Dragonback 06 Dragon and Liberator (3 page)

"Don't worry about the flaggers," Neverlin said. "Money isn't the
only thing that can ensure a man's loyalty."

Another voice called something, the words too faint for Alison to
make out. "What?" Frost called back.

The other voice grew louder as its owner moved closer, until it
was loud enough for Alison to understand. "—under the edge vent," the
other said.

"Well, well," Frost said, a sudden malicious amusement in his
voice. "So Morgan thinks he's clever."

"Get away from us with that thing," Neverlin snapped.

"Relax; it's not a bomb," Frost soothed. "It's the hyperspace
tracer I planted on his ship a couple of months back."

There was a slight pause. "Really," Neverlin said, all calm and
icy again. "Interesting."

"More stupid than interesting," Frost countered. "He must think
we're amateurs. Dumbarton, check it for booby traps and bugs and then
put it in my car."

"Yes, sir." A few soft footsteps and the other was gone.

"So you think Morgan was being stupid?" Neverlin asked.

"Don't you?" Frost countered.

"Oh, I wasn't referring to his foolishness in thinking these
shuttles would take their occupants someplace worth tracing," Neverlin
said. "I was referring to the fact that he accurately guessed our need
for the Patri Chookoock's soldiers.
And
that he guessed it
early enough to plant himself in here before our own security perimeter
went up. I wonder what else he may have guessed."

"What he
guessed
?" Frost asked, his voice going cool. "Or
what he might have been
told
?"

"An interesting conclusion for you to jump to," Neverlin said,
matching his tone.

Alison smiled tightly to herself. Maybe some of the seeds of
distrust she'd tried to plant between Neverlin and Frost were starting
to grow.

"I didn't mean you, naturally," Frost said. "And my own troops are
completely trustworthy. But the Patri didn't seem too thrilled about
you taking away both his soldiers
and
this thing." He tapped
the safe again.

"Though not nearly as unhappy as he was about that Malison Ring
raid on his estate two weeks ago," Neverlin countered.

Frost grunted. "And whoever the frunging idiot was who put that
particular centipede in their shirts is going to pay for it," he
promised darkly. "I don't believe for a minute it was really General
Davi who ordered it."

"Regardless, it's one more reason for the Patri to perhaps be
reevaluating his part in this."

"Let him reevaluate," Frost said. "We've got all the Brummgas that
we need, and once we're off Brum-a-dum there won't be any way for him
to call them back if he changes his mind. Anyway, he'll come around
again once it's done and there's loot to be passed out."

"Indeed." Neverlin paused. "There is, of course, one other
possibility. I understand we have a new fighter pilot on the payroll."

"Former StarForce Wing Sergeant Jonathan Langston," Frost said,
his voice suddenly as thoughtful as Neverlin's. "He claims Morgan
betrayed him."

"
Claims
being the key word," Neverlin said. "What exactly
do we know about him?"

"He and his Djinn-90 disappeared somewhere in the vicinity of that
canyon on Semaline," Frost said. "He claims he was held captive by the
inhabitants—"

"There's that word
claims
again," Neverlin put in. "I
don't want claims, Colonel. I want facts."

"Don't worry, I'm watching him," Frost promised. "Meanwhile, what
do we do about this?" There was another thunk as he tapped the side of
the safe.

"We'll take it with us as planned," Neverlin said. "But not on
either of these shuttles, in case Morgan had more surprises up his
sleeve. The first group of transports should be back soon from the
transfer point. We'll deploy for siege and wait for them."

"Do you want to call the Patri for reinforcements?"

"I hardly think that necessary," Neverlin said, and Alison could
imagine the other's detestably oily smile. "We can handle this
ourselves."

"Yes, sir," Frost said. "I'll deploy the troops."

There were a few faint footsteps, and then all was silence again.
Alison held the microphone against the wall another few seconds, just
to be sure, then turned it off and replaced the earphone end. "You
heard all that?" she asked quietly.

"Yes," Taneem murmured from her shoulder. "What do we do?"

