"Shall we go do that now?"
Jin glanced down at Daulo's slack face. "No. There'll probably be Trofts on duty on the bridge, and we don't want to risk starting anything right now. Tomorrow night, when Daulo Sammon's recovered and you and I have caught up on our sleep, we'll give it a try."
Akim stifled a yawn. "All right. Should one of us stand watch?"
Jin shook her head. "Just lie down against the door, if you don't mind. As long as we're alerted the second anyone tries to get in, I'll be able to deal with them."
"What about you?" Akim asked, sliding across the floor to parallel the door.
"There's not really enough room for all of us to lie down."
"Don't worry about me," Jin yawned. "I used to sleep sitting up all the time when I was a girl. I should be able to recover the technique."
"Well... all right." Reaching to his feet, Akim pulled off his shoes and slid them beneath his head as he stretched out on his back against the door. "But if you have trouble sleeping, let me know and we can trade off partway through the night."
"I'll do that," Jin promised. "Thank you, Miron Akim. Goodnight."
For a moment his dark eyes bored into hers. "Goodnight, Jasmine Moreau."
Reaching up, Jin flicked off the light. The room fell silent, and for a long while she just sat there in the darkness, feeling utterly drained in body, mind, and spirit. Two weeks, Akim had said, since Jin's "invasion" had begun. Two weeks, now, she'd been marooned on this world.
And with an almost shocking suddenness, the end of it was upon her.
With an effort of will, Jin activated her optical enhancers and looked over at
Akim. His eyes were closed, his body limp, his breathing slow and steady.
Sleeping the sleep of the righteous. And why not? she thought, almost resentfully. After all, she'd done her best to convince him that there was nothing for them to do but sleep for the next half day or more. This was the eye of the storm, the lull before embarking on what he surely knew would be a long and perilous journey to Azras to sound the alarm.
Except that, with any luck at all, it wouldn't be.
Two weeks. Eight days for the Southern Cross, six days for the Dewdrop. Fourteen
Aventinian days were... Briefly, she tried to make the conversion to Qasama days, but her brain wasn't up to it and she gave up the effort. It was close, though; the two planets' rotation periods didn't differ by more than an hour or so.
Which meant that the rescue team could be here almost any time.
We'll listen for your call at local sunrise, noon, sunset, and midnight, Captain
Koja's supply pod message had said. If you can't signal, we'll come down and find you.
How long would they wait before landing and beginning a full-scale search? Not more than a day, surely. Especially once they confirmed that the shuttle's crash site was being guarded by military helicopters. Twelve hours in orbit, no more, and they'd be coming down.
And when they did...
Jin shivered. We aren't enemies, she'd told Akim. And she'd meant it. Whether he liked it or not, they really were allies in this battle to tear Obolo Nardin's sticky fingers off Qasama. The landing team, though, was unlikely to see things that way.
Which meant she had to get in touch with them before they landed. Probably within the next day. Almost certainly before it was safe for Akim and Daulo to leave.
Her stomach knotted at the thought. What would they think, she wondered uneasily, when she abandoned them here tomorrow evening and made her solitary escape from Mangus? Would they understand that all this really hadn't been a cold-blooded scheme to trap them here out of her way? Would they believe her when she repeated that this was still the safest place for them to wait for their own reinforcements to arrive?
And would either understand if she had to kill someone in order to get access to one of those helicopter radios out at the shuttle crash site?
Probably not. But ultimately, it didn't much matter. Whether they understood or not, it was something she had to do. As much for Qasama's safety as for her own.
With a sigh, she turned off her optical enhancers and tried to sink into the darkness surrounding her. Eventually, she succeeded.
Chapter 43
She woke abruptly, and for a moment just sat there in the darkness, heart thudding in her ears as her fogged brain tried to figure out what it was that had startled her so thoroughly out of a deep sleep. Then it clicked, and she surged to her feet, stifling a groan as pain lanced through sleep-stiffened joints and muscles.
"What is it?" Akim hissed.
"Trouble," Jin told him grimly, keying in her optical enhancers. Akim was sitting up now, a hand dabbing at his eyes as he grabbed his shoes; Daulo was still stretched out in sleep. "That deep drone you can hear sounds very much like a pre-flight engine test."
Akim's eyes widened. "A what?" he demanded, jamming his shoes on and scrambling to his feet.
"A pre-flight engine test," she repeated, squatting down beside Daulo and shaking his shoulder. "Daulo Sammon?-come on, wake up."
"What time is it, anyway?" Akim asked. His groping hand found her arm, squeezed with painful force.
"Take it easy," she growled, shrugging off his hand and checking her nanocomputer's clock circuit. The readout stunned her: they'd been aboard the ship barely seven hours. "Only about mid-morning," she said.
"Mid-morning? But you said-"
He was interrupted by a sudden gasp from Daulo. "Who is it?" he croaked.
"Shh!" Jin cautioned him. "Relax-it's Jasmine Moreau and Miron Akim. How do you feel?"
He paused, visibly working moisture into his mouth. "Strange. God above, but those were bad dreams."
"Some of them may not have been dreams," Jin told him. "Do you feel up to traveling?"
Clenching his teeth, Daulo pushed himself into a sitting position, a brief spasm flicking across his face. "I'm a little dizzy, but that's all. I think I'll be all right if we don't have to go too far or too fast. Where are we, anyway?"
"Inside the Troft ship." Jin turned to Akim, noting with relief that he seemed to have recovered his balance. "I'm going to make a fast reconnoiter outside," she told him. "See if I can figure out just what's happening."
"I'll come with you," the other said.
"It might be better if you stayed here with-"
"I said I'll come with you."
Grimacing, Jin nodded. "All right. Daulo, you stay here and get all the kinks out of your muscles. We'll be back in a couple of minutes."
The corridor directly outside the door was deserted, though the sounds of activity coming from all directions indicated that that was probably a very temporary condition. "Where to?" Akim hissed in her ear as she stepped out.
"This way," she whispered back, leading the way back to the ship's central corridor. Glancing both ways along it, she started forward at a fast jog. "We need to find a room with a full-sweep monitor," she added as he caught up and matched her pace, "and most of those'll be in the neck and command module."
"You're certain?" he snarled. "As you were certain that Obolo Nardin wouldn't be reacting until tomorrow?"
She glanced back over her shoulder at his tightly hostile face. "So maybe I overestimated Obolo Nardin's nerve," she growled. "Or maybe the Trofts decided the odds of us getting recaptured weren't all that good and decided to offload and run before your people caught them here."
"Or maybe-"
And barely three meters ahead, a door slid open and a Troft stepped into the corridor.