Cobra Bargain

Chapter 2

Cari Moreau slouched back in her lounge chair, a seventeen-year-old's version of a martyr's expression plastered across her face. "Aw, come on, Jin," she complained. "Again?"

Jasmine Moreau-"Jin" to her family and everyone else she could persuade to use the nickname-gazed at her younger cousin with a combination of patience, affection, and rock-solidness, "Again," she said firmly. "You want to pass this test or don't you?"

Cari sighed theatrically. "Oh, all right. Slavemaker. Misk'rhe'ha solfowp'smeaf, pierec'eay'kartoh-"

"That's 'khartoh,' " Jin interrupted. "Kh-sound, not k. And the initial 'p' in

'pierec'eay'khartoh' is aspirated." She demonstrated. "The difference between p-sounds in 'pin' and 'spin.' "

"I don't hear any difference," Cari grumbled. "And I'll bet Ms. Halverson won't, either."

"Maybe she won't, no," Jin agreed. "But if you ever plan to use your catertalk on any Trofts, you'd better be sure to get it right."

"So who says I'm planning to use it on any Trofts?" Cari grumbled. "Any Trofts I run into are gonna understand Anglic."

"You don't know that," Jin shook her head. "Traders or demesne representatives assigned to the Worlds will, sure. But who says you're never going to wind up somewhere out in space with only Trofts who snargled off in their language lessons, too?"

That got her a snort from her cousin. "That's easy for you to say. You're gonna be the Cobra zipping around out there, not me. Of course you're gonna need to know catertalk and Qasaman and all."

Jin felt a lump rise to her throat. Of all her relatives, Cari was the only one who was truly enthusiastic about her Cobra ambitions... and the only one who took for granted that she would achieve them. On that latter point even Jin's father had trouble, and Jin could remember times when only a long private talk with Cari had kept those hopes and dreams alive...

And with a jolt she realized that the younger girl had neatly deflected the conversation into a right angle. "Never mind what I'm going to need," she growled with mock irritation. "At the moment it's you who needs to know this stuff, because you're the one who's going to be tested on it tomorrow. Again-and remember the asperated-p in pierec'eay'khartoh this time. You pronounce it the wrong way to a Troft and he's either going to fall over laughing or else challenge you to a duel."

Cari perked up a bit. "Why?-is it something dirty the way I said it?" she asked eagerly.

"Never mind," Jin told her. The error was, in fact, a fairly innocuous one, but she had no intention of telling her cousin that. She could remember back three years to when she'd been seventeen herself, and a slight hint of wickedness might help spice up a course Cari clearly considered to be deathly dull. "Let's try it again," she said. "From the top."

Cari took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "Misk'rhe-"

Across the room the phone warbled. "I'll get it," Cari interrupted herself, bounding with clear relief out of her chair and racing toward the instrument.

"...Hello?... Oh, hi, Fay. Jin!-it's your sister."

Jin unfolded her legs from beneath her and walked over to Cari's side. Three steps from the phone screen the expression on Fay's face suddenly registered, and she took the remaining distance in two quick strides. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"Thena MiGraw just called from Uncle Corwin's office," Fay said grimly. "There was some kind of crazy incident there a few minutes ago, and Dad wound up shooting someone."

Beside Jin, Cari gasped. "He what?" Jin asked. "Did he kill him?"

"No idea yet. The guy's been rushed to the hospital, and Dad and Uncle Corwin are there now. Thena said she'd call again and let us know if and when they learned anything."

Jin licked suddenly dry lips. "Which hospital are they at?"

Fay shook her head. "She said specifically not to go there. Uncle Corwin told her he didn't want anybody else underfoot while they sorted this out."

Jin gritted her teeth. Understandable, but she didn't have to like it. "Did she say how Dad was doing? Or give any other details?"

Fay shrugged uncomfortably. "Dad was pretty shaken up, I guess, but he wasn't falling apart. If there were any other details Thena wasn't giving them out."

