by Timothy Zahn
Akim snorted gently. "Yes, your ships. Odd. We've watched them come by for many years, Jasmine Moreau. In the early days we prepared for attack each time we spotted one, wondering if this would be the one that would bring warriors down to the surface. Then we discovered the satellites, and began correlating your ships' movements against them, and realized what you were actually doing. But still we watched . . . and two weeks ago, when the long-expected invasion actually came, we missed it entirely." He eyed her. "I trust you appreciate the irony of it."
Jin shivered. "I gave up on irony when my companions were killed."
His expression was almost sympathetic. "We didn't shoot your spacecraft down, Jasmine Moreau," he said quietly.
"I know."
"The Trofts?"
She nodded. "You appreciate irony, Miron Akim? Try this one: given that they never came out to investigate, I don't think they even knew who and what they'd hit."
He frowned. "They attacked without knowing what they were attacking?"
"It was probably some kind of automated hunter/seeker missile patrolling the airspace, programmed to hit anything flying too close to Mangus. We must have just happened to arrive at the same time one of their ships was landing or lifting; they surely wouldn't have missiles flying around the area all the time."
"Uncontrolled weapons." Akim spat. "And they consider themselves civilized, no doubt."
Jin nodded. "There are things Trofts won't do . . . but some of the things they will do are pretty disgusting. We'll have to try and scramble the controls for launching the missiles before we leave the ship or any helicopters you send will be shot out of the sky before they get past Purma."
"Shall we go do that now?"
Jin glanced down at Daulo's slack face. "No. There'll probably be Trofts on duty on the bridge, and we don't want to risk starting anything right now. Tomorrow night, when Daulo Sammon's recovered and you and I have caught up on our sleep, we'll give it a try."
Akim stifled a yawn. "All right. Should one of us stand watch?"
Jin shook her head. "Just lie down against the door, if you don't mind. As long as we're alerted the second anyone tries to get in, I'll be able to deal with them."
"What about you?" Akim asked, sliding across the floor to parallel the door. "There's not really enough room for all of us to lie down."
"Don't worry about me," Jin yawned. "I used to sleep sitting up all the time when I was a girl. I should be able to recover the technique."
"Well . . . all right." Reaching to his feet, Akim pulled off his shoes and slid them beneath his head as he stretched out on his back against the door. "But if you have trouble sleeping, let me know and we can trade off partway through the night."
"I'll do that," Jin promised. "Thank you, Miron Akim. Goodnight."
For a moment his dark eyes bored into hers. "Goodnight, Jasmine Moreau."
Reaching up, Jin flicked off the light. The room fell silent, and for a long while she just sat there in the darkness, feeling utterly drained in body, mind, and spirit. Two weeks, Akim had said, since Jin's "invasion" had begun. Two weeks, now, she'd been marooned on this world.
And with an almost shocking suddenness, the end of it was upon her.
With an effort of will, Jin activated her optical enhancers and looked over at Akim. His eyes were closed, his body limp, his breathing slow and steady. Sleeping the sleep of the righteous. And why not? she thought, almost resentfully. After all, she'd done her best to convince him that there was nothing for them to do but sleep for the next half day or more. This was the eye of the storm, the lull before embarking on what he surely knew would be a long and perilous journey to Azras to sound the alarm.
Except that, with any luck at all, it wouldn't be.
Two weeks. Eight days for the Southern Cross, six days for the Dewdrop. Fourteen Aventinian days were . . . Briefly, she tried to make the conversion to Qasama days, but her brain wasn't up to it and she gave up the effort. It was close, though; the two planets' rotation periods didn't differ by more than an hour or so.
Which meant that the rescue team could be here almost any time.
We'll listen for your call at local sunrise, noon, sunset, and midnight, Captain Koja's supply pod message had said. If you can't signal, we'll come down and find you.
How long would they wait before landing and beginning a full-scale search? Not more than a day, surely. Especially once they confirmed that the shuttle's crash site was being guarded by military helicopters. Twelve hours in orbit, no more, and they'd be coming down.
