“I understand,” Merrick said, wishing he actually did. Maybe it was just as well that he didn’t.
Abruptly, Anya stood up. “Finish the fire,” she ordered, pulling a knife from beneath her jacket. “I’ll go find us some food.”
“You want me to come with you?” Merrick asked, starting to also stand up.
“No,” she said tartly, her hand pressing down on his shoulder.
“You sure?” Merrick asked, eyeing her closely.
Her shoulders sagged a bit. “I’m sure,” she said again, more quietly this time. “I would like to have time alone.”
“Sure,” Merrick said, lowering himself back into a crouch as he keyed his infrareds. Once again, her face was a tangle of unreadable emotions. “If there’s any trouble, just give me a shout.”
“I will,” she promised. “Have the fire ready.” She shifted her eyes across the clearing to the Trofts. “After we eat, we’ll begin your instruction.”
Merrick felt his stomach tighten. Hanging beneath a piece of cloth hundreds of meters above the ground… “Sounds good,” he said. “Don’t worry. It’ll be all right.”
“Yes,” she murmured. “It will.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The news filtered in slowly from Archway, in bits and pieces, half of them genuine news, the other half unfounded rumors. The fact that the comm connections between Bitter Creek and the rest of DeVegas province were running a fitful on-again-off-again pattern didn’t help.
But gradually the horrifying picture became clear.
Lorne was out in the forest, hunting spine leopard way stations, when the news of the mob action at Yates Fabrications came through. He was taking a short, restless nap when the factory’s sabotage was reported.
He was in Mayor McDougal’s store, reporting that the last way station had been cleared out, when he learned about the slaughter.
“I’m so sorry,” McDougal said quietly as Lorne stared at the report on the mayor’s comboard. “I’m so very sorry.”
Lorne nodded mechanically, his eyes frozen to the short list of names.
Bates. Jankos. Harper. Men he’d known. Men he’d worked and fought beside. Men with whom he’d shared meals, drinks, laughter, danger, and curses. Three Cobras dead.
Three Cobras murdered.
“Do we know what happened?” he asked, his voice sounding like a stranger’s in his ears. “I mean, what really happened?”
“Not really,” McDougal said, the anger in her voice a match for the fury roiling through Lorne’s gut. “And I doubt we will anytime soon. You can see the Dominion wrote that piece and just slapped it in under Harry’s name. They didn’t even bother to match his style. They’re in charge of all news. Probably all comm and radio activity, too.”
“First rule of conquest,” Lorne murmured, still staring at the names.
The deaths were bad enough. But what was worse were the two names that weren’t in the report.
Because they should have been. His parents had been on the outskirts of Archway when he last talked to them, heading in to check on the supposed riot that Sergeant Khahar had talked about, and neither of them was the sort to stay in the background when there was danger or trouble. An article that took the time to name all the so-called ringleaders of the so-called mob should certainly have included Paul or Jasmine Broom in that roster. The deliberate lack of such a mention could only mean one thing.
Reivaro had taken them.
In fact, the more Lorne thought about it, the more he wondered if the entire confrontation had been staged deliberately to draw his parents into a situation where the Dominion could manufacture an excuse for a grab.
But maybe it wasn’t too late for him to get them back.
“I have to go,” he said, looking up. “I have to get to Archway.”
“No,” McDougal said flatly.
Lorne stared at her. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? No?”
“It means you can’t help them,” McDougal said. “Your parents aren’t in Archway anymore.”
“And you know this how?”
“I know because the Dominion may be many things, but they’re not stupid,” McDougal said, nodding at the comboard. “Look at the time-stamp. It’s been hours since the riot. If this was an excuse to declare martial law and grab your parents, they’ve long since done it.”
“We don’t know that,” Lorne persisted. “And don’t forget Chintawa. He’ll be fighting this, fighting the whole martial law thing, at least fighting for jurisdiction over my parents. There’s a fair chance they’re still in limbo while Santores and the Dome thrash it out. If they are, I have to get down there.”
McDougal shook her head. “You’re not going.”
A red haze seemed to settle in between Lorne and the woman. “How are you going to stop me?”
“Hopefully, with reason,” McDougal said, the anger in her voice and face turned into something hard and cold. “First reason: as mayor of your assigned town, I’m still officially in charge of you. If I say you stay, you stay. Second reason—” A muscle in her jaw tightened. “I think that’s exactly what they’re hoping you’ll do.”
Lorne frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Think about it,” McDougal said. “The report comes in late and doesn’t mention your parents. That provides the illusion that you still have a window in which to act. At the same time, it makes that window so small you have to act immediately, without taking time to think, or you risk losing your chance.” She shook her head. “No, whatever it is they want your parents for, they want you, too.”
Lorne’s mind flashed back to the family’s last dinner-table conversation. “I can’t just sit here.”
“I know you don’t want to,” McDougal said. “But it really is your best option. You saw what happened when they tried to come and get you. They’re probably not anxious to go that route again. I say we make them. We make them choose between coming here in person, or giving up and leaving you alone.” She looked through the window at the open area in front of the store. “And we make sure that if they do come back, we’re ready and waiting.”