Alison started to take a deep breath. She remembered in time that
they needed to conserve air and made it a shallow breath instead. "We
settle in, try to relax, and wait."

The Malison Ring mercenaries were piling out of the cars in the
distant hangar, their weapons held ready as they spread out across the
floor. "Come on; come on," Jack muttered under his breath, squeezing
the steering wheel of his borrowed car as if he were trying to break
it. He should
never
have agreed to this stupid plan. "Come
on
."

And then Draycos was there, a black shadow sprinting toward him
through the other shadows of the building site between Jack and the
hangar. Jack stretched out his arm toward the open window, and as the
K'da dived through the opening he caught the boy's hand with his front
paws and slithered up his sleeve. "Go," Draycos ordered tautly. "Not
too fast."

Jack clenched his teeth. But Draycos was right. Even with the
horrible urgency pressing in on them he couldn't simply peel away as if
the entire Internos police force were on his tail.

And so, with an air of casual unconcern, he pulled the car away
from the curb. An honest citizen driving away from an honest errand,
not a guilty would-be thief running from the scene of the crime.

He played the role for three blocks, until he was out of sight and
hearing of the men back at the hangar. Then, stomping hard on the
accelerator, he kicked the car to high speed.

"Careful," Draycos warned, his head rising from Jack's shoulder to
look out the boy's shirt. "Frost might have backup watchers even this
far out."

"Doesn't matter," Jack gritted out, the red-tinged image of Alison
and Taneem buried alive inside that safe hazing over his eyes like a
vision of the ground floor of hell. "Even if he did, it's too late for
them to stop us."

"What's your plan?"

"We go in full bore," Jack told him. "Uncle Virge, get prepped to
fly, and activate all weapons systems."

"Are you sure that's wise?" Uncle Virge asked cautiously. "They'll
surely have heavy weaponry in there with them."

"They'll never get a chance to use it," Jack said. "No
warning—we're just going to blast away at the hangar with everything
we've got."

"But Alison and Taneem—"

"Are inside three inches of hardened metal with their own air
supply," Jack cut him off. "Draycos?"

"Yes, you're right," Draycos agreed, a cautious hope in his voice.
"They should be well protected against any of the
Essenay
's
weapons."

"That's the nice thing about some traps—you can get them to work
in either direction," Jack said, a grim and not entirely pleasant
thrill rippling through him. After months of running and ducking and
hiding, he and Draycos were finally going to take the battle to the
enemy.

He was still psyching himself up for combat when a delivery truck
pulled out of a blind driveway directly in front of him.

He jammed on the brakes. But he was going way too fast, and it was
already way too late. With a horrible crunching of metal and plastic,
he slammed full tilt into the truck's front left side.

For a short eternity the car spun and twisted terrifyingly around
him. Then, abruptly, it came to a halt. Breathing heavily, Jack peered
between the milky white balloons of the car's emergency protection
system as they slowly receded back into their compartments.

He'd ended up half turned around, facing back toward the truck.
The front left side of the other vehicle was a shambles, though not
nearly as bad as the mess Jack had made of his own car. "Draycos?" he
panted.

"I'm unharmed," the K'da said from his shoulder. "You?"

"I'm okay," Jack assured him. With a grating creak, the truck door
opened and the Brummgan driver climbed rather shakily to the ground.
"Looks like the other guy is, too."

"We'd best get out of here," Draycos warned. "The accident will
hardly have gone unnoticed."

Jack looked through his broken windows. All around them Brummgas
had stopped their cars or had appeared in open doorways or were peering
out of windows. "No kidding," he said, pulling the door release and
leaning against the panel.

For a wonder, it wasn't jammed, and with an ear-piercing shriek he
got it open. With his hands shaking with reaction, it took another half
minute to get his seat belts off. He had just gotten them clear when a
large hand reached in, grabbed his left upper arm, and hauled him
bodily out of the car.

And he found himself staring up at the dark Brummgan eyes and
gleaming golden collar ring of a police officer. "Your vehicle
license?" the Brummga demanded.

