The desk in his temporary Cobra Academy room was small and several centimeters shorter than he liked; but it was equipped with a computer terminal, and that was all Justin really cared about. He"d just punched in a new search command and was waiting for the results when there was a tap at the door. "Come in," he said absently. Probably someone here to complain about his late hours again-
"No one ever tell you it was impolite to leave without saying good-bye?"
Justin spun his chair around, surprise and chagrin flooding his face with heat.
"Oh... hi, Aunt Gwen," he managed to say without stuttering. "Uh-well, you were all busy discussing the mojos, and I had work to do here...."
He trailed off under her steady, no-nonsense gaze, the look that since childhood had been more effective on him than any amount of brimstone or lecture.
"Uh-huh," she said. "Well, it"s too bad you took off when you did. You missed my report."
"The one on the Qasaman strategic material situation?"
"That"s the one. And the surprise bonus: the Qasamans" long-range communication method."
Justin blinked, his heartbeat speeding up. "You"ve figured it out? Well, come on-how do they do it?"
"I"ll trade you," she said, waving at the desk and its scattering of papers and maps. "You tell me your secret first."
He felt his mouth twist into a grimace... but he"d have to tell someone soon, anyway. Aunt Gwen he could at least hope to be sympathetic. "All right," he sighed. "I"m trying to work up a tactical plan for the next intelligence raid on
Qasama."
Gwen"s eyes remained steady on his. "What makes you think there"ll be another mission?"
"There has to be," he said. "The first mission ended with too many critical facts still unknown. Those underground manufacturing centers, at the very least, and if Dad"s right the mojos as well."
"Uh-huh. I presume you plan on leading this expedition?"
Justin"s lip quirked. "Of course not... but I will be one of the team."
"Um." Gwen glanced around the room, snared a chair from beside the door and pulled it over to face her nephew"s. "You know, Justin," she said, sitting down,
"if I didn"t know better, I"d think you were running away from something."
He snorted. "Heading to Qasama hardly qualifies as running away, in my opinion."
"Depends on what you have here to face. Staying put when you feel real or imagined public animosity isn"t easy. But sometimes any other option is the coward"s way out."
Justin took a deep breath. "Aunt Gwen... you can"t possibly know what this situation is like. I failed on Qasama-pure and simple-and it"s my job now to make up for it if I can."
"You"re not listening. Failure or not isn"t the issue. Rushing ahead with a premature course of action qualifies as running away, period. And yes, I do know what you"re facing. When your father came back from the war he-" She stopped, lips compressed, then quietly continued. "There was an accident in town one night, and he... killed a couple of teenagers."
Justin felt his mouth go dry. "I"ve never heard this," he said carefully.
"It"s nothing we"re anxious to talk about," she sighed. "Basically, the kids pretended they were going to run him over with their car and his Cobra reflexes countered in a way that wound up indirectly killing them. But the details don"t matter. He wanted to run away afterwards-had a whole bunch of off-world university applications filled out and ready to go. But he stayed. He stayed, and along with helping the rest of us cope with the ostracism, he just happened incidentally to save a few men from a fire."
"So he stayed... until he left for good and came here to Aventine?"
Gwen blinked. "Well... yes, but that"s not the same. The Dominion government wanted the Cobras to come help open up the colony-"
"Could he have refused?"
"I-can"t say. But he wouldn"t have, because his skills and abilities were needed out here."
Justin spread his hands. "But don"t you see?-you"re giving my own argument back at me. Dad"s Cobra abilities were needed, so he came; my Cobra abilities are needed on Qasama, so I"m going. It"s the exact same thing."
"But it"s not," Gwen said, her voice and eyes almost pleading. "You don"t have the training and experience to be a warrior. You"re just trying to cleanse your conscience through an act of revenge."
Justin sighed and shook his head. "I"m not out for revenge, really I"m not.
Between the ride back and my time here I"ve had two weeks to work through my emotions on the matter, and... I think I understand myself and my motives.
Qasama has to be stopped, we need more information to do that-" he took a deep breath-"and if I"m not a real warrior, I"m probably the closest thing to one left on Aventine."
"Jonny has worked hard to make the Cobras a force for peace and development in the Worlds."
"But he had to go through his war first," Justin told her quietly. "And I have to go through mine."
For a long minute the room was silent. Then Justin gave his aunt a pa.s.sable attempt at a smile. "Your turn now. What"s your secret?"
Gwen sighed, a long hissing sound of defeat, "If you look at a topographical map of Qasama, you"ll see that all the cities and villages are scattered along a low, roughly boomerang-shaped ridge four thousand kilometers or so in total length and maybe six hundred at its largest diameter. There"s evidence that it was caused by an upwelling of basaltic magma in the fairly recent geological past."
"That"s a lot of magma," Justin murmured.
"Granted, though there are even larger examples of this sort of thing back on some of the Dominion worlds. Anyway, I"ve done some computer modeling, and it looks very possible that the basalt intruded into some highly metallic rock layers. If that"s the case the Qasamans have a ready-made waveguide for low-frequency radio waves a hundred meters below them, ready to dig antennas into. That sort of system"s been used before, but with the metallic ore around it the basalt would keep nearly all of the signal inside it, leaking very little of it out for anyone to pick up."
Justin whistled under his breath. "Cute. Very cute. A planet already wired for sound." And if true, it would eliminate the last lingering doubts he had about mojo long-distance telepathic abilities. That was worth a lot right there. "When will you know for sure if you"re right?"
She sighed again. "I suppose it won"t be certain until your intelligence raid finds the antennas." She gazed at him another moment, then got to her feet. "I"d better be going," she said, backing toward the door. "Almo"s waiting to take me back to my hotel. I"ll... talk to you later."
"Thanks for coming by," Justin said. "Don"t worry-this"ll be done in a day or two, and after it"s submitted I"ll have more time to spend with the family."
"Sure. Well... good night."
" "Night, Aunt Gwen."
For a long minute after she left he stayed where he was, eyes on the closed door. A hundred meters down to the Qasamans" basaltic waveguide. Thirty stories, more or less... approximately the depth of the Purma building he"d escaped from.
Had that been all the place was?-the local communications center, not the industrial complex that he"d thought? If so-
If so, he"d missed little of truly vital importance by his premature break for freedom.
He was, perhaps, not a failure, after all. Or at least not as much of one as he"d thought.
It was nice to know. But, ultimately, it made little practical difference. There was still the job on Qasama to do, and he and his fellow Cobras the only ones who could do it.
Turning to his desk once more, he got back to work.