Cobra Outlaw - eARC by Timothy Zahn Read Free Book Online Page A

pattern changed subtly. “Ask, then.”
    “Let’s start with your parents,” Merrick suggested. “Tell me about their rebellion twelve years ago.”
    Another shift in the pattern. “What do you want to know?”
    “What exactly happened?” Merrick asked. “I assume they didn’t just pick up rocks and charge into battle.”
    “They did use rocks, where it was appropriate,” Anya said, a little stiffly. “Not held, but catapulted. They also used arrows, blowgun darts, and weapons dropped by winghunters upon the masters’ positions.” The IR pattern changed again. “But in the end, it all came to nothing.”
    Not surprising, if they were attacking laser-armed Trofts with bows and arrows. Sometimes, Merrick mused, there was a fine line between raw courage and ill-considered stupidity. “What kind of weapons did the winghunters drop?” he asked. “Homemade explosives? More arrows?”
    “The winghunters dropped powder of freshly-harvested bersark,” Anya said. “It was hoped it would confuse or otherwise disable them.”
    Merrick winced. Unprocessed bersark, he’d been told, was a highly poisonous substance. Chemical warfare at its finest. “And if the bersark didn’t get them, crazed kilerands would?” he suggested.
    “That was another hope,” Anya said, nodding. “Though kilerands normally eat bersark accidentally, when it’s mixed in with their other foods. There was no promise that they would eat the powder that was dropped.”
    “Though even if they did, you’d still need the Trofts to make loud noises,” Merrick pointed out. “That’s what draws them, right? Loud noises?”
    “There was no fear of that,” Anya said bitterly. “The masters continually make loud noises. They shout when they want us to work. They shout when they want us to cower.” Her throat worked. “They shout when they want us to die.”
    “I gather the bersark approach didn’t work any better than the rest of it?”
    Anya shook her head. “It was my parents’ best hope. The masters had spent much of their rule in their own areas, isolated from the forest villages, and the rebels hoped they hadn’t learned the nature of all our plants and animals. But they knew bersark well enough to know how to avoid it or counteract its effects.”
    “So the rebellion failed,” Merrick said. “And your parents fled to this hideout? The one we’re currently headed for?”
    “Yes,” Anya said. “It was secure, unknown to the masters.”
    “ Was ,” Merrick said, leaning heavily on the word. “That’s the operative word here. Was . What makes you think the Trofts didn’t have every local bolt-hole and hiding place identified and raided two hours after the last rebel surrendered?”
    The blood flow in Anya’s face again changed. “I don’t understand.”
    “They would have interrogated their prisoners, Anya,” Merrick said patiently. Was she really that naïve? “I know your people are brave, but a good interrogator can—”
    “There were no prisoners,” Anya said. “The masters killed them all.”
    Merrick frowned. “What are you talking about? There are always prisoners.”
    “Not here,” Anya said, her face suddenly blazing with heat. “Not us. We do not surrender.”
    Merrick stared at her, a sudden chill running through him. He’d read about warrior cultures, mostly on Earth but some on other Dominion worlds, where surrender in battle was simply not an option. But neither the Cobra Worlds nor the Qasamans had any such military conviction.
    It seemed unbelievable. Still, maybe he’d already seen a hint of that philosophy in action. Yesterday, high up on the cliff, Anya had been prepared to sacrifice her life to keep Merrick’s secret from the Trofts. Maybe that readiness to die had been part of her culture, a part he’d never even suspected.
    And as the new reality sank in, the conversation in Gangari on the previous day suddenly took on new meaning. [The dark memory of years past, you still have it?]