Dragonback 04 Dragon and Herdsman

  The window rolled down, and Jack leaned his head outside. As he did, he gripped the top of the door with his right hand as if steadying himself.

  And felt Draycos grab the back of his hand and melt onto his skin.

  They were safe again. At least for now.

  He held his pose another few seconds, just for show, then pulled his head back inside. "Okay," he said, slumping onto the seat cushions. "False alarm."

  "I'll leave it open anyway" Alison said pointedly.

  "Fine," Jack said. "So what in blazes are you doing here?"

  "That was my question," she countered. "Are you trying to make a career out of messing up my life?"

  "Seems to me the last time I saw you I was helping save your life," Jack growled, annoyed in spite of himself.

  "You have an interesting memory," she said. "The way I remember it, you didn't do anything for me I couldn't have done myself."

  A set of K'da claws pressed in silent warning against Jack's ribs. He grimaced, but the dragon was right. This wasn't the time for an argument. "Yeah, whatever," he said. "So how exactly did I mess things up for you this time?"

  "I was trying to join the Malison Ring," she said. "In fact, I was having my final interview with them yesterday when I overheard someone saying you'd been spotted in the area."

  "And you didn't think about maybe warning me?"

  "I would, if I'd known where to find you," she said. "The last thing I wanted was for them to catch you and start asking questions, especially about your time in the Whinyard's Edge. So I came by tonight, hoping I could stop you before you walked into their trap."

  "So what happened?"

  "What do you mean, what happened?" she retorted. "I was waiting for you in back, that's what happened. I never figured you'd be crazy enough to walk in the front door."

  Jack grimaced. "Yeah. Well . . . sorry."

  She shrugged. "I'll live," she said. "Can I drop you somewhere?"

  "I've got a ship at the port," he said. "Docking slot E-7."

  She nodded. "Fine."

  For a few minutes they rode in silence. Jack wanted to ask Draycos if he was all right but couldn't risk Alison overhearing his mutterings. Still, from the way the K'da had moved along Jack's skin, he certainly seemed to be unhurt.

  Ahead, Jack could see the elaborately carved archway marking the entrance to the spaceport. "Keep an eye out for large men with guns," he warned.

  "Thank you," Alison said dryly. "That had occurred to me. If you don't mind, we'll just go to my ship—it's in D-2—and you can walk the rest of the way."

  "That's fine," Jack said. "By the way, thanks for getting me out of there."

  "No problem," she said. "You owe me one."

  They passed beneath the archway. Jack watched carefully; but if the Malison Ring had been able to get any men to the port, they weren't being obvious about it. Certainly no one stepped out into the street in front of them and started shooting.

  So he and Draycos had lost this round. But that was all right. There were a dozen more major Malison Ring offices scattered around the Orion Arm. As soon as Jack got back to the Essenay he'd get Uncle Virge looking for another good target. They would come up with another scheme for getting in, figure out a better disguise this time—

  "Uh-oh," Alison muttered.

  Jack snapped his attention back. "What?"

  "Trouble," she said, nodding toward a rather decrepit-looking light freighter off to the left. A half-dozen men in business suits were visible nearby, walking around it or standing idly near the entry hatch.

  "They don't look like mercenaries to me," Jack said.

  "They're not," Alison said. "It's still trouble."

  She drove past the turnoff, and Jack half-turned to peer out the back window. The loitering men didn't seem to have noticed them. One of them shifted position slightly, bringing his face more fully into the glow of one of the port's lights—

  "Did they spot us?" Alison asked.

  Jack found his voice. "Doesn't look like it," he said, forcing his voice to stay casual. "I hope you have a backup plan."

  "I do, but not on this planet," Alison said grimly. "I don't suppose I could talk you into giving me a lift."

  Jack hesitated. Even if Draycos's existence wasn't exactly a secret anymore, they still didn't want to broadcast the news to the whole Orion Arm. Besides that, he'd taken great pains for over a year now to keep Uncle Virgil's death a secret. And that one hadn't yet leaked out at all. Having a stranger aboard for even a few days would be begging for trouble.

  But on the other hand . . . "Where exactly did you have in mind?" he asked.

