Dragonback 03 Dragon and Slave (32 page)

The weapon wasn't necessary. Not only was the door not locked, but
it even opened as Jack ran up the steps. "Yes?" asked the thin woman
standing in the doorway, goggling at the crumpled shuttle behind him.

"My name's Jack McCoy," Jack panted, braking to a halt. "I have
some escaped slaves with me. We claim sanctuary with the Daughters of
Harriet Tubman and the Internes government."

The woman lifted her eyebrows, her gaze flicking along the line of
ragged slaves coming uncertainly up her walkway. "Well," she said
calmly. "You'd all better come inside."

"Thanks." Brushing past her, Jack headed down a darkened hallway.

He was halfway along it when someone caught his arm. "Hold on,"
Fleck's voice murmured in his ear.

"Fleck, I have to go," Jack protested, tugging uselessly against
the big man's grip. "Right away, before the cops and Gazen's people get
here."

"Yeah, I know," Fleck said. "I just wanted to say thanks to you
and your friend. For all of us."

Jack looked down the hallway, a sudden lump in his throat. "You're
welcome," he managed. "Take care of them, will you?"

"Absolutely," Fleck promised, letting go of Jack's arm. "Get
going. I'll say good-bye to the others for you."

Jack nodded, not trusting himself to say anything else.

His vision seemed a little blurry as he made his way down the
hallway.

The
Essenay
was waiting at their prearranged Station C
rendezvous when he and Draycos arrived. Not on some distant world, as
the Brummgas monitoring their transmissions would hopefully assume, but
in the last spot anyone would ever think to look: nestled snugly
beneath the overhang of the Chookoock family wall, barely half a mile
from the gate.

How
Uncle Virge had managed to sneak the ship in Jack
couldn't guess. All he knew was that that it was lying quietly now, its
power output near zero, its chameleon hull-wrap blending perfectly with
its surroundings.

"Welcome aboard, Jack lad," Uncle Virge greeted him cheerily as he
slipped in through the hatchway. "Good to have you back."

"It's good to be back," Jack said, feeling suddenly tired all over
as he sealed the hatch. Tired, but immensely satisfied. "How badly were
we hit?"

"Oh, they never laid a finger on me," Uncle Virge scoffed, his
voice following Jack's progress from the various ship's speakers as the
boy headed to the galley. "One or two very tiny things we can fix once
we're out of here. I imagine you're hungry."

"Starving," Jack said, going straight to the food synthesizer.
"And Draycos is even worse."

"I am all right," the dragon said, leaping out from Jack's collar.
He landed on the deck and stretched in all directions. "You did well,
Uncle Virge."

"Thank you kindly," the computerized voice said with only a hint
of sarcasm. "The compliments of a lunatic K'da are so very gratifying."

"That's not fair," Jack objected, keying the food synthesizer.

"I'm merely quoting the comments and opinions of the Chookoock
family," Uncle Virge soothed. "You should have heard the radio traffic
as you charged the wall that last time."

"Oh?" Jack said as the synthesizer popped out two servings of
Draycos's hamburger/tuna fish/chocolate/motor oil specials. "A bit
perturbed, were they?"

"It was more like group heart failure," Uncle Virge said dryly.
"They'd already seen my little
kom treeta
maneuver—"

"
My
little
kom treeta
maneuver," Draycos murmured
as Jack set his meal down on one end of the galley table.

"Whatever," Uncle Virge said. "That was bad enough; but when you
then pinned that Djinn-90 like a wrestler with a leg-lock, they about
fell apart."

"I'm sorry we missed it," Jack said, returning to the synthesizer
and punching up a double cheeseburger for himself.

"Don't worry, I made a recording," Uncle Virge said. "First they
were screaming at the pilot to get himself loose, then screaming at him
not
to get himself loose because you were too close to the
wall and Gazen and Neverlin would get fried. Then they were screaming
at the other Djinn-90 to get there
now
even if he had to fry
his engines to do it—"

"You
did
say we had an actual recording, right?" Jack
interrupted him.

"The joy is in the telling," Uncle Virge said. "But that was
nothing compared to the mass conniption fit they threw when you dropped
the shuttle right on the Tubman Group's doorstep and led the slaves
inside. Like Moses heading toward the Promised Land. How did you get
out through all the local police, anyway?"

"Nothing to it," Jack shrugged, collecting his cheeseburger and
carrying it to the table. "Like you said, all the attention was on the
slaves filing in the front. I just went straight through the house, out
the back door, and disappeared into the night before they got
themselves organized."

Uncle Virge make a clucking noise. "Simple, but elegant. And a
nice stick in the nose for the Chookoock family, too."

"That wasn't why I did it," Jack reminded him, taking a big bite
of his sandwich.

"No, of course not," Uncle Virge said. "So are we finally ready to
go to StarForce with this?"

"Not quite," Jack told him around his mouthful. "We now know it's
the Malison Ring mercenaries that Neverlin is using."

"Excellent," Uncle Virge said. "Fine work."

"But we still don't know where the rendezvous with the incoming
refugee fleet is going to be," Jack continued. "If we can get into the
Malison Ring records and dig that out—"

"Wait a minute, Jack lad," Uncle Virge cut him off. "Just wait one
minute."