And when they did . . .
Jin shivered. We aren't enemies, she'd told Akim. And she'd meant it. Whether he liked it or not, they really were allies in this battle to tear Obolo Nardin's sticky fingers off Qasama. The landing team, though, was unlikely to see things that way.
Which meant she had to get in touch with them before they landed. Probably within the next day. Almost certainly before it was safe for Akim and Daulo to leave.
Her stomach knotted at the thought. What would they think, she wondered uneasily, when she abandoned them here tomorrow evening and made her solitary escape from Mangus? Would they understand that all this really hadn't been a cold-blooded scheme to trap them here out of her way? Would they believe her when she repeated that this was still the safest place for them to wait for their own reinforcements to arrive?
And would either understand if she had to kill someone in order to get access to one of those helicopter radios out at the shuttle crash site?
Probably not. But ultimately, it didn't much matter. Whether they understood or not, it was something she had to do. As much for Qasama's safety as for her own.
With a sigh, she turned off her optical enhancers and tried to sink into the darkness surrounding her. Eventually, she succeeded.
Chapter 43
She woke abruptly, and for a moment just sat there in the darkness, heart thudding in her ears as her fogged brain tried to figure out what it was that had startled her so thoroughly out of a deep sleep. Then it clicked, and she surged to her feet, stifling a groan as pain lanced through sleep-stiffened joints and muscles.
"What is it?" Akim hissed.
"Trouble," Jin told him grimly, keying in her optical enhancers. Akim was sitting up now, a hand dabbing at his eyes as he grabbed his shoes; Daulo was still stretched out in sleep. "That deep drone you can hear sounds very much like a pre-flight engine test."
Akim's eyes widened. "A what?" he demanded, jamming his shoes on and scrambling to his feet.
"A pre-flight engine test," she repeated, squatting down beside Daulo and shaking his shoulder. "Daulo Sammon?—come on, wake up."
"What time is it, anyway?" Akim asked. His groping hand found her arm, squeezed with painful force.
"Take it easy," she growled, shrugging off his hand and checking her nanocomputer's clock circuit. The readout stunned her: they'd been aboard the ship barely seven hours. "Only about mid-morning," she said.
"Mid-morning? But you said—"
He was interrupted by a sudden gasp from Daulo. "Who is it?" he croaked.
"Shh!" Jin cautioned him. "Relax—it's Jasmine Moreau and Miron Akim. How do you feel?"
He paused, visibly working moisture into his mouth. "Strange. God above, but those were bad dreams."
"Some of them may not have been dreams," Jin told him. "Do you feel up to traveling?"
Clenching his teeth, Daulo pushed himself into a sitting position, a brief spasm flicking across his face. "I'm a little dizzy, but that's all. I think I'll be all right if we don't have to go too far or too fast. Where are we, anyway?"
"Inside the Troft ship." Jin turned to Akim, noting with relief that he seemed to have recovered his balance. "I'm going to make a fast reconnoiter outside," she told him. "See if I can figure out just what's happening."
"I'll come with you," the other said.
"It might be better if you stayed here with—"
"I said I'll come with you."
; Grimacing, Jin nodded. "All right. Daulo, you stay here and get all the kinks out of your muscles. We'll be back in a couple of minutes."
The corridor directly outside the door was deserted, though the sounds of activity coming from all directions indicated that that was probably a very temporary condition. "Where to?" Akim hissed in her ear as she stepped out.
"This way," she whispered back, leading the way back to the ship's central corridor. Glancing both ways along it, she started forward at a fast jog. "We need to find a room with a full-sweep monitor," she added as he caught up and matched her pace, "and most of these'll be in the neck and command module."
"You're certain?" he snarled. "As you were certain that Obolo Nardin wouldn't be reacting until tomorrow?"
She glanced back over her shoulder at his tightly hostile face. "So maybe I overestimated Obolo Nardin's nerve," she growled. "Or maybe the Trofts decided the odds of us getting recaptured weren't all that good and decided to offload and run before your people caught them here."
