"Governor Moreau?"
Deep in personal combat with the official bafflegab staring out at him from his reader, Governor Corwin Jame Moreau switched mental gears with an effort and turned his attention to his intercom. It made for a pleasant change; Thena MiGraw's face was a lot nicer to look at than Directorate papers. "Yes, Thena?"
"Sir, Justin is here. Shall I have him wait a few minutes?"
Corwin grimaced. Shall I have him wait. Translation: should she give Corwin a few minutes to prepare himself. Typically perceptive of Thena... but Corwin had already stalled this confrontation off a couple of days, and if he wasn't ready now, he never would be. "No, go ahead and send him in," he instructed her.
"Yes, sir."
Corwin took a deep breath, straightening himself in his chair and reaching over to shut off the reader. A moment later the door opened and Justin Moreau strode briskly into the room.
Strode briskly; but to Corwin's experienced eye the subtle beginnings of Cobra Syndrome were already starting to show in his brother's movements. The ceramic laminae coating Justin's bones, the implanted weaponry, servos, and joint strengtheners—after twenty-eight years his body was beginning to react to all of it, precipitating the arthritis and anemia that would, a decade or two from now, bring his life to a premature end. Corwin winced in sympathetic pain, wishing for the millionth time that there was something he could do to alter the inevitable. But there wasn't. Like his father before him, Justin had chosen this path willingly.
And like the late Jonny Moreau, he had also chosen to accept his fate with quiet dignity, keeping his pain to himself whenever possible and quietly deflecting any offers of sympathy. In Corwin's opinion, it was a counterproductive approach, serving mainly to increase the Moreau family's collective sense of frustration and helplessness. But he understood his brother well enough to know they had to grant him his choice of how to face the long and painful path ahead.
"Justin," Corwin nodded in greeting, reaching across the desk to offer his brother his hand. "You're looking good. How are you feeling?"
"Pretty good," Justin said. "Actually, I suspect that at the moment you're suffering more from Cobra Syndrome than I am."
Corwin felt his lip twist. "Caught the debate on the pub/info net last night, I see."
Justin made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. "All of it I could stomach, anyway. Which wasn't very much. Is Priesly as much of a phrijpicker in private as he is in public?"
"I almost wish he was. I'd actually be happier if he and the rest of the Jects were simply the frothing idiots they look like on the net—if they were we'd have found their strings years ago." Corwin sighed. "No, unfortunately Priesly is as sharp as he is gantua-headed, and now that he's finally hammered the Jects into a real political force he sees himself as holding the balance of power in both the Council and Directorate. That's heavy stuff for someone who considers himself an outcast, and he sometimes goes a little overboard."
"Does he?" Justin asked bluntly. "Hold the balance of power, I mean?"
Corwin shrugged. "I don't know," he admitted. "With his pack of sore losers trying to stir up a full-fledged crisis none of the Syndics or Governors seem quite sure of how to handle him. If Priesly offers them a deal that would henceforth keep him quiet..." He shook his head. "It's conceivable they might go for it."
"We still need the Cobras," Justin interjected with some heat. "Need them more than ever, in fact. With Esquiline and the other New Worlds expanding like crazy, they need a steady supply of Cobras. Not to mention the need to keep a credible Cobra force here in case some group of Trofts decide to—"
"Easy, brother," Corwin cut him off, hands held palm outward. "You're preaching to the converted, remember?"
"Sorry," Justin growled. "Priesly's pack has a way of getting under my skin. I wish someone had realized sooner that the Jects were a political powder keg waiting for a flicker to come along. That should have been obvious as soon as we found out about Cobra Syndrome."
"Hindsight is wonderful, isn't it?" Corwin said dryly. "What would you have done, then?"
"Given them the regular nanocomputer and made them full Cobras in the first place," Justin growled. "It's just a waste of time, energy, and expensive equipment to have them running around with bone laminae and servos their computer won't let them use."
Corwin cocked an eyebrow. He'd heard variants of that argument before, but never from Justin. "You don't really mean that."
"Why not?" Justin countered. "Okay, so the training period uncovered psychological problems the pre-screening had missed. So what? Most of the glitches weren't all that severe; given time, they'd probably have worked things out eventually by themselves."
"And what about the harder cases?" Corwin asked. "Would you really have taken the risk of turning potentially unstable Cobras loose on the general population?"
"We could have handled that," Justin said doggedly. "They could have been assigned out of the way somewhere—permanent spine leopard hunting duty, maybe, or the really tricky cases could have been sent to Caelian. If they didn't work out their problems, eventually they'd have done something stupid and gotten themselves killed."
"And if they weren't so cooperative?" Corwin asked quietly. "If they decided instead that they were being dumped on and went after revenge?"
Some of the energy went out of Justin's face. "Yeah," he sighed. "And then it would be Challinor all over again."
A shiver went up Corwin's back. Tors Challinor's attempted treason had occurred well over half a century ago, before he'd even been born... but he remembered the stories his parents had told him about that time. Remembered them as vividly as if he'd been there himself. Jonny had made sure of that; the incident had carried some vital truths, and he hadn't wanted them to ever get lost. "Challinor, or worse," he told Justin soberly. "Remember that this time it wouldn't have been basically stable Cobras pushed by idiot bureaucracy to take matters into their own hands. It would have been flawed Cobras, and a hell of a lot more of them." He took a deep breath, willing the memories away. "Agreed, Priesly is a nuisance; but at least as a Ject all he can go for is political power."
"I suppose you're right," Justin sighed. "It's just that... never mind. As long as we're on the subject, though—" Digging into his tunic pocket, he pulled a magcard out and tossed it onto the desk. "Here's our latest proposal for how to close the remaining gaps in the prelim psych tests. I figured as long as I was coming over here anyway I'd give you an advance copy."
Corwin took the magcard, trying not to grimace. A perfectly reasonable thing for Justin to do, and under normal circumstances nothing for anyone to complain about. But things in the Council and Directorate weren't exactly normal at the moment. Advance notice. Corwin could just hear what Priesly and his allies would say about this. "Thanks," he told Justin, placing the magcard over by his reader. "Though I may not get time to look at it until after the rest of the Council get their copies, anyway."
Justin's forehead furrowed slightly. "Oh? Well, it's hardly going to make a big splash, I'm afraid. We're projecting to go from a seven-percent post-surgery rejection rate to maybe a four, four and a half percent rate."
Corwin nodded heavily. "About what we expected. No chance of getting things any tighter?"
Justin shook his head. "The psych people aren't even sure we can get it this tight. The problem is that having Cobra gear implanted in people sometimes... changes them."
"I know. It's better than nothing, I suppose." For a moment there was silence. Corwin's gaze drifted out his window, to the Capitalia skyline. That skyline had changed a lot in the twenty-six years since he'd struck out on his own into the maze that was Cobra Worlds politics. Unfortunately, other things had changed even more than the skyline. Lately he found himself spending a lot of time staring out that window, trying to recapture the sense of challenge and excitement he'd once felt about his profession. But the bootstrapping seldom worked. Somewhere along the line, pushed perhaps by Priesly's public bitterness, Cobra Worlds politics had taken on a hard edge Corwin had never before experienced. In many ways it had soured the game for him—turned both his victories and defeats a uniform bittersweet gray—and made the governorship a form of combat instead of a means for aiding the progress of his worlds.
It brought to mind thoughts about his father, who had similarly soured on politics late in life, and more and more often these days he found himself fantasizing about chucking the whole business and escaping to Esquiline or one of the other New Worlds.
But he couldn't, and he knew it. As long as the Jects' sour grapes were threatening the foundation of the Cobra Worlds' security and survival, someone had to stay and fight. And he'd long ago realized that he was one of those someones.
Across the desk from him Justin shifted slightly in his chair, breaking the train of Corwin's musings. "I assume you had a specific reason for asking me here?" he probed gently.
Corwin took a deep breath and braced himself. "Yes, I did. I heard from Coordinator Maung Kha three days ago about Jin's application to the Academy. He was..." He hesitated, trying one last time to find a painless way to say this.
"Summarily rejecting it?" Justin offered.
Corwin gave up. "She never had a chance," he said bluntly, forcing himself to look his brother straight in the eye. "You should have realized that right from the start and not let her file it."
Justin didn't flinch. "You mean there's no reason to try and change an unfair policy simply because it is policy?"
"Come on, Justin—you teach out there, for heaven's sake. You know how traditions hang on. Especially military traditions."
"I also know that those traditions started back in the Old Dominion of Man," Justin countered. "We haven't exactly been noted for blindly adopting their methods in anything else. Why should the military be immune?"
Corwin sighed. Various combinations of Moreau family members had hashed through all this in one form or another dozens of times over the past few years, ever since Justin's youngest daughter had first decided she wanted to follow in her father's Cobra footsteps. Like Justin's father before him... and Corwin was well aware that, for the Moreaus at least, family tradition wasn't something to be treated lightly.
Unfortunately, most of the others on the Council didn't see it that way. "Military tradition is always particularly hidebound," he told Justin. "You know it, I know it, the worlds know it. It comes of having conservative old people like you at the top running things."
Justin ignored the attempt at levity. "But Jin would be a good Cobra, possibly even a great Cobra—and that's not just my opinion. I've given her the standard screening tests—"
"You've what?" Corwin cut him off, aghast. "Justin—damn it all, you know better than that. Those tests are exclusively for the use of the Academy."
"Spare me the lecture, please. The point is that she scored in the top five percent of the acceptance range. She's better equipped, mentally and emotionally, than ninety-five percent of the people we've accepted."
"Even granting all that," Corwin sighed, "the point remains that she's a woman, and women have never been Cobras."
"Up till now they haven't—"
"Governor!" Thena MiGraw's voice on the intercom cut him off. "There's a man coming—"
And behind Justin the door slammed open and a stranger leaped into the office.
"Destroy the Cobras!" he shrieked.
Corwin froze, the sheer unexpectedness of it holding him in place for those first crucial seconds. The intruder took a few rapid steps into the room, arms waving, raving just short of incomprehensibility. Out of the corner of his eye Corwin saw that Justin had dropped out of his chair, spinning on his heels into a crouch facing the intruder. "All right, hold it!" the Cobra snapped. His hands were up, the little fingers with their implanted lasers tracking the man.
But if the other heard Justin's command, he ignored it. "The Cobras are the destruction of freedom and liberty," he screamed, taking yet another step toward Corwin. "They must be destroyed!" His right hand swung in a wide circle toward Corwin's face and then dipped into his tunic pocket—
And Justin's outstretched fingers spat needles of light directly into his chest.
The man shrieked, an oddly gurgling sound. His knees buckled, slamming him to the floor. With an effort, Corwin shook off his stunned paralysis and jabbed at the intercom. "Thena! Security and a med team, fast."
"Already called them, Governor," she said, her own voice trembling with shock.
Justin had stepped to the intruder's side and knelt down beside him. "Alive?" Corwin asked, holding his breath as his brother's fingers touched the other's neck.
"Yeah. At least for the moment. Any idea what the hell that was all about?"
"None. Let's let Security sort it out." Corwin took a deep breath, let it out carefully. "Glad you were here. Thanks."
"No charge. Let's find out what kind of gun he was carrying..." Justin reached into the intruder's tunic pocket... and an odd expression settled onto his face. "Hell," he said, very softly.
