Dragonback 02 Dragon and Soldier (3 page)

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.

"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 merc 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 uncrumbled 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.