by Timothy Zahn
Jin stared at him in disbelief. "And that doesn't worry you?"
"Of course it does," he said, eyes steady on her face. "But the scheme is self-limiting. Yes, he can listen into the Shahni's conversations, and that certainly must be dealt with. But you have to realize that the more communications he copies, the longer it's going to take him to find the ones he wants. At the rate he's making and distributing these phones, his entire system will eventually collapse under its own weight. If it hasn't already done so."
Jin shook her head. "I wish it were that simple, but its not. You see, he doesn't need to sift all these conversations and data transfers by hand. He can do it with computers."
"With computers?" Daulo frowned. "How?"
"It's very simple. All he has to do is have the computers scan each conversation for preprogrammed words or names—"
"And he then has to listen personally only to the ones containing those words," Akim interrupted her. "Credit us with a little sophistication, offworlder—the method is well known. But for the scope you accuse Mangus of indulging in—" He shook his head. "Perhaps you don't realize just how much information is transferred around Qasama in a single day. It would take computers far more advanced than any available on Qasama to handle it all."
"I know," Jin said quietly. "But Obolo Nardin's computers didn't come from Qasama. They came from the Troft Assemblage."
For a half dozen heartbeats the others just looked at her, Daulo with his mouth hanging open, Akim only marginally less thunderstruck. Daulo found his voice first. "That's insane," he hissed.
"I wish it were," Jin said. "But it's not. There's a Troft ship parked right now in the other half of Mangus."
"Which you can't show us at the moment, of course," Daulo growled. "How convenient."
Jin flushed. Daulo was carrying this hostility act entirely too far. "I'll see what I can do later to remedy that—"
"And what," Akim interrupted her, "would the Trofts stand to gain from such a deal?"
Jin turned back to him. "I don't know how much you know about the Trofts, but they're not the monolithic structure you might think. The Assemblage is basically nothing more than a loose confederation of independent two- to three-system demesnes in constant economic and political rivalry with each other."
"Like the villages and cities of Qasama," Daulo muttered under his breath.
Jin glanced at him. "Something like that, yes. My guess is one of those demesnes has decided humans are more of a threat than we're worth, and is trying to do something about it."
"By helping Obolo Nardin gain political power?" Akim frowned.
"By uniting Qasama," Jin corrected quietly. "And then using your world as a war machine against us."
Akim's eyes flashed. "We don't need alien help to hate you, offworlder," he bit out. "But we don't make war under alien orders, either."
"If Obolo Nardin succeeds, you may not have much say in it." A sound caught Jin's ear. "Someone's coming," she hissed, shutting off her sonic.
A second later the curtain was pulled aside to reveal Radig and a handful of men. Radig looked rather annoyed, Jin noted; at a guess, his eavesdropping on their discussion had been something less than successful. "You—offworlder—put these on," he snarled, throwing her a tangle of male clothing.
The same clothing, she saw, that she'd worn as a disguise that morning in Azras. "And then what?" she asked as one of the guards stepped forward to unshackle her.
He ignored the question. "That one—" he pointed at Akim "—will be coming with us to the assembly building. You, on the other hand—" he smiled chillingly at Daulo "—we'll keep alive a little longer. Though you probably won't like it."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Jin demanded.
"Get undressed!" Radig snapped.
"Tell me what you're going to do to Daulo Sammon."
One of the guards stepped forward, raised his hand to slap her—
"No!" Radig stopped him. "She's to remain unmarked." He glared at Jin as the guard reluctantly stepped back. "And you ought to be thankful my father doesn't want your body to show evidence of any other activities, either. Otherwise we would be postponing your execution by a few hours."
Jin glared right back at him. "You would have found it surprisingly unrewarding," she said evenly. "What are you going to do to Daulo Sammon?"
"Interrogate him, probably," Akim spoke up grimly from beside her. "They're still looking for your companion, remember?"
Jin glanced at Daulo's expression. "I've already said he's beyond your grasp," she told Radig.