  "It's a planet called Rho Scorvi," she said. "Ever hear of it?"

  "I don't think so," Jack said, searching his memory. "Does it have a real name?"

  "The natives probably have their own name for it, but no one else does," she said. "It's about eighty light-years past Immabwi."

  Jack grimaced. Immabwi was off toward the southern edge of the Orion Arm, not exactly in the mainstream of civilization. It was going to cost either a lot of time or a lot of fuel to get there. And he and Draycos didn't have any extra time to spare. "You sure I can't just fly you twice around the galaxy?"

  "That's the nearest place where I know I can find some friendly transport," she said stiffly. "If it's going to upset your delicate schedule, forget it."

  "Don't get huffy," he said. "I just hope you've got enough cash to get us there, that's all."

  "Don't worry; I've got plenty of fueling credits," she said, patting her jacket pocket. "Always carry them with me, just in case."

  "That's handy," Jack said. "Rich uncle?"

  "Careless travelers."

  Jack made a face. And here he was, trying hard to stop stealing from people. "So how come the guys back there are after you?"

  "I never said they were after me," she said. "That ship belongs to some other friends—I've just been hitching a ride. They must be after them."

  "Fine" Jack said. "So why are they after them?"

  "How should I know?" Alison retorted. "Can we just get out of here? Whoa."

  "What?" Jack asked, twisting around to look over his shoulder.

  "Is that your ship?" Alison asked, pointing ahead. "Oh," Jack said, relaxing again. "Yes. Actually, it belongs to my uncle."

  "Your uncle's doing very well for himself," she said as she brought the car to a stop near the Essenay's air lock hatchway. "That's, what, a Pergnoir-7 light personal transport?"

  "Hardly," Jack said with a snort as he climbed out of the car. His legs still felt a little wobbly, but he should be able to make it into the ship without Alison's help. "It's just your basic run-of-the-line light freighter."

  "If you say so," Alison said, sounding doubtful as she followed him into the air lock. "Sure looks like a Pergnoir to me. You sure giving me a ride will be all right with your uncle?"

  "Don't worry; he's not here at the moment," Jack said, looking warningly at the air lock's camera/speaker/micro-phone module. He hoped Uncle Virge would take the hint and keep quiet. "He's off-planet on a job."

  "Handy," Alison said. "When do you need to pick him up?"

  "He'll let me know," Jack told her, heading for the cockpit. "Come on—you can get us our lift clearance while I crank up the systems. The sooner we get out of here, the better."

  CHAPTER 4

  Jack prepped the ship while Alison talked to the control tower, and a few minutes later they were heading up into the faint glow of the pre-dawn sky. Twenty minutes later, Jack keyed in the ECHO stardrive, and they were on their way to Rho Scorvi.

  Alison had been impressed enough by her first look at the Essenay's exterior. Jack's guided tour of the interior knocked her socks off.

  "I don't believe this," she said for probably the fourth time as he took her into the dayroom. "A full-auto medic chair, a class-five food synthesizer, and a table repeater display. Your uncle poured a big bucket of cash into this thing."

  "Like I said, he's good
at what he does," Jack said.

  "No kidding," Alison said. She turned the table on and off, watching as the wood-grain surface went transparent and then opaque again. "What sort of remote sensors do you have?"

  "I'm not really sure," Jack said. "Computer?"

  "We have a Calico 404 package," Uncle Virge answered. His voice was bland and emotionless, but there was a definite edge of quiet annoyance beneath the surface.

  Jack heartily sympathized. Unfortunately, there wasn't a thing he could do about it. Even before they'd lifted, Alison had spotted the P/S/8 designation on the computer-interface board and recognized it as a model with personality simulation capabilities. At that point, Jack had had no choice but to allow—or rather, insist—that Uncle Virge talk to her.

  He'd modified his normal voice, of course, going with something that sounded more like a standard P/S computer than the more colorful personality Uncle Virgil had left behind. But it was obvious that he wasn't happy with any of this.

  It was equally obvious he was going to be having a long and unpleasant conversation with Jack the minute their new passenger was out of earshot.

