Dragon and Herdsman

CHAPTER 2

During the long nights Jack had spent outside the Malison Ring office, the two mercenaries had always arrived between four-fifty and five-fifteen in the morning. Jack made sure he and Draycos were there at three-thirty sharp.

"Okay, buddy," he murmured to Draycos as they approached along the office's side of the street. "There are three security cameras covering the area around the front door, built into that low parapet on the roof. You think you can handle them?"

"I shall do my best," Draycos said. With a surge of weight, he leaped out the back of the boy's collar, his front paws pushing down on Jack's shoulders to give himself some upward momentum. There was a second, harder surge as his hind paws pushed down in the same places, and Jack looked up in rime to see a flicker of gold scales disappear up onto the roof of the building they were passing.

He crossed to the far side of the street and continued on, rubbing briefly at his shoulders where the dragon had pushed off. In his early days with Draycos, that maneuver would probably have knocked him flat on his face. Now, he was so used to it he hardly even noticed. No doubt about it, he and Draycos were becoming a real team.

Just when that team might be about to dissolve.

Jack shivered, this time not from the cold night air. Only a couple of weeks ago, near the end of his time as a slave, Draycos had been doing his look-over-a-wall trick in two-dimensional form when he'd suddenly fallen completely off Jack's back, ending up on the far side of the wall he'd been looking through.

Fortunately, he'd come out in proper three-dimensional form on the other side. But that hadn't made the whole thing any less scary. By Draycos's own admission, no other K'da had ever managed such a trick before with their regular Shontine symbiotic hosts.

The fact that Draycos hadn't accidentally slipped off Jack's back since then wasn't any real comfort. Neither was the fact that the dragon insisted he'd never felt better in his life. The bottom line was that something unexplained had happened.

And if there was one thing Uncle Virgil had made sure to hammer into Jack's skull, it was that the unexplained was always something to worry about.

Was Jack's body somehow rejecting Draycos? That was the simplest possibility. It was also the most ominous. A K'da couldn't live away from a host for more than six hours at a time. If he tried, he would go two-dimensional anyway and disappear off into death. The rest of the Shontine refugees were on their way, but they were still almost three months out from the eastern edge of the Orion Arm. If it turned out that human beings like Jack could only act as temporary K'da hosts, Draycos would most likely be dead long before they arrived.

Ahead was the doorway that had been Jack's second home for most of the last week. He paused there, peering across at the Malison Ring office, determination settling into his stomach like a lead weight. If Draycos was going to die, there was probably nothing either of them could do to prevent it. But whatever happened, no matter what it took, Jack would see to it that the rest of the K'da and Shontine made it safely to their new home. He owed Draycos that much.

Across the street, a gold-scaled dragon head lifted into view over the roof parapet, the long snout turning sharply upward in silent signal. Peeling himself away from the wall, Jack hurried over.

Draycos dropped from the roof as Jack approached, landing in a crouch beside the door. "The cameras are disabled," he reported quietly. "There was also a fourth, hidden from the street, guarding the approaches to the other three. I dealt with that one first."

"Thanks," Jack said, pulling out the key he and Uncle Virge had created that afternoon. Mentally crossing his fingers, he slid it into the lock.

With a quiet snick, the lock popped open. "One down, one to go," he said, holding out his hand.

Draycos put a paw on his palm and melted back onto his skin, slithering his way up along his arm. Jack waited until the dragon had maneuvered himself into his usual position with his head curving around Jack's right shoulder, then eased the door open.

Even without Uncle Virge's warning the previous night, he would have known from the distinctive hum that a cavity-wave system was operating. Without the counterlock they'd put together, disarming it would have been tricky. With the counter-lock, it was a piece of cake. Keying the device, he waited patiently until the hum faded into silence. "Uncle Virge?" he murmured.

"It's off," the computerized voice confirmed from Jack's left collar. "Watch yourself, lad."

"Right." Keeping alert for laser tags and other more subtle security traps. Jack headed in.