"Or maybe—"
And barely three meters ahead, a door slid open and a Troft stepped into the corridor.
The alien was fast, all right. His hand went instantly to the gun belted against his abdomen, closed on the grip—
And Jin leaped across the gap, one hand grabbing the gun to lock it in place as the other jabbed hard against the Troft's throat.
The alien dropped with no sound but a muffled clang. "Come on," Jin breathed to Akim, looking over at the door the alien had emerged from. Port drive monitor station, the catertalk symbols read. "Here we go," she muttered to Akim, and jabbed at the touchplate. The door slid open onto a roomful of flashing lights and glowing displays and a second Troft seated in a swivel chair in front of them.
The alien was just starting to turn around toward the door as she took a long step forward. It was doubtful he ever knew just what had hit him.
"Bring that other one in," Jin whispered to Akim, glancing around to make sure there was no one else in the room. Akim already had the unconscious Troft halfway through the door, leaning over to throw one last look each way before he let the panel slide closed.
"Are they dead?" he asked, letting the limp form drop to the deck with a shudder.
"No," she assured him. "They'll be out of action for at least an hour, though. Better leave that alone," she added as Akim gingerly picked up the Troft's laser. "Those are extremely nasty weapons, and I don't have time to teach you how to use it properly. Right now you'd be as likely to damage yourself with it as shoot anyone else."
Reluctantly, he let the laser drop onto the Troft's torso, and Jin turned her attention to the control boards. Somewhere here had to be . . . there it was: Monitor camera selection. Now if she could find a camera that covered the rear loading hatchway, or even outside . . . there. "Here goes," she said, tentatively touching the switch.
The central display shifted to a fisheye view that seemed to be coming from somewhere near the starboard drive nozzle. At one edge was a corner of the loading tower's ramp; at the other was the gateway to the human half of the Mangus compound. In the center about a dozen people were running motorized load carriers both ways between the gateway and the ship.
Akim spotted it first. "They're not unloading," he said abruptly. "The carriers leaving the ship are empty—see?"
"Yeah," Jin agreed, stomach tightening into a hard knot. "Damn. Perhaps you were right after all, Miron Akim. Obolo Nardin's apparently packing his alien gadgetry onto the ship and deserting Mangus."
Akim swore under his breath. "We can't let him escape," he said. "With those alien computers he'll be able to set up somewhere else in the Great Arc and continue his treason."
"I know." For a half dozen heartbeats Jin watched the display, trying to think. "All right," she said at last. "Wait here; I'm going back to get Daulo Sammon."
"And then what? Everyone out there is armed; and even if we could get past them all, there's still no way we could call for reinforcements in time."
"I know." Stepping to the door, she slid it open and glanced out. Again, no one was in sight. "We'll have to do something else. Like take over the ship."
* * *
Daulo was waiting when she reached the pumping room, pacing restlessly around the cramped space. "What's going on?" he demanded as she slipped back into the room.
"It looks like Obolo Nardin's preparing to leave," she told him, giving him a quick once-over. "How are you feeling?"
"I can make it. What do you mean, leaving?"
"Just what I said. He's got his people loading stuff onto this ship right now."
"And the aliens aren't stopping him?"
"Hardly. They're helping him. Shh!"
A double set of hurrying footsteps passed by out in the corridor. "But how are we going to get off before they leave?" Daulo hissed.
"We're not." The corridor was quiet again. Sliding it open a crack, Jin looked out. "Okay, looks clear. If we meet any Trofts, let me handle them."
They slipped out and headed forward. "Where are they all?" Daulo hissed, glancing around as they jogged.
"A lot of them are probably in the stern, helping with the loading," Jin murmured back. "Most of the rest will be busy back in the engineering rooms or up front in the command module."
The latter being where they were headed. It didn't seem a good idea to worry him with that.
