Dragon and Liberator

CHAPTER 17

For Alison, the next six days went by smoothly and quietly. As near as she could tell, the time had gone equally smoothly for everyone else aboard the Advocatus Diaboli.

Neverlin and Frost met several times, discussing the final details of their plan. Sneaking through the vents, Taneem had managed to get close enough to eavesdrop on one of those talks.

But the two men had kept their voices too low for Alison to pick up more than a few words over Taneem's comm clip. Taneem had tried to repeat some of it to her later, but the conversation had been filled with technical terms that she didn't know and were therefore hard for her to remember.

It was frustrating, but there was nothing Alison could do about it. There were many unanswered questions about the details of Frost's plan, details that could prove critical in the days ahead.

As for Harper, he seemed to be spending most of his time in his stateroom, emerging only for meals or an occasional brief chat with Frost or one of the other Malison Ring mercenaries. Harper did walk around the ship at least once, but as far as Taneem could tell he never approached any of the vital control areas and never left the sight of one of the crew or passengers.

Like Neverlin, Harper seemed perfectly relaxed about the upcoming battle. But maybe that was just the man's personality.

Still, as the hours ticked down toward their arrival at Point Three, even Harper seemed to be picking up some of the tension beginning to pervade the rest of the ship.

Not only the ship but Alison herself. Very soon now she would learn if Jack and Draycos were really aboard the Foxwolf. And if they were, how much damage they had caused.

And at that point, she would have a decision to make.

She didn't want to confront Neverlin and Frost this soon. Not with the K'da/Shontine fleet still several days away.

But if and when Frost took over the job of finding and killing Jack and Draycos, she would have no choice.

The hours became minutes, the voices on the bridge softening as the tension and expectation grew. Taneem lay quietly in the duct, watching Neverlin and Frost and the Valahgua leader through the mesh and reporting as much of the situation as she could to Alison.

Which left Alison absolutely nothing to do except listen to Taneem's whispers, pace restlessly back and forth across the life-pod, and pray that Jack and Draycos had come up with some plan of their own.

And to pray even harder that they were both still alive.

The access crawl space beneath the Foxwolf's main control complex, Jack reflected, was well named.

In his opinion, though, the creatures the ship's designers had expected to be crawling around in here were mice.

Okay, he said, rolling carefully onto his back and shining his light upward. Barely a foot directly above his head was a wide hole in the crawl space ceiling with an orderly tangle of wires and cables of various sizes coming out of it. In ones and twos the cables angled away from the hole, heading off in all directions toward the edges of the crawl space. To his right and left, he could see similar explosions of cables coming from other openings in the low ceiling. Is this the right one?

Draycos's head lifted slightly from his shoulder, peering at the markings by the hole. Yes, he said, sinking back down onto Jack's skin. Do you need me to identify the wires for you?

No, I got it, Jack assured him. A set of soft footsteps angled across Jack's ceiling to his left, reminding him—if he'd needed reminding—that the control complex directly above him was full of bad guys.

With a thick deck between them and him, they weren't likely to hear any noise he might make. Just the same, he was careful not to clink his flashlight as he set it down onto the deck beside his ear.

Reaching into his pockets, he removed his multitool and the cable-and-switch setup he'd put together. Studying the various stripe/spot patterns on the cables above him, he located the ones Draycos had described and set to work.

Jack had been highly trained in the art of bypassing security locks, alarms, and other complex electronics. This job, in comparison, was about as tricky as a walk in the park.

His first task was to connect three of the hyperspace control lines together, being careful not to trigger any flickers the computer might notice. Then he wired in one of the two high-voltage power lines that ran the console's display monitors, running that particular splice through the switch on his cable.

And he was done. That's it, he told Draycos. I flip the switch, and the hyperdrive controls fry. That ought to hold their attention awhile.

Let's hope it's long enough, Draycos said. Moving carefully in the cramped space, he slid out of Jack's sleeve. "I'll signal you when I'm in position," he murmured.

"Watch yourself," Jack warned.

The K'da flicked his tail in acknowledgment as he set off across the crawl space.

Jack watched him go, feeling a frustration that was edging toward despair. Every plan the boy had come up with over the past six days, every scheme he'd hoped to pull, had fallen apart in his hands.

