Dragon And Soldier

Chapter 3

"What do you think you're doing?" the guard demanded. His voice was surprisingly quiet, almost civilized. It made the glare on his face even scarier by contrast.

"I thought I heard something," Jack said, trying to sound nervous and flustered. It didn't take much acting. "Like there was someone in there."

"So?" the guard demanded. He turned his hand a little, twisting the wad of jacket in his grip. "What's it to you?"

Jack would have thought the conversation was quiet enough to have escaped notice. He was wrong. "Sergeant?" the deep voice called from the other end of the room.

"Got a candidate here for an Intelligence assignment, sir," the guard called back. "Caught his nose where it wasn't supposed to be."

"Bring him," the voice ordered.

The guard let go of the front of Jack's coat, shifting his grip to the back collar, and quick-marched him across the room. The crowd of teens magically parted in front of them, leaving a clear path to the two desks.

Jack hadn't yet had a good look at the man at the second desk. Now, as the guard shoved him forward, he saw that the other was younger than he'd first thought. He was probably no older than his late twenties, though the gray hair made him seem twice that age. His expression was cool and thoughtful as he watched Jack approach. His collar insignia was that of a lieutenant; the small nameplate over his right shirt pocket read BASHT.

He waited until Jack had been deposited directly in front of him before speaking again. "Name?" he asked.

"Jack Montana," Jack said, pulling out the fake ID he'd put together aboard the Essenay. "From Carrier," he added, holding it out.

Lieutenant Basht made no move to take the card. "What was the commotion about?"

Jack swallowed. "I thought I heard a noise in there," he said. "I just looked in, just for a second."

"He didn't just look in," the guard insisted. "He had his hand inside the door—"

Basht silenced him with a glance. "You always investigate noises in places you have no business being?" he asked.

"It's my uncle," Jack explained hesitantly. "He told me once about a mere group that liked to hide soldiers in their recruitment centers. They'd pop out suddenly and start shooting."

A murmur of reaction went through the teens behind him. Basht's face didn't even twitch. "No reputable mercenary organization would ever do a thing like that," he said in a precise voice. "We don't waste people for no good reason."

"They figured anyone who was fast enough to duck had what they were looking for," Jack said, making his voice tremble a little. "The rest weren't worth the effort to train."

For a long moment Basht stared up at him in silence. Jack dropped into what Uncle Virgil used to call "little-boy mode": making eye contact with the man, cringing and letting his gaze drop away, then forcing himself to look at him again. It was supposed to make Jack look all innocent and scared, and to hopefully squeeze a little pity out of the opposition.

Problem was, he wasn't sure that was the effect he wanted here. It might get him off this particular hook, but it might also get him booted straight out the door behind him. That wasn't exactly what he and Draycos had had in mind.

"So," Basht said at last. "You looked in."

Jack nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Just looked in?"

"Yes, sir."

"Really," Basht said, his voice suddenly the temperature of a walk-in freezer. "Then how do you explain that your papers are halfway into the office?"

Jack blinked. "Excuse me?"

Basht pointed past Jack's side. "Those are your papers, aren't they?"

Jack turned around. Lying on the floor partway into the office, half visible from where he stood, was a neatly folded set of papers with a blue backing. The same blue backing, he realized, that had been on Jommy Randolph's indenture agreement.

Only then did he finally catch on. An office, a secretary's work station, neat stacks of blank Whinyard's Edge forms conveniently lying around ...

And a clever and resourceful K'da poet-warrior.

Score one for the dragon.

"I don't know," he said, fumbling at his inside jacket pockets as if looking for something that should have been there. "I guess ... I guess so."

Basht's eyes flicked to the side. "You," he said to one of the teens. "Go get it."

The teen hurried to the office and returned with the blue-backed paper. "Jack Montana," Basht read aloud. He frowned as he looked down the sheet. "Who filled this out, your baby sister?"

"My parents didn't have much school-learning," Jack improvised. Draycos's reading skills were improving rapidly, but his penmanship still needed a lot of work.