Lorne looked down at the comboard, a dozen conflicting emotions swirling through his brain. The thought of just abandoning his parents was tearing him apart. But down deep, he knew McDougal was right.
Or at least she was half right. “No,” he said.
“No what?” McDougal asked warily.
“We’ll let them come for me,” he said, looking up again. “But the people of Bitter Creek have already stuck their necks out far enough. From now on, I’ll handle it myself.”
For a moment McDougal eyed him measuringly. Then, she gave a soft snort. “You got sand, Broom—I’ll give you that,” she said. “But it’s pretty stupid sand.”
“Runs in my family,” Lorne said, trying to force humor he didn’t feel. “If I don’t see you again, thanks for everything—”
“Wait a second.” McDougal pursed her lips tightly, a pained expression on her face. “Look, I don’t know if I should say anything about this. But…okay, look. During the Troft occupation the Cobras who weren’t pinned down used to run raids against their encampments. I don’t know much about it—we were too far away from Archway to give them much help, and the whole thing was deep black secret. But I do know that their rendezvous point was somewhere at or near Braided Falls. You know that area?”
“Well enough,” Lorne said. “Badj Werle used to talk about a little cave or something right behind the falls where he and his friends sometimes hung out when they were in school.”
“It’s more like an extra-deep indentation than an actual cave,” McDougal said. “And I don’t know if they met there or somewhere nearby—there might be other caves in that bluff that I don’t know about. Regardless, if any other Cobras got away, that’s probably where they’ll gather. Think of it as a compromise between being an easy target in Archway or a lone duck in Bitter Creek.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,”
Lorne said. “But for now, this is where they’ll be looking for me. It’d be a shame to disappoint them.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” McDougal snapped, a flash of anger cracking through her calm exterior. “You don’t even know what you’re up against. Their weapons, their people—Broom, they’re way beyond us in everything they’ve got. Be smart, go down to the Falls, and take the time to think this through.”
“I have,” Lorne said. In fact, to his own mild surprise a plan was already forming in the back of his mind. “And just for the record, Dill De Portola and I got a pretty good first approximation of their weapons systems yesterday morning. I think I can take them down.”
“What, all by yourself?”
“Hardly.” Lorne forced a smile. “Reivaro has his Marines. I have Aventine.”
“I thought you didn’t want our help.”
“Not the people,” Lorne corrected. “The planet.” He peered out the window. “It’s not Caelian. But I think it’ll do.”
#
The plan was simple enough in concept. The execution turned out to be much harder.
First there was the location to scout. Lorne spent a solid half hour trudging along Stony Creek before he found what he was looking for: a section of ground between a rotting log and the creek where years of spring overflows had washed out a narrow but relatively deep hollow. Equally important was the thick-trunked arrowcrest tree standing just behind the log with a set of branches stretching outward fifteen meters above the ground.
Finding the proper-sized rock was next. That part was much easier. As McDougal had pointed out earlier, the naming of Stony Creek hadn’t required an abundance of imagination. A little hunting yielded a nice hard stone, which he tucked under a tuft of grass at the end of the hollow.
Capturing a spine leopard was next, and wasn’t nearly so straightforward. Lorne had killed uncounted numbers of the predators during his years of Cobra service, but never before had he had to take one alive and unharmed.
It proved considerably trickier than he would ever have guessed. More than once during the stalking and chasing he wished he had Jody and her animal-physiology and management degrees with him. The trap she’d constructed for capturing predators on Caelian would have been even more useful.
Finally, with persistence and patience, he managed to corner a good-sized male and knock it out with a pair of shots from his stunner. He tied its legs together with the medical tape from his field pack and hauled it back to his hollow, securing it to the log with more tape to make doubly sure it didn’t get away. A little experimentation showed that a low-level fingertip laser burst at close range would almost completely vaporize the tape.
And after that came the hardest part of all.
The waiting.
He spent the rest of the afternoon patrolling the forest. Not so much to protect anyone—the townspeople had either retreated indoors or were out in the relatively safe fields south and east of town doing last-minute crop work—but more to keep himself too busy to second-guess his decision. If McDougal was wrong about Archway being a trap, staying in Bitter Creek would probably lose him his only chance of freeing his parents.
On the other hand, by now it was probably too late for him to do anything no matter what had actually gone down at Yates Fabrications. He wasn’t sure if that made him feel better or worse.
Evening had come and gone, and the first stars were peeking through the darkening sky, when they finally came for him.
There were two of them, judging from the noise they made as they strode through the forest undergrowth. They seemed to be making no attempt to keep their presence secret, any more than they’d tried to hide the approach of the aircar they’d arrived in.
Though he suspected the aircar’s wide, lazy circle had been driven less by showmanship than by the tactical necessity of mapping out the infrared signatures of all the townspeople before they came in for a landing. If that was true, they must surely have spotted Lorne out here in the forest. Hopefully, that meant they hadn’t stopped in town first to browbeat Mayor McDougal.
Still, professional pride alone should have dictated a more stealthy approach toward their prey. Maybe their slaughter of the three Archway Cobras had convinced them of the superiority and strength of their weapons.
