Free Cobra Outlaw - eARC by Timothy Zahn Page B

She will win through.”
    Kemp bared his teeth, then gave a reluctant nod. “You’ve just arrived, and I’m too slow to stop you from going in there. Got it?”
    Jody nodded, feeling her pulse pounding at the base of her neck as she took a few silent steps backward. It was the only way, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. Bracing her feet against the deck, she flexed her shoulders once to relax them and then launched herself toward the corridor curve.
    Kemp hit his cue perfectly. “Jody, keep back—Jody, stop !” he said, raising his voice as she raced past him.
    “Rashida?” she called, ignoring Kemp’s order and dodging his token attempt to grab her arm as she ran around the curve into the gunbay area.
    The scene was pretty much as she’d envisioned it. The Marine was standing beside the gunbay door, his back to the wall, his legs spread out in a solid shoulder-width stance. Rashida stood in front of him, her back to him, her body pinned against his chest by his left forearm across her throat. Smitty was on his knees across the corridor from them, his fingers pressed to his eyes, his face screwed up in pain at his blindness. The Marine’s right hand was tucked away behind Rashida’s back where Jody couldn’t see whether he had a weapon there or not.
    Though at this point a hand weapon would be pretty redundant. The Marine was wearing a Dominion combat suit, complete with the epaulets whose multiple auto-targeting lasers Jody had seen demonstrated back on Caelian. Those lasers could take out Rashida, Smitty, and Jody herself if the Marine chose: quickly, efficiently, and without the man himself having to move a muscle.
    She was two steps in from the curve before the Marine seemed to recover from his surprise at his unexpected company. “Halt!” he snapped.
    “Please,” Jody said, trying for a tone of dignified pleading as she obediently came to a stop. “Please. Can’t you see she’s terrified?”
    “As long as your Cobras keep their distance she’s got nothing to worry about,” the Marine said, his eyes flicking back and forth between Jody and Smitty.
    “She’s a Qasaman,” Jody said, enunciating her words carefully. “More than that, she’s a Qasaman woman. They’re not used to this kind of thing.”
    “I thought they just went through a war.”
    “Not the women,” Jody said, watching his face carefully. If she could get him to hook onto the Dominion cultural ethos that saw women as having limited capabilities and subservient societal roles, maybe she could make this work. “If you let her go, I’ll take her place.”
    “Yeah, right,” the Marine scoffed. “I’m supposed to believe this was your idea? That the Cobras are just offering the great Jody Moreau Broom up as a sacrificial lamb?”
    “What sacrifice?” Jody countered. “You said there wouldn’t be any trouble as long as no one attacked you.”
    “Don’t play cute,” the Marine growled. “I know damn well that you’re planning a—”
    And in the middle of his sentence Rashida grabbed the arm pressed against her throat, jabbed her right heel down on the Marine’s foot, bent her left knee to bring her left heel up against the wall between his thighs, then straightened the knee and sent them both toppling forward. Before the Marine could move his free foot to try to break their fall, an invisible wall seemed to slam across Jody’s body, blurring her vision and tilting the universe violently around her. Rashida and the Marine continued their face-first fall—
    They were a fraction of a second from impact when a faint flash of current arced from the stunner in Smitty’s right little finger to the top of the Marine’s head. Rashida landed hard on the deck, the Marine slamming down on top of her.
    And as they hit the deck, a small handgun went skittering across the deck from the unconscious Marine’s hand.
    “Clear!” Smitty barked, scrambling to his feet. Grabbing the Marine’s arm, he flipped his unconscious