"I am afraid I have to agree," Draycos put in, licking a bit of
tuna from the end of his snout. "Infiltrating yet another mercenary
group would be highly dangerous, especially now that Neverlin knows you
were the one on Iota Klestis."

"Not really," Jack said, smiling tightly. "You see, Neverlin
doesn't know we know about the Malison Ring. He'll never think of
looking for us there."

"Unless he remembers our previous run-in with Dumbarton," Draycos
warned.

"He'll never put it together," Jack insisted. "Look, we know there
are three groups involved in this. That means only three places we can
get the rendezvous location from. The Chookoock family is out. Neverlin
is
definitely
out. That leaves the Malison Ring."

"So let StarForce go in and get it," Uncle Virge urged.

"You put StarForce on this and Neverlin will fold the game so fast
it'll make your feet dizzy," Jack told him. "They'll fade into the
woodwork and come up someplace where no one will look for them. And
then the refugee fleet will die. No, Draycos and I are the only ones
who can do it."

Uncle Virge sighed. "Draycos, you talk to him. I don't seem to be
able to get through anymore."

"We will speak about this later, Jack," Draycos said. "Perhaps
there is another way."

"You find it and I'll do it," Jack promised.

"I shall work on it," the dragon assured him, tonguing the last
bite of food into his mouth "In the meantime, do you suppose I could
have another one of these?"

Cornelius Braxton looked up from his breakfast cakes and coffee
and the usual stack of morning reports as his wife walked into the room
with a sheaf of papers of her own. "Good morning, Cynthia," he greeted
her. "You're up early."

"I wanted to check the mail," she said, sitting down at the table
across from him. "We got a note from Kelly. Daryl's got a quick job on
Happenstance in two weeks, and he'll be dropping her and the family off
for a visit on the way."

"Wonderful," Braxton said approvingly as he poured her a cup of
coffee. "A man can go only so long without seeing his grandchildren.
How long will they be here?"

"She says the job should only take him a month or so," Cynthia
said. "He'll pick up Kelly and the children on his way back."

"That means another trip to Great Galaxy Romp, you know," Braxton
warned. "Maybe even two or three. Those kids are impossible to wear
out."

"As long as I don't have to ride the roller coasters," Cynthia
said. "Now for the darker side of the news. Harper got a ping on Arthur
Neverlin."

Braxton set down his fork. "Where?"

"Brum-a-dum, of all places," she said. "A long-range shuttle from
the
Advocatus Diaboli
was apparently involved in a slave escape
from one of the big families."

Braxton blinked. "
Arthur
was helping slaves escape?"

"I don't think the break was his idea," Cynthia said dryly. "He
was found unconscious in the shuttle afterward. Or rather, what was
left of the shuttle—it was pretty badly banged up."

"But the police
did
detain him?"

"Briefly." Cynthia made a face. "Unfortunately, the slave
family—the Chookoocks—pulled some weight and got him out before any
serious police could get there."

"Sounds like Brum-a-dum," Braxton said sourly, picking up his fork
again. "So Arthur's been playing with the Chookoock family. That must
be where he got the Brummgas Jack Morgan told us about."

"Very likely." Cynthia lifted her eyebrows. "But here's the
really
interesting part. The escape was apparently engineered by a young boy
named Jack McCoy."

"Doesn't ring any bells," Braxton said. "Do we have a photo?"

"No, he managed to disappear even before Neverlin did," Cynthia
said, selecting one of the papers on the stack and handing it across
the table. "But take a look at the description."

Braxton ran his eye over the paper. He paused, read it again more
closely. "Are you suggesting Jack McCoy is actually Jack
Morgan
?"
he asked, looking up at his wife.

"The description certainly fits," she pointed out, handing over
another handful of sheets. "Especially when you read some of the
slaves' statements."

Braxton's coffee reheated itself twice before he finished reading
through the pages. "Well, well," he said at last, laying them aside.
"Sounds like our young friend's had a very busy month. And involved
with Arthur, too."

"I'm not sure
involved
is exactly the word," Cynthia
warned. "After all, he
did
wreck Neverlin's shuttle on his way
out of the Chookoock compound."

"Yes," Braxton mused. "That's at least twice now the two of them
have bumped into each other. Arthur must be getting very annoyed. Did
anyone track Jack off Brum-a-dum?"

"Not as far as I know," Cynthia said. "But he has to surface
sometime. And we
do
have the description and parameters of his
ship, you know, from when he used our fuel credits at Shotti Station.
We could have Harper put out the word for our people to watch for him."

"That might not be a bad idea," Braxton murmured, selecting a
sheet from his own stack of papers and handing it to his wife. "Because
I've just been looking over Chu's report on the mark Jack scratched
into my cylinder back on the
Star of Wonder
."

Cynthia frowned as her eyes flicked down the paper. "He must be
joking," she said, looking up at her husband again.

"Chu doesn't have that kind of sense of humor," Braxton said. "At
least, not in writing."

"But an
animal
claw?" she protested. "What would Jack have
been doing with an animal claw?"

"I don't know," Braxton conceded, picking up the report on the
Brum-a-dum slave escape. "But I think it's about time we found out."

He looked across the table at his wife. "Let's go find Jack
Morgan."