  "Extremely cool," Alison said, turning the table transparent one last time. "Can you access your InterWorld transmitter from here, too?"

  Jack felt his breath catch in his throat. Ships this small, even luxury models, never had InterWorld transmitters aboard. How could Alison have guessed the Essenay had one? "What are you talking about?" he asked guardedly.

  "Don't be cute," she said. "I saw the InterWorld directory tab on the list when you were pulling up Rho Scorvi's coordinates."

  "A directory?" Jack repeated, thoroughly lost now. "What does a directory have to do with anything?"

  "Because the InterWorld directory is part of the InterWorld access software," she explained patiently. "If you've got a directory, you've got the software. If you've got the software, you've got the transmitter."

  "Or my uncle just wants to be able to look up numbers before he calls them," Jack countered. It was, he thought rather disgustedly, a pretty weak argument.

  Alison apparently thought so, too. "Right," she said sarcastically. "Even though every spaceport and planet-based transmitter has its own directory. But fine. Let's ask. Computer—?"

  "Never mind," Jack cut her off, half-lifting his hands in a gesture of surrender. The standard P/S/8 computer interface probably couldn't lie. Uncle Virge could, and in this case probably would, and the last thing Jack wanted was for Alison to catch him at it. "Yes, we've got a transmitter."

  "Which is another five or six buckets of cash," Alison concluded, looking around the dayroom. "I hope you realize just how much money you're sitting on here, Jack Montana."

  She brought her gaze back to him. "If that's your real name."

  "Like 'Alison Kayna,' you mean?" Jack asked pointedly.

  Her lip twitched. "Fine. None of my business. So where do I sleep?"

  "You can use my uncle's cabin," Jack said. "It's down the hall on your left."

  "You're sure he won't mind?" she asked. "I could just sleep here on the couch."

  "He won't mind," Jack assured her. "Besides, I sometimes like to get up during the night and have a snack. I don't want to trip over you."

  "Fair enough," Alison said. "If you don't mind, I'm going to go sack out for a while. It's been a long and fairly interesting night."

  "Sounds like a plan," Jack agreed. "I think I'll catch some winks myself after I check the ECHO settings. Help yourself to anything you want—food or music or whatever. I'll get you some of my clothes, too."

  "Okay," Alison said, heading for the door. "Thanks for the tour. And thanks for the ride. I appreciate it."

  "I appreciate you getting me out of that cell," Jack said. "See you later."

  He headed to the cockpit. "She still in her cabin?" he asked as he dropped into the pilot's chair.

  "She's cleaning up in the bathroom," Uncle Virge said.

  "Okay," Jack said, bracing himself. "Let's have it."

  "Let us have what?" Draycos asked, lifting his head from Jack's shoulder.

  "The objections, arguments, and how-dare-yous," Jack said. "Mouse got your tongue, Uncle Virge?"

  "What are you expecting me to say, Jack lad?" Uncle Virge growled. "That this is as crazy a scheme as you've ever come up with? And given your record these past three months, that's a high standard for you to top."

  "Number one," Jack said, holding up a finger, "she got me out of a tight jam."

  "I thought getting you out of jams was what your tame K'da poet-warrior was for."

  Draycos stirred against Jack's skin. "He could have gotten me out, yes," Jack said hurriedly before the dragon could speak. "Alison got there first. I owe her."

  "So buy her a liner ticket to Rho Scorvi and send her on her way."

  "Number two," Jack said, lifting another finger, "I never did find out what kind of game she was playing back at the Whinyard's Edge training camp. Given that whatever it was nearly got both of us killed, it might be nice to see if I can wheedle it out of her."

  "She was running a scam, of course," Uncle Virge huffed. "Just like you were."

  "And third," Jack said, lifting one final finger, "the people she was avoiding back at her ship were from Braxton Universis."

  There was a short pause. "Are you sure?" Uncle Virge asked, his huffiness suddenly gone.

  "Positive," Jack said. "I saw one of them back on the Star of Wonder. His name's Harper, and he's one of Cornelius Braxton's more trusted bodyguards."

  "Are you suggesting Braxton is interested in this girl?" Uncle Virge asked.

