Dragonback 02 Dragon and Soldier (16 page)

Especially if he could get someone else to do both the shooting
and the being shot at. Directly ahead was one of the big tents, the
ones he'd decided earlier were sleeping quarters. Panting a little from
the long uphill climb, he stumbled to the door and pulled it open.

It was a sleeping tent, all right. There were twelve sets of bunk
beds arranged around a small table with four matching chairs. The
chairs were empty.

So were all the bunks.

For a long moment Jack just stood there staring. Twelve bunk beds.
Twenty-four beds. All empty.

All
of them?

All of them.

He stumbled back outside, to find Draycos lurking beside the
corner of the tent. "You did not alert them?" the dragon asked.

"There isn't anyone to alert," Jack told him tightly. "They're
gone."

The dragon's long neck arched back. "Gone? Gone where?"

"How should I know?" Jack countered, looking around the
encampment. Everything was dark and silent.

Everyone asleep, he had thought. Now, he wondered if anyone was
even here.

"Shall we try the other tent?" Draycos asked.

"Let's try the HQ first," Jack said. "It's on the way, and the
rest of the squad should still be setting up."

"Yes," Draycos agreed. He leaped up to Jack's shoulder and
disappeared down the back of his neck. "Hurry. The Shamshir are still
approaching."

With its windows shielded, the headquarters building was as dark
as the rest of the camp. But as Jack approached, he saw to his relief
that there was a narrow sliver of soft light coming from under the
door. At least someone was home there.

Unless the rest of Tango Five Zulu had carelessly left the lights
on before they vanished into the night with everyone else. Mentally
crossing his fingers, he pulled open the door.

The rest of Tango Five Zulu hadn't vanished. They were all still
there, kneeling in a circle in the center of the room, their faces
bowed toward the floor, their hands clasped behind their necks. Two men
in full nighttime camouflage outfits were standing behind them, their
weapons leveled at their backs.

But Jack only saw that out of the corner of his eye. His full
attention was on the other two men in the room, standing beside the
squad's stack of fold-top computers.

Their guns pointed directly at Jack.

"Walk inside," a hard, flat voice growled from somewhere to his
right. "No noise."

Carefully, trying not to make anything that looked like a
suspicious move, Jack turned his head that direction.

Standing in the corner of the room, positioned where he could
guard the doorway Jack was still standing in, was a Brummga.

Jack stared at the wide alien, his mouth dropping open a little.
Suddenly, it was like he'd gone back in time to the ruins of the
Havenseeker
and his first meeting with Draycos.

But this Brummga wasn't wearing the same mismatched collection of
clothing and combat gear. He was dressed in the same camouflage outfit
as the other Shamshir mercenaries, with the same curved-sword patch on
his shoulder. And the gun he was holding was smaller and sleeker than
the shiny black monstrosity the other Brummga had pointed at Jack back
then.

Different Brummga. Different group.

Worse situation.

The Brummga twitched his weapon, emphasizing his order. Shaking
away the uncomfortable feeling of deja vu, Jack took another step into
the room. Just to prove he knew how to behave in a situation like this,
he carefully closed the door behind him.

"Anyone else?" one of the men across the room asked.

Jack opened his mouth to tell him he had no idea— "Okay," the man
said. "Keep sharp."

Jack closed his mouth again. Of course; the man hadn't been asking
him. He'd been talking to a spotter outside on a comm clip.

For a moment he wondered if the spotter might have caught a
glimpse of Draycos. Maybe even have seen the dragon go two-dimensional
and slide onto Jack's skin.

But no. If he had, he surely would have said something. And the
guy in here didn't seem like he was that good of an actor.

"This the last of your tech squad?" one of the other men asked,
slinging his gun over his shoulder and striding over to Jack. He had
thrown back the hood of his camo jacket, and Jack could see that his
head was totally bald beneath it. Like a billiard cue ball with a face
painted on it, he thought irreverently.

"Yeah, that's him," Jommy said, his voice low and surly. "He was
on sentry duty."

"Didn't do a very good job," Cue Ball commented, taking Jack's
Gompers rifle away from him.