His plan to drug the ship's water supply had come to nothing. There simply weren't enough of the proper chemicals aboard.

His backup plan, to fire a surge through the Death weapons' power lines, had merely ended up popping circuit breakers and getting them chased away again. The Valahgua had responded to that one by taking a bunch of their security cameras from other areas and installing them in the tween gap. By the time the Valahgua finished, all approaches to the two Death weapons were covered.

Draycos's plans hadn't fared much better. He'd tried using the ventilation ducts to approach the weapons, only to discover the Valahgua had tripled the guard. Many of the Brummgas were stationed outside in the corridors, and Draycos had concluded that a surprise attack from the duct would almost certainly succeed.

But with the tween gap now virtually closed to him and Jack, the ventilation system was their only means of traveling invisibly through the ship. With cameras still mounted in the weapons rooms, any attack from the ducts would give that secret away, leaving them nothing. Jack and Draycos had discussed the situation, and decided not to risk that until and unless they were desperate.

Now, with less than an hour before the Foxwolf reached Point Three, they were.

And so Draycos was going to go and try to take out the starboard Death, the one they knew was still operational.

Leaving the one Jack had tried to gimmick when they'd first come aboard. Which, by now. Jack knew, was probably also back to being operational.

He took a careful breath, trying to focus on the positive points. The Valahgua had had four Death weapons to use against the K'da and Shontine refugees. In a few minutes they would have only one. Surely that counted for something.

"Jack?" Draycos's voice came softy from Jack's comm clip. "I'm in the duct. Ten minutes and I should be there."

"Right," Jack said. "Just let me know when you're ready for me to turn their hyperdrive console into toast."

"I will." Draycos paused, and Jack could imagine his jaws cracking open in a grin. "Butter side down, of course."

Despite his gloom, Jack had to smile. "Butter side down," he confirmed.

"And then get out as quickly as you can," Draycos added, going serious again. "I'll meet you back in the recycling room."

"Sure," Jack murmured, his smile fading. Toast, butter side down, had been one of Uncle Virgil's favorite catchphrases.

Uncle Virgil. Virgil Morgan, professional thief, con man, and safecracker. Who had somehow ended up in possession of both Jack and the Essenay after Jack's parents were murdered eleven years ago.

How in the world had that happened?

Jack didn't know. It was possible he would never know. Uncle Virge, the copy of his personality that Uncle Virgil had planted in the Essenay's computer, claimed he had no information about that part of Jack's life.

But Uncle Virge was in control of the Essenay. And despite Jack's instructions, the Essenay had apparently followed him to Point Two and rendezvoused with Neverlin's Advocatus Diaboli.

Neverlin, whose attempted frame-up of Jack for theft and murder had gotten him into this whole thing in the first place. Neverlin, who Jack had only recently discovered had been directly involved with the murder of Jack's parents.

Coincidence? Jack didn't know that, either.

He swallowed against a lump that had suddenly appeared in his throat. It was possible Uncle Virge had betrayed him. Maybe Alison had betrayed him, too. Certainly she wasn't someone he could completely trust.

But he had Draycos.

He could only hope that he could still say that fifteen minutes from now.

As part of their overall plan for the Gatekeeper's air ducts to double as back-door access routes, the ship's designers had made sure that the ventilation grilles would be difficult to see through from inside the rooms. Draycos was therefore able to move silently and invisibly toward his goal.

To his surprise, the invisibility part proved less important than he'd expected it to. At first there were plenty of Brummgas striding through corridors or lounging about the various rooms he passed. But as he approached the Number Four weapons bay, that number became less and less. The last three rooms he passed, in fact, were completely deserted.

Something was wrong.

He took the last stretch of duct at a careful crawl, his tongue flicking out as he went, trying to analyze the scents of Brummga and human and Valahgua drifting on the air around him.

And it was no doubt because he was taking such care that he spotted the small object sitting just inside the weapons bay's auxiliary control room grille.

He froze in place ten feet away, peering hard at the object. It looked like a tube or perhaps a section of thick cable, about six inches long and one inch in diameter. It was too wide to have gotten through the small holes in the grille, which meant someone must have opened the grille in order to put it there.

