Dragonback 02 Dragon and Soldier (8 page)

"What is it?" Draycos asked, hurrying to catch up with him.

"He's laying a sopor mist ahead of himself," Jack said, looking
around. Unfortunately, this room hadn't come equipped with any handy
extension cords. "A few more whiffs and you and I would have been
snoozing blissfully away. You see anything to climb with?"

"No need," Draycos said, stepping to the window. With forepaws and
muzzle he slid it open. "I will jump first and stand below. You may
drop onto my back."

"You must be kidding," Jack growled, going back to the desks. The
computers themselves were standard fold-top portables, with a whole
spaghetti mix of cables connecting them to printers and scanners and
other equipment. "I'd break your back. Or else miss completely and
break mine. Help me get these cables loose."

Two minutes later, Jack had the cables knotted together. "It will
be too short," Draycos warned, running an eye over the makeshift rope.

"It'll be close enough," Jack insisted, carrying the lumpy coil
across the room and feeding one end out the window. "Here," he added,
handing the other end to the dragon. "Hold tight."

There was no way he could slide down quickly, not on a rope with
as many knots in it as this one had. Just the same, he went down as
fast as he could manage. The watchman back there could burst in on
Draycos at any time, and he probably had something a lot nastier than
sopor mist in his arsenal.

But there were no shots from above, and none of the knots gave
way, and a few seconds later he had reached the end. Draycos had been
right; he found his feet dangling about six feet short of the ground.
Bending his knees slightly, he dropped the rest of the way.

He'd barely landed when the collection of cables fell into a heap
beside him. Draycos was right behind them, dropping into a crouch away
from the tangle. "Anyone nearby?" Jack whispered.

The dragon's long neck turned back and forth, his green eyes
glowing like a pair of control panel status lights as they probed the
darkness. His tongue darted out, and his ears twitched back and forth
like small, pointed radar dishes. "I sense no one," he said.

"Okay." Pulling off his bag mask, Jack tossed it to the breeze. It
would have been nice to have its protection all the way back to the
barracks, but he didn't dare risk it getting caught in some bush nearby
once he finally threw it away. Grisko and his buddies would come
hunting for the intruder soon enough, and marking which of the three
barracks he had come from would be making it far too easy for them. He
would just have to trust that Draycos was right about the coast being
clear. "Let's go."

The trip seemed even longer this direction than it had going the
other way. But again, there were no shouts or lights or other signs of
discovery. Either they'd made it out ahead of the general alarm, or
else Grisko had decided to play it cool. Draycos boosted Jack up to the
window, then followed.

Three minutes later, undressed again, he was safely back under the
blankets.

"What now?" the dragon murmured from his shoulder.

Jack took a slow, deep breath, listening to his heart thudding in
his ears. That had been close. Too close. Uncle Virge would definitely
not be happy with this one.

Especially since they hadn't even accomplished what they'd set out
to do. "I don't know," he had to admit. "If we hadn't left that pile of
computer cables on the ground, they might have figured it was a false
alarm. No chance of that now, though."

"My fault," Draycos said, his whisper sounding subdued. "I am
accustomed to thinking as a warrior. Not as—" He paused.

"A thief?" Jack suggested.

"Yes," Draycos said reluctantly. "I apologize. I know you are
trying to move away from that part of your life."

"It's okay," Jack soothed him. "Actually, it's kind of nice to
know I've got something useful to bring to this team."

"You are the reason I am alive," Draycos reminded him. "For my
part, that is very useful."

"And you're very welcome for it," Jack said. "I just meant it's
good to be something other than your personal RV."

"Pardon?"

"Recreational vehicle. Mobile home." Jack shook his head. "Skip
it."

"Ah. I see."

"Anyway, don't worry about the cables," Jack went on. "Even if
you'd thought to pull them back inside, leaving them tied together like
that would still have been a dead giveaway. You sure didn't have time
to put everything back the way it was."

"What will we do next?"

Jack stared at the dark underside of the bunk above him. "Depends
on whether they nail us or not," he said. "If they grab me tomorrow, we
wait our chance and try to break out."

