Dragon and Judge

CHAPTER 21

A massive shock wave caught Jack across the face and chest like a full-body slap, hurling him backward down the tunnel.

But even as he dropped toward the rocky floor, he sensed Draycos leaping past him. A fraction of a second later, he slammed into the K'da as they both hit the floor. They rolled over a couple of times and came to a halt.

"You all right?" Jack asked, wiping dust and grit off his face as he scrambled to his feet. For a second his knees wobbled, and he had to grab the slurry pipe for support.

The K'da said something, but Jack's ears were still ringing too hard from the explosion to hear it. "What?" he asked. "No— come here." Brushing at his shirt with one hand, he held out the other toward Draycos.

Draycos put a paw on his hand and slithered up his sleeve onto his back. I am unhurt, the K'da's reassurance came into Jack's mind, bypassing his dazed hearing. You?

"I'm okay," Jack said, blinking a few times. The tunnel was filled with dust that was only slowly starting to settle. "The guy's consistent, anyway. He used a bomb on my parents, and now he tried to use one on me."

Draycos's snout rose from Jack's shoulder and his tongue flicked out twice. I do not sense any airflow, Jack. We may be trapped in here.

Jack smiled tightly. "I'll bet that's what Bolo thinks, too. Let's take a look."

His flashlight was a few feet farther down the tunnel, glowing faintly through the pile of rock chips that had partially buried it. Jack retrieved it, then backtracked to the site of the explosion.

Bolo had done a good job. The tunnel near the intersection was completely blocked by a pile of shattered rock. "Probably a shaped charge set against the ceiling," Draycos said as Jack played his light over the top of the pile.

"Had it all ready to go, too," Jack agreed. "I wonder what he would have done if I'd refused to come to the mine with him."

"Perhaps there would now be no Great Assembly Hall, either," Draycos said.

Jack grimaced. "Yeah." Taking a deep breath—and instantly regretting it as the floating dust set off a coughing fit—he turned around. "I guess we'd better get started."

"Will you need help?" Draycos asked.

"No, I can handle it," Jack assured him. "You stay here and keep an ear out for any other tricks Bolo might have up his sleeve."

It took a few minutes for Jack to reach the end of the tunnel. It took another minute for him to cut away the protective plastic from one of the two diggers with his multitool. His one fear, that the diggers' power cells would have drained over the past eleven years, proved unfounded. A minute of trial and error as he figured out the controls, and he and the machine were on their way back up the tunnel.

He arrived at the blockage to find Draycos digging carefully at one edge of the rock pile. Beside the K'da, the slurry pipe against the wall had been freshly sliced open. "All set," Jack announced. He pointed at the pipe. "Getting bored?"

"I was concerned the air might fail before we finish," Draycos explained. "Fortunately, the collapse doesn't seem to have damaged the pipe."

"Good," Jack said, holding out a hand. "Come on aboard— there's not enough room here for all of us."

A minute later Draycos was on his back, and Jack plowed his new toy into the rock pile.

The job went surprisingly quickly, though as Jack thought about it he realized that a machine designed to eat into a solid rock face would have little trouble with what were basically just very large chunks of gravel. The toothed roller on the front end dug into the pile, taking in the rocks and sending them back into a set of grinders where they were chewed up still further before being ejected out the machine's back end.

Every couple of minutes the pile would shift, scattering the rocks and sending more dust into the air. But the fresh breeze from the slurry pipe helped blow it clear. Fifteen minutes into the task, Jack could already see a gap at the top of the pile. Five minutes after that, the pile was low enough that he could see the huge dome Bolo's explosive had blasted in the ceiling.

And ten minutes after that, he was able to shut down the digger and crawl carefully over what was left of the pile to freedom.

"I suppose the next question is what we do next," Jack muttered to Draycos as he trudged back up the tunnel. "Bolo and his aircar will be long gone by now, and from here to anywhere is going to be a really long walk."

Why not go back to the canyon?

