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.

The alien was fast, all right. His hand went instantly to the gun belted against his abdomen, closed on the grip-

And Jin leaped across the gap, one hand grabbing the gun to lock it in place as the other jabbed hard against the Troft's throat.

The alien dropped with no sound but a muffled clang. "Come on," Jin breathed to

Akim, looking over at the door the alien had emerged from. Port drive monitor station, the catertalk symbols read. "Here we go," she muttered to Akim, and jabbed at the touchplate. The door slid open onto a roomful of flashing lights and glowing displays and a second Troft seated in a swivel chair in front of them.

The alien was just starting to turn around toward the door as she took a long step forward. It was doubtful he ever knew just what had hit him.

"Bring that other one in," Jin whispered to Akim, glancing around to make sure there was no one else in the room. Akim already had the unconscious Troft halfway through the door, leaning over to throw one last look each way before he let the panel slide closed. "Are they dead?" he asked, letting the limp form drop to the deck with a shudder.

"No," she assured him. "They'll be out of action for at least an hour, though.

Better leave that alone," she added as Akim gingerly picked up the Troft's laser. "Those are extremely nasty weapons, and I don't have time to teach you how to use it properly. Right now you'd be as likely to damage yourself with it as shoot anyone else."

Reluctantly, he let the laser drop onto the Troft's torso, and Jin turned her attention to the control boards. Somewhere here had to be... there it was:

Monitor camera selection. Now if she could find a camera that covered the rear loading hatchway, or even outside... there. "Here goes," she said, tentatively touching the switch.

The central display shifted to a fisheye view that seemed to be coming from somewhere near the starboard drive nozzle. At one edge was a corner of the loading tower's ramp; at the other was the gateway to the human half of the

Mangus compound. In the center about a dozen people were running motorized load carriers both ways between the gateway and the ship.

Akim spotted it first. "They're not unloading," he said abruptly. "The carriers leaving the ship are empty-see?"

"Yeah," Jin agreed, stomach tightening into a hard knot. "Damn. Perhaps you were right after all, Miron Akim. Obolo Nardin's apparently packing his alien gadgetry onto the ship and deserting Mangus."