Even through the surreal numbness in Jin's mind, she felt a brief flicker of pride. No, of course her father wouldn't fall apart. A Cobra who'd survived both

Qasaman missions wouldn't break over something like this. Besides which, she would bet large sums that whatever had happened had been the other guy's fault.

"Have you talked to Gwena yet?"

Fay shook her head. "I was hoping to have more details before I did that. She's got all she needs on her mind already, and I'd hate for her to drop everything and fly in unnecessarily."

"Better let her decide how necessary it is," Jin advised. "They can always reschedule her thesis defense, and she'll be pretty hurt if she has to learn about this from the net. Anything on the net yet, speaking of which?"

"This early? Shouldn't be. Anyway, I just wanted you to know what had happened, make sure you were here when Dad gets home."

"Yeah, thanks," Jin nodded. "I'll come now."

"Okay. See you soon." Fay's face vanished from the screen.

Beside Jin, Cari took a shuddering breath. "I'd better call Mom and Dad," she said. "They'll want to know about this."

"Thena's probably already done that," Jin told her, eyes focused on the empty phone screen. Something was nagging, premonition-like, at the back of her mind... Reaching out, she tapped the phone's numberpad, keying it into

Capitalia's major public/info net. Search/proper name: Moreau, Justin, she instructed it.

"What are you doing?" Cari asked. "Fay said there wouldn't be anything on it yet."

Jin clenched her teeth. "Fay was wrong. Take a look."

There was no sign on the driveway leading to the squat, square building nestled back from the street a few blocks from Capitalia's main business district. Not that a sign would have made much difference; the small plaque beside the windowless front door proclaiming the place to be the Kennet MacDonald Memorial

Center would mean little to the average Capitalian citizen.

To the city's Cobra population, the name meant a great deal more. As did the building itself.

The door was locked, but Jin knew the code. The center's softly lit social areas were largely deserted, she noted as she padded quietly past them, with only a relative handful of Cobras sitting together in twos or threes. Attendance had been dwindling, she knew, ever since Priesly and his loud-faced Jects had started harping on what they liked to call "Cobra elitism." Gazing across the empty chairs and tables, Jin's mind flashed back to her childhood, to the hours she'd spent here with her father and the other Cobras. The men who were the true heroes of the Cobra Worlds.

And now those men avoided the center, hesitant to add fuel to Priesly's fires by congregating together. For that alone, Jin thought bitterly, she could wish the

Jects to drown in their own saliva.

Her father was where she'd expected to find him: downstairs, alone, in the large practice area the Cobras had dubbed the Danger Room.

For a few minutes she stood above him in the observation gallery, watching and remembering. The target robots the room's computer controlled weren't especially smart, but they were fast and numerous. As a child, Jin had also thought their low-power lasers were dangerous, and she could still remember the terror she'd felt watching from up here as her father went head-to-head against them. In actuality, as she'd finally learned years later, the robots' lasers were dangerous only to a Cobra's pride; but that knowledge couldn't entirely suppress her adrenaline-fueled gut reaction as she watched her father fight.

It wasn't exactly an even fight, for one thing. Arrayed against Justin at any given time were between four and seven of the target robots, all taking pot shots at him, often with little concern for their own welfare. Cover in the

Danger Room had been deliberately kept to a minimum, leaving the Cobra no choice but to keep moving if he was to survive.

And Justin kept moving. Superbly, to Jin's admittedly biased way of thinking.

Using walls, floor, and ceiling as backstops, his computer-driven servos had him bouncing all around the room, flashes of light flickering almost continuously from the little fingers of both hands as his metalwork lasers combined with his optical-enhancement targeting system to make impossible midair hits on his attackers. Half a dozen times the observation gallery's windows vibrated as reflections from one or the other of Justin's sonic weapons hit them, and once the brilliant spear of his antiarmor laser flashed out from the heel of his left leg to take out a persistent enemy right through the low covering wall it was hiding behind. Jin found herself gritting her teeth as she watched, hands clenched into fists at her sides as her body half crouched in sympathetic readiness. Someday, the thought came dimly through her tension, that could be me in there. Will be me in there.

