Dragon And Soldier

Chapter 23

The commander was awake by the time Jack let go of Draycos's tail and got himself seated more or less securely on the branches facing him. "You sure there isn't anyone else around?" he muttered as Draycos climbed around behind the prisoner.

The dragon shook his head, but remained silent. Jack understood; he didn't want the prisoner to hear his voice. "Okay," he said briskly. "Let's get this over with." Grabbing hold of the cable tying the man's wrists together, he started to pull him up into a sitting position.

The other responded by trying to grab Jack's hand. "Hey, hey, take it easy," Jack warned, yanking his hand back out of reach. "Don't struggle or try anything stupid. You're fifty feet off the ground in a very leaky tree."

The man seemed to see the logic in that. He grunted behind his gag and subsided. "All we want is a little chat," Jack went on, pulling him upright again. This time the other didn't struggle. "A quiet little chat," he added. "You try shouting for help and we'll have to shut you up. A fair chance we'll lose your balance in the process. Understand?"

The man grunted again. Jack glanced at Draycos, making sure the dragon was standing ready but out of the prisoner's sight. Then, reaching over, he pulled off the gag.

"Montana?" the other rumbled, his voice the croak of a man with too dry a mouth. He worked his lips a moment and tried again. "It's Montana, isn't it?" he demanded.

Jack started. He knew that voice. "Colonel Elkor?" he asked, pulling off the headband and lifting the man's hood.

It was Colonel Elkor, all right, glaring at Jack like he was trying to push him out of the tree by sheer willpower. "Well, well," Jack said, filling in time as he tried to get his brain rebooted. He'd expected Sergeant Grisko or maybe Lieutenant Basht to be leading this charge. To have a full colonel show up meant this was bigger than he'd thought.

"You're a pretty big fish to be flopping around in this size pond," he went on. "I guess I never saw you as the great outdoors type."

"I wondered about you," Elkor growled. "So is Kayna working for you? Or is it the other way around?"

He started to turn. Draycos batted him warningly against the side of the head and he seemed to think better of the idea. "I'll bet it's Kayna who's calling the shots," he decided. "Who are you working for? The Shamshir, or someone else?"

"This is my interrogation, thanks all the same," Jack said. "But just for the record, I'm not working for anyone."

Elkor snorted derisively. "Right. You just felt like a midnight stroll one night. And then, what, you needed to use the latrine?"

Jack shook his head. "I already told you. The Shamshir sneaked into the camp and captured us. I escaped and—"

"Don't play dumb," Elkor cut him off harshly. "I'm talking about back on Carrion."

"Oh," Jack said, a little lamely. "That."

"Oh. That," Elkor mimicked. "Basht was pretty sure it was Kayna. But I wondered about you. If we'd had time to really check out your application—"

"Wait a second," Jack said, frowning as he thought back on that failed midnight raid. Was he suggesting that had been Alison coming up the stairs? "I'm sorry, but I'm confused here. What does Alison have to do with any of this?"

For the first time Elkor's glare seemed to crack a little. "Are you saying that wasn't you in the HQ building?"

Jack hesitated. Common sense, plus years of Uncle Virgil's tirades on the subject, said you never gave away information for free. But he was thoroughly lost here, and he had the odd feeling that Elkor wasn't exactly sitting steady on this stack of blocks either. Maybe it would be worth pooling their information a little.

"I did sneak into the HQ, yes," he told Elkor. "I was looking for some computer data. But I had to run for it when someone headed my direction laying down a sopor gas pattern. I assumed at the time it was a guard."

Elkor snorted again. "Trust me, if it had been one of us you would have known it. Sopor gas is for sissies."

"Or for people who don't want anyone knowing they'd been there," Jack pointed out. "So you think that was Alison?"

Elkor regarded him coolly. "So what computer information were you looking for?"

Jack shrugged. "Fine. Have it your way."

He began shaking out the handkerchief he'd taken from around the colonel's mouth. "Even with the gag, I'll bet they'll be able to hear you from down there. Assuming they ever come back to this area to look, of course."