The office was similar to the Whinyard's Edge recruiting office he'd been in on Carrion a couple of months back, consisting of a single large room with several smaller offices opening off the side and back walls. Unlike the Edge recruiting office, though, each of the rooms here was decorated with a gold plate identifying its occupant. On the theory that mercenary leaders were as vain as the business and government types he and Uncle Virgil had scammed over the years, Jack picked out the door with the most elaborate plate and headed toward it.

He encountered two more barriers along the way, one a laser alarm, the other a pressure plate hidden beneath the rug. Both were easily avoided.

"Okay," he muttered under his breath as he examined the lock. It looked straightforward, but this was no time to get sloppy. "Draycos?"

"I am ready."

Turning around. Jack pressed his back against the door, feeling the subtle shift across his skin as Draycos curved his two-dimensional form to look "over"—the dragon's preferred term—the wall. Jack held his breath as the other moved around a little, wondering if he would lose his grip and fall off again.

But a few seconds later the dragon returned safely to his original position. "There are no extra locks or traps I can find," he reported.

"Good," Jack said, pulling out his lock pick. "This'll just take a second."

Two minutes later, Jack settled himself into a very expensive desk chair facing an equally expensive computer system. "Bingo," he said, switching on the machine. "Human designed, and with a modern operating system. This will do nicely."

The computer finished its start-up procedure. Leaning forward, Jack punched in the "sewer-rat" program Uncle Virgil had created for breaking into other people's computers.

It would be nice, he reflected, if Neverlin had been considerate enough to load the rendezvous information into the general Malison Ring computer network where anyone could get at it. But even if the conspirators hadn't been that careless, there were other tricks he could try.

One approach would be to download a list of worlds where the Malison Ring had troops and equipment, particularly the Djinn-90 starfighters they'd used against Draycos's advance team. With that information, he and Draycos could travel to the most likely jump-off points for the attack and search the local squads' computers for the rendezvous data. Or Jack could try loading a dump-tap into the system that would pull any messages to or from Neverlin and send copies to another computer where Uncle Virge could access it.

However he found the rendezvous point, he and Draycos would then have two choices. They could either try to beat the Malison Ring there and warn the refugee fleet or else turn everything over to StarForce and let them handle it.

And with thoughts and plans sifting themselves through Jack's mind, he was caught completely by surprise when the door across the room was abruptly slammed open.

He leaped to his feet. But it was far too late. Men in Malison Ring uniforms were pouring into the office, guns drawn and ready. "Don't shoot!" Jack called, holding his hands wide open, his heart pounding in his chest. Once before, he'd seen Draycos take out a room full of opponents. If he'd done it once, surely he could do it again.

But that time his opponents had been stupid enough to bunch up where the dragon's speed and agility gave him the advantage. This group, unfortunately, wasn't playing it that way. Instead of heading straight toward him, they spread out in both directions along the walls, staying well back.

"Jack?" Draycos whispered, his voice too soft for anyone but Jack to hear.

"No," Jack whispered back, keeping his lips motionless. "Uncle Virge, lock down."

The flood of mercenaries finally ended, leaving nine of them facing him. For a moment they stood motionless, staring at Jack in silence as if he were some kind of museum exhibit. Then, still without a word, the middle three men handed their weapons to those beside them and strode forward.

Quickly, efficiently, silently, they patted Jack down, relieving him of his comm clip, his key, his burglar equipment, his multitool, his belt, and his boots. One of the men, a sergeant, produced a handheld scanner from a belt pouch and ran it systematically over Jack's body. The second man had a set of handcuffs, and he and the third fastened Jack's hands securely behind his back.

The sergeant returned the scanner to its pouch and jerked his head over his shoulder. "Let's go."

The other two grabbed Jack's arms and marched him toward the door. The guards along the walls began to file out, adjusting their exit so that three of them ended up walking in front of Jack and his keepers while the other three walked behind them. Even with their prisoner in handcuffs, they kept their guns handy.

There was a tall man standing alone in the middle of the large room when Jack emerged from the office. His Malison Ring uniform was a lot flashier than those of the rest of the soldiers, with two rows of colored bars across his upper chest. "He's clean?" he asked as Jack and his three keepers approached.

"Yes, Commandant," the sergeant said. "Looks like he was trying to break into your computer."

