by Timothy Zahn
"What do you mean?" Draycos asked. "Are you asking about their physical form?"
"No, I saw some of their bodies aboard the Havenseeker" Jack said, shivering at the memory of that trek through debris and death. "I meant what are they like as people. Their personalities, culture—that sort of thing. Are they like you, or are they more like humans?"
Draycos seemed to gather his thoughts. "I do not yet know your people very well," he said slowly. "You will therefore need to make your own comparisons. The Shontine in general are not violent or aggressive beings. Few indeed are the true warriors born to them, though those few are strongly gifted in their art. Still, even the average Shontin is capable of fighting in his own defense when it becomes necessary to do so."
"But only as a last resort?"
"Mostly," Draycos agreed. "The majority of them prefer to contemplate and appreciate the various forms of their arts, or to create beautiful and useful things with their hands, or to work the soil and bring forth food."
"Sounds like something you'd find on one of the Orion Arm's more backwater worlds," Jack commented.
"I am sure some of your people would consider them primitive and naive," Draycos said, a little stiffly. "Others would recognize their strength of character and purpose as signs of highly advanced beings. Until the Valahgua began their war against us, their greatest heroes were those who throughout history had stood for what was right amid opposition, even to the point of death."
He moved restlessly against Jack's skin. "Now, sadly, their warriors have become the most esteemed among them. I can only hope they will be able to regain the culture and dignity of their race once they are safely here."
"And I suppose when they are that you'll—?" Jack broke off, suddenly embarrassed at what he'd been about to ask.
But Draycos had caught it anyway. "Do you ask if I will be returning to one of them if we should succeed in our task?"
"Don't get me wrong," Jack said quickly. Too quickly, probably. Uncle Virgil had always said that he talked too fast when he was nervous. "I mean, this arrangement is only supposed to be until they get here. And that's fine with me."
"I will not leave until you wish for me to do so," Draycos said quietly. "I promise you that."
"Yeah," Jack said tardy, blinking back sudden moisture in his eyes. "But no one's exactly sent you an engraved invitation to the royal banquet, either. Uncle Virge and I were doing fine before you showed up, and we'll do fine after you leave."
He leaned back stiffly, wincing as his head bumped against the cold metal of the shelves behind him. "Assuming we ever get out of here," he got himself back on track, wishing he'd never brought up the subject of Draycos's future in the first place. The dragon was a temporary associate. Nothing more. "What does a good poet-warrior do in a situation like this?"
"He does his duty, of course," Draycos said. "The duty of all prisoners of war is to escape."
Jack sighed. "One small problem with that," he said. He snapped his wrist out again to rattle the handcuff chain in reminder.
Only this time the chain didn't rattle. At his first tug it clinked once—
And with a soft thud, the chain snapped off at the cuff around his wrist and dropped in a heap onto the dirt floor.
Jack jerked in surprise, grabbing reflexively at the handcuff around his wrist. Or rather, the ordinary bracelet the cuff had suddenly become. "What in—?"
He broke off, his mouth snapping firmly closed. Of course. The dragon's claws. The claws that he'd once seen scratch a K'da letter into the end of a metal cylinder.
Only this time, the dragon hadn't just scratched. This time, so quietly and stealthily that Jack hadn't even noticed, Draycos had cut his way straight through the handcuff chain.
"You were saying there was a problem?" Draycos said blandly.
Jack glared down at his chest in the darkness. It was impossible to tell, but he could swear the other was laughing at him. "Funny dragon," he growled. "Okay, you're so smart. Now what?"
"As I said, our duty is to escape," Draycos said. Sliding up along Jack's skin to his neck, he popped the control collar free. "But our duty is also to our comrades. We must assist in their release."
"Hold on a second," Jack warned, shivering with relief as he dropped the collar onto the floor and pushed it as far away from him as he could. "If you're suggesting we take on Lieutenant Cue Ball and his troops all by ourselves, you've got a serious argument coming."
