Dragonback 02 Dragon and Soldier (27 page)

The dragon's neck arched warningly. "What do you mean?" he asked,
his voice ominous.

"Relax," Jack hastened to reassure him. Apparently, the dragon
wasn't in a mood for joking. "Watch and learn."

He cleared his throat. "Okay, Uncle Virge," he said. "So we don't
have anything on the Djinn-90s. What interesting tidbits
did
you happen to find in the Shamshir data?"

"You only asked for the Djinn-90 information," Uncle Virge
reminded him.

"I know what I asked for," Jack said firmly. "Quit stalling. What
did you find?"

There was a moment of sulky silence. "There's one small piece that
might
be considered interesting," Uncle Virge conceded at
last. "But, really, it's so minuscule—"

"I said quit stalling," Jack interrupted. "Give."

"It's just an item about the Brummgas," Uncle Virge groused.
"Remember how you ran into a Brummga on Iota Klestis, at the site of
Draycos's crash?"

"Like I'd forget," Jack said with a grimace. If Draycos hadn't
used Jack's tangler gun on the big alien, both he and the dragon would
have wound up very dead. "And Lieutenant Cue Ball had a couple on his
staff, too, hanging around looking ugly," he added. "So?"

"So at least from the Shamshir data," Uncle Virge said grudgingly,
"it looks like all the Brummgas in the various mercenary forces come
from the same place."

Jack sat up a little straighter. "What do you mean, the same
place?" he asked. "The same city? Same province?"

Uncle Virge sighed audibly. "Same dealer."

Draycos's neck was still arched. "What do you mean by 'dealer'?"
he asked.

"I'm not sure," Jack said grimly. "But I can guess. Are you
talking about a slave dealer, Uncle Virge?"

"Well, of course, mercenaries are considered skilled labor," Uncle
Virge hedged. "And Brummgan law isn't quite, shall we say, up to
Internos standards—"

"They deal in slavery," Draycos cut him off.

Uncle Virge sighed again. "Yes."

Draycos hissed like he had a bad taste in his mouth, his neck
crest stiffer than Jack had ever seen it. "The indenture of children
was barbaric enough," he bit out, his eyes glittering like lasers
filtered through a pair of emeralds. "But for intelligent beings to be
owned like animals—"

"Easy, pal, easy," Jack said hastily, holding up his hands. "Don't
get mad at
me
. Or at the Internos government, for that matter.
Like I've told you before, we humans aren't in charge of everything
that happens out there."

"What about the Trade Association?" Draycos demanded. "Are there
not laws concerning such things?"

"There are some, sure," Jack said. "But you can only enforce what
you can see. And there are only so many Judge-Paladins to go around.
Come on—we're trying."

Slowly, the crest softened. "I understand," he murmured. "It is
still an abomination."

"No argument there," Jack agreed, shivering. He'd seen a group of
slaves on one of the worlds he and Uncle Virgil had visited once. The
memory of their haunted eyes and faces had stuck with him ever since.
"But in this case, it could be a useful abomination."

"What do you mean?" Draycos asked.

"Nothing good," Uncle Virge cut in. "You can wager your teeth and
tail on that. Jack—look, lad—"

"We need to find those mercenaries, Uncle Virge," Jack said. "And
since we aren't having any luck tracing their fighters, maybe we can
trace their personnel."

"And how do you intend to do that?" Uncle Virge demanded. "How do
you expect to get close enough to a Brummga slave lord to get a look at
his records?"

"Perhaps as a soldier for hire," Draycos suggested.

"Forget it," Jack said firmly. "I'm not cut out to be a soldier."

"You did not do badly," Draycos said. "Do not forget that you were
not properly trained or led. And you were certainly not among true
warriors."

"I appreciate the vote of confidence," Jack said dryly. "But I
think we'll find a different way in, if it's all the same to you."

"That is your option," Draycos said. "Still, whether you accept it
or not, you are showing great progress in living by a warrior's ethic."

Jack snorted gently. "I don't know how you figure that one."

