Dragonback 03 Dragon and Slave (15 page)

"Exactly," Jack said. "Once everyone goes to bed, we'll have as
much freedom of movement as we're ever likely to get."

He eased himself up and looked carefully across the bed. Her
Thumbleness was lying half under the blankets like a dropped rag doll,
her flat nose waggling in rhythm with her snores. "Which means
tonight's the night," he added as he lay back down on the floor. His
pulse was pounding in his ears, his whole body tingling with
excitement. For the first time in a long time, he felt really psyched
up for a job. "Tonight we hit Gazen's computers."

But it was one thing for Jack to be ready for a job. It was
something else for the job to be ready for him.

For starters, Her Thumbleness was a kid. That meant that her
normal, non-High Day bedtime was earlier than that of the adult
Brummgas. And on this particular night, of course, she'd been kicked
upstairs early, which gave Jack that much more time to lie around
staring at the ceiling.

And then came a twist he hadn't expected. The noise of clumping
Brummgas had faded down the hallway; and he was just starting the
one-hour countdown he would give them to fall asleep, when he began to
hear the soft humming of cleaning machines and the stuttering footsteps
of Wistawki feet. Apparently, only now were the house slaves fanning
out through the Brummgan residential areas to do their house-cleaning
duties.

It was about as bizarre a setup as Jack had ever heard of. In
every other place he'd visited over his lifetime, that kind of cleaning
always took place during the day, while the occupants were out working
or busy with other activities. Here, it seemed, the Brummgas preferred
to have it done practically under their feet as they prepared for bed.
Apparently, the Chookoock family didn't want
anyone
, not even
their own slaves, poking around when they weren't there.

"Jack?" Draycos's voice said softly in his ear.

Jack jerked silently awake, realizing only then that he'd fallen
asleep. The dragon was crouched over him, his green eyes glowing
faintly, his red-edged golden scales glittering in the pale light from
the ceiling starscape. "What is it?" he whispered back.

"I believe it is clear now," Draycos said. "It is also getting
late."

"I'll bet," Jack said, rubbing his knuckles into his eyes. "Any
idea what time it is?"

"According to Her Thumbleness's clock, it is just before four in
the morning."

Jack winced. By six o'clock, he knew from the previous morning,
the breakfast staff would be moving around downstairs. That gave him
less than two hours to wring that mercenary data out of Gazen's
computers. "Then we'd better get cracking," he said.

The corridor outside Her Thumbleness's room was dark and deserted.
Jack eased toward the stairway, keeping near the wall and watching for
tripwires or other intruder snares. Given the late-night cleaning
activity, he had already decided there probably wouldn't be any. But in
this line of work, it didn't pay to take anything for granted.

It was just as well he hadn't. The same person who had wired up
the gatekeeper's house had apparently had a few gadgets left over after
finishing that job. Jack found a tripwire at the top of the stairway,
and a pressure plate four steps down.

Clearly, the Chookoock family was serious about their privacy. Or
maybe they just didn't want Her Thumbleness making midnight raids on
the kitchen.

But that was all there was, and a few minutes later he was
crouched beside Gazen's office door. "There will most likely be
security inside," Draycos warned in his ear.

"I know," Jack said, studying the lock carefully. Sturdy enough,
but nothing he couldn't handle.

Unless, of course, it held a surprise or two. "How about we take a
look?" he suggested, shifting around and pressing his back against the
door.

"Certainly." The dragon moved along his skin, and Jack felt him
extend his two-dimensional form outward, arching himself "over" the
door.

For a minute nothing happened. Jack held position, feeling tiny
movements against his skin as Draycos shifted around, studying the door
and the office itself. Back when he and Draycos had first met, this
little K'da talent hadn't been much more than a curiosity. Draycos had
been barely able to speak the language, couldn't read a word of it, and
knew absolutely nothing about Orion Arm technology. Sending him to look
through locked doors hadn't been much better than giving the job to a
trained monkey.