"It would be useful in that case to have transport ready."

Jack peered down his nose at his chest. "Are you suggesting we ask
Uncle Virge for help?
You
?"

"My feelings about Uncle Virge's life philosophy do not prevent me
from working with him," Draycos said stiffly. He shifted a little
across Jack's skin, like a K'da version of fidgeting.

"Even if Uncle Virge isn't exactly your sort of soul mate?"

"I do not know that word," the dragon growled. "The point remains.
I am a poet-warrior of the K'da. My personal feelings cannot be
permitted to intrude upon my work."

"Glad to hear it," Jack said, rather enjoying this. Draycos was
always so calm and in control that it was nice to see him squirm a
little for a change. "I'll make sure I have my comm clip along tomorrow
in case we have to whistle him up."

"Assuming he is close enough to be of assistance."

"He is," Jack assured him. "Anyway, if they
don't
grab me,
we might as well finish the last four days of training before we take
off."

"We will not try again?"

"With them alerted?" Jack retorted. "Not a chance. We'll have to
pick another mercenary group and try again."

"Then why not leave now?"

"Because it'll be easier to sneak out after graduation than
before," Jack told him. "And because Alison has proved it helps if
you're not starting from scratch."

"Perhaps," Draycos said, sounding doubtful. "We must be alert,
though. They may decide not to take you immediately."

"Oh, I'll be careful," Jack said. "Trust me. I've had enough
people do that slow vulture circle around me, watching and hoping I'll
make a wrong move. I know what it looks like."

"That will be helpful," Draycos said, not sounding entirely
convinced. "You had best sleep now."

"Sounds good to me," Jack said with a sigh. The excitement and
tension of their midnight excursion was fading, and his eyelids were
suddenly feeling very heavy. "See you at reveille."

"Yes," Draycos murmured. "I wonder . . ."

With an effort, Jack propped open one eyelid. "You wonder what?"

"I wonder if perhaps I was not seen at all," the dragon said.
"Perhaps it was something else that drew the patrols to the camp
perimeter."

"Such as?"

"Perhaps the
Essenay
," Draycos said. "You suggested it
would be close at hand."

Jack thought it over. It
was
possible, he had to admit.
After five days of not hearing from him, Uncle Virge might well have
gotten impatient and brought the ship in for a closer look. Without
knowing the Edge's security system, he could have tripped some alarm in
the process. "Could be," he told Draycos. "We'll ask him about it
later." He lifted his eyebrows. "If it
was
Uncle Virge, you
have my permission to never let him live it down."

"I was not thinking of how to place blame," the dragon said. "I
was merely wondering if the ship might have taken damage."

Jack winced. "I guess we'll find that out soon enough, too."

No one came storming into the barracks in the predawn darkness
before reveille. No one came and grabbed him in the shower, or on his
way to breakfast, or even at breakfast. Everything, in fact, settled
nicely into the normal morning routine, from the rotten food to the
blaring trumpet calling the recruits to the morning parade-ground
maneuver.

It wasn't until they'd finished the first two drills that the
routine was abruptly broken.

He spotted the officer angling across the field toward Grisko as
the sergeant shouted out the commands that ended the second drill.
Grisko set the recruits to attention and for a moment he and the
officer talked quietly together. Then the officer turned to face the
trainees, and Jack saw that it was Lieutenant Basht from the recruiting
office.

"All right, listen up," Grisko bellowed across the ranks. "The
following fall out and go with Lieutenant Basht: Brinkster, Kayna, Li,
Mbusu, Montana, Randolph."

The sodden breakfast, which had already been lying heavily on
Jack's stomach, suddenly picked up about a ton of extra weight. Heart
pounding in his ears, he left his position and moved up through the
ranks.

"Form up: two by three," Basht ordered as the six recruits reached
the front. They did so, Alison and Jommy taking the front two spots.
Jack stepped into place behind Jommy, with Rogan Mbusu falling in
behind him. Brinkster and Li, both girls, took their places behind
Alison.