At last the lopsided duel was over; and it was with mild surprise that Jin discovered she'd been watching for less than five minutes. Taking a deep breath, she blew at the drop of sweat on the tip of her nose and tapped on the window.

Below, her father looked up, surprise creasing his face as he saw her. Can I come down? she hand-signed to him.

Sure, he signed back. Main door.

She took the stairway down, and by the time she pushed open the heavy door he had a towel wrapped around his neck and was dabbing at his face with it. "Hi,

Jin," he greeted her, coming forward for a quick hug. His expression, she noted, was the flat-neutral one he always used when he was trying to bury some strong emotion. "This is a surprise."

"Thena called an hour ago and said you were on your way home from the hospital," she explained. "When you didn't show up, I decided to come and find you."

He grunted. "I hope you didn't drive all over Capitalia looking for me."

"Of course not. Where else would you be?"

"Visiting my past?" He glanced around the room.

"Working out tension," she corrected him. "Come on, Dad-I know you better than that."

He gave her a half-hearted smile, the mask sliding from his face as he did so to reveal the hidden ache behind it. "You do indeed, my little Jasmine," he said quietly. "You always have."

She put her hand on his arm. "It's a mess, isn't it?"

He nodded. "Yeah. How are you and your sisters holding up?"

"Oh, we're doing all right. The real question is how are you doing?"

He shrugged. "As well as can be expected. Better, after this," he added, waving a hand to take in the Danger Room. "How much did Thena tell you?"

"The condensed version only. What happened, Dad?"

His eyes held hers for a minute, then slipped away to look around the room. "It was the stupidest slop-headed thing you've ever seen," he sighed. "On my part, I mean. This guy-Baram Monse, the hospital ID'd him-just burst in and started yelling and cursing-anti-Cobra stuff, mainly. I tried stunning him, but he was moving and I turned too slowly to get the sonic lined up properly." He shook his head. "Anyway, he reached into his pocket and I figured he was going for a weapon. It was too late to physically jump him... so I used my lasers."

Across the room a maintenance robot trundled in through an access door and began picking up one of the "dead" target robots. "And he didn't have a gun?" Jin ventured at last.

"You got it," Justin said, a touch of bitterness seeping into his tone. "No gun, no spray, not even a tangler reel. Just a simple, harmless, unarmed crank. And I shot him."

Jin looked past him at the maintenance robot. "Was it a setup?" she asked.

From the corner of her eye she caught her father's frown. "What do you mean?" he asked carefully.

"Was Monse trying to goad you or Uncle Corwin into attacking him? Trying to make you look bad?" She turned back to face him. "I don't know if you've seen the net yet, but an absolute flood of condemnation hit the thing practically from the minute Monse was taken off to the hospital. That wasn't reaction-those people had their rhetoric primed and ready to go."

Justin hissed through his teeth. "The thought has crossed my mind, I'll admit.

And you haven't even heard the best part yet: the fact that Monse is going to live despite taking a pair of setting-two fingertip laser blasts square in the center of his chest. Want to hazard a guess as to how he managed that?"

She frowned. Body armor was the obvious answer... but it was clear from her father's tone that it was something more interesting than that. Monse would have needed some kind of protection, though-at short range, a twin laser burst at number-two setting would have been perfectly adequate to cut through bones the thickness of ribs or breastbone and take out the lungs or heart beneath them.

Adequate, at least, to cut through normal bones... "The same reason Winward lived?" she asked hesitantly.

Justin nodded. "You got it."

A shiver went up Jin's spine. Michael Winward, shot in the chest by a projectile gun during the first Qasaman mission twenty-eight years ago... surviving that attack solely because the bullet was deflected by the ceramic laminae coating his breastbone and ribcage. "A Ject," she murmured. "That little phrijpicker

Monse is a lousy Ject."