"What?" Corwin snapped, getting to his feet.
Still kneeling beside the wounded man, Justin gazed down at him. "He's unarmed."
Cari Moreau slouched back in her lounge chair, a seventeen-year-old's version of a martyr's expression plastered across her face. "Aw, come on, Jin," she complained. "Again?"
Jasmine Moreau—"Jin" to her family and everyone else she could persuade to use the nickname—gazed at her younger cousin with a combination of patience, affection, and rock-solidness, "Again," she said firmly. "You want to pass this test or don't you?"
Cari sighed theatrically. "Oh, all right. Slavemaker. Misk'rhe'ha solfowp'smeaf, pierec'eay'kartoh—"
"That's 'khartoh,' " Jin interrupted. "Kh-sound, not k. And the initial 'p' in 'pierec'eay'khartoh' is aspirated." She demonstrated. "The difference between p-sounds in 'pin' and 'spin.' "
"I don't hear any difference," Cari grumbled. "And I'll bet Ms. Halverson won't, either."
"Maybe she won't, no," Jin agreed. "But if you ever plan to use your catertalk on any Trofts, you'd better be sure to get it right."
"So who says I'm planning to use it on any Trofts?" Cari grumbled. "Any Trofts I run into are gonna understand Anglic."
"You don't know that," Jin shook her head. "Traders or demesne representatives assigned to the Worlds will, sure. But who says you're never going to wind up somewhere out in space with only Trofts who snargled off in their language lessons, too?"
That got her a snort from her cousin. "That's easy for you to say. You're gonna be the Cobra zipping around out there, not me. Of course you're gonna need to know catertalk and Qasaman and all."
Jin felt a lump rise to her throat. Of all her relatives, Cari was the only one who was truly enthusiastic about her Cobra ambitions... and the only one who took for granted that she would achieve them. On that latter point even Jin's father had trouble, and Jin could remember times when only a long private talk with Cari had kept those hopes and dreams alive...
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."
"Thena called an hour ago and said you were on your way home from the hospital," she explained. "When you didn't show up, I decided to come and find you."
He grunted. "I hope you didn't drive all over Capitalia looking for me."
"Of course not. Where else would you be?"
"Visiting my past?" He glanced around the room.
"Working out tension," she corrected him. "Come on, Dad—I know you better than that."
He gave her a half-hearted smile, the mask sliding from his face as he did so to reveal the hidden ache behind it. "You do indeed, my little Jasmine," he said quietly. "You always have."
She put her hand on his arm. "It's a mess, isn't it?"
He nodded. "Yeah. How are you and your sisters holding up?"
"Oh, we're doing all right. The real question is how are you doing?"
He shrugged. "As well as can be expected. Better, after this," he added, waving a hand to take in the Danger Room. "How much did Thena tell you?"
"The condensed version only. What happened, Dad?"
His eyes held hers for a minute, then slipped away to look around the room. "It was the stupidest slop-headed thing you've ever seen," he sighed. "On my part, I mean. This guy—Baram Monse, the hospital ID'd him—just burst in and started yelling and cursing—anti-Cobra stuff, mainly. I tried stunning him, but he was moving and I turned too slowly to get the sonic lined up properly." He shook his head. "Anyway, he reached into his pocket and I figured he was going for a weapon. It was too late to physically jump him... so I used my lasers."
Across the room a maintenance robot trundled in through an access door and began picking up one of the "dead" target robots. "And he didn't have a gun?" Jin ventured at last.
"You got it," Justin said, a touch of bitterness seeping into his tone. "No gun, no spray, not even a tangler reel. Just a simple, harmless, unarmed crank. And I shot him."
Jin looked past him at the maintenance robot. "Was it a setup?" she asked.
From the corner of her eye she caught her father's frown. "What do you mean?" he asked carefully.
"Was Monse trying to goad you or Uncle Corwin into attacking him? Trying to make you look bad?" She turned back to face him. "I don't know if you've seen the net yet, but an absolute flood of condemnation hit the thing practically from the minute Monse was taken off to the hospital. That wasn't reaction—those people had their rhetoric primed and ready to go."
Justin hissed through his teeth. "The thought has crossed my mind, I'll admit. And you haven't even heard the best part yet: the fact that Monse is going to live despite taking a pair of setting-two fingertip laser blasts square in the center of his chest. Want to hazard a guess as to how he managed that?"
She frowned. Body armor was the obvious answer... but it was clear from her father's tone that it was something more interesting than that. Monse would have needed some kind of protection, though—at short range, a twin laser burst at number-two setting would have been perfectly adequate to cut through bones the thickness of ribs or breastbone and take out the lungs or heart beneath them.
Adequate, at least, to cut through normal bones... "The same reason Winward lived?" she asked hesitantly.
Justin nodded. "You got it."
A shiver went up Jin's spine. Michael Winward, shot in the chest by a projectile gun during the first Qasaman mission twenty-eight years ago... surviving that attack solely because the bullet was deflected by the ceramic laminae coating his breastbone and ribcage. "A Ject," she murmured. "That little phrijpicker Monse is a lousy Ject."
"Bull's-eye," Justin sighed. "Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that he was unarmed when I shot him."
"Why not?" Jin demanded. "It means I was right—that the whole thing was a setup—and it means that Priesly is behind it."
"Whoa, girl," Justin said, putting a hand on each of her shoulders. "What may look obvious to you or me or Corwin isn't necessarily provable."
"But—"
"And until and unless we can prove any such connection," he continued warningly, "I'll thank you to keep your allegations to yourself. At this stage it would hurt us far more than it would hurt Priesly."
Jin closed her eyes briefly, fighting back sudden tears. "But why? Why is he picking on you?"
Justin stepped to her side, slipping his arm tightly around her shoulders. Even full-grown, she was a few centimeters shorter than he was—the ideal height, she'd always felt, to nestle in under his arm. "Priesly's not after me in particular," Justin sighed. "I doubt he's even especially after Corwin, except as he's an obstacle that's in Priesly's way. No, what really after is nothing less than the elimination of Cobras from the Cobra Worlds."
Jin licked her lips and hugged him a little closer. She'd heard all the rumors, arguments, and speculations... but to hear it said in such a straightforward, cold-blooded way by someone in a position to know the truth sent a chill up her back. "That's insane," she whispered. "Totally insane. How does he expect Esquiline to expand without Cobras leading the way into the wilderness?—Esquiline or the other New Worlds? Not to mention the Caelian Remnant—what's he going to do, just throw them to the peledari and let them get eaten alive?"
She felt his sigh against her side. "Jin, as you grow older you're going to run into a surprising number of otherwise intelligent people who get themselves trapped into some single-rail goal or point of view and never get out of it. Caelian is a perfect example—the people still living there have been fighting that crazy ecology for so long they can't break the habit long enough to back out and accept resettlement somewhere else. Some of the Jects—not all, certainly, but some—are equally single-minded. They wanted to be Cobras—wanted it very badly, most of them—but were deemed unfit, for one reason or another... and the love they had has been twisted into hatred. Hatred that demands revenge."
"No matter what the consequences are for the rest of the Cobra Worlds?"
He shrugged. "Apparently not. I don't know—maybe some of them genuinely think the need for Cobras has passed, that everything the Cobras do can be done more efficiently by ordinary men with machines or enhancement exoskeletons. And I'll even admit that some of Priesly's complaints may not be entirely unreasonable—maybe we have picked up a little too much elitist attitude than is good for us."
A maintenance robot passed them, heading toward another of the target robots. Jin's eyes followed it, came to rest on the target... and somewhere in the back of her mind a synapse clicked, and for the first time in her life she suddenly realized what those hulking machines she'd been watching all these years really were. "My God," she whispered. "They're Trofts. Those target robots are supposed to be Trofts."
"Don't be silly," Justin said; and his voice made her look sharply up at him. On his face—
The expression was blank. Like someone playing poker... or someone denying all knowledge of a secret he wasn't allowed to divulge. "I just meant—" she began awkwardly.
"Of course it's not a Troft," Justin cut her off. "Look at the shape, the size and contours. It's nothing but a generic practice target." But even as she looked at him his face seemed to harden a fraction. "Besides, the Trofts are our trading partners and political allies," he said. "Our friends, Jin, not our enemies. There's no reason for us to know how to fight them."
"Of course not," she said, trying hard to match his same neutral tone as she belatedly caught on. No, certainly the robots didn't look much like Trofts... but the shape and positioning of their target areas were too accurate to be accidental. "And I don't suppose anyone really wants to be reminded that they were once our enemies," she added with a touch of bitterness. "Or that it was the Cobras who kept that war from even starting."
He squeezed her shoulders. "The Cobras remember," he said quietly. "And so do the Trofts. That's what really matters... and that's why we'll find a way to stop Priesly and his lunatic gang." He took a deep breath. "Come on; let's go home."
Tamris Chandler, Governor-General of the Cobra Worlds, had come into politics from a successful legal career, and Corwin had noted more than once at Council and Directorate meetings that Chandler seemed to relish his occasional opportunities to play at being prosecuting attorney. He was doing so now... but for once, he didn't seem to be enjoying it very much.
"I hope you realize," he said, glaring out from Corwin's phone screen, "how much of a mess your brother has gotten all of us into."
"I understand the mess, sir," Corwin said, keeping a tight rein on his temper. "I contend, however, the assumption that it's Justin's fault."
Chandler waved aside the objection. "Motivational guilt aside, it was he who fired on an unarmed man."
"Who was technically trespassing in my office and threatening me—"
"Threatening you?" Chandler cut in, raising his eyebrows. "Did he say anything specifically that applied to you?"
Corwin sighed. "No, sir, not specifically. But he was vehemently denouncing the Cobras, and my pro-Cobra views are well known. It may not technically be assault, but any jury would agree that I had cause to fear for my safety."
Chandler glared a moment longer. Then his lip twitched and he shrugged. "It'll never reach a jury, of course—we both know that. And just between us, I think your scenario here is probably correct. Priesly's had you in his sights ever since he joined the Directorate, and to get both you and the Cobras in trouble with a single move is just the sort of sophistication I'd expect from him."
Corwin gritted his teeth against the sarcastic retort that wanted to come out. Sniping at Chandler's thinly disguised admiration of Priesly the Bastard would feel good, but Corwin needed the governor-general's support too much to risk that. "So we both agree the Monse affair was deliberately staged," he said instead. "The question remains, what is the Directorate going to do about it?"
Chandler's eyes drifted away from Corwin's gaze. "Frankly, Moreau, I'm not sure there's anything we can do about it," he said slowly. "If you can prove—not allege, prove—that Monse came in there trying to goad your brother into opening fire, and if you can prove that Priesly was involved in it, then we'll have something we can hook onto. Otherwise—" He shrugged. "I'm afraid he's got too much of a power base for us to throw unsubstantiated accusations at him. You've seen what his people are doing to your brother on the net—he'd flay all the rest of us, too, if we moved against him at this stage."
Or in other words, the governor-general was going to react to this blatant power bid by simply ignoring it. By letting Priesly play out his gambit and hoping he wouldn't bother Chandler himself in the process. "I see," Corwin said, not trying to hide his bitterness. "I presume that if I am able to get some of this proof before the Directorate meeting tomorrow that you'll be more supportive of my position?"
