Dragon and Herdsman

CHAPTER 19

Draycos headed off, moving silently through the shadows, the dummy wedged firmly onto his crest.

Jack waited until he was out of sight. Then, tucking the end of the rope securely into his belt, he drew his rangier and started back toward the creek.

He wasn't nearly as quiet as Draycos, or at least it didn't sound like it in his own ears. Still, he managed to reach a spot where he could see the creek without having drawn any obvious attention from the hidden soldiers. The rippling noise from the water and the general background of insect chirps and animal rustlings probably helped cover the sound of his approach. And, of course, the soldiers were almost certainly not expecting anyone to show up until morning.

The minutes dragged by. Jack peered into the gloom, trying to spot the enemy positions. But the soldiers were too well camouflaged. He just hoped they hadn't spotted him and were even now creeping stealthily toward him.

Something moved at the corner of his eye. He jerked, trying to bring up his tangler—

"Shh," Draycos warned, catching Jack's gun hand with his paw.

Sternly, Jack ordered his heart back to normal. "Don't do that," he whispered.

"My apologies," the dragon said. "Give me the rope."

Jack unlooped the rope from his belt. "I made a lasso with a slipknot in the end for you," he said, handing it over.

"Thank you," Draycos said. "Stand ready."

With the lasso end gripped between his teeth, the K'da slipped toward the creek. Jack gave him a few seconds, then carefully stood up into a crouch behind one of the trees, making sure he had a solid grip on the rope. Draycos was in combat mode, his gold scales turned to black, and even knowing he was there Jack couldn't see him.

Of course, the waiting soldiers would undoubtedly have infrared and starlight vision enhancers. Jack hoped the dragon was being especially careful.

More minutes went by. Jack kept his eyes on the stream, wondering if this was actually going to work. The dummy seemed to be taking way too much time getting down here, and he wondered uneasily if it might have gotten snagged on something at the bottom of the creek.

And then, there it was: a reed poking out of the water, making its slow way downstream. And as Jack listened, he could hear the stealthy hiss of someone breathing through it.

He frowned. Breathing?

But even as the question arose, so did the obvious answer. Draycos, hidden in the bushes beside the stream, was making the breathing noises, trying to attract the soldiers' attention without being too obvious about it.

For a minute Jack wondered if maybe the dragon was being a little too subtle. The reed was still moving, drifting its way downstream, and still there was no reaction from the other side.

And then, one of the shadows across the creek seemed to shiver. A second later, it had resolved itself into the figure of a soldier. Holding his machine gun ready, he stepped warily to the water's edge and leaned over the creek, peering down at the dummy beneath the surface.

And as a warbling K'da battle cry shattered the nighttime quiet, Draycos leaped across the stream.

The soldier jerked back, trying to bring his gun to bear on the dragon who had suddenly appeared. But Jack's tangler shot got there first. In the darkness he couldn't see the threads as they wrapped themselves around the soldier, but the flash of the cartridge's capacitor was all he needed to know the shot had been squarely on-target. The man teetered and started to fall.

But before he could do so, Draycos reached him. Sailing over his shoulder, the dragon dropped the loop of his lasso neatly over the other's shoulders as he passed. "Now!" he shouted as he hit the ground and spun around. He leaped up onto the-soldier's back, his claws digging into the other's battle vest. Jack gave a sharp tug on the rope—

And as the quick-release knot came free and the tree snapped back toward vertical, the lassoed soldier was yanked off his feet and dragged into and across the stream. He shot through the reeds at the edge, plowing his way through bushes and drifts of dead leaves as he was pulled across the ground. He and Draycos shot past, and Jack ducked away from his tree and sprinted after them.

Sounds of sudden commotion could be heard from the far side of the stream as he reached the unconscious soldier and braked to a halt. "Here," Draycos said, lifting the other's over/under machine-gun/tangler combination. "Hold out the stock."

Jack unfolded the metal shoulder stock and held it out. Draycos's claws slashed once, and the stock with its hidden tracker was no longer attached to the weapon. "Ready," Jack said, dropping the severed metal onto the ground and looping the gun's strap over his shoulder.

