Cobra Alliance

'The law is on my side,' Jonny said. 'Frankly, Mr. Wrey, I don't see why this is really a problem. You obviously have the room to spare for me, and I've already showed you that you'll be both morally and legally in the clear if your superiors become annoyed. And who knows? Maybe they'll actually be glad I came along... in which case you'll get all the credit for such foresight.'

Wrey snorted at that, but Jonny could see in his face that he'd already opted for the simpler, safer course. 'All right, what the hell. You want to cut out and spend the war on Asgard, that's none of my business. Just be here when the rest of the passengers show or I'll leave without you.'

'Understood. And thank you.'

Wrey snorted again and the screen went blank.

Jonny exhaled slowly. Another minor victory... and as emotionally unsatisfying as all such political wins seemed to be. Perhaps, he thought, it was because no opponent was ever fully vanquished in this form of combat. They always got back up out of the dust, a little smarter and—often—a little madder each time. And Jonny would now be spending the next three months heading straight for Wrey's political domain, while Wrey himself had those same months to plan whatever revenge he chose.

So much for victory.

Grimacing, Jonny punched again for Almo Pyre. His order halting the ship's servicing would have to be rescinded.

There was a great deal of work involved in turning over his duties on such short notice, and in the end Jonny wound up with far less time than he'd wanted to tell his family good-bye. It added one more shade of pain to the already Pyrrhic victory, especially as he had no intention of letting Wrey know how he felt.

The worst part, of course, was that there was very little aboard ship to occupy his thoughts. On the original trip to Aventine a quarter century earlier, there'd been fellow colonists to meet as well as magcards of information compiled by the survey teams to be studied. Here, even with the fourteen business passengers Wrey was bringing home, the ship carried only thirty-six people, none of whom Jonny was especially interested in getting to know. And if the ship carried any useful information on the impending war, no one was saying anything about it.

So for the first couple of weeks Jonny did little except sit alone in his cabin, reread the colonies' data he'd brought to show the Central Committee, and brood... until one morning he awoke with an unexpected, almost preternatural alertness. It took him several minutes to figure out on a conscious level what his subconscious had already realized: during ship's night they had passed from no-man's space into the Troft Corridor. The old pattern of being in hostile territory evoked long-buried Cobra training; and as the politician yielded to the warrior, Jonny unexpectedly found his helpless feelings giving way to new determination. For the time being, at least, the political situation had become a potentially military one... and military situations were almost never completely hopeless.

He began in the accepted military way: learning the territory. For hours at a time he toured the Menssana, getting to know everything about it and compiling long mental lists of strengths, weaknesses, quirks, and possibilities. He learned the names and faces of each of the fourteen crewers and six Marines, evaluating as best he could how they would react in a crisis. Doing the same with the passengers actually proved a bit easier: with the same excess of free time he himself had, they were eager to spend time with him, playing games or just talking. More than once Jonny wished he'd brought Cally Halloran along, but even without the other's knack at informal psych analysis, he was soon able to divide the passengers into the old 'float/freeze' categories: those who could probably deal with and adapt to a crisis, and those who couldn't. Heading the former were two executive field reps Jonny soon learned to consider friends as well as potential allies: Dru Quoraheim, a pharmaceutical company executive whose face and dry humor reminded him vaguely of Ilona Linder; and Rando Harmon, whose interests lay in rare metals and, occasionally, Dru Quoraheim. For a while Jonny wondered if Dru had latched onto him to use as a partial shield against Harmon's advances, but as it became clear that those advances were entirely non-serious he realized the whole thing was an elaborate game designed to give the participants something to concentrate on besides the mental picture of silent Troft warships.

And when his survey was complete... it was back to waiting. He played chess with Dru and Harmon, kept abreast of the ship's progress, and—alone, late at night—tried to come up with some way to keep the war from happening, or at least to keep it from happening to Aventine. And wondered if and when the Trofts would move against the Menssana.

Twenty-five light-years from Dominion space, they finally did.

It was evening, ship's time, and most of the passengers were in the lounge, grouped in twos and threes for conversation, social drinking, or the occasional game. At a table near the back Jonny, Dru, and Harmon had managed a synthesis of all three in the form of a light Aventine sherry and a particularly nasty round of trisec chess.

A game Jonny's red pieces were steadily losing. 'You realize, of course,' he commented to his opponents, 'that such friendly cooperation between you two is prima facie evidence of collusion between your two companies. If I lose this game, I'm swearing out a complaint when we get to Asgard.'

'Never stand up in court,' Harmon rumbled distractedly. His attention had good reason to be elsewhere; Dru was slowly but inexorably building up pressure on his king side and too many of his own pieces were out of position to help. 'Dru's the one who's apparently moonlighting from the Joint Command's tactical staff.'

'I wish I was,' Dru shook her head. 'At least I'd have something to do during the war. Market developers don't get much work when the market shrinks.'

For a few minutes the only sound was the click of chess pieces as Dru launched her attack, Harmon defended, and Jonny took advantage of the breather to reposition his own men. Harmon was a move behind in the exchange and wound up losing most of his cozy castle arrangement. 'Tell me again about this collusion,' he said when the flurry of moves was over.

'Well, I could be mistaken,' Jonny admitted.

Harmon grunted and took a sip of his drink. 'Going to be the last Aventine sherry anyone back home gets for a long time,' he commented. 'A real pity.'

'War usually is.' Jonny hesitated. 'Tell me, what does the Dominion's business community think of the upcoming hostilities?'

Dru snorted. 'I presume you're not talking about the shipyards and armaments manufacturers?'

'No, I mean companies like yours that've been working with Aventine. Maybe even the Trofts, too, for all I know. Like you said, Dru, you're losing a growing market out here.'