Jack rolled his eyes. With their ears recovered from the blast there was no longer any reason not to just talk to each other. Clearly, Draycos was delighted with this new parlor game he'd learned and was determined to practice it every chance he got.

Personally, Jack found it a lot harder and more distracting to focus his thoughts that way. But he supposed the K'da was right. / have no problem with that, he said, concentrating hard on forming each word in his mind. The problem's going to be getting someone's attention from up on the rim. Unless you were thinking of climbing down with me hanging on to your tail.

He had a quick mental image of the K'da giving one of his crack-jawed smiles. I think that would be a bit more than the Golvins are ready for just now.

Ahead, Jack could see a faint glow as the beam from his flashlight reflected off the white ceramic ceiling of the assembly area. They were almost home. So again, what do we do? he asked. Wait for Thonsifi to start wondering what happened to me and get Eithon to fly her up here?

That is certainly a possibility, Draycos said. We may need to spend the day here, but surely she will not allow the sun to set without coming to see if you need assistance.

I don't know, Jack replied doubtfully. Now that we know why the One wasn't happy to see me in the first place, I don't think he'd be all that heartbroken if I never came back.

They had reached the end of the tunnel now. With a sense of relief, Jack stepped into the big assembly room.

And without warning, a hand lanced out from just inside the room and grabbed his shirt collar. Before he could do more than gasp, he was yanked sideways off his feet, the arm shifting around to catch him around the throat.

"Cute, kid," Bolo's voice grated in his ear. The arm tightened around Jack's throat, and he felt the muzzle of a gun press up against the back of his head. "Just tell me everything, huh? I'm already dead, huh? Where was your friend hiding, the end of the tunnel?"

"I . . . don't know . . . what—" Jack tried to say, pulling at Bolo's arm as he fought desperately to get air into his lungs.

"Save it," Bolo snarled, squeezing his arm even tighter. "This slurry pipe here, the one you cut or broke open to get some fresh air? It's really good at conducting sound, too."

Lifting Jack half off his feet by his neck, Bolo dragged him around the corner to stand in front of the tunnel entrance. "You—down in the mine!" he shouted. "I've got your friend. Come out or I'll blow his head open."

There was no answer. Jack could feel Draycos moving around on his skin, and could sense that the K'da was trying to talk to him.

But he couldn't understand. He couldn't feel or hear or concentrate on anything except the arm choking the life out of him. White sparkles were starting to dance across his vision, and he could feel his knees starting to wobble as the strength drained out of his legs. His hands, clutching uselessly at Bolo's arm, were going numb.

"You hear me?" Bolo's voice came distantly in his ears. "Come out!"

The jabbing pressure on the back of Jack's head disappeared. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bolo's other hand appear over his shoulder, pointing his gun down the tunnel.

And suddenly Jack was shoved violently forward against Bolo's arm as Draycos burst from the back of Jack's shirt between the two of them, breaking Bolo's grip on Jack's throat.

Someone screamed, but whether it was Draycos or Bolo Jack couldn't tell in his daze. He staggered forward away from the sudden clattering noises behind him, one hand clutching his aching throat. The side of the tunnel loomed ahead of him, and he barely got his other hand up in time to keep himself from running face-first into the rough stone.

From behind him came a sudden loud thud, and then an equally sudden silence. Still gasping in air, he turned himself around.

Draycos was crouched on the assembly room floor, his neck arched, his jaws partially open. His glowing green eyes were on Bolo, sprawled on the floor beneath him. Bolo's gun was also on the floor, lying in the dust a couple of feet from the man's limp hand. "Uh-oh," Jack murmured.

"I'm sorry," Draycos said, looking at Jack. "I was only trying to disable him."

"It's okay," Jack said. It hurt his throat to talk, and his voice was unexpectedly raspy in his ears. "Hard floor in here."

"Harder than I realized," Draycos said ruefully, looking Jack up and down. "What about you?"

Jack shook his head. "I'll be okay. You?"

