Cobra Bargain

by Timothy Zahn

  And if they had, it wouldn't have made any difference. None at all. Even if the

  Southern Cross had the capability of landing down there-which it didn't-they would still have been too late to save anyone. A crash like that would have killed everyone on board on impact. Koja closed his eyes briefly. At least, he thought, it would have been quick. It wasn't much consolation.

  "I'll be damned," the scanner chief muttered abruptly into his thoughts.

  "Captain, you'd better take a look at this."

  Koja turned back to his display. A closer view of the crash site had replaced the first photo on his display. "Lovely," he growled.

  "Maybe it is," the chief said, picking up his lightpen. A circle appeared briefly in the photo's lower right-hand corner. "Take a look and tell me if I'm seeing what I think I am."

  It was an animal-that much was obvious even to Koja's relatively untrained eye.

  A quadruped, with the build of a hunting feline, lying prone on the leafy ground cover in the clearing the shuttle's passage had torn through the tree canopy. "A spine leopard?" he hazarded.

  "That's what I thought, too," the other nodded. "Notice anything unusual about its head?"

  Frowning, Koja leaned closer. The head...

  Was gone. "Must have gotten caught in the crash," he said, feeling suddenly queasy. If something outside the shuttle had been torn up that badly...

  "Maybe, maybe not," the chief muttered, an odd note in his voice. "Let me see if

  I can get us in a little closer-"

  A new, tighter photo replaced the one on the display, the normal atmospheric blurring fading away as the computer worked to clean up the image. The spine leopard's head...

  "Oh, my God," LuCass whispered from his side. "Captain-that's not crash damage."

  Koja nodded, the cold hand on his heart tightening its grip. Not crash damage; laser damage. Cobra laser damage.

  Someone had survived the crash.

  "Complete scan," Koja ordered the scanner chief through dry lips. "We've got to find him."

  "I've already done a check of the area we can penetrate-"

  "Then do it again," Koja snapped.

  "Yes, sir." The chief got busy.

  LuCass took a step closer to Koja's chair. "What are we going to do if we do locate him?" he asked softly. "There isn't any place down there we could possibly set this monster down."

  "Even if there was, I doubt the Qasamans would sit back and let us do it." Koja clenched his teeth until they ached. He'd asked the Directorate-begged the

  Directorate-to rent a second shuttle from the Trofts as an emergency backup. But no; the damned governor-general had deemed it an expensive and unnecessary luxury and vetoed the request. "Any chance we could get some food and medical supplies down to him? It would at least give him a fighting chance."

  LuCass was already typing on Koja's computer keyboard. "Let's see what we've got on board... well, we could foam some ablator onto a mini cargo pod. A parachute... yes, we could rig a chute. Pressure sensor to tell it when to pop...? Hmm. Nothing... wait a second, we could put it on a simple timer and have it pop at a prefigured time. Looks feasible, Captain."

  "At which point the question arises of where to send it so that he can actually find it." Koja looked over at the scanner chief. "Anything?"

  The other shook his head. "No, sir. The canopy's just too thick for short-wave or infrared penetration. His only shot at civilization is to the east, though-we could try dropping the supplies where the road ahead of him intersects an eastward path." He hesitated. "Of course, there's no guarantee he's lucid," he added. "He could be going in any direction, in that case, or even walking around in circles. Or his brain could be functioning fine but his body too badly injured to get all the way to the road."

  "In either case he's dead," Koja said tightly. "He may be dead even if he does get to a village-the Qasaman leaders are hardly going to keep the shuttle crash an official secret." He looked at LuCass. "Get a crew busy on that pod," he ordered. "Include a tight-beam split-freq radio with the other supplies. We'll have a spot picked out to aim for by the time you're ready."

  "Yes, sir." LuCass turned back to his own board, keyed the intercom, and began issuing orders.

  Exhaling in a silent sigh, Koja looked back at the dead spine leopard still on his display. And it's all just so much wasted effort, he thought blackly.

  Because as long as the Cobra was alone in enemy territory the time clock would be ticking down toward zero. Eventually, the Qasamans would identify him; or else a wandering krisjaw or spine leopard would find him; or else something completely unknown would get him.

  Qasama was a deathtrap... and the only people who had any chance at all of pulling him out of it were back on Aventine. Eight days and forty-five light-years away.

  Eight days. Koja cringed, trying desperately to find a closer alternative. The

  New Worlds, perhaps-Esquiline and the other fledgling colonies-or even the nearby Troft demesne of Baliu'ckha'spmi. But Esquiline would have no spacecraft capable of making groundfall, either; and with neither an official credit authorization nor a supply of trade goods on board, trying to deal through an unfamiliar Troft bureaucracy for the rent of another shuttle could take literally months.

  Eight days, A minimum of fourteen days for the round trip, even if the faster

  Dewdrop was available. Add the time needed to choose and equip a search and rescue team, and it could easily be twenty days before they could even begin to look for him.