Draycos bent down and slid his paws beneath Jack's shoes, and a second later Jack found himself flying high into the air straight up into the branches of one of the bushier trees.

He caught a branch with each hand, the gun banging against his back as he got his balance. "Clear," he called down softly as he worked his way quickly over to the trunk, wincing as the tangle of branches grabbed his sleeves and scratched his face. "Watch yourself."

His only answer was the sound of splashing from the direction of the creek as the other soldiers charged to their comrade's rescue. Peering down, Jack found that Draycos had vanished. "And happy hunting," he murmured to himself. Lifting the gun, making sure it was on its tangler setting, he waited.

They came in pairs, the first two soldiers moving swiftly but quietly through the trees, their guns swinging back and forth and up and down as they searched for their quarry. Twice one of them looked up into Jack's tree, his gun lifting as he did so to point in the same direction. But Jack had moved to the far side of the trunk, and there apparently wasn't enough of him showing through the branches for them to spot.

The two soldiers headed toward the man Draycos had captured. As they did so, Jack saw two more pairs coming in behind them and to either side, staying back and watching for trouble.

Unfortunately for them, trouble was already watching them. Smiling tightly, he lined up the muzzle of his borrowed tangler on the first of the closest pair and squeezed the trigger.

The mercenaries were good, all right. Even before the cartridge hit, both men reacted to the sound of the shot, swinging their guns upward and firing in unison. But the branches that had hidden Jack from their sight now also protected him from their fire. As his shot hit its target and dropped the soldier to the ground, their own cartridges exploded into a snarled mess in the branches.

But only one of the soldiers was down, and the other now knew exactly where Jack was. With a hoarse shout to his comrades, he opened fire, plastering the tree with tangler threads. Still shooting, he began to circle, trying to get a clear shot. Two of the other soldiers rushed up to join him, and now there were three tanglers firing at Jack instead of just one. The last pair stayed well back, where they could cover the rest of the group.

And with nowhere to run. Jack was now the proverbial sitting duck.

"Come on, dragon, move it," he muttered, wincing back from the soldiers' shots as he tried to fire back. But the one clear shot he'd had was long gone, and all he succeeded in doing was plastering the nearest branches with tangler threads of his own.

Which might not be such a bad thing, he realized suddenly. If he could make himself a nice little cage of tangler threads, he would be more or less safe. At least until they gave up on taking him alive and switched to machine-gun mode.

He fired a few more rounds into the branches around him, shifting his aim to keep up with the circling soldiers. Between his shots and theirs, it was getting increasingly difficult to see what was going on down there. He could only hope that Draycos would spot the two soldiers standing distant guard, their eyes on the trees and ground-hugging bushes.

And with Jack's own thoughts and attention on those same trees and bushes, he and the soldiers were all looking in the wrong direction when the K'da made his move.

He appeared behind the three soldiers still shooting into Jack's tree, boiling up without warning from a drift of dead leaves that had hidden him from both eyes and infrared detectors. Before they could even react, his forepaws took out two of them, slapping against the sides of their heads hard enough to send them cartwheeling in opposite directions.

The third was faster than the others. He swung around and dropped to one knee, trying to swing his gun around to this new threat. But Draycos was already in motion, leaping over the soldier's gun and past his shoulder. The dragon's tail whipped around the man's neck as he passed, gagging him as it slapped across his windpipe and yanked him backward off-balance. The action also brought Draycos's own momentum to a sudden halt, dropping him to the ground behind the man.

Draycos had just hit the matted leaves when the two remaining soldiers opened fire with their tanglers. The first shot, aimed where Draycos would have been if he'd continued his arcing leap, missed completely, zipping past to explode its netting over one of the distant bushes.

The second shot, instead of missing, clipped the corner of the kneeling soldier's arm. Some of the threads whipped around his face and chest, Draycos managing to snatch his tail out of the way just in time. The rest of the threads spread out harmlessly though the air over the K'da's head.

Not enough of the threads were wrapped around the soldier for the shock capacitor to knock him out. But it didn't matter. Draycos had already twisted around, slapping the side of the man's neck with one paw as he snatched the tangler from his hands with the other. As the stunned soldier toppled over, Draycos dived to the side, staying behind him so as to use his body as a shield against the two remaining gunners. Flipping the barrel of the tangler up over the other's ribs, Draycos fired.