"Of course," Chandler said immediately. "But bear in mind that, whatever happens, we won't be spending a lot of time on this incident. There are more important matters awaiting our discussion."
Corwin took a deep breath. Translation: he'll do what he can to cut Priesly's tirade to a minimum. It was, he supposed, better than nothing. "Understood, sir."
"Well. If that's all...?"
"Yes, sir. Goodnight, sir."
The screen blanked. Corwin leaned back in his chair, stretching muscles aching with tension and fatigue. That was it: he'd talked to all the members of the Directorate that he had a chance of bringing onto his side in this. Should he move on to the Council and the lower-ranking syndics there? He glanced at his watch, saw to his mild shock that it was already after ten. Far too late to call anyone else now. No wonder, in retrospect, that Chandler had been a little on the frosty side.
A motion off to his side caught his eye, and he looked up as Thena MiGraw put a steaming cup of cahve on his desk. "You about finished for the night?" she asked.
"I don't know if I am, but you sure should be," he told her tiredly. "Seems to me I told you to go home a couple of hours ago."
She shrugged. "There was some busywork I had to do, anyway," she said, seating herself with her usual grace in a chair at the corner of the desk.
"Besides which, you thought I might need some moral support?"
"That and maybe some help screening out crank calls," she said. "I see that wasn't necessary."
Corwin lifted the cup she'd brought him, savoring for a moment the delicate aroma of the cahve. "The Moreau name's been an important one on Aventine for a long time," he reminded her, taking a sip. "Maybe even the more predatory of the newswriters figure the family's earned a little respect."
"And maybe a little rest, too?" Thena suggested quietly.
Corwin gazed at her, eyes tracing her delicate features and slender figure. A pang of melancholy and loss touched his heart, a pang that seemed to be coming more and more often these days. I should have married, he thought tiredly. Should have had a family.
He shook off the thought with an effort. There had been good and proper reasons behind his decision all those years ago, and none of those reasons had changed. His father's long immersion in Cobra Worlds' politics had nearly destroyed his mother, and he had sworn that he would never do such a thing to any other human being. Even if he could find a woman who was willing to put up with that kind of life...
Again, he forced his mind away from that often-traveled and futile path of thought. "The Moreaus have never been famous for resting when there was work to be done," he told Thena. "Besides, I can rest next year. You ought to get on home, though."
"Perhaps in a few minutes." Thena nodded at the phone. "How did the calls go?"
"About as expected. Everyone's a little uncertain of how to handle it, at least from the perspective of practical politics. My guess is that for the time being they'll all keep their heads down and wait for more information."
"Giving Priesly free rein to plant his version in their minds tomorrow." She snorted gently. "Uncommonly nice timing for him, having all this happen just before a full Directorate meeting."
Corwin nodded. "Yeah, I noticed that myself. As did, I'm sure, the other governors. Unfortunately, it doesn't exactly count as evidence."
"Unless you can use it to find a connecting thread—" She broke off, head cocked in concentration. "Was that a knock?"
Frowning, Corwin hunched forward and keyed his intercom to a security camera view of the outer corridor. "If it's a newswriter—" Thena began ominously.
"It's Jin," Corwin sighed, tapping the intercom and door release. Probably the last person he felt up to facing at the moment... "Jin? Door's unlocked—come on in."
"You want me to leave?" Thena asked as he switched the intercom off.
"Not really," he admitted, "but it'd probably be better if you did."
A faint smile flickered across Thena's face as she stood up. "I understand. I'll be in the outer office if you need me." Touching him on the shoulder as she passed, she headed toward the door.
"Uncle Corwin?"
"Come in," Corwin called, waving to the girl—no; she's a young woman now—standing in the doorway.
Jin did so, exchanging quiet greetings with Thena as the two women passed each other at the doorway. "Sit down," Corwin invited, gesturing to the chair Thena had just vacated. "How's your dad doing?"
"About as you'd expect," she said, sinking into the chair. "Uncle Joshua came over a while ago and they spent a lot of time talking about other problems the family's had in the past."
Corwin nodded. "I remember similar trips down memory lane. Pretty depressing to listen to?"
She pursed her lips. "A little."
"Try not to let it bother you. It's one of the methods we Moreaus have traditionally used to remind ourselves that things usually wind up working out for the best."
Jin took a deep breath. "Dad told me my application for the Cobra Academy's been rejected."
Corwin's jaw tightened; with a conscious effort he relaxed it. "Did he explain why?" he asked.
She shook her head. "We didn't really discuss it—he had other things on his mind. That's one reason I came to see you."
"Yeah. Well... to put it bluntly, you were rejected because you're a woman."
He hadn't really expected her to looked surprised, and she didn't. "That's illegal, you know," she said calmly. "I've studied the Academy's charter, the official Cobra Statement of Purpose, and even the original Dominion of Man documents. There's nothing in any of them that specifically excludes women from the Cobras."
"Of course there isn't," he sighed. "There isn't anything that excludes women from the governorship, either, but you'll notice that there aren't very many women who make it to that office. It's a matter of tradition."
"Whose tradition?" Jin countered. "Neither of those unspoken rules started with the Cobra Worlds. We inherited them from the Old Dominion of Man."
"Sure," he nodded. "But these things take time to change. You have to remember that we're barely two generations removed from the Dominion and its influence."
"It took less than one generation for us to give the Cobras their double vote," she pointed out.
"That was different. Tors Challinor's attempted rebellion forced an immediate political acknowledgment of the Cobras' physical power. Your case, unfortunately, doesn't have that kind of urgency to it."
For a long moment Jin just looked at him. "You're not going to fight the Council for me on this, are you?" she asked at last.
He spread his hands helplessly. "It's not a matter of fighting them, Jin. The whole weight of military history is against you. Women just haven't as a rule been welcomed into special military forces. Not official military forces, anyway," he corrected himself. "There've always been women rebels and guerrilla fighters, but I don't think that argument'll go over very well on either the Council or the Academy."
"You have a lot of influence, though. The Moreau name alone—"
"May still have some force out among Aventine's people," he grunted, "but the aura doesn't carry over into the upper echelons. It never did, really—in many ways your grandfather was a more popular figure than I am, and even in his time we had to fight and scrap and trade for everything we got."
Jin licked her lips. "Uncle Corwin... I have to get into the Academy. I have to. It's Dad's last chance to have one of the family carry on the Cobra tradition. Now, more than ever, he needs that to hang onto."
Corwin closed his eyes briefly. "Jin, look... I know how much that tradition means to Justin. Every time one of you girls was born—" He broke off. "The point is that the universe doesn't always work the way we want it to. If he and your mother had had a son—"
"But they didn't," Jin interrupted with a vehemence that startled him. "They didn't; and Mom's gone, and I'm Dad's last chance. His last chance—don't you understand?"
"Jin—" Corwin stopped, mind searching uselessly for something to say... and as he hesitated, he found his eyes probing the face of the young woman before him.
There was a lot of Justin in her face, in her features and her expressions. But as he thought back over the twenty years since her birth he found he could see even more of her father in her manner and personality. How much of that, he wondered vaguely, was due to genes alone and how much was due to the fact that Justin had been her only parent since she was nine years old? Thoughts of Justin sent a new kaleidoscope of images flurrying past his mind's eye: Justin fresh out of the Cobra Academy, excited by the upcoming mission to what was then the totally mysterious world of Qasama; an older and more sober Justin at his wedding to Aimee Partae, telling Corwin and Joshua about the son he would have someday to carry on the Moreau family's Cobra tradition; Justin and his three daughters, fifteen years later, at Aimee's funeral...
With an effort, he forced his thoughts back to the present. Jin was still sitting before him, the intensity of purpose in her expression balanced by a self-control rarely found among twenty-year-olds. One of the primary factors looked for in all Cobra applicants, he remembered distantly... "Look, Jin," he sighed. "Odds are very high that there's nothing at all I can do to influence the Academy's decision. But... I'll do what I can."
A ghost of a smile brushed Jin's lips. "Thank you," she said quietly. "I wouldn't be asking you to do this if it weren't for Dad."
He looked her straight in the eye. "Yes, you would," he said. "Don't try to con an old politician, girl."
She had the grace to blush. "You're right," she admitted "I want to be a Cobra, Uncle Corwin. More than anything else I've ever wanted."
"I know," he said softly. "Well. You'd better get back home. Tell your father... just tell him hi for me, and that I'll be in touch on this thing."
"Okay. Goodnight... and thank you."
"Sure."
She left and Corwin sighed to himself. Your basic chicken-egg problem, he thought. Which came first: her desire to be a Cobra, or her love for her father?
And did it really make any difference?
Thena reappeared in the doorway. "Everything all right?" she asked.
"Oh, sure," he growled. "I've just promised to take a running leap at a stone wall, that's all. How do I get myself into these things?"
She smiled. "Must be because you love your family."
He tried to glare at her, just on general principles, but it was too much effort. "Must be," he admitted, returning her smile. "Go on, get out of here."
"If you're sure...?"
"I am. I'm only going to be a few more minutes myself."
"Okay. See you in the morning."
He waited until he heard the outer door close behind her. Then, with a sigh, he leaned back to his reader, keying for the government info net and his own private correlation program. Somewhere, somehow, there had to be a connection between Baram Monse and Governor Harper Priesly.
And he was going to find it.
The Directorate meeting started at ten sharp the next morning... and it was as bad as Corwin had expected.
Priesly was in fine form, his tirade all the more impressive for being brief. A less gifted politician might have overdone it and wound up boring his audience, but Priesly avoided that trap with ease. In front of the entire Council, where the sheer number of members lent itself to the generation and manipulation of emotional/political winds, the longer-winded speeches were often effective; in front of the nine-member Directorate such ploys were dangerous, not to mention occasionally coming off as downright silly. But Corwin had hoped Priesly would try anyway and hang himself in the process.
He should have known better.
"...and I therefore feel that this body has the duty to reexamine the entire concept of elitism that the Cobras and the Cobra Academy represent," Priesly concluded. "Not only for the sake of the people of Aventine and the other worlds, but even for the Cobras themselves. Before another tragedy like this one occurs. Thank you."
He sat down. Corwin glanced around the table, noting the expressions of the others with the frustration he was feeling more and more these days. They were felling into the standard and predictable pattern: Rolf Atterberry of Palatine firmly on Priesly's side, Fenris Vartanson of Caelian—himself a Cobra—and Governor Emeritus Lizabet Telek just as firmly against him, the others leaning one way or the other but not yet willing to commit themselves.
At the head of the table Governor-General Chandler cleared his throat. "Mr. Moreau: any rebuttal?"
Or in other words, had Corwin found any positive link between Priesly and Monse. "Not specifically, sir," he said, getting briefly to his feet. "I would, though, like to remind the other members of this body of the testimony Justin and I have already put on record... and also to remind them that my brother has spoken here many times in the past in his capacity as an instructor of the Cobra Academy. A position, I'll mention, that requires him to submit to frequent psychological, physical, and emotional testing."
"If I may just insert here, sir," Priesly put in smoothly, "I have no quarrel at all with Cobra Justin Moreau. I agree with Governor Moreau that he is an outstanding and completely stable member of the Aventinian community. It is, in fact, the very fact that such a fine example of Cobra screening could still attack an unarmed man that worries me so."
Chandler grunted. "Mr. Moreau...?"
