Dragonback 06 Dragon and Liberator (22 page)

And then the mesh suddenly gave way beneath him, dumping him
sideways toward the deep chasm below.

He yelped with surprise and a flash of panic. But even before the
yelp made it out past his lips his fall was stopped short. There was
another second of confusion and dizziness.

Then his brain cleared, and he understood. Draycos had cut the
mesh floor beneath them on only three sides, and their combined weight
had then bent it down like an opening trapdoor. Draycos, all four sets
of claws gripping the mesh, was holding them sideways against the open
flap. "We must get away from here," Draycos said in Jack's ear.

"I'm with you, buddy," Jack said. "How?"

In answer, Draycos stretched out his top two limbs a few inches,
easing the pressure on Jack's body Jack tensed again, but with the
K'da's lower legs still hooked to the mesh flap he was in no danger of
falling. "Roll over so that you're facing me," Draycos said.

It was tricky to maneuver in the cramped space and with the small
amount of slack Draycos had given him. But the guns still thundering
all around them made for good inspiration. Jack got himself turned
around in Olympic-record time. "Now hold on tightly," Draycos said.

Jack wrapped his arms and legs around the other's torso. Draycos
let go with his front paws, lunging forward and grabbing the underside
of the mesh just in front of their hanging flap. He walked the paws
forward, working his rear paws onto the mesh behind them.

And with that the K'da headed off, moving rapidly along the
underside of the mesh.

With the long tween gap yawning under him, the booming gunfire
rattling the metal above him, and the violent jostling as Draycos
clawed his upside-down way beneath the mesh, all Jack could do was shut
his eyes, wish he could shut his ears, and hold on for dear life. The
bouncing went on and on. . . .

Abruptly, Draycos stopped. "Hold tighter," he ordered over the
noise of the gunfire.

Jack nodded and got a fresh grip on the K'da's torso, pressing the
side of his head against the other's scale-covered neck. Draycos let go
of the mesh with his rear claws, and once again Jack's stomach churned
with the brief sensation of falling. For another second the K'da
continued to hang on to the mesh only with his front claws. Then Jack
felt the rear paws find a grip, and a moment later he found himself
again squeezed between Draycos and cold metal as the K'da climbed
rapidly down another of the vertical mesh sections.

The gunfire above them was starting to slow down by the time they
reached bottom. Bottom, in this case, was another mesh walkway. For a
few seconds Draycos peered into the darkness, as if figuring out
exactly where they were. Then, touching Jack's hand, he slid up his
sleeve.
Straight ahead about fifty feet
, he said.
There
should be another entrance panel on your right
.

Got it
. Jack set off, his knees feeling a little wobbly.

The gunfire continued to slow down, and by the time they reached
the panel it had stopped entirely.
Be careful as you open it
,
Draycos warned.
They're undoubtedly listening now front above,
hoping to hear what we might be doing
.

In that case, let's just hang here a minute
, Jack
suggested.
Sooner or later, they're bound to start making noise
again
.

Draycos seemed to think about that, and Jack could sense his
uneasiness with the situation. They were still very much exposed out
here, and his warrior's instincts were probably screaming at him to get
them under better cover.
Trust me
, Jack said.

Very well
, Draycos said reluctantly.
But if I hear
anyone approaching
—

He broke off as a soft metallic thud came from somewhere above and
forward of their position.
Sounds like one of the mercenaries is
coming in to look for our bullet-riddled bodies
, Jack said, getting
a grip on the panel's handles.
That's our cue
.

He paused, his hands still on the handles, listening hard. Through
the mesh he could now see the faint glow of a flashlight peeking
through the mesh far above them. The footsteps started up, paused, then
started up again, settling into a rhythm.

And with perfect timing, Jack popped the panel exactly as one of
the footsteps sent its covering echo through the tween gap.

A minute later, they were through the doorway. Jack got a grip on
the edge of the panel and pulled it back into place, again timing the
event to coincide with the distant traveler's footsteps.
Okay
,
he said, taking a deep breath.
I think we're in
.

I believe you're right
, Draycos agreed.
Well done, Jack
.

Years of practice
, Jack assured him.
With some of the
crazy jobs Uncle Virgil had me pull, I had to raise running and hiding
to a fine art
.

He looked around. The room they were in was long and narrow, with
a ten-foot-tall, box-shaped cabinet on each of the fore and aft
bulkheads. Control displays on each winked with colored status lights.
Connecting the cabinets to the walls and ceiling were more
stripe/spot-marked pipes.
Another fire control room
? he
hazarded.

No, this is one of the ship's water-reclamation plants
,
Draycos said.

Really
, Jack said, looking at the cabinets with new
interest.
The crew drinks the stuff that comes out of these, do they
?

From these and nine other plants throughout the ship
,
Draycos said.
Why
?

Because there are two ways to keep a gun from going off
,
Jack said.
Wreck the gun, or stop the person from pulling the
trigger
.

Are you suggesting we
poison
them? The entire crew
?

We don't have to kill them
, Jack said hastily. There had
been an unpleasant tone in the K'da's mental voice just then.
I was
thinking we could find a way to knock them out. Or else make them so
sick they can't function
.

Draycos was silent a moment.
We would need to sabotage all ten
of the purifiers
, he pointed out. And
we would have to do all
ten simultaneously. Otherwise, once people started getting sick they'd
realize something was wrong and guard the rest of the purifiers
.

True
, Jack said.
We'd also have to find something that
would affect humans, Brummgas
, and
Valahgua
.

And we'd need to deal with the emergency bottled water, as well
,
Draycos continued.
Those supplies are, unfortunately, scattered
throughout the ship
.