  And with or without a supply pod, twenty days alone on Qasama was a death sentence. Pure and simple.

  But that didn't mean they had to give up without a fight... and if the fight in this case consisted of hoping for a miracle, then so be it. The fact that one of the Cobras had survived the crash was a miracle in and of itself; perhaps the angel in charge of this area would be feeling generous.

  Eventually, they would find out. In the meantime...

  Reaching to his keyboard, Koja began plotting out the route and fueling stops for a least-time course back to Aventine. It had been his experience that miracles, when they happened, tended to favor those who had laid the proper groundwork for them.

  Chapter 13

  Jin stood at the road for a long time, trying to figure out what to do next.

  It was, at any rate, confirmation that the shuttle had indeed crashed to the west of the Fertile Crescent. Roads always led to civilization; all she had to do was follow it.

  The question was, which way?

  For a moment the landscape seemed to swim before her eyes, and the red warning border appeared superimposed on the scenery. She twisted her head, sending a jolt of pain through the stiffness in her neck. There had been no fewer than five such warnings in the past half hour, a sure sign that she was losing it.

  Combat fatigue, shock from her injuries, some slow poison in the animal bites and scratches she'd suffered-it didn't much matter the cause. What mattered now was finding somewhere safe to collapse before she did so on her feet.

  So... which way?

  Blinking hard against a sudden moisture in her eyes, she studied the road. Two lanes wide, probably, paved with some kind of black rocktop-hardly a major thoroughfare. Running almost due north-south, at least at this point, it was probably one of the connecting roads between the small forest villages west and northwest of the major Fertile Crescent city of Azras. The maps in her pack showed those villages to be anywhere from ten to fifteen kilometers apart. A trivial distance for a Cobra in good condition, but her present condition was anything but good.

  The red circle appeared around her vision again. Biting hard on her lower lip, she again managed to force it away.

  Thoughts of the maps had reminded her of something. Something important...

  Concentrating hard, she tried to force her brain awake enough to think of what it might be. Her packs-that was it. Her packs, with their Aventinian maps and packaged survival food and Qasaman clothing-

 
; Qasaman clothing.

  With an effort, Jin keyed her auditory enhancers. Nothing but insect and bird twitterings. Stepping off the road, she walked back to the line of trees and dropped her packs to the ground behind a bush that seemed to be half leaves and half thorns. Locating her personal pack among the three, she fumbled the catches open and pulled out a set of Qasaman clothing.

  Changing clothes was an ordeal. Between the oozing cuts on her arms and face and the ache and throbbing of her crash injuries, every movement seemed to have its own distinctive pain. But with the pain came a slight clearing of her mind, and when she was done she even had the presence of mind to stuff her torn Aventinian garb away and to push all three packs into at least marginal concealment under the thorn bush. A minute later she was trudging along the road, heading north for no particular reason.

  She never heard the car's approach. The voices, when they called to her, seemed to come from a great distance, echoing out of a wavering mist that filled her ears as much as it did her eyes.

  "-matter with you? Huh?"

  Bringing her feet to a halt, she tried to turn around, but she'd made it only halfway when a pair of hands suddenly were gripping her shoulders. "-God in heaven, Master Sammon! Look at her face-!"

  "Get her into the car," a second, calmer voice cut the first off. "Ende-give him a hand."

  And in a dizzying flurry Jin was picked up by shoulders and thighs and carried bouncing to a dimly seen red box shape....

  The air sensor strapped to his right wrist beeped twice, and Daulo Sammon raised it close to his face, rubbing some of the dust off his goggles for a better view. The readout confirmed what his lungs and the beep had already told him: that the air in this part of the mine was beginning to get stale. Raising his other wrist, Daulo consulted his watch. Officially, the workers had fifteen minutes to go before their shift was over. If he had the air exchangers started now, running them for perhaps three minutes...

  Not worth it. "Foreman?" he called into his headset microphone. "This is Daulo

  Sammon. The shift is hereby declared over; you may begin moving the men back to the shaft now."

  "Yes, Master Sammon," the other's voice came back, hissing with static from the ore veins' metallic interference. Daulo strained his ears, but if the foreman was pleased or surprised by such uncommon leniency, his voice didn't show it.

  "All workers, begin moving back to the central core."

  Daulo clicked his headset off the general frequency and turned back himself, his light throwing sharp shadows across the crisscrossing of shoring that half covered the rough tunnel walls. His grandfather had expected the mine to play out in his own lifetime, and had neglected its safety accordingly, and it had taken Daulo's father nearly ten years to reverse the deterioration that had ensued. Will it all be gone before it becomes mine? Daulo wondered, sweeping his light across the star-sparkling rock peeking out between the bracings. A small part of his mind rather hoped it would; the thought of being responsible for all the lives that toiled daily down here had always made him a little uneasy. He'd seen his grandfather neglect that responsibility, and had seen what the burden had done to his father. To have that weight on his own shoulders...

