"I trust you, Jack Morgan," the dragon said. "You have proven yourself to be a friend and ally. I do not yet trust anyone else in this region of space."
Jack opened his mouth; closed it again. "Look, Draycos, I appreciate the vote of confidence," he said. "Really I do. But this is a job for someone who knows what they're doing, not me."
"Tell me then who betrayed us to the Valahgua," Draycos countered. "Was it the Chitac Nomads? Was it the human who then met with us for the actual purchase? Was it the Triost Mining Group? Was it your Internes government itself?"
Jack spread his hands helplessly. "I don't know."
"Nor do I," Draycos said. "Until I do, I cannot afford to trust anyone else."
Jack sighed. "Uncle Virge? Help me out here, will you?"
"Unfortunately, he's got a point, Jack lad," Uncle Virge said. "I vote we go along with him."
Jack made a face. At least until Draycos had helped clear him of the phony theft charge? Was that when Uncle Virge's vote would suddenly change?
Probably. He'd noticed a lot of conniving and persuasion coming out of the Essenay's computer since Uncle Virgil's death. Could the old scoundrel have somehow imprinted it with more than just his speech patterns? "Fine," he said with a sigh. "If that's the way you want it, I'll play along."
Draycos bowed his head again. "In the name of my people, I thank you, Jack Morgan."
"Your people are welcome," Jack said, yawning. "And just call me Jack, okay? Go ahead and change course, Uncle Virge."
"Computing now," Uncle Virge said. "Do you want me to increase speed, too?"
"Might as well," Jack said. "Not much point in saving fuel if I'm going to wind up in prison anyway. Come on, Draycos, let's catch some sleep. You can have Uncle Virgil's old cabin if you want."
"Thank you," Draycos said. He stood up and stretched catlike, his head and forelegs close to the floor, his tail high up in the air. "I would prefer to stay with you."
"Oh—right," Jack said. He'd almost forgotten the dragon's need to stay close to his host. The whole idea still made his skin crawl a little. "Well, come on then. It's been a long day."
Jack woke suddenly from a dream where a giant gold boulder had rolled down a hill made of smoky dirt and was doing its best to crush him. He opened his eyes, and in the faint light from the display screen he got a glimpse of Draycos's tail as the dragon disappeared silently out his cabin door. "Uncle Virge?" he murmured, glancing at the clock. He'd been asleep for only three hours.
"I'm on him lad," his uncle's voice came back softly. "He's headed for the cockpit."
Jack felt his stomach tighten. Was Draycos planning to hijack the ship? "What's he doing?"
There was a short silence. "Nothing," Uncle Virge said at last. "He looked over the control settings, checked the monitor station, then left. Now he's headed for the galley."
In succession, the dragon visited the galley, the dayroom, Uncle Virgil's old cabin, and the food/water storeroom. Nowhere did he so much as touch anything. He headed into the corridor leading to the aft section of the ship, sniffing at each of the storage lockers along the way, then looked around the small cargo hold.
It wasn't until Draycos was in the engine room that Jack finally caught on. "He's doing a check of the ship," he told Uncle Virge. "Looking around for anything that might be wrong."
"What, he doesn't trust me?" Uncle Virge asked, sounding rather offended. "Besides, how would he know if anything was wrong?"
"Don't be so touchy," Jack scolded mildly. "It's probably just natural caution."
"Humph," Uncle Virge said. "Still, I suppose that as long as he doesn't fiddle with anything . . ."
"That's the spirit," Jack said, rolling onto his other side and pulling up the blanket again. "I'm going back to sleep. Wake me if we hit anything."
"Trust me, you'd know," Uncle Virge said dryly.
"Good night, Uncle Virge."
But he didn't fall asleep right away. This thing with Draycos was like the dogs he'd read about once who would prowl around their masters' houses several times a night making sure everything was all right.
Jack had never owned a pet before, but he'd always wondered what it would be like. Maybe this was his chance to find out.
But no. Draycos wasn't a pet. He was a thinking, talking, very independent creature on an important mission. Jack had better not start thinking of him like a trained dog instead of the K'da warrior that he was.