"Let's hope yours was better," Basht said. "Are you satisfied yet that we aren't going to shoot you in the back?"

Jack swallowed again. "Yes, sir. I'm ... I guess I was just..."

"Don't make excuses, Montana," Basht said coldly. "Edgemen do their jobs right and take the credit, or they do them wrong and take the consequences. There's no middle ground. Is that clear?"

Jack straightened up. "Yes, sir."

Basht watched him a few seconds longer, as if determined to make him wiggle as much as possible. Then he jerked his head fractionally toward the door behind him. "Go get your gear," he ordered.

For the first time in several minutes, Jack took a clear breath. "Yes, sir."

Behind the door a short corridor branched off in two directions, the doors marked by the interstellar symbols for male and female. Jack took the door to the right, and found himself in a large chamber filled with locker-room—style changing benches. Along one wall was a long supply counter with a dozen men working behind it. At the far end was a stack of footlockers. Fifty or so of Jack's fellow recruits were already gathered around the changing benches, in various stages of changing from their street clothes into light gray Whinyard's Edge uniforms.

"Welcome to paradise," Jack murmured to himself, and joined the line at the counter.

The supply men were very efficient. In a few dizzying minutes Jack had had a quick blood sample drawn and a full-body scan taken, been issued a dress uniform, boots, and four sets of fatigues, collected a field kit and operations manual, and had been pointed toward the stack of footlockers. Finding an open space at a bench along the back wall, he started to change.

He had stripped to his underwear, and was shaking out the uniform shirt, when he suddenly realized all conversation in the room had stopped.

He turned around. The whole room was standing frozen in place, from the new teenage recruits to the supply men behind their counter. All of them staring at him.

No. Not at him. At the K'da warrior wrapped around his body.

Jack felt suddenly sick. He'd gotten so used to having Draycos riding his skin that he'd completely forgotten about him. With his mind still focused on his near-miss out in the reception room, he hadn't even stopped to think about what he was doing.

Now, with a single act of unthinking carelessness, he'd ruined everything. Draycos's secret was gone, announced to the whole Orion Arm from a grubby mercenary changing room.

And as Draycos's secret crumbled, so did any hope for his people. Their enemies would silence him with ease now; and in five months the K'da and Shontine refugee fleet would arrive at their new home only to find a deadly ambush waiting.

They were dead. They were all dead. And Jack was the one who had killed them.

"Wow!" the kid beside Jack said, his eyes wide.

Jack focused on him. "You like my dragon?" he asked. The words came out with difficulty, his voice sounding in his ears like it was coming from deep inside a well.

"It's cool," the kid said. "I've never seen a tattoo that big before."

For a long heartbeat Jack just stared at him. And then, as abruptly as it had crumbled to dust, the whole thing uncrum-bled itself back together again.

He'd gotten used to Draycos riding his skin, all right. So used to it that he'd also forgotten what the K'da looked like stretched out back there. "Biggest one in the Orion Arm," he bragged. His voice sounded just fine now. "At least, that's what the guy said."

The kid shook his head in wonder, leaning forward for a better look. "How long did it take him to do it?" he asked.

"Couple of months," Jack improvised, hoping that wasn't a ridiculous number. He didn't have the faintest idea how long it took to put on a tattoo. "He did part of it every day until it was done."

The kid shook his head again. "Cool."

Jack frowned at him. The kid was a good head shorter than he was, with a wide, round face and ears that stuck out to the sides. Like a hot-air balloon with twin air scoops attached, he decided. "I'm Jack Montana," he introduced himself.

"Rogan Mbusu," the other said.

"Uh-huh," Jack said. "How old are you, Rogan?"

The kid drew back a little. "I'm fourteen," he said, a little defiantly. "I'll be fifteen on my next birthday."

"Yeah, that's the way birthdays usually work," Jack said, frowning. No way the kid was fourteen. Even twelve would be pushing it. "Fourteen, huh?"

Rogan's eyes drifted away. "Sure," he said. Turning back to his own section of the bench, he resumed changing into his new uniform.

