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

anywhere else on the planet, and in theory the team could have worked their traps right there. But Geoff and Freylan had wanted to get a little farther from any effects of human civilization, miniscule though those effects might be, and had opted instead for a hillside about five kilometers northwest of the main gate.
    The four of them had spent their first day on Caelian burning off a small section of ground to serve as a landing pad for their rented aircar. Six days later they'd repeated the process. Now, only four days after that, not only had most of the grasses come back, but several small bushes had taken root as well. Jody winced at the teeth-tingling screech of thorns against metal as Geoff set them down on the pad, wondering how much of a bite the fresh scratches were going to take out of the rental's damage deposit.
    But at least they'd finally nailed a gigger. As Geoff shut down the aircar's engine, she could hear the small predator's outraged snarling a dozen meters away.
    "Sounds like we've got one," Freylan said with a mixture of relief and excitement as he started to open his door.
    And stopped as Paul touched his shoulder. "My turn to go out first," the older man said mildly.
    "Right," Freylan said, his voice muffled with embarrassment.
    Mentally, Jody shook her head. Back on Aventine, when she'd first been brought aboard the project, she'd noticed Freylan's tendency to get so focused on some part of his work that he totally forgot where he was.
    In Capitalia, that could be an embarrassment. On Caelian, it could get you killed.
    Paul climbed out of his side of the aircar, closing the door behind him, and for a minute he stood with his back to the vehicle, his head moving slowly back and forth as his enhanced vision and hearing scoped out the section of forest closest to them. Jody held her breath, wondering which variety of Caelian's fauna would decide to check out the intruders this time. The forest had gone quiet, almost as if in anticipation of the drama about to take place . . .
    Abruptly, Paul leaned over, brought his left leg up, and fired a burst from his antiarmor laser into a stand of bushes behind the aircar. There was a piercing scream, and with a crackle of broken branches a screech tiger half leaped, half fell into view between two of the bushes. Paul gave the area another slow sweep, then gestured the all clear.
    "Man, those things are big," Geoff muttered, his eyes on the dead screech tiger as he climbed gingerly out of the car.
    "Amazingly quiet, too," Paul agreed. "Especially considering their size. I didn't even know it was coming toward us until I picked up its infrared signature."
    "I sure hope we find some kind of breakthrough before we have to go that far up the food chain," Freylan said feelingly as he looked at the screech tiger. "I really don't want to have to take blood and tissue samples from a live one of those."
    "A hearty amen to that," Jody agreed, tearing her eyes away from the dead predator and looking around. The usual midmorning lull in the wind was right on schedule, and the still air around her seemed to press in with a sense of watchful foreboding. "Let's grab the gigger and get out of here before the scavengers pick up the scent."
    Their animal trap was simplicity itself, consisting of a rectangular mesh box set up with its floor and sides bunched together and held loosely at ground level beneath a layer of leaves and over a deep hole dug in the ground. The minute an animal put its weight on the mesh, the floor was designed to collapse, dropping the animal into the newly formed box while a spring-loaded lid swung over from concealment to seal off the top. Jody's contribution to the contraption had been the set of cylindrical free-spinning tubes around each of the mesh's main wires, which were designed to send the captured animal's legs straight through to hang uselessly in midair in the hole instead of leaving them inside the box proper where the animal could make full use