Cobra Bargain

Chapter 46

For several heartbeats Jin and Akim just gazed at each other. "I wondered why you went along with me on all this," Jin asked at last. "Now I know. You want the stardrive in this ship, don't you?"

"The stardrive?" Akim snorted. "You think too small, Jasmine Moreau-or perhaps too big." He waved his free hand around him, keeping the other pointed at her.

"There's literally nothing aboard this ship we won't be able to use. The stardrive, the computer systems, the powerplants-even the crew's personal effects will give us information about these new enemies we face." He nodded his head slightly toward the lasers behind her under the panel. "Daulo Sammon and I had time in your absence to learn how to use those hand weapons. You were right; they are indeed powerful. All by themselves they will be worth a ransom."

Jin's eyes flicked to his hand. "Weapons mean a lot to you, don't they? That's, what, a breakapart palm-mate dart pistol?"

Akim nodded. "Designed from the one Decker York used on our people thirty years ago. We learned a great deal from your last invasion; we'll learn even more from this one. Get up, now, and go over to the hatch."

"Why?" she asked, not moving from her seat.

"I want one of those lasers behind you. This ship is staying here, and your people were kind enough to tell me how to keep it from leaving."

I can stop him, she thought. My sonic-

Would be slow enough to leave Akim time for a reflexive shot. And if the poison they'd coated the darts with was anything like the ones the original model used... Okay, okay, don't panic girl, Jin told herself firmly. You're still in control here. With a flick of her eyes her nanocomputer's autotarget capability was locked onto the palm-mate in Akim's hand; and with a casual curving of her hands-

She inhaled sharply as a fresh wave of agony lanced through her injured fingers.

Once again, she'd forgotten about her hands.

And it left her only the antiarmor laser and arcthrower to use against the palm-mate. The first of which would vaporize Akim's hand in the process... the second of which would kill him outright.

A hard knot began to form in Jin's stomach. I won't kill him, she told herself firmly. I won't. "Miron Akim, listen to me-"

"I said get up!"

"No!" Jin snapped back. "Not until you hear me out."

Akim took a deep breath, and Jin could see the knuckles on his gun hand tighten momentarily. "I don't intend to break our truce, Jasmine Moreau," he grated.

"You've been of great help to us, and I won't kill you unless I have to. But I mean to have this ship."

Jin was suddenly aware of the mike still in her hand, and of the total silence from the speaker behind her. Both the Dewdrop and the Troft commander were waiting. Listening. "Miron Akim, listen to me," she said, fighting hard against the trembling in her voice as she reached behind her to set the mike down on the panel. "You don't want this ship. Qasama isn't ready for it yet."

He spat. "And you of Aventine are omniscient enough to know that, are you?"

"How are you going to control it?" Jin persisted. "You've seen how Obolo Nardin used the computers he was given-how are you going to keep someone else from doing something similar?"

"The Shahni will control the technology. They'll make sure it's used properly."

"Used by whom? Are the Shahni going to become a technocratic oligarchy, then?-doling out new technology to those they deem fit?" She shook her head.

"Don't you see, Miron Akim, how something like that would change the whole texture of Qasaman society? I've seen how you do things here, the way your cities and villages each have their own unique political balance, independent from that of the next town over. Your people take great pride in this, and well they should; it's one of your society's greatest strengths. For that matter, search your records and legends-it was to escape from an overly centralized government that your ancestors left the Dominion of Man in the first place."

"Then perhaps it's time we grew up," Akim said stubbornly. "Would you have us hold onto petty quarrels and pride at the cost of civil war?"

"Civil war?" Jin snarled. "God above-you worry about civil war, and you want to add new weapons to the mixture?"

"The weapons will be controlled by the Shahni-"

"For how long? Months? Days? And what do you think will happen once a single village or city gets hold of one of them?"

Akim clenched his teeth. "I'm an agent of the Shahni," he grated out. "I'm charged to obey their orders, and to do that which benefits Qasama as a whole.

It's not my place to make these larger policy decisions."

"Why not?" she countered. "For that matter, you've already made a policy decision. If standing orders are all that count, why haven't you killed me?"

"If keeping Qasama defenseless is all that counts to you," he countered, "why haven't you killed me?"

She sighed. "Because ultimately it doesn't matter. No matter what you do, Qasama won't get this ship. If the Trofts can't get it off the planet, they'll destroy it."

