Dragon And Soldier

Chapter 28

"Sorry, lad," Uncle Virge said, his voice as quiet and apologetic and sincere as a professional fundraiser. "I'm afraid the Shamshir Mercenaries keep pretty sloppy records on their competitors' aircraft. There isn't any way we're going to be able to trace those Djinn-90s from this."

"Uh-huh," Jack said, gazing across the table with a fascinated repugnance as he watched Draycos tearing into his fourth soup bowl full of hamburger, tuna fish, chocolate sauce, and motor oil.

It wasn't that he couldn't understand the dragon's hunger. After all, Draycos hadn't had much to eat for the past three weeks. But the thought of that particular food combination still sent Jack's own taste buds screaming for cover. "So that's it, huh?"

"That's it," Uncle Virge confirmed. "And if I may say so, you might recall that I thought the idea was doomed idiocy from the start. So now we can get on with a proper job of saving Draycos's people?"

"By which you mean turning him over to the Star-Force?" Jack suggested.

Draycos looked up, his long tongue nicking a bit of tuna fish off one corner of his snout. "We cannot do that, Jack," he protested. "It is too dangerous."

"Relax," Jack said, taking a sip of his fizzy-soda. Yes, Uncle Virge had sounded quiet and apologetic and sincere, all right. Unfortunately for him, Jack had heard that tone of voice before. Many times before. "You know, Draycos, for being such a clever K'da poet-warrior, you're kind of slow on the uptake sometimes."

The dragon's neck arched warningly. "What do you mean?" he asked, his voice ominous.

"Relax," Jack hastened to reassure him. Apparently, the dragon wasn't in a mood for joking. "Watch and learn."

He cleared his throat. "Okay, Uncle Virge," he said. "So we don't have anything on the Djinn-90s. What interesting tidbits did you happen to find in the Shamshir data?"

"You only asked for the Djinn-90 information," Uncle Virge reminded him.

"I know what I asked for," Jack said firmly. "Quit stalling. What did you find?"

There was a moment of sulky silence. "There's one small piece that might be considered interesting," Uncle Virge conceded at last. "But, really, it's so minuscule—"

"I said quit stalling," Jack interrupted. "Give."

"It's just an item about the Brummgas," Uncle Virge groused. "Remember how you ran into a Brummga on Iota Klestis, at the site of Draycos's crash?"

"Like I'd forget," Jack said with a grimace. If Draycos hadn't used Jack's tangler gun on the big alien, both he and the dragon would have wound up very dead. "And Lieutenant Cue Ball had a couple on his staff, too, hanging around looking ugly," he added. "So?"

"So at least from the Shamshir data," Uncle Virge said grudgingly, "it looks like all the Brummgas in the various mercenary forces come from the same place."

Jack sat up a little straighter. "What do you mean, the same place?" he asked. "The same city? Same province?"

Uncle Virge sighed audibly. "Same dealer."

Draycos's neck was still arched. "What do you mean by 'dealer'?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," Jack said grimly. "But I can guess. Are you talking about a slave dealer, Uncle Virge?"

"Well, of course, mercenaries are considered skilled labor," Uncle Virge hedged. "And Brummgan law isn't quite, shall we say, up to Internos standards—"

"They deal in slavery," Draycos cut him off.

Uncle Virge sighed again. "Yes."

Draycos hissed like he had a bad taste in his mouth, his neck crest stiffer than Jack had ever seen it. "The indenture of children was barbaric enough," he bit out, his eyes glittering like lasers filtered through a pair of emeralds. "But for intelligent beings to be owned like animals—"

"Easy, pal, easy," Jack said hastily, holding up his hands. "Don't get mad at me. Or at the Internos government, for that matter. Like I've told you before, we humans aren't in charge of everything that happens out there."

"What about the Trade Association?" Draycos demanded. "Are there not laws concerning such things?"

"There are some, sure," Jack said. "But you can only enforce what you can see. And there are only so many Judge-Paladins to go around. Come on—we're trying."

Slowly, the crest softened. "I understand," he murmured. "It is still an abomination."

"No argument there," Jack agreed, shivering. He'd seen a group of slaves on one of the worlds he and Uncle Virgil had visited once. The memory of their haunted eyes and faces had stuck with him ever since. "But in this case, it could be a useful abomination."

"What do you mean?" Draycos asked.

