They started with Akim, two of the guards firing questions at him about his family and background as one of the techs ran a handheld scanner over his clothing. After that it was Merrick's turn, and he could feel sweat collecting beneath his collar and in his armpits as he answered the questions and watched the tech's face for signs of surprise or confusion. Cobra gear was supposed to be undetectable unless someone was specifically looking for it, but as far as Merrick knew that theory had never been tested. Certainly not under conditions like these.
It was thus with a huge sense of relief that he watched the tech finish his sweep and step back without shouting a panicked warning. Whatever trouble they were expecting to find, Cobras apparently weren't on the list.
"What is your purpose here?" one of the Trofts asked after Jin had also been cleared.
"To speak to your commanders," Akim said, his voice the controlled stiffness of someone carrying out an errand he hadn't particularly wanted. "The Shahni wish to know why you have invaded Qasaman territory, and to open discussions leading to your departure."
The Troft covered his translator pin and started murmuring in cattertalk. Merrick ran his auditory enhancers up—[The humans, our presence they wish to discuss,] he said. [The leader, the garb of a senior Shahni official he wears.]
He received a reply and lowered his hand from his pin. "Follow," he said, and strode out of the room. Akim followed, with Jin behind him and Merrick behind her. Behind Merrick, two more Trofts brought up the rear.
Twenty meters later, they arrived at an alcove and a pair of elevators guarded by four more Trofts. One of the latter punched the call button as the party approached, and both sets of elevator doors slid open. The Troft leading the way turned and backed into the leftmost car, his eyes and laser trained on the humans. "Come," he said.
Akim nodded, but instead of following the other inside he stopped at the door and gestured Merrick to enter ahead of him. Merrick nodded and continued forward, hoping he could get inside before the Trofts started wondering about the sudden change in marching order.
But the Trofts merely stood impassively by as Merrick walked into the elevator. The lead Troft, to Merrick's relief, hadn't taken the corner above the trapdoor, and he casually crossed the car and took up position there. One of the other Trofts stepped into the elevator behind him and touched the lowest button on the control panel.
And to Merrick's stunned disbelief, the doors slid closed and the car started down.
"Wait!" he yelped, lunging toward the doors. Or trying to lunge, anyway; he managed only a single step before the first Troft swung the muzzle of his laser around and jabbed it warningly into Merrick's ribs. "We can't leave—Senior Administrator Akim is still outside."
[Fools, you think we are they?] the Troft at the door spat. [Spies, we do not understand that you are?]
The Qasaman translation had barely begun when Merrick grabbed hold of the laser barrel poking into his ribs and twisted it hard, shifting the muzzle out of line with his side and trying to pull it out of the Troft's grip.
But the Troft didn't let go, not even as the unexpected tug pulled him off his feet. He hung on grimly, his beak clacking unintelligibly as he fought for possession of the weapon. Merrick tried twisting the laser in the opposite direction, but the alien still kept hold of the weapon. The other Troft leaped forward, shoving at Merrick's arm with one hand and jabbing the muzzle of his own weapon into Merrick's face with the other.
And in that frozen fraction of a second, Merrick's body moved.
He let go of the laser he and the first Troft were fighting over, shrugging off the second Troft's grip on his arm and following through with a blindingly fast sweep of his hand across the weapon to knock it out of line. The momentum of the sweep twisted Merrick's shoulders around; and as his whole body did a quick corkscrew to the right his left hand swung up, little finger extended, the other fingers curled tightly toward his palm, and fired a burst of laser fire at each of the two Trofts' foreheads.
Only neither alien dropped over dead. Instead, the transparent faceplates blackened at the points of impact, blocking off the main brunt of the blasts.
But enough had gotten through to send a shock of pain through both aliens. Merrick grabbed again at the first Troft's laser, and this time he was able to wrench it from the alien's grip. Spinning it around, he jammed it upward beneath the lower edge of the alien's faceplate and fired.
There was a brilliant flash, and the soldier dropped to the floor. Merrick spun the weapon around, elbowing the remaining Troft's laser aside, and fired a second shot under that one's faceplate, sending him crumpling to the floor beside the first.