"Get undressed," the other repeated coldly. "Before I allow my men to forget my father's orders. All of his orders."
For a long moment Jin seriously considered letting them try it. But this wasn't the time or the place for that kind of a confrontation. Swallowing her anger, she changed into the other set of clothes, doing her best to ignore the watching eyes.
* * *
It seemed darker, somehow, out in the compound, and it took Jin most of the short walk to the assembly building to realize that it was because the housing complexes were now completely dark. The timing was no doubt deliberate; whatever Obolo and his son had planned, they wouldn't want any witnesses around to see it.
The suspense didn't last long. "Let me explain what's going to happen," Radig said in a conversational tone as the two men holding Jin's arms positioned her in front of the building's entrance. "You, a spy and enemy of Qasama, were trying to steal our technology. Fortunately for Qasama, this alert Shahni agent—" he waved at Akim, held by two burly guards a few meters in front of her "—was here to stop you. Unfortunately for him, you were also armed." He nodded to one of Jin's guards and the man reached a gloved hand into his holster to produce a standard Qasaman projectile pistol. "He shot you, but you managed to kill him before you died. A pity."
"And you then put the gun in my hand to get my fingerprints on it?" Jin asked coldly, watching the pistol being held at her side. The second he raised it to shoot she would have to to act . . .
"Ah—something else you don't know about Qasama," Radig said sardonically. He nodded again, and to her surprise the man with the gun pressed the weapon into her hand, keeping his own gloved hand around hers in a firm controlling grip. "Our science is quite advanced in such matters—more so, obviously, than yours. Here it's possible to prove from a careful residue analysis that a specific shot was fired by a specific gun held in a specific hand. Therefore, each of you will have to fire the fatal shots yourselves. With our help, of course."
"Of course," Jin said sarcastically. A reddish haze seemed to be stealing across her vision, and for a second she wondered if they'd decided to risk drugging her after all. But it wasn't that kind of haze . . . and after a moment she realized what it was.
It was fury. Simple, cold-blooded fury.
A good Cobra is always self-controlled, the dictum ran through her mind . . . but at the moment none of those platitudes seemed worth a damn. Daulo had looked quietly horrified as he'd been led off for his interrogation; Radig's own self-satisfied expression here and now was in sharp contrast as he choreographed his double murder . . . and it occurred to Jin that up till now Mangus had been gaining all the benefits of treason without having to pay any of the costs.
It was time for the balance to be evened up a bit.
A third guard was moving up to Akim's side now, pressing his pistol into the other's clearly unwilling hand. Consciously unclenching her teeth, Jin activated her multiple targeting lock, keying for the centers of the three guards' foreheads. "I presume it's almost time," she said coldly, glancing at Radig before focusing on Akim. "Tell me, Miron Akim: what's the penalty for attempted murder on Qasama?"
Radig snorted. "Don't try to scare us, woman—" he snarled, taking a step toward her.
"Miron Akim?"
"This is more than simple murder, Jasmine Moreau," Akim replied, his eyes on Radig. "It's murder combined with treason. For that the penalty is death."
"
I see," she nodded. "I trust, then, you won't be too upset if I have to kill some of them?"
One of the guards snorted something contemptuous sounding. But Radig didn't even smile. Stepping to her side, he grabbed the barrel of the pistol in her hand and brought it up to point directly at Akim. "If you're waiting for your companion to save you, wait for him in hell," he snarled, eyes glittering with hatred. "In fact, I almost hope he's watching. Let him watch you die."
Jin glared straight back, twisted her right arm free of the hands holding it, and slammed the gun across the side of Radig's face.
He flopped over backwards onto the ground without a sound. The guard holding Jin's left arm spat a curse, but he'd gotten no farther than tightening his grip on her arm before she turned partly around in his direction to slam the pistol against his head. The grip abruptly loosened; and even as the guard to her right threw his arms around her shoulders, she twisted back that direction to swing the weapon into his face. Simultaneously, her left hand whipped up, swept across the group around Akim—
Her peripheral vision caught the triple sputter of light as her nanocomputer fired her fingertip laser, and she turned back just in time to see the three guards drop like empty sacks to the ground.
