Dragon And Soldier

Chapter 12

The second floor was much like the first: wide spaces, tables with merchandise, no cover near the windows. Draycos didn't pause, but continued up the next stairway to the third floor.

There he found what he was looking for. This floor, instead of being devoted to merchandise, had been divided by low partitions into an orderly maze of small ofEce-like areas. Even better, the windows were partially covered by thick, decorative drapes. Keeping to the cover of the partitions, he made his way to one of the side windows and looked cautiously out.

The side of the next building was perhaps ten feet away, an easy leap for a K'da warrior. He scanned all the windows, but there was no one in sight. Apparently, the attackers were concentrating on the street side, where the Edgemen were pinned down.

Still, they hadn't completely neglected their defense of this side. Between the two buildings a steady trickle of popcorn bombs was raining down.

It was an interesting defensive method, one which the K'da and Shontine had never used. The popcorn bombs were propelled outward from a central launcher somewhere on top of the building. As each bomb cleared the edge of the roof, it sprouted a small parachute, which stopped its outward motion and turned it instead to fall straight down. The parachute then popped off, sending the bomb falling at normal speed toward the street below.

For a few seconds Draycos watched the bombs, studying their pattern. With the proper timing, it should be cub's play to get though it.

The rooftop was a little ways above his position as he looked out the window, and he couldn't see if there was anyone up there tending the popcorn machine. Still, the Edge manual had said such devices ran automatically, so it had probably been left on its own. He would have to risk it.

He looked down, and felt his jaws crack open in a tight smile. Whatever else the popcorn bombs were supposed to do, they were also having an unintended but useful side effect. Just as the gunfire from the windows was creating a hazy smoke screen around the tops of the buildings, so too the bombs were creating a smoky mist of their own at ground level.

Which meant that, when he made his move, neither the attackers nor the defenders would see a thing.

He pushed open the window and backed up to midway across the room. There he crouched low, watching the bombs fall past the window. He could feel the blood pounding through his body, pouring oxygen and nutrients into his muscles in preparation for the effort ahead. Out of the edge of his eye he could see the golden color in his scales turn to black as some of the extra blood flow trickled into them.

The K'da warrior was ready.

Across the room, the pattern of falling bombs reached the proper point. Digging his claws into the carpet, he charged.

A quick sprint took him back to the window. He jumped up to the sill with his front paws, got his rear paws planted on the sill behind them, and leaped up and outward.

There was no time to wonder what would happen if he had made a mistake in the pattern. Fortunately, he hadn't. His jump took him sailing cleanly through a gap in the artificial hailstorm and landed him on top of the low parapet around the edge of the roof.

The popcorn machine had been set up near the center of the roof, spitting its deadly dispatches toward and over the edges. As Draycos had expected, there was no one tending it. Staying low beneath the stream of bombs, he sprinted across the roof.

This particular machine was slightly different from the one that had been shown in Jack's manual. But it was similar enough. Two quick slashes through the power and control cables, and the rain of bombs stopped.

Beside the machine was a trap door leading down into the building. Prying open the popcorn machine's magazine, he pulled out two of the small bombs. Then, ready to toss them in if necessary, he pulled the trap door open a crack.

He flicked his tongue into the gap. There was an alien tang in the air, almost buried beneath the taste of the explosive powder of the guns. The taste of Parprin was there, too, but faint and stale, plus the stronger scent of a human. Neither the human nor alien scents seemed to be nearby.

He lifted the trap door the rest of the way up. Below was a narrow stairway leading down to a door that had been propped open. No one was visible, and the enemy did not seem to have set any alarms or booby traps. Tucking his two popcorn bombs out of the way beneath his forearms, he headed down.

The open door below led into the center of a corridor lined with ten doors. Apartments, he decided, or possibly private offices. Silently, he prowled down the hallway, listening and tasting at each door.

At the second and fourth doors to the left, on the side facing the street, he found the enemy.

He took a moment to lay the two bombs on the hallway floor by the fourth door, where the door would strike them if it was opened carelessly. Then, returning to the second door, he pulled it open.

The attacker's setup was again something he'd seen in Jack's manual. At the window sat a slender, long-barreled weapon on a tripod, angled sharply downward to fire at the street. A belt of ammunition ran up to it from a small suitcase on the floor.

The gunner himself was of a species Draycos hadn't met before: short and stocky, with large ears and clumps of feathers poking out of a mottled red-and-purple skin. His heavy battle vest had a shoulder patch showing a long, curved sword, and his scent matched the alien smell Draycos had tasted by the trap door.

He was seated cross-legged in the center of the room, well back from the window, leaning comfortably against the front corner of a large desk. With the help of a small video monitor in one hand and a control stick in the other, he was firing the weapon by remote control.

Foolishly enough, he was sitting with his back to the door. Perhaps he assumed his large ears would warn him of any intruders.