"I do not suggest that at all," Draycos assured him. "Our chances for success will be much higher if we leave this place and summon help."
"Now you're talking," Jack said, pushing himself to his feet and brushing the dirt off his hands. "Any idea how we manage that without someone objecting?"
"We begin by opening the door," Draycos said. "Quietly, of course."
"Thanks," Jack said dryly, finding the door handle and easing it open a crack. When it came to sneaking, at least, the noble K'da warrior and the lowly human thief were thinking alike.
Everything seemed quiet outside. Jack stood without moving for a moment, listening to the sounds of the night and watching all the shadows he could see from his angle. Most of the faint background noise seemed to be coming from the Agrist huts in the distance behind them, with nothing closer. Nothing moved, either, at least nothing that he could see. "Looks clear," he murmured. "We going for the Flying Turtles?"
"Would you rather walk?"
Jack rolled his eyes. Draycos was in rare form tonight. Very pleased with himself over the handcuffs, no doubt. "No, let's travel in style, shall we?" he said. "You want to watch our backs?"
A weight formed on his shoulders in response, his jacket pulling tight against his throat as Draycos's head rose up from his shoulder, facing backwards. "Ready."
"Okay." Bracing himself, Jack pulled the door all the way open and stepped into the doorway. He paused there for a moment, watching and listening some more. Still nothing. Closing the door behind him, he slipped out into the night.
CHAPTER 20
He had just reached the first human building, the one where the rest of Tango Five Zulu were handcuffed to the floor, when a slab of light suddenly cut through the darkness ahead.
He dropped into a crouch at the corner, pressing himself against the building. The light, he saw, was coming from the doorway of the second human building. As he watched, two Shamshir soldiers came striding out, supporting a staggering Li between them.
Jack felt his muscles tense. If they took her to the same hut they'd just locked him into, the mustard was about to hit the wiener, big time.
But no. They turned the other direction, their backs to him, and headed toward another row of the small mud huts on the other side of the building.
There was a soft hiss in his ear. "Easy," Jack soothed. "They're not coming this way."
"She has been tortured," Draycos murmured back. There was an edge of barely controlled fury in his voice. "Can you not see that?"
Jack frowned, studying Li's back as she stumbled along. "No, I don't think so," he said. "I remember her looking like she was in shock earlier. I think she's still just not clicking on all chips."
"She does not look right," Draycos insisted. "How can you be certain?"
"Trust me," Jack assured him. "I've seen people scared out of their braincases before."
He nodded toward Li and her escorts. "Besides, look where they're taking her. They're putting her in isolation, same as they did me. That proves she wasn't tortured." "I do not understand."
Jack sighed. "They're trying to get one of us to break. Right? So they want the ones who are left to be as scared as possible. If they'd really tortured Li, they'd put her back in with the others instead of off by herself." "Why?"
"So everyone could see firsthand all the gory details," Jack said. "The more scared they are when their turns come, the more likely they'll be to give Lieutenant Cue Ball what he wants."
Draycos's tongue flicked out restlessly. "They put you by yourselves so as
to frighten the others?"
"You got it," Jack said. "See, when people keep getting taken away and no one comes back, the ones who are left start wondering what's happened to them. Sometimes that's a whole lot scarier than anything they could dream up on their own."
Draycos was silent a moment. "It is barbaric."
"I suppose," Jack admitted. "But it's better than beating the sand out of someone. Don't your people ever use psychological warfare?"
"I do not know that term," Draycos said stiffly. "But if it is like this, I am certain we do not."
"Figures," Jack murmured. Sometimes the K'da were too noble for their own good.
The two Shamshir emerged from the hut, minus Li, and turned purposefully toward the building Jack was crouched beside. Going to collect the next contestant in Lieutenant Cue Ball's little game, no doubt. "Keep quiet," he warned Draycos, easing back from the corner out of their sight. "And get ready."
The soldiers reached the door and disappeared inside.
And the second they were out of sight, Jack sprinted for the Flying Turtle they'd been brought here in.
