Dragon And Soldier

Chapter 2

The planet Carrion was, in Jack's opinion, a very appropriately named world.

Or so it seemed as he paid the taxi driver and joined the stream of pedestrians hurrying along the wide sidewalks. Even just glancing around, he could spot the uniforms of a half dozen different mercenary groups among the crowds. The men and women inside the uniforms were rough-looking types, all of them with small areas of empty space around them as they strode along. Like arrogant vultures gathered to feed on their prey, he thought darkly, with the ordinary citizens trying to keep as far away from them as possible.

Or maybe he was imagining the citizens' reaction. Maybe he was just projecting his own feelings onto the people around him.

What in the world was he doing here, anyway?

"Is that it ahead?" Draycos murmured from his right shoulder.

Jack made a face as he focused on the plain white building half a block down the street ahead of them. "That's it," he confirmed. "The main Carrion recruitment office of the Whinyard's Edge."

"A whinyard was a Scottish name for a dagger or short sword," Uncle Virge put in from the comm clip fastened to Jack's left collar. "It dates back to—"

"Thank you, Professor," Jack cut him off. The last thing he was in the mood for right now was a history lesson. "Unless you've got something useful to say, everyone just shut up. Okay?"

"Have the young people from the spaceport arrived yet?" Draycos asked.

"I don't see them," Jack said, craning his neck to try to look over the crowd and slowing down a little. He didn't want to reach the recruitment office before the group he and Draycos had spotted being gathered together at the spaceport. The idea was to blend in with them when they went in to sign their enlistment papers, not to be the one leading the charge. "They were probably getting them here by bus. Busses always take longer than cabs."

"A bus also implies they're expected, Jack lad," Uncle Virge warned. "That means the Whinyard's Edge will know how many of them there are supposed to be."

"Maybe," Jack said. "I can handle that."

"It's not too late to back out," Uncle Virge went on. "We could try to put together enough money to simply buy the information we need from them."

"And if they refuse, it'll just put them on their guard," Jack pointed out. "Hang on a second."

Ahead, a sleek bus pulled to the curb in front of the white building. "Okay, they're here," Jack confirmed as a boy his age got rather hesitantly off the bus. "I'm shutting down," he added, reaching for the comm clip. "Wish me luck."

There was an electronic sigh. "Good luck," Uncle Virge said.

Jack clicked off the clip, unfastened it, and slipped it into his pocket. The first kids off the bus had gathered into a little group by the curb, hanging back instead of going directly into the building. Either they were nervous, or else they were waiting for someone who was still behind them.

"You have not yet explained this indenture process," Draycos said from his shoulder.

"It's sort of like an apprenticeship," Jack said. An adult was getting off now, a woman wearing a Whinyard's Edge uniform. Not only were they expected, but the mercenaries had even sent a babysitter to the spaceport to herd them in. "Parents hire their kids out to different mere groups, usually for two to five years."

"And what do they receive in exchange?"

"Cash," Jack told him. "Lots of it."

"It is a form of slavery," Draycos declared, his voice dark. "Your people permit this?"

"Not exactly," Jack said. The woman was striding toward the white building, the kids following like scared but obedient ducklings. This was probably the first time most of them had ever been away from home, he suspected. "The Internos government officially condemns it, but there are plenty of human worlds that sort of wink at the whole thing. Mostly the poorer ones where the people don't have any other way to make a living."

"There are always other ways," Draycos insisted. "This is not the behavior of a civilized society."

"No, of course not," Jack soothed. Uncivilized this, uncivilized that—the dragon needed to lighten up a little. Things were the way they were; and like it or not, there wasn't a thing you could do about it.

The universe was a giant mulching machine, Uncle Virgil had often said. If you were smart, you rolled with the gears. If you weren't, you got chewed up by them.

"And there are so very many of them," Draycos murmured, obviously still brooding about it.

"Which is what we want, remember?" Jack reminded him patiently. "Uncle Virge said this was one of only a couple of groups who were hiring lots of kids right now. The more they've got coming in, the easier it'll be for me to slip in and get lost in the crowd."

"I understand the reasoning," Draycos said, a bit tartly. "That does not mean I have to enjoy my part in this."

The last kid had gotten off the bus. "Okay," Jack muttered, taking a deep breath and picking up his pace. "Nice and easy. Here we go."

And as the last boy in line walked through the white building's door, Jack closed the gap and stepped in right behind him.

