Timothy Zahn: Cobra Bargain

And with a jolt she realized that the younger girl had neatly deflected the conversation into a right angle. "Never mind what I'm going to need," she growled with mock irritation. "At the moment it's you who needs to know this stuff, because you're the one who's going to be tested on it tomorrow. Again-and remember the asperated-p in pierec'eay'khartoh this time. You pronounce it the wrong way to a Troft and he's either going to fall over laughing or else challenge you to a duel."

Cari perked up a bit. "Why?-is it something dirty the way I said it?" she asked eagerly.

"Never mind," Jin told her. The error was, in fact, a fairly innocuous one, but she had no intention of telling her cousin that. She could remember back three years to when she'd been seventeen herself, and a slight hint of wickedness might help spice up a course Cari clearly considered to be deathly dull. "Let's try it again," she said. "From the top."

Cari took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "Misk'rhe-"

Across the room the phone warbled. "I'll get it," Cari interrupted herself, bounding with clear relief out of her chair and racing toward the instrument.

"...Hello?... Oh, hi, Fay. Jin!-it's your sister."

Jin unfolded her legs from beneath her and walked over to Cari's side. Three steps from the phone screen the expression on Fay's face suddenly registered, and she took the remaining distance in two quick strides. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"Thena MiGraw just called from Uncle Corwin's office," Fay said grimly. "There was some kind of crazy incident there a few minutes ago, and Dad wound up shooting someone."

Beside Jin, Cari gasped. "He what?" Jin asked. "Did he kill him?"

"No idea yet. The guy's been rushed to the hospital, and Dad and Uncle Corwin are there now. Thena said she'd call again and let us know if and when they learned anything."

Jin licked suddenly dry lips. "Which hospital are they at?"

Fay shook her head. "She said specifically not to go there. Uncle Corwin told her he didn't want anybody else underfoot while they sorted this out."

Jin gritted her teeth. Understandable, but she didn't have to like it. "Did she say how Dad was doing? Or give any other details?"

Fay shrugged uncomfortably. "Dad was pretty shaken up, I guess, but he wasn't falling apart. If there were any other details Thena wasn't giving them out."

Even through the surreal numbness in Jin's mind, she felt a brief flicker of pride. No, of course her father wouldn't fall apart. A Cobra who'd survived both

Qasaman missions wouldn't break over something like this. Besides which, she would bet large sums that whatever had happened had been the other guy's fault.

"Have you talked to Gwena yet?"

Fay shook her head. "I was hoping to have more details before I did that. She's got all she needs on her mind already, and I'd hate for her to drop everything and fly in unnecessarily."

"Better let her decide how necessary it is," Jin advised. "They can always reschedule her thesis defense, and she'll be pretty hurt if she has to learn about this from the net. Anything on the net yet, speaking of which?"

"This early? Shouldn't be. Anyway, I just wanted you to know what had happened, make sure you were here when Dad gets home."

"Yeah, thanks," Jin nodded. "I'll come now."

"Okay. See you soon." Fay's face vanished from the screen.

Beside Jin, Cari took a shuddering breath. "I'd better call Mom and Dad," she said. "They'll want to know about this."

"Thena's probably already done that," Jin told her, eyes focused on the empty phone screen. Something was nagging, premonition-like, at the back of her mind... Reaching out, she tapped the phone's numberpad, keying it into

Capitalia's major public/info net. Search/proper name: Moreau, Justin, she instructed it.

"What are you doing?" Cari asked. "Fay said there wouldn't be anything on it yet."

Jin clenched her teeth. "Fay was wrong. Take a look."

There was no sign on the driveway leading to the squat, square building nestled back from the street a few blocks from Capitalia's main business district. Not that a sign would have made much difference; the small plaque beside the windowless front door proclaiming the place to be the Kennet MacDonald Memorial

Center would mean little to the average Capitalian citizen.

To the city's Cobra population, the name meant a great deal more. As did the building itself.

The door was locked, but Jin knew the code. The center's softly lit social areas were largely deserted, she noted as she padded quietly past them, with only a relative handful of Cobras sitting together in twos or threes. Attendance had been dwindling, she knew, ever since Priesly and his loud-faced Jects had started harping on what they liked to call "Cobra elitism." Gazing across the empty chairs and tables, Jin's mind flashed back to her childhood, to the hours she'd spent here with her father and the other Cobras. The men who were the true heroes of the Cobra Worlds.

And now those men avoided the center, hesitant to add fuel to Priesly's fires by congregating together. For that alone, Jin thought bitterly, she could wish the

Jects to drown in their own saliva.

Her father was where she'd expected to find him: downstairs, alone, in the large practice area the Cobras had dubbed the Danger Room.

For a few minutes she stood above him in the observation gallery, watching and remembering. The target robots the room's computer controlled weren't especially smart, but they were fast and numerous. As a child, Jin had also thought their low-power lasers were dangerous, and she could still remember the terror she'd felt watching from up here as her father went head-to-head against them. In actuality, as she'd finally learned years later, the robots' lasers were dangerous only to a Cobra's pride; but that knowledge couldn't entirely suppress her adrenaline-fueled gut reaction as she watched her father fight.

It wasn't exactly an even fight, for one thing. Arrayed against Justin at any given time were between four and seven of the target robots, all taking pot shots at him, often with little concern for their own welfare. Cover in the

Danger Room had been deliberately kept to a minimum, leaving the Cobra no choice but to keep moving if he was to survive.

And Justin kept moving. Superbly, to Jin's admittedly biased way of thinking.

Using walls, floor, and ceiling as backstops, his computer-driven servos had him bouncing all around the room, flashes of light flickering almost continuously from the little fingers of both hands as his metalwork lasers combined with his optical-enhancement targeting system to make impossible midair hits on his attackers. Half a dozen times the observation gallery's windows vibrated as reflections from one or the other of Justin's sonic weapons hit them, and once the brilliant spear of his antiarmor laser flashed out from the heel of his left leg to take out a persistent enemy right through the low covering wall it was hiding behind. Jin found herself gritting her teeth as she watched, hands clenched into fists at her sides as her body half crouched in sympathetic readiness. Someday, the thought came dimly through her tension, that could be me in there. Will be me in there.

At last the lopsided duel was over; and it was with mild surprise that Jin discovered she'd been watching for less than five minutes. Taking a deep breath, she blew at the drop of sweat on the tip of her nose and tapped on the window.

Below, her father looked up, surprise creasing his face as he saw her. Can I come down? she hand-signed to him.

Sure, he signed back. Main door.

She took the stairway down, and by the time she pushed open the heavy door he had a towel wrapped around his neck and was dabbing at his face with it. "Hi,

Jin," he greeted her, coming forward for a quick hug. His expression, she noted, was the flat-neutral one he always used when he was trying to bury some strong emotion. "This is a surprise."