But now, things were different. Draycos was a quick study, and had
been eager to learn everything he could about humans and the Orion Arm—

Jack's breath caught suddenly in his throat. For a second there,
something about the way Draycos was hanging onto his back had felt
different. As if the dragon had somehow been . . .

He frowned.
Slipping
was the word that had come to mind.

But Draycos couldn't slip. Could he? In fact, wouldn't sliding off
Jack's skin in his two-dimensional form be fatal?

His mind flashed back to their first meeting, when Draycos had
been about to die from being too long without a host. If he'd been
alone much longer, he would have gone two-dimensional anyway and
drifted off into nothingness.

Could something like that be happening now?

He took a deep breath, careful to keep his back pressed firmly
against the door.
Steady
, he ordered himself. After all,
Draycos slipped off Jack's body all the time, every time he popped back
into his three-dimensional form. It was just a matter of timing, that
was all. A matter of the dragon doing the transition right as he came
off Jack's skin. No problem.

So why was it suddenly feeling so strange?

"Draycos?" he whispered. "You all right?"

There was no answer. He was opening his mouth to try again when
there was a stirring, and the dragon came fully and solidly back onto
his skin. "There are no alarms in the door mechanism that I can see,"
he reported from Jack's right shoulder.

"What about the rest of the room?" Jack asked. "Cameras or motion
detectors?"

"There appears to be a single camera in the upper left corner of
the room," the dragon said. "It is pointed at the door, but covers most
of the office."

"That's it?"

"That was all I could see," Draycos replied. "But I do not claim
to be an expert yet at these matters."

"No, but you're probably right," Jack assured him. "Gazen's got
that overconfident attitude we professional thieves love to see.
Besides, here in the middle of the mansion, what does he need security
for?"

"We will hope you are correct," Draycos said. "What about the
camera?"

"Were there wires attached?" Jack asked. "Or did it seem to be
wireless?"

"There were definitely wires," the dragon said. "I could see them
going into the wall."

Jack nodded. Again, as he would have expected. The signal from
wireless systems could be tapped into by someone who knew what he was
doing, possibly even from outside the house. And if there was one thing
Gazen wouldn't want, it would be strangers looking over his shoulder.
"We should be able to get to them though the wall," he concluded.
"Anything else?"

"Only a device labeled 'Dropskip Sequencer' built into the lock,"
Draycos said. "It does not appear to be an alarm, but I am certain it
has some special purpose."

Jack's brief surge of overconfidence vanished. "Oh, it has a
purpose, all right," he said with a sigh. "A sequencer keeps track of
how many times the door has been opened. Practically foolproof, and
practically undetectable. Except by K'da poet-warriors."

"Can it be disconnected?"

Jack shook his head. "Like I said, foolproof. Even if we were able
to take it off, Gazen would know it had been tampered with and figure
out someone had been inside. Might as well save ourselves the trouble."

"What is our plan, then?"

Jack chewed at his lip. His time was sliding away, he knew, the
seconds vanishing like peanuts at an elephant convention. He had to get
in, get the data, and get out.
And
he had to do it without
Gazen knowing he'd been there.

Or did he?

He scratched his cheek as a new thought suddenly struck him. Did
he really care whether Gazen knew he'd been in here? After all, the
minute he got the mercenary data they needed, he and Draycos were going
to be out of here. Through the front gate, over or around whatever
security the Brummgas had hanging around, back to the
Essenay
,
and off this rock.

But to knowingly reveal himself in the middle of a job went
against every cubic inch of training Uncle Virgil had hammered into
him. Very unprofessional. Also very stupid.

Draycos was still waiting. "All right," Jack said slowly.
"Compromise. We'll take out the camera, but we won't worry about the
sequencer."

"We do not care if Gazen knows someone has been inside?"

"With luck, we'll be long gone before he finds out," Jack assured
him, straightening up.

"Perhaps," Draycos said doubtfully. "It does not seem, though,
that this thing you call luck has been with us in any great quantity so
far."

"Tell me about it," Jack said dryly, straightening up from his
crouch. "But it's got to change sometime. Let's get around the other
side of that wall and find those camera wires."