But the two soldiers weren't there anymore. They had ducked to either side, taking cover behind nearby bushes as Draycos's shots went harmlessly past.

They were fiddling with their weapons, probably switching to machine-gun mode, when Jack maneuvered the barrel of his own weapon through the mass of tangler threads around him and nailed them both.

It took a while for Jack to work his way through the masses of tangler threads and get back down the tree. Long enough, in fact, for Draycos to go examine the two more distant soldiers and then return to the four he and Jack had first taken out. "That was fun," Jack puffed as he unslung his gun again and peered in the direction of the creek. "Where are the ones who were up in the trees?"

Draycos twisted his neck back toward the creek. "They don't appear to be approaching," he said. "I do not understand why not."

"Maybe we can find out," Jack suggested. Crouching down, he unfastened the nearest soldier's helmet and slipped it over his own head.

"—not move," a familiar voice growled. Familiar, yet unexpected.

It was Colonel Frost. The man they thought they'd heard leaving the planet.

"The others aren't responding," another voice protested.

"And you think getting yourselves waxed along with them will do them any good?" Frost shot back.

Jack cleared his throat. "Oh, come on, Frost, be a sport," he said into the helmet's microphone. "Let them try their luck. We don't mind. Besides, it's got to be pretty uncomfortable sitting up there in those trees."

There was a brief silence. "Very good, Morgan," Frost said, his voice three shades darker than the night around them. "You and the K'da both. I don't suppose you sustained any injuries?"

"Nothing worth mentioning," Jack assured him. "A few more of your men are a little worse for wear, though. I thought you'd left us."

"I'm not going anywhere," Frost promised coldly. "This K'da of yours is tougher than I expected. Certainly tougher than I was told. I'm beginning to understand why the Valahgua want them wiped out."

"You're probably also beginning to understand why they're sitting behind the lines and letting you and Neverlin and the Chookoock family do all the work and take all the risks," Jack said. "Not to mention absorbing all the damage. You've got to be asking yourself right now whether or not it's really worth it."

Frost gave a soft chuckle. "Believe me, boy, it's worth it," he said. "New technology is the golden ring these days, especially when you have a company like Braxton Universis standing ready to market it."

"Only you haven't got Braxton Universis," Jack reminded him.

"We will," Frost said confidently. "And from what I saw on those Shontine advance ships, we all stand to make a very tidy profit on this operation."

"Your soldiers here on the ground might have a different opinion."

"Soldiers are expendable," Frost said bluntly. "That's their job. Besides, most of them will recover just fine. Your K'da doesn't seem to have the stomach for killing."

Jack looked at Draycos. The dragon's tail was swishing almost gently through the air, but there was a look in his eyes that sent a shiver down Jack's back. "I wouldn't count on that if I were you," he warned Frost.

"Maybe," the colonel said offhandedly. "All I know is that people who hide in the middle of civilians and herd animals are cowards."

Jack grinned tightly. So Frost had completely missed the point of why they'd brought the Erassvas and Phookas along. "Look who's talking," he countered. "You want to come out here personally so we can have this out man-to-man?"

"Don't be absurd," Frost scoffed. "Duels went out with flintlock pistols, and they were never anything but stupid to begin with. But let's talk about you. Aren't you tired yet of running and living off ration bars?"

"Oh no, I love forests," Jack assured him. "More than that, I love taking out mercenaries. You must be running pretty low on them by now. Is that where your ship went? To scare up a few replacements?"

"You'll see," Frost promised. "But I'll grant you that this is taking far more of my time and energy than I'd planned. So what exactly do you want? Maybe we can come to some agreement."

"What I want is to be left alone," Jack said. "But for now, I'll settle for you clearing your tree-sitters out of our way. They can come collect this bunch, and you can fly them back to your base camp to get patched up."

"As I said, no stomach for killing," Frost said contemptuously.

"As I said, don't count on Draycos's kind heart," Jack said, putting some darkness of his own into his voice. "We're getting tired of playing tag out here, and we now have a couple of nicely lethal weapons of our own. So get your men out of our way, and keep them out."

