Cobra Bargain

Chapter 25

Jin had never been one to make snap judgments of people. But in the case of

Radig Nardin she was severely tempted to make an exception.

"Overbearing sort, isn't he?" she murmured to Daulo as they stood a short distance from where Nardin was loudly supervising the loading of his metals.

"Yes," Daulo said tightly. His eyes and most of his attention, she saw, were on

Nardin; his arms, at his sides, were rigid.

Jin licked her lips. The tension in the air around them seemed almost thick enough to cast a shadow, and her stomach was beginning to tighten in sympathetic reaction. Whatever it was that was happening here, things seemed to be rapidly building up to a head, and she found herself easing away from Daulo just in case she suddenly needed room to maneuver. Nardin's two drivers and aides were somewhere off to the side... there. Nowhere near cover, should Nardin decide to pick a fight-

"Stop!" Daulo snapped.

Jin whipped her eyes back to Nardin. Almost leisurely, he turned around to face them, his hand raised in striking pose above one of the sweating Sammon workers.

His gaze flicked measuringly across Daulo's clothing, returned to his face. "You tolerate insubordinate attitudes in your workers, Master Sammon?" he called.

"If and when such insubordination is seen," Daulo said evenly, "it will be punished. And I will do the punishing."

For a moment the two young men locked eyes. Then, breathing something inaudible,

Nardin lowered his arm. Turning his back on Daulo, he stalked a few meters away from the loading area.

Jurisdictional dispute? Jin wondered. Apparently. Or else Nardin just liked going out of his way to irritate people. "You all right?" Jin asked Daulo quietly.

The other took a deep breath, seemed to relax a bit. "Yes," he said, exhaling in a hiss. "Some people just can't handle power this young."

Jin glanced at him, wondering if he noticed the irony of those words coming from a nineteen-year-old heir. "Radig Nardin is high in the Mangus hierarchy?" he asked.

"His father, Obolo Nardin, runs the place."

"Ah. Then Mangus is a family-run operation like yours?"

"Of course." Daulo seemed puzzled that she'd even have to ask such a question.

Across the way, the last few crates were being loaded onto the trunk. "How often does Mangus need these shipments?" she asked Daulo.

He considered. "About every three weeks. Why?"

She nodded at the truck. "Riding inside a crate might be the simplest way for me to get inside Mangus."

Daulo hissed thoughtfully between his teeth. "Only if you had time to get out before they locked all the crates away somewhere."

"Do they do that?"

"I don't know-I've never been there. Mangus always sends someone to pick up their shipments."

"Is that normal?"

"It is for Mangus. Though if you're right about what they're doing in there, it makes sense for them not to let villagers in."

The qualifier caught Jin's attention. "Only villagers? Can city people get in?"

"Regularly," Daulo nodded. "Mangus brings in work parties from Azras every two to three weeks for one-week periods. Simple assembly work, I gather."

"I don't understand," Jin frowned. "You mean they import their entire labor force?"

"Not the entire force, no. They have some permanent workers, most of them probably Nardin family members. I assume their assembly work comes in spurts and they'd rather not keep people there when they're not needed."

"Seems inefficient. What if some of those workers take other jobs in the meantime and aren't available when they need them?"

"I don't know. But as I said, it's simple assembly work. Training newcomers wouldn't be hard."

Jin nodded. "Do you know anyone personally who's been in one of the work parties?"

Daulo shook his head. "For city people only, remember? We only know about it through my father's relationship with Mayor Capparis of Azras."

"Right-you've mentioned him before. He keeps you informed on what Azras and the other cities are doing?"

"Somewhat. For a price, of course."

That price being preferential access to the Sammon family mine, no doubt. "Do the rest of Azras's political leaders share in this tradeoff?"

"Some." Daulo shrugged, a bit uncomfortably. "Like everyone else, Mayor Capparis has enemies."

"Um." Jin focused on Nardin's arrogant expression again; and, unbidden, an image popped into her mind. Peter Todor, early in their Cobra training, visibly and eagerly awaiting the moment when Jin would finally give up and quit. The moment when he'd be able to gloat over her defeat. "Is there any reason," she asked carefully, "why Mangus or Mayor Capparis's enemies should resent Milika in particular?"