He reached the handkerchief toward Elkor. The other leaned away, then jerked as Draycos caught his head firmly between his forepaws. "Wait a second," he said hastily. "All right, all right. What do you want to know?"

"I want to know what's going on," Jack told him, lowering the handkerchief but keeping it in sight. "You can start by telling me what happened to the rest of the Edgemen at Kilo Seven."

Elkor's lips compressed into a thin line. "We pulled them out," he said grudgingly. "We knew the Shamshir would be raiding the place and didn't want them getting hurt."

"Oh, I see," Jack said. "You didn't care enough about us to even warn us, but—"

He broke off, staring at the man. Suddenly, it was all making terrible sense. "You called the Shamshir down on us, didn't you?" he said. "You let them capture us."

"One of you was a spy and a traitor," Elkor said. "In the Whinyard's Edge, we know how to deal with traitors."

He smiled unpleasantly, clearly enjoying Jack's discomfort. "Now, now, don't pout," he said, mock-soothingly. "What are you going to do, call foul and run crying home to Mommy? This is the real world, kid. Get used to it."

"What about the others?" Jack asked, ignoring the gibe. "Why didn't you just take Alison and me out and shoot us, if that was what you wanted?"

"Not very sporting to line you up against a wall," Elkor said. "Besides, we didn't just want you dead. We wanted information. We figured that if you were working for the Shamshir, one of you would get a big welcome when they snatched you."

He cocked his head. "Or else one of you would come back and claim to be an escaped hero."

"And if we weren't working for the Shamshir?"

Elkor shrugged. "You were working for someone. Might as well let the Shamshir beat it out of you than bother with it ourselves."

Jack hissed between his teeth. "And of course, you couldn't let us take working computer codes to them," he said. "So you made sure you scrambled them before we landed on Sunright."

"After we landed, actually," Elkor said offhandedly. "Not that it matters."

"No, not really," Jack said. "So who's behind all this?"

Elkor frowned. "Who's behind all what?"

"Who's pulling your strings?" Jack amplified. "Who's really after this mine? Is it Cornelius Braxton?"

Elkor snorted. "Don't be ridiculous. You think someone as big as Braxton would even notice an operation this small?"

"Arthur Neverlin, then?" Jack persisted.

"Never heard of him."

"But then—"

"No one pulls our strings, kid," Elkor cut him off coldly. "No one but us. If whoever you're working for is thinking about trying to bulldoze his way into this, you can tell him to forget it. Once we've got hold of that mine, it's going to be ours, period. No one else is going to get a piece of it. You got that?"

"Yeah, I got it," Jack said. So Lieutenant Cue Ball had been right. Neither mercenary group cared a downwind spit about the people they'd been hired to protect. They were in it for the daublite mine, and that was it. "It's so much easier to fight and kill and steal someone else's mine than go dig one yourselves."

"Mines cost money," Elkor countered. "Lives are cheap. Do the math."

"Yeah, well, some lives are apparently cheaper than others," Jack said. "That still doesn't explain why you threw Jommy and the rest of them to the wolves along with Alison and me."

Elkor sniffed. "What's this 'and me' stuff? Kayna was the chief suspect, not you. You were just one of the known contacts."

Jack blinked. "The what?"

"She talked to you, Montana," Elkor said patiently. "Grisko told us. Alone, and at length, out on the shooting range. Do I have to draw you a picture?"

Jack stared at him in disbelief. "Let me get this straight," he said slowly. "Alison has a chat with, say, Rogan Mbusu, maybe about nothing more classified than the lousy food. And suddenly you're just going to throw him away? Just on the off chance that she might have passed secret information to him?"

"You make the assumption that any of you were worth much to begin with," Elkor said. "You ever hear the term 'cannon fodder'?"

Jack swallowed hard. "Yes."

"It's rather out of date, actually," Elkor went on. "No one but a few primitives use real cannon anymore. But the term still applies."

"Kind of an expensive hobby," Jack murmured. "You still have to pay all of our indenture fees."

"You should read the contract more closely sometime," Elkor suggested blandly. "There are all sorts of neat clauses that cover death or capture in a war zone when the subject has failed to properly defend himself. Another good reason to bring you out here instead of dealing with you back on Carrion."