He found himself in a large reception room with a pair of ornate desks at the far end beneath a huge wood carving of the Whinyard's Edge insignia. The woman who had escorted the teens in from the bus was seated at one of the desks, while an older gray-haired man sat at the other.

Off to either side of the main room, near where Jack had entered, were a pair of unmarked doorways. One of the doors was slightly ajar, and through it Jack caught a glimpse of the simple desk and filing cabinets of a secretarial work station. On the far back wall, behind the fancy desks and directly beneath the wooden insignia, was a door with a picture of a dagger painted on it and what looked like a motto stenciled around its edge.

The number of teens in the reception room was a surprise. Even huddled together like sheep the way they were, they filled the room all the way to the walls. The bus Jack had seen pull up must have been only the last of a group of them, possibly bringing in new recruits from several different parts of the spaceport. Apparently, the Whinyard's Edge was holding an even bigger recruitment drive than he'd realized.

Briefly, his mind flicked back to his confident statement to Uncle Virge that there were no major wars going on anywhere. He hoped he hadn't been wrong about that.

"Over there," Draycos murmured, just loud enough for Jack to hear over the soft buzz of conversation. The dragon's snout rose slightly from Jack's upper chest beneath his shirt, pointing to the left. "That boy has papers."

"Uh-huh," Jack said. More than just papers: it was an official looking document with a blue-paper backing sheet. A document that Jack himself didn't have.

This was not good.

Carefully, casually, he eased through the crowd and came up behind the boy. "Some place, huh?" he commented.

"Terrific," the other said, his voice trembling slightly. First time away from home, all right.

"Hey, buck up," Jack said, trying for a cheerfully encouraging tone he suddenly wasn't feeling anymore. The paper the boy was holding was an official indenture agreement.

On an official Whinyard's Edge form. With an official Whinyard's Edge signature on the bottom.

And suddenly Jack's plan of simply talking his way inside as part of the group wasn't looking so hot anymore.

"Yeah, right," the boy said. "Just like summer camp. How long you in for?"

"Probably the same as you," Jack improvised, searching the form for the correct number. There was a small bit of weight at his collarbone as Draycos lifted an eye up to look over the boy's shoulder. "Two years, right?"

The boy snorted under his breath. "I guess your folks must not need the money," he said, waving the form up into Jack's face. The name at the top caught Jack's eye: Jommy Randolph. "I'm in for five. Five whole years."

"Put a quark in it," a girl at Jack's other side growled. She was maybe thirteen, with jet-black hair and eyes that were so dark they were almost black, too.

"You talking to me?" Jommy demanded, his voice threatening.

"You see anyone else in here whining about life?" she countered.

"Maybe it's just that no one else gets it," Jommy said, taking a half step toward her. Clearly, he wasn't in the mood for criticism.

The girl stood her ground. "Or maybe it's just that no one else's glue is melting," she said. "You'd think they were drop-kicking you into prison or something."

"Oh, they're drop-kicking us, all right," Jommy shot back. "I had an uncle once—-"

"Quiet back there!" a deep voice snapped from the far end of the room, the words cutting through the buzz.

The buzz instantly evaporated. Grimacing to himself, Jack backed away from Jommy and the girl and started to ease his way to the exit. Uncle Virge had been right; this had been a lousy idea. Time to wave bye-bye and head for the tall grass.

"There is a guard," Draycos whispered.

Jack looked over his shoulder. There was a guard, all right, standing at attention between him and the door. A very big guard, in full uniform, with a very big gun belted at his waist.

So much for a gracious retreat. "I'm open to suggestions," he muttered, turning away from the guard.

"To your left," Draycos said. "The room with the open door."

"Good idea," Jack said, drifting in that direction. The buzz of whispered conversation was starting to come back now, despite the order for silence. Maybe they all thought it was going to be like summer camp. "We'll try for a window."

"You will not be going into the room," Draycos said. "I will need five minutes alone. Unfasten your sleeve."

Jack frowned. But he obeyed, unsnapping the cuffs of his leather jacket as he eased toward the slightly open door. Beneath his shirt, he could feel Draycos sliding along his skin, moving as much of his two-dimensional form as he could onto Jack's left arm.

Obviously preparing to spring out the end of that sleeve. Problem was, Jack couldn't see what that would gain them.

He had reached the door now, listening as best he could over the murmurs of the crowd. He hadn't spotted anyone in the room earlier, and he couldn't hear anyone in there now. But that didn't prove anything. They would just have to gamble that the office was indeed empty. "Ready?" he whispered.