"Nothing good," Uncle Virge cut in. "You can wager your teeth and tail on that. Jack—look, lad—"

"We need to find those mercenaries, Uncle Virge," Jack said. "And since we aren't having any luck tracing their fighters, maybe we can trace their personnel."

"And how do you intend to do that?" Uncle Virge demanded. "How do you expect to get close enough to a Brum-mga slave lord to get a look at his records?"

"Perhaps as a soldier for hire," Draycos suggested.

"Forget it," Jack said firmly. "I'm not cut out to be a soldier."

"You did not do badly," Draycos said. "Do not forget that you were not properly trained or led. And you were certainly not among true warriors."

"I appreciate the vote of confidence," Jack said dryly. "But I think we'll find a different way in, if it's all the same to you."

"That is your option," Draycos said. "Still, whether you accept it or not, you are showing great progress in living by a warrior's ethic."

Jack snorted gently. "I don't know how you figure that one."

"You told Alison not to risk coming back for you," Draycos reminded him. "That showed your consideration of others' safety before your own."

Jack felt his lip twist. "Well... actually, no, it didn't. I just didn't want her bringing the Shamshir chase ships back my direction."

Draycos's tail arched. "Truly?"

Jack shrugged. "Sorry."

Uncle Virge laughed out loud. "That's my boy," he said smugly. "See there, Draycos, old snake? Jack's not as easily corrupted by this warrior ethic nonsense as you'd like to think."

"Perhaps," Draycos said, his eyes seeming to measure Jack. "Perhaps it is merely a path that will require many small steps. Do not forget he did return to rescue the others."

"Only because you pressured him, I'd wager," Uncle Virge said. "Like I suppose you also pressured him into wrecking that daublite mine for no good reason."

"I suggested nothing of the sort," Draycos protested. "Furthermore, there was a good reason. The Agri had become virtual prisoners of the Shamshir mercenaries they had hired. From all appearances, the Parprins were in same situation with the Whinyard's Edge."

"And whose fault was that?" Uncle Virge shot back. "Theirs, that's whose."

"Is it a fault to work to create a source of profit, only to have it stolen away?" Draycos countered.

"Of course not," Jack put in. "That's as bad as a bunch of mercenaries trying to steal someone else's property and having a kid come along and con it right out from under them."

The budding argument stopped dead on its rails. "What did you say?" Uncle Virge demanded suspiciously.

"Yes," Draycos seconded. "What did that mean?"

Jack smiled. Yes, his relationship with Draycos was going to change his relationship with Uncle Virge. Maybe it would indeed change it forever, the way he'd wondered and worried about earlier as he stood alone in the darkness of the forest.

But maybe that wasn't such a bad thing. Maybe the three of them together were going to hammer themselves into a better team than he'd ever thought they could be. Certainly a better team than he'd ever dared to hope. "Remember, Uncle Virge, when we were leaving Sunright you said that I didn't do things halfway?" he said. "Well, as a matter of fact..."

The thin young man's name was Louie, and he was red-faced and panting as he lugged the two footlockers through the door and into the middle of the run-down hotel room. "Okay," he puffed, dropping the end of the first footlocker onto the floor with a thud. "Yours."

He dropped the second footlocker with an equally loud thud. "His."

"You sure it's the right one?" Alison Kayna asked, glancing both ways down the hallway before closing the door behind him.

"The name tag says 'Jack Montana' in big letters," Louie pointed out. "I deserve a bonus for this one, kiddo."

"What for, lugging and handling charges?" Alison countered scornfully. "Come on, be real. The way I hear it, the Whinyard's Edge was pulling off Sunright so fast the whole base was running in ten directions at once. You could have loaded one of their own Lynxes with goodies and flown it out without anyone noticing."

"Busy or not, they all still had guns," Louie said pointedly.

"And you could con the bullets right out of them," Alison said. "It was a stroll to the backyard compost heap, and you know it."

Louie shook his head. "You are the cheapest kid with a nickel I've ever seen," he grumbled.

"Blame it on my upbringing," Alison said. "You'll get your usual fee, by the usual channels. A pleasure doing business with you."

"Yeah, I'm sure," Louie said, gazing her direction. "How about information? You pay anything for information?"

"What kind of information?" Alison asked.