Jack felt his heart sink.
Oh no
. "Sure," he managed,
pointing back into the car. "It's in the storage compartment." If he
could get into the car and out the other side . . . "I'll get it."

But he'd barely started his turn when the grip on his arm
tightened and pulled him back again. "This vehicle plate shows it
stolen," the Brummga growled. "You come now to jail."

Jack
? Draycos's urgent thought came.

From overhead came a faint whine. Jack looked up to see a
formation of three long-range shuttles appear, losing altitude as they
flew toward the Chookoock family's private hangar.

Frost's shuttles had returned.

And if the mercenaries were monitoring the police comm system, the
sudden frantic flurry of reports claiming a dragon had attacked a cop
would bring them down on him and Draycos in double-quick time.

Jack
?

Don't bother
, Jack told him wearily, his earlier thrill of
anticipation burned into ash.

He was being put into the rear seat of the police car when he saw
the Chookoock shuttles lift again into the sky. He watched them head
for the stars, his stomach knotted tight enough to hurt.

Alison and Taneem were on their own now.

The returning shuttles arrived sooner than Alison had expected.
Far too soon, unfortunately, for Jack and Draycos to have had time to
put together a rescue plan.

Neverlin and Frost were probably thinking along the same lines.
They wasted no time getting their troops and the safe aboard and
lifting off again.

Alison tried her burglar's pickup a couple of times during the
flight. But the safe had apparently been secured someplace away from
the passengers, and the background rumble of the engines masked
whatever anyone might be saying.

There wasn't much conversation going on inside the safe, either.
Taneem would answer any questions that Alison asked her, mostly
questions about how the K'da was doing. But aside from that she lay
quietly against Alison's skin, neither speaking nor moving.

Maybe she was conserving oxygen. More likely she was just
terrified.

The flight didn't last long. An hour and a half after lifting from
Brum-a-dum, Alison felt the subtle jolt as the shuttle docked with
another vessel. A few minutes later the safe was rocked onto a lift
cart and rolled through the shuttle's hatchway. Ten minutes and several
turns later, they reached their destination. Another short flurry of
rockings and bumps to get them off the cart, and the safe came to rest.

And once again silence descended.

For the next two hours Alison kept her microphone pressed against
the safe wall, splitting her attention between the occasional and very
distant background noises and the indicator on her gas mask canister.

The gas mask was a marvel of engineering. Along with a small
oxygen tank, it included a catalytic reactor that could take their
exhaled carbon dioxide and split it back into carbon and oxygen.
Without such a converter, a mask that size wouldn't have kept her and
Taneem alive for even a single hour, and several times during their
quiet vigil Alison gave silent thanks that her father had provided her
with such exotic and expensive equipment.

But even so marvelous a gadget had its limits. The carbon storage
tube slowly but steadily filled with a black, sootlike powder as the
oxygen tank just as slowly but steadily drained.

Finally, just under four hours into their ill-fated mission,
Alison decided it was time. "It's been quiet out there for two hours,"
she told Taneem as she put away the microphone and got out her light.
"It should be safe for you to take a look."

"All right," Taneem said softly.

Alison pressed her back hard against the safe's rear wall. She
felt the familiar movement across her skin as Taneem leaned in her
strange fourth-dimensional way over the metal. There was a pause, and
somehow Alison had a sense that the K'da was surprised.

There was another wiggle, and Alison looked down through her open
collar as Taneem's gray-scaled head and silver eyes slid back around
onto her shoulder. "Is it clear?" she asked.

"Very clear," Taneem said. "And very familiar."

"How familiar?"

"Very," Taneem said again, a hint of wry humor finally peeking
through her tension. "We're in the room containing the second safe you
opened for Colonel Frost on our journey from Semaline to Brum-a-dum."

Alison felt her mouth drop open. "We're aboard the
Advocator
Diaboli
?"

"Unless there are two such rooms," Taneem said. "You're surprised
by this?"

"Well, no, I suppose it makes sense," Alison had to admit.
"Neverlin will certainly want to be on hand for the big attack. I guess
I'm just surprised he'd risk his own ship instead of bunking in with
Frost and the rest of his people on their warships."