Draycos's affirmative was signaled by a light claw-tap on his arm. Jack stepped to the office door, swung his left hand smoothly into the open gap—

And with a sudden brief surge of weight, Draycos went three-dimensional as he leaped out through the end of the sleeve. Jack caught a flicker of gold scales as the dragon dodged out of sight behind the door, and then was gone.

Keeping his movements smooth, Jack dropped his arm back to his side and kept moving. No startled screams came from behind him; the office must have been empty after all.

He continued his apparently aimless wandering along the edge of the crowd, trying to figure out what Draycos had in mind. Was he planning on going out a window and jumping the door guard from behind? Jack had seen the K'da poet-warrior in action, and knew he could pull it off.

But going outside and coming in again would mean showing himself on a busy street. Surely he wouldn't do that. Not unless they were desperate. They weren't that desperate yet, were they?

The minutes ticked by. Jack stayed near the back of the crowd, occasionally wandering around some more so that it wouldn't look suspicious when he eventually returned to the office. The guard at the door stayed put, and no golden-scaled dragon suddenly appeared from the doorway behind him.

Slowly, the crowd shrank as the teens were processed and disappeared through the dagger-decorated door. Slowly; but still too fast for Jack's comfort. Already the back of the group had pulled away from the area around Draycos's office. That meant that when Jack went back to retrieve his companion, he would no longer have people standing all around to help mask his movements.

Too bad he hadn't known any of this was coming. Aboard the Essenay he had a whole collection of time-delay firecrackers designed for use as diversions. Too late now.

In the old days, Uncle Virgil would have been right there beside him, ready to jump in with an improvised change of plans. But then, in the old days he and Uncle Virgil never had any life-and-death situations hanging over them. They never had the fate of two entire species depending on whether they could pull off some scam or theft. All they'd ever had to worry about was closing a deal, or popping a safe, and then getting out before the cops arrived.

How had he gotten himself into this, anyway?

Jack looked around the room at the other kids, feeling his throat tighten. He knew the facts of how this had happened, of course. How he'd bumped into the ambushed K'da/Shontine ship and found Draycos dying amid the wreckage. How they'd escaped from the people who had attacked Draycos's people, and gone on to solve the frame-up that Jack had been hiding from in the first place.

But in the old days, that would have been the end of it. Uncle Virgil would have calmly and cheerfully gone back on his promise to help Draycos find the people who had attacked him. He would have kicked the dragon out to fend for himself, and he and Jack would have flown off to get on with their lives. Nice, neat, and very simple.

So what was Jack doing here? Draycos had already said he wouldn't force himself on a host who didn't want him. Why didn't Jack simply dump him on StarForce like Uncle Virge wanted?

Was it because he'd made Draycos a promise? Could this K'da warrior-ethic thing actually be starting to rub off on him?

He hoped not. He desperately hoped not. It was all well and good for Draycos to be strong and noble—he was an adult, and he'd been trained for that sort of thing. But Jack was only fourteen years old, and very much alone in the universe. There was no way he could deal with the complications a K'da warrior ethic demanded of a person.

More to the point, he didn't want to deal with them. Life was hard enough without making it any harder.

Draycos's five minutes were up. As casually as he could manage, Jack strolled back to the office door.

He reached it and turned to lean his back against the jamb, gazing blankly out at the crowd. As he did so, he dropped one hand to his side and scratched gently against the wood.

From inside came an answering scratch. Good; Draycos was ready. Now if only the guard over by the exit could conveniently be looking somewhere else.

He wasn't. He was staring straight at Jack, a very unpleasant look on his face.

Jack let his eyes drift away, trying hard to look as innocent as a newborn kitten. It looked like he was going to have to do this right under the guard's nose.

Okay. No problem. Bracing himself, hoping the dragon really was ready, he turned around suddenly as if startled and leaned his head slightly into the office. As he did so, his right hand dipped into the open doorway—

The sudden weight on his palm nearly toppled him over onto his nose. Fortunately, it disappeared almost immediately as Draycos flattened himself into two-dimensional form onto Jack's skin and slithered up his arm beneath his shirt. Jack regained his balance and turned back around.

And was suddenly hauled nearly off his feet by the front of his jacket.

The door guard was no longer at the door. He was standing right in front of Jack, a fistful of Jack's jacket clutched in his hand.

And the unpleasant expression had become downright ugly.