Daulo frowned at her, "Why would they?"

She braced herself. "Could you be charging more for your goods than they consider fair?"

Daulo's eyes hardened. "We don't overcharge for what we sell," he said coldly.

"Our mine produces rare and valuable metals, which we purify to a high degree.

They'd be costly no matter who sold them."

"What about the Yithtra family, then?" Jin asked.

"What about them?"

"They sell lumber products, right? Do they overcharge the cities?"

Daulo's lip twisted. "No, not really," he admitted. "Actually, most of the lumber business out there bypasses Milika entirely. The Somilarai River, which cuts through the main logging area to the north, passes directly by Azras, so much of the lumber is simply floated downriver to processing areas there. What the Yithtra family has done has been to specialize in exotic types of wood products like rhella paper-things the more wholesale lumbering places can't do properly. You probably saw a few rhella trees on your way in from your ship: short, black-trunked things with diamond-shaped leaves?"

Jin shook her head. "Afraid I was looking more at what might be crouching up there than I was at the trees themselves. These rhellas are rare?"

"Not all that much, but the paper made from the inner pulp is the preferred medium for legal contracts, and that creates a high demand. Writing or printing on fresh rhella paper indents the surface, you see," he added, "and that indentation is permanent. So if the writing is altered in any way, it can be detected instantly."

"Handy," Jin agreed. "Expensive, too, I take it?"

"It's worth the cost. Why are you asking all this?"

Jin nodded toward Nardin. "He has the air about him of someone who's getting all ready to gloat," she said. "I was wondering if he's looking forward to gloating over the villages in general or Milika in particular."

"Well..." Daulo hesitated. "I'd have to say that even among Qasama's villages, we're considered somewhat... not renegades, exactly, but not quite part of the whole community, either."

"Because you're not tied into the central underground communications network?"

He looked at her in surprise. "How-? Oh, that's right; you learned all about that when you took over that Eastern Arm village your last time through. Yes, that's a large part of it. And even though other villages are now starting to sprout up outside the Great Arc, we were one of the first." He eyed her. "This is all part of your research on us?"

Jin felt her face warming. "Some," she admitted. "It's also related to the problem of Mangus, though."

He was silent for a long moment. Shifting her eyes from the loading dock, Jin looked around her. It was a beautiful day, with gentle breezes coming from the southwest adding contrast to the warmth of the sunlight. The sounds of village activity all around her melded into a pleasant hum; the occasional clinking of chains and cables from the mine entrance nearby added to the voices of the workers.

It was almost a shock to shift her eyes westward and see the wall. The wall, and the metal mesh addition the village had had to erect against the high-jumping spine leopards... the spine leopards her people had sent to them.

On the recommendation of her own grandfather.

A sudden shiver of guilt ran up her back. What would Daulo and Kruin think, she wondered bleakly, if they knew her family's role in bringing this burden onto them? Maybe that's why I was marooned here in the first place, the thought occurred to her. Maybe it's part of a divine retribution on my family.

"You all right?" Daulo asked.

She shook off the train of thought. "Sure. Just... thinking about home."

He nodded. "My father and I were wondering last night about what plans your people might be making to get you back."

She shrugged uncomfortably. "They're not likely to be planning anything except my memorial service. The way the crash destroyed the shuttle's transmitters, there wasn't any way I could signal our mother ship; and between that and what they would have seen from orbit they'd have assumed that everyone was dead. So they'll go on back, and everyone will mourn us for awhile, and then the

Directorate will start debating what to do next. Maybe in a few months they'll try this again. Maybe it won't be for a couple of years."

"You sound bitter."

Jin blinked away tears. "No, not bitter. Just... afraid of how my father's gong to take this. He wanted so much for me to be a Cobra-"

"A what?"

"A Cobra. It's the proper name for what you call a demon warrior. He wanted so much for me to follow in the family tradition... and now he'll wonder if he pushed me where I didn't want to go."

"Did he?" Daulo asked quietly.

