Dragonback 06 Dragon and Liberator (23 page)

Jack had been highly trained in the art of bypassing security
locks, alarms, and other complex electronics. This job, in comparison,
was about as tricky as a walk in the park.

His first task was to connect three of the hyperspace control
lines together, being careful not to trigger any flickers the computer
might notice. Then he wired in one of the two high-voltage power lines
that ran the console's display monitors, running that particular splice
through the switch on his cable.

And he was done.
That's it
, he told Draycos.
I flip
the switch, and the hyperdrive controls fry. That ought to hold their
attention awhile
.

Let's hope it's long enough
, Draycos said. Moving carefully
in the cramped space, he slid out of Jack's sleeve. "I'll signal you
when I'm in position," he murmured.

"Watch yourself," Jack warned.

The K'da flicked his tail in acknowledgment as he set off across
the crawl space.

Jack watched him go, feeling a frustration that was edging toward
despair. Every plan the boy had come up with over the past six days,
every scheme he'd hoped to pull, had fallen apart in his hands.

His plan to drug the ship's water supply had come to nothing.
There simply weren't enough of the proper chemicals aboard.

His backup plan, to fire a surge through the Death weapons' power
lines, had merely ended up popping circuit breakers and getting them
chased away again. The Valahgua had responded to that one by taking a
bunch of their security cameras from other areas and installing them in
the tween gap. By the time the Valahgua finished, all approaches to the
two Death weapons were covered.

Draycos's plans hadn't fared much better. He'd tried using the
ventilation ducts to approach the weapons, only to discover the
Valahgua had tripled the guard. Many of the Brummgas were stationed
outside in the corridors, and Draycos had concluded that a surprise
attack from the duct would almost certainly succeed.

But with the tween gap now virtually closed to him and Jack, the
ventilation system was their only means of traveling invisibly through
the ship. With cameras still mounted in the weapons rooms, any attack
from the ducts would give that secret away, leaving them nothing. Jack
and Draycos had discussed the situation, and decided not to risk that
until and unless they were desperate.

Now, with less than an hour before the
Foxwolf
reached
Point Three, they were.

And so Draycos was going to go and try to take out the starboard
Death, the one they knew was still operational.

Leaving the one Jack had tried to gimmick when they'd first come
aboard. Which, by now. Jack knew, was probably also back to being
operational.

He took a careful breath, trying to focus on the positive points.
The Valahgua had had four Death weapons to use against the K'da and
Shontine refugees. In a few minutes they would have only one. Surely
that counted for something.

"Jack?" Draycos's voice came softy from Jack's comm clip. "I'm in
the duct. Ten minutes and I should be there."

"Right," Jack said. "Just let me know when you're ready for me to
turn their hyperdrive console into toast."

"I will." Draycos paused, and Jack could imagine his jaws cracking
open in a grin. "Butter side down, of course."

Despite his gloom, Jack had to smile. "Butter side down," he
confirmed.

"And then get out as quickly as you can," Draycos added, going
serious again. "I'll meet you back in the recycling room."

"Sure," Jack murmured, his smile fading.
Toast, butter side
down
, had been one of Uncle Virgil's favorite catchphrases.

Uncle Virgil. Virgil Morgan, professional thief, con man, and
safecracker. Who had somehow ended up in possession of both Jack and
the
Essenay
after Jack's parents were murdered eleven years ago.

How in the world had that happened?

Jack didn't know. It was possible he would never know. Uncle
Virge, the copy of his personality that Uncle Virgil had planted in the
Essenay
's computer, claimed he had no information about that
part of Jack's life.

But Uncle Virge was in control of the
Essenay
. And despite
Jack's instructions, the
Essenay
had apparently followed him to
Point Two and rendezvoused with Neverlin's
Advocatus Diaboli
.

Neverlin, whose attempted frame-up of Jack for theft and murder
had gotten him into this whole thing in the first place. Neverlin, who
Jack had only recently discovered had been directly involved with the
murder of Jack's parents.

Coincidence? Jack didn't know that, either.

He swallowed against a lump that had suddenly appeared in his
throat. It was possible Uncle Virge had betrayed him. Maybe Alison had
betrayed him, too. Certainly she wasn't someone he could completely
trust.

But he had Draycos.

He could only hope that he could still say that fifteen minutes
from now.

As part of their overall plan for the
Gatekeeper
's air
ducts to double as back-door access routes, the ship's designers had
made sure that the ventilation grilles would be difficult to see
through from inside the rooms. Draycos was therefore able to move
silently and invisibly toward his goal.

To his surprise, the invisibility part proved less important than
he'd expected it to. At first there were plenty of Brummgas striding
through corridors or lounging about the various rooms he passed. But as
he approached the Number Four weapons bay, that number became less and
less. The last three rooms he passed, in fact, were completely deserted.

Something was wrong.

He took the last stretch of duct at a careful crawl, his tongue
flicking out as he went, trying to analyze the scents of Brummga and
human and Valahgua drifting on the air around him.

And it was no doubt because he was taking such care that he
spotted the small object sitting just inside the weapons bay's
auxiliary control room grille.

He froze in place ten feet away, peering hard at the object. It
looked like a tube or perhaps a section of thick cable, about six
inches long and one inch in diameter. It was too wide to have gotten
through the small holes in the grille, which meant someone must have
opened the grille in order to put it there.

He flicked out his tongue again. This close to the grille, he
should be able to pick out the specific scents coming from that room.
There was one human in there, he decided, plus four or five Brummgas.
No Valahgua.

He frowned, his tail arching with sudden suspicion. Only a handful
of defenders for one of the precious remaining Death weapons?

Not a chance. Especially since his earlier checks had showed guard
contingents three times that size. Could the rest of them be spread out
in the corridor, where they would have a better field of fire?