Leaving Akim standing among the carnage. The pistol they'd meant him to kill her with still gripped in his hand. Not quite pointed at her . . .
For a long moment they stared at each other. "It's all over, Miron Akim," she called softly, the haze of fury evaporating from her mind. The hand holding the pistol was noticeably trembling now. "May I suggest we get out of here before these men are missed?"
Slowly, the pistol sagged downward; and after a moment, Akim stooped and laid it on the ground, his eyes on her the whole time. He flinched slightly as she stepped toward him, but didn't back up. "It's all right," she assured him quietly. "As I said earlier, we're on the same side here."
He licked his lips and seemed to finally find his voice. "A demon warrior," he said. A shiver abruptly ran through him. "A demon warrior. Now it finally makes sense. God in heaven." He took a shuddering breath. "On the same side, you say, Jasmine Moreau?" he said with a hint of returning spirit.
"Yes—whether you believe it or not." She risked a glance around the compound. He hadn't tried to jump her by the time she looked back at him. "If for no other reason than because Obolo Nardin wants both of us dead. So which will it be?—you want to join forces, or would you rather we tackle Obolo Nardin's private army separately?"
Akim licked his lips again, glancing down at the three dead men around his feet. "I don't really have much of a choice," he said, looking her firmly in the eye. "Very well, then, Jasmine Moreau: in the name of the Shahni of Qasama, I accept your assistance in return for my own. Do you have a plan for getting us out of Mangus?"
Jin breathed a quiet sigh of relief. "A plan of sorts, yes. But first we're going to have to go back into the administrative center. Or I have to, anyway."
He nodded with far too much understanding for her taste. "To rescue Daulo Sammon?"
She gritted her teeth. "His family saved my life, long before they knew who I was. No matter what Daulo Sammon thinks of me now, I owe them his life in return."
Akim looked back at the administrative center. "How did you plan to get him out? More of the same firepower you just demonstrated?"
"Hopefully less of it." Jin grimaced, locating Radig's unmoving form. "I'd hoped to persuade Radig Nardin to tell me where they'd taken him. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like he'll be up to talking for a while."
"He'll be on the lowest level," Akim said thoughtfully. "Probably in a corner room. An airtight one, if possible."
Jin frowned at him. "How do you know?"
He shrugged. "Historical precedent, coupled with the nature of the drugs used in the kind of interrogation they're probably doing. Drugs that are reported to be extremely unpleasant, incidentally. The sooner we get him out, the better for him."
Jin bit her lip. "I know. Unfortunately, there's something else we have to do first."
"Such as?"
"Such as getting our escape route set up. Come on."
Chapter 41
The hard part wasn't taking the high road for the second time that night, jumping from ground to housing complex roof to the top of the wall. The hard part wasn't even inching along the wall on her stomach, leaning precariously down to cut the power cables linking the spotlights and splice them together into a makeshift rope.
The hard part was wondering the whole time whether Akim would still be waiting down below when she finally finished the chore.
But he was. Evidently, she decided as she carefully pulled him up, Shahni agents were not as fanatic as she'd feared they might be. A true fanatic would probably have preferred death to dealing with a perceived enemy of Qasama.
She got him up and spreadeagled in a safe if not entirely comfortable position atop the wall, and for a long minute he gazed in silence at the Troft ship below. "May God curse Obolo Nardin and his household," he spat at last. "So you were telling the truth after all."
"Keep your voice down, please. You know anything about Troft ships besides what they look like?"
He shook his head. "No."
"Me, neither. Which could be a problem . . . because that's where we're going to hide out for the next day or two."
He didn't fall off the wall, or even gasp in stunned astonishment. He just turned a rock-carved face to her. "We're what?"