He lifted his eyebrows. "You did fail to defend yourselves, didn't you? I hadn't heard any reports of gunfire."

For a long moment Jack just looked at him, wondering what Draycos would say if he reached over and pushed the smug son of a snake out of the tree. Uncle Virgil would have, he suspected. Even Draycos, for all his warrior ethic, was crouched there with his eyes burning like those of an avenging angel. He probably wouldn't lift a single claw to save scum like this.

He took a deep breath. No. He'd never been a killer, or even an avenger. He'd been a thief; and even there he was supposed to be reformed.

And he was probably selling Draycos short anyway. The dragon had gotten that look in his eye before, and he hadn't murdered anyone yet.

"You are a small, petty, pathetic little man," he told Elkor quietly. "You deserve to die. With any justice, it'll be at the hands of your own people."

Elkor's mouth twitched in a lopsided smile. "So you don't even have the guts to kill me, huh? You're no soldier, Montana. You never will be."

"I can live with that," Jack told him. "Incidentally, I have lived in the real world, sometimes among people who would have pushed you out of this tree ten minutes ago if you'd done this to them."

Elkor snorted. "If you're hinting that you've got friends, save it," he said. "I don't scare that easily."

"I'm not trying to scare you," Jack said. "And none of them are my friends. I was simply pointing out that none of them ever tried to kill the casual acquaintances of people they were mad at. Even they had more class than that."

"Did I say I needed your approval?" Elkor asked. "Or even wanted it?"

"Hardly," Jack said, suddenly thoroughly weary of this man. "Fine. We're going. Where are your transports?"

A slight frown creased Elkor's forehead. "Why?"

"Why do you think?" Jack retorted. "So we can get out of here. Don't worry, I'm not going to steal it. All I want is to use the comm."

"And you think I'm going to tell you?"

With a sigh, Jack pulled out the small folding knife from his belt pack. He locked it open and waved it under Elkor's eyes. "That cable you're tied with is pretty tough," he reminded the other. "Even with this, it'll take you quite awhile to cut through it. Would you rather use your teeth?"

Elkor eyed the knife. "They're on the west side of the outpost," he muttered. "In a clearing about two hundred yards due west of the sentry cage on that side. But you'll never make it past the guards."

"We'll take our chances." Reaching up, Jack drove the tip of the knife blade into the tree trunk a couple of feet above Elkor's head. "Help yourself after we're gone," he said, pulling the colonel's hood over his eyes again.

Catching Draycos's eye, he nodded. "Come on, buddy," he said. "Let's go."

They headed down the tree, Draycos climbing down backwards as Jack dangled onto his tail beneath him. They reached the ground without incident and headed off through the woods toward the area where Elkor had said the transports were located. If they weren't there, Jack promised himself darkly, he would make sure to send Draycos back up the tree and get his knife back.

"Then the disturbance outside the training camp was a diversion for Alison's benefit?" Draycos murmured as they slipped through the trees.

Jack blinked, forcing himself back from half-hoped-for scenarios of revenge. "What? Oh. Yeah, I suppose that makes the most sense. I wonder who she's working for."

"We had already decided it was not the Shamshir," Draycos reminded him. "Could it be a different mercenary group?"

Jack frowned. With his own chances of escape weighing heavily on his mind, the last thing he was interested in right now was Alison Kayna's possible background and friends. Still, it was an intriguing question. "I don't think so," he told the dragon slowly. "With all that's happening here, it would make sense for the Shamshir to send in whoever they had handy to grab some quick information about the Edge's plans for Sun-right. But any other mere group ought to be able to take the time to find an adult to use as a spy instead of a kid."

Draycos seemed to digest that. "Then who is she working for? Were we wrong about her connection to the Shamshir?"

"I don't know," Jack said as a sudden and very unpleasant thought sent a creepy sensation tingling across the back of his neck. "You don't suppose she might be working for Neverlin, do you?"

"I thought we decided he was too busy hiding from Braxton to bother us."

"You decided that," Jack countered, "I never did."

The dragon twitched his tail. "I do not believe Neverlin could have moved this quickly," he said firmly. "And how could he have known we would be joining this particular mercenary group? Alison was clearly already signed up before we arrived."