"You told Alison not to risk coming back for you," Draycos
reminded him. "That showed your consideration of others' safety before
your own."

Jack felt his lip twist. "Well . . . actually, no, it didn't. I
just didn't want her bringing the Shamshir chase ships back my
direction."

Draycos's tail arched. "Truly?"

Jack shrugged. "Sorry."

Uncle Virge laughed out loud. "That's my boy," he said smugly.
"See there, Draycos, old snake? Jack's not as easily corrupted by this
warrior ethic nonsense as you'd like to think."

"Perhaps," Draycos said, his eyes seeming to measure Jack.
"Perhaps it is merely a path that will require many small steps. Do not
forget he
did
return to rescue the others."

"Only because you pressured him, I'd wager," Uncle Virge said.
"Like I suppose you also pressured him into wrecking that daublite mine
for no good reason."

"I suggested nothing of the sort," Draycos protested.
"Furthermore, there
was
a good reason. The Agri had become
virtual prisoners of the Shamshir mercenaries they had hired. From all
appearances, the Parprins were in same situation with the Whinyard's
Edge."

"And whose fault was that?" Uncle Virge shot back. "Theirs, that's
whose."

"Is it a fault to work to create a source of profit, only to have
it stolen away?" Draycos countered.

"Of course not," Jack put in. "That's as bad as a bunch of
mercenaries trying to steal someone else's property and having a kid
come along and con it right out from under them."

The budding argument stopped dead on its rails. "What did you
say?" Uncle Virge demanded suspiciously.

"Yes," Draycos seconded. "What did that mean?"

Jack smiled. Yes, his relationship with Draycos was going to
change his relationship with Uncle Virge. Maybe it would indeed change
it forever, the way he'd wondered and worried about earlier as he stood
alone in the darkness of the forest.

But maybe that wasn't such a bad thing. Maybe the three of them
together were going to hammer themselves into a better team than he'd
ever thought they could be. Certainly a better team than he'd ever
dared to hope. "Remember, Uncle Virge, when we were leaving Sunright
you said that I didn't do things halfway?" he said. "Well, as a matter
of fact . . ."

The thin young man's name was Louie, and he was red-faced and
panting as he lugged the two footlockers through the door and into the
middle of the run-down hotel room. "Okay," he puffed, dropping the end
of the first footlocker onto the floor with a thud. "Yours."

He dropped the second footlocker with an equally loud thud. "His."

"You sure it's the right one?" Alison Kayna asked, glancing both
ways down the hallway before closing the door behind him.

"The name tag says 'Jack Montana' in big letters," Louie pointed
out. "I deserve a bonus for this one, kiddo."

"What for, lugging and handling charges?" Alison countered
scornfully. "Come on, be real. The way I hear it, the Whinyard's Edge
was pulling off Sunright so fast the whole base was running in ten
directions at once. You could have loaded one of their own Lynxes with
goodies and flown it out without anyone noticing."

"Busy or not, they all still had guns," Louie said pointedly.

"And you could con the bullets right out of them," Alison said.
"It was a stroll to the backyard compost heap, and you know it."

Louie shook his head. "You are the cheapest kid with a nickel I've
ever seen," he grumbled.

"Blame it on my upbringing," Alison said. "You'll get your usual
fee, by the usual channels. A pleasure doing business with you."

"Yeah, I'm sure," Louie said, gazing her direction. "How about
information? You pay anything for information?"

"What kind of information?" Alison asked.

"Oh, you know," Louie said, waving a hand vaguely around. "I hear
stories. Listen to rumors. That sort of thing."

"Rumors aren't usually worth much."

"The ones I listen to are," Louie assured her. "An extra five
hundred?"

"One hundred."

"Three hundred."

Alison studied his face. "All right, three hundred. Let's hear it."

Louie lowered his voice. "You know that big mine explosion? The
one that got both the Shamshir and Whinyard's Edge to cancel their
contracts with the locals and pull out?"

