Cobra Strike

Dropping his hand, he looked at Justin. "Let's get moving-you and I are going to be part of the helicopter defense, and we need to be at the wall when they figure out what's going on."

"And then what?" Justin asked quietly. "The Dewdrop can't possibly carry all of us."

Winward gave him a tight smile. "That's sometimes what rearguards are for, you know: to stay behind. Come on, let's hit the wall and find some good positions to shoot from."

"Okay, start easing back," Pyre murmured into his mike. "No noise, and be sure you're out of sight of the Qasamans before hitting the road."

There were answering murmurs in his ear, and Pyre shifted his attention to the knot of troops facing him twenty meters away. He'd agreed to stay within sight as a sort of exchange hostage while Moff was in the village... which meant that when the timer ran down on this one he would have to be gone before the Qasamans decided to start shooting. Activating his auditory enhancers, he tried to listen for the excited voices that would mean the Dewdrop had been spotted.

The shouts, centered on the Qasamans' lead car, erupted barely two minutes later; and Pyre was racing through the trees before anyone thought to take a shot at him. With the need for stealth gone, he made straight for the road, where better footing would let him use his leg servos to best advantage. From behind came an explosion as the Qasamans destroyed the tree that blocked their path. Slowing as he passed the last of their prepared trees, Pyre sent it crashing down behind him, a move that should put the ground troops out of the game for good. Pushing his pace to the limit, he watched the sky for both the descending Dewdrop and the Qasamans' inevitable aerial response.

From his vantage point the events occurred simultaneously. Far ahead the glittering shape of the small starship dropped rapidly against the blue sky as, overhead, three small helicopters screamed southward to the attack. A hard lump rose into Pyre's throat as He watched them disappear behind the tree-tops. They were, as York had predicted, modified civilian craft... but the Cobras' brief tangle with them had showed them well worth taking seriously.

He kept ru

And suddenly it was all over. A great roiling pillar of black smoke rose above the trees; and seconds later the Dewdrop shot out of it like a missile from its launcher. The two remaining helicopters climbed after it, but their weapons weren't designed to fire straight up and the Dewdrop's gravity lifts were more than adequate to maintain the starship's lead. The three craft became points of reflected light in the sky... and then were just two spots.

The Dewdrop, gleaner-team's scientists aboard, had escaped. Leaving the Cobras behind.

Ahead, someone stepped from the trees along the road and gave Pyre a quick wave before retreating to cover again. Pyre slowed and joined him. "Any trouble?" the other Cobra asked.

Pyre shook his head. "They're at least ten minutes behind me. Any sign of our escort yet?"

The other gri

Pyre notched up his enhancers. In the distance he could hear a low rumble, accompanied by a well-remembered snuffling. "Right on schedule. Everyone ready?"

"This end is, anyway. I presume gleaner-team's Cobras made it out while everyone was blinded by the smokescreen."

"And were all busy assuming the Cobras were going inward instead of outward,"

Pyre nodded. This would be a whole lot easier if the Qasamans thought everyone had escaped in the Dewdrop.

The rumbling was getting closer....

And then, across the road, they burst out of the woods: a bololin herd, ru

The leading edge had passed, the herd's flanks perhaps twenty meters away.

Turning, Pyre and the other Cobra began to pace them, drifting closer to the herd as they ran until they were perhaps four meters away. Glances ahead and behind showed the rest of outrider-one joining the flow. At the herd's opposite flank, if all had gone well, the gleaner-team Cobras were doing likewise.

And for the next few hours, they should all be reasonably safe. After that-

After that, the Menssana lay three hundred kilometers almost dead ahead, presumably still u

Theoretically, anyway. Pyre settled his legs into a rhythmic pace, letting his servos take as much of the load as possible. Personally, he would be happy if things even came close.

And in this case, they did.

Chapter 30

They listened in silence as McKinley went through his presentation, and when he was finished Stiggur sighed. "No chance of an error, I don't suppose."

McKinley shook his head. "Nothing significant, certainly. We had enough test subjects to get good statistics."

Across the table from him, Jo

Pyrrhic victory in his mouth. He'd been vindicated, his "crazy" theory about the mojos more or less confirmed.

But the price of that victory was going to be war.

He could see that in the faces around the table. The other governors were scared-more than they'd ever been after the Dewdrop's first mission. And even though some of them might not know how they'd respond to that fear, he understood human nature enough to know which way most would eventually go. Fight and flight were the only basic options... and the Cobra Worlds had no place to run.

Fairleigh cleared his throat. "I still don't understand how the mojos can be doing all this. I mean, you've established their brain capacity is too small for intelligence, haven't you?"

"There's no particular need for intelligence in this," McKinley said. "It's the mojo's symbiont-either human or krisjaw-who actually assess the situation. The mojo simply picks up that evaluation and pushes for the response that is in the mojo's best interests."

"But that takes judgment, and that implies intelligence," Fairleigh persisted.

"Not necessarily," Telek shook her head. "Straight extrapolative logic could simply be part of the mojo's instinct package. I've seen instincts in other animals that appear to take as much or more intelligence than that would require. You'll notice that the Chata spookie seems to manage the same trick with only a slightly larger cranial capacity."

"It could be even easier, at least for the mojo," McKinley added. "Presumably the human conies up with his own list of possible responses, including-on some level-how each response would affect the mojo. Choosing among those takes no more intelligence than any animal needs to survive in the wild."

"Could you be reading the data wrong, somehow, then?" Stiggur asked. "We need to be absolutely sure of what's going on."

"I don't think we are, sir," McKinley shook his head. "We didn't get as many details out of Moff as Winward was hoping we would, but I think what he did say pretty well confirms this interpretation."