Basht glanced over their formation, and for a second Jack thought
he was going to make some snide comment. But he merely did a crisp
military turn and strode off the field.

They followed, automatically falling into step with him. As they
walked, Jack tried to puzzle out what was going on.

His analysis didn't get very far. Jommy and Alison were certainly
the best of the bunch, which might imply this group had been singled
out for special commendation. Problem was, he and Rogan were here, too,
and neither of them was exactly near the top of the list. As for
Brinkster and Li, Jack had noticed them along the way but neither had
struck him as being either particularly good or particularly bad. So
ordinary and unnoticeable were they, in fact, that he'd never even
heard their first names.

Maybe it was a random sample, then. But with a hundred eighty boys
and only twenty girls in the group, it didn't seem likely that a spin
of the dart board would end up with three of each.

He was still trying to come up with some explanation when he
suddenly realized that Lieutenant Basht was leading them straight
toward the headquarters building.

Jack's heart had been starting to quiet down. Now, it picked up
its pace again. So that was it. They'd figured out somehow that he was
last night's casual visitor, and this whole thing was a smokescreen to
get him away from the main group.

Beneath his shirt, he felt Draycos shifting around against his
skin. Apparently, the K'da had figured it out, too. "Easy," he muttered
a warning. The first rule Uncle Virgil had hammered into him when
facing the authorities was not to do their job for them.
You're
innocent until they absolutely prove otherwise
, he had told Jack
over and over.
And for ten minutes after that, too
, he'd
usually added.

There didn't seem to be any extra security hanging around the
building as Basht opened the door and led the way inside. Jack rather
expected him to take them straight upstairs to the records room, or
maybe to split Jack off from the others and take him up there. To his
mild surprise, Basht led them instead to a first-floor room.

To his even greater surprise, the room was filled with computer
stations. The stations were unoccupied, but a thin man wearing
colonel's insignia was standing near the front beside a double stack of
sealed cartons. From the way he eyed them as they filed in, Jack
guessed he'd been waiting specifically for them.

"Parade rest," Basht ordered as they formed into their
two-by-three again. "Mbusu. Tell me about Sunright."

Sunright
? Frantically, Jack searched his memory. Then he
remembered: it was one of the worlds that had been listed in the
Current
Whinyard's Edge Missions
section of their training manual.

And that was about all he remembered. If Basht called on him, he
was going to be in serious trouble.

For a second it looked like Rogan was already there. "Uh—" the boy
floundered. His voice quavered the way it always did whenever he had to
talk to a superior officer, and Jack winced in sympathy.

Then the mental wheels seemed to catch. "Sunright, sir," Rogan
said, his voice still trembling a little. "Third planet of the Gamma
Lartrin system. Human colonized in 2115; ceded to the Parprins and Agri
by the Treaty of Mcdougall in—"

"Lose the sniveling," Basht cut him off. "Kayna? What are the
Edge's interests in the place?"

"The Edge has been hired by a Parprin daublite mining colony to
protect its interests from a group of Agrist claim-jumpers," Alison
said briskly. So she was on top of this, too. That figured. "Troops
have been in position on the ground for the past sixteen months."

"Planetary bio stats?"

"Atmosphere is slightly oxygen-heavy, but well within human
tolerances," Alison said. "Gravity is three percent less than Earth
Standard; temperatures average two degrees cooler."

Basht nodded. "Who are we facing there? Randolph?"

"The Agri have their local military group," Jommy said. "Mostly
volunteers. They've also hired units of the Shamshir mercenaries."

"Relative strengths?" Basht asked. "Li?"

Li seemed to shrink behind the smooth skin of her face. "I don't
remember, sir," she said in a barely audible voice.

For a long second Basht's eyes burned into her, as if he was
trying to set her on fire. Then, the glare flicked over her shoulder.
"Brinkster? What's our strength?"

Out of the corner of his eye Jack saw the girl wince. "I think we
have eight hundred troops on the ground, sir."

"You
think
?"