"No further comments, sir," Corwin said, and sat back down. Priesly had taken a chance with that interruption, he knew, and with a little luck it would wind up working against him. The thrust of his arguments, serious though they were, were still a far cry from the result he and Monse had almost certainly been trying for. If Monse had succeeded in triggering the combat reflexes programmed into Justin's implanted nanocomputer, Priesly would have had a far stronger bogy to wave in front of both the Directorate and the populace as a whole.
Across the table, Ezer Gavin stirred. "May I ask, Mr. Chandler, what Cobra Moreau's status is at the moment? I presume he's been suspended from his Academy duties?"
"He has," Chandler nodded. "The investigation is proceeding—much of it at this point into Mr. Monse's background, I may add."
Corwin glanced at Priesly, read no reaction there. Hardly surprising—he already knew that whatever Priesly's connection was with Monse, it was well buried.
"I'd like to also point out, if I may," Lizabet Telek spoke up with an air of impatience, "that for all the fuss we're generating—both here and on the nets," she added with a glance at Priesly, "this Monse character wasn't killed or even seriously injured."
"If he hadn't had that ceramic laminae on his bones he would have been," Atterberry put in.
"If he hadn't been trespassing in the first place he wouldn't have been hurt at all," Telek retorted. "Mr. Governor-General, could we possibly move on to some other topic? This whole discussion is turning my stomach."
"As it happens, we do have another topic to tackle today—one which is far more serious," Chandler nodded. "All further discussion on the Monse case to be tabled until further investigations are complete... now, then." He tapped a button next to his reader; a moment later the door across the room opened and a dress-uniformed Cobra ushered a thin academic type into the chamber. "Mr. Pash Barynson, of the Qasaman Monitor Center," Chandler introduced the newcomer as he walked over to the guest chair at the governor-general's left. "He's here to brief us on a disturbing pattern that may or may not be—Well, I'll let him sort it all out for you. Mr. Barynson...?"
"Thank you, Governor-General Chandler," Barynson said with a self-conscious bob of his head. Setting a handful of magcards down on the table, he picked one up and inserted it into his reader. "Governors; governors emeritus," he said, glancing around at them all, "I'm going to admit right up front that I'm rather... uncomfortable, shall we say, about being here. As Mr. Chandler has just indicated, there are hints of a pattern emerging on Qasama that we don't like. On the other hand, what that pattern really means—or even if it really exists—are questions we still can't answer."
Well, that's certainly clear, Corwin thought. He glanced across the table at Telek, saw a sour expression flicker across her face. As a former academician herself, Corwin knew, she had even less patience with flowery fence-straddling than he did. "Suppose you elaborate and let us judge," she invited.
That got her a frown from Chandler, but Barynson didn't seem insulted. "Of course, Governor Emeritus," he nodded. "First, since all of you may not be familiar with the background here—" he glanced at Priesly—"I'd like to briefly run through the basics for you.
"As most of you know, in 2454 the Council had a series of six spy satellites placed into high orbit over the world of Qasama for the purpose of monitoring their technological and societal development following the introduction of Aventinian spine leopards into their ecological structure. In the twenty years since then the program has met with only limited success. We've noted that the village system has expanded beyond the so-called Fertile Crescent region, indicating either that the Qasamans' cultural paranoia has eased somewhat or that they've given up on keeping their long-range communications immune from interception. We've spotted evidence of some improvement in their aircraft and ground vehicles, as well as various minor changes you've had full reports on over the years. Nothing, so far, that would give us any reason to believe the Qasaman threat vis-a-vis the Cobra Worlds has in any way changed for the worse."
He cleared his throat and tapped a button on the reader. A series of perhaps fifty dates and times appeared on Corwin's reader—the earliest nearly thirty months ago, he noted, the most recent only three weeks old—under the heading Satellite Downtimes. A quick scan of the numbers showed that, for each downtime listed, the affected satellite had lost between three and twelve hours of its record. "As you can see," Barynson continued, "over the last thirty months we've lost something on the order of four hundred hours of data covering various parts of Qasama. Up until recently we didn't think too much about it—"
"Why not?" Urbanic Bailar of the newly colonized world Esquiline cut in. "I was under the impression that the main duty of your Monitor Center was to keep the planet under constant surveillance. I wasn't aware that leaving twelve-hour gaps qualified as constant."
"I understand your concern," Barynson said soothingly, "but I assure you that Esquiline was—is—in no danger whatsoever. Even if the Qasamans knew your world's location—which they don't—there's simply no way they could create an attack fleet without our knowing it. Remember that they lost all their interstellar capability shortly after they reached Qasama—they'd be starting from literal step zero." Something flicked across his eyes, too fast for Corwin to read. "No, none of us are in any immediate danger from the Qasamans—that much we're certain of."
"Well, I for one don't see what the fuss is," Atterberry snorted. "Self-repairing machinery like satellites are supposed to fail occasionally, aren't they?"
"Yes, but not this often," Governor Emeritus David Nguyen put in. "Both of you are correct, actually," Barynson nodded, licking briefly at his lips. "Which is why we hadn't paid the gaps any real attention. However, a week ago one of our people, more on a hunch than anything else, tried running location and vector correlations on them. It turned out—well, here, you can see for yourselves," he said, pushing another series of keys.
A map of the Fertile Crescent region of Qasama, home to virtually all the humans on that world, appeared on Corwin's reader. A series of colored ovals and arrows had been superimposed on the landscape.
"Interesting," Telek growled. "How many of these gaps are missing that same chunk of the Crescent's western arm?"
"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.
All of which made Vartanson a very wild card indeed... and a man no one else in the Directorate ever really liked to cross.
Not even the governor-general. "I understand," Chandler said again to Vartanson. Soothingly. "Actually, I think that even if we don't find another good candidate, these three new Cobras plus the experienced one ought to be adequate for the mission's needs."
Corwin took a deep breath. "Perhaps," he said carefully, "we ought to see this lack of a fifth Cobra not as a problem but as an opportunity. A chance to throw the Qasamans a curve."
He looked over to see Telek's eyes on him. "You mean like that switch your brothers pulled back on the first mission?" she asked. "Good idea, that—may even have saved the entire mission."
Silently, Corwin blessed her. She couldn't know what he was about to propose, but by reminding the others of how well that other scheme had worked out she'd weakened the automatic resistance his enemies would almost certainly come up with. "Something like that," he nodded, unconsciously bracing himself. "I'd like to suggest that we create, solely for this mission, the first woman Cobra. Now, before you voice any objections—"
"A woman Cobra?" Atterberry snorted. "Oh, for— Moreau, that is the most ridiculous idea I've ever heard."
"Why?" Corwin countered. "Just because it hasn't ever been done?"
"Why do you suppose it has never been done?" Priesly put in. "Because there are good reasons for it, that's why."
Corwin looked over at Chandler. "Mr. Chandler?"
There was a slightly sour look on Chandler's face, but he nodded. "You may continue," he said.
"Thank you." Corwin's gaze swept the table, settled on Priesly and Atterberry as the two most hostile-looking. "One reason that the idea of women Cobras sounds so outlandish is that the Old Dominion of Man had a fairly strong patriarchal orientation. Women simply weren't considered for elite military troops—though I'll point out that during the Troft War there were a large number of female resistance fighters on both Adirondack and Silvern."
"We all know our history," Nguyen put in gruffly. "Get to the point."
"The point is that even what little we know of Qasaman society paints it as even more patriarchal than the Dominion was," Corwin told him. "If the thought of female warriors strikes you as ridiculous, think of how they'll see it."
"In other words," Telek said slowly, "they're not likely to even consider the possibility that a woman along on the mission could be a demon warrior."
"A demon what?" Priesly frowned.
"It's the Qasaman term for Cobras," Chandler told him.
"Appropriate," Priesly grunted.
Vartanson threw him a cold look. "Being borderline demonic is often part of our job," he said icily.
Priesly's lip twitched, and he turned abruptly back to Corwin. "Your assumption, of course, is that the mission will be caught," he said. "Isn't that being a little pessimistic?"
"It's called being prepared," Corwin said tartly. "But assuming they won't get caught brings me to my second point: we want people who can fit in well enough with the Qasamans to poke around for answers without being immediately branded as foreigners. Correct?" He looked at Chandler. "Can you tell me, Mr. Chandler, how many of the Cobra candidates on your list can speak Qasaman?"
"All of them," the governor-general said stiffly. "Give me a little credit, Mr. Moreau—Qasaman may not be an especially popular language course to take, but there's a reasonable pool of proficient people out there to choose from."
"Especially since most young men with Cobra ambitions try and learn it," Gavin pointed out.
"I understand that," Corwin nodded. "How many of this pool can speak it without an Aventinian accent?"
Chandler's brow darkened. "Everyone who learns a foreign language speaks with an accent," he growled.
Corwin looked him straight in the eye. "I know someone who doesn't," he said flatly. "My niece, Jasmine Moreau."
"Ah—well, there it is, everyone," Atterberry put in sardonically. "That's what all this is about—just another blatant grab for power by the Moreau family."
"How does this qualify as a grab for power?" Corwin snorted. "By sending my niece out to possibly get herself killed?"
"Enough." Chandler hadn't raised his voice, but something in his tone sliced cleanly through the burgeoning argument. "I've worked up a preliminary cost analysis for the proposed Qasaman mission—we'll take a short recess now for you to examine it. Mr. Moreau, I'd like to see you in my office, if I may."
"You realize, I presume, what you're asking the Directorate to do," Chandler said, gaze locked on Corwin's face. "Not to mention what you're asking me, personally, to do."
Corwin forced himself to meet the other's gaze. "I'm doing nothing but trying to give this mission of yours a better chance of success."
Chandler's lip twitched. "So it's 'my' mission now, is it?"
"Isn't it?" Corwin countered. "You clearly set it up privately, without the assistance or even the knowledge of the Academy board. Not to mention the knowledge of the Directorate itself."
Chandler's expression didn't change. "You have any proof of that?"
"If Justin had known this was in the works, he would have told me about it."
"That's hardly proof. I could have sworn all of the Academy directors to secrecy."
Corwin didn't answer, and after a moment Chandler sighed. "Let's be honest, here, shall we, Moreau? Logic and social goals notwithstanding, the real reason you want your niece in the Cobras is because your brother wants her there."
"She wants it herself, too," Corwin told him. "And, yes, I'll admit that there's part of me that wants to keep the family tradition alive. That doesn't negate the reasons I gave the Directorate a few minutes ago."
"No, but it muddies the politics considerably," Chandler grunted. "Okay, then—run the scenario. Tell me how the votes would fall if we went back and called a showdown."
"Telek and I would vote yes," Corwin said slowly. "Priesly and Atterberry would of course vote no, whether they agreed with me or not. Vartanson and Bailar... probably yes. Vartanson because if women were allowed in, it would effectively double Caelian's pool of Cobra candidates; Bailar because the Qasamans are only a few light-years from Esquiline's doorstep and he'll be more concerned with the logic of Jin's case than in history. With Vartanson's double vote, that would give me five votes."
"Which means you need one more vote for a clear majority," Chandler said. "Mine, for instance."
Corwin looked him square in the eye. "Yours was always the only vote I really needed."
