"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.
CHAPTER 37
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 Chookooc
k 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."
Timothy Zahn, Dragonback 03 Dragon and Slave
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