Timothy Zahn - Cobra Bargain

And found she'd been right.

A cold chill shivered its way up her back. Mangus, she thought to herself, bitterness at her stupidity bringing a knot to her stomach. Mangus. Mongoose. An utterly obvious and natural name for a group seeing itself as the Qasaman answer to the Cobra threat. She and Kruin Sammon had both caught the name's significance, even to the point of having an argument about it... and in all of that fuss both of them had still managed to miss one small fact.

The fact that no one on Qasama had any business naming such a group mongoose in the first place... because no one on Qasama had ever heard the hated demon warriors referred to as Cobras.

Until now.

The Troft ship below was only about half visible, its long neck disappearing into a Troft-style maintenance building while a squat siege-tower unloader partially blocked her view of the main drive nozzles at the aft end. But enough was showing for her to see that the usual inkblot/sunburst indicators of ownership and demesne identification were missing.

There were figures moving down there-mostly Trofts, but a handful of humans as well. If the Trofts hadn't bothered to remove the equivalent identity marks from their clothing... but a quick telescopic examination showed they had. Something on the oddly shaped residential building across the compound from the ship, then? She shifted her attention to it-

And without warning there was a hooting of alarms from behind her.

Reflexively, she flattened herself to the top of the wall, biting back a curse as the human half of Mangus seemed to explode with light. Her light-amps automatically shut off in the glare; clenching her jaw, she kicked in her audio enhancers to compensate. Her opponents had the edge in sheer numbers, but if she could spot their positions before they started shooting, she might be able to eliminate them before they could do her too much damage.

Trained responses took over from the momentary panic... and it was only then that she realized that the floodlights weren't being directed at her. In fact, the placement of many of them-fastened to the wall a meter below her-had actually wound up leaving her in relative shadow. Lifting her head a few centimeters, she keyed her optical enhancers to telescopic and scanned the compound for the focus of the commotion.

It wasn't hard to find. Daulo and Akim, the latter limping slightly, were being half dragged away from the outer gate by an escort of six armed men.

Jin ground her teeth savagely. I should have gone with them, she told herself bitterly. For a long minute she watched the group walk toward the administrative center, a hundred wild schemes for saving them rushing tornado-like through her mind. Then, with a shuddering breath, she forced her emotions aside. All right, girl, knock it off. Calm down and think it out.

Daulo and Akim had been captured. All right. Obolo Nardin would know soon that they were on to his secret; but then he'd already suspected that much, anyway,

Furthermore, since neither man had escaped or otherwise breached Mangus's security, there was no reason for Obolo to panic. Which meant that the inevitable interrogation would presumably be handled in a relatively leisurely fashion, and also that the Troft ship down there wouldn't be sent scurrying prematurely off to space with its cargo only half unloaded.

Until, that was, Obolo discovered his offworlder spy had escaped.

Damn.

Jin chewed at her lip, trying hard to come up with an alternative... but there wasn't one. Not if she wanted Daulo to live past the next hour or so. And the whole idea wasn't as crazy as it looked at first glance, anyway. Obolo was smart enough, but for all his chemically-stimulated mental abilities, he still lacked one crucial fact... and as long as he thought Jin was just an ordinary

Aventinian, she and Daulo would have a chance.

The floodlights bathing the compound were still on, but the activity at the gate was dissipating now as the prisoners and their escort marched down the road toward the administrative center. Sliding along on her belly, Jin eased forward until she was between two of the wall-mounted lights. The ground directly below wasn't exactly dark, but it was as good as she was going to get. Taking a last look around, she slid off the wall to hang for a second by her hands, and dropped.

And gasped in shock as the impact of landing sent a stab of pain up through her left knee.

"Damn!" she hissed under her breath, rolling awkwardly over to a sitting position and clenching her leg tightly. For a long and terrifying minute she was afraid the vaunted Cobra equipment had failed her, that she'd actually succeeded in spraining or even breaking the joint. But finally the pain began to ease, and in another minute she was able to scramble carefully to her feet and start limping toward the administrative center.

She hadn't yet figured out how she was going to cover that much floodlit ground without being seen, but fortunately that problem solved itself. She'd taken only a few steps before the lights abruptly cut off, plunging the compound again into darkness. Excitement's over, folks; go to bed, she thought, increasing her speed to a sort of syncopated trot. Now if the freshly relaxed security extended to the doors of the administrative center...

Surprisingly, it did. Even more surprisingly, it also extended to the lower levels of the building where her cell was located; though once she thought about it it was obvious that any preliminary interrogation of their new prisoners would be taking place upstairs in Obolo's throne room. She hoped Daulo would remember to leave her out of whatever story he and Akim told them.

The guards she'd stunned were still lying unconscious in the washroom where she'd left them. Retrieving them, she treated each to another blast from her sonic as a precaution and then carried them back to their posts. A quick study of the cell door; then, raising her fingertip lasers, she burned a spectacular but shallow arc part of the way around the lock area. Not too much, she warned herself. Your theoretical rescuer didn't get very far, remember. When Obolo sent someone to check on her-as he eventually would-there had to be a plausible explanation as to why the guards had been knocked unconscious but Jin still a prisoner. Whatever conclusion Obolo came to, it ought to be possible to bend it to her own ends. She hoped.

A minute later she was back in her cell, relocking it behind her via the exposed mechanism. Replacing the metal plate over the opening was somewhat trickier, but by softening it first with her lasers she was able to smooth it back without leaving any major stress wrinkles to show it had once been off.

And after that there was nothing to do but wait. We'll let the offworlder spy kill them for us, Obolo had told his son. Jin had no idea how he planned to do it; but if he wanted to do it properly he would need to at least have Jin in the same room with Daulo and Akim before they were killed.

She hoped to God that Obolo would want to do it properly.

"In the name of the Shahni," Akim intoned formally, "I hereby charge you with treason against Qasama. All here are released of vows of loyalty to others and ordered to surrender to my authority."

A fine speech, Daulo thought; delivered with just the right combination of command and righteous anger.

It would undoubtedly have sounded even better if he and Akim hadn't been on their knees with their hands manacled behind them.

Seated on his cushions, Obolo Nardin raised a bored eyebrow. "You maintain your dignity well, Miron Akim," he said in a raspy voice. "So. You have said the required words. Now tell me the reason for which you charge my household with treason."

Akim's lip twisted. "Or in other words, what do the Shahni know about your treachery? Don't be foolish."