"Oh, you know," Louie said, waving a hand vaguely around. "I hear stories. Listen to rumors. That sort of thing."

"Rumors aren't usually worth much."

"The ones I listen to are," Louie assured her. "An extra five hundred?"

"One hundred."

"Three hundred."

Alison studied his face. "All right, three hundred. Let's hear it."

Louie lowered his voice. "You know that big mine explosion? The one that got both the Shamshir and Whinyard's Edge to cancel their contracts with the locals and pull out?"

"I was there when Montana blew it," Alison said dryly. "Lit up the sky for miles. You'd better have more than just a colorful commentary on the event."

"Oh, I've got more," Louie promised with a sly smile. "Turns out our boy Montana was either very, very stupid or very, very clever. When the fires finally went out and the Agri got busy clearing away the wreckage, they found what was left of the transport sitting flat-square on top of the mine shaft."

"Okay," Alison said, frowning. "So?"

"So?" Louie echoed. "Oh, come on, girl. You just finished playing soldier. Don't you remember anything about troop transport design?"

"I'm too tired for games, Louie," Alison said patiently. "Just spill it."

"Troop transports," he said, in a tone like someone lecturing a small child. "They carry soldiers into battlefields. Where people will be shooting at you. From below."

Alison frowned. "You talking about armor plating?"

"See?" Louie said, looking pleased. "You did learn something. Yes, I'm talking about at least twenty inches of Hy-Dense cerametal on the underside of every modern troop transport. With that model of Lynx, it's closer to thirty inches."

And then, suddenly, Alison got it. "The mine shaft didn't collapse!"

"Bingo," Louie said, looking extremely pleased with himself. "And with the meres already having cancelled their contracts, there's no way for them to reverse themselves and get their hooks into the locals again. Like I said: either really stupid, or really clever."

In her mind's eye, Alison could see that last look on Jack Montana's face. The look he'd been giving the Shamshir computer as he sent her back to their transport with the pilot code. "Not stupid," she murmured. "Clever."

"Whichever," Louie said. "Worth that extra three hundred?"

"I suppose," Alison said, keeping her voice casual. "I'll send a note about it."

"Yeah," Louie said. "Well, have fun with your new stuff. And let me know whenever I can be of service. Always happy to work with you."

"As long as the money's good?" Alison suggested.

"Your money's always good," Louie said with another sly smile. "See you, kiddo." Turning, he left the room.

Alison went to the door and made sure it was locked. Then she returned to the two footlockers. Ignoring her own for the moment—she knew what was in that one, after all— she knelt down beside Jack's.

So Jack Montana had pulled a fast one there at the end. On her, and on everyone else. He'd conned both sets of mercenaries into pulling out, thinking the mine they both wanted was permanently ruined, and left matters for the Agri and Parprins to work out between themselves.

Clever, all right. And it made Jack an even more interesting puzzle than she'd thought when she'd hired Louie to sneak his footlocker out of the Edge camp.

The footlocker was, of course, locked. But that wouldn't be a problem. Squeezing on the base of her left-hand forefinger, she slid out the plastic lockpick that had been surgically implanted beneath the fingernail.

She hadn't told Jack about this little gem, naturally. He would have wanted to know how a simple indentured teenager could afford this kind of high-tech gimmick, or what she would even have wanted with it in the first place. Instead, she'd spun him that bogus story about having dug her handcuffs out from under the shelving in the Shamshir storage hut.

Now, it seemed, Jack hadn't been entirely honest with her, either.

Because Alison listened to stories, too. And one of the most interesting ones recently concerned an incident a month ago aboard a liner called the Star of Wonder. An incident centering on a high-level power struggle between Cornelius Braxton and his board director Arthur Neverlin for control of the huge megacorporation Braxton Universis.

And right in the middle of that struggle had been a boy named Jack. A boy who was reported to have an uncle named Virgil, like the Uncle Virge Jack had called to when that spaceship had shown up and shot those Shamshir fighters off her back.

Trouble was, the name of the kid on the Star of Wonder hadn't been Jack Montana. It had been Jack Morgan.

Was Jack Montana really Jack Morgan? Very possibly. Maybe there would be something in his footlocker that would confirm that. Maybe there would be other interesting items, as well.

And if so, there were people out there who would pay money for that information. A great deal of money.

Slipping the tip of her lockpick into the lock, she set to work.