Oddly enough, Jin felt no resentment at the question. "No. I love him a lot,

Daulo, and I might have been willing to become a Cobra just from that love. But, no-I wanted this as much as he did."

Daulo snorted gently. "A warrior woman. Seems almost a contradiction in terms."

"Only by your history. And on our own worlds Cobras are more like civilian peacekeepers than fighters."

"Almost like what the mojos were to us," Daulo pointed out.

Jin considered. "Interesting analogy," she admitted.

He gave a sound that was half snort, half chuckle. "Just think of the sort of peacekeeper force we could have if we combined the two."

"Cobras and mojos?" She shook her head. "No chance. In fact, it's occurred to me more than once that that may be exactly the thought that scared our leaders the most: the idea that your mojos might spread to Aventine, that we might wind up having our Cobras controlled by alien minds."

"But if it would make them less dangerous-"

"The mojos have their own priorities and purposes," Jin reminded him. "I'd just as soon not find out what one might do with a Cobra."

Daulo sighed. "You're probably right," he conceded. "Still-"

"Master Sammon?" a voice called from behind them. They turned, and Jin saw

Daulo's chauffeur waving to them from the doorway of the mine's business center.

"A call for you. Important, he says."

Daulo nodded and set off at a brisk trot. Jin watched him take the chauffeur's place at the phone, then turned back to watch Nardin. Mangus. Mongoose. The name alone gave the lie to all her talk about city versus village warfare. A compound called Mongoose could have only one possible focus, and that was outward from

Qasama. In the back of her mind, her conscience twinged: should she continue to let Daulo and his father believe that Mangus was a plot against the villages?

Especially since they might withdraw their support from her if they knew the truth?

"Jasmine Alventin!"

She started and twisted around. Daulo was beckoning urgently to her as he opened the car's left-hand rear door; the chauffeur was already in the front seat.

Heart thudding in her throat, Jin jogged over to join them. "What is it?" she asked, pulling open the right-hand door and sliding in the back beside Daulo.

"One of our people noticed a Yithtra family truck coming in by the south gate,"

Daulo said, his voice tight. "It had something like a tree trunk sticking from the back, covered with some kind of cloth so that it couldn't be seen.

Jin frowned. "An unusual tree they don't want anyone to see?"

"That's what our spotter thought. It occurred to me that there's something else of that shape that they might be even more anxious to hide from sight."

Jin's mouth went dry. A missile? "That's... crazy," she managed. "Where would they have gotten something like that?"

Daulo's eyes flicked to the chauffeur. "Whatever it is, I want to try and get a look at it."

The chauffer sped them down the spoke road to the Small Ring, turning counterclockwise onto it. "The simplest route would be to take the spoke road directly from the south gate to the Small Ring," Daulo muttered. "But in this case... I'm going to guess they'll turn instead onto the Great Ring and take it to the Yithtra section, then come down that spoke road to the house. What do you think, Walare?"

"Sounds reasonable, Master Daulo," the chauffeur nodded. "Shall I run that in reverse and see if we can catch them?"

"Right."

Guiding the vehicle expertly through the pedestrian crowds, Walare curved around the Inner Green, passed the spoke road from the south gate, and continued on toward the grand house Daulo had identified some days earlier as that of the

Yithtra family. Another spoke road angled off just before it, and Walare turned down it. Jin looked back at the house as they headed away, noting the liveried guards at all the visible entrances-

"There," Daulo snapped, pointing at a small truck far ahead down the spoke road.

Jin keyed in her optical enhancers for a look at the truck's three occupants.

All three looked oddly tense, but none seemed especially suspicious of the car approaching them. A minute later the two vehicles passed each other, and Daulo and Jin both spun around in their places.

There was indeed something cylindrical poking awkwardly out from between the truck's rear doors; and it was indeed swathed heavily in some kind of silky white cloth. "Follow it," Daulo ordered Walare. "Well, Jasmine Alventin?" he added as the car swung into a tight U-turn.

Jin pursed her lips, trying to estimate the object's length and circumference.

"It's not very big, if it's what we think it is," she told him. "Rather obvious, too."

