Cobra Gamble Read Online Free

disconcerting. Was he rethinking the whole concept of this war and his place in it?
    Or was this simply a reaction to his own near-death on the battlefield? Was he shying away from killing in the hope that by doing so he might himself survive?
    "Merrick Moreau?" Kinstra prompted.
    Abruptly, Merrick came to a decision. Releasing the target locks on the Troft guards, he instead locked onto their weapons. The ultimate purpose of these counterattacks was to discourage the razorarm hunts and drive the Trofts from the forests. He could do that just as well by chasing them back to the cities, where they would be the Qasaman military's problem.
    "Merrick Moreau?" Kinstra repeated, more urgently this time.
    "Ready," Merrick said. "Keep your head down." Moving out of the relative safety of the tree, he rolled onto his right side, giving his left leg the freedom of movement the nanocomputer would need to handle the fire pattern Merrick had set for it. He took a deep breath, and triggered his laser.
    The brilliant beam slashed through the darkness of the night, a multiple stuttering of light cutting through leaves and undergrowth and flash-vaporizing the metal, ceramic, and plastic of the launcher and the Trofts' lasers. The last of the five shots blazed out and Merrick pushed himself up off the ground for a quick assessment.
    And dropped instantly back down as the launcher erupted in a blistering staccato fire of its own, its antipersonnel missiles screaming through the forest and blasting huge chunks of wood from the trees above Merrick's head.
    Reflexively, he reached out a hand to grab Kinstra and pull him down. But the Qasaman was already there, pressed against the matted covering of dead leaves, his mouth moving as he shouted something. Merrick adjusted his auditory enhancers, trying to filter out the cracks of the explosives, "—posed to kill them!" he caught Kinstra's last words.
    "We're supposed to stop them," Merrick called back. A new crunching sound penetrated his hearing, and he looked up to see the tree he'd been hiding behind starting to lean sideways as the Troft missiles tore apart its trunk half a meter above Merrick's eyes. "Come on," Merrick called, getting a grip on Kinstra's arm. The tree above them leaned farther and farther, then ponderously toppled over, crashing through the other trees and bushes beside it.
    And as it slammed into the forest floor, its impact raising a blinding cloud of leaves and dust, Merrick pulled Kinstra up onto his elbows and knees and headed away as fast as they could crawl.
    They'd made about twenty meters when the missile launcher finally fell silent. Even as both men turned carefully around, they spotted the glow of the repulsorlifts flickering through the trees as the freighter headed hastily into the night sky.
    * * *
    A thin layer of clouds had covered up the stars by the time the team once again passed through the gate into the village of Milika.
    It was, for Merrick, an odd homecoming. When he'd first been brought back here eight days ago to complete his recovery, the village's lights had glowed cheerfully long into the night. But not anymore. Since the second wave of Trofts had arrived, Milika and the other forest villages had returned to the rhythms of humanity's past, to the time when activity was governed by the sun. Now, the town began to close down when the sun reached the treetops, the vendors bidding farewell to their final customers of the day and hurriedly closing up their shops. By the time the first stars appeared, the open areas of Milika were all but deserted, the people busy with their evening meals and quiet indoor activities as the village was slowly swallowed by the darkening forest.
    It was a little silly, in Merrick's opinion, given that the Trofts' infrared detectors were perfectly capable of picking out the heat signatures of several hundred humans from the relative coolness of the forest around them. If they came looking for villages, they could certainly