He had estimated he would have about a minute to pop the hatchway and get inside before the soldiers reappeared. As it turned out, the hatchway wasn't locked, and he made it with a good twenty seconds to spare. He was already in the cockpit, studying the control board, when the soldiers came back outside.
With Alison Kayna striding along between them.
"They have taken Alison," Draycos murmured, his head rising from Jack's shoulder for a better look.
"Yeah, I saw," Jack grunted, still sorting out the board. This thing wasn't going to fly much like the Essenay, but the controls were similar enough. "Was there something you wanted me to do about it?"
"I was merely observing," Draycos said mildly. "She is not being treated as a fellow Shamshir soldier."
Jack looked up again. The dragon was right. As far as he could tell, she was being marched along the same way he had been earlier, like any other prisoner Lieutenant Cue Ball was hoping to squeeze for information. "Okay, so maybe it isn't the Shamshir she's working for," he conceded. "Maybe it's some other group. Maybe she scrambled the computer codes so that she could be the only one who could pull out the data for them."
"Why?"
"How should I know?" Jack growled. "Maybe she was hired to get in good with the Shamshir. Maybe she was hired to chase the Whinyard's Edge off Sunright. Maybe she just wants to make a cash deal, like I tried to."
Alison and the soldiers disappeared into the building. "And right now, I don't much care," Jack added, keying for startup. "All I want is to get out of here."
The weight on his shoulder shifted as Draycos looked around the cockpit. "Will there not be a recognition code required to start the engines?"
"Probably." Jack gestured to the board. "Conveniently for us, the pilot left this one on standby. I was hoping he had."
Draycos cocked his head. "Careless of him."
"Agreed," Jack said. "But like you said, these guys aren't really soldiers."
He eased in the lifters, and the Flying Turtle rose gently into the sky. "Keep your claws crossed," he warned. "If anyone's going to object, now's the time they're going to do it."
But no one challenged them as they headed off into the night. No one challenged, or signaled, or even seemed to notice. Jack kept the transport close to the ground, putting distance between them and Dahtill City as quickly as he dared, wondering how in the world it was they were getting away so easily.
"It would seem that proper military procedure does not exist here," Draycos commented. "Perhaps the Agri have not allowed their city to be turned into a base for the Shamshir."
"Maybe," Jack said. "Or maybe it's simpler. If this is where the mine is that everybody wants, neither side will want to have any serious fighting nearby."
"Perhaps." Draycos's head rose up higher, his snout pointing past Jack's nose to the left. "Could that be the mine?"
Jack looked that direction. A mile or so past the edge of the city were three dim structures. The center one was much taller than the others, clearly built to house the kind of crane and digging equipment necessary for a deep-ground mine shaft. The other two buildings seemed to be support structures, probably containing supplies and extra equipment. There were only a few lights in evidence, just enough to keep aircraft from running into them. Apparently, the Agri weren't working a night shift.
"Probably," he confirmed. "I seem to remember that daublite is usually deep enough that you have to sink a pretty long shaft to get anywhere near it."
"That sounds expensive."
"Expensive and time-consuming both," Jack agreed.
"The Agri have probably been at this project for years. Maybe even generations."
"Only to then have others try to steal it away from them," Draycos said, sounding disgusted. "Those structures are built over vertical shafts, then?"
"Just the one in the middle," Jack said. "It looks like the pictures I've seen of deep mines."
"A delicate operation," Draycos murmured. "Easily destroyed by accident, or by falling debris collapsing the shaft. I can understand why they do not wish battles nearby."
His head swiveled back toward the view ahead. "This is not the direction to Mer'seb," he said. "From Dahtill City we must turn southwest."
"Right," Jack agreed. "If we were heading for Mer'seb. But we're not. We're going back to Kilo Seven."
The dragon's head pulled far enough away from Jack's skin that he could peer at his face. "Is that wise?"
Jack snorted. "In my occasionally humble opinion, 'wise' hasn't been part of the equation since we started this whole job," he said. "But yes, I think it'll get us what we want."