He smiled lopsidedly in the darkness. Not a problem. If today was anything to go by, Draycos would be sure to remind him about that at least once an hour.
A subtle reflection flicked across the bulkhead a few inches in front of his face. "Everything all right?" he called.
"As best as I can tell," Draycos replied. "I am sorry to have awakened you."
"That's okay," Jack said, rolling over again to face the dragon. "You coming back aboard?"
Draycos seemed to study him. "I can stay away awhile longer, if you'd prefer."
"It's up to you," Jack told him, trying not to let his relief show in his voice. This whole thing was still very new, and he wasn't very comfortable with it. The longer the dragon was able to keep his distance, the better.
"Then I will sleep here for the present," Draycos said.
"Okay."
For a few minutes the room was silent. Draycos lay down on the deck in the middle of the room, facing the door like a guard dog on duty. The dragon's golden scales glinted faintly in the light from the display, shimmering whenever he moved. Jack gazed at the shadowy figure, still trying to wrap his mind around all this.
"So how long were you two together?" he asked suddenly.
The long neck lifted and half turned toward him. "Pardon?"
"You and your—what did you call him?"
"My symbiont?"
"Yeah, that. How long were you together?"
The gold-scaled tail flicked slightly. "Polphir and I were companions for ten of your years," the dragon said.
Jack frowned. "Is that Earth years, or something else?"
"It is the unit we were told was your time basis," Draycos said. "Is there more than one form of the unit?"
"No, if they just said years, they meant Earth Standard," Jack confirmed. "You just seem older than that, somehow."
"I am," Draycos said. "Polphir was my second host. I had been with another, named Trachan, for fifteen years before that. And of course I had a guardian host during the five years I was a cub."
"Ah," Jack said. So the K'da was somewhere around thirty. That seemed more reasonable. He wondered if that was considered young or old for their species. "So what happened to Trachan? You two just split up?"
"Shontine and K'da do not 'split up,' " Draycos said stiffly. "He was killed in battle with the Valahgua."
"Oh," Jack said, grimacing. "Sorry. I didn't mean to . . . you know."
"It is all right," Draycos said quietly. "At least I was able to mourn him properly. With Polphir . . . a proper farewell is not yet possible."
"I'm sorry," Jack said again, feeling embarrassed and depressed at the same time. He'd started the conversation in hopes of learning a little more about this strange houseguest they'd picked up. Instead, all he'd accomplished was to dredge up unpleasant memories.
Served him right for starting a conversation in the middle of the night. "I guess I should let you sleep now, huh?" he added lamely.
"And you must be tired, as well," Draycos said.
"Yeah," Jack said. "Well . . . good night."
"Good night."
Taking a deep breath, Jack rolled over and adjusted the pillow beneath his head. There was a lot he still didn't know about these creatures, and a lot he still needed to know. But there would be time for that.
Anyway, the important point was that the dragon had been fed, he'd been talked to, and it seemed safe to be around him. That was enough for now.
Eventually, of course, things would probably get trickier. Things usually did. But as Uncle Virgil had been fond of saying, t
hat was a worry for another day.
Later, when Draycos returned to his back, he didn't even wake up.
CHAPTER 9
It was early evening, local time, when the Essenay put down at the main Vagran Colony cargo spaceport.
Or, rather, when the light freighter Donkey's Age put down there. Rather than risk bringing the police or Braxton Security down on their heads right from square one, Jack had decided to use a fake ship ident. It was one of a set of four fakes that Uncle Virgil had bought the same time he'd installed the chameleon hull-wrap.
He used a fake ID for himself, too, and got through customs without raising any alarms. A few minutes later he was walking along the high-ceilinged tube that led inward toward the central terminal building. "You're being very quiet," he commented as he walked. "Do I take it a K'da warrior would never do anything so dishonorable as sneaking in under a phony name?"
"The warrior code recognizes that camouflage is often necessary," Draycos said from his right shoulder.
"But you still don't like it."