Jack looked back around the room. A few of the boys were still staring at him, but most had had their fill of the show and were going about their business again. Turning his back to them, Jack did likewise.

A few minutes later he was finished. Folding his civilian clothing into the footlocker, he pulled the "dog-collar" wristband from its pouch inside the lid and closed it, making sure all the locks were fastened. He slid the wristband around his right wrist and headed toward the line of uniformed kids at the wide exit door. The footlocker, following the signal from his wristband, rolled along at his side like an obedient puppy.

On the far side of the exit door was another supply counter. There Jack picked up a combat vest with a dozen pockets, a condensation canteen, a shirt nameplate, and the results of the medical scan they'd done on him at the other end of the line.

Last of all, he was issued his weapons.

"Moray pistol and Gompers flash rifle," the supply man identified the handgun and snub-nosed rifle as he slid them across the counter. His voice had the bored tone of someone who's been saying the same thing once a minute since breakfast. "Holster's in the side trouser pocket—pick either left- or right-handed. Rifle goes over the shoulder, barrel down, grip back."

"Uh—" Jack frowned at the guns as he picked them up. They were a lot heavier than he'd expected. "Grip how?"

"Come on, come on, move along," the man snapped, already pushing the next recruit's weapons across the counter.

Fumbling the guns into an awkward grip, Jack moved away. At the end of the room ahead was one final door, with glimpses of daylight shining through each time one of the new recruits went out. He looped the rifle sling over one shoulder, just to get it out of the way, and slid his hand into his right-hand pocket. The man had said there was a holster somewhere in there?

"It goes like this," a girl's voice said from behind him. Jack turned, to see the dark-eyed girl who'd had the brief run-in earlier with Jommy Randolph. "What?" he asked.

"I said it goes like this," she repeated. She patted her right hip, where her Moray was already nestled in its holster. "You pull the tab and it folds out into shape."

"Oh." Jack located the tab and pulled. Sure enough, the holster folded out. "Right. Thanks."

"The rifle goes like this," she added, looping the sling over her right shoulder with the gun pointed down and the top of the barrel facing forward. "This way you can just grab the grip and swing it up on its strap into firing position." She demonstrated. "See?"

"Yeah," Jack said, tucking his Moray away and redoing the rifle. Gingerly, he swung it up. "Yeah, I see."

"Don't worry, it won't bite," she assured him, her face somewhere between contempt and amusement. "See the red spirals along the barrels? These are candy canes."

"They're what?"

"Candy canes. Non-functional guns."

Jack frowned down at his rifle. "What are they giving us non-functional guns for?"

She shrugged. "Get us used to carrying the weight, I suppose."

"But why not use real ones?" Jack persisted. "They're going to give us those before we go into the field anyway, aren't they?"

She snorted. "If you want to get on a crowded transport with a hundred farm boys like you who've never seen a gun before and who have live ammo, go ahead. Me, I'll stick with Santa's elves and their candy canes."

"I have too seen guns before," Jack insisted irritably. This girl had a genuine knack for rubbing people the wrong way. "Just not this particular type."

"Sure," she said. "Just keep 'em pointed at the ground, okay?" She nodded toward his left hand. "You need help with that, too?"

Jack looked down at the nameplate still in his hand. "I think I can figure that one out for myself, thanks," he growled.

"I'm sure," she said. Her own name plate, he saw, was already neatly pinned over her right shirt pocket. KAYNA, it said. "The name's Montana, right?"

"Yes," Jack said. "Call me Jack."

"Call me Kayna," she said pointedly. She took another look at his face, and her lip twitched. "Or Alison," she added, almost grudgingly.

"Nice to meet you, Alison," Jack said.

"Yeah. Right." She tapped her own name plate. "And remember: If you can read it, it's upside down."

She smiled sweetly and moved off, her footlocker rolling along beside her. Muttering under his breath, Jack pinned his nameplate into place and followed.

Maybe Jommy had been right. Maybe this was going to be like prison.