Merrick stared down at the bodies, his heart thudding in his ears, his breath coming in short gasps.
My God,
the thought flashed across his numbed mind.
Was that me?
Of course it had been him. It had been his body, his combat reflexes, his Cobra weaponry.
He closed his eyes, fighting the sudden urge to vomit. Never before had he used his power against another person. Never before had he even been tempted by anger or frustration to do so.
He'd killed two people. Not spine leopards, mindless predators who would cut a murderous swath through someone's ranchland if they weren't eliminated. He'd killed two living, sentient beings.
He clamped his teeth tightly as a second wave of nausea swept through him. Up until now he'd thought only about the fear-edged respect Miron Akim had shown for him and his mother, a respect in stark contrast to the disdain that radiated from so many of Aventine's people. Thoughts of combat had been little more than a hazy backdrop to that warm glow of vindication, a vague and sanitized mural consisting of images of fire and triumph and glory. This blood and stillness and stench of burned flesh wasn't what he'd expected. Wasn't at all what he'd signed up for.
He took a shuddering breath. Only it was, he knew. He'd signed up willingly, even eagerly, and it was too late to back out. Not when there were people out there who were counting on him.
People like Miron Akim . . . and Merrick's mother.
Merrick winced. Jasmine Moreau, daughter of Justin Moreau, granddaughter of the legendary Jonny Moreau. She wouldn't panic in this situation.
Hadn't
panicked, in fact, when she'd found herself facing similar danger all those years ago.
You boast overmuch of your strength, demon warrior,
Miron Akim's son Siraj had scoffed. Maybe he'd been right.
It was time to find out.
Merrick gave his head a sharp shake, and as the haze in front of his eyes vanished he realized that the elevator was still heading downward. Apparently, the fight and his brief surge of horrified introspection and self-pity had lasted only a few seconds.
He checked the elevator indicator, noting that they were passing the second subbasement, and tried to think. With Jin and Merrick stuck here at the airfield, it was clear that Akim assumed the two Shahni trapped in the Palace would have to be abandoned.
Probably he was right. But maybe he was wrong.
Reaching down, Merrick picked up one of the Trofts' lasers. So far, the invaders had no idea that there were Cobras on Qasama. The longer that ignorance could be maintained, the better. Steeling himself, he pointed the laser at the black spot he'd made in the first alien's faceplate and squeezed the trigger.
The Troft weapon was considerably more powerful than Merrick's fingertip lasers, and the blast had no trouble getting through even the darkened faceplate and through the mass of skin and bone behind it. A reminder, Merrick thought grimly, that he'd better make damn sure he didn't end up at the receiving end of any future blasts. Shifting aim, he repeated the camouflage on the second Troft, then lifted the weapon toward the side of the car. He had no idea how to trigger the secret trapdoor Akim had told him about, or whether the net would deploy properly if he simply blasted the floor open. He certainly wasn't ready yet to just throw himself blindly down a Qasaman elevator shaft. Aiming at a spot about chest height, he shifted the laser to continuous mode and squeezed the trigger.
The beam lanced out, sizzling like cooking breakfast meat as it sliced through the relatively thin metal of the car wall. Merrick carved out a human-sized opening, then dropped the weapon back onto the floor and peered through the hole he'd created.
A meter away, the wall of the shaft was sliding past, its surface covered with cables and protrusions. Bracing himself, Merrick picked out a suitable spot and jumped, grabbing on to a convenient set of handholds. He locked his fingers around the cold metal and looked down in search of similar purchase for his feet.
Just as the elevator car settled to a stop a meter below him.
Merrick blinked, embarrassment and chagrin sweeping across him as he saw the elevator shaft floor no more than half a meter below the car. The Trofts had been taking him to the tower's lowest level, and he'd now arrived.
But the chagrin at his unnecessary derring-do vanished as a far more urgent thought belatedly gripped him. When the car doors opened, and the reception committee saw the two dead bodies in there...
