Cobra Gamble (15 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Merrick's first impression as he came slowly out of the gray fog filling his brain was that he was uncomfortable.

Really
uncomfortable. The air around him was cold and dry, his body ached in at least a dozen places, and a half-reflexive attempt to shift position showed his arms, hands, and legs inexplicably incapable of movement.

And then, abruptly, he remembered.

Carefully, keeping his eyes closed, he activated his opticals. He was in a small room, about three meters square, with a single metal door to his right and no windows that he could see from his current angle. The ceiling light was something of a surprise: soft and diffuse instead of the white-hot blaze that Merrick would have expected in an interrogation cell. The ceiling behind the light was also a surprise: textured, reinforced concrete instead of metal. Did that mean he was on the ground instead of inside one of the invaders' warships? Possibly in what was left of the Sollas subcity—what he could see of the room he was in looked very much like the holding cell the Qasamans had had him locked in for a few hours.

Unless he wasn't on Qasama at all. There was no reason why the invaders couldn't have taken him to one of their own worlds instead.

And if they had, not only would he probably never escape, but his remains would probably never even be found.

It was a somber and embarrassing demonstration of his still shaky thought process that it took him another few seconds of swirling panic to recognize the obvious way to answer that question. And with his nanocomputer's clock circuit showing only a little over three days since his capture, it was almost certain that he was still somewhere on Qasama.

He was listening to his thudding heart as it started to slow down when there was a soft click from the door.

He froze, his brain finally kicking into full gear. Now, when his captors thought he was still unconscious, would be his best chance to make his move.

Only an instant later he realized to his chagrin that he couldn't. The immobility of his arms, hands, and legs wasn't because of fatigue, but because they were encased in heavy cast-like wraps bolted to the frame of the bed on which he was lying. Even if he'd had better leverage, it was unlikely he could break the bolts free. He still had his sonic weapons, but there was no advantage in stunning his visitors if all he could do afterward was lie here while other Trofts strolled over and locked the door on him again.

No, all he could realistically hope for right now was to gain some information. Opening his eyes, he turned his face toward the door as the lock clicked again and the heavy metal panel swung open.

A Troft stepped into the room, his clothing a civilian-type leotard instead of the armored ones the invaders' soldiers typically wore. He had a small case in his hand, similar to the sort that Merrick had seen doctors from the Tlossie demesne carrying. Behind the alien he caught a glimpse of a long corridor, its ceiling bowed and battered in places. As the door closed behind the Troft, there was movement behind him and a second figure stepped into view.

Merrick caught his breath. The second person wasn't another Troft. It was a human female.

She was young, he noted in that first glance, probably a few years younger than he was, with a slim but muscular build and the slightly darkened skin of a lifetime spent out in the sun. Her expression was as odd as the rest of her, blank for the most part, yet edged by a hint of wariness.

And framing that unfamiliar face and strange expression was a swirling halo of the brightest blond hair Merrick had ever seen.

The Troft stepped to the bed, set his case down and opened it, and as he reached inside he jabbered out a stream of cattertalk.

Not a single word of which Merrick understood.

Merrick felt his heart picking up its pace again. Like everyone else in the Cobra Worlds, he'd slogged his way through four years of cattertalk lessons in school. While he'd never really cared for those classes—he'd found Qasaman much easier to learn—he'd nevertheless gotten through them, and had even placed in the top half of his class.

Now, it was as if that whole section of his memory had been wiped clean. Was his brain still not functioning at full capacity yet?

Or had the Trofts done something to him in the seventy-five hours he'd been their prisoner? [Your words, I do not understand them,] he said. At least he still remembered how to speak cattertalk. Assuming he
was
actually speaking it right now. [Your comment, will you repeat it?]

The Troft's radiator membranes fluttered as he held a small sensor over Merrick's chest, his eyes flicking sideways to the young woman. "He said that he is your doctor," the woman said in Anglic. "He asks how you feel."