Draycos didn't give him the chance to correct that error. A single leap across the room landed him behind the alien. A single slap of his forepaw bounced the other's head against the desk and sent him sprawling unconscious onto the floor.

For a moment Draycos crouched beside him, listening to the rhythm of his breathing. The soldier was alive, but definitely out of the fight.

One room down. One more room to go, and then he would have done all he could. He turned back to the door.

And paused as a sudden thought struck him. Perhaps he wasn't quite finished here yet.

He spent a minute learning how to work the control stick. Then, manipulating the buttons and wheels delicately with his claws, he raised the muzzle of the gun to point at the building across the street. Studying the monitor, he located one of the windows where a similar gun was firing down into the street.

Smiling to himself, he lined up the crosshairs on the other gun and fired.

The result was all he could have hoped for. His bullets hammered into the other weapon, shaking it like a puppet with tangled strings and toppling it back out of sight. Swinging the gun to the right, he found the next enemy weapon and again opened fire. This gun was sturdier, and it took him two bursts to knock it out of action.

He swung the gun toward the next building over, aware that his time was rapidly running out. If the operators of the two ruined weapons were quick and smart, they would alert the soldier two rooms away from him that this weapon had fallen into enemy hands. The soldier would then come and try to take it back.

The enemy was definitely smart, and even a little quicker than Draycos had expected. From down the corridor came a pair of sharp cracks as the two popcorn bombs he'd left behind the other door went off.

The enemy was coming.

He took another two seconds to ruin one more enemy weapon, then dropped the control stick and loped back toward the door. Leaping up, twisting to the side in midair, he landed with a gentle thud against the wall just above the door. His claws dug into the hard wood and held on.

Just in time. Beneath him, the door was pulled violently open, and a burst of gunfire spattered across the empty space.

Seeing no one but his unconscious comrade, the soldier shifted his aim toward the desk, the only reasonable hiding place in the room. The bullets slammed into the wood, sending clouds of splinters flying. It was just as well, Draycos decided as he gazed down, that he hadn't tried to hide there.

The gunfire stopped, and a human soldier eased cautiously into the doorway, his gun held ready. Unhooking one paw from the wall, Draycos leaned over and slapped hard at the side of the man's head.

This one was tougher than his alien comrade had been. The blow sent him staggering to the side, but he managed to stay on his feet. He shook his head once, as if to clear it, just in time to catch the slap of Draycos's tail as it struck him in the same spot where the first blow had landed. The man toppled to the floor, his gun clattering out of his grip, and stayed down.

Draycos slipped out of the room and headed back toward the stairway. The hallway was empty, but he knew it wouldn't be for long. Already he could hear several pairs of footsteps moving upward from the floor below. Either more of the attackers were coming to investigate, or an advance party of Whinyard's Edge defenders was on its way.

Either way, his time had run out. He reached the stairway and climbed toward the roof, noticing as he did so that all the gunfire outside seemed to have ceased.

And as he eased his head up through the trap door, he found out why. In the distance, heading toward them at high speed, were three small aircraft.

So the Whinyard's Edge had finally called in air support. About time.

He raced across the roof, hoping Jack was still where he'd left him. He reached the edge, and in a single move leaped up onto the parapet and then threw himself into a flat dive toward the window he'd originally left.

His jump was slightly off, and his paws fumbled a bit as he ducked in through the window. Regaining his balance, he retraced his steps through the partitions and back to the wide stairway.

He made his way down to the second floor landing. There he paused, listening. The three Parprins were talking quietly, and from the direction of their tense voices he could tell they were still sitting or standing at the bottom of the stairway.

Unfortunately, Jack was keeping quiet. Had he moved away somewhere? If so, there might be a problem getting back to him without the Parprins seeing him.

And if he didn't move quickly, the Parprins would be the least of his worries. With much of the attack broken, and the aircraft dealing with the rest, he could see through the windows that the Edgemen were beginning to move purposefully around in the street. One of their first tasks, he knew, would be to check the nearby buildings for enemies.

All the buildings. Including this one.

He focused his attention on the stairway railing. A metal railing; and metal, he knew, conducted sound quite well. Reaching up, he gave it three gentle scratches with his claws.

To his relief, there was an immediate answering scratch.

He lifted his head carefully, just far enough to see. Jack had one hand resting on the railing, the fingers beckoning impatiently.

Slinking down the stairs, Draycos reached the spot where Jack stood. He touched the boy's hand and slid quickly up his sleeve as he changed into two-dimensional form. Shifting along Jack's skin, he worked his way around into his accustomed position.

Just in time. Across the room, the door slammed open. Moving carefully, Draycos peeked out through Jack's shirt.

Sergeant Grisko stood framed in the doorway, a small machine gun held high across his chest. Behind him, Draycos could see Alison Kayna andjommy Randolph.

"There he is," Jommy said, pointing past Grisko's shoulder. "I told you."

"Yeah, you sure did." Grisko leveled the full power of his glare at Jack. "And what the frinking rip," he demanded, "are you doing here?"