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would not have to worry much about
Aventine's winter tonight.
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Winter, as such, didn't exist aboard Troft warships.
For the fourth time in almost that many minutes the comboard screen seemed to
blur in front of
Telek's eyes; and for the fourth time she shook her head stubbornly and
swallowed a mouthful of cahve. It was late, she was tired, and she would need
to be at
COBRA STRIKE
247
least marginally coherent for the Council meeting in the morning. But this was
the first chance she'd had to see the Menssana's report, and she was
determined to have at least a passing acquaintance with what they'd found
before she checked out for the night.
There was a light tap at the door. "Come," she called.
It wasn't, as she'd expected, one of the Academy medical staff. "The nurses at
the monitor station are annoyed you haven't gone to sleep yet," Jonny
commented as he walked into the room.
She blinked, then snorted. "They brought you all the way from Capitafia to
tell me that?"
"Hardly. I was in the neighborhood and thought I'd drop in." Pulling up a
chair, he sat down.
Telek nodded. "They did good. You can be damn proud of them."
"I know. Though Justin doesn't think so."
"Well, he's wrong," Telek growled. "If he'd tried to get to Purma's
underground stuff, he wouldn't have made it out alive. Period. And if he
hadn't made it out, we might have taken Yuri and Marck aboard before we knew
how the Qasamans like to stack their deals."
"I understand that. He will too, eventually. I hope." Jonny waved toward her
comboard. "The
Menssana's report?"
"Uh-huh. You people did pretty well yourselves."
Jonny nodded. "They all look promising," he agreed. "At least two are better
even than that."
Telek looked him in the eye. "I want those worlds, Jonny."
He returned the gaze without flinching. "Badly enough to fight a war for?"
"Badly enough to do whatever we have to," she said bluntly.
He sighed. "I'd rather hoped that what happened on Qasama would have blunted
your eagerness a bit."
248
Timothy Zahn
COBRA STRIKE
249
"It's made me aware of what it'll cost. But the option is the loss of the last
nineteen thousand people on Caelian."
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"Or so goes the argument. They can always move back here, you know."
"But they won't. Anyone who was willing to lose that much face by admitting
defeat has already done so. We can't move the rest of them back to
civilization their pride won't take it."
"Whereas your pride won't let you turn tail on the Qasamans?" he countered.
"Pride has nothing to do with it."
"Sure." Reaching into his tunic, Jonny produced a magdisk and handed it to
her. "Well, whatever your motives, as long as you're solidly hell-bent on
smashing Qasama, you might as well know as much about the place as possible."
Telek frowned at the disk. "What's this?"
"The official Baliu'ckha'spmi report on Qasama."
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She looked up at him, feeling her mouth fall open. "It's what? Where did you
get it?"
"From the Troft ship out there," he replied. "Clearly, any ship sent to back
up our mission would have their own world's report aboard for emergency
reference. So I went up this afternoon and got a copy."
"Just like that?"
"More or less. A combination of bluff, bluster, and legal footwork." He smiled
faintly. "Plus a healthy new respect for us on their part."
"God knows we earned that much," she said quietly. York and Winward alone had
earned them at least that much.... She shook off the sudden resurgence of
guilt for her failures on the trip. "So why give it to me?"
"Oh, the whole Council will get copies in the morning," he shrugged. "As I
said, I was in the neighborhood."
"Yeah. Well ... thanks."
"No charge." Jonny got to his feet wincing with the effort, she noticed and
walked to the door. There he paused and looked back at her. "Lizabet
... I'm not going to let the Worlds go to war for your new planets," he told
her quietly. "Not after what we've seen of Qasama. A surgical strike against
their technological base, perhaps, if feasible; aerial bombings, probably, if [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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