  But if the mine went, then so did the Sammon family's wealth and prestige... and very likely its place in the village, as well. Without the mine, only lumber processing would remain as a major industry, and it was for certain the Sammon family wouldn't be involved in that.

  And as for the dangers of the mine, outside Milika's wall the miners would have to risk the krisjaws and razorarms and all the rest of Qasama's deadly animal life. Behind his filter mask, Daulo's lip twisted as the old proverb came to mind: on Qasama there were no safe places, only choices between dangerous ones.

  He reached the central shaft a few minutes later to find a growing line of men waiting for their turns at the mine's three elevators. Bypassing them, he stepped to the car that was currently loading and motioned the men already in it to get off. They did so, making the sign of respect as they passed him. Stepping into the elevator, Daulo slid the gate closed and punched for the top.

  The ride up was a long one-though not as long as the trip the opposite direction always seemed-and as the car shook around him he pulled off headset, goggles, and mask and gingerly rubbed the bridge of his nose. A hot shower was what was needed now-a shower, followed by a good meal. No; the meal would be third-after the shower he would presumably be summoned by his father for a report on his trip down the mine. That was all right; he would have time to organize his observations and conclusions while he scrubbed the mine's grit and chill from his body.

  The sudden stream of light as the car reached ground level made Daulo blink.

  Shifting the equipment around in his hands, he surreptitiously wiped away the sudden tears as the operators outside opened the gates and stepped back, making the sign of respect as they did so. Daulo stepped out, nodding at the mine chief as the latter also made the sign of respect. "I trust, Master Sammon," the chief said, "that your inspection found nothing wanting?"

  "Your service to my father seems adequate," Daulo told him, keeping his face and voice neutral. He had, in fact, found things down there to be excellent, but he had no intention of saying so on the spur of the moment. Aside from the danger of swelling the mine chief's ego with unnecessary public praise, Daulo's father had always warned him against rendering hasty judgments. "I shall report to my father what I have seen."

  The other bowed. Passing him, Daulo walked out from under the elevator canopy and headed past the storage and preparation buildings toward the access road where Walare was waiting with his car.

  "Master Sammon," Walare said, making the sign of respect as Daulo came up to him. Daulo climbed in, and a moment later Walare was guiding the car off the mine grounds and onto Milika's public streets.

  "What news is there?" Daulo asked as they turned toward the center of town and the Sammon family house.

  "Public news or private?" Walare asked.

  "Private, of course," Daulo said. "Though you can skip past the backlife gossip."

  In the car's mirror, Walare's eyes were briefly surrounded by smile lines. "Ah, how times have changed," he said with mock sadness. "I remember a time-no more than three years ago-when the backlife news was the first thing you would ask for-"

  "The news, Walare; the news?" Daulo interrupted with equally mock exasperation.

  He'd known Walare ever since the two were boys; and while the public relationship between driver and Sammon family heir were rigidly defined, in the privacy of Daulo's car things could be considerably freer. "You can reminisce about the lost golden age later."

  Walare chuckled. "Actually, it's been a very quiet day. The Yithtra family trucks are mobilizing-someone there must have found a rich section of forest.

  Perhaps because of that, the mayor's trying again to talk your father into supporting his efforts to have the top of the wall rebuilt."

  "Waste of money and effort," Daulo snorted, glancing behind him. Part of the village wall was visible past the village's buildings, the forest-like paintings on the lower part in sharp contrast with the stark metal mesh extension atop it.

  "The razorarms can't get over what we've got now."

  Walare shrugged. "Mayors exist largely to make noise. What else is there for him to make noise about these days?"

  Daulo grinned tightly. "Besides our trouble with the Yithtra family, you mean?"

  "What can he say about that that he hasn't already said?"

  "Not much," Daulo admitted. There were times he wished the competition between his family and the Yithtra family didn't exist; but it was a fact of life, and disliking it didn't change that. "Anything else?"

  "Your brother Perto brought in that shipment of spare motor parts from Azras,"

  Walare said, his voice abruptly taking on a grim tone. "Along with a passenger: an injured woman they found on the road."

  Daulo sat up a bit straighter. "A woman? Who?"

>   "No one at the house recognized her."

  "Identification?"

  "None." Walare hesitated. "Perhaps it was lost in... the trouble she had."

  Daulo frowned. "What sort of trouble?"

  Walare took a deep breath. "According to the driver who helped bring her in, she'd been clawed at least once by a krisjaw... as well as clawed by a baelcra and bitten by one or more monota."

  Daulo felt his stomach tighten. "God above," he muttered. "And she was still alive?"

  "She was when they brought her to the house," Walare said. "Though who knows how long she'll stay that way?"

  "God alone," Daulo sighed.

  Chapter 14