Cobra Bargain

Chapter 10

It was a two-week trip to Qasama; two weeks that went by very quickly. It was, for one thing, the first time the new Cobras had had a chance to interact with each other on anything approaching a social level. With each other, and also with the two men who would actually be leading the mission.

They were, to her mind, a study in contrasts. Both were top experts at

Aventine's Qasama Monitor Center, but at that point all similarity ended. Pash

Barynson was middle-aged and thin and short, a few centimeters shorter even than

Jin, with sparse black hair and an excruciatingly academic manner that was so stiff that it bordered on caricature. His associate, Como Raines, was almost exactly the opposite, in both manner and appearance. Tall and chubby, aged somewhere in his mid-thirties, he had red-blond hair, a perpetual smile, and an outgoing manner that enabled him to become friends with everyone on board almost before the Southern Cross had cleared Aventine's atmosphere.

It was an unlikely pairing, and it took Jin nearly a week to realize that the mission's planners hadn't simply pulled their names out of the grab-bag. Raines, with his easy friendliness, would presumably be the main contact man with the

Qasamans, while Barynson's job would be to stay in the background and analyze the data as Raines and the others pulled it in.

From the briefings, too, it was quickly clear that Barynson was the man in charge.

"We'll be making our approach along here-from the uninhabited west-making our landing about here," Barynson said, leaning over the photomap and jabbing a finger at a section of forest. "Timing the touchdown for about an hour before dawn, local time. The nearest of the villages bordering the Fertile Crescent area are about fifteen kilometers to the east and southeast-" he touched each in turn "-with what looks to be lumbering operations to the northeast here on the river at about the same distance. You'll note that the site is-theoretically, at least-a fair compromise between distance and seclusion. Whether it'll turn out that way in practice, of course, we won't know until we get there."

"Any idea what kind of undergrowth we'll have to go through?" Todor asked.

"Unfortunately, no," Barynson admitted. "Most of the data we've got on Qasaman forests comes from far to the east of this site, and infrared studies indicate that the canopy here, at any rate, is different in composition from that area."

"Of course," Raines put in, "if travel turns out to be impractical, we can always take the shuttle up to tree-top height and move it closer to the villages."

"Only if things are pretty damn difficult," Layn muttered. "We have only the

Trofts' word for it that the Qasaman observation systems won't be able to track our approach. The more we move the shuttle around, the higher the risk we'll be spotted."

"Agreed," Barynson nodded. "Though the more immediate danger will probably be the Qasaman fauna. I hope you Cobras will be up to the challenge."

"We're ready," Layn told him. "My men-people-know what they're doing."

Barynson's eyes flicked to Jin, turned quickly away. "Yes, I'm sure they do," he said, almost as if he believed it. "Well, anyway... we'll all be equipped with the best simulations of Qasaman clothing that the Center's analysis of telephotos could provide. The landing is timed so that we can get through the forest in daylight and reach one of these villages by nightfall. That'll give us the chance to make a close check of our clothing and get a first approximation of the culture before we have to tackle Azras and the main Fertile Crescent civilization. So; questions?"

Jin glanced across the table, caught Sun's eye. The other shrugged fractionally, echoing Jin's own thoughts: there wasn't a lot of point in asking questions to which there were as yet no answers.

"Very well, then." Barynson threw a look around the table. "We have three days left before planetfall, and for those three days I want all of you to do your best to become Qasamans. You'll wear our ersatz Qasaman clothing, eat our nearest approximations to the food the Qasamans were eating thirty years ago, and-most important of all-speak only Qasaman among yourselves. That rule is absolute-you aren't to speak Anglic to anyone, not even to one of the Southern

Cross's crew. If any of them talks to you, you aren't to understand them. Is that clear?"

"Isn't that carrying things just a little far?" Hariman asked with a frown.

"The Qasmans had ample opportunity to study Anglic the last time we were here,"

Jin put in quietly. "Some of them were even able to force-learn it well enough to speak it. If they suspect us, they might throw one of those people at us."

"Right," Barynson nodded, looking impressed despite himself. "The old trick of getting a spy to speak in his native language. I'd just as soon none of us falls for it."

"We understand," Sun said in Qasaman. "We demon warriors, at least, won't fall for it."

"I hope not." Barynson looked him straight in the eye. "Because if you ever do, you'll probably wind up earning your pay the hard way."

Qasama was a dark mass against the stars, a fuzzy new-moon sliver of light at one edge showing the dawn line, as the shuttle fell free of the Southern Cross and began its leisurely drift toward the world below. Gazing down through the tiny porthole to her left, Jin licked dry lips and tried to quiet her thudding heart. Almost there, she told herself. Almost there. Her first mission as a

Cobra-a goal she'd dreamed about and fantasized about for probably half her life. And now, with it almost close enough to taste, she could feel nothing but quiet terror.

So much, she thought half bitterly, for the heroic Cobra warrior.

"You ever fly before this trip?" Sun, sitting on the aisle seat next to her, asked quietly.

"Aircraft, sure, but never any spacecraft," Jin told him, thankfully turning her attention away from the porthole. "Hardly ever into enemy territory, either."

He chuckled, a sound that almost masked the nervousness she could see around his eyes. "We'll do fine," he assured her. "Parades and canonization, remember?"

A smile broke of its own accord through her tension. "Sure." Reaching across the armrest, she took his hand. It was almost as cold as her own.

"Hitting atmosphere," she heard the pilot say from the red-lit cockpit at the front of the passenger compartment. "Injection angle... right on the mark."

Jin gritted her teeth. She understood all the reasons behind coming in as far as they could on an unpowered glide approach-the light from a ship's gravity lifts was extremely visible, especially against a night sky-but the eerie silence from the engines wasn't helping her nervousness a bit. Looking back out the porthole, she tried not to imagine the planet rushing up to hit them-

"Uh-oh," the pilot muttered.

"What?" Barynson snapped from the seat beside him.

"A radar scan just went over us."

Jin's mouth went a little drier, and Sun's grip on her hand tightened. "But they can't pick us up, can they?" Barynson asked. "The Trofts told us-"

"No, no, we're okay," the pilot assured him. "I was just surprised they're scanning this far from the Fertile Crescent, that's all."

"They're paranoid," Layn muttered from the seat across the narrow aisle from

Sun. "So what else is new?"

But they aren't supposed to be that way any more, Jin thought morosely. They were supposed to lose that when we got the mojos off their shoulders. That had been the whole point of seeding the planet with Aventinian spine leopards thirty years ago, after all. If it hadn't worked-

She shook her head to clear it. If it hadn't worked, they would find out soon enough. There wasn't any point in worrying about it until then.

"Parades and canonization," Sun murmured, misreading her thoughts. It helped, anyway, and she threw him a grateful smile.

The minutes dragged on. An oddly distant scream of air against the shuttle's hull increased and then faded, and slowly all but the brightest of the stars overhead began to be swallowed up by the thickening atmosphere around them.

Straining upward against her restraints, Jin could make out the gross details of the ground beneath them now, and in the distance the horizon had lost all of its curve. Five minutes, she estimated-ten at the most-and they would be down.

Setting her nanocomputer's clock circuit, she leaned back in her seat, closed her eyes, took a deep breath-

And through the closed lids she still saw the right-hand side of the passenger compartment abruptly blaze up like a fireball, and a smashing wall of thunder slammed her against her seat and into total blackness.