For a moment Chandler gazed back at him in silence. "Politics goes in cycles," he said at last. "If the governor-general's office has more power now than it has had in the past, I make no apologies for it." He pursed his lips, slowly shook his head. "But you're wrong if you think I can push this through on my own, against all opposition. Priesly alone would be too much to buck."
Corwin turned away from him, eyes drifting to the governor-general's floor-to-ceiling window and the panoramic view of Capitalia that it opened onto. In his mind's eye, he could see Jin's face, last night, as she pleaded with him... could see Justin's expression at the hospital as the enormity of what he'd inadvertently done slowly became apparent. What price power? he thought dimly to himself. What use is this office, anyway, if it's not to do what needs to be done? "All right, then," he said slowly. "If Priesly needs incentive, I'll give it to him." He turned back to Chandler. "We'll let Jin into the Cobras, ostensibly for the reasons I listed as to her usefulness on a Qasaman spy mission. But we'll also bill it as a grand experiment into whether or not women can successfully be integrated into the entire Cobra program. If it doesn't work—if the experiment's a failure—" he took a deep breath "—then I'll resign my governorship."
It was perhaps the first time he'd ever seen genuine shock on Chandler's face. "You'll—what?" the other all but sputtered. "Moreau, that's—it's crazy."
"It's what I want to do," Corwin told him evenly. "I know what Jin's capable of. She'll handle the job, and she'll handle it well."
"That's practically irrelevant. Whatever happens, Priesly will claim the experiment was a failure, just to get you out. You know that."
"He'll try to claim that, certainly," Corwin nodded. "Whether or not the claim sticks will depend on how Jin does, won't it?"
Chandler pursed his lips, his eyes searching Corwin's face. "It'll need the approval of the entire Council, of course."
"We all have our supporters and allies there," Corwin said. "Between yours, mine, and Priesly's, we ought to have enough. Especially if we use the secrecy of the Qasaman mission to keep the experiment on closed-access. Less of a possibility for political flak from the general populace that way."
A lopsided smile creased Chandler's face. "You're getting cynical in your old age."
Corwin looked back out the window again. "No," he said with a sigh. "Just getting political."
And wondered why that should sound so like a curse in his ears.
Late spring in Syzra District, Jin had once heard, was the most enjoyable time of the year in that particular part of Aventine... if you happened to be a duck. Supposedly, for the better part of three months straight, the sky over Syzra was either heavily overcast or pouring its guts out in torrents of cold rain.
But if those stories were true, this day was a pleasant exception. The rising sun, peeking through the dense forest surrounding them at a distance on three sides, shone clear and bright through a sky that had only a few high cirrus clouds to add counterpoint to its brilliant blue. What wind there was came in short, mild gusts; and the air temperature, while chilly, was more bracing than uncomfortable. It was the kind of day Jin had always loved.
And she felt absolutely terrible. Squinting her eyes slightly against the sunlight, she clenched her fists at her sides, tried to stand as tall as the three young men to her right, and fought hard to keep from throwing up.
"All right, recruits, let's bend your ears forward," the man standing facing them bellowed, and Jin clamped down a little more on her rebellious gastrointestinal tract. Instructor Mistra Layn's voice, unusually rich in deep tones, wasn't helping things a bit. So much for my celebrated cast-iron gut, she thought wryly to herself, remembering the warnings everyone had given her about the normal physiological reaction to Cobra surgery. Clearly, she'd been too quick to dismiss them; now all she could hope for was that the reaction was as short-term as they'd all said it would be.
"You already know," Layn continued, "that we've been selected for a special mission to Qasama. So I won't bore you with that harangue again. What you're probably wondering instead is why we're out here in the middle of nowhere instead of at one of the main Academy centers. Well?"
It took a second for Jin to realize that he was asking them a question. It took a few seconds longer to realize that none of her fellow trainees were going to respond. "Sir?" she said tentatively.
A flicker of something crossed Layn's face, but his voice was neutral enough. "Trainee Moreau?"
"Sir, are we here because the mission will involve travel through forested areas of Qasama?"
Layn cocked an eyebrow and threw a leisurely look behind him. "Why, yes—there is forest here, isn't there? There's forest at the training center in Pindaric District, too, as I recall. So why aren't we there instead of here?"
Jin gritted her teeth. "I don't know, sir."
The young man at Jin's right stirred. "Sir?"
"Trainee Sun?"
"Sir, the Pindaric center concentrates on teaching new Cobras how to hunt and kill spine leopards," Mander Sun said. "Our mission won't involve hunting so much as it will evasion and simply staying alive."
"Don't the Cobras at Pindaric need to learn how to stay alive?" Layn countered.
Her eyes locked on Layn, Jin couldn't see if Sun flushed. But from the tone of his voice she rather thought he had. "The methods of training for attack versus defense are entirely different, sir," he said. "More than that, they would be obviously different to the other trainees there. I understood this was supposed to be a secret mission."
For a long moment Layn merely looked at Sun. "More or less correct, Trainee Sun. The secrecy part, that is. But who says attack and defense training are different?"
"My grandfather, sir. He was Coordinator of the Academy for twenty years."
"Does that give you the right to stiff-neck your instructor?" Layn said coldly.
This time there was no doubt that Sun flushed. "No, sir," he said stiffly.
"Glad to hear it." Layn let his gaze drift to all four of them. "Because I have no intention of going to Qasama without the absolute best people available backing me up. If I don't think one or more of you measures up, I can and will bounce you—and I don't much care whether it's on the first day of training or while you're being wheeled in to have your nanocomputers implanted. All of you got that?"
Jin swallowed, suddenly conscious of the neck-wrap computer nestling up under her jaw. If she failed her training—was deemed unsuitable, for whatever reason—the nanocomputer that would eventually be implanted beneath her brain would be a mere shadow of the true Cobra computer, disconnecting all of her newly acquired weaponry and severely limiting the power available to the servos augmenting her muscles. She would be, in short, a Ject.
"All right, then," Layn said. "Now. I know you're all eager to find out just what those aching bodies of yours can do. For the moment, actually, that's not a hell of a lot. Those computers around your necks will give you limited servos and no weapons whatsoever. In four days—assuming adequate progress—you'll be given new neckwraps that let you activate your optical and auditory enhancers. After that, over a period of about four weeks, you'll get the use of your fingertip lasers, the lasers plus enhancers, the sonic weapons and arcthrower, the antiarmor laser alone, antiarmor plus everything else, and finally your preprogrammed reflexes. The purpose, you'll note, is to give you the best possible chance of learning to use your new bodies without killing yourselves or anyone else in the process."
"Question, sir?" the trainee at the far end of the line spoke up tentatively.
"Trainee Hariman?"
"Sir, I was under the impression that the normal training period was six to eight weeks, not four."
"Weren't you told this wasn't going to be normal training?" Layn countered.
"Ah, yes, sir, I was. It just seemed to me... a little quick, that's all. Especially with the new weapons being introduced with this group."
Layn cocked an eyebrow. "What new weapons are those, Trainee?"
"Ah... I was under the impression, sir, that the Council had approved the use of short-range voltage generators for use through the arcthrower circuits."
"You're referring, I take it, to the so-called stun-guns? You're well informed, Trainee Hariman."
"Much of the weapons debate has been public knowledge, sir."
"So it has. As it happens, though, that won't be a consideration. For the simple reason that none of you will be participating in that experiment. The Council decided you were going to be experimental enough as it was—" Layn's eyes flicked to Jin "—and there was no need to give you untried equipment as well."
"Yes, sir," Hariman said. "That doesn't explain how we're going to learn how to be Cobras in four weeks instead of six, sir."
"You questioning your ability as a trainee, or my ability as an instructor?"
"Uh... neither, sir."
"Good. Did you say something a moment ago, Trainee Todor?"
"Sir?" The trainee standing between Hariman and Sun sounded startled.
"The question was simple enough, Trainee. Did you say something to Trainee Sun while I was explaining why you hadn't had stun-guns installed?"
"Uh... it was nothing, sir."
"Repeat it."
"I, uh..." Todor audibly took a breath. "I was just thinking that, as far as extra weaponry was concerned... uh, that Trainee Moreau could be easily implanted with a pair of turret guns."
Layn's expression didn't change, but it seemed to Jin that his eyes flicked briefly to her breasts before rising to her face. "Trainee Moreau? Any comment?"
A truly scathing retort had already come to mind, but it seemed better not to use it. At least not here and now. "No, sir," she said.
"No. Well, then, I've got one." Layn's eyes flicked to the other three trainees... and abruptly his face hardened. "It's pretty clear that none of you is exactly thrilled at having a woman in the unit. Now, you've all heard the Council's reasons as to why they think this is worth trying, so I won't hash that over again. But I will say this.
"To tell you the absolute truth, I don't much like it either. Special military units have always been men-only, from the Dominion of Man's old Alpha Command all the way on up to the Cobras. I don't like breaking tradition like this; I especially don't like the idea that this is a test to see if the Cobras should be opened up in the future to more women. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that I hope Trainee Moreau will fail. But." His gaze hardened even more, "If she fails, she is going to do it on her own. Understood? Specifically, she is not going to fail because you or I or anyone else pushed her harder than she should have been pushed. Considerations of fairness aside, I don't want anyone claiming that the test was unfair. You got all that?"
There were three murmurs. "I asked if you got all that," Layn snapped.
"Yes, sir," the others said in unison.
"Good." Layn took a deep breath. "All right, then, let's get to work. That tree over there—" he pointed to their right "—is about three kilometers away. You've got six minutes to get there."
Sun moved first, stepping behind Todor and Hariman to take the lead. Jin was right behind him, the other two trainees falling in belatedly after her. Pace yourself, girl, she warned herself, trying as best she could to let the servo motors in her legs do most of the work. Around her, the thudding of the others' footsteps filled her ears, almost drowning out the faint whine from above...
Abruptly, the sound clicked with her consciousness, and she glanced up, eyes searching the sky. There it was, just coming into sight over the treetops to her right: a Troft-built aircar, bearing toward the complex that was serving as their training center. She twisted her head further around, seeking out Layn, but if the instructor was surprised by the craft's arrival it didn't show in his stance. Probably someone here to observe from the Directorate, she decided, shifting her attention back to the race.
To her annoyance, she found that while she'd let the aircar's presence distract her both Todor and Hariman had managed to pass her by. It's okay, she reminded herself, picking up her speed a little. They're more concerned with making sure they don't come in last than they are with pacing themselves. That'll probably work against them. Todor, she noted, was already breathing harder than he should—either hyperventilating or else not letting his servos take as much of the load as he ought to. Either way, he should find himself in trouble before the run was over.
Involuntarily, Jin's jaw clenched. She didn't like having to play tactical games like this, least of all against the men who were going to be her teammates on Qasama. But she didn't have much choice in the matter. Layn had put it very clearly: her performance here on the training field was going to determine not only whether or not she herself became a full Cobra, but also whether or not any other woman in the Cobra Worlds would ever have that same chance.
She'd never before been much of a one to fight for universal causes; but whether she liked it or not, she was smack square in the middle of this one. In the middle, with nothing but her own stamina and determination going for her.
And—maybe—the legacy of the Moreau family. Pace yourself, she repeated over and over to herself, using the words as a running cadence. Pace yourself...
She was second, behind only Sun, when they at last reached the tree.