Jack thought about it a second and decided he wasn't going to let
that one pass. "Oh, I don't know," he objected calmly. "I spotted the
eight guys you've got coming in from the south."

He had the minor satisfaction of seeing Cue Ball's face flicker
with surprise. "Sure you did," the other said suspiciously. "How many
of them were human?"

There were five quick taps on the back of Jack's arm. "Five," Jack
said. "Why? You taking inventory?"

Cue Ball snorted. "Get over there," he growled, jerking his head
toward the other teens. "Join your buddies."

Jack did as he was told, crossing the room and kneeling down
between Brinkster and Li. He could feel Brinkster's body trembling
where her shoulder touched his. Li, on his other side, seemed in shock,
as if refusing to believe this was really happening.

"Come on, you know the drill," Cue Ball prompted, jabbing Jack's
own gun into the back of his neck. "Hands on your head; fingers laced
together."

Again Jack obeyed, glancing around at the others. Jommy's surly
tone, he could see now, hadn't been entirely honest. The kid was angry,
all right, and trying hard to look brave and tough. But he was also
scared. Very scared.

Eleven-year-old Rogan Mbusu wasn't even trying to put up a good
front. He was crying openly, tears streaming down his cheeks, his body
shaking with silent sobs. Beside him, Alison knelt without moving, her
face expressionless.

Stunned by it all, like Li? Or was she simply better at burying
her emotions than the others?

It was only then that he realized Alison was staring back at him.
Staring very intently.

He frowned back at her. Was she trying to ask him something? Tell
him something?

Concentrating on Alison, he jerked as a pair of hard hands slipped
around his neck. Before he could react further, the hands were gone.

Leaving something hard and cold snugged up around his throat.

"All right, listen up," Cue Ball said. Out of the corner of his
eye, Jack saw the man fasten a gray metal collar around Li's neck.
"These things are called control collars." He moved on to Alison. "In
case the famous Whinyard's Edge ten-day training course didn't cover
them, let me explain. Their sole purpose in life is to choke the living
daylights out of you if you try to run or make trouble."

He stepped behind Rogan. The kid nearly collapsed at his touch;
Cue Ball merely propped him up with one hand and put on his collar with
the other. "They can get triggered one of two ways," he said. "First,
if you wander too far from the tether marker. One of us has that. I'm
not going to tell you which one."

He slid on Jommy's collar. "The other way is for one of us to fire
'em directly. That'll happen if we decide somewhere along the way that
you're not worth the trouble of taking back with us. And we're easily
convinced. So don't try."

"This guy's just a bundle of charm," Jack muttered under his
breath.

Cue Ball, now standing behind Brinkster, apparently had good ears.
The next thing Jack knew, the big man had slapped him hard against the
side of his head. "Watch your mouth, kid," he growled.

Jack grimaced. "Yes, sir," he said, trying to sound meek and
subdued and feeling annoyed with himself. He'd forgotten Uncle Virgil's
first rule of being a prisoner: always look as helpless and harmless as
you possibly can. It tended to make the enemy overlook you.

And if there was one thing he really wanted right now it was to be
overlooked.

"One more thing," Cue Ball added as he snapped Brinkster's collar
around her neck. "All six of these collars are keyed together. Plus
side for us: we don't have to fumble for six different buttons if we
have to drop a troublemaker. Minus side for you: if one of you gets the
chop, all of you do. Think about that if you're tempted to be a hero."

"We're set here, Lieutenant," one of the other men reported.

Jack glanced that direction. The men had the squad's fold-top
computers packed into a couple of backpacks, and were hoisting them up
onto their backs.

"Right," Cue Ball said. Lieutenant Cue Ball, rather. "We're
heading out now, kiddies. Keep it nice and easy and quiet. We've got
people positioned all around the camp, just like Sentry Smart Mouth
here said. You whistle up an alarm, and all you'll do will be to get
the rest of your buddies slaughtered in their bunks. Understood? Good."

They left the HQ building, the prisoners in single file, the
Shamshir troops spread out on both sides around them. It wasn't until
they were halfway across the silent encampment that Jack suddenly
caught the full significance of that last comment.