She sighed. "I don't much like it either, but at the moment we're slightly low on options." She waved back toward the administrative center. "As soon as they find out we're gone, they'll turn their half of Mangus upside down looking for us. And since they're already scouring the countryside between here and civilization for my theoretical accomplice, going outside the wall isn't going to be any safer. What's left?"
"If we're discovered here, it will be Trofts we'll have to fight," Akim said pointedly, "Will you be as effective a warrior against them as you would be against Obolo Nardin's men?"
Jin snorted, the image of her father battling the target robots in the MacDonald Center's Danger Room flashing through her mind. "We were designed to fight the Trofts, Miron Akim," she told him grimly.
"I see." Akim exhaled a thoughtful hiss. "I suppose it really is our best chance, then. All right, I'm ready."
"Yes, well, I'm not. First I've got to go back and get Daulo Sammon, remember?"
"I thought perhaps you'd changed your mind." Visibly, Akim braced himself. "All right, then. Tell me what you want me to do."
He didn't think much of the idea—that much was evident from the play of emotions across his face as she explained it. But he didn't waste any time arguing the point. Unlike Daulo, Akim didn't seem particularly disturbed by the thought of taking orders from a woman. Perhaps he'd had experience with female agents of the Shahni; perhaps it was simply that he knew better than to let pride get in the way of survival.
A moment later she was moving silently through the darkness toward the administrative center as, behind her, Akim pulled the cable back up. At least this time, Jin knew, she wouldn't have to worry about him leaving before she returned.
* * *
She hit the wall a little harder this time, rekindling the ache in her left knee. For a moment she hung by her fingertips, gritting her teeth tightly as she waited for the pain to subside.
"You all right?" Akim asked softly from half a meter in front of her.
"Yeah." Pulling herself up, she rolled onto her stomach facing Akim and took the end of the cable/rope from him. "Knee got hurt in the crash and hasn't totally recovered yet. How about you?"
"Fine. Any trouble?"
"Not really," Jin replied, trying not to pant. Even before that last leap over from the housing complex, the jog from Daulo's interrogation cell with the boy in fire-carry across her shoulder had worn her out far more than it should have. A bad sign; it implied she was getting too tired to give her servos as much of the load as they we
re capable of. "You were right about him being on the lowest level," she said as she began pulling Daulo up. "Obolo Nardin thoughtfully left a pair of guards outside his door to mark the spot for me."
"Did you kill them?"
Jin's cheek twitched. "I had to. One of them recognized me before I could get close enough."
Akim grunted. "They're all parties to treason. Don't forget that."
Jin swallowed. "Right. Anyway, I found Daulo Sammon strapped to a chair with a set of tubes in his arms and smoke curling around him from a censer under his chin."
"Was he alone?"
"No, but I was able to stun the interrogator without killing him. Okay, here he comes. I'll take his weight; you protect his head."
Between them, they got Daulo up on the wall, draping his limp body over it like a hunting trophy across an aircar rack. "Any idea what they might have used on him?" she asked, trying to keep the anxiety out of her voice as Akim peered closely at Daulo's slack face. The boy was so quiet . . .
Akim shook his head slowly. "There are too many possibilities." He took Daulo's wrist. "His heartbeat's slow, but it's steady enough. He should be able to simply sleep the drugs off."
"I hope you're right." Notching her light-amps to higher power, Jin gave the Troft side of the compound a quick scan. "Did you see any activity over there while I was gone?"
"No. Nor on the other side, either."
Jin nodded. "Hard to believe our escape still hasn't been noticed, but I suppose we should be grateful for small favors."
Akim snorted gently. "Perhaps Obolo Nardin expected his son to disobey the order about leaving you untouched."
"You're a cheery one," Jin growled, shivering. "Well, there's no point in postponing this. Watch his head again, will you, while I flip him over the side?"
A minute later Daulo was down, half lying and half slouching at the base of the wall. "Your turn," Jin told Akim. "Don't step on him."
"I won't. How will you get down?"
She felt her stomach tighten. "I'll have to jump," she said, trying not to think about what had happened the last time she'd tried that stunt. "Don't worry, I can manage it."
