Dragonback 01 Dragon and Thief (6 page)

Draycos was already in motion, bounding over to the fallen
mercenary and giving him a quick examination. "An interesting weapon,"
he commented, turning back to Jack. "We had best get moving."

It took Jack two tries to find his voice. "Right," he managed.
"That was . . . was that you?"

"A K'da battle cry," Draycos said, flipping the tangler to Jack.
"It seemed a reasonable diversion. Are you ready?"

"I'm three blocks past ready," Jack said, dropping the weapon back
into its holster.

"Pardon?"

"Skip it," Jack said. "The ladder?"

"Yes," Draycos confirmed, turning his glittering green eyes upward
toward the bubble. "When I say." Crouching down, he leaped.

Jack followed him with his eyes, feeling his mouth drop open.
Twenty feet straight up, and the dragon made it with a foot or two to
spare. Twisting around, catlike, on the narrow landing, he got his
front paws firmly wrapped around the upper part of the ladder. "Now;
come," he said.

"Hang on," Jack said, kneeling down beside the unconscious Brummga
as a sudden thought struck him.

"What are you doing?" Draycos demanded.

"Trying to get this thing out," Jack told him, digging into the
tangler webbing over the long holstered wand lying along the
mercenary's left leg.

"An unknown weapon is dangerous to use," Draycos warned.

"You mean like my tangler?" Jack retorted. "You seemed to handle
that just fine."

"I am a K'da warrior," Draycos said stiffly. "The understanding
and use of weapons is my profession."

"You're still lucky I hadn't put the safety catch back on," Jack
grunted. "Don't worry, a slapstick's the easiest thing in the world to
use. You press the button at your end and touch the other guy with the
other end, and he won't be bothering you for a couple of hours. Rats."

"What?"

"It's buried too deep under the webbing," Jack said, standing up
again. "Never mind. Here I come."

Even with the dragon bracing the top, the ladder felt pretty
shaky. He didn't want to think what it would have been like without the
extra support.

But the ladder held, and so did the one to the upper control area.
The lower section of the dome wasn't as badly crunched as it had looked
from below, but there were several gaps big enough for them to get
through. A minute later, they were standing outside on the top of the
ship.

"Where is your spacecraft?" Draycos asked.

"Way back there," Jack said, pointing toward the forested areas to
the right. "There's a crack in the hull about fifty yards back where I
came in."

"Good," Draycos said. "Quickly, then."

They headed off. The damage wasn't as bad up here as it had been
along the sides of the hull, Jack noted, but the handful of trees
lining both sides more than made up for it. Most of them had been
smashed into toothpicks as the ship plowed through the area, and those
that remained standing had been knocked about at crazy angles. Mostly
they were leaning away from the ship, but a few were actually leaning
toward it.

Everything within sight, trees and ground alike, had been scorched
and blackened by the heat of the crash. They were probably lucky the
crash hadn't sparked a forest fire.

From the direction of the wrecked bubble behind them came the
faint sound of crunching metal. Jack spun around, tangler in hand, but
no one was visible. "You think the ladder went down?" he hazarded.

"With some assistance, yes," Draycos agreed. "I believe the
pursuit has begun. Come; over here."

He veered suddenly toward the edge, aiming toward a tree that was
leaning inward. "Wait a second," Jack said, frowning, as he turned to
follow. "The
Essenay
's still further back."

"If we remain here, they will have a very limited search area,"
Draycos explained over his shoulder. "On the ground our chances of
eluding them are greater."

"Yeah, but it's forty feet to the ground," Jack objected. "There
was a ladder built into the hull near where I came in—let's use that."

"All ladders will be watched," Draycos said. "This they may not
expect."

"Right," Jack muttered, throwing a dubious look at the tree they
were making for. Leaning toward the ship, yes, but at its closest it
was still a good ten feet away. "I suppose it's too late to mention
that my species doesn't jump nearly as well as yours does."

"Do not worry," Draycos said, trotting to a halt beside the tree
at the point where the hull started its downward curve. This time he
didn't even bother to crouch, but just jumped from a standing start
over to the tree.

For a second he hung there, all four feet clinging to the tree
with claws Jack hadn't noticed before. Then, turning his head, he
peered back toward Jack. "Leap when I say," he said. "Ready—"

With a convulsive jerk, the dragon pushed away with his hind legs
and arched his whole body backwards, like a reversed vid of how he'd
landed on the tree in the first place. The arching continued until he
was stretched straight back toward Jack. His tail uncurled and
stiffened—"Leap," Draycos ordered.