Draycos hesitated, just enough. "I am still learning the ways of your society," he said.
"In other words, you don't like it," Jack concluded, wondering vaguely why he was even arguing the point. Certainly Draycos didn't want to argue it. Was he actually trying to push the dragon into telling him he'd done something wrong?
If he was, he was wasting his time. "This place is not as I expected," Draycos said, again ducking the question. "Why are there no other beings here? I understood this to be the chief cargo area for this world."
"Doesn't say much for the world, does it?" Jack agreed, giving up the argument. The tube they were walking along was dirty, as if it hadn't been cleaned or even swept in weeks. Embedded in the graytop beneath their feet, the cargo-carrier monorail tracks looked a little rusty, as if they hadn't been used in years. "And I've been to worse places than this, too."
"Yet an important corporation like Braxton Universis had an assembly plant here?"
"Cheap labor, probably," Jack said. "Humans and lots of different aliens, too. There's also tons of raw materials out beyond the settlements. The place hasn't been developed very much."
"They are unfair to their workers?"
"No idea, really," Jack said. "Anyway, the tubes Braxton used are in much better condition. This place is laid out like a lopsided starburst. There's a big three-story warehouse and terminal building in the middle, with all these tubes leading off to the different landing pads. You bring stuff into the warehouse by rail, pass it through customs if you have to, then rail it out these tubes to the ships."
He pointed ahead. "The tube and landing pad I used with the Braxton cargo is on the far side of the warehouse."
"Should you not have landed us closer to it?"
Jack came to an abrupt halt. "Look, pal, if I had enough money to swim in I wouldn't be in this trouble in the first place," he growled. "You've already cost me a lot of fuel burning ECHO to this place. Now you want me to pop for the expensive landing pads, too?"
"My apologies," Draycos said. "I did not realize there would be extra cost involved."
"There's always extra cost involved," Jack muttered, starting up again. "Be happy I even got us a pad at the same spaceport."
They continued on in silence, the clunk of Jack's boots on the graytop the only noise. Ahead, the tube widened as it entered the main warehouse building. Jack went in, his footsteps echoing softly now from the distant walls and high ceilings. The middle part of the floor was marked off into different-sized rectangles, with walkways wide enough for loading-carts running between them.
A few of the rectangles were empty, but most were piled with stacks of shipping crates of various sizes and colors. The narrow and rather crooked walkways between the piles made quite a maze. Twenty feet up, catwalks and cranes formed their own maze, some of the walkways connecting with small offices that lined the walls of the second floor. One or two of the office doors were showing lights, but most of the spaceport's staff seemed to have quit for the day. The overhead lights were set at nighttime levels, giving the whole place a rather gloomy air.
The simplest route to the tube they wanted, he knew, would be around the edge of the warehouse. But going that way would mean a longer walk, and Jack was already feeling jumpy about being here. Navigating the maze of boxes would be quicker, and would offer the extra bonus of keeping him out of sight. Picking out a gap between two sets of greenish-brown boxes, he headed toward it.
"Is it always this quiet?" Draycos asked.
"In case you hadn't noticed, it's evening out there," Jack reminded him. "Vagran ports usually aren't busy enough to need a late shift."
He glanced around. No one was visible, but there could easily be groups of workers out of sight in the maze of stacks. "And keep your voice down," he added. "Bad enough to look like I'm talking to myself. I don't want to look like I'm answering back, too."
"I will be more careful," Draycos promised, lowering his voice to a level where Jack could barely hear it himself. "What exactly was the cargo that vanished?"
Away to their left, near the entrance to one of the other tubes, a group of chattering Jantris in maintenance coveralls appeared. "The invoice called it a molecular stress-gauge some-thing-or-other," Jack said, picking up his pace a little and keeping a wary eye on the Jantris. That particular species loved to talk, especially to strangers, and the last thing he wanted was to get trapped into some rambling conversation with them.
The concern turned out to be unnecessary. The Jantris went to the next tunnel around the edge and disappeared down it, still chattering among themselves. Taking one last look around, Jack stepped between the greenish-brown stacks and headed into the maze. "And you saw this device?" Draycos asked.
