Cobra Bargain

Chapter 7

"All right, Cobras, move it out," Mistra Layn growled. "Remember this is a forest-watch your feet and your heads."

Keying her auditory enhancers up a notch, Jin fell into her usual leftguard position in the loose diamond formation around Layn and crossed with the others under the trees at the edge of the clearing. It was an operation they'd practiced several times in the past few days: walking through the fenced-off part of the forest around their camp, using their optical and auditory enhancers to try and spot the various animal-cue simulators and moving-head targets the instructors had planted around them. Spotting a squawker or target first earned the trainee a point; nailing it cleanly with fingertip lasers before the group got within the animal's theoretical attack range was worth two more points.

It was just one more of the silly competitions Layn was continually using to pit his trainees against each other. One more needless opportunity, Jin thought bitterly, for the other three trainees to hate her.

It was hardly her fault that she was better than they were at these games. It was certainly not her fault that they couldn't accept that.

Her innocence in the matter was cold comfort, though, and thinking about it brought an ache to her throat. She hadn't expected instant acceptance by the others-she'd known full well that Uncle Corwin's lectures about military traditions hadn't merely been scare tactics. But she had thought that by now, eleven days into the training, some of the hostility would surely have faded away.

But it hadn't. Oh, they were polite enough to her- Layn's big speech the first day of training about letting her fail on her own had been backed up by action, and both he and the others were clearly bending over backwards to avoid any kind of overtly prejudicial behavior. But the whispered comments and secret smiles were still there, lurking most outwardly in the quiet times when the trainees were alone.

Or rather, when Jin was alone. The other three spent a lot of that time together.

It hurt. In many ways, it hurt worse than the worst physical aftereffects of her surgery. She'd always been something of a misfit as she was growing up-either too quiet or too aggressive for the other girls and even most of the boys her age. Only with her family had she ever felt truly at home, truly accepted. With her family, and to a lesser extent with the Cobra friends of her father's...

A faint chirping from ahead penetrated her brooding. A tarbine squawker, she identified it, head automatically turning back and forth to pinpoint the sound.

There?-there. Activating her optical sensors' targeting capability, she locked onto the small black cube nestled in the crook of a branch and fired her right fingertip laser.

A needle of light lanced out, and the box abruptly stopped chirping.

"A tarbine?" Sun called softly to her from the rear point of the diamond.

"Yeah," she said over her shoulder.

"Why'd you kill it?" Layn asked from the center. "Tarbines aren't dangerous."

"No, sir," she said, recognizing that she'd made the right decision and that

Layn simply wanted her to explain it for the others. "But where tarbines are, there's a good chance you'll find mojos, too."

"With their accompanying spine leopards or krisjaws," Layn nodded. "Right.

Besides which...? Anyone?"

"Their chirping might mask the sound of something more dangerous?" Todor hazarded from in front of Layn.

"Good enough," the instructor grunted. "Enough conversation. Look sharp."

And a bare second later, the exercise abruptly ceased to be routine. Dead ahead, the bushes suddenly parted and a huge cat-like animal stepped out to face them.

A spine leopard.

It's impossible, a small fraction of Jin's mind insisted. The fence surrounding this part of the forest was five meters high, a theoretically impossible barrier even for a spine leopard.

And then the animal snarled, and theory was abruptly forgotten as four sets of fingertip lasers flashed out to converge on the spine leopard's head.

Uselessly, of course, and Jin silently cursed herself for letting her reflexes waste precious time that way. The decentralized spine leopard nervous system was functionally invulnerable to the kind of localized damage the fingertip lasers could inflict. The only known way of dealing with the animals was to get in a clean shot with the antiarmor laser running lengthwise down her left calf-

She was actually starting to shift her weight onto her right foot when the crucial fact caught up with her conscious mind: the trainees' current neckwrap computers didn't allow the antiarmor laser to be activated. The others' fingertip lasers were still slicing uselessly at the spine leopard, leaving blackened tracks in the fur where they passed. And the look that was growing in the creature's eyes... "Stop it!" Jin snapped. "Can't you see you're just making it mad?"

"Then what the hell do you want-?" Todor barked back.

"Try your disrupters!" Sun cut him off. An instant later a backwash of half audible, half felt sound washed over Jin as the others obeyed, playing tight cones of ultrasound over the spine leopard. Another waste of time, Jin thought tightly. Sonic weapons could throw the predators off-balance, but only temporarily; and like the fingertip lasers, their use seemed to enrage the beasts. As soon as this one got its balance back-

And then it struck her. Layn, fully equipped with both antiarmor laser and the nanocomputer needed to use it, had yet to fire a shot.

