Cobra Alliance

Jonny felt a cold sweat break out on his forehead. Again, the possibility that this was a test sprang to mind... but if so the stakes had been jumped immensely. Even passive cooperation with this woman might be worth a conspiracy charge. 'Who are you?' he mumbled, lips as motionless as he could keep them.

Her eyes met his for the first time and a strangely mischievous smile tugged at the corners of her lips. 'Don't you remember your star geometry pupil?'

Geometry? 'Danice? Danice Tolan?'

Her smile widened a bit. 'I knew I hadn't changed that much.' Abruptly, she became serious again. 'Now: what are you doing in a Dominion military prison?'

'Officially, I'm here because I've been talking about peace with the Trofts and am therefore considered a security risk. In actuality, I'm here for stepping on a little man's pride.'

'Peace.' Danice said the word as if tasting it. 'Anything come of those talks that could be considered progress?'

'It wasn't exactly a formal negotiation: but yes, I think I can keep the war from happening. If I can get the Central Committee to go along, that is.'

'Which you obviously can't do from here.' Her eyes were hard, measuring. 'How long are you in for?'

'Wrey said three to five days or more. But he's already gone on to Asgard and there's no telling what the Committee'll do when he tells them we were stopped and boarded by the Trofts.'

'You think they might declare war right then and there?'

'You tell me—you must know more about Dominion politics these days than I do.'

Danice chewed gently at her lip, and for a long minute the only sound in the cell was the hum of her probe. Twice she paused to reset the instrument, and Jonny noticed a worried frown gradually spreading across her face. 'All right,' she mumbled abruptly. 'We'll do it now. I'm registering a possible aneurysm in the hepatic artery—that should buy us a trip to the hospital for a closer look. Just try and play off of any cues.' Without waiting for a reply she flicked off the instrument and called for the guard captain.

The captain wasn't wildly enthusiastic about her proposed hospital trip, but it was clear from his tone and worried glances that he considered the Cobra an important prisoner. Barely fifteen minutes later Jonny and Danice were heading under heavy guard through the gathering dusk toward the city's newest and best-equipped hospital.

Jonny's last experience with full mainstream medical care had been just before leaving for Aventine, and he was thoroughly impressed by the added sophistication and power the equipment had achieved in the intervening time. Multiple-layer, real-time holographic displays of his body were available at anything from a quarter- to twenty-thousand-power magnification, with structural and chemical highlighting available. Danice handled the controls with the skill of obvious practice, locating and displaying the alleged aneurysm so clearly that even Jonny could spot it in the holo.

'We'll have to operate,' Danice said, turning to the senior guard who'd accompanied them. 'I suggest you check with your superiors for instructions—see if there's a particular surgeon they'd prefer to use or whatever. In the meantime I'm going to sedate him and give him a shot of vasodepressor to relieve pressure on that aneurysm.'

The guard nodded and fumbled out his phone. A floating table, looking uncomfortably like a coffin with a long ground-effect skirt, was brought up. Jonny was hoisted onto it and strapped down, and from a cabinet in its side Danice withdrew a hypospray and two vials. Injecting their contents into Jonny's arm, she replaced the hypospray and brought out a full-face oxygen mask. 'What's that for?' one of the guards asked as she slipped the milky plastic over Jonny's head.

'He needs a slightly enhanced air supply to compensate for his suppressed circulation,' she said. 'What room, orderly?'

'Three-oh-seven,' the man who'd brought in the floating table told her. 'If you'll all get out of the way... thank you.'

Danice at his side, Jonny was pushed out into the hospital's corridor maze, arriving eventually at room 307, the numbers barely legible through the mask. 'Wait here until he's settled,' Danice told the guards curtly. 'There's not enough room to accommodate spectators in there.'

Jonny was maneuvered alongside a bed in a crackerbox-sized alcove. Stepping to the far side of his table—the side between him and the guards at the door—Danice and the orderly reached down—

And he was flipped over into total darkness.

The action was so unexpected that it took Jonny several heartbeats to realize exactly what had happened. The flat top of the floating table had apparently rotated a half turn on its long axis, concealing him in a hollowed-out part of the table's upper section. Above him he could hear the faint sounds of something heavy being lifted from the table... felt the table moving away from the bed... indistinct voices holding a short conversation... then moving again, through several turns and a long elevator ride....

When he was finally rotated into the open again, he and Danice were alone in an underground parking garage. 'Hurry,' she whispered, her hands shaking as she unfastened his restraints. 'We've got to get you off-planet before they realize that's not you in that bed.'

'Who is there?' Jonny asked as they jogged to a nondescript gray car.

'Fritz—one of the hospital's medical practice robots.' She got behind the wheel, took a deep breath. 'We had a few minutes to touch up his features a bit, but the minute someone pulls off that mask, it's all over.'

'You want me to drive?' Jonny asked, eyeing the tension lines in her face.

A quick shake of the head. 'I need to get used to this sometime. It might as well be now.'

She drove them through the garage, up a ramp, and out into the bustle of early-evening traffic. Jonny let her drive in silence for a few minutes before asking the obvious question. 'Where are we going?'

'There's a freighter leaving for Palm in about two hours,' she said, not looking at him. 'We've bumped some ungodly number of high-stress plastic whosies to put aboard a yacht and pilot for you—you can tell him exactly where and when to part company with the freighter.'