The commandant turned cold fish eyes on Jack. "So desertion wasn't enough for you, eh?" he demanded.

Jack blinked. Desertion? "I'm not a deserter," he protested.

"No, of course not," the other said darkly. "Colonel Frost put out a blanket alert on a perfect stranger just for the fun of it. Sergeant, put him in the tombs while I call the colonel and see what he wants me to do with him."

"Yes, sir." The sergeant gestured, the two soldiers holding Jack's arms gave him a shove, and the whole group continued on across the room to an unmarked double door.

The double door led to a long corridor with another set of double doors at the far end. The sergeant unlocked one of them and led the way through, and Jack found himself in a smaller version of the big room they'd just left. Most of the doors here were the normal wooden variety, but the one all the way across the room from the double doors was made instead of thin, crisscrossed metal bars. The sergeant walked the group over to the latter door and swung it open. "In here," he said.

Jack obeyed. The sergeant stopped him at the door, removed his handcuffs, and gave him a final shove into the cell. With a solid-sounding thunk the door slammed shut behind him. "Smit, Gargan—you're on watch," the sergeant said, gesturing the rest of the group back to the double doors. They filed back out, leaving two of the mercenaries standing guard on opposite sides of the exit where they could watch Jack's every move.

Taking a deep breath, feeling thoroughly disgusted with himself. Jack walked to the cot at the back of the cell and sat down.

Secret plots being what they were, he'd been pretty sure that Neverlin and his fellow conspirators wouldn't have shared the details of their scheme with the entire Malison Ring. But he really should have expected them to come up with a cover story that would get everyone in the group hunting for him.

Jack Morgan, Malison Ring deserter. So obvious.

"Jack?" Draycos murmured from his shoulder.

"Just a second," Jack murmured back, giving the cell a quick check. No obvious cameras or microphones, and the guards were too far away to eavesdrop. "Clear enough," he said. "Sorry, Draycos. After what happened on Brum-a-dum, I should have expected Neverlin to turn the whole hornets' nest loose on us."

"No apology needed," Draycos assured him. "Do you want me to eliminate the guards?"

Jack measured the distance across the room with his eyes. "I don't know," he said doubtfully. "There's an awful lot of ground to cover. We need a diversion of some sort."

"What do you suggest?"

Jack chewed the inside of his cheek. It would be dangerous, he knew. But then, what wasn't dangerous these days? "The room next door seems to be just a normal office," he said. "If you were able to slide off my back through the wall, you could maybe make some noise and see if they would come close enough for you to jump them."

Draycos didn't reply. "I know it's dangerous," Jack went on. "But right now I can't think of anything else to try. If you'd rather, I'm willing to wait a bit and see if we come up with something else."

"No," the dragon said. "If we are to make our escape, we must do so at once. Neverlin already knows about me, though it would appear he hasn't passed that knowledge on to the rest of the Malison Ring."

"But if they contact him and he spills the beans, it's all over," Jack agreed grimly. "First thing they'd do is move us someplace where none of these tricks would work."

"So let us do it," Draycos decided. "Put your back against the wall."

Jack shifted around and pressed his back against the side of the cell. He felt the dragon shift around on his skin, lifting his two-dimensional form through the extra dimension and leaning over the barrier.

For a moment nothing happened. Then, all at once, there was a sudden movement against Jack's back, and Draycos was gone.

Jack took a careful breath. There was no way of knowing whether or not the trick had been successful. Still, it had felt about the same as the time it had happened accidentally. He hoped that meant Draycos was all right.

Jack had just moved away from the wall when, across the room, the two guards quietly collapsed onto the floor.

Jack stared at them in disbelief. Draycos hadn't even made it out of the office yet. How could he have—?

And then, as Jack's suddenly sluggish brain tried to figure it out, he caught a hint of a familiar odor wafting toward him.

Someone was pumping sopor mist into the room.

Jack twisted back around, holding his breath as he pounded three quick times against the sidewall. If he and Draycos fell asleep before they could get back together, the commandant wouldn't need Neverlin or anyone else to tell him something strange was going on.

Jack had lifted his hand to hit the wall again when the universe went dark.