Cobra Guardian: Cobra War: Book Two Read Online Free PDF Page A

you were thinking it," Geoff repeated into the silence, a fresh edge of challenge in his voice.
    Jody took a deep breath. So he was in the mood for a fight, was he? Fine. She was willing to oblige. "I came along because I thought my training might help in figuring out a solution to this place," she said stiffly. "But that wasn't the reason I was invited, was it?"
    A sudden shadow flicked across the anger and frustration in Geoff's face. "What are you talking about?" he asked carefully.
    "I'm talking about the real reason you asked me to join you and Freylan out here," Jody said. "It wasn't my animal training you wanted at all. It was--"
    She broke off at the sound of the double doors opening again, and turned her attention back to the tunic she was supposed to be scraping.
    But before she did, she had the slightly guilty pleasure of seeing a look of shame briefly cross Geoff's face.
    "That was the spot, all right," Paul announced as he and Freylan came into the room. "It should be all right now."
    "At least until the next vine gets a grip," Freylan muttered, still brooding over his failure to catch the chink earlier.
    "When it does, we'll deal with it," Paul said calmly. "How are we doing in here?"
    "Almost ready," Jody said, giving her father's tunic a final inspection. Geoff, she noted, had quietly slipped into the other room where the packs were stacked. "Yes, it's done," she confirmed, handing it over. "I wonder what you do if you're allergic to this stuff."
    "You probably itch a lot," Paul said, giving the tunic a quick once-over of his own and then slipping it on. "Either that, or you get used to walking around naked."
    "Not you personally," Freylan added hastily, his cheeks reddening.
    Jody turned back to her own unfinished tunic, a smile sneaking onto her face despite her grouchy mood. Freylan could be so adorably awkward sometimes. "I know," she said over her shoulder to him. "But at least you'd still have your skin."
    "Speaking of skin," Paul said, stepping smoothly in on top of Freylan's embarrassment, "did you get anything more from that red-tail?"
    "Not really," Freylan said, and Jody could hear the relief in his voice at the return to safer scientific ground. "I'm still ninety percent convinced that odor has something to do with it. But there's too much overlap between the red-tail and the groundsniffer for me to figure out what the key might be."
    "If it's there at all," Paul warned.
    "It's there," Freylan said firmly. " Something' s there. Otherwise, the spores and other vegetation would attack all hair and fur, instead of just everything from five or six millimeters out."
    Jody grimaced, running her fingers over the stubble that had once been a lovingly-cared-for head of hair. The very first thing they'd been ordered to do when the Freedom's Fire lifted off Aventine en route for Caelian was to shave their heads and body hair. Of all the unpleasant aspects of their brief time here, that was the one she still couldn't get used to.
    But it wasn't like there was any choice in the matter. Caelian's rich and aggressive plant life attacked anything with even a trace of organic, carbon-bearing material in it, the skin of living beings the only exception to that rule. And much as she missed her hair Jody had no wish to wake up every morning with her body covered by little green spores.
    In and of themselves, the spores wouldn't have been so bad. They loved to settle on and eat the natural fibers and synthetics that made up most clothing, but that was a slow process and would hardly leave a person running home from the shops clutching rags to her chest, despite the way her father had made it sound.
    The problem was that vigorous Caelian plants attracted voracious Caelian animals. The first to come were always the insects, from buzzics to flycrawlers all the way up to some that Jody hadn't seen yet but was told could be mistaken for small birds. The insects would start eating the plants, inevitably moth-chewing some of