Back aboard the
Star of Wonder
, the wiring for the
purser's office security cameras had been hidden inside the walls.
Here, in the middle of the Chookoock family stronghold, the designers
had apparently decided not to be so fancy. The wires from Gazen's
camera ran along the outside of the office wall, snugged up close
against the ceiling.

It was a place most intruders wouldn't have a hope of reaching
without a ladder, Jack included. Fortunately, he had Draycos instead.
By standing on Jack's shoulders, the dragon was just able to reach up
to the wires. A delicate puncture with one of his claws, and the camera
was out of the game.

The lock on the door itself was only a little trickier. With the
help of a flat lockpick Jack had hidden in his other shoe, he had it
open in under two minutes.

And with less than fifteen minutes gone since they'd sneaked out
of Her Thumbleness's room, they were inside Gazen's office.

"Okay," Jack breathed, standing with his back to the door and
giving the room a quick once-over of his own. It looked clean, all
right. Gazen definitely liked his privacy. "It should be downhill from
here."

"Pardon?"

"It should be easy," Jack translated, crossing the room and
sitting down in Gazen's chair. It was a very comfortable chair, soft
and smooth and luxurious, and he found himself feeling a twinge of
discomfort as he settled against the smooth material. He shouldn't be
even touching something this nice, let alone be sitting in it.

He blinked, an ugly shock running through him.
I shouldn't
even be touching something this nice
? What in space was
that
supposed to mean?

Because he'd certainly touched fancier stuff than this. Way
fancier. He could remember standing on a carpet once that would have
cost Gazen's entire year's salary, in the middle of a room decorated
with original da Vincis and Michelangelos and ancient Chinese urns.
What was this nonsense about not being good enough to sit in Gazen's
lousy chair?

Because he was a slave, that was why. And even in the short time
he'd been playing that role, the whole slave mindset had wiggled its
way into him. Quietly, subtly, and a lot deeper than he'd realized.

Until now.

Back in the slave compound, he'd often wondered why none of the
others seemed interested in escaping from such a horrible place. Greb
and Grib he could understand—they'd grown up there. But that didn't
explain the others.

Now, he was finally beginning to understand. Once a person got
used to something, it became normal. Normal, and familiar, and in a
weird way even sort of comforting.

You knew what the boundaries were. You knew what you could do, and
you knew what everyone else could do. You didn't have to think, or
plan, or take any real responsibility for your life. In spite of all
the work, and all the drabness, in some ways being a slave was easy.

And apparently for most of those back in the compound, that was
what mattered.

Deliberately, defiantly, he ran his hands along the arm of the
chair, pressing his fingers hard into the material. He was not a slave,
and he would
not
think like one.

"Your language seems overfilled with these odd figures of speech,"
Draycos murmured. "I sometimes wonder that you can find any rules in it
at all."

"We didn't exactly sit down and map the thing out ahead of time,"
Jack reminded him, forcing his mind back on track. Giving the arm of
the chair one last squeeze, he leaned forward and switched on Gazen's
computer. "The next time we invent a language, we'll take better notes."

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it," Jack said, watching as the computer ran
through its startup procedure. Still, to be honest, were the slaves
back there doing anything worse than what he himself had done?

Because he'd stolen and conned and cheated people knowing full
well that it was wrong. He'd taken the easy route himself, sitting back
and letting Uncle Virgil tell him what to do.

So he had no business feeling superior to Lisssa and Maerlynn and
the others. In a lot of ways, he'd been a slave, too.

And
he'd
only had Uncle Virgil to keep him there. Not a
laser-equipped wall and a few acres of armed Brummgas.

"You will be using your sewer-rat program, I presume," Draycos
commented. "Someday I must meet the creature it is named after."

Jack frowned down at what he could see of the dragon's head
beneath his shirt. That was the second time in as many minutes that
Draycos had cut through some unpleasant thoughts with an odd and
vaguely humorous comment. Was he getting nervous?