They reached the port drive monitor station without incident, collected Akim, and continued on. "Stay at my sides," Jin warned the two men as they neared the end of the neck. "If I have to shoot it'll probably be straight ahead or behind, and I don't want you getting in the way."
They left the neck and entered the flat-steeple command module beyond it. Jin had been braced for an immediate battle; to her mild surprise, again there was no one in sight. "How many aliens are we going to be up against?" Akim muttered.
"Probably thirty to fifty in a ship this size," Jin told him, trying to remember what little she knew about Troft ship layouts. The bridge ought to be near the top of the command module, just below the sensor blister. A collision door slid open at their approach—
And they found themselves in a spacious monitor intersection.
It was a design, Jin remembered, peculiar to Troft ships. A circular area seemingly carved out of the intersection of two major corridors, its walls were covered by monitor screens and displays. In its center, a wide spiral stair led to the level above. "I think we're here," Jin murmured to the others. "Now stay behind me and—"
"Stop, humans!" a flat, mechanical voice shouted in Qasaman from behind them.
Jin spun around, dropping into a crouch at the base of the stairway and shoving Akim and Daulo to either side. A flash of light and heat sliced the air above her, and an instant later her nanocomputer had thrown her in a flat dive to the side. She rolled up onto her right hip, left leg sweeping toward the Troft as he swung his own weapon toward her. She won the race, barely, and the corridor lit up with the blaze of her antiarmor laser.
She was on her feet in an instant, sprinting back to the stairway. "Follow me up," she snapped at Akim and Daulo, leaping onto the stairs and starting up them five at a time. Whoever was up there couldn't possibly have missed hearing the ruckus, and she had to get to them before they sealed off the bridge.
And for one heart-stopping second it looked like she was going to be too late. Even as she came around the last turn of the staircase she looked up to see a heavy blast hatch starting to swing down over the opening.
Her knees straightened convulsively, hurling her in a desperate leap straight up. Her hands caught the rim of the opening, barely in time—
And she gasped with pain as the rubberine rim of the hatch slammed down on her fingers.
For a long second she hung there, vision wavering with the agony in her hands, mind frozen with the realization that she was completely and utterly helpless. The triggers to her fingertip lasers were out of reach, her sonics useless with a metal hatch blocking them,
her antiarmor laser impossible for her to aim. Servo strength . . . Pressing upward with the back of one hand did nothing but send a fresh wave of pain through her fingers like an electric shock—
Electric shock!
Her mind seemed to catch gears again; and, gritting her teeth, she fired her arcthrower.
There was no way to tell if the random lightning bolt actually hit anything; but the thunder was still echoing in her ears when the pressure on her hands abruptly eased a little. Again she shoved upward, and this time it worked. Arm servos whining against the strain, the hatch swung open; simultaneously, she pulled down hard on her other hand, launching herself up and through the opening.
They were waiting for her—or, rather, those who hadn't been leaning on the hatch in the path of the arcthrower blast were waiting for her—but it was clear they didn't really understand what it was they were facing. Even as she shot out of the hatchway like a cork from a bottle, the room flashed with light as a crisscross of laser fire sliced through the air beneath her.
There were five of them in all, and they never got a chance to correct their aim. Jin reached the top of her arc, head coming perilously close to banging against the ceiling, and her left leg swung around in a tight crescent curve across the crouching Trofts, antiarmor laser spitting with deadly accuracy.
By the time she landed, stumbling, on the deck, it was all over.
For a moment she just sagged there, teeth clenched against the throbbing pain in her fingers. The ceramic-laminated bones were effectively unbreakable, but the skin covering them had no such protection, and it was already turning black and blue with massive bruising.
"Is it all right?" a muffled voice called tentatively from behind her.
She turned to see Akim poke his head cautiously over the level of the deck. "Yeah," she grunted. "Come on, hurry up. We've got to close this place off."
Akim came all the way in, followed closely by Daulo. "What happened to your hands?" Daulo asked sharply, stepping forward to take one of them.