It took another few seconds for Merrick to find his voice. Her faint accent was like nothing he'd ever heard before. "I'm a little groggy," he told her. "Otherwise, I think I'm all right."

The woman looked at the doctor and rattled off some cattertalk of her own. The words were just as incomprehensible as the Troft's had been. The alien made a sort of clucking noise deep in his throat, pointed a finger at Merrick's torso, and said something back to her. "The doctor says you are wrong," she translated. "You have injuries to your spleen, your right kidney, and your stomach which as yet are only partially healed. You also have several areas of torn muscle and strained tendons."

Which were the same injuries Dr. Krites had listed back in Milika. At least the Troft doctor knew what he was doing.

Or at least he could read a medical scanner. "You only asked how I
felt."
Merrick reminded the woman. "You didn't ask what my actual condition was." He started to gesture, but with his arms pinioned all he could manage was a little wiggling of his fingertips. "So what's the prognosis?"

The woman again spoke to the Troft, and there was another brief exchange between them. "A few days more of treatment and you will be sufficiently healed," she said.

Merrick frowned. "Sufficiently healed for what?"

"For the Games." She waved a hand in a way that reminded him of a stage magician preparing to make his assistant disappear. "Rest now, and heal."

"I'd heal more comfortably if you'd get all these restraints off me," Merrick said, again wiggling his fingers. "Would you ask the doctor if he could please do that?"

The woman's forehead wrinkled slightly, but she launched into more cattertalk. The doctor replied, and the woman shook her head. "The doctor says that you would kill us if he did that. It is not his wish to die that way."

"What if I promise not to kill him?" Merrick offered.

The woman looked him straight in the eye. "Do you so promise?"

Merrick held her gaze without flinching. "Yes," he said firmly, and meant it. He wasn't here to kill non-combat personnel.

Besides, between his sonics and his stunner he already had plenty of non-lethal weapons in his arsenal.

But either the doctor already knew that or simply didn't believe him. "No," the woman said. "You will heal as you are, until the Games"

"I'll do my best," Merrick said. It had still been worth a try. "What kind of games are we talking about, exactly?"

"The
Games," the woman said, as if the word itself was definition enough.

The doctor put his scanner back in the bag and pulled out a hypo. "The doctor will now give you something to help you sleep," the woman continued. "It will also stimulate healing."

"How about if we just stimulate the healing and let me stay awake?" Merrick suggested. "I'm getting really tired of sleeping."

"Without the sleeping there cannot be the healing." Some of the severity seemed to slip from the woman's face. "Have no fear, Merrick Moreau Broom," she added in a marginally kinder tone. "We have all felt this medicine. It will not harm you."

"Thank you," Merrick said. His words struck him as slightly stupid sounding, but on the spur of the moment he couldn't come up with anything better. "I see you know my name," he said, wincing as the doctor slipped the hypo into his arm above the shackle and injected the contents. "May I ask yours?"

"My name is not for strangers to know," the woman said. "But among the common I am known as Anya Winghunter."

"Anya Winghunter," Merrick repeated, nodding his head. It sure sounded like a name to him. There must be some subtlety here that he was missing. "Will I see you again?"

"If the doctor so chooses," she said as the Troft returned the hypo to its place and closed the bag. "I come and go at his pleasure."

"Ah," Merrick said. Was the room starting to go foggy again? "You're his assistant?"

She shook her head. "I am his slave."

Merrick's last view before the room faded into darkness was that of Anya's face framed by her impossibly blond hair. His last thought before that darkness was
what the hell?

* * *

When he again awoke, his nanocomputer indicated that he'd slept for another seven hours. His head was aching, possibly with dehydration, and his stomach was rumbling with the reminder that that he hadn't eaten since Milika, over three days ago.

It was another handful of seconds before he noticed that the shackles that had been on his arms and legs were gone.

