by Timothy Zahn
Akim's eyes were steady on her. "That last jump from the housing roof—you didn't make it by very much."
"I'm just getting a little tired. Look, we're wasting time."
He gazed at her another moment, then pursed his lips and nodded. Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he wrapped it around the cable and held on there with both hands. Rolling off the wall top, he slid down to the ground in a military-style controlled fall. Waving once to her, he knelt and began to untie Daulo from the cable.
This is it. Dropping her end of the cable to fall beside Akim, Jin lowered herself over the edge to hang by her fingertips. Knees slightly bent, she set her teeth and let go. The ground jumped up to meet her—
And she clamped down hard on her tongue as a hot spike jabbed up through her left knee.
"Jasmine Moreau!" Akim hissed, dropping to the ground beside her.
"I'm all right," she managed, blinking back tears of pain as she lay on her back clutching her knee. "Just give me a minute."
It was closer to three minutes, in fact, before she was finally able to get to her feet again. "Okay," she breathed. If she consciously turned over to her servos the job of keeping her upright . . . "I'm fine now."
"I'll carry Daulo Sammon," Akim said in a voice that allowed for no argument.
"Okay by me," Jin said, wincing as she eased back down to a sitting position. "I'll let you carry the cable, too, if you don't mind. But first we have to figure out how we're going to get into that ship."
Akim looked over at it. "Security systems?"
"Undoubtedly." Jin adjusted her enhancers to a combination telescopic/light-amp and made a slow sweep of the unloading tower nestled up to the ship's stern. "Looks like the twin horns of a sonic motion-detector over the doorway there," she told Akim. "As well as a—let me see—yes; there's also an infrared laser sweep covering the loading ramp and a fifteen-meter wedge of ground in front of it."
"What about that one?" Akim asked, pointing at the maintenance building. "The one the craft's nose is buried in."
"Probably something similar." Jin glanced back along the wall behind them. "More motion detectors and monitor cameras over the gateway to the other half of Mangus. A reasonably layered intruder defense."
"Can you defeat it?"
"If you mean can I destroy it, sure. But not without setting off a dozen alarms in the process."
"Well, then, what can you do?"
Jin gnawed at her lip. "It looks like our only chance will be to approach the ship from the side. If I can get on top of it, there'll probably be a way to get through the coupling between the unloading tower and the ship proper."
Akim considered that. "That almost sounds too easy. Except for a demon warrior, of course."
"No, their security wasn't planned with demon warriors in mind," Jin said dryly. "On the other hand, they haven't been totally stupid, either. You can't see it, but for about thirty meters out from the side of the ship there's a crisscross infrared laser pattern running a few centimeters off the ground."
"Can you see it well enough?"
"Seeing it isn't what I'm worried about. The problem is that the pattern of crisscrosses changes every few seconds."
Surprisingly, Akim chuckled. "What's so funny?" Jin growled.
"Your Trofts," he said, the chuckle becoming a snort of derision. "It's nice to know they're neither omniscient nor even very clever. That laser system is a Qasaman one."
"What?" Jin frowned.
"Yes indeed. Perhaps Obolo Nardin deliberately gave it to them to keep a little extra control over the bargain."
"Meaning there's a weakness in the system?" Jin asked, heart starting to beat a little faster.
"There is indeed." He pointed toward the ship. "The pattern changes randomly, as you noted; but there are between three and six one-meter-square places in every system of this sort where the lasers never touch."
"Really?" Jin looked back at the ship. "Doesn't that sort of negate the whole purpose?"
"There's a reason behind it," Akim said, a bit tartly. "It gives those using the system places to mount monitor cameras or remote weapons. The gaps are normally set far enough back from the edge to be useless to the average invader . . . but of course, you're hardly an average invader."
"Point." Bracing herself, Jin eased to her feet. A flicker of pain lanced through her knee as she did so; she tried hard to ignore it. "Okay. Wait here until you see me wave to you from the top of the tower ramp over there. Don't move until then, understand?—I don't want you wandering into range of the detectors by mistake before I figure out how to shut them down."