If Jack had stopped to think, he never would have done it. To jump
to the tail of an unknown alien as it hung from a fire-damaged tree was
an amazingly stupid thing to do.

But all he could think about at the moment was the tangled Brummga
and his buddies. He jumped as ordered, caught the gold-scaled tail, and
a second later slammed against the blackened tree trunk as the dragon
collapsed back to vertical again.

"Can you climb down from here?" Draycos asked.

"Sure," Jack said, breathing hard as he shifted his grip from the
dragon's slippery tail to the tree itself. He hadn't managed to get his
feet up in front of him in time, and the impact had knocked a fair
amount of the wind out of him. Fortunately, his jacket had protected
him from the worst of the scrapes he might otherwise have collected.
Taking a couple of deep breaths to steady himself, he started down.

Most of the branches had been splintered or knocked off by the
ship's crash, but there were enough limb stumps still sticking out to
provide hand and footholds. Draycos, having swiveled around on the tree
until he was facedown like a squirrel, passed him going down the
opposite side of the trunk.

Two minutes later, they were on the ground. "Where now?" Draycos
asked.

Jack looked around, orienting himself as he brushed the worst of
the soot off his hands. "This way," he told the dragon, angling off
through the scorch zone. "There's a small clearing we were able to put
down in, just past that ridge over there. Uncle Virge?"

"The ship's ready," Uncle Virge's voice came from his comm clip.
"Better hurry. If the amount of ground-radio traffic is anything to go
by, they're starting to heat up the search for you."

Jack nodded grimly. Terrific. "Right," he said. "Here we come."

The ridge Jack was headed for was yet another result of the crash:
a mound of smoking dirt that had been thrown up by the big ship as it
plowed across the ground. Most of the smaller trees in this zone had
been knocked over as the dirt swept past, but there were enough of the
larger ones sticking out at all angles to make navigation hazardous.
Earlier, on his way toward the wreck, Jack had nearly run into at least
three of them in the dense smoke, and he'd been able to feel the
burning heat of the dirt itself right through his boots.

Now, as they angled toward the ridge going the other direction, it
didn't look a whole lot more inviting. What Draycos and his bare paws
were going to think of it he didn't know.

It didn't take long for him to find out. Only a few steps into the
smoke Draycos, who had been in the lead, paused and let Jack catch up.
A silent leap, a brief weight on Jack's chest which quickly vanished,
and Jack was slogging his way through the crumbly dirt alone.

He continued on, fighting hard not to cough as he waded through
the smoke, feeling more than a little annoyed. The least the dragon
could have done, he grumbled to himself, would have been to ask
permission before climbing aboard.

He had gone perhaps ten paces more, and was passing a particularly
large tree trunk that had managed to stay mostly vertical, when a pair
of arms reached out from behind the tree and wrapped themselves solidly
around his chest. "Gotcha!" a deep human voice said.

"Ye-
owp
!" Jack gasped, trying to pull away. A
human
voice? "Hey!"

The man responded by lifting him completely clear of the ground.
"Oh, no you don't," he growled. "Settle down or I'll break your ribs."

"No, no, let me go," Jack pleaded, still fighting against the grip
as he flailed his legs around helplessly. It was no use; the man was as
strong as an ox. "Help! Mommy!"

"Oh, shut up," the man snarled contemptuously. He shifted grip
slightly, and there was a soft click from somewhere behind Jack's ear.
"Base, this is Dumbarton. I've got him."

"Do you need assistance?" a fainter voice demanded. Jack
stiffened, a chill running through him despite the sweltering heat of
the ridge. Earlier, he had thought of Draycos's voice as being
snakelike, which made sense now that he knew the dragon's reptilian
nature.

But for absolute snakelike quality, this new voice beat Draycos
hands down. It was human, but as cold and heartless and just plain
nasty a voice as Jack had ever heard.

Considering some of the people he and Uncle Virgil had kept
company with over the years, that was saying a lot.

"Negative, sir," Dumbarton said. His tone was suddenly respectful,
and Jack had the odd sense that this wasn't who he'd expected to answer
the comm clip. "Like the Brummy said, he's just a kid, maybe twelve or
thirteen. I can handle him."

"He was alone?"

"Yes, sir," Dumbarton said.

"Very well," the evil voice said. "Bring him here. The rest of
you, spread out and continue the search. I