Timothy Zahn - Cobra Bargain

The sight made her gasp.

The shuttle was a disaster area. Across the aisle the far hull had been literally blown in, leaving a ragged-edged hole a meter or more across. Strands of twisted and blackened metal curled inward from the gap like frozen ribbons; bits and pieces of plastic, cloth, and glass littered everything she could see.

The twin seats that had been by the hole had been ripped from their bracings and were nowhere to be seen.

The twin seats that Layn and Raines had been sitting in.

Oh, God. For a moment Jin gazed in horror at the ruined struts where the seats had been. They were gone, gone totally from the shuttle... from thirty or forty kilometers up.

Somewhere, someone groaned. "Peter?" she croaked. Todor and Hariman had been in the seats just behind the missing men... "Peter?" she tried again. "Rafe?"

There was no answer. Reaching up with a hand that was streaked with blood, she groped for her safety harness release. It was jammed; gritting her teeth, she put servo-motor strength into her squeeze and got it free. Shakily, she climbed to her feet, stumbling off-balance on the canted floor. She grabbed onto what was left of her seat's emergency crashbag to steady herself, jamming her left knee against the bulkhead in the process. A dazzling burst of pain stabbed through the joint, jolting her further out of her fogginess. Shaking her head-sparking more pain-she raised her eyes to look over the seat back to where

Todor and Hariman should be.

It was only then that she saw what had happened to Sun.

She gasped, her stomach suddenly wanting to be sick. The explosion had apparently sent shrapnel into his crashbag, tearing through the tough plastic and leaving him defenseless against the impact of the shuttle's final crash.

Still strapped to his seat, blood staining his landing coveralls where the harness had dug into his skin, his head lolled against his chest at an impossible angle.

He was very clearly dead.

Jin stared at him for a long minute. This isn't real, she told herself wildly, striving to believe it. If she believed it hard enough, maybe it wouldn't have happened... This isn't real. This is our first mission-just our first mission.

This can't happen. Not now. Oh, God, please not now.

The scene began to swim before her eyes, and as it did so a red border appeared superimposed across her optically enhanced vision. The sensors built into her

Cobra gear, warning her of approaching unconsciousness. Who cares? she thought savagely at the red border. He's dead-so are Layn and Raines and who knows who else. What do I need to be conscious for?

And as if in answer, the groan came again.

The sound tore her eyes away from Sun's broken body. Clawing her way past him, she stumbled out into the littered aisle, eyes focusing with an effort on the seats where Hariman and Todor dangled limply in their harnesses. One look at

Hariman was all she could handle-it was clear he'd died in the explosion, even more violently and terribly than Sun. But Todor, beside him in the aisle seat, was still alive, twitching like a child in a nightmare.

Jin was there in seconds, pausing only to grab the emergency medical kit from the passenger compartment's front bulkhead. Kneeling down beside him, ignoring the pain from her injured knee, she got to work.

But it was quickly clear that both the kit's equipment and her own first-aid training were hopelessly inadequate. Surface-wound treatment would be of no use against the massive internal bleeding the sensors registered from Todor's chest; anti-shock drugs would do nothing against the severe concussion that was already squeezing Todor's brain against the ceramic-reinforced bones of his skull.

But Jin wouldn't-couldn't-give up. Sweating, swearing, she worked over him, trying everything she could think of.

"Jin."

The husky whisper startled her so badly she dropped the hypospray she'd been loading. "Peter?" she asked, looking up at his face. "Can you hear me?"

"Don't waste... time..." He coughed, a wracking sound that brought blood to his lips.

"Don't try to talk," Jin told him, fighting hard to keep the horror out of her voice. "Just try and relax. Please."

"No... use..." he whispered. "Go... get out... of here... someone... coming. Has to... be some... one..."

"Peter, please stop talking," she begged him. The others-Mandy and Rafe-they're all dead. I've got to keep you alive-"

"No... chance. Hurt too... badly. The mish... mission, Jin... you got... got to..." He coughed again, weaker this time. "Get out... get to... some... where hid... hidden."

His voice faded into silence, and for a moment she continued to kneel beside him, torn between conflicting commitments. He was right, of course, and the more her brain unfroze itself from the shock the more she realized how tight the deadline facing her really was. The shuttle had been deliberately shot down... and whoever had done the job would eventually come by to examine his handiwork.

But to run now would be to leave Todor here. Alone. To die.

"I can't go, Peter," she said, the last word turning midway into a sob. "I can't."

There was no answer... and even as she watched helplessly, the twitching in his limbs ceased. She waited another moment, then reached over and touched fingertips to his neck.

He was dead.

Carefully, Jin withdrew her hand and took a long, shuddering breath, blinking back tears. A soft glow from Todor's fingertip lasers caught her eye: the new self-destruct system incorporated into their gear had activated itself, shunting current from the arcthrower capacitors inward onto the nanocomputer and servo systems. Automatically destroying his electronics and weaponry beyond any hope of reconstruction should the Qasamans find and examine his body.

No. Not if the Qasamans found him; when they found him. Closing her eyes and mind to the carnage around her, Jin tried to think. It had been-how long since the crash? She checked her clock circuit, set just before the initial explosion.

Nearly seventy minutes had passed since then.

Jin gritted her teeth. Seventy minutes? God-it was worse than she'd realized.

The aircraft the Qasamans would have scrambled to check out their target practice could be overhead at any minute, and the last thing she was ready for was a fight. Clutching at Todor's seat, she pulled herself to her feet and made her way forward.

The cockpit was in worse shape even than the passenger compartment, having apparently survived the explosion only to take the full brunt of what must have been a hellish crash landing. One look dashed any hope she might have had of calling the Southern Cross for advice or help-the shuttle's radio and laser communicator would have been mangled beyond repair.

Which meant that unless and until the Southern Cross figured out on its own that something was wrong, she was going to be on her own. Totally.

Barynson and the pilot-she realized with a distant twinge of guilt that she'd never even known that latter's full name-were both dead, of course, crushed beyond the protective capabilities of harness and crashbag. She barely gave them a second look, her mind increasingly frantic with the need to get out as quickly as possible. Behind Barynson's chair-thrown from its rack by the impact-was what was left of the team's "contact pack," containing aerial maps, close-range scanning equipment, trade goods, and base communicator. Scooping it up, Jin headed aft to the rear of the passenger compartment where the rest of the gear was stored. Her survival pack seemed to be as intact as any of the others; grabbing Sun's pack as well for insurance, she stepped to the exit hatch and yanked on the emergency release handle.

Nothing happened.

"Damn," she snarled, tension coming out in a snap of fury. Swiveling on her right foot, she swung her left leg around and sent a searing burst of antiarmor laser fire into the buckled metal.