  "If not him, then it's someone else high up in the corporation."

  "Or they could merely be interested in Alison's friends," Draycos suggested. "The ones she said she was riding with."

  Jack shook his head. "There aren't any friends. That ship is hers."

  "Are you certain?"

  "Trust me, I know a lie when I hear it," Jack said. "The point is that if Braxton is interested in her, maybe we should be interested, too."

  "Seems to me it's just one more reason to cut her loose at the first stop," Uncle Virge said darkly. "Or had it occurred to you that there's just one person at the top of Braxton's interest list right now?"

  "Arthur Neverlin," Jack agreed. "But if Alison is working for him, why did she spring me just now?"

  "Maybe he wants to give us some rope," Uncle Virge suggested. "A little running room to see how much we know. It just seems to me that the timing of this little rescue is awfully convenient."

  "True," Jack had to admit. "Still, if she did overhear them yesterday, it wouldn't have taken her any time at all to put something like this together. We know she's partial to sopor mist—she probably had everything she needed already aboard her ship."

  "I still think she's here to worm out your secrets," Uncle Virge insisted.

  "Or perhaps she hopes you'll lead her to your uncle," Draycos put in thoughtfully. "Recall that on Brum-a-dum they were still trying to use you to get to him."

  "They were, weren't they?" Jack said slowly, thinking back to that conversation. Unless they just wanted revenge . . . but Neverlin didn't seem the type to waste time with revenge. Not his own time, anyway. "Granted, Alison could be all of that. Even so, I think our best bet is to hold on to her, at least for a while. How does that saying go? Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer?"

  "That's the one," Uncle Virge said with a sniff. "And if you ask me, it's a very stupid saying. I say keep your enemies as far away from you as you can."

  "And your friends?" Draycos asked.

  "Better to make do without them," Uncle Virge retorted.

  Jack sighed. In Uncle Virgil's world, people had always fallen into one of two categories: the ones he could use, and the ones he couldn't. "Friendship," "affection," "trust"—those might as well have been alien words as far as he was concerned.

  Maybe Jack himself had been an exception. Then again, maybe he hadn't.
br />   But things were different now, he reminded himself firmly. He did have a friend—Draycos—and he was going to make that friendship work.

  And part of that process was for him to earn the dragon's respect, which meant keeping his promises. "No one's suggesting we have to become Alison's best friends," he told Uncle Virge. "But we are going to take her to Rho Scorvi. Period."

  "Whatever you say, Jack lad," Uncle Virge said with a theatrical sigh. "Would it strain the duties of a proper host if I at least kept an eye on her?"

  "Of course not," Jack said.

  "I agree," Draycos seconded. "Keeping a promise does not require one to abandon caution."

  "Then we're in agreement," Uncle Virge said with false cheerfulness. "How wonderful for us all."

  "Don't be snide," Jack admonished him, climbing out of the pilot's seat. "And while you're being all vigilant, I'm going to get some sleep."

  "Fine," Uncle Virge said. "Incidentally, I trust you realize there's one other option."

  "About . . .?"

  "About those Braxton Universis men," Uncle Virge said, his voice going a bit darker. "It could be they were looking for you."

  "Why would they seek him?" Draycos asked.

  "Because he's crossed paths twice now with Arthur Neverlin," Uncle Virge reminded him.

  "And both times Neverlin has come out the worse for the exchange," Draycos reminded him.

  "True, but Braxton may not realize that," Uncle Virge said. "If I were him, and I saw two people keep running into each other, I'd wonder if there were dots that needed to be connected. At the very least, he might want to borrow Jack for a nice cozy chat somewhere."

  "Which I really don't want to do right now," Jack said. "Actually, Uncle Virge, that had occurred to me. But I don't see much I can do about it."

  "I just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page," Uncle Virge said soothingly. "Good night, Jack. Sleep well."

  CHAPTER 5

  The trip, including fueling stops, took eight days.

  It wasn't nearly as bad as Jack had expected it to be. Alison kept mostly to herself, coming out of her cabin for meals and sometimes to play games on the dayroom computer terminal. Other than that she spent most of her time sleeping or writing in a small notebook she always kept with her.