With a little luck on Lorne’s part, they would learn that the race wasn’t necessarily to the swift, nor the battle always to the strong.
He tracked their movements as they came deeper into the woods. Every so often he fired off a fingertip laser as if he was still taking out spine leopards or other predators, giving the hunters glimpses of distant light that should continue to draw them in. The one glimpse he got of the pursuers through the trees showed that their Marine combat suits had been supplemented by close-fitting helmets and visors, the latter probably including nightscope capabilities.
After that look Lorne made sure to stay completely out of their sight, relying on his audio enhancers to keep track of their movements.
The hunt had been going on for about twenty minutes when their patience finally ran out. “Broom?” Sergeant Khahar’s voice boomed through the trees. “Come on, Broom, this is ridiculous. We know you’re here, and you know you can’t hide forever. Come out and make it easy on all of us, okay?”
“We promise we won’t kill you,” Chimm added. “Our orders are to bring you in alive.”
Lorne glanced around, giving himself a quick orientation. The Marines were probably thirty meters away; the trussed spine leopard no more than five. Time to make his move. “Go away!” he called back, using the cover of his voice to move quickly through the leaves and grass to the ambush point. “I’m busy.”
The spine leopard glared up at him as he came around the arrowcrest tree, its mouth half open, its extended forearm spines showing its anger and frustration. Lorne stepped up to it, a sudden and unexpected qualm rippling through him. Normally, spine leopards were killed in the heat of combat, in self defense or defense of others. The thought of killing a helpless animal—of any sort—was unpleasant and more than a little heart-rending.
But he had no choice. Steeling himself, he raised his right hand and fired three shots through the predator’s kill points.
It dropped without a sound, its spines relaxing in death. Quickly, trying not to think about what he’d just done, Lorne fired three more bursts into the predator’s tether and the tape around its legs, leaving no obvious indications of its recent captivity. Lifting up the carcass, he lowered himself into the hollow and laid the dead animal on top of him. He pushed up the edge of the body just enough with his left hand to allow him a narrow view slit beneath it, looking out toward the creek. With his right hand, he picked up the rock.
He’d been in position for exactly fourteen seconds when there was a faint crackling sound near the edge of his vision and the two Marines stepped into view.
“Damn him, anyway,” Chimm muttered, swinging his head and torso back and forth, his voice just barely audible even through Lorne’s enhancers. “Where the hell’s he gotten to?”
“He can’t be far,” Khahar muttered as they came to a stop three meters away from the spine leopard Lorne was hiding beneath. “That’s a fresh kill—probably the one he was just shooting at. Freeze.”
Both men stiffened into statues. Lorne held his breath, wondering if they’d somehow spotted him beneath the spine leopard’s heat signature.
“Nothing,” Chimm said, looking around again. “He’s gone to ground, all right.”
“Or to sky,” Khahar said, peering up at the branches of the arrowcrest towering above him and then doing a quick scan of the surrounding trees. “Probably hoping we’ll get close enough for a quick two-shot.”
Chimm snorted. “Lot of good that’ll do him.”
“I’d shelve the strut if I were you,” Khahar warned. “I’ve seen the specs, and those antiarmor lasers are nothing to sniff at. If that Cobra in Archway had been able to get off a second shot, and if Rivelon had taken the first i
n the heart instead of the stomach, he’d be very dead right now.”
There was a moment of silence as Chimm digested that. “So what do we do?”
“We flank him,” Khahar said, giving the trees one final sweep and then starting an equally methodical ground-level survey. “Antiarmor’s in the leg—limits how fast he can shoot in opposite directions.”
“Good plan,” Chimm said. “One problem: how in hell do we flank him when we don’t know where he is?”
“Oh, I know exactly where he is,” Khahar said with malicious satisfaction. “Right up there, off that little bend in the creek. See it?”
“You mean that eddy pool?”
“That’s the one,” Khahar said. “Why did you think I pointed it out to you on our way in? It’s the perfect spot for an ambush: he’s invisible, his IR profile is blocked by cold water, and he’ll even be able to hear us when we start splashing water toward him.” He did another slow circle. “And he’s nowhere else. He’s there, all right.”
“If you say so,” Chimm said, clearly not convinced. “You want me to cross over?”
“I’ll go,” Khahar said. “There’s a spot about thirty meters back where I can cross without touching the water. Even if he’s listening, he won’t hear me. Wait until I’m on your nine, then we’ll head toward him together.” He pointed again toward the pool. “And keep an eye on those reeds along the edge—he’s probably breathing through one of them. One of them moves, mark it and we’ll know exactly where he is.”
“Got it,” Chimm said, giving the area around him a quick look. “Just make it snappy. This place gives me the creeps.”
“If I see any birdies, I’ll tell them not to warble too loud,” Khahar said sarcastically. “Watch out for the trees—they’re pretty scary, too.”
He backed out of Lorne’s view, disappearing into the woods. Chimm muttered a curse under his breath, took a final look around, then settled himself to watch the eddy pool as he’d been ordered.