"Or you'll commit cold-blooded murder?"

"I'll commit cold-blooded self-defense," Jack countered. "And don't forget, Neverlin wants me alive."

"For now," Frost said icily. "But that may change. Either way, I certainly don't need to keep those Erassvas or their herd animals alive. Or that girl you have with you, either. Who is she, by the way?"

"Just a hitchhiker," Jack said. "Speaking of hitchhikers, how did you get that tracking transmitter into my ship?"

"What makes you think there was a transmitter aboard?" Frost countered blandly.

"I gather it worked off the ECHO drive," Jack continued. "What did it do, use the drop-power to boost out some kind of signal as soon as we popped back into normal space?"

"Actually, the gadget sends a sort of ripple across hyperspace itself," Frost said. "A nearby ship with the right equipment can pick it up and follow you straight in."

"Cute," Jack said. "Cutting-edge technology, no doubt."

"Not even on the market yet," Frost said smugly. "And when it is, it'll go exclusively to StarForce and the Internos Police. Had I mentioned the advantages of having Braxton Universis in your pocket?"

"Maybe once or twice," Jack said. "So are you going to send someone to pick up your trash? Or are Draycos and I going to have to start clearing the table ourselves?"

"We'll get them," Frost said quietly. "And then we'll get out of your way. For now."

"Good enough," Jack said, an unpleasant sensation at the back of his neck. There'd been something in Frost's voice just then, something he didn't like at all. "And tell Neverlin that the next time he wants to talk, he should just drop me a message on the net."

"The next time Mr. Neverlin speaks to you, it'll be face-to-face," Frost promised darkly. "Good night, Jack."

There was a click, and the comm went dead. "What do you think?" he asked, pulling off the helmet.

Draycos flicked his tongue out a few times. "They don't appear to be coming closer," he said. "I believe he means to do as he says."

"Which should definitely worry us," Jack said, grimacing. "Someone like Frost only pulls back when he's got something else already planned."

"Any idea what that could be?"

"Not a clue," Jack admitted. "Maybe we'll find out tomorrow morning when we try to get through here."

"I was thinking we might want to veer a little ways east or west of this particular spot," Draycos suggested.

"Oh, definitely," Jack agreed. "I didn't mean we'd go through here." He shook his head. "I just wish I knew what he sent the transport to get. More men or more equipment, probably. Either way, we're not going to like it."

"Sufficient unto the day, Jack," Draycos said. "Is that correct?"

" 'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,' yeah," Jack confirmed. "Uncle Virgil used to quote that one a lot. Usually when he'd messed up on a job and needed some time to figure out what to do next."

"Interesting how many truthful sayings he seemed to adapt to his own purposes," Draycos said. "Perhaps he had more education than he let on."

"Or he just picked it up as he went," Jack said, resettling the strap of the machine gun more comfortably over his shoulder. "Let me grab a couple spare tangler clips for this thing, and then we'd better get back. I just hope Frost didn't hit the camp while we were out here playing soldier."

The camp, to Draycos's quiet relief, was just as they'd left it. The Erassvas were sleeping soundly, with the Phookas either dozing, searching for food, or waiting their turn to spend an hour on their blubbery hosts. If Frost's men had been there, they hadn't left any traces behind, not even any scent.

Draycos was mildly surprised to find Alison still sound asleep as well. Up to now the girl had slept lightly, ready to snap awake at the slightest hint of trouble. Perhaps the long days of travel and tension had finally caught up with her. Certainly after tonight's activities Jack was also asleep practically before he hit the ground.

But with Alison, Draycos wondered if it might be more than simple fatigue. Perhaps Taneem's presence on her body was doing something to her.

He gazed down at the sleeping girl, his tail lashing with frustration and concern. When they'd begun this experiment, they'd all assumed it was the Erassvas' sluggishness that was affecting the Phookas. Could it be that it was actually the other way around?

But there was nothing he could do about it right now. Whatever was going on, everyone still desperately needed their rest. Including Draycos himself.

So he would give the perimeter one final sweep, and then he would settle down to rest as best he could. Tomorrow should be soon enough to try to find out what was happening with Alison.

Sufficient unto the day, the thought whispered again through his mind, is the evil thereof.