Another test. Of course-and with that all the pieces fell together. A single spine leopard, captured and released into the enclosure, to see if their first response would be to scatter or to continue their assigned mission of protecting

Layn. Doubtless the Cobra already had his antiarmor laser target-locked on the animal, ready to fire the second it looked like things were getting out of control.

Phrijpicker mousfin, she snarled mentally at him. It was a particularly stupid trick-under target-lock or not, spine leopards were far too dangerous to fool around with this way, especially on inexperienced trainees. Somehow, they had to stop the thing before it shrugged off the effects of the sonics and charged. And maybe wound up killing someone.

And whatever they were going to do, they had better do it fast, The spine leopard was rolling its weight slightly from side to side now, the spines along its forelegs beginning to bristle outward-a sign that it was starting to feel endangered. Which would make it that much more vicious when it finally attacked...

Her eyes flicked around the area, came to rest on the cyprene trees and the thick gluevines running up many of their trunks... and a small chapter of family history bobbed to the surface. "Sun!" she snapped, leaping with servo-enhanced strength into the lower branches of a gluevine-wrapped tree midway from her to the spine leopard. Her muscles tensed, but the sudden motion didn't trigger an attack. "Cut the gluevine at the base of the tree," she called back over her shoulder as she got her own lasers going on the top part of the nearest vine.

"Rip it free of the trunk-don't touch the cut end."

Sun moved to obey, and three seconds later a five-meter section of gluevine hung free in Jin's hand. Glancing down, she saw that the spine leopard was still holding its ground... but even as she watched, it leaned back on its back haunches. Preparing to spring...

"Hariman-split the vine lengthwise," Sun called. "Moreau?-I've got this end. You ready?"

Which meant he'd figured out what she had in mind. "Ready," she called back, clenching her teeth in anticipation. "Hariman?"

Her answer was a burst of laser fire that cracked the gluevine's thick outer coating, letting the incredibly sticky stuff inside ooze out. "Go!" Sun snapped; and Jin leaped.

Her target was another cyprene just beyond where the spine leopard was coiling itself for its spring. A spring that would carry it to Todor, still doggedly playing his sonic over the predator... and as time seemed to slow down for her,

Jin saw for the first time that, in moving over to cut the gluevine, Hariman had unwittingly put himself directly in the line of fire between Layn and the spine leopard. Which meant that if this didn't work, either Hariman or Todor would probably die.

The outer twigs of her target tree scratched at her face and hands as she came in through them... and with all her strength she hurled the vine to the ground.

Directly across the spine leopard's back.

The creature screamed, a blood-chilling sound Jin had never before heard one make. It almost made her miss grabbing the cyprene's trunk; as it was, she tore a gash in the back of her left hand scrambling for a grip. Twisting around, heart thudding in her ears, she looked down.

The spine leopard went ahead and leaped anyway... but even as its feet left the ground, Sun tugged on his end of the gluevine with Cobra servo strength, and an instant later the predator was flying past Todor on a tightly curved course. It landed on its feet, gluevine still draped solidly across its back, foreleg spines spread out in full defensive position-

And twisted to face Sun.

"Stick the vine somewhere and get out of there!" Jin shouted to him.

Sun needed no prompting. In a single motion, he jammed the cut end of the gluevine against the tree he'd cut it from and leaped straight up into the cyprene's branches. Barely pausing to catch his balance, he changed direction and pushed off toward Jin's tree, half a second ahead of the now leashed spine leopard's own leap toward his ankles.

He caught the trunk just above her, sending a rain of twigs and leaves down around her head. "Now what?" he muttered.

"I assume Layn's eventually going to laser it," she told him... but the Cobra was still standing there with Todor and Hariman, watching with them as the spine leopard thrashed about trying to free itself from the gluevine. Todor took a step toward the animal, and it paused in its efforts to make a short leap and slash with its front claws.

"Doesn't seem interested in doing so, does he?" Sun grunted as Todor made a hasty leap back. "Maybe they're going to tranq it and use it on the next batch of trainees."

So Sun had tracked the same line of thought she had. "Pretty damn fool game, if you ask me," she growled to him. "They could at least have waited until we had our antiarmor lasers activated."

"So maybe they want us to be creative."

Jin twisted up her head to look at him. "Meaning...?"

"Well... how long do you suppose it could live with its pseudospine broken?"

She looked down at the animal. Already it had worried a few centimeters of the gluevine free, sacrificing a narrow line of its fur in the process. Left on its own another minute of two... "What say we find out," she suggested grimly.

"Sounds good. You take the rear, I'll take just back of the head. On three; one, two, three."

And Jin pushed off from the tree, arcing into the air as high as she dared.

