Cobra - Cobra Strike Part 15

Justin eyed him suspiciously. "Are you leading up to the suggestion that someone take a little midnight stroll in a day or two?"

"I don't know how else to find out their true threat potential," Pyre shrugged.

"And if we're caught at it?"

"Trouble, of course. Which is why the operation would have to be handled by someone who knew what he was doing."

"In other words, one of the Cobras or Decker. And since we're in plain view and

Decker is both watched and unarmed, not getting caught starts sounding a bit unlikely."

Pyre shrugged. "At the moment, you're right. But maybe something will change."

He gave Justin a long look. "And in that event... you weren't supposed to know this, but Decker isn't unarmed. He's carrying a breakapart palm-mate dart gun with him."

"He's what? Almo, they said no weapons. If they catch him with that-"

"He'll be in serious trouble," Pyre finished for him. "I know. But Decker didn't want the party completely helpless, and the gun did make it through the big inspection okay."

"As far as you know."

"He's still got it."

Justin sighed. "Great. I hope the Marines taught him patience as well as marksmans.h.i.+p."

"I'm sure they did," Pyre grunted, pus.h.i.+ng himself to his feet with an ease that was probably due solely to his implanted servos. "I'm going to crash for a few hours-if you're smart you'll do likewise after your exercises."

"Yeah," Justin said with a yawn. "Before you do, though, has the governor said when she's going to call Joshua back in for our switch?"

Pyre paused halfway to the door, a look of chagrin flicking across his face.

"Actually... her current plan is to go ahead and leave Joshua out there for the foreseeable future."

"What?" Justin stared at him. "That's not what we planned."

"I know," Pyre shrugged helplessly. "I pointed that out to her-rather strongly, in fact. But the situation seems pretty stable at the moment and...."

"And she likes having Joshua's visual transmission too much to give it up. Is that it?"

Pyre sighed. "You can hardly blame her. She'd wanted the whole contact team implanted with those optical sensors, I understand, and been turned down on grounds of cost-split-frequency transmitters that small are expensive to make.

And now with all our other eyes taken away, Joshua's all we've got left if we want to see what's going on." He held up a hand soothingly. "Look, I know how you feel, but try not to worry about him. The Qasamans are hardly going to attack them now without a good reason."

"I suppose you're right." Justin thought for a moment, but there didn't seem anything else to be said. "Well... good night."

" 'Night."

Pyre left, and Justin flexed his arms experimentally. Thirteen hours in the couch had indeed left the muscles stiff, but he hardly noticed the twinges as his thoughts latched onto Pyre's last comment. Without a good reason... but what would const.i.tute such a reason in the Qasamans' minds? An aggressive act or comment on Cerenkov's part? Discovery that the ostensibly voice-only radio link to the s.h.i.+p also had a split-freq channel that was carrying the visual images they'd obviously tried to suppress? Violent use of York's illegal gun? Or perhaps even the outside reconnaissance Pyre had clearly already decided on?

Eyes on the darkened display, Justin settled into his exercises, pus.h.i.+ng his body harder than he'd originally intended to.

Chapter 9.

With less need for immediate debarkation-and more comfort and room aboard s.h.i.+p in which to wait-the Menssana's pa.s.sengers didn't bother with filter helmets, but simply stayed inside until the atmospheric a.n.a.lyzers confirmed the air of

Planet Chata was indeed safe for human use.

Long tradition gave Jonny, as senior official aboard, the honor of being the first human being to step out on the new world's surface; but Jonny had long since learned to put discretion before pomp, and the honor was claimed by one of the six Cobras who went out to set up a sensor/defense perimeter about the s.h.i.+p.

Once again the pa.s.sengers waited; but when an hour of Cobra work failed to entice any predators out of the nearby woods-or to flush out anything obviously dangerous within the perimeter itself-Team Leader Rey Banyon declared the

Menssana's immediate area to be safe enough for the civilians.

Jonny and Chrys were near the end of the general exodus of scientists through the Menssana's main hatch. For Jonny it was a step into his own distant past.

Chata looked nothing at all like Aventine, really; certainly not after even a cursory examination of plant life and landscape. Yet the simple fact of Chata's strangeness relative to Aventine's by-now familiarity gave the two experiences an ident.i.ty. A new world, untouched by man-

"Brings back memories, doesn't it?" Chrys murmured at his side.

Jonny took a deep breath, savoring the almost spicy aromas wafting in along the light breeze. "Like Aventine when I first arrived," he said, shaking his head slowly. "A kid of twenty-five, just about overwhelmed by the sheer scope of what we were trying to do there. I'd forgotten how it all felt... forgotten what all of us have really accomplished in the past forty years."

"It'll be harder to do it again," Chrys said. Dropping to one knee, she gently fingered the mat of interlaced vine-like plants that seemed to be the local version of gra.s.s. "Chata may only be thirty light-years from Aventine, but we don't have anything like the Dominion's transport capability. It hardly makes sense to spend our resources this direction with so much of Aventine and

Palatine still uninhabited. Especially-" She broke off abruptly.

"Especially when this whole group is only ten to fifteen light-years from

Qasama?" Jonny finished for her.

She got to her feet with a sigh, brus.h.i.+ng bits of greenery off her fingers as she did so. "I've heard all the arguments about buffer zones and two-front wars," she said, "but I don't have to like it. And I keep coming back to the fact that the only reason we consider Qasama a threat is because the Trofts say we should."

The beep of his phone preempted Jonny's reply. "Moreau," he said, lifting the device to his lips.

"Banyon, Governor," the Cobra team leader's voice came. "Got something off our satellite I think you should look at."

Chrys's presence beside him was a silent reminder of his promise to play pa.s.senger on this trip. "Can't you and Captain Shepherd handle it?" he said.

"Well... I suppose so, yes. I just thought that your advice would be helpful on this."

"Unless you're talking emergency-" Jonny broke off as a fluttering hand waved between him and the phone.

"What are you doing?" Chrys stage-whispered fiercely. "Let's go see what they've got."

If I live to be a thousand, the old line flashed through Jonny's head. "Never mind," he told Banyon. "I'll be right there."

They found Banyon and Shepherd on the Menssana's bridge, their attention on a set of three displays. "It wasn't something that registered right off the blocks," Banyon began without preamble, indicating a dark ma.s.s now centered in the largest display. "Then we found out it was moving."

Jonny leaned close to the screen. The ma.s.s seemed to consist of hundreds or thousands of individual dots. "Enhancement all the way up on this?"