The Troft lying on his couch by the aircar's starboard window stirred as the four trainees far below reached the tree. [The second-place human,] he said, his high-pitched catertalk almost swallowed up by the whine of the aircar's thrusters. [It was a female?]
Beside Corwin, Governor-General Chandler harrumphed. "You're very perceptive," he said reluctantly, throwing a glare in Corwin's direction.
"It's just an experiment," Priesly added sourly. "Pushed through by certain elements in our government—"
[Of the four, she is the best,] the Troft said.
Priesly's eyes narrowed. "Why do you say that?" he demanded.
The Troft's arm membranes flexed, then relaxed back against his upper arms. [Our approach, she was the only one who noticed it,] he explained. [Her face, it sought out the sound and confirmed our identity as non-hostile before resuming her running. That sort of alertness, it is a preferred attribute for a Cobra warrior?]
"It is indeed," Chandler admitted. "Well. At any rate, now that you've seen the trainees—at least from a distance—we'll be heading over to the special camp where this proposed mission is being headquartered. You'll be able to examine all the Qasaman data there, see why it is we think there's something happening that we ought to investigate."
The Troft seemed to consider that. [This information, you would not be giving it to me without need. What is it you want?]
Chandler took a deep breath. "In a nutshell: transport. We can use one of our own starships to get the team from here to Qasama, of course, but we haven't yet got a safe way for them to get from orbit to ground. We would like to borrow a Troft military shuttle for that purpose."
"We don't want to land a full starship," Priesly put in. "Not only because of the danger of detection—"
[A vehicle with a stardrive, you do not want it to fall into Qasaman hands,] Speaker One cut him off. [My intelligence, do not insult it, Governor Priesly.]
Priesly shut up, a pained look on his face, and for a moment Corwin could almost feel sorry for him. There'd been no anger in Speaker One's comment—merely a desire to save time—but Priesly hadn't dealt with this particular representative of the Tlos'khin'fahi demesne long enough to know his personality. Speaker One had been an interdemesne trader before being given the Cobra Worlds liaison post four years ago, and Corwin had long since noted that such Trofts had an almost supernatural control over their tempers. Not surprising, given the loose and often combative relationships that existed between the hundreds of demesnes that made up the Troft Assemblage. A trader who got into verbal fights with his customers every third time he was out of his home demesne wouldn't be a trader for long.
"Governor Priesly meant no harm, Speaker One," Chandler spoke up into the conversational void, looking pleased himself at Priesly's discomfiture. "The tactical reasons for borrowing such a landing craft are of course obvious. The financial reasons, I imagine, are also obvious to you."
[Such a shuttle, you cannot afford to buy.]
Chandler nodded. "That's it exactly. Though we're in far better shape now than we were thirty years ago when this whole Qasaman mess began, even now our budget will only support the cost of the mission itself—that is, the personnel, basic equipment, and specialized training. You'll remember we're still paying off the last full starship we bought from you; we can't afford to buy a shuttle, too."
[The Tlos'khin'fahi demesne, why should it lend you this craft? We are far from Qasama, with little at stake should they escape their world.]
Translation: the bargaining had begun. "We don't necessarily want the Tlos'khin'fahi demesne itself to provide the shuttle," Corwin put in before Chandler could answer. "However, as our main trading partner, the health of our economy should be of some concern to you... and if our buying a shuttle would hurt that economy, it would have at least a minor effect on you."
[The Baliu'ckha'spmi demesne, would it not have more of a reason to provide you a shuttle?]
Chandler threw a glance at Corwin. "Probably," he conceded. "The problem is that... the Baliu'ckha'spmi demesne might infer the wrong thing from such a request."
[You refer to the trade by which you obtained the New Worlds?]
"Basically," Chandler said heavily. "The agreement was that we would neutralize the Qasaman threat for them, after all. If they decide this means that Qasama wasn't properly neutralized... well, we don't really want to open that can of snakes."
The Troft's arm membranes fluttered again as he sorted through the idiom. [The reason for bringing me out here in secret, it is also because of this concern?]
"You don't miss much," Chandler admitted. "Yes, we didn't want any word of this leaking out to other demesne representatives if we could possibly avoid it."
For a moment Speaker One was silent. The aircar began a leisurely turn, and Corwin glanced out the window. Below them, nestled in an artificial clearing, was the small logging complex that had been temporarily taken over by the Cobra Academy for the special training course. [The question, I will bring it to my demesne-lord's attention,] Speaker One said as the aircar dipped toward a scarred landing square near the main building's entrance. [Some sort of trade, it will of course be necessary.]
"Of course," Chandler nodded, sounding relieved. "We'll be happy to consider any request he suggests."
[My demesne-lord, he will also remember that the original pacification plan was created by the late Governor Jonny Moreau,] the Troft continued. [If I could inform him that one of Governor Jonny Moreau's line would be planning this mission as well, it would give more weight to my arguments.]
Chandler threw Corwin a surprised look. "Why?" he asked.
[Continuity in the affairs of war, it is as valued as in the affairs of business,] the Troft said—rather coolly, Corwin thought. [Such a thing, Governor-General Chandler, it is possible?]
Chandler took a deep breath. From the expression on his face, he was clearly envisioning the political flap were he to reinstate Justin to the Academy while still under a cloud from the Monse shooting... "I'm afraid, Speaker One," Priesly spoke up tartly, "the Moreau family is no longer directly involved with such military planning—"
"Fortunately, that won't be a problem," Corwin interrupted him. "The human female you saw in the clearing a few minutes ago—the one you thought was the best of the trainees? She is Jasmine Moreau, daughter of Cobra Justin Moreau and Governor Jonny Moreau's granddaughter."
Priesly sputtered; Chandler cut him off with a hand signal. "Will that be adequate, Speaker One?" the governor-general asked.
There was a slight bump as the aircar touched down. [It will indeed,] the Troft said. [Your data, I will now be pleased to study it.]
Chandler exhaled quietly. "Certainly. Follow me."
"All right, Cobras, move it out," Mistra Layn growled. "Remember this is a forest—watch your feet and your heads."
Keying her auditory enhancers up a notch, Jin fell into her usual leftguard position in the loose diamond formation around Layn and crossed with the others under the trees at the edge of the clearing. It was an operation they'd practiced several times in the past few days: walking through the fenced-off part of the forest around their camp, using their optical and auditory enhancers to try and spot the various animal-cue simulators and moving-head targets the instructors had planted around them. Spotting a squawker or target first earned the trainee a point; nailing it cleanly with fingertip lasers before the group got within the animal's theoretical attack range was worth two more points.
It was just one more of the silly competitions Layn was continually using to pit his trainees against each other. One more needless opportunity, Jin thought bitterly, for the other three trainees to hate her.
It was hardly her fault that she was better than they were at these games. It was certainly not her fault that they couldn't accept that.
Her innocence in the matter was cold comfort, though, and thinking about it brought an ache to her throat. She hadn't expected instant acceptance by the others—she'd known full well that Uncle Corwin's lectures about military traditions hadn't merely been scare tactics. But she had thought that by now, eleven days into the training, some of the hostility would surely have faded away.
But it hadn't. Oh, they were polite enough to her— Layn's big speech the first day of training about letting her fail on her own had been backed up by action, and both he and the others were clearly bending over backwards to avoid any kind of overtly prejudicial behavior. But the whispered comments and secret smiles were still there, lurking most outwardly in the quiet times when the trainees were alone.
Or rather, when Jin was alone. The other three spent a lot of that time together.
It hurt. In many ways, it hurt worse than the worst physical aftereffects of her surgery. She'd always been something of a misfit as she was growing up—either too quiet or too aggressive for the other girls and even most of the boys her age. Only with her family had she ever felt truly at home, truly accepted. With her family, and to a lesser extent with the Cobra friends of her father's...
A faint chirping from ahead penetrated her brooding. A tarbine squawker, she identified it, head automatically turning back and forth to pinpoint the sound. There?—there. Activating her optical sensors' targeting capability, she locked onto the small black cube nestled in the crook of a branch and fired her right fingertip laser.
A needle of light lanced out, and the box abruptly stopped chirping.
"A tarbine?" Sun called softly to her from the rear point of the diamond.
"Yeah," she said over her shoulder.
"Why'd you kill it?" Layn asked from the center. "Tarbines aren't dangerous."
"No, sir," she said, recognizing that she'd made the right decision and that Layn simply wanted her to explain it for the others. "But where tarbines are, there's a good chance you'll find mojos, too."
"With their accompanying spine leopards or krisjaws," Layn nodded. "Right. Besides which...? Anyone?"
"Their chirping might mask the sound of something more dangerous?" Todor hazarded from in front of Layn.
"Good enough," the instructor grunted. "Enough conversation. Look sharp."
And a bare second later, the exercise abruptly ceased to be routine. Dead ahead, the bushes suddenly parted and a huge cat-like animal stepped out to face them. A spine leopard.
It's impossible, a small fraction of Jin's mind insisted. The fence surrounding this part of the forest was five meters high, a theoretically impossible barrier even for a spine leopard.
And then the animal snarled, and theory was abruptly forgotten as four sets of fingertip lasers flashed out to converge on the spine leopard's head.
Uselessly, of course, and Jin silently cursed herself for letting her reflexes waste precious time that way. The decentralized spine leopard nervous system was functionally invulnerable to the kind of localized damage the fingertip lasers could inflict. The only known way of dealing with the animals was to get in a clean shot with the antiarmor laser running lengthwise down her left calf—
She was actually starting to shift her weight onto her right foot when the crucial fact caught up with her conscious mind: the trainees' current neckwrap computers didn't allow the antiarmor laser to be activated. The others' fingertip lasers were still slicing uselessly at the spine leopard, leaving blackened tracks in the fur where they passed. And the look that was growing in the creature's eyes... "Stop it!" Jin snapped. "Can't you see you're just making it mad?"
"Then what the hell do you want—?" Todor barked back.
"Try your disrupters!" Sun cut him off. An instant later a backwash of half audible, half felt sound washed over Jin as the others obeyed, playing tight cones of ultrasound over the spine leopard. Another waste of time, Jin thought tightly. Sonic weapons could throw the predators off-balance, but only temporarily; and like the fingertip lasers, their use seemed to enrage the beasts. As soon as this one got its balance back—
And then it struck her. Layn, fully equipped with both antiarmor laser and the nanocomputer needed to use it, had yet to fire a shot.
Another test. Of course—and with that all the pieces fell together. A single spine leopard, captured and released into the enclosure, to see if their first response would be to scatter or to continue their assigned mission of protecting Layn. Doubtless the Cobra already had his antiarmor laser target-locked on the animal, ready to fire the second it looked like things were getting out of control.
Phrijpicker mousfin, she snarled mentally at him. It was a particularly stupid trick—under target-lock or not, spine leopards were far too dangerous to fool around with this way, especially on inexperienced trainees. Somehow, they had to stop the thing before it shrugged off the effects of the sonics and charged. And maybe wound up killing someone.
And whatever they were going to do, they had better do it fast, The spine leopard was rolling its weight slightly from side to side now, the spines along its forelegs beginning to bristle outward—a sign that it was starting to feel endangered. Which would make it that much more vicious when it finally attacked...
