Timothy Zahn - Cobra

The introductions and greetings were a flurry of smiles, hugs, and general giddiness. Chrys and Gwen had known each other well enough through tapes back and forth that the awkwardness Jonny had half feared never materialized. Gwen asked about her nephew, was assured he was like any other two-year-old—except smarter, of course—and Jonny was just turning to lead the way out when she stopped him with a hand on his arm and a mischievous grin. "Before we go, Jonny, I've got a little surprise for you," she said. "Someone I met on the ship who's going to be working in the same town I am." Her eyes flicked over his shoulder.

A ship-met fiancé? Jonny thought. He turned, expecting a stranger... and felt his mouth drop open. "Cally!"

Cally Halloran's grin was a thing of truly massive proportions. "Hi, Jonny. Damn, but it's good to see you."

"Same to you with spangles," Jonny grinned. "Chrys, this is Cally Halloran, one of my teammates in the Adirondack war. I thought you and Imel were planning to stay in the Army for the rest of your natural lives."

"Imel's still there," Halloran nodded, "but you clowns out here gave the brass too many ideas of what Cobras could be used for. I finally had one Iberiand forest-patrol mission too many and put in for a transfer here."

"If you're expecting palace guard duty work in Dawa District, you can forget it," Jonny warned. "Chances are you'll be doing jungle duty and heavy manual labor besides."

"Yeah, but here I'll at least be working more on my own, without some middle-level Army officer looking over my shoulder." He waved a hand skyward. "Or maybe even get to help open up a new world like you did."

"Palatine and Caelian?" Jonny shook his head in mild disgust. "You want Army thinking, there it is in spades. We've barely got a third of Aventine even surveyed, let alone settled, and they open up beachheads on two other worlds. Talk about straining resources and manpower—especially Cobra manpower—"

"Jonny," Chrys interrupted smoothly, "you promised you wouldn't plunge us into Aventine's politics for at least the first hour. Remember?"

They all laughed. Jonny had not, in fact, made any such promise, but the hint was well taken. "Chrys is right—I do tend to go overboard sometimes," he admitted, pointing them all toward the door. "If you're all adequately tired of standing around here, let's go get some dinner. Chrys and I don't get to Capitalia too often, but we know where the best restaurant is."

The meal was a resounding success, the food and atmosphere of the restaurant as good as Jonny had remembered. They spent some time catching up on Halloran's and the Moreau family's recent histories, the conversation then shifting to Aventine in general and Dawa District in particular. Jonny knew relatively little about the latter, Dawa being one of the most recently incorporated parts of the planet, and he was rather surprised to find that he and Chrys still knew far more than the supposedly up-to-date information the colonists had been given.

They were working on dessert and the Aventine version of cahve when Chrys casually mentioned the mysterious Dominion craft coming in fast on the colony ship's wake. "No mystery there," Halloran shook his head. " I heard about it back on Asgard; I assumed you'd been told, too. That's Committé Vanis D'arl and some sort of special Cobra project that the Army and Central Committee have cooked up."

" D'arl? " Gwen's eyes were wide. "Jonny—that's the Committé Jame's working for."

"You're right." The name hadn't immediately registered, but now he remembered. Jame had been with D'arl's staff for, what, twelve years now? "Any idea who D'arl brought with him, Cally?"

"Boy, you Moreaus really get around," Halloran said, shaking his head in amazement. "No, I don't know who else is aboard—I only know it involves Cobras because Mendro and Bai had Freyr Complex tied up in knots for a month while Committee people crawled all over the place."

"Doing what?"

"All I heard were rumors. But they had a lot of trucks moving in and out... and parking by the surgery wing."

"Sounds like they're updating the Cobra equipment," Jonny frowned. "Have the Trofts and Minthisti been behaving themselves?"

"Far as I know. Maybe the Dominion's thinking about really pushing the colonization effort out here and wants to have more Cobras available."

"With D'arl coming here for a final assessment?" Jonny suggested. "Could be."

"Ah-ah," Gwen put in warningly. "That's politics, you guys. Technical foul; Chrys gets a free change of topic."

They all smiled, and the conversation shifted to the sorts of geological and tectonic utilization work Gwen hoped to be doing on her new world. But for Jonny, the relaxed mood of a few minutes earlier proved impossible to totally recapture. Tors Challinor's attempted rebellion seven years ago hadn't been repeated, but Jonny had lived those years waiting for that other shoe to drop, knowing that if Aventine could survive another few decades, the Cobras would all be dead and the society could at last get back to normal. But if the Dominion was planning to send them a new batch...

But the evening, if no longer scintillating, nevertheless remained pleasant as Jonny and Chrys gave the others a brief tour of Capitalia's night life. It was odd, though perhaps inevitable, that Jonny found himself mentally comparing everything to their hazily remembered counterparts on Asgard and Horizon; but if Gwen and Halloran found it all quaint and primitive, they were far too polite to say so.

It was after midnight when they finally called it quits, and as there was no point in returning to Rankin at such an hour, they checked into one of Capitalia's small selection of hotels. Gwen and Halloran had disappeared to their rooms, and Jonny was just starting to undress when he noticed the red "message waiting" light on his phone was glowing. "Uh-oh," he muttered.

Chrys followed his gaze. "Ignore it," she advised. "At least until morning. Theron would've risked waking you up if it was urgent."

"Ye-e-e-s," Jonny agreed, almost unwillingly picking up the instrument. "But he wouldn't have bothered us at all if it wasn't at least important. Might as well get it over with."

The message, as he'd expected, was simply to phone his assistant whenever convenient. Jonny looked at his watch, shrugged, and made the call.

Yutu answered promptly, without any of the grogginess that would have indicated a sound sleep. "Sorry to bother you, Syndic," he apologized, "but something came in on the net a half hour ago that I thought you should know about. Late this afternoon a dead spine leopard was found in the plains a couple of kilometers west of Paleen in Dawa District. It had been mauled pretty badly... and apparently not by scavengers."

Jonny looked up to see Chrys's suddenly tense eyes, felt his own jaw tighten. The elusive predator that even spine leopards needed defenses against had finally made its long-overdue appearance. So to speak.... "Any sign of what had killed it?" he asked Yutu.

"There's nothing more yet than what I've told you, sir. The carcass has been taken to Niparin, where I gather they're going to bring some experts in to study it. I just thought you might want to issue some orders immediately."

"Yeah." Caravel District was getting more built up every day, but there were still vast tracts of forest area surrounding the towns... and if the new predator migrated like the spine leopards did, the region could have unwelcome company at any time. "Put all the Cobras on alert, and have them keep an eye out for any unusual tracks or signs if business takes them into the forest," he instructed Yutu. "Everyone else is to stay out of the forest, period, and farmers working near the edges are to keep their cabs sealed."