"Bull's-eye," Justin sighed. "Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that he was unarmed when I shot him."

"Why not?" Jin demanded. "It means I was right-that the whole thing was a setup-and it means that Priesly is behind it."

"Whoa, girl," Justin said, putting a hand on each of her shoulders. "What may look obvious to you or me or Corwin isn't necessarily provable."

"But-"

"And until and unless we can prove any such connection," he continued warningly,

"I'll thank you to keep your allegations to yourself. At this stage it would hurt us far more than it would hurt Priesly."

Jin closed her eyes briefly, fighting back sudden tears. "But why? Why is he picking on you?"

Justin stepped to her side, slipping his arm tightly around her shoulders. Even full-grown, she was a few centimeters shorter than he was-the ideal height, she'd always felt, to nestle in under his arm. "Priesly's not after me in particular," Justin sighed. "I doubt he's even especially after Corwin, except as he's an obstacle that's in Priesly's way. No, what really after is nothing less than the elimination of Cobras from the Cobra Worlds."

Jin licked her lips and hugged him a little closer. She'd heard all the rumors, arguments, and speculations... but to hear it said in such a straightforward, cold-blooded way by someone in a position to know the truth sent a chill up her back. "That's insane," she whispered. "Totally insane. How does he expect

Esquiline to expand without Cobras leading the way into the wilderness?-Esquiline or the other New Worlds? Not to mention the Caelian

Remnant-what's he going to do, just throw them to the peledari and let them get eaten alive?"

She felt his sigh against her side. "Jin, as you grow older you're going to run into a surprising number of otherwise intelligent people who get themselves trapped into some single-rail goal or point of view and never get out of it.

Caelian is a perfect example-the people still living there have been fighting that crazy ecology for so long they can't break the habit long enough to back out and accept resettlement somewhere else. Some of the Jects-not all, certainly, but some-are equally single-minded. They wanted to be Cobras-wanted it very badly, most of them-but were deemed unfit, for one reason or another... and the love they had has been twisted into hatred. Hatred that demands revenge."

"No matter what the consequences are for the rest of the Cobra Worlds?"

He shrugged. "Apparently not. I don't know-maybe some of them genuinely think the need for Cobras has passed, that everything the Cobras do can be done more efficiently by ordinary men with machines or enhancement exoskeletons. And I'll even admit that some of Priesly's complaints may not be entirely unreasonable-maybe we have picked up a little too much elitist attitude than is good for us."

A maintenance robot passed them, heading toward another of the target robots.

Jin's eyes followed it, came to rest on the target... and somewhere in the back of her mind a synapse clicked, and for the first time in her life she suddenly realized what those hulking machines she'd been watching all these years really were. "My God," she whispered. "They're Trofts. Those target robots are supposed to be Trofts."

"Don't be silly," Justin said; and his voice made her look sharply up at him. On his face-

The expression was blank. Like someone playing poker... or someone denying all knowledge of a secret he wasn't allowed to divulge. "I just meant-" she began awkwardly.

"Of course it's not a Troft," Justin cut her off. "Look at the shape, the size and contours. It's nothing but a generic practice target." But even as she looked at him his face seemed to harden a fraction. "Besides, the Trofts are our trading partners and political allies," he said. "Our friends, Jin, not our enemies. There's no reason for us to know how to fight them."

"Of course not," she said, trying hard to match his same neutral tone as she belatedly caught on. No, certainly the robots didn't look much like Trofts... but the shape and positioning of their target areas were too accurate to be accidental. "And I don't suppose anyone really wants to be reminded that they were once our enemies," she added with a touch of bitterness. "Or that it was the Cobras who kept that war from even starting."

He squeezed her shoulders. "The Cobras remember," he said quietly. "And so do the Trofts. That's what really matters... and that's why we'll find a way to stop Priesly and his lunatic gang." He took a deep breath. "Come on; let's go home."