Timothy Zahn - Cobra Strike

"-in, Almo; are you there? Almo?"

Pyre's body sagged with relief. "I'm here, Governor. Phew. I thought something had happened to all of you."

"Yeah, well, it's about to," Telek said grimly. "Somehow they've tumbled to the fact that we're a spy mission, and it's probably a tossup as to whether they try and board us or take the safer way out and just blow us up."

"Any word from the contact team?" Pyre asked, forcing his voice to remain steady.

"Moff still has them on the bus, and so far they seem okay. They're being taken somewhere besides Sollas, though, probably the next city down. We were hoping you'd have a chance of intercepting them before they got too far away, assuming we could contact you in time."

"And?"

Telek hesitated. "Well... we estimate the bus will be passing the main road heading south from Sollas in ten or fifteen minutes. But that's twenty-plus kilometers from us-"

"How many Qasamans aboard?" he cut her off harshly.

"The usual six-man escort," she told him. "Plus their mojos. But even if you could get there in time I don't know how you'd get them out safely."

"I'll find a way. Just don't lift until I get back here with them... or until it's clear I'm not going to make it back at all."

He broke the connection without waiting to hear her reply and began crawling backwards from his concealing bush toward the protection of the forest, leaving the comm laser deployed for possible future use. Twenty kilometers in ten minutes. Hopeless even if he'd had clean ground to run on instead of a forest... but maybe the Qasamans would outsmart themselves on this one. Six guards in an ordinary bus was a fairly loose setup, even with the mojos and against four unarmed prisoners. In their place Pyre would transfer the Aventinians to a safer vehicle at the first opportunity... and to his way of thinking the crossroads to the south would be the ideal spot for such a switch.

And if his guess proved correct the whole party would be there for a few extra minutes. Long enough, perhaps, for Pyre to get there too.

At which point he'd have to face not only the busload of Qasamans but also whatever troops they'd assembled for the transfer. But there was nothing he could do about that. It was time for Almo Pyre, Cobra, to become what his implanted equipment had always intended him to be. Not a hunter, spy, nor even a killer of Aventinian spine leopards.

But a warrior.

Setting off at the fastest run the forest permitted, he headed south. It was all up to him now.

It was all up to him now.

York took a quiet breath, using his Marine biofeedback techniques to relax his muscles and nerves and to prepare him for action. To the right and slightly ahead he could see the buildings of Sollas silhouetted against the darkening sky, and if he remembered the aerial maps correctly they were now about as close to the city as this road got. It was time to make his attempt... and to find out just how deadly these mojos were.

His pen and ring were already resting casually in his left hand. Easing his calculator-watch off his left wrist, he fit the pen through its band, making sure the contacts were wedged solidly together. The ring slid onto the pen's clip to its own slot, and the palm-mate was ready. The arming sequence was three keystrokes on the calculator.

Wrapping the watchband into position around his right palm, he raised his hand over the back of the seat in front of him. Moff had given up his guard duty to one of the others a few kilometers back, but the Qasaman's attention was on

Rynstadt and Joshua at the moment. I get one free shot, York reminded himself distantly; and bringing the pen to bear on the guard, he squeezed the trigger.

The Qasaman jerked as the tiny dart buried itself deep in his cheek, his gun swinging wildly in reflexive search for a target. Reflexive but useless; already his eyes were beginning to glaze as the potent mix of neurotoxins took effect.

York shifted his aim to the mojo on the dying man's shoulder and a second dart found its target... but as he brought the palm-mate to bear on Moff's mojo all hell broke loose.

They were smart all right, those birds. The dead Qasaman hadn't even fallen to the floor before the remaining five mojos were in the air, sweeping toward him like silver-blue Furies. He got off two more shots, but neither connected-and then they were on him, talons digging into his face and gun arm and slamming him hard into the seat. Through the haze of agony he could dimly hear screams from

Rynstadt and the incomprehensible shouts of the Qasamans. Mojo wings slapped at his eyes, blinding him, but he didn't need his sight to know that his right forearm was being flayed, his right hand torn by beaks and talons as the mojos fought single-mindedly to get the palm-mate away from him. But it was wrapped firmly around his open hand, caught there though the will to hold it had long since vanished. His arm was on fire-wave after wave of agony screaming into his brain-and then suddenly the birds were gone, fluttering away to squawk at him from seat backs and Qasaman shoulders, and he saw what they'd done to his arm-

And the emotional shock combined with the physical shock... and Decker York, who had seen men injured and killed on five other worlds, dropped like a stone into the temporary sanctuary of unconsciousness.

His last thought before the blackness took him was that he would never wake up.

"Oh, my God," Christopher whispered. "My God."

Telek bit hard into the knuckles of her right hand, curled into an impotent fist at her mouth. York's arm.... She willed her eyes to turn away, but they were as tightly frozen to the scene as Joshua's own eyes were. Like a violent, haphazard dissection of York's arm-except that York was still alive. For now.

Beside her, Nnamdi gagged and fled the room. She hardly noticed.

It seemed like forever, but it was probably only a few seconds before Rynstadt was at York's side, a small can of seal-spray from his landing kit clutched in his shaking hand. He sprayed it on York's arm, sloppily and with an amateur's lack of uniformity; but by the time the can hissed itself dry Cerenkov had broken his own paralysis and moved in with a fresh can. Together they managed to seal off the worst of the blood flow.

Through it all Joshua never budged. Terrified out of his mind, Telek thought.

What a thing for a kid to see!

"Governor?" F'ahl's voice from the intercom made her jump. "Will he live?"

She hesitated. With the blood loss stopped and the seal-spray's anti-shock factors supporting York's system... but she knew better than to give even herself false hope. "Not a chance," she told F'ahl quietly. "He needs the

Dewdrop's medical facilities within an hour or less."

"Almo-"

"Might be able to get him here in time. But he won't. If he tries he'll just get himself killed, too." The words burned in her mouth, but she knew they were true. With the Qasamans and their birds jarred out of any overconfidence they might have had. Pyre wouldn't get within ten meters of the bus. But he would try anyway....

And now there was no other choice. "Captain, prepare the Dewdrop for lift," she said, her eyes straying at last from the display, only to stop on Justin lying in his couch. His fists, too, were clenched, but if he recognized she had just condemned his brother to death he didn't show it. "We'll try to take out as much of the tower and forest weaponry before we go and hope the ship can absorb whatever we don't destroy."

"Understood, Governor."

Telek turned to the lounge doorway, where Winward and Link were standing, their faces pale and grim. "We won't be able to get it all from here," she told them quietly.

"Already figured that out," Winward grunted. "When do you want us to head out?"

The pre-launch sequence would take at least ten minutes. "About fifteen minutes," she said.