"Point," Daulo admitted. "Especially since they've got regular log carriers they could have used to bring something like that in without it being seen at all.

You think perhaps it is nothing but a tree trunk brought in to stir us up?"

Jin chewed at her lip. It might be possible to glean something even through all that cloth. "Let me try something," she said. Leaning her head out the side window, she keyed in her optical enhancers' infrared capability.

The reflection/radiation profile was strong and dramatic; and even with the background clutter from the truck and pavement around it, there was no room for doubt. "It's metal," she told Daulo.

He nodded grimly. "I'm sure you realize what this means. The Yithtra family's made a deal with Mangus."

"Or else they stole it. Which could get the whole village in trouble."

Daulo hissed between his teeth. "Trouble from agents seeking to retrieve it?"

Or straightforward retaliation, Jin thought. But there was no point in worrying

Daulo with that one. "Basically," she told him. "On the other hand, we've now got a chance to pick up some information without having to go all the way to

Mangus for it."

He stared at her. "Are you serious? We can't break into the Yithtra family house."

"I didn't think we could," Jin told him tightly. "That's why I'm going to have to do this here and now."

He said something incredulous sounding, but she was too busy thinking to pay attention. There were a dozen ways to take out a vehicle, but all of them would instantly brand her as a demon warrior. To their right, another of Milika's marketplaces stretched alongside the street, teeming with potential witnesses to anything she tried.

Potential witnesses... but also potential diversions. "Pull up closer to the truck," she ordered the chauffeur. "In a minute I'll want you to pass it."

"Master Daulo...?" the other asked.

"Do it," Daulo confirmed. "Jin-?"

"I'm going to jump out as you start to pass and get into the truck," she told him, eyes searching across the marketplace booths ahead as she lowered the window. Somewhere out there had to be what she was looking for...

There-right beside the street fifty meters ahead: a group of six customers holding an animated discussion beside a vendor of food and drink... and four of the six carried mojos on their shoulders. "Pull up," she ordered Walare. "Daulo

Sammon, I'll meet you back at the house." From the corner of her eye she saw them closing on the truck ahead; activating her target system, she locked onto the bellies of three of the mojos. Even in the glare of full daylight, she knew, it was going to be a calculated risk to fire even low-power shots from her fingertip lasers. But there wasn't anything she could do about that except cross her fingers and pray that no one noticed them. Walare had them directly behind the truck now, and was starting to pull around; and as the food booth shot past,

Jin fired three shots in rapid succession.

It was all she could have hoped for. The birds' screams pierced the air like a triple siren, followed immediately by an equal number of human bellows. Jin got a quick glimpse of the scorched mojos tearing furiously around through the air as everyone nearby scrambled for safety from the birds' unexpected behavior; and as the sudden ruckus audibly spread behind her she wrenched the car door open and flipped her legs out onto the pavement. For a second she held onto the door for balance as her feet caught the stride; then, shoving the door shut, she surged forward. Her timing was perfect: with Walare halfway into his passing maneuver, her side of the car had been directly behind the truck, out of view of any rear-facing mirror. A two-second quick-sprint put her beside the cylinder's bouncing nose; grabbing the edge of one of the open doors, she pulled herself up and through the gap and into the welcome shadows inside the truck.

She took a shuddering breath, acutely aware of the time limit now counting down.

In five minutes or less the truck would reach the Yithtra house, and if she didn't get out before then, she might very well have to shoot her way out.

Crouching down beside the cylinder, she tore away its silky covering... and froze.

The cloth wasn't just cloth. It was light and tight-woven, with cords tied between it and the cylinder.

A parachute.

And the cylinder beneath it was smooth and white, with black scorch marks liberally splattered over its surface. Marks that nevertheless didn't obscure the lettering on the loosely fastened access panel:

TYPE 6-KX TRANSFER CONTAINER: FOR GOVERNMENTAL SHIPPING USE ONLY.

God above, she thought numbly. The Yithtra family hadn't bought or stolen a missile, after all. They'd found something far worse: a goodbye present from the

Southern Cross.

A present for her.