she thinks.īy the New York Times Best-Selling Author Because the enemy, too, knows that there are no female Cobras, and Jasmine can infiltrate without being suspected. Until a mission arises that demands her expertise, and requires that she be given the deadly Cobra implants. Her only ambition is to become a Cobra-but no woman has ever been accepted to the Academy or ever will be, if her opponents have their way. But Corwin's niece, Jasmine, faces the greatest challenge. and learn that it takes more than a Cobra father to make a Cobra son.Ĭorwin Moreau is governor of Aventine, but the fact that the Moreau family has held power for so long is beginning to generate bad feelings in the Cobra Worlds Council. Jonny's son Justin would carry the Moreau name to danger. And the offer was five new planets for the overcrowded Cobra worlds. Now, though, the Troft were trading partners-and they feared what might be a mutual danger: A new race, ruthless and tenacious, that threatened human space as well as Troft. He'd lost too many friends during the Troft war, though the Cobras triumphed in the end. If anyone had told Jonny Moreau the Cobras would one day take orders from the alien Troft, he would have laughed without humor. Jonny Moreau would learn the uses-and abuses-of his special abilities, and what it truly meant to be a Cobra. and not all the Cobras could be trusted to fight for Earth alone.

Thus were created the Cobras, a guerilla force whose weapons were surgically implanted, invisible to the unsuspecting eye, yet undeniably deadly. It would attack the aliens not from space, but on the ground-with forces the Trofts did not even suspect.

Outnumbered and on the defensive, Earth made a desperate decision. The colony worlds Adirondack and Silvern fell to the Troft forces almost without a struggle.

Manta's Gift by Timothy Zahn