"Understood." Akim hesitated. "Good luck, Jasmine Moreau."
* * *
Akim had been right: the gaps were indeed there, though she had to spend a few tense minutes out in the open watching the lasers go through their paces before she had all four of the spots identified. The pattern led like meandering steppingstones back toward the ship itself, with distances between them that under normal conditions would have been child's play for her. But with her knee the way it was, it wasn't going to be nearly that easy.
But then, it wasn't as if she had any real choice in the matter. Clenching her teeth, she jumped.
Akim had said the gaps would be a meter square each; to Jin they'd looked a lot smaller. But they were big enough. Pausing just long enough at each point to regain her balance and set up the next leap, she bounded like a drunken kangaroo through the detection field. The second-to-last jump took her to within three meters of the ship's hull; the last took her to the top of the stubby swept-forward wing.
For a long minute she crouched there, watching and listening and waiting for her knee to stop throbbing. Then, standing up again, she made her way aft along the wing, passing over the blackened rim of the starboard drive nozzle to the forward edge of the unloading tower.
The tower, like the ship, was of Troft manufacture, and the two had clearly been designed to mate closely together. But "closely" was a relative term, and as she approached it Jin could see that the metal of the tower proper gave way to a flexible rubberine tunnel half a meter from the entryway cover. Rubberine was inexpensive, flexible, and weatherproof, but it had never been designed to withstand laser fire. A minute later, Jin had sliced a person-sized flap in the soft material; a minute after that, she was inside the tower.
Inside the tower . . . and standing on the threshold of a Troft ship.
The emotional shock of it hit her all at once, and her mouth was dry as she stepped through the vestibule-like airlock into the ship. Inside a Troft ship, she thought, a shiver running up her back as she paused in the center of the long alien corridor. A Troft ship . . . with Trofts aboard?
Her stomach tightened, and she held her breath, keying her auditory enhancers to full power. But the ship might have been a giant tomb for all the activity she could detect. All of them ashore? she wondered. It seemed foolish . . . but on the other hand, if Troft shipboard life was anything like what she'd experienced on the way to Qasama, the crew was unlikely to spend their nights here by choice. And if there were only two or three duty officers aboard, they'd probably be all the way forward in the command module.
It was a good theory, anyway, and for now it would have to do. Returning to the airlock, she went back out into the loading tower.
She'd half feared the controls to the approach-detection system would have been routed to the command module, but it turned out the Trofts had elected convenience over extra security. All those long hours of catertalk classes were paying off now; scanning the labeled switches, she figured out the procedure and shut off the system.
Akim was on his feet against the wall, Daulo already hoisted onto his back, when she stepped out into the cool night air and waved. He headed toward her at a brisk jog, and a minute later had reached the ramp. "Is it clear?" he hissed as he started up.
"Far as I can tell," she whispered back. "Come on—I don't want the security system to be off any longer than it has to be."
A handful of heartbeats and he was beside her. "Where to now?" he puffed, pulling back from her attempt to take Daulo's weight from him.
"Forward, I think, at least a little ways," she told him. "We need to find an empty storeroom or something where we won't be getting any company."
"All right," he nodded. His eyes bored into hers. "And when we're settled and have time to talk, you can tell me exactly why you came to Qasama."
Chapter 42
The confrontation was fortunately postponed a few minutes by the necessity of covering their trail. Switching the motion detectors back on was the work of five seconds; trying to seal the hole Jin had made in the rubberine took considerably longer and with far less success. She was able to use her lasers to fuse the edges back together, but the procedure left shiny streaks that stood out all too well against the duller background material. Roughing up the shiny parts with her fingernails helped some, but not enough, and eventually she gave up the effort. As Akim pointed out, anyone coming in through the tunnel would probably be more concerned with his footing than with watching the walls, anyway.