Which means we'd have to hit them hard and fast
, Jack said
slowly, trying to think. Uncle Virgil had taught him a fair amount
about incapacitating drugs and chemicals. Surely he could come up with
something he could make up from stuff already aboard ship.

The big question was whether he could do it in time.

In time
? Draycos asked.

We've got less than six days until we hit Point Three, remember
?
Jack said.
At that point, the Brummgas scream for help and Frost
throws everything he's got at us
.

What if we destroy the radios
? Draycos suggested.
That
might at least buy us another few hours
.

Not worth the risks
, Jack said.
Besides, even if we
could take out all the actual radios, anyone with a comm clip will be
able to punch a message across the kind of distance we're talking about
.

He grimaced.
Besides, whatever was going on with the
Essenay
just before we went on ECHO, there's a good chance Neverlin
and Frost already know we're here. They'll be over as soon as we all
come off ECHO
.

For a moment Draycos was silent. Jack tried to catch some of the
K'da's thoughts, but they flashed by too subtly and too quickly.
Then
we'll just have to make do with the time we have
, he said.

Right
, Jack agreed.
Are there any other secret ways of
getting around this ship besides the tween gap
?

There are the ventilation ducts
, Draycos reminded him.

I meant for me
, Jack said.
Unfortunately, my body
doesn't compress nearly as well as yours and Taneem's do
. He shook
his head.
I still can't believe she was able to get around the
Advocatus Diaboli
that way. What in the world did its designers
think they were doing, making ducts that big
?

Actually, oversized ducts are a fairly standard large-ship
design, according to the technical material I read in the
Essenay's
encyclopedia
, Draycos said.
If there's a hull breach, you
want to be able to deliver massive quantities of air to the affected
area, thereby giving anyone trapped there a chance to escape or put on
an emergency vac suit. A ship the size of the
Advocatus Diaboli
usually
has plenty of air reserves available for such a purpose
.

He flicked his tail against Jack's leg.
I'm surprised Virgil
Morgan never taught you about that
.

I'm not
, Jack said sourly.
Uncle Virgil was strictly
about practical stuff, and I outgrew ventilation ducts when I hit seven
.

Of course
, Draycos said.
My apologies for bringing up
an unpleasant subject
.

Don't worry about it
, Jack assured him, shifting his
thoughts firmly away from childhood memories.
Okay, we've got six
days. Let's start by taking an inventory of what we've got to work with
.

For Alison, the next six days went by smoothly and quietly. As
near as she could tell, the time had gone equally smoothly for everyone
else aboard the
Advocatus Diaboli
.

Neverlin and Frost met several times, discussing the final details
of their plan. Sneaking through the vents, Taneem had managed to get
close enough to eavesdrop on one of those talks.

But the two men had kept their voices too low for Alison to pick
up more than a few words over Taneem's comm clip. Taneem had tried to
repeat some of it to her later, but the conversation had been filled
with technical terms that she didn't know and were therefore hard for
her to remember.

It was frustrating, but there was nothing Alison could do about
it. There were many unanswered questions about the details of Frost's
plan, details that could prove critical in the days ahead.

As for Harper, he seemed to be spending most of his time in his
stateroom, emerging only for meals or an occasional brief chat with
Frost or one of the other Malison Ring mercenaries. Harper did walk
around the ship at least once, but as far as Taneem could tell he never
approached any of the vital control areas and never left the sight of
one of the crew or passengers.

Like Neverlin, Harper seemed perfectly relaxed about the upcoming
battle. But maybe that was just the man's personality.

Still, as the hours ticked down toward their arrival at Point
Three, even Harper seemed to be picking up some of the tension
beginning to pervade the rest of the ship.

Not only the ship but Alison herself. Very soon now she would
learn if Jack and Draycos were really aboard the
Foxwolf
. And
if they were, how much damage they had caused.

And at that point, she would have a decision to make.

She didn't want to confront Neverlin and Frost this soon. Not with
the K'da/Shontine fleet still several days away.

But if and when Frost took over the job of finding and killing
Jack and Draycos, she would have no choice.

The hours became minutes, the voices on the bridge softening as
the tension and expectation grew. Taneem lay quietly in the duct,
watching Neverlin and Frost and the Valahgua leader through the mesh
and reporting as much of the situation as she could to Alison.

Which left Alison absolutely nothing to do except listen to
Taneem's whispers, pace restlessly back and forth across the life-pod,
and pray that Jack and Draycos had come up with some plan of their own.

And to pray even harder that they were both still alive.

The access crawl space beneath the
Foxwolf
's main control
complex, Jack reflected, was well named.

In his opinion, though, the creatures the ship's designers had
expected to be crawling around in here were mice.

Okay
, he said, rolling carefully onto his back and shining
his light upward. Barely a foot directly above his head was a wide hole
in the crawl space ceiling with an orderly tangle of wires and cables
of various sizes coming out of it. In ones and twos the cables angled
away from the hole, heading off in all directions toward the edges of
the crawl space. To his right and left, he could see similar explosions
of cables coming from other openings in the low ceiling.
Is this
the right one
?

Draycos's head lifted slightly from his shoulder, peering at the
markings by the hole.
Yes
, he said, sinking back down onto
Jack's skin.
Do you need me to identify the wires for you
?

No, I got it
, Jack assured him. A set of soft footsteps
angled across Jack's ceiling to his left, reminding him—if he'd needed
reminding—that the control complex directly above him was full of bad
guys.

With a thick deck between them and him, they weren't likely to
hear any noise he might make. Just the same, he was careful not to
clink his flashlight as he set it down onto the deck beside his ear.

Reaching into his pockets, he removed his multitool and the
cable-and-switch setup he'd put together. Studying the various
stripe/spot patterns on the cables above him, he located the ones
Draycos had described and set to work.