"Even damaged, it'll be worth-"

"Not damaged-destroyed," Jin snapped. "They'll turn the engines into a minor fusion bomb and blow the ship, themselves, and Mangus into dust and scatter it into the upper atmosphere. You heard me talking to the Troft commander-they're scared to even let Obolo Nardin's people get a glimpse at their readout displays. You think he'll let you take his crew alive and his ship intact?"

For a long moment the only sound in the room was the muffled hiss of the laser torch coming from the direction of the hatch. Jin kept her eyes on Akim, acutely aware of the targeting lock on the other's weapon... acutely aware, too, of

Daulo's stiff presence a meter to her left. She wished she could see his face, try and get some feeling as to which side of this confrontation he was on. But she didn't dare look away.

"No," Akim said suddenly. His face was rigid, eyes almost unfocused, and Jin felt a sympathetic ache for him. But the other's voice was firm, with no hesitation left for her to work against. "No, my duty is clear. Even if it doesn't seem that I can win, I still have to try." He took a deep breath. "Stand up, Jasmine Moreau, and move over to the hatch."

Slowly, Jin stood up. "I beg you to reconsider, Miron Akim."

"Move over to the hatch," he repeated stiffly.

Licking her lips, her eyes still on Akim, Jin took a sidling step to her left toward the lock-

And gasped as her left knee collapsed beneath her.

Perhaps Akim had been expecting a trick; perhaps he merely reacted reflexively to her sudden movement. Even as Jin's hands snapped out toward Daulo's chest, she heard the faint snap of the palm-mate, and the hoarse whisper of the poisoned dart piercing the air bare centimeters from her right arm. She could almost sense her nanocomputer assessing the situation; could feel it preparing to take control of her servos and launch her into a defensive counterattack that would leave Akim burned to ashes-

And at the last instant before her outstretched hands reached Daulo's chest, she flipped her left hand over, curving the palm inward, and jammed the heel of her right hand against the left's fingertips. The fingernails slammed into Daulo's breastbone with the full force of her right hand behind it-

And with a flash of heat against her right wrist her left-hand fingertip laser fired.

Akim jumped violently to the side, swearing viciously as the blackened remains of his palm-mate went spinning to the deck. With a curse, he leaped toward Jin, hands curving into talons.

Jin waited, feet braced against the deck; and as his arms curved toward her shoulders she jabbed her arms out, the heels of her hands slamming hard into his upper chest. The impact stopped him dead in his tracks; sliding one hand around each of his shoulders, Jin twisted him around and shoved him hard into the chair she'd just been sitting in.

For a moment he just sat there, looking up at her in dazed astonishment as he caught his breath. "All right," she told him, taking deep breaths herself as the pain in her fingers slowly retreated again to a dull ache. "Let's get out of here before the Trofts get nervous and blow the ship regardless."

"Jin!" The Dewdrop's translator called faintly from the speaker. "What's happening? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she called back. "All of us are. Commander, call your men off and we'll open up the bridge."

"Understood," the Troft translator said. "You will not be harmed."

Slowly, Akim got to his feet and faced Jin. "Someday," he said bitterly, eyes boring into hers, "we will repay you in full for all you have done to us."

She met his gaze without flinching. "Perhaps. At least now you'll have a chance of surviving to do so."

Silently, he moved toward the hatch. She followed, keeping her attention on him... and because of that they were halfway there before she suddenly realized

Daulo wasn't following. "Come on, Daulo Sammon," she called over her shoulder.

"Time to leave."

"Not quite yet," he said quietly.

Frowning, she threw him a quick glance... and then looked again.

Daulo was standing well back from her, pressed against the communications board.

In his hand was one of the captured lasers. "Daulo Sammon?" she asked carefully.

"Thanks to you, your world is now safe from us," Daulo said tautly. His face was pale, but the gun was steady. "At least for now. But you, Jasmine Moreau, aren't nearly so safe... and the repayment Miron Akim spoke of can begin with you."

"Hold it!" Justin shouted. "You-whoever you are-if you harm her, you'll never get off that ship alive."

"You'll have to catch us first," Daulo called to the mike. "And by that time, we'll have figured out just what to do with her."

"Damn you! If you so much as-"

Stepping to one side, Daulo shifted his aim and fired a long burst into the communications board.

