Timothy Zahn - Cobra

"Good. Get to work." MacDonald turned to Jonny. "Even if Challinor didn't set up a flag to let him know when anyone tries to call Capitalia, we should assume he'll be moving against us soon. We'll need to alert Mayor Tyler and organize whatever we can in the way of resistance."

"Which is basically you and me," Jonny said.

"Plus those half-dozen pellet guns Chrys mentioned last night." He saw Jonny's expression and shrugged uncomfortably. "I know—living clay pigeons. But you know as well as I do that our nanocomputers react more slowly when faced with two or more simultaneous threats. It might just give us the edge we'll need."

"Maybe." All the ghosts of Adirondack were rising behind Jonny's eyes. Civilians getting killed in cross-fires... "What would we be doing, trying to guard the road from Thanksgiving?"

MacDonald shook his head. "There's no way we can keep them out—they can abandon the road whenever they please if they don't mind having to kill a spine leopard or two on the way into town and don't need to bring in any heavy equipment. No, the best we can hope for is to hold this building until Chrys can finish a transmitter that'll bring help from Capitalia."

"Maybe we should try the innocent approach, too," Chrys suggested, looking up from the book of circuit diagrams she'd been paging through. "As long as they haven't actually invaded yet, why don't we have someone—Dad, for instance—try to drive through Thanksgiving to Sangraal and call Capitalia from there?"

"I doubt if Challinor's letting any traffic travel east from here," MacDonald said, "but it's worth a try. You think your dad would be willing?"

"Sure," she reached for her phone... hesitated. "Maybe I'd better just ask him to come over and then explain things once he gets here. Challinor may have put a monitor in the system."

The call took half a minute; Eldjarn asked no questions and said he'd be there right away. As Chrys broke the connection MacDonald started for the door. "I'm going to find the mayor," he said over his shoulder. "Jonny, you stay here—just in case. I'll be back as soon as I can."

Eldjarn had come and gone and Chrys had been working for an hour and a half when they heard the shot.

"What was that? " Chrys asked, looking up from her breadboard.

"Pellet gun," Jonny snapped, already moving toward the door. "You'd better stay here while I—"

"Forget it," she said, setting her solderer down carefully and racing after him. "Ken's out there!"

There was no second shot, but even so they had no problem locating the scene of the trouble. Already thirty or more people had gathered around the edge of the Square; more, like Jonny and Chrys, were hurrying in that direction. Off to the side, at one corner of the building housing the mayor's office, lay a crumpled figure. Kneeling over him was MacDonald.

"Halt!" an authoritative voice barked, as Jonny and Chrys pushed through the clump of spectators and headed for MacDonald. "Stay away from him."

Jonny glanced at the speaker without slowing. "The hell with you, L'est," he said. "The man's hurt!"

The laser blast Jonny had half expected to take in the back didn't come, and they reached MacDonald without further incident. "What can we do?" he asked as they dropped to their knees beside him. The other Cobra, Jonny saw now, was pumping rhythmically on the injured man's sternum with the heel of his hand.

"Ventilate him," MacDonald snapped; but Chrys had anticipated the order and was already beginning mouth-to-mouth. Jonny opened the charred shirt gingerly, wincing as he saw the location of the burn. "What happened?"

"Challinor got here about fifteen minutes ago and told Mayor Tyler they were taking over," MacDonald said tightly. "We weren't in any kind of defense posture yet, but Insley tried to take a shot at him anyway." He swore viciously. "Challinor got out of the way and behind cover. There wasn't any reason to shoot to kill—but L'est apparently felt we needed an object lesson."

Jonny looked over MacDonald's shoulder. L'est was still standing near the center of the Square, watching them. Glancing around, he noticed for the first time that four more Cobras were also present, spaced more or less evenly around that end of the Square: the two men who besides L'est had been at Challinor's the night before, Challinor himself, and—"Sandy Taber's joined them," he said.

MacDonald grunted. "Chrys?" he asked.

She moved her face away from Insley's and shook her head. "There's no pulse in the carotid artery," she said gently. "Hasn't been since we got here. I'm sorry, Ken."

For a long moment MacDonald looked at her, his hands still in position on the dead man's chest. Then, slowly, he stood up and turned back toward the Square, his face like a thundercloud sculpted from stone. "Keep her clear, Jonny," he murmured, and started walking toward L'est.

The action was so casual that he was four steps away before Jonny understood exactly what the Cobra was planning. Simultaneously, a hissing intake of air behind him told him Chrys also had suddenly realized what was going to happen. "Ken!" she blurted, leaping to her feet.

Jonny was faster, standing up and grabbing her in an unbreakable grip before she could get past him. "Stay here," he whispered urgently into her ear. "You can't do anything for him out there."

"Jonny, you have to stop him!" she moaned as she struggled against him. "They'll kill him!"

For Jonny, it was the hardest decision he'd ever made in his life. Every instinct screamed at him to step into the Square and begin shooting, to try and knock out one or more of the Cobras waiting silently in their circle. To him it was obvious that Insley's death had been a deliberate effort on L'est's part to provoke precisely this reaction; to goad MacDonald into a confrontation where all the numerical and tactical advantages were theirs. But equally obvious was the fact that there was nothing he could to change the coming battle's outcome. At five-to-two odds he and MacDonald together would die just as surely as MacDonald alone... and with both of their Cobra defenders gone, the people of Ariel would have no way at all to fight back against Challinor's fledgling warlords. Even more than it had been the previous night, it was clear where his duty lay.

And so he clung tightly to Chrys and watched as they killed his friend.

It was a short battle. Even burning with rage, MacDonald had enough sense not to simply come to a halt and try to gun L'est down. Halfway through one of his strides he abruptly let his right leg collapse beneath him, dropping straight down onto the ground. Simultaneously, his arms snapped up, fingertip lasers sending fire to both sides. Patrusky and Szintra, at the receiving ends of the two blasts, reacted instantly, twisting aside as their own nanocomputers responded with return fire. An instant later there were twin howls of pain as the renegade Cobras' shots crossed the Square and hit each other... and from his prone position on the ground, MacDonald brought his left leg to bear on L'est.

He never got a chance to fire. With his own lightning reflexes and servo-augmented muscles, L'est leaped up in a six-meter-high arc that took him almost directly over his opponent. MacDonald moved with desperate speed to get his hands up... but L'est's leg got to firing position first.

The square lit up for an instant, and it was all over.

Beside him, Jonny felt the tension drain out of Chrys's body. For a moment he thought she would either faint or become hysterical... but when she spoke her voice was quiet and firm. "Let me go to him, Jonny. Please."

He hesitated, knowing what it would look like. "It'll be pretty bad—"

"Please."

They went together, Jonny with his arm still around her.

It was, indeed, pretty bad. L'est's antiarmor blast had caught MacDonald high in the chest, destroying his heart and probably a good percentage of his lung tissue. His arms lay limply on the ground, indicating that the connections between nanocomputer and arm servos had also been destroyed, denying the Cobra even the satisfaction of one last dying shot.