"Explain it to me."
And convince him that Jack was acting like a properly noble K'da warrior? Probably. "First off, the only things the Shamshir took were our squad's own computers," Jack said. "That means all the rest of the Edge stuff is still there. Computers and comm equipment. Alison, or whoever, couldn't possibly have sabotaged all of it."
"Then your codes will still allow you access."
"Right," Jack nodded. "So the first thing we'll do is call Mer'seb and whistle up a rescue team. After that, we'll tap into their mainframe and try to pull up the Djinn-90 information that was the reason we came here in the first place."
"You will do that directly?" Draycos asked. "I thought your plan was to use the Essenay's equipment and thereby protect yourself from discovery."
"It was," Jack said. "Problem is, the Essenay is way to the south somewhere right now."
"Can you not summon it with your comm clip?"
Jack shook his head. "If Uncle Virge is still waiting at November Six, he's way out of comm clip range."
"What about the transmitter in this vehicle? It is more powerful than your comm clip. Could you not tune it to the correct frequency?"
"Sure, but then the conversation wouldn't be encrypted," Jack pointed out. "That means anyone and his toy poodle Mitsy would be able to listen in."
"Perhaps we can use another form of coding," Draycos suggested.
"I don't know how," Jack said. "But it doesn't really matter. I wanted to do a gentle tap into their records so that I could then do a quiet sneak away. But with the Shamshir raid, there's no chance of a quiet sneak anyway. I might as well just bulldoze my way into their mainframe, pull the records, and make a run for it."
"With the Essenay still at November Six?"
"Right, but we've got this now," Jack reminded him, tapping the edge of the control panel. "If we're quick, we should be able to get ourselves down to Uncle Virge before the balloon goes up."
Draycos digested all that. "And you believe you will be able to locate the Kilo Seven outpost?"
"Piece of Boston cream pie." Jack pointed to one of the displays on the board. "Along with not shutting down the transport, the pilot also didn't bother to erase the course memory."
"I see," Draycos murmured. "Convenie
nt."
"And sloppy," Jack said. "But then, they're not real soldiers, are they?"
It had taken Lieutenant Cue Ball fifteen minutes to get them from Kilo Seven to Dahtill City. Ten minutes into the return flight, just as Jack was thinking about cutting their altitude a little, the comm suddenly twittered. "About time," he muttered. "Draycos, how are you at imitating voices?"
"Not very good, I'm afraid," the dragon said.
"Me, neither," Jack said, reaching for the transmission switch. "But maybe I can buy us at least a little more time."
He keyed on the microphone. "Yeah, what do you want?" he demanded in the best imitation of Lieutenant Cue Ball's voice he could manage.
But it wasn't, as he'd expected, some Shamshir flunky wanting to know who had borrowed their transport. "Flying Turtle 505, identify yourself," came an all-too-familiar voice.
Draycos's ears went straight up. "It is Sergeant Grisko," he whispered in Jack's ear.
Jack nodded, feeling suddenly limp with relief. The good guys had finally arrived.
Or at least, the side that wasn't going to be shooting at him had arrived. There were no actual good guys anywhere in this game. "Sir, this is Private Montana," he said, switching back to his normal voice. "Squad Tango Five Zulu. Our group was captured by the Shamshir. I've just escaped."
"Really," Grisko said. "Congratulations."
"Thank you, sir," Jack said. "But they've still got the others. We have to get them out."
"Of course," Grisko said. "Come on in and we'll set something up. You can fly that thing all right?"
"Reasonably well, yes, sir."
"And you're all strapped in?"
"Yes, sir," Jack said, frowning at the speaker. That was a strange question. Come to think of it, Grisko's whole voice was sounding strange. "Shall I put down where our Lynx landed earlier?"
"Sounds good," Grisko said. "Keep 'er steady, and come on in."
The speaker clicked off. "Okay," Jack said, shutting off the comm at his end. "We're set."