Her eyes flicked around the area, came to rest on the cyprene trees and the thick gluevines running up many of their trunks... and a small chapter of family history bobbed to the surface. "Sun!" she snapped, leaping with servo-enhanced strength into the lower branches of a gluevine-wrapped tree midway from her to the spine leopard. Her muscles tensed, but the sudden motion didn't trigger an attack. "Cut the gluevine at the base of the tree," she called back over her shoulder as she got her own lasers going on the top part of the nearest vine. "Rip it free of the trunk—don't touch the cut end."
Sun moved to obey, and three seconds later a five-meter section of gluevine hung free in Jin's hand. Glancing down, she saw that the spine leopard was still holding its ground... but even as she watched, it leaned back on its back haunches. Preparing to spring...
"Hariman—split the vine lengthwise," Sun called. "Moreau?—I've got this end. You ready?"
Which meant he'd figured out what she had in mind. "Ready," she called back, clenching her teeth in anticipation. "Hariman?"
Her answer was a burst of laser fire that cracked the gluevine's thick outer coating, letting the incredibly sticky stuff inside ooze out. "Go!" Sun snapped; and Jin leaped.
Her target was another cyprene just beyond where the spine leopard was coiling itself for its spring. A spring that would carry it to Todor, still doggedly playing his sonic over the predator... and as time seemed to slow down for her, Jin saw for the first time that, in moving over to cut the gluevine, Hariman had unwittingly put himself directly in the line of fire between Layn and the spine leopard. Which meant that if this didn't work, either Hariman or Todor would probably die.
The outer twigs of her target tree scratched at her face and hands as she came in through them... and with all her strength she hurled the vine to the ground.
Directly across the spine leopard's back.
The creature screamed, a blood-chilling sound Jin had never before heard one make. It almost made her miss grabbing the cyprene's trunk; as it was, she tore a gash in the back of her left hand scrambling for a grip. Twisting around, heart thudding in her ears, she looked down.
The spine leopard went ahead and leaped anyway... but even as its feet left the ground, Sun tugged on his end of the gluevine with Cobra servo strength, and an instant later the predator was flying past Todor on a tightly curved course. It landed on its feet, gluevine still draped solidly across its back, foreleg spines spread out in full defensive position—
And twisted to face Sun.
"Stick the vine somewhere and get out of there!" Jin shouted to him.
Sun needed no prompting. In a single motion, he jammed the cut end of the gluevine against the tree he'd cut it from and leaped straight up into the cyprene's branches. Barely pausing to catch his balance, he changed direction and pushed off toward Jin's tree, half a second ahead of the now leashed spine leopard's own leap toward his ankles.
He caught the trunk just above her, sending a rain of twigs and leaves down around her head. "Now what?" he muttered.
"I assume Layn's eventually going to laser it," she told him... but the Cobra was still standing there with Todor and Hariman, watching with them as the spine leopard thrashed about trying to free itself from the gluevine. Todor took a step toward the animal, and it paused in its efforts to make a short leap and slash with its front claws.
"Doesn't seem interested in doing so, does he?" Sun grunted as Todor made a hasty leap back. "Maybe they're going to tranq it and use it on the next batch of trainees."
So Sun had tracked the same line of thought she had. "Pretty damn fool game, if you ask me," she growled to him. "They could at least have waited until we had our antiarmor lasers activated."
"So maybe they want us to be creative."
Jin twisted up her head to look at him. "Meaning...?"
"Well... how long do you suppose it could live with its pseudospine broken?"
She looked down at the animal. Already it had worried a few centimeters of the gluevine free, sacrificing a narrow line of its fur in the process. Left on its own another minute of two... "What say we find out," she suggested grimly.
"Sounds good. You take the rear, I'll take just back of the head. On three; one, two, three."
And Jin pushed off from the tree, arcing into the air as high as she dared. Sun's leap paralleled hers... and as they passed the top of their arcs and started down—
"No!" Layn bellowed; but it was far too late. Jin hit the spine leopard full in the back, keeping her knees stiff until the last second in order to transfer as much impact to the spine leopard's body as she could. Sun hit a fraction of a second behind her, and she both heard and felt the twin cracks—
"No, damn it, no!" Layn yelled again, leaping belatedly forward to kneel down at the limp spine leopard's side... but this time Jin could hear a strange note of resignation in his voice. "Damn it all—"
The look on his face when he got to his feet effectively silenced any comments Jin might have had. But Sun wasn't so reticent. "Is there a problem, sir?" he asked blandly. "You did want us to kill it, didn't you?"
Layn impaled him with a laser-strength glare. "You were merely supposed to get me clear of it," he bit out. "Not—" He took a deep breath. "For your information, trainee, you two idiots have just broken the central mobility transmain of an extremely expensive robot. I trust you're satisfied."
Sun's jaw fell, and Jin felt her eyes go wide as she looked down at the spine leopard. "I suppose that explains," she heard herself say, "why you didn't laser it."
Layn looked like he was ready to chew rocks. "Return to your quarters, all of you," he snarled. "Evening classes are as usual; you're free until then. Get out of my sight."
The tap on her door was gentle, almost diffident. "Yes?" Jin called, looking up from her reader.
"It's me, Mander Sun," a familiar voice answered. "Can I come in?"
"Sure," Jin called back, frowning as she keyed the door open.
He looked almost shy as he stepped hesitantly a couple of paces into the room. "It occurred to me that someone ought to check up on that cut you got out there this afternoon," he said.
She looked down with a little surprise at the heal-quick bandage on her left hand. "Oh, no problem. The cut wasn't deep, just a little messy."
"Ah," he nodded. "Well, then... sorry to have bothered you..." He hesitated, looking a little lost.
Jin licked her lips. Say something! she told herself as her mind went perversely blank. "Uh—by the way," she managed as he started to turn back toward the door, "do you think Layn's going to make trouble for us because of what we did to that robot?"
"He'd better not try," Sun said, turning back again. "If they're going to drop pop tests like that on us, they'd better not complain when we don't do what they expect." He hesitated just a fraction. "That was, uh... a pretty good trick you came up with out there, incidentally. The thing with the gluevine."
She shrugged. "Wasn't all that original, really," she admitted. "My grandfather did something similar once against a berserk gantua. And as long as we're handing out compliments, you were pretty fast on the uptake yourself."
"I didn't have much choice," he said wryly. "It didn't look at the time like you were going to have a chance to explain it to anyone."
"Stupid robot," she muttered, shaking her head. "Almost a shame we didn't figure that part out. Layn would probably have had a stroke if one of us had gone up and petted the thing."
Sun grinned. "I think he came close enough to a stroke as it was." His grin changed into a tight, almost embarrassed smile. "You know, Moreau—Jin... I have to admit that I didn't think much at the beginning of having you in the squad. Not for the tradition reasons Layn trotted out, but because none of the women I've ever known has had the kind of—oh, I don't know; the killer instinct, I guess, that a warrior has to have."
Jin shrugged, forcing herself to meet his gaze. "You might be surprised," she said. "Besides, a lot of what Cobras do these days is more like patrol officer work than full-fledged war, certainly in the more settled areas of the Worlds."
"Hold it right there," Sun growled in mock annoyance, holding his hands up palm-outward. "I don't mind having you here, but I'm not getting drawn into any theoretical discussions on the merits of women in the Cobras, thank you. Not with a test on surveillance techniques breathing down our necks." He glanced at his watch. "Like in half an hour. Phrij—and I still need to study for it some more."
"Me, too," Jin licked her lips. "Thanks for coming by, Mander. I—uh—"
"Mandy," he said, pulling open the door. "That's what everyone else calls me. See you in class."
"Right. Bye."
For a long minute after he was gone she stared at the closed door, not entirely sure whether or not to trust the warm glow beginning to form deep within her. Could her long isolation from the group really be ending? As quickly and easily as that? Just because she'd unwittingly helped give their rough and demanding instructor something of a black eye?
Abruptly, she smiled. Of course it could. If there was one military tradition that superseded every other, it was the "us versus them" feeling of trainees toward everyone else... and especially toward instructors. In helping Sun ruin Layn's robot spine leopard, she'd suddenly become one of the "us."
Or at least, she warned herself, I've got my foot in the door. But for now, at least, that was enough. The first barrier, her father had often reminded her, was always the hardest to break.
For just a moment she frowned as an odd thought flickered across her mind. Surely Layn hadn't deliberately let her destroy that robot... had he? No—of course not. The very idea was absurd. He'd already said he didn't want her to succeed.
And speaking of succeeding... Turning back to her reader, she keyed for a fast scan of the lessons on surveillance methods. As Sun had pointed out, there was a test breathing down their necks.
The reminder clock on his desk pinged, and Corwin looked up at it with mild surprise. Somehow, while he hadn't been looking, the afternoon had disappeared. It was four fifty, and in just forty minutes the celebration was scheduled to start over at Justin's house. The celebration for his daughter's graduation from the Cobra Academy.
For a moment Corwin gazed unseeingly at the clock, his mind jumping back almost thirty years to the similar celebration his parents had thrown for Justin himself. It had been a strained evening, with everyone trying to ignore the fact that the new Cobra and his twin brother would he heading off in a few days to the mysterious world of Qasama, possibly never to return.
And now it would be Jin who'd be going off in a week. To the same world. Under almost identical circumstances.
To try and fix the same problem.
Corwin could remember a time, far back in the dim haze of his youth, when it had seemed to him that if you fixed a problem right the first time it would stay fixed. When he believed there were problems that could be permanently fixed.
The memories made him feel very old.
"Corwin?"
With a jolt, he brought himself back to the real world. "Yes, Thena, what is it?"
"The governor-general's on the line. Says it's important."
Corwin flicked another glance at his clock. "He always does," he growled. "Oh, all right." He stabbed at the proper button, and Thena's image was replaced by Chandler's. "Yes?"
Chandler's face looked like he'd been chewing on something not quite ripe. "I've got some bad news for you, Moreau," he said without preamble. "I have here on my desk a petition calling for your brother Justin to be confined until the matter of the Monse shooting can be definitively cleared up. It's been endorsed by seventy-one members of the Cobra Worlds Council."
Corwin felt his face go rigid. Seventy-one members was something like sixty percent—an utterly incredible number. "That's ridiculous," he said. "The whole thing—"
"The whole thing," Chandler cut him off grimly, "has been pulling for more net space than any seven-week-old issue has any right to be getting. In case you haven't noticed, the public rumblings over the whole mess never completely vanished; and in the past week or so they've started getting louder again."
Corwin gritted his teeth hard enough to hurt. Preoccupied with arrangements and details for the Qasama mission, he hadn't had time to keep up with the ebb and flow of Aventinian public opinion. But then why hadn't Justin or Joshua or someone else pointed it out to him—?
Because they hadn't wanted him to worry, of course. And so, while he'd been busy looking the other way, Priesly's gang had been busy weaving an encirclement.
But maybe it still wasn't too late to fight back. A petition, even one from the Cobra Worlds Council, wasn't legally binding on the governor-general's actions. If he could get Chandler on his side... or at least onto neutral... "Since you're calling me about it," he said carefully, "do I presume you intend to comply with their demand?"
Chandler's eyes flashed. "It's hardly a demand, Moreau—I can ignore the thing entirely if I choose to do so. The question really boils down to whether or not you're worth bucking this kind of public opinion for."
"Or in other words, why risk political fallout over a governor who's on his way out anyway?" Corwin asked softly.