The ship was still quiet as they started down the long central corridor. Jin had hoped to hide them in an empty storeroom where they could be assured of privacy, but it was quickly apparent that that plan would have to be altered. Most of the rooms they found along their way were locked down, and the few that were open still had a fair assortment of scancoded boxes guardwebbed to walls and floor. Akim pointed out at one stop that even with the boxes there was enough room for the three of them; Jin countered with the reminder that the Trofts would probably be coming in to continue their unloading in the morning.
So they kept going. Finally, in the forward part of the main cargo/engineering section, just aft of the ship's long neck, they found an unlocked pumping room with enough floor space for at least two of them to lie down comfortably at the same time. "This ought to do, at least for now," Jin decided, glancing around the vacant corridors one last time before shutting the door behind them. "Let me give you a hand with Daulo."
"I've got him," Akim said, lowering the youth to a limp sitting position against one wall. "Is there a light we can turn on?"
The glow filtering in from the corridor was enough for Jin's light-amps to work with. Locating the switch, she turned on the room's wall-mounted lights. "We shouldn't leave them on long," she warned Akim.
"I understand," Akim nodded, giving the room a quick once-over.
"Do you see anything we can use as a pillow?" Jin asked, lowering herself carefully to the deck beside Daulo.
Akim shook his head. "His shoes will do well enough, though." Stooping down, he removed Daulo's shoes and leaned awkwardly over the unconscious youth.
"I can do that," Jin offered, reaching over.
"I'm all right," Akim said tartly, avoiding her hands. The motion threw him off balance, and he had to drop one hand to the deck to catch himself.
"Miron Akim—"
"I said I was all right," he snapped.
"Fine," Jin snapped back, suddenly fed up with it all.
Akim glared up at her as he slipped the shoes beneath Daulo's head. "You'd be advised to show more respect, offworlder," he growled, moving back and sitting down across the room from her.
"I save my respect for those who've earned it," Jin shot back.
For a long moment he and Jin eyed each other in brittle silence. Then Jin took a deep breath and sighed. "Look . . . I'm sorry, Miron Akim. I realize my personality grates against your sensibilities, but right now I'm just too tired to try and fit into the normal Qasaman mold."
Slowly the anger faded from Akim's face. "Our worlds would have been enemies even without the razorarms, wouldn't they?" he said quietly. "Our cultures are just too different for us to ever understand each other."
Jin closed her eyes briefly. "I'd like to think neither of our societies is that rigid. Just because we're not the best of friends doesn't mean we have to be enemies, you know."
"But we are enemies," Akim said grimly. "Our rulers have shown it in their words; your rulers have shown it in their actions." He hesitated. "Which makes it very hard for me to understand why you saved my life."
Jin eyed him. "Because you're not the Shahni and their thirty-year-old words, and I'm not the Aventinian Council and their thirty-year-old actions. You and I are right here—right now—facing a threat to Qasama that both of us want to stop. We are not enemies. Why shouldn't I save your life?"
Akim snorted. "That's a false argument. We're extensions of our rulers—no more, no less. If our rulers are at war, we are, too."
Jin chewed at her lip. "All right, then. If I'm such a threat to Qasama, why didn't you call Obolo Nardin's men while I was off rescuing Daulo Sammon?"
The question seemed to take Akim by surprise. "Because they would have killed me along with you, of course."
"So? Aren't you supposed to be willing to die for the good of your world? I am."
"But then—" Akim stopped.
"But then what?" Jin prompted him. "But then the threat Mangus represents would remain hidden?"
Akim's lip twisted. "You're subtler than I'd thought," he said. "You fight me with my own words."
"I'm not trying to fight you," Jin shook her head wearily. "Not verbally or any other way. I'm simply trying to point out that you're doing exactly what you're supposed to: you've evaluated the potential threats to Qasama, you've figured out which of those threats is the most immediate, and you're throwing every weapon you possess at it." She smiled wryly. "At the moment, I'm one of those weapons."
He smiled, too, almost unwillingly. "And I one of yours?" he countered.