There was a faint creak as the doors started to open. Merrick looked frantically around, but there was nowhere he could see where he could hide. From the corridor beyond the elevators came a sudden explosion of startled cattertalk—
And even knowing how stupid and predictable it was, but unable to think of anything better, Merrick stepped onto the car's roof and dropped silently onto his stomach.
Just in time. Against the shaft wall he saw a multiple flicker of shadows, and with the scraping of leathery armor against metal a pair of Trofts climbed out of the car through Merrick's newly blasted hole. Merrick pressed himself as flat onto the roof as he could, wondering tensely if the Trofts would be able to jump high enough to catch a glimpse of him up here.
Fortunately, they didn't seem interested in trying. From the sounds of their footsteps, they were instead working their way around the car, easing cautiously around the rear toward the larger open area on the far side. Possibly hoping to get a better view of the car roof from over there?
Abruptly, Merrick tensed. No, of course the searchers weren't going to bother with the top of the car. Not when the Trofts one floor up could simply open their own elevator doors and look directly down on him.
He looked up. Those doors were still closed, but they wouldn't stay that way for long. No exit for him that direction. Meanwhile, the two roving Trofts were still poking around the shaft on the far side of the car.
Which left Merrick only one option. Getting a grip on the edge of the car, he rolled his legs over the side, making sure not to come anywhere near the hole and any more Trofts prowling around in there. He took half a second to let his swing dampen out, then dropped as quietly as he could onto the shaft floor. Dropping flat onto his stomach, he slid underneath the car.
The gap between car and floor was smaller than it had looked when he'd been hanging on to the wall a few moments ago, and he found the space an ominously snug fit. But at least he was finally out of sight.
But again, probably not for long. He could see the roving Trofts' feet as they continued to move around, the sizes and angles of their shadows now indicating that they were shining lights up along the inside of the shaft. Unless one of them had already looked beneath the car, they would surely eventually get around to doing so. And if there was one guaranteed fact in the universe right now, it was that Merrick wasn't going to be doing any serious fighting from under here.
But if he was lucky, he might not have to.
The trapdoor will drop you into a net,
Akim had said,
which will then drop you through the false floor of the shaft to a landing below.
The floor beneath him certainly didn't
feel
false, Merrick observed as he wriggled his way over to the car's rear corner. It felt as solid as any other floor he'd ever been on.
But Merrick had studied all the records from Grandpa Justin's mission half a century ago, and he knew that the airfield tower elevators went a lot deeper than just a couple of subbasements. This had to be the false floor Akim had talked about, which meant there had to be a way through it somewhere.
But if the rabbit hole was directly under the trapdoor, Merrick couldn't find it. He ran his hands over the grimy concrete, keying in his light-amplification and infrared enhancements to help in his search. But he couldn't find a single trace of anything that seemed out of the ordinary.
The muffled footsteps across the shaft changed tempo. Merrick looked in that direction, to see that the two Trofts were retracing their path around the rear of the car, heading back toward the hole.
And if they decided to check under the car one more time before they gave up their search . . .
Cursing silently, Merrick frantically renewed his search. But there was still nothing. He rolled up onto his side facing the Troft feet, raising his hands into firing position. A futile gesture, he knew—the minute he fired, everyone in the shaft, the car, and the corridor would know instantly where he was. If they decided they still wanted him alive, they could recapture him with ease. If they didn't, all they had to do was open fire through the floor of the elevator car.
The Trofts were at the rear of the car and starting around the last corner when Merrick heard a soft snick.
And without a whisper of warning, the floor beneath his elbow suddenly gave way.
He grabbed for support as his upper body started to fall into the large, irregularly shaped hole that had magically opened up in the thick concrete. He looked for the missing section of flooring, saw it swinging gently from hinges at the far end. Getting a grip on the edge of the hole, he pulled himself forward and down into the opening.
For a moment he hung there, studying the underside of the floor in the dim backwash of light from the elevator shaft. The false floor was constructed on long metal I-beams, one of which ran right along one edge of the trapdoor. Shifting his grip to it, he held on one-handed as he reached over and pulled the trapdoor back up into place. It closed with another soft snick.