"I was there when Montana blew it," Alison said dryly. "Lit up the
sky for miles. You'd better have more than just a colorful commentary
on the event."

"Oh, I've got more," Louie promised with a sly smile. "Turns out
our boy Montana was either very, very stupid or very, very clever. When
the fires finally went out and the Agri got busy clearing away the
wreckage, they found what was left of the transport sitting flat-square
on top of the mine shaft."

"Okay," Alison said, frowning. "So?"

"So?" Louie echoed. "Oh, come
on
, girl. You just finished
playing soldier. Don't you remember
anything
about troop
transport design?"

"I'm too tired for games, Louie," Alison said patiently. "Just
spill it."

"Troop transports," he said, in a tone like someone lecturing a
small child. "They carry soldiers into battlefields. Where people will
be shooting at you. From below."

Alison frowned. "You talking about armor plating?"

"See?" Louie said, looking pleased. "You
did
learn
something. Yes, I'm talking about at least twenty inches of Hy-Dense
cerametal on the underside of every modern troop transport. With that
model of Lynx, it's closer to thirty inches."

And then, suddenly, Alison got it. "The mine shaft didn't
collapse!"

"Bingo," Louie said, looking extremely pleased with himself. "And
with the mercs already having cancelled their contracts, there's no way
for them to reverse themselves and get their hooks into the locals
again. Like I said: either really stupid, or really clever."

In her mind's eye, Alison could see that last look on Jack
Montana's face. The look he'd been giving the Shamshir computer as he
sent her back to their transport with the pilot code. "Not stupid," she
murmured. "Clever."

"Whichever," Louie said. "Worth that extra three hundred?"

"I suppose," Alison said, keeping her voice casual. "I'll send a
note about it."

"Yeah," Louie said. "Well, have fun with your new stuff. And let
me know whenever I can be of service. Always happy to work with you."

"As long as the money's good?" Alison suggested.

"Your money's always good," Louie said with another sly smile.
"See you, kiddo." Turning, he left the room.

Alison went to the door and made sure it was locked. Then she
returned to the two footlockers. Ignoring her own for the moment—she
knew what was in that one, after all— she knelt down beside Jack's.

So Jack Montana had pulled a fast one there at the end. On her,
and on everyone else. He'd conned both sets of mercenaries into pulling
out, thinking the mine they both wanted was permanently ruined, and
left matters for the Agri and Parprins to work out between themselves.

Clever, all right. And it made Jack an even more interesting
puzzle than she'd thought when she'd hired Louie to sneak his
footlocker out of the Edge camp.

The footlocker was, of course, locked. But that wouldn't be a
problem. Squeezing on the base of her left-hand forefinger, she slid
out the plastic lockpick that had been surgically implanted beneath the
fingernail.

She hadn't told Jack about this little gem, naturally. He would
have wanted to know how a simple indentured teenager could afford this
kind of high-tech gimmick, or what she would even have wanted with it
in the first place. Instead, she'd spun him that bogus story about
having dug her handcuffs out from under the shelving in the Shamshir
storage hut.

Now, it seemed, Jack hadn't been entirely honest with her, either.

Because Alison listened to stories, too. And one of the most
interesting ones recently concerned an incident a month ago aboard a
liner called the
Star of Wonder
. An incident centering on a
high-level power struggle between Cornelius Braxton and his board
director Arthur Neverlin for control of the huge megacorporation
Braxton Universis.

And right in the middle of that struggle had been a boy named
Jack. A boy who was reported to have an uncle named Virgil, like the
Uncle Virge Jack had called to when that spaceship had shown up and
shot those Shamshir fighters off her back.

Trouble was, the name of the kid on the
Star of Wonder
hadn't been Jack Montana. It had been Jack Morgan.

Was Jack Montana really Jack Morgan? Very possibly. Maybe there
would be something in his footlocker that would confirm that. Maybe
there would be other interesting items, as well.

And if so, there were people out there who would pay money for
that information. A great deal of money.

Slipping the tip of her lockpick into the lock, she set to work.