Chandler at least had the grace to look uncomfortable. "It's not like that," he muttered. "Whatever happens with your niece on Qasama doesn't change the fact that you are at present a full Aventinian governor."
"True," Corwin nodded. "Not to mention the possibility that Jin may actually do so well out there that I won't have to resign in the first place."
"I suppose that's possible," Chandler conceded. "Hardly likely, though."
Corwin shrugged. Despite his words, it was clear from Chandler's manner that he felt awkward about writing Corwin off without cause. It gave Corwin a psychological lever—a weak one, but the best he was likely to get. "I presume you'll be ordering Justin into house arrest, then?" he asked. "Surely there's no need to put him in an actual prison."
Chandler's eyes bored into his. "It might be enough to satisfy them," he said evenly. "Suppose someone suggests that he's potentially a threat to the community and ought to be somewhere more secure?"
"You could counter by asking this person where the hell he thinks would be a safe place to incarcerate a Cobra who doesn't want to stay put," Corwin told him. "Or point out the obvious fact that Justin's not a danger to anyone who isn't threatening him. Alternatively, if this person's on the Directorate and privy to such information, you could just point out that the use of that Troft shuttle for the Qasaman mission might be in jeopardy if Speaker One finds out you've locked up a Moreau."
Chandler's eyebrows lifted a fraction. "I find it hard to believe you and the Tlossies are that friendly."
"Of course we aren't," Corwin shook his head. "But you'll recall this unnamed someone of yours was on the aircar when Speaker One asked that a Moreau help plan the Qasama mission. Reminding him of that ought to make him a little cautious about pushing too hard for public incarceration."
Chandler snorted, gently. "Perhaps. Perhaps." He took a deep breath. "All right. House arrest it is, with as little publicity as we can get away with."
"Thank you, sir." Corwin hesitated. "If I could ask one more favor, though... we're having the graduation party for Jin this evening. Could you postpone the order until tomorrow morning? It would make things a lot easier on all of us."
"I hardly think Justin's going to sneak off and leave the planet," Chandler said, almost offhandedly. Having already made up his mind to buck Priesly on one point, bucking him on another one as well apparently didn't cost any extra effort. "The house arrest will officially begin tomorrow morning at eight, then. You realize, of course, that Priesly is likely to consider this a favor you owe him. Whether you look at it that way or not."
"I've already put my career on his block over Jin's Cobra appointment," Corwin said coldly. "If Priesly thinks he can squeeze blood out of me beyond that, he's going to be sorely disappointed."
"I suppose." Chandler sighed. "Though I wouldn't underestimate his skills at manipulating the nets if I were you. Resigning quietly from a governorship and resigning in public disgrace are two very different ends. I think he'd take a great deal of pleasure in the chance to drag the Moreau name out for the gantuas to walk on."
Corwin felt his stomach tighten. The Moreau name. It was a noble part of the Cobra Worlds' young history, one of the few names virtually everyone on Aventine had grown up knowing. Protecting it had been a deciding factor in his father's fight against the Challinor rebellion so many years ago, and his subsequent work in reshaping Aventinian politics; and it was one of the few gifts of real value Corwin himself had to give to his nieces and—if he ever had any—to his own children. The thought of Priesly with his grubby hands on it... "If he tries it, he'll be sorry," he told Chandler softly. "Call it a threat, or call it a statement of fact; but make sure he understands."
Chandler nodded. "I'll try. I just wanted you to understand what we were dealing with here. Anyway... I expect I ought to let you go. You'll of course want to tell your brother about this tonight."
"I will," Corwin sighed. "Goodnight, sir... and thank you."
The governor-general threw him a grim smile and vanished from the screen.
For a long moment Corwin just sat there, staring blankly at the empty screen. So Priesly hadn't been content with merely embarrassing Corwin's family, instead, he was out for real blood. Well, if it's a fight he wants, he thought bitterly, it's a fight he's going to get. And Corwin had been in politics considerably longer than Priesly had. Somehow, he'd find a way to turn all this back on the Ject. Somehow.
Taking a deep breath, he pushed the thought back as far as he could and got to his feet. He was going to a party, after all, and ought to at least try to project an image of happiness. Whether he felt that way or not.
The red streaks of sunset were fading into the early-evening darkness of the springtime Capitalia sky as Jin drove up to the curb and stepped out onto the walk. For a moment she just stood there in the dusk, gazing at the house and wondering why the home of her childhood should look so different to her now. Surely it wasn't just that she'd been away for four weeks—she'd been away that long many times before. No, the house hadn't changed; it was she who was different. The home of her childhood... but she was no longer a child. She was an adult.
An adult; and a Cobra.
Almost automatically, she keyed through a series of settings on her optical enhancers as she walked up toward the house, spotting things about the building and grounds that she'd never known before. The infrared setting showed what seemed to be a minor heat leak in the corner by her bedroom—no wonder that room had always felt colder than the rest of the house in the winter. Telescopic enhancement showed that the allegedly permanent siding was beginning to crack near the guttering; and a telescopic/light-amplified study of a hole in the tall sideyard borlash tree won her a glimpse of bright animal eyes hiding there. Memories of the past, thoughts of the future—all of it mingled together with the reality of the present. The reality that, against all odds, she'd achieved her life's ambition.
She was a Cobra.
The sound of a decelerating car behind her registered on her consciousness and she turned, expecting to see one of her uncles driving up.
It was Mander Sun.
"Hey! Jin!" he called, leaning his head out the window. "Hold up a minute."
She retraced her steps and crossed the street as he pulled to a halt against the opposite curb. "What is it?" she asked, belatedly noticing the hard set of his mouth. "Is anything wrong?"
"I don't know." His eyes probed her face. "Maybe it's just rumors... look, I heard something this afternoon from a friend of my dad's who does datawork for the Directorate. Do you know why you were approved for the Academy?"
The obvious reasons—the official reasons—came to Jin's mind, faded unsaid. "I know what I was told. What did you hear?"
"That it was a quiet deal," he growled. "That your uncle—the governor—put himself on the line for you. If this mission succeeds he gets to keep his position. Otherwise... he has to resign."
Jin felt her mouth go dry. The memory of that horrible night so many weeks ago flashed back to mind: the night her father had shot Monse... the night she'd gone and pleaded with Uncle Corwin to get her—somehow—into the Cobras. "No," she whispered. "No. He wouldn't do that. Politics is his life."
Sun shrugged helplessly. "I don't know if it's true or not, Jin. I just thought... well, that maybe you didn't know. And that maybe you should."
"Why?—so that I can be more nervous about the mission than I already am?" she snarled, the numbness suddenly flashing into anger.
"No," Sun said quietly. "So that you could hear it from a friend. And so I could tell you that the rest of the team is behind you."
She opened her mouth, closed it again as the anger vanished. "So that... what?"
He held her gaze. "I talked to Rafe and Peter before coming over here," he said. "We all agreed that you were a good teammate who didn't deserve this kind of extra pack on her shoulders." He snorted gently. "We also agreed that anyone who would pull a scummy move like that on Governor Moreau was a full-blooded phrijpicker, and that a guy like that might arrange to leak the word to you just before we left—little extra squeeze value, you know. And like I said... I thought you'd do better to hear it from friends."
She looked back toward the house so that he wouldn't see the moisture in her eyes. It was true, of course—in retrospect it had to have been something like that. Oh, Uncle Corwin... "Yes," she said. "I... yes. Thank you."
A tentative hand touched hers where it rested on the car. "We'll do it, Jin," Sun said. "All of us together—we'll do such a bang-up job on Qasama that they'll be lucky if they don't have to give us a full-city parade and canonize Governor Moreau in the bargain."
Jin blinked the tears back and tried a smile. "You're right," she said, squeezing his hand briefly. "We'll make them sorry they tried to pick on a Moreau."
"And even sorrier that they tried to use a Sun to do it," Sun added with grim pride in his voice. "Anyway. I've got to get moving—my family's waiting for me. You going to be okay?"
"Sure," she nodded. "Mandy... thanks."
"No charge. Partner." Reluctantly, she thought, he pulled his hand away from hers. "Well. Look, you take care of yourself—try not to get into any trouble—and I'll see you at the starfield in a week."
"Right. Bye."
"Bye."
She watched until his car turned a corner and vanished from sight. Then, taking a deep breath, she straightened her shoulders and started back toward the house. Not all the nuances of this mess were clear to her, but one of them was clear enough. The family didn't intend for her to know about Uncle Corwin's bargain; and so, as far as they were concerned, she wouldn't. She'd never had any formal acting experience, but she'd grown up with two older sisters and had long since learned how to bend the truth with a straight face.
Or even with a smiling face. She was going to a party, after all, and ought to at least try to project an image of excitement. Whether she felt that way or not.
The new Cobras had a week of liberty before they were due to leave. For Jin, at least, the week went by very quickly.
"...and whatever you do, listen to Layn, okay?" Justin told his daughter as they walked arm in arm up the long ramp leading to the Southern Cross's entry-way. "I know he's a pain in the butt as an instructor, but he's a smart tactician and a crackling fighter. Stick with him and you'll be all right."
"Okay, Dad," Jin nodded. "Hey, don't worry—we'll be fine."
Justin looked down at his daughter's face as, for a brief second, an intense feeling of deja vu washed over him. "Qasama is the last place in the world to be overconfident about, Jin," he said quietly. "Everything about the planet is dangerous, from the krisjaws and spine leopards to the mojos to the Qasaman people. They're all dangerous, and they all hate you. Especially you."
Jin squeezed him a little tighter. "Don't worry, Dad, I know what I'm getting into."
"No, you don't. No one ever does. You have to—well, never mind." He took a deep breath, fighting back the urge to lecture her. "Just be careful, and come back safely. Okay?"
"Good advice," she said solemnly. "You be careful, too, huh? At least I'll be with a group of Cobras and other competent people. You'll be stuck here with Priesly and his mob."
And under Priesly's trumped-up house arrest... Justin's jaw tightened momentarily with a freshly renewed awareness of the two guards standing a few paces behind them. "Yeah, well, it's not all that bad," he told his daughter, forcing a smile. "As long as Corwin's in there fighting for me Priesly hasn't got a chance of making this thing stick."
Something passed, too quickly to identify, across Jin's face. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah. Well... walk me up the ramp?"
He did. At the entryway they exchanged one last hug... and as Jin's arms tightened, Cobra-strong, around him, Justin's vision blurred with moisture. A quarter century of hope and frustration was finally over. His child had succeeded him as a Cobra.
A triple tone sounded from the entryway. "I'd better get inside," Jin said into his chest. "I'll see you in a few weeks, Dad. Take care of yourself, okay?"
"Sure." Reluctantly, he released her and took half a step back. She smiled at him, blinking back tears of her own, then turned to wave one last time down the ramp to where her sisters and cousins were waiting for the Southern Cross's takeoff.
Then she was gone, and Justine found himself walking away from the ship. She'll be all right, he thought over and over to himself. She'll be all right. Really she will. She's my daughter—she has to come through it all right.
And for the first time he truly knew how his own parents must have felt on that day, so long ago, when he and Joshua had themselves lifted off for Qasama. The realization brought a half-bitter smile to his lips.
Whether there was justice in the universe he didn't know. But there did appear to be a certain symmetry.