The Dewdrop's voice was suddenly cut off... and the clatter of Daulo's laser as he tossed it casually to the deck again was almost shattering in the taut silence.

"Daulo...?" Jin asked, feeling her eyebrows come together in bewilderment.

Daulo looked at her, took a deep breath. "Now we can leave," he said quietly.

"And we'd better go quickly. Before, as you said, the Trofts get nervous."

Beside Jin, Akim took a step toward Daulo. "Would you mind explaining," he grated, "just what in God's name that was supposed to prove?"

Daulo gestured upward. "Her father is up there," he said simply.

For a long second the two men eyed each other... and then a smile tugged at

Akim's lips and he snorted gently. "Clever. Very clever. Or it will be if it works."

"I think it will," Daulo nodded. "Like a good Qasaman family, they are very close." He looked at Jin. "Well, come on, Jasmine Moreau," he said briskly.

"Let's get out of here."

The walk down the corridor was a nerve-wracking one. Jin had rather expected a large escort to tag along to make sure they actually left Mangus, but to her uneasy surprise they rated only a single Troft to lead them out of the ship, and he abandoned them just beyond the portside entryway where Jin had earlier shot her way back into the ship. "I don't like this," Akim muttered as they hurried down the steps into the now deserted maintenance bay. "Obolo Nardin's men may be waiting to gun us down out there."

"If Obolo Nardin's got any brains, he'll have his people behind their own wall by now," Jin said as they ran across the bay toward an exit door that would let them out of the maintenance building near the gap in the outer wall. "The Trofts seem to be in a flat-out hurry-that drive rumble is getting louder, and I wouldn't want to be on this side of Mangus when they fire up the engines for real."

The words were barely out of her mouth when, abruptly, the rumble swelled to a roar and a piercing ultrasonic whine rose to accompany it. "It's moving!" Daulo shouted over the noise, waving back at the ship.

Jin glanced over her shoulder. My God, he's right, she thought, stunned, as she watched the command module sliding smoothly back through the now retracted rubberine collar along the reddish haze of the ship's gravity lifts. "Run!" she shouted to the others. "Outside, to whatever cover you can find."

They needed no urging. Flinging open the building door, they sprinted out across a short patch of bare ground to the wall. Even here the air was becoming noticeably warmer; if they were anywhere near the nozzles when the Trofts kicked the drive to full power, Jin knew, they would stand a good chance of being charred on their feet.

They passed the edge of the wall at a dead run, and it took only a glance to see that there was nothing anywhere that could possibly serve as cover. "That way!"

Akim shouted into the din, waving his arm to the right as he turned to run that direction. "Around the corner of the wall!"

It was the best they were going to get. Akim in the lead, they tore along the wall toward the south-east point of the Mangus diamond-shape a hundred meters away. Jin's left knee flashed stabs of pain with each step; gritting her teeth against the agony, she forced herself to keep going. Behind and to her side, she heard Daulo panting with the effort-sensed him stumble-

"Daulo!" She skidded to a halt and grabbed for his arm, gasping with pain as she reflexively tried to close her hand.

"No!" he panted, waving her forward. "Just go-never mind me-"

The rest of his protest was swallowed up in a sudden blast of sound from beyond the wall. Jin didn't hesitate; throwing one arm across Daulo's back and the other behind his knees, she lifted him bodily and ran.

She nearly made it. Akim was around the corner, and she and Daulo were within five paces, when the landscape in front of them abruptly flared with light and an incredible wave of heat washed over them from behind. In her arms Daulo cried out; blinking back tears, Jin fought to keep her balance against the hurricane windstorm behind them. She reached the corner-tried to turn-

And from seemingly out of nowhere Akim's arm darted out, grabbing Jin's just above the elbow and spinning both her and Daulo around the corner to sprawl to the ground.

For a few seconds Jin couldn't speak... but then, for that same time neither of the others would have been able to hear her, anyway. The roar from the Troft ship was deafening-far louder than she would have expected it to be-and seemed to go on forever. Finally-finally-it began to ease, and within a few seconds had faded to a whine in the distance.

Leaving behind it the crackling of fire.

"God in heaven-they've set Mangus on fire!" Akim snarled suddenly, leaping up and disappearing around the corner in the direction of the wall opening.

Jin scrambled to her feet and took a few steps back from the wall. Sure enough, the overhead canopy was flickering with reflected light from the flames beneath it. On the ground in front of her, Daulo said something under his breath.