Lieutenant Cue Ball had just threatened to shoot up the camp. But
the threat didn't make sense, because Jack already knew that the rest
of the Edgemen had disappeared.

Which meant that Lieutenant Cue Ball
didn't
know that.

He puzzled at it all the way to the empty guard post and on into
the woods. Okay. So the Edgemen were gone. But the Shamshir raiders
hadn't made them go away. Not by killing them, or kidnapping them, or
luring them out of camp.

So where
had
they gone? And why?

He still hadn't come up with any answers by the time they met up
with the eight soldiers Draycos had spotted earlier. The group was
spread out near Jack's sentry cage, clearly waiting for Lieutenant Cue
Ball and his prisoners to show up. A backup force, undoubtedly, in case
something had gone wrong.

Jack found a minor bit of satisfaction in the fact that there were
indeed five humans in the group.

They continued on down the slope. Some clouds had rolled in,
cutting off most of the already dim starlight, and Jack found himself
in a continual struggle with underbrush that wanted to trip him up and
low-hanging tree branches that wanted to take his forehead off.

But the darkness also provided an unexpected plus. With visibility
near zero, he could feel Draycos carefully probing at the collar with
his claws, searching out its operation.

And then, the pressure around his neck disappeared.

The dragon had popped the collar.

Jack tensed, trying to decide which way he should jump. A second
later he nearly yelped in frustration as the pressure came back again.

A very rude word flashed across his mind. But Draycos was right.
Walking through the middle of an unfamiliar forest, with armed enemies
all around, was not exactly the ideal spot to make a break for it.

He just hoped they would find a better opportunity before
Lieutenant Cue Ball stood all of them in front of a firing squad.

Ten minutes later they reached a small clearing. An unmarked
Flying Turtle 505 transport sat there, a much smaller vehicle than the
Lynx the squad had arrived in earlier. It was guarded by two more
Brummgas with Shamshir shoulder patches. The whole crowd piled aboard,
and they headed up into the sky.

And finally Jack had it figured out. The whole thing was a clever
trap, with Tango Five Zulu and their computers as the bait. They'd been
sent out here to draw Lieutenant Cue Ball and his men into grabbing
range. Now, as they lifted out of the woods, the hidden Edge forces
would spring their trap.

Only they didn't. The Flying Turtle slid along under the cloudy
sky at treetop level, without a single other vehicle in sight.

All right, then
, Jack decided as the minutes slipped by and
nothing happened.
Change in plan
. The Edge wasn't out to trap
Lieutenant Cue Ball at all. Instead, they were looking for some secret
Shamshir base. It was still a trap, Tango Five Zulu was still the bait,
only now the Edgemen would wait until they reached their destination to
spring it.

He was still holding firmly to that idea fifteen minutes later
when the transport settled into a landing.

"Let's go, puppies," Lieutenant Cue Ball said, stepping to the
hatchway and waving his gun toward it. "Don't forget about your
collars."

Jack was third in line out the door. He glanced first at the sky,
to see if the Edge fighters were on their way.

They weren't. Trying hard to keep his hopes up, he lowered his
gaze to the area around them.

And with that all of his secret hopes dropped straight into his
boots, chewed their way through the soles, and disappeared into the
ground beneath him. If this was a secret military base, then he was
Draycos's maiden Aunt Matilda.

For starters, the place wasn't even remotely secret. It was
completely out in the open, without any large trees, overhanging
cliffs, or even camouflage screens to protect it. The Edge training
camp on Carrion would have been harder to spot than this place.

It was also very definitely not a military base. The only vehicles
in sight were two more Flying Turtles, neither of which looked even
slightly armed. A couple of human-style buildings squatted at the edge
of the landing area, probably service areas for the transports,
probably courtesy of the Shamshir. The rest of the town seemed to be
composed entirely of mud huts of various sizes.

"Welcome to Dahtill City," Lieutenant Cue Ball announced as the
prisoners looked around them. "Regional capital of this part of Agrist
territory, and where this whole thing started."