Backing up, he slipped into the duct that paralleled the corridor
outside the room. He flicked his tongue at the nearest grille, looking
for the scent of nervous Brummgas.

But it wasn't there. The corridor was deserted, or nearly so.

Something was definitely wrong.

He returned to the room's duct again and took a cautious pair of
steps toward the object lying inside the grille. From here he could see
that it was vibrating slightly with the air flowing across it.
Something light, then. Something light that had been rolled up into a
cylindrical shape?

A piece of paper?

Carefully, he continued forward. It was a rolled-up piece of
paper, all right, which had partially unrolled to its current diameter.
Picking it up, he looked cautiously through the grille into the room
beyond.

The room had changed since his quiet reconnaissance two nights
ago. As he'd already surmised, the crowd of guards that had lined the
bulkheads was gone. Instead, the walls were lined with a double bank of
video monitors. It was hard to tell at his distance, but they seemed to
be carrying the feeds from various security cameras. One group of
monitors, he saw, showed images from the tween gap area.

As he'd also surmised, there were only five Brummgas in the room.
Three of them were standing around the control end of the Death weapon,
their backs to Draycos behind his grille. Two more were standing
watchful guard by the door, with the grille at the edge of their
peripheral vision.

Standing two paces behind the three at the controls, the stiffness
of his back betraying his tension, was Wing Sergeant Langston.

Draycos eyed the group, his warrior's instincts tingling. Five
Brummgas out of over three hundred, and a human whom they clearly
didn't trust. Bait, if he'd ever seen it.

Which meant that this whole thing was a trap.

Taking one last look through the grille, Draycos picked up the
rolled-up paper and retreated quietly along the duct.

He found a hidden spot away from any of the grilles, one where he
had three different escape routes available to him. Crouching down, he
unrolled the paper.

It was a note, as he'd expected, written in small but precise
letters. Leaning close to give it all the light from his eyes that he
could, he began to read.

Draycos
:

I hope you get this message. I don't have much real
information for you—they still don't completely trust me—but rumor is
that the Valahgua are expecting you and Jack to try to hit the last two
Death weapons before we reach Point Three
.

They've now got cameras inside all the hull-gap access doors
near both weapons bays to watch for your arrival. The ventilation
system seems untouched so far—I don't think they realize you'll fit in
there. I'm hoping that's the approach you'll use, since I can't get
this note into any of the hull-gap doors without making a lot of noise
.

Draycos nodded grimly to himself. Nothing really new, except that
Langston had figured out the designers' system of back doors.

Unfortunately, as soon as he hit this particular Death weapon, the
Valahgua would know about it, too. That would leave him only the
equipment crawl spaces, which covered limited areas of the ship, and
didn't reach the weapons bays at all.

They also fixed the Death weapon that you and Jack sabotaged.
Not the two you shredded—they were furious about that, by the way—but
the first one you hit, in the port-side weapons bay
.

Again, nothing new there. The heavy guard on the other Death
weapon alone had pretty well proved it had been fixed.

On the other hand, just because the Valahgua thought they'd fixed
it didn't necessarily mean that they had. If they'd missed Jack's
secondary sabotage, the weapon could still blow up in their faces when
they tried to fire it. He could hope, anyway.

Speaking of that port-side weapon, rumor is that the Valahgua
moved it sometime during ship's night. I don't know where
.

Draycos frowned. They'd
moved
it? But it was already in as
secure and inaccessible a place as the
Gatekeeper
had to offer.

And then, suddenly, he understood.

Langston and a handful of Brummgas, alone in a critical part of
the ship. Bait for a trap, Draycos had already suspected.

Now he knew what the trap was.

"Jack, we're in trouble," he said quietly into the comm clip. "The
Valahgua have moved the other Death weapon to cover this one.

"The minute I come into the open, they're going to kill me."

For a few seconds Jack lay motionless in the crawl space, staring
at the low ceiling above his head as he silently berated his
carelessness. He'd gotten so used to dealing with Brummgas and their
slow and unimaginative brains that he'd forgotten there were also
humans and Valahgua in the mix.

Apparently, one of them had come up with something clever.

"Jack?"

"Yes, I'm here," Jack said, kicking his brain into gear. "Start at
the beginning."

He listened as Draycos read Langston's note and then gave his own
observations and conclusions. "They're learning, anyway," Jack said
when the K'da had finished. "Okay, let's think this through. First of
all, I don't suppose you have any idea where they might have put the
second Death, do you?"

"Jack, it could be literally anywhere aboard the ship," Draycos
said heavily. "As I've told you, its beam can penetrate any number of
decks and bulkheads."

"Right, but it'll also kill everyone in its path," Jack said. "I
presume the Lordover won't want to sacrifice any more of his allies
than he has to."

"Probably, but that's not much help," Draycos said. "He can easily
move all the Brummgas and humans out of the line of fire."

"Except for those they
can't
move," Jack said. "What kinds
of duty stations are there around the starboard weapons bay? Anything
that absolutely
has
to be manned? Especially now, as We're
about to come off ECHO?"

"There's nothing forward of the main control complex," Draycos
said. "All the duty station functions in the bow can be handled from
somewhere else. That leaves over a quarter of the ship as
possibilities."

"Okay, then, how about power supplies?" Jack suggested. "You
hinted earlier that the things had originally been set up in the
weapons bays because they needed more power than your average crew mess
or monitor station could deliver."

"True, and that
does
limit their choices somewhat,"
Draycos said, a cautious hope starting to filter into his voice. "But
I'd need to either visit each room or else find a monitor station in
order to find out which one they're using."

"Where's the nearest power monitor?" Jack asked, focusing on the
ceiling over his head. "Better yet, can I tap into the one here in the
control complex?"