Telek leaned forward, hands tightening painfully... but the carnage she"d half expected wasn"t there. The scene was almost exactly as it had been when the signal had been cut off a scant few minutes ago... except that Moff was sitting facing the Aventinians with his gun drawn.
Telek groped for the mike. "Joshua, let me see the rest of the team," she called.
The scene remained unchanged. "He can"t hear you," Christopher murmured. "We can clean up the signal at this end, but there"s no computer equipment out there to do the same."
"Great," Telek gritted. "Which means we can"t contact Almo, either. d.a.m.n it all." She stared at the display another moment, then turned to the two men standing quietly just inside the lounge door. "Well, gentlemen, it looks very much like your paid vacation is over. Suggestions?"
Michael Winward gestured toward one of the displays showing the nearby forest.
"The Qasamans presumably don"t know Almo"s out there, which is theoretically an advantage for our side. But if we can"t tell him what"s going on the advantage is pretty useless. Somehow, we"ve got to get his attention so that he"ll set up the comm laser."
"In other words, you think you should try and sneak out to him." Telek hesitated, shook her head. "No. Too risky. Even if we could come up with a diversion for you you"d probably be spotted before you could get to cover. Let"s see if we can wait until the usual check-in time."
The other Cobra, Dorjay Link, glanced at Winward and shook his head minutely.
"The Qasamans may be moving people and weapons into the forest to cover the
Dewdrop from that side," he told Telek. "Almo could come down from his nest right into the middle of them."
"He"d hear or see them, though, wouldn"t he?" Nnamdi spoke up.
"Cobras are human, too," Winward said tartly. "And if he doesn"t even wake up until they"re in position they won"t be making much noise."
Telek stared at the forest display. I"m out of my depth, she admitted to herself. We"ve gone to a military situation without a sc.r.a.p of warning-
No. They had had their warning; and that was what really hurt. The purpose of
Moff"s mysterious disappearance a few hours ago was now clear: he"d been setting up this operation, coordinating things via the still unknown, triple-d.a.m.ned long-range communication system of theirs. In which case-"The soldiers and guns are probably already in place out there," she said out loud. "The only way to wake Almo up and simultaneously let him know there"s trouble..." She stopped and looked back at the two Cobras.
Winward nodded-understanding or agreement, she didn"t know which. "A quick sortie. Gunfire and all that. Let me get into my camouflage suit-be back in a minute. Dorjay, start looking for my best approach, will you?"
"Sure," Link said as Winward vanished out the lounge door. "Any chance.
Governor, that we can wait until full dark?"
"No," Christopher spoke up before Telek could say anything. "Governor, we"ve got a new problem-the contact team"s not being brought back to Sollas."
"d.a.m.n." Telek stepped to his side, looked at the display that was now showing an aerial photo of the area between Sollas and Huriseem. "How do you know?"
"Joshua"s been looking around a little-I saw the sun out of the side window.
Looks to me like they"re taking this road-" he traced it with a finger-"down to the next city southwest of here."
Telek checked the scale. "d.a.m.n. Closest approach doesn"t get them under twenty kilometers from the Dewdrop. Where"s the next connecting road?-oh, there it is.
Three kilometers past that point. Any idea where on the road they are?"
Christopher spread his hands helplessly. "The range finder doesn"t seem to work when the computer"s mucking with the signal like this. About all I can do is estimate their speed and extrapolate from Huriseem. Looks like they"re about here, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes from that crossroads."
Telek looked over at Justin, immobile on his coach. If she"d just let him replace his brother as they"d planned... but, no, she"d wanted to have her d.a.m.ned window to the world. "We"ve got to intercept that car," she said to the room in general. "Either free the team outright or try to replace Joshua.
Somehow."
"With Moff on the alert I somehow doubt the latter option"s open," Link said from in front of the display he"d appropriated from Nnamdi.
"I know." Telek gritted her teeth, then turned toward the intercom. "Captain, I want a pulse-laser message to the Troft backup ships right away. Tell them to get in here as fast as they can."
"Yes, Governor."
And it"ll do no good at all. She knew it, and everyone aboard knew it. The Troft ships were too far away even to make orbit before dawn. The Dewdrop was on her own.
Which meant that Winward would have to make his suicide sortie in a few minutes... and Almo still had an even chance of getting caught before he knew what was happening... and it was all futility anyway, because there was no way a
Cobra or even two could ambush that bus without killing or injuring everyone aboard in the ensuing firefight The inescapable conclusion was that it would be better to lift off now, hoping the Dewdrop would have the necessary speed to escape the Qasamans" sh.e.l.ls or rockets.
To cut their losses. And if that was to be the decision, it had to be made before Winward went outside to sacrifice his life. Which meant within the next ninety seconds.
A no-win situation... and even as she wondered what she was going to do, there was a slight movement in the forest far to the south of them, and an invisible laser beam lanced out, catching the Dewdrop squarely in the nose.
Chapter 16.
For a long moment Pyre lay quietly in his hammock bag, wondering what had awakened him. The level of sunlight filtering through the trees indicated sundown was approaching. He"d slept the whole day away, he realized, guilt twinging at him. Probably woke up simply because his body had had all the rest it needed; he must have been a lot more tired than he"d thought.
He was just starting to pull his arms out of the bag when he heard the m.u.f.fled cough.
He froze, notching his auditory enhancers to full power. The normal rustlings of the forest roared in his ears... the normal rustlings, and the fainter sound of quiet human voices. Ten or more of them, at the least.
Hunting party? was his first, hopeful thought. But he heard no footsteps accompanying the voices, just the occasional sounds of someone easing from one position to another. Even stalking hunters moved around more... which implied that his unexpected guests were less akin to hunters than to fishermen.
And there were only two fish out here worth such a concerted effort, at least as far as he knew: the Dewdrop and himself.
d.a.m.n.
Slowly, moving with infinite care and silence, he began disentangling himself from the hammock bag and the defense cage. If they were looking for him the activity could well be a mistake; but whether it brought them down on him or not, he had no intention of getting caught wrapped up like yesterday"s leftovers. The cage creaked like a tacnuke explosion as he opened it, but no one seemed to notice, and a minute later he was standing above the hammock bag with his back pressed against the tree trunk.
And the prey was now ready to become the hunter. The voices had come from the strip of forest between him and the Dewdrop; moving to the far side of the trunk he started down, pausing at each branch to look and listen.
He reached the ground without seeing any of the hidden Qasamans, but further noises had given him a better idea of their arrangement and he wasn"t surprised to have avoided drawing fire. They seemed to be paralleling the edge of the forest nearest the Dewdrop, their attention and weaponry almost certainly focused on the ship. And to have been set up now, an entire week after the landing, implied something had gone wrong. Whether the contact team had gumfricked up or the exaggerated Qasaman paranoia had finally a.s.serted itself hardly mattered at this point. What mattered-
What mattered was that Joshua Moreau was out there in the middle of it. And if he"d been killed while Pyre overslept-
The Cobra bit down hard on the inside of his cheek. Stop it! he snarled. Settle down and think instead of panicking. The fact that the Qasamans had not yet openly attacked the Dewdrop implied they were still in the planning stages here... and if so, then chances were Joshua and the others were still okay.
Moving against the contact team would tip off the Dewdrop, and the Qasamans were surely smart enough to avoid doing that.
And with the ship and Cerenkov both unaware that anything was wrong, it was all up to Pyre now.