Sun's leap paralleled hers... and as they passed the top of their arcs and started down-

"No!" Layn bellowed; but it was far too late. Jin hit the spine leopard full in the back, keeping her knees stiff until the last second in order to transfer as much impact to the spine leopard's body as she could. Sun hit a fraction of a second behind her, and she both heard and felt the twin cracks-

"No, damn it, no!" Layn yelled again, leaping belatedly forward to kneel down at the limp spine leopard's side... but this time Jin could hear a strange note of resignation in his voice. "Damn it all-"

The look on his face when he got to his feet effectively silenced any comments

Jin might have had. But Sun wasn't so reticent. "Is there a problem, sir?" he asked blandly. "You did want us to kill it, didn't you?"

Layn impaled him with a laser-strength glare. "You were merely supposed to get me clear of it," he bit out. "Not-" He took a deep breath. "For your information, trainee, you two idiots have just broken the central mobility transmain of an extremely expensive robot. I trust you're satisfied."

Sun's jaw fell, and Jin felt her eyes go wide as she looked down at the spine leopard. "I suppose that explains," she heard herself say, "why you didn't laser it."

Layn looked like he was ready to chew rocks. "Return to your quarters, all of you," he snarled. "Evening classes are as usual; you're free until then. Get out of my sight."

The tap on her door was gentle, almost diffident. "Yes?" Jin called, looking up from her reader.

"It's me, Mander Sun," a familiar voice answered. "Can I come in?"

"Sure," Jin called back, frowning as she keyed the door open.

He looked almost shy as he stepped hesitantly a couple of paces into the room.

"It occurred to me that someone ought to check up on that cut you got out there this afternoon," he said.

She looked down with a little surprise at the heal-quick bandage on her left hand. "Oh, no problem. The cut wasn't deep, just a little messy."

"Ah," he nodded. "Well, then... sorry to have bothered you..." He hesitated, looking a little lost.

Jin licked her lips. Say something! she told herself as her mind went perversely blank. "Uh-by the way," she managed as he started to turn back toward the door,

"do you think Layn's going to make trouble for us because of what we did to that robot?"

"He'd better not try," Sun said, turning back again. "If they're going to drop pop tests like that on us, they'd better not complain when we don't do what they expect." He hesitated just a fraction. "That was, uh... a pretty good trick you came up with out there, incidentally. The thing with the gluevine."

She shrugged. "Wasn't all that original, really," she admitted. "My grandfather did something similar once against a berserk gantua. And as long as we're handing out compliments, you were pretty fast on the uptake yourself."

"I didn't have much choice," he said wryly. "It didn't look at the time like you were going to have a chance to explain it to anyone."

"Stupid robot," she muttered, shaking her head. "Almost a shame we didn't figure that part out. Layn would probably have had a stroke if one of us had gone up and petted the thing."

Sun grinned. "I think he came close enough to a stroke as it was." His grin changed into a tight, almost embarrassed smile. "You know, Moreau-Jin... I have to admit that I didn't think much at the beginning of having you in the squad.

Not for the tradition reasons Layn trotted out, but because none of the women

I've ever known has had the kind of-oh, I don't know; the killer instinct, I guess, that a warrior has to have."

Jin shrugged, forcing herself to meet his gaze. "You might be surprised," she said. "Besides, a lot of what Cobras do these days is more like patrol officer work than full-fledged war, certainly in the more settled areas of the Worlds."

"Hold it right there," Sun growled in mock annoyance, holding his hands up palm-outward. "I don't mind having you here, but I'm not getting drawn into any theoretical discussions on the merits of women in the Cobras, thank you. Not with a test on surveillance techniques breathing down our necks." He glanced at his watch. "Like in half an hour. Phrij-and I still need to study for it some more."

"Me, too," Jin licked her lips. "Thanks for coming by, Mander. I-uh-"

"Mandy," he said, pulling open the door. "That's what everyone else calls me.

See you in class."

"Right. Bye."

For a long minute after he was gone she stared at the closed door, not entirely sure whether or not to trust the warm glow beginning to form deep within her.

Could her long isolation from the group really be ending? As quickly and easily as that? Just because she'd unwittingly helped give their rough and demanding instructor something of a black eye?

Abruptly, she smiled. Of course it could. If there was one military tradition that superseded every other, it was the "us versus them" feeling of trainees toward everyone else... and especially toward instructors. In helping Sun ruin

Layn's robot spine leopard, she'd suddenly become one of the "us."

Or at least, she warned herself, I've got my foot in the door. But for now, at least, that was enough. The first barrier, her father had often reminded her, was always the hardest to break.

For just a moment she frowned as an odd thought flickered across her mind.

Surely Layn hadn't deliberately let her destroy that robot... had he? No-of course not. The very idea was absurd. He'd already said he didn't want her to succeed.

And speaking of succeeding... Turning back to her reader, she keyed for a fast scan of the lessons on surveillance methods. As Sun had pointed out, there was a test breathing down their necks.