Cobra Strike

For a long moment the other studied him. The mojo on his shoulder, sensing perhaps the general tension level, twitched its wings nervously. "I agree that you are dangerous," Moff said at last through the old man. "It is perhaps foolish to keep you alive in hopes of learning your secrets. But unless we discover your intentions toward us we ca

"And then be eliminated?"

Moff didn't reply... but the conversation had already made up Justin's mind.

Qasama was already tacitly assuming a war was likely, and to give them anything he didn't absolutely have to would be a betrayal of those who'd come after him.

Besides which, it might be interesting to see what sort of place they'd consider safe enough to hold an unknown threat. And besides that...

He caught Moff's eye again. "Just out of curiosity, how did you come to the conclusion that we were spying on you?"

Moff pursed his lips thoughtfully. Then, with a slight shrug, he began to speak.

"Your double correctly interpreted a sign in the village of Huriseem this morning," the translator said. "It showed that, despite our efforts, you still had a visual co

Justin frowned. "That was all you had?"

"It was enough to justify questioning you. York's similarly undetectable weapon-and his use of it-proved our guess was correct."

"You were the one who picked up on our hidden camera, I suppose?"

Moff nodded once, a simple gesture that admitted the fact without the trappings of pride or false modesty. Justin nodded in return and settled down to wait, the last piece of his rationalization complete. He had no desire to kill any more people than absolutely necessary when he made his break, and leaving someone with Moff's observational skills behind as witness would be a poor idea. No, he would wait until they reached their destination and Pyre had made his appearance. Together, the two Cobras would leave the Qasamans wondering for a long time just how the escape had been managed.

So he settled back in his seat and tried to keep track of the bus's path through the wide streets of Purma. And thought about his father's stories of his own war.

The strip of clear land that would, farther north, open up to become the airfield was barely sixty meters wide here at Sollas's southwest edge; but Pyre found little comfort in that fact as he raced across it toward the darkened building that was his target. None of the structures at the city's edge seemed to be showing many lights-another concession to the wandering bololins, perhaps?-but he felt as if a thousand pairs of eyes were watching him the whole way. Two thousand eyes, one thousand guns....

But he reached the building without challenge, and for a minute he stood in relative shadow considering his next move. The four-story structure beside him was made of brick, and in the weeks before the mission the First Cobras had taught him how to scale such things. Once on top, he could theoretically leap from rooftop to rooftop until he reached the more open areas near the airfield.

Pyre looked up the flat side of the building, grimacing. Theoretically. Most of the streets in his path were the wider bololin-speedway type, and while jumping one of them would be reasonably within his servos' range, he wasn't at all sure he wanted to try it a dozen or more times.

Around the corner of the building, a faint scrape reached his ears. Notched up to full power, his audio enhancers pulled in the sound of several sets of footsteps.

Sidling to the corner. Pyre took a cautious look down the street. Barely two hundred meters away, at the next intersection, a group of six Qasamans were standing in a loose circle, conversing in low tones. As he watched, three of them split off and began striding purposefully down the street directly toward him. Pyre eased back. Sealing the city's edge with a sentry net was a precaution he hadn't expected even the Qasamans to bother with, given they thought they had everyone under lock and key. Unless...

Of course. They'd found the men he'd killed in the forest.

He mouthed a silent curse. With all that had happened he'd completely forgotten that glaring evidence of his presence. And with the sentry patrols alert and in visual contact with each other, he'd now run out of choices. Locking his fingers around the bricks facing him, he began to climb. It was a long way to go, and

Pyre had had very little practice in this sort of thing, but the Qasaman patrol was apparently in no special rush to take up its post and he was nearly to the top before they emerged from the street. He froze, holding his breath but neither the men nor their mojos looked up, and after a few seconds he continued his climb, taking care not to make even the slightest sound.

Which probably saved his life. Reaching the low parapet surrounding the roof, he raised his head over it-and found himself eye to eye with a kneeling Qasaman not three meters away, his hands in a small cloth bag in front of him.

The man's eyes and mouth went wide with surprise. But his hand was still scrambling for his gun when Pyre's arm swung over the parapet and a flicker of laser light caught his spread-winged mojo in the breast. He was still trying to draw the weapon from its holster when the second flicker caught him in the same place and he fell gently to the side, his astonishment still unvoiced.

Pyre was over the parapet in a second, trembling with the hair's-breadth closeness of the call and the cold knowledge that he was by no means safe yet.

If the ground sentries had heard anything-or if an observer on the next roof over had witnessed the incident-

Activating his optical enhancers, he raised his head cautiously and checked the nearest buildings. The roof to the south was vacant. The one to the north held another figure, some sort of light-amp binoculars at his eyes as he gazed out toward the forest. A quick glance over the parapet showed the sentries below were undisturbed. Crawling to the dead Qasaman, Pyre reached into the other's bag, found a set of the same light-amp glasses and what looked like a water container and some sort of vegetable cake.

So the rooftop guards, like those on the ground, had apparently just now taken up their positions, which explained how he'd made it safely from the forest. So he was in, and behind their first lines, and temporarily undetected. So... now what?

Pyre found himself gazing at the dead mojo. Whatever he did, he was going to need a certain amount of camouflage.... Carefully, trying not to wince, he rolled the dead man over and eased off his jacket. Beneath it the man had worn a knitted sweater-like garment; cutting and unraveling a piece of it, Pyre used the yarn to tie the mojo's talons to the jacket's epaulet. Smoothing the wings back in place, he tied them together with more yarn. The whole effect would never hold up even under moderately close scrutiny, but with luck it wouldn't have to. Keeping close to the roof, he struggled into the jacket which was, thankfully, too large rather than too small. The dead man's gun belt came next; and, almost as an afterthought, he scooped up the light-amp binoculars as well.

Then, mentally crossing his fingers, he headed for the city-side edge of the roof.

He made it, again, without raising any obvious alarm. Below him was one of the narrower, northeast-southwest streets; across it, the building roof facing him appeared deserted. At both of the closest street intersections he could see triads of sentries, their attention apparently ground level and outward. Giving all the rooftops in the immediate area one last scan, he gathered his feet beneath him, got a good grip on his mojo, and jumped.