"I suppose," Jack conceded reluctantly. "Yeah, you're probably right."

But the creepy sensation refused to fade completely away.

They were making their cautious way around the perimeter of the outpost before Draycos spoke again. "Where are we going?"

"Weren't you listening?" Jack asked. "We're going to find a transport, you're going to knock out whatever guards there are, and we're going to whistle up the Essenay."

"We are leaving, then?"

Jack grimaced. "Look, Draycos, I'm sorry," he said. "It just didn't work out. We'll back off, regroup, and try to get the Djinn-90 data some other way."

"I was not thinking about the information," Draycos said. "I was thinking about those still in Shamshir hands."

"What about them?"

"Did you intend to simply leave them there?"

Jack frowned down at the dragon padding soundlessly through the dead leaves at his side. Uh-oh. "Hey, I know how you feel about that sort of thing," he said cautiously. "K'da warrior ethic, and all that. But I think that asking Colonel Elkor for a rescue party is pretty much out of the question."

"Certainly," Draycos agreed. "That means we will have to do it alone."

Jack took a careful breath. "Look," he said, as if talking to a very small child. "I know you're upset. But you have to understand the realities of the situation. We're talking about two of us—you and me—against a whole mercenary force."

"Dahtill City is not a military base," Draycos pointed out. "There will be a limit on the number of soldiers to oppose us."

"Unless they brought in more after our escape," Jack countered. "They could have, you know."

"If more soldiers were summoned, it would be to search for you outside the city," the dragon pointed out reasonably. "Not to reinforce those inside."

Jack clenched his teeth. This was not going well at all. "We hardly even know these kids," he said. "Anyway, it's Alison's fault they're there, not mine."

"Fault is of no matter," Draycos said. "They are your comrades. Your fellow soldiers. A warrior does not simply abandon those of his own side. Not when there is a chance of saving them."

"Even if it means getting killed?" Jack shot back harshly. "We could, you know. Those guns of theirs weren't just for show. We go charging in, and they're going to start shooting. What happens to your people then? Hmm?"

For a long minute they walked in silence. "Do you remember our first meeting, Jack?" Draycos asked at last. "Despite your objections, I took the time to aid a wounded soldier of the other side."

"You kept him from burning his hands and neck in hot dirt," Jack said, grimacing at the memory. "And I still think it was a waste of time."

"The point is that a warrior does that which is right," the dragon said. "Not because he may profit from it. Because it is right."

"What if I say no?" Jack challenged. "Are you going to go in without me?"

Draycos didn't answer, and after a moment Jack sighed. "You got a plan?"

"I do not believe it will be difficult," Draycos said. "As you pointed out, neither side wishes to risk a serious battle near the daublite mine. With two armed vehicles, we may be able to persuade them to surrender the prisoners without a fight."

It could work, Jack realized grudgingly. Particularly if Lieutenant Cue Ball had already discovered that none of the squad could do anything with the stolen computers. There wouldn't be much point in hanging onto them. "You mentioned two transports. You planning on flying the second one yourself?"

"I actually referred to only one transport," Draycos said. "The other armed vehicle will be the Essenay."

"And how do you expect to call in Uncle Virge without everyone from here to Dahtill City knowing the plan?"

"You may leave that to me," Draycos said. "Will you assist me?"

Jack sniffed. "Do I have a choice?"

"Yes," Draycos said quietly. "You are my host. If you refuse to help me rescue the others, I will honor your wishes."

"That's part of the warrior ethic, too, I suppose?"

"Yes."

They walked a few more steps in silence. "You're going to make a liar of me, you know," Jack finally said in resignation. "I told Colonel Elkor we weren't going to steal his transport. Now we're going to do it anyway."

"Do not worry," Draycos assured him. "When you made that statement, it was indeed the truth. There was no intent to deceive. Hence, there was no lie."

Jack looked down at him. "That was supposed to be a joke."

The dragon turned his green eyes upward, his jaws opening slightly. "Yes, I know," he said. "Shall we go?"

Jack shook his head. "Lead the way."