"I'm unhurt," Draycos said. He looked back down at Bolo. "What do we do now?"

Jack gazed down at the dead man, a strange mixture of emotions swirling through him. Uncle Virgil, criminal though he was, had consistently hammered into Jack that he was never, ever to kill anyone.

Of course, that hadn't been so much from respect for life as it was the fact that killing during one of their jobs could bring huge penalties down on top of them. Still, the training was there, and it had taken firm hold over Jack's heart and soul. So much so, in fact, that when he and Draycos had first linked up he'd made a point of explaining to his new partner that K'da warrior rules about summary justice didn't apply here in the Orion Arm.

And yet, despite all that, Jack couldn't help but feel a dark satisfaction at Bolo's death. After eleven years, justice had finally been done for his parents.

Resolutely, he turned his eyes away. "What we do," he told Draycos, "is get in that aircar and get the blazes out of here."

"What about Jonathan Langston?" Draycos asked.

Jack grimaced. He'd forgotten all about the Golvins' secret prisoner. "What about him?"

Draycos cocked his head slightly to the side, and Jack grimaced again. "You're right," he conceded with a sigh. "Fine. We'll go back and get him out."

"We must at least try to determine whether or not his story is true," Draycos said, stepping away from Bolo and padding to Jack's side. "You must find a way to convince the One to allow a hearing."

"Not necessary," Jack assured him. "Langston's telling the truth."

Draycos's neck arched with surprise. "How do you know?"

"Simple logic," Jack said, rubbing at his throat. "Tell you later."

They went out to the aircar and Jack climbed into the pilot's seat. He glanced around, checking the controls—"Uh-oh," he muttered.

"What is it?" Draycos said, lifting his head from Jack's shoulder.

"That," Jack said, pointing at a small flat box half hidden beneath the instrument display panel. "It's a UniLink, a gadget for patching through to the nearest InterWorld transmitter and sending direct messages." He pulled it out on its attached cable and peered at the display. "And I'd say it's just been used."

"Do you think Bolo sent out word of your death?"

"Let's hope that's all the message said," Jack said, tucking it back away out of sight and turning on the main engines.

"Wait a moment," Draycos said. "Can we use that to contact the Essenay?"

Jack shook his head. "A UniLink's designed to send to only one specific location, which means it's got the target receiver preloaded," he explained. "They're also typically loaded to the gills with encryption and ping-testers. No, we'll have to grab Langston and head back to the spaceport InterWorld building and call Uncle Virge the old-fashioned way."

As a passenger, Jack had already seen that flying into the canyon took a great deal of concentration and skill. As a pilot, he quickly found out that it took all that and then some. Twice the shifting winds nearly blew the aircar sideways into one of the stone columns, and once he came within inches of ramming a guy wire he hadn't noticed.

But after what seemed like twice the time all his earlier trips had taken, he made it through and set the aircar down onto the landing pit.

A small crowd was waiting there, standing in a nervous-looking cluster at the northern end of the pit. A pace or two in front of the others were Thonsifi and the One.

"Good morning, One Among Many," Jack greeted the latter as he walked toward the group. "My apologies for the delay. I'm now ready to begin the day's judging."

"Where is he?" the One demanded, his eyes flicking past Jack's shoulder to the aircar's empty passenger seat.

"You mean Bolo?" Jack asked pointedly. "The man who wrecked your other Assembly Hall and murdered two Judge-Paladins?"

The One twitched violently, his face turning into a solid mass of wrinkles. "Disaster and death," he whispered. "I was right. You have brought disaster and death upon us."

"Relax—I'm not blaming you," Jack said. "Neither will the Judge-Paladins' Office when they—"

"No!" the One cut him off, his voice edging into panic. "You cannot tell them! You must not tell them!" He jabbed his right arm straight up into the air.

And suddenly, the entire front of the waiting crowd sprouted bows and arrows.

All of the arrows pointed straight at Jack.