When the colony worlds Adirondack and Silvern
fell to the Troft forces almost without a struggle. Outnumbered and on
the defensive, Earth made a desperate decision. It would attack the
aliens not from space, but on the ground — with forces the Trofts did not
even suspect. Thus were created the Cobras, a guerilla force whose
weapons were surgically implanted, invisible to the unsuspecting eye,
yet undeniably deadly. And the Moreau family were the most famous of the Cobra warriors. Long after victory over the Troft was achieved, the
Cobras made common cause against their former adversaries against a new
enemy. Their reward was three planets that would be a home for the
Cobras, who deadly powers made them too dangerous to feel at home on
Earth.
Now, years had passed and not everyone on the
Cobra worlds thought that the Cobras were worth the cost of maintaining
their existing built-in weaponry, let alone supporting research to
improve the Cobra weapons, and possibly even put an end to the negative
effects of that built-in weaponry, which caused Cobras to die much too
young. Many who had never known interplanetary war were convinced that
the Cobras were not needed at all.
That was a grave miscalculation, because a Troft faction has decided to invade the Cobra planets in force, using a new strategy that even the formidable Cobra
warriors may not be able to defeat...
