Timothy Zahn - Cobra Bargain

"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."

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.