He sat up carefully, mindful of his low blood sugar, wondering where the hook was for this particular gambit. But no lasers blazed at him, no antipersonnel explosives shattered the silence, and there were no hungry predators waiting on the floor beneath his table in hopes of a quick snack.

Maybe that would come later. For now, he could focus on his hunger, his imprisonment, and this new mystery of why his captors apparently no longer feared him enough to nail him to the bed.

And, swirling through all of it, the puzzle that was Anya Winghunter.

She wasn't Qasaman, not with that hair. He'd seen Qasamans with hair as light as a dark reddish brown, but the vast majority of the people he'd met here had black or very dark brown hair. The official records of the Cobra Worlds' other incursions onto Qasama backed up that assessment. She wasn't from the Worlds, either, not with that accent.

Had someone hauled her all the way across the Troft Assemblage from the Dominion of Man? Or had the Trofts found another lost human colony somewhere closer, another colony like Qasama itself?

And what the
hell
was this slave thing?

The Assemblage, he knew, was in fact little more than a loose confederation of three- to five-system demesnes, most of which were in continual low-level and mostly polite conflict with each other, whether for influence, real estate, or trade advantage. The various demesnes had different customs, different goals and viewpoints and, as the Troft doctor had shown a few hours ago, occasionally some interesting and nearly incomprehensible dialects.

But never had he heard any hint that some Troft demesne kept slaves. Especially
human
slaves.

Could it all be a lie? Had they taken some woman, from wherever, tricked her up to look exotic and vulnerable, and dropped her in front of him to try to mess with his emotions? The Trofts a hundred years ago had tried that gambit with Jonny Moreau, he remembered, sending a woman into his cell in hopes that her presence and helplessness would induce him to help her escape and thereby reveal his abilities under controlled conditions and close observation.

If that was the plan, they were going to be sorely disappointed. Now that Merrick was on to them, he knew better than to fall for the trick.

He had just about concluded that the only way he was going to get food was to pound on the door and demand it when the lock again gave its distinctive double click. Getting a grip on the edge of the bed, ready to move in any direction he might need to go, Merrick braced himself. The door swung open.

To reveal Anya standing in the doorway, a covered tray in her hands. "I was told to bring you food," she said.

"Finally," Merrick said, glancing at the slot in the bottom of the door. There was no reason why she couldn't just have taken off the tray's cover and slid it in to him. Unless there was some reason she thought she should deliver it personally. "Thank you."

But instead of coming in, the woman just stood there. Just waiting.

Merrick frowned. Was he supposed to go over there and take the tray from her? Were the Trofts hoping that luring him that close to an open door would tempt him into an escape attempt that they could watch?

And then, belatedly, he got it.
Slave
... "Come in," he invited. "Just put the tray down here on the bed."

Silently, she crossed the cell and set the tray down where he'd indicated. Merrick watched her face closely, but he could see no hint of resentment at having just been ordered around like a child. In fact, she seemed almost relieved that he hadn't left her standing there without telling her what to do. Maybe she really
was
a slave.

Was that what this invasion of Qasama and the Cobra Worlds was all about? Could all this death and destruction be because some group of Troft demesnes had developed a taste for human slaves and was looking to expand their stock?

If so, they'd badly miscalculated. Merrick had seen how hard the Qasamans fought to keep from being subjugated. They would fight even harder to keep from becoming slaves. Needless to say, so would the Cobra Worlds.

"Will there be anything more?" Anya asked, straightening up and looking emotionlessly at him.

"No, I think that will do it," Merrick said, forcing back a sudden flush of anger at whoever had done this to her. "Thank you."

A brief hint of something flickered across her face. Maybe she wasn't used to being thanked for her service. But she merely nodded, turned, and strode out of the room. "You want to stay and eat with me?" Merrick called impulsively after her.

She turned back, the same odd look briefly crossing her face. "I cannot," she said. "I must return to my master."

She was still facing him when some unseen warden swung the door shut in front of her.