She shrugged. "I could hardly stop Obolo Nardin on my own, even if I wanted to. Besides, he's one of your people. Dealing with him should be your business."
"True." Akim glanced around at the metal walls surrounding them. "Though dealing with him from here may prove difficult."
"Don't worry, we'll get out all right," Jin assured him. "Remember, Obolo Nardin seems to be very big on mind-expander drugs, which means he'll be thinking about this very logically. If we aren't in his half of Mangus—and he'll be able to confirm that pretty quickly—then he'll have to assume we got out somehow. It's a solid fifty kilometers back to Azras and we're on foot, so he knows we can't possibly be there before midday tomorrow—today, I mean. Then we either have to contact the Shahni by phone—"
"Which he would know about instantly."
"Right. And since he knows we know about his rigged phone system, he knows we'll have to try something else instead." And now came the crucial question. Jin braced herself, trying to keep her voice casual. "So. Are there any radio systems in use on Qasama? Big ones, I mean, not like the little short-range things the Sammon family uses inside their mine."
She held her breath; but if he noticed anything odd in her voice or face he didn't show it. "The SkyJo combat helicopters have radios," he said thoughtfully. "But the nearest ones we could get to are in Sollas."
Her heart skipped a beat. "There aren't any at Milika?" she asked carefully. "I'd assumed your people would come in by helicopter when you heard about the supply pod."
"We did, but those SkyJos have since been sent into the forest to guard your spacecraft's wreckage."
Jin began to breathe again. "I see. And of course, Obolo Nardin will know all that," she said, getting back on the logic of her argument. "So he'll know that we'll have to go all the way to Sollas to find any kind of assault force to hit him with. How far is that by car?"
"Several hours. And more time after that to assemble a force and get it back here, especially since we can't use the phone system. Yes, I see now where you're heading. You think Obolo Nardin will feel secure enough not to panic and begin destroying evidence of his treason?"
"Not for at least the next half day, no. Face it; he's got too much to lose if he cuts and runs when he doesn't have to. Not to mention the fact that if he pulls up stakes here he also loses his best
chance of finding us before we can talk. I doubt he'd do that without a specific and imminent threat swooping down toward him." She shrugged. "Now, if another day goes by without him catching up with us, then he probably will start worrying. But by then his search parties ought to either be back home or spread out too thin to bother us. And Daulo Sammon will hopefully be back on his feet, too."
Akim looked down at Daulo. "I hate the thought of hiding here while Obolo Nardin has full freedom to operate," he admitted candidly. "The damage he could do to Qasama . . . but I also see nothing better for us to do."
"Well, if something occurs to you, please don't hesitate to speak up," Jin told him. "I might have more of this tactical military training than you do, but you know the planet far better than I ever will."
He grimaced. "Most of it, perhaps. But apparently not enough. Tell me, how did your people discover Obolo Nardin's treason?"
Jin snorted gently. "They didn't. They knew there was something wrong with Mangus, but they got their conclusions almost completely backwards."
She described the satellite blackouts and the missile-test theory the Qasama Monitor Center had come up with. "Interesting," Akim said when she'd finished. "I hope you aren't suggesting the Trofts have given Obolo Nardin advanced weapons, too."
"No, I don't think they'd do anything like that," Jin shook her head. "Trofts never give anything away for free, and certainly not to a human society that's still considered a threat. They'll be keeping a very tight control over what Obolo Nardin gets, and any technology that could conceivably be used against them won't be on the list."
"Hence the security around this ship," Akim nodded. There was an odd note of disappointment in his voice. "Yes, I suppose they would be careful about such things. I take it that it wasn't Obolo Nardin who was knocking out your satellites, then?"
"No, it was the Trofts playing games with them. Trivial to do, too, from close range. They probably sneaked up behind the one they needed to knock out and left a remote chase satellite slaved in orbit to it. That way they could remotely arrange blackouts to cover both landing and liftoff and still leave no hard evidence of tampering when our ships came by to pick up the recordings."