"Of course not," Jack said impatiently. "I already told you the boxes were sealed. But there was something in there. And that something was gone when I got to Cordolane."
"Did the police have any thoughts?"
"If you think I waited around to hear what the cops had to say, you're nuts," Jack said darkly. "I just unloaded the boxes where they'd told me to put them and took off."
"That may have been foolish," Draycos pointed out. "Running creates the appearance of guilt."
Jack snorted. "What kind of appearance does standing there like an idiot with an empty cargo box create?"
"Perhaps you do not understand my question," Draycos persisted.
"You're the one who doesn't understand," Jack retorted. He took a deep breath. "Look. Our law says a person is innocent until proven guilty. Doesn't mean a thing. Uncle Virgil is on their books as a thief, and I fly with Uncle Virgil. They smell even a hint of trouble near me, and they won't stop to wonder if there might be some other explanation. You think I'd be able to prove my innocence from jail?"
"But you told me you have changed your life."
"Sure I have," Jack said bitterly. "But who knows that? No one, that's who. You may not realize this, noble K'da poet-warrior that you are, but it's a lot easier to hang onto a good reputation than it is to tear down a bad one and start over from scratch."
"Perhaps I can assist you with that process," Draycos said.
"Yeah, thanks," Jack said. "I'll settle for you helping me out of this particular mess."
"I will do my best." Draycos's head lifted slightly from the skin of Jack's shoulder, his eye ridges and spiny crest pushing up against the shirt and leather jacket. His tongue flicked out twice. "As to smelling trouble, what is that odor?"
Jack inhaled slowly. There was something in the air, all right. Faint, but tart and vaguely disgusting. "I don't know," he said, sniffing again. "Doesn't smell like any normal spaceport stuff."
"No," Draycos agreed, his tongue darting out again. "It smells like something dead."
Jack hissed softly between his teeth as the smell suddenly clicked. "You're right," he said. "It's dead meat. Freshly dead meat, in fact."
And where there was freshly dead meat . . . "Let'
s get out of here," he muttered, throwing a quick look around as he broke into a jog.
"Is there danger?" Draycos asked, his head rising up farther out of Jack's shoulder.
"Stay down, will you?" Jack growled as he drew his tangler. The extra weight whenever Draycos went three-dimensional always threw him off balance. "Yeah, there's danger. Dead meat means scavengers. Fresh dead meat means scavengers who don't mind killing." He reached the edge of a stack of crates and carefully looked around it.
There they were: at least a dozen cat-sized animals with dirty black-and-white speckled fur, ratlike faces, and wicked-looking teeth and claws. Most of them were gathered around an unidentifiable carcass, still chewing away. Others squatted a little ways off, busily grooming themselves after their meal.
The carcass, he noticed with a sick feeling in his stomach, was wearing the remains of a maintenance coverall.
"Heenas," he whispered to Draycos. He backed carefully away from the corner, feeling sweat gathering on his forehead.
There was a sudden weight on his shoulder. He glanced around to find Draycos's head rising up from his back, twisted to look behind them. "Draycos—"
"Behind you!" the dragon snapped.
Jack spun around, the tangler swinging around with him.
Ten feet away, moving silently toward him like miniature lions stalking their prey, were eight more heenas. Their yellow eyes looked impossibly bright in the dim light. Their fur stuck straight out from their bodies, making them look even bigger than they already were. The three in front were already crouching, ready to spring.
Lowering his aim, Jack fired.
The tangler cartridge caught two of the front three heenas in its milky-white threads. The third was too fast, managing to jump sideways out of range. The two trapped animals squealed as the tangler's shock capacitor sparked, putting them out of the fight.
The other heenas, without any sound or reaction, continued toward him.
Jack backed up to the stack of crates, his heart pounding in his ears as he did the math. There were six heenas in front of him, plus the dozen he'd already spotted just around the corner. That made eighteen, plus any more that might be skulking around somewhere else.