Timothy Zahn: Cobra Bargain

"Thirty-seven of the fifty-two," Barynson said. "All but two of the others-"

"Lose some of the territory directly to the east of that section," Priesly interrupted him.

Corwin felt something cold crawl up his back. "You have any small-scales of that place?" he asked.

A slightly grainy picture replaced the map. "This is a photo taken three years ago, before the rash of malfunctions," Barynson said. "For those familiar with the Qasaman landscape, the city in the left-center of the picture is Azras; the one northeast of it, near top-center, is Purma."

Involuntarily, Corwin glanced up at Telek, to find her eyes likewise on him.

Purma-the city where the Qasamans had tried their damnedest to kill three members of Telek's original spy mission... one of those three being Justin.

"Now here-" the photo changed "-is that same area as of the last satellite collection two weeks ago."

Azras and Purma were essentially unchanged. But in the center of the screen-

"What's that thing in the middle?" Gavin asked.

"It appears to be a large compound or encampment or something." Barynson took a deep breath. "And from all indications, it's not only encircled by the standard

Qasaman defensive wall, but is also completely covered on top."

Protected from overhead surveillance... "And those areas on either side of it?"

Corwin asked.

"Those could have been blanked out by accident," Barynson said carefully. "But if they're not... we think it significant that east-parallel to the planet's rotation-is the obvious direction for practice in firing large, long-range rockets."

There was a long moment of silence. "Are you telling us," Bailar said at last,

"that that covered compound is the center of a Qasaman missile base?"

Barynson nodded grimly. "The probability seems high that the Qasamans are attempting to rediscover space travel. And that they may be succeeding."

For a long minute there was silence in the room. Then Atterberry stirred.

"Well," he said to no one in particular, "so much for that one."

"So much for that one what?" Telek growled at him.

"That attempt to keep the Qasamans down," Atterberry amplified. "Trying to break their intersocial cooperation by tricking the mojos off the people and onto spine leopards-the whole Moreau Proposal, in other words."

"Who says it's been a failure?" Corwin put in, not bothering to keep the annoyance out of his voice. He and his family had sweat blood over that proposal... and in the process had saved the Cobra Worlds a long and costly and possibly losing war. "All we have here is an inference from a possible assumption based on questionable data. With that underground communications system of theirs we have no way of really knowing what's going on down there."

"All right," Atterberry snorted. "Let's hear your idea of what that compound is for, then."

"There could be hundreds of explanations," Corwin shot back. "Ninety percent of which would have nothing to do with any spaceward expansion."

"Such as a new test facility for the air-to-air missiles they've already got, for instance," Telek said. "Or longer-range ones for use against each other."

Chandler cleared his throat. "I think you're both missing the point," he said.

"Whatever they're doing down there, the fact is that if Dr. Barynson and his colleagues are correct about the satellite malfunctions, then we're already talking a serious threat. Am I correct, Dr. Barynson, in the assumption that those satellites aren't easily knocked out?"

"Without our realizing that they had been deliberately hit?" Barynson nodded.

"Most definitely. That's one of the reasons we were so slow to notice the pattern of the downtimes, in fact-with no obvious physical damage anywhere, there was no reason to assume the Qasamans were responsible."

"Have we established the Qasamans were responsible?" Vartanson spoke up. "You haven't yet suggested a mechanism for this purported sabotage, Doctor, and until you do I don't see how this can be treated as anything but an admittedly odd coincidence."

Barynson scratched at his cheek. "That's the dilemma we're in, all right,

Governor," he admitted. "As I said, there hasn't been any obvious physical damage to any of the satellites. We've checked into some of the other possibilities-high-powered lasers blinding the lenses from the surface, for example-but so far none of the simulations give us the right kind of damage profile."

"How about ionizing radiation?" Vartanson persisted. "And I don't necessarily mean radiation from Qasama."

"Solar flares?" Barynson shrugged. "It's certainly one possibility. But if we assume random flares or ionosphere shifts we're still left with the question of why only that one area was so often left unmonitored."

"It seems to me," Nguyen spoke up quietly, "that we could argue about this forever without getting anywhere. Mr. Moreau is correct: we have insufficient data for any solid conclusions. The only way we're going to get the kind of information we need will be to go back down there."

"In other words, send in another spy mission," Atterberry said with undisguised distaste. "The last one we sent in-"

"Wound up buying us nearly thirty years of peace," Telek put in tartly.

"Postponing a war that's going to have to be fought anyway, you mean-"

"Who said it's going to have to be fought?" Telek snapped. "For all we know, that compound has nothing to do with us-it could just as well be part of the preparations for an all-out internecine war that'll blow the Qasamans back to a pre-metal culture."

"I hope," Priesly said quietly, "that you aren't as eager for that result as you sound."

Telek's jaw tightened visibly. "I don't particularly want to see the Qasamans destroy themselves, no," she growled. "But if it comes down to a choice between them and us, I want us to be the ones who survive."

Chandler cleared his throat. "It should be obvious that, whatever reservations we might have, Mr. Nguyen is correct. Another mission to Qasama is called for, and the sooner we get it underway, the sooner we'll find out what's going on."

He tapped a key on his reader, and the telephoto on Corwin's reader was replaced by a list of nine names. "Given the experience of the first Qasaman mission,"

Chandler continued, "it would appear to make more sense to start primarily with new Cobra recruits than to try and retrain older frontier-duty Cobras for the different kind of action they might face on Qasama. I've taken the liberty of running a preliminary sort-through of the latest acceptance list; these are the names that fell out."

"Sorted how?" Gavin asked.

"Particular emotional stability, ability to mix well and comfortably socially-that sort of thing," Chandler replied. "It's just a preliminary sorting, of course."

Vartanson straightened up from his reader. "How many Cobras were you planning to send on the mission?" he asked Chandler.

"The initial plan is calling for one experienced Cobra and four fresh recruits-"

"You can't have them," Vartanson said flatly.

All eyes turned to the Cobra. "What in the worlds are you talking about?" Bailar asked, frowning.

Vartanson gestured at his reader. "Six of these recruits are from Caelian. We need them back there."

Chandler took a deep breath. "Mr. Vartanson... I understand the close community feeling the people of Caelian have-"

"There are barely three thousand of us left, Mr. Chandler," Vartanson said, his tone icy. "Twenty-five hundred civilians, five hundred Cobras-all of us fighting for our lives against Hell's Own Blender. We can't afford to let you take even one of those Cobras away from us... and you're not going to."

An uncomfortable silence filled the room. Caelian was a dead-end world, in every sense of the word-a planet abandoned after years of struggle against its incredibly fluid ecology had bought the colonists nothing but a stalemate. Most of the population, when offered transport to the new world of Esquiline a quarter-century ago, had jumped at the chance... but for a small fraction of that populace, the mindless Caelian ecology had taken on the status of a powerful and almost sentient enemy, and to run from that enemy had seemed to them to be an acceptance of defeat and dishonor. Corwin had visited Caelian once since that remnant had dug in for the battle, and had come away with the uncomfortable picture of the people of Hell's Blender as rafters on a raging river. Drifting away not only from the rest of the Cobra Worlds community, but possibly even from their own basic humanity.