"What?" she asked, stepping closer.

"I said they were fools." Gingerly, Daulo propped himself up on an elbow, took a deep breath. "If they'd wanted to destroy their half of Mangus properly, they should have had a self-destruct set up ahead of time. Now they're always going to wonder what they left behind we might be able to use."

"Good," Jin said grimly. "Maybe that fear will keep them from coming back and trying this again. Odd that they'd panic like that, though; once they were rid of us, they really had all the time they needed to do their cleanup properly."

Daulo chuckled. "No, they didn't." He squinted toward the sky. "Take a look."

Frowning, Jin peered skyward... and felt her throat tighten.

Above them, a dark shape ringed with red haze was dropping swiftly toward the ground. "The Dewdrop? But... I told them not to land here."

"Of course you did. And I expect your father had a very sharp argument with the others about that after I threatened you and then destroyed your link with them."

Jin looked back down at him, suddenly understanding. "Is that why you did it? To get the Dewdrop down here faster?"

"Not faster, really. Just more directly."

"More-?" Jin clamped her mouth shut. "Oh. Sure. Wherever they track the Dewdrop, that's where they'll send the helicopters. Perfectly obvious."

His eyes were steady on her. "I had no choice, Jin. Even if you'd been willing to take us directly to Azras, we still might not have gotten the military here before Obolo Nardin covered his trail and cleared out."

"Agreed," Jin nodded. "Very clever, as Miron Akim said. I wish I'd thought of it myself." The Dewdrop was showing a recognizable shape now. Lying down on her back, Jin raised her left leg and sent three antiarmor laser bursts in the ship's direction. "That should let them know I'm all right," she explained.

Daulo slid over to sit next to her. "I'd rather... hoped we'd have a little more time together once this was over," he said, almost shyly. "Before you had to leave."

Jin reached over to touch his hand with her fingertips. "I did, too," she said, and was mildly surprised to find how much she really meant it. "But I don't think we can afford to stay. Miron Akim told me there were two of those SkyJo helicopters based near my shuttle; if they get the tracking data fast enough, they won't be more than a few minutes behind us."

Daulo nodded, and for a moment they watched the Dewdrop dropping through the sky toward them. Then, with a grunt that was half sigh and half groan, Daulo climbed to his feet. "Speaking of Miron Akim, I'd better go and track him down. Make sure he hasn't found some weapon and is lying in wait for your ship with it."

Jin got up too, conscience nagging uncomfortably. "Daulo... look, I... well, I want you to know that I really did plan to fulfill my half of our bargain."

He frowned at her. "What are you talking about? You don't think that my finding the way to capture Obolo Nardin and Mangus isn't going to raise my family's status?"

"But that was all your doing, not-"

"Could I have done it without you?"

"Well... no, not really. But-"

"Jin." He stepped close to her, put his hands on her shoulders. "The bargain is satisfied. Really."

Over the plain behind him, the Dewdrop was sweeping down toward Mangus. "Okay,"

Jin sighed. "Well, then... I guess there's nothing to say but goodbye. Thank you for everything, Daulo."

Leaning forward, Daulo kissed her gently. "Goodbye, Jin," he said, smiling at her. "I hope this will let your uncle keep his power among your people."

Jin had almost forgotten about that. "He will," she nodded. "There's no way even his enemies can twist what's happened into failure."

"Good." He smiled again, this time with a touch of mischievousness. "Then perhaps he can talk them into letting you visit Qasama again."

She smiled back. "If I can, I will-that's a promise. If I can't... you'll be getting back into space again someday. You can come visit me."

The background whine that had been growing steadily louder over the past few minutes suddenly shifted pitch. Looking over Daulo's shoulder, Jin saw the

Dewdrop had landed. "I've got to go," she said, disengaging herself and stepping away from him. "Goodbye, and thank your father for me."

There were five men crouching in a loose arc around the Dewdrop's entryway before she was halfway there- Cobras, all of them, by their stances-but she didn't pay any real attention to them. Silhouetted against the hazy glow from the gravity lifts, another man was running toward her. Moving with the slightly arthritic gait she knew so well. "Dad!" she shouted to him. "It's all right-no one shoot!"

A moment later she was in his arms. A minute after that, they were aboard the

Dewdrop, heading for space.