He flicked out his tongue again. This close to the grille, he should be able to pick out the specific scents coming from that room. There was one human in there, he decided, plus four or five Brummgas. No Valahgua.

He frowned, his tail arching with sudden suspicion. Only a handful of defenders for one of the precious remaining Death weapons?

Not a chance. Especially since his earlier checks had showed guard contingents three times that size. Could the rest of them be spread out in the corridor, where they would have a better field of fire?

Backing up, he slipped into the duct that paralleled the corridor outside the room. He flicked his tongue at the nearest grille, looking for the scent of nervous Brummgas.

But it wasn't there. The corridor was deserted, or nearly so.

Something was definitely wrong.

He returned to the room's duct again and took a cautious pair of steps toward the object lying inside the grille. From here he could see that it was vibrating slightly with the air flowing across it. Something light, then. Something light that had been rolled up into a cylindrical shape?

A piece of paper?

Carefully, he continued forward. It was a rolled-up piece of paper, all right, which had partially unrolled to its current diameter. Picking it up, he looked cautiously through the grille into the room beyond.

The room had changed since his quiet reconnaissance two nights ago. As he'd already surmised, the crowd of guards that had lined the bulkheads was gone. Instead, the walls were lined with a double bank of video monitors. It was hard to tell at his distance, but they seemed to be carrying the feeds from various security cameras. One group of monitors, he saw, showed images from the tween gap area.

As he'd also surmised, there were only five Brummgas in the room. Three of them were standing around the control end of the Death weapon, their backs to Draycos behind his grille. Two more were standing watchful guard by the door, with the grille at the edge of their peripheral vision.

Standing two paces behind the three at the controls, the stiffness of his back betraying his tension, was Wing Sergeant Langston.

Draycos eyed the group, his warrior's instincts tingling. Five Brummgas out of over three hundred, and a human whom they clearly didn't trust. Bait, if he'd ever seen it.

Which meant that this whole thing was a trap.

Taking one last look through the grille, Draycos picked up the rolled-up paper and retreated quietly along the duct.

He found a hidden spot away from any of the grilles, one where he had three different escape routes available to him. Crouching down, he unrolled the paper.

It was a note, as he'd expected, written in small but precise letters. Leaning close to give it all the light from his eyes that he could, he began to read.

Draycos:

I hope you get this message. I don't have much real information for you—they still don't completely trust me—but rumor is that the Valahgua are expecting you and Jack to try to hit the last two Death weapons before we reach Point Three.

They've now got cameras inside all the hull-gap access doors near both weapons bays to watch for your arrival. The ventilation system seems untouched so far—I don't think they realize you'll fit in there. I'm hoping that's the approach you'll use, since I can't get this note into any of the hull-gap doors without making a lot of noise.

Draycos nodded grimly to himself. Nothing really new, except that Langston had figured out the designers' system of back doors.

Unfortunately, as soon as he hit this particular Death weapon, the Valahgua would know about it, too. That would leave him only the equipment crawl spaces, which covered limited areas of the ship, and didn't reach the weapons bays at all.

They also fixed the Death weapon that you and Jack sabotaged. Not the two you shredded—they were furious about that, by the way—but the first one you hit, in the port-side weapons bay.

Again, nothing new there. The heavy guard on the other Death weapon alone had pretty well proved it had been fixed.

On the other hand, just because the Valahgua thought they'd fixed it didn't necessarily mean that they had. If they'd missed Jack's secondary sabotage, the weapon could still blow up in their faces when they tried to fire it. He could hope, anyway.

Speaking of that port-side weapon, rumor is that the Valahgua moved it sometime during ship's night. I don't know where.

Draycos frowned. They'd moved it? But it was already in as secure and inaccessible a place as the Gatekeeper had to offer.

And then, suddenly, he understood.

Langston and a handful of Brummgas, alone in a critical part of the ship. Bait for a trap, Draycos had already suspected.

Now he knew what the trap was.

"Jack, we're in trouble," he said quietly into the comm clip. "The Valahgua have moved the other Death weapon to cover this one.

"The minute I come into the open, they're going to kill me."