimaced. So much for the Trofts taking them anywhere within close reach of any of the invasion's chief organizers. Still, he shouldn't have expected the aliens to be that naive. "Miron Akim sent me with a message," he said. "He said that since we hadn't been able to get to the trapped Shahni you were to initiate Plan Saikah instead."

There was a moment of silence. Then, to Merrick's relief, the blinding light went out. "Plan Saikah?" the first voice asked carefully. "Are you certain?"

"Very certain," Merrick assured him. "Why? What is it?"

There was a soft sigh. "It is a sentence of death."

A shiver ran up Merrick's back. "For you?"

"We are not concerned with our own deaths," the other said stiffly. "Facing danger for Qasama is our duty and our honor. I was speaking of the Shahni who will soon be lost to us."

"We cannot simply condemn them to such a death, Jol Najit," Zoshak said urgently. "Not without at least making an attempt to rescue them."

"And how would you do that, Carsh Zoshak?" the first voice—Najit—countered. "Would you have us chew through the barriers like demented rodents?"

"What kind of barriers are we talking about?" Merrick asked. His eyes were recovering now, enough for him to see that the glow he'd noticed when he'd first arrived was coming from the display and controls of a small monitor built into the elevator shaft wall. In the dim light, he could see that besides Zoshak and Najit there were three other Djinn in the room. "Because maybe if we—"

"We are talking about barriers that cannot be breached with the necessary speed and silence," Najit cut him off. "Now be quiet—we have work to do."

"I'm just trying to help," Merrick said doggedly, trying to visualize the Palace floor plans he'd glanced at earlier. Given the location of the safe room, even if Plan Saikah was a brute-force assault the Shahni should still have a pretty good chance of surviving long enough to be rescued. "If we could open up a pathway—"

"I said be
silent,
demon warrior," Najit bit out. "You are not part of this."

"I understand that," Merrick said, trying to keep his voice calm. What part of
I'm trying to help
didn't Najit get? "Since I'm not part of your group, there's no particular place I have to be."

"An excellent point," Najit growled. "Go somewhere else, and be out of our way." He turned his back on Merrick and headed toward the monitor station.

"So I guess I'll just pop over to the Palace and get the Shahni out," Merrick called after him.

Slowly, Najit turned around, and even in the dim light Merrick could see the rigid set to the other's face. "Let me make this clear, demon warrior," he said. "You are to stay out of our way.
Completely
out of our way. You will not go to the Palace, you will not return to the airfield tower, you will not stand or sit or lie in the path of any Qasaman forces. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I understand," Merrick said quietly. "You've been given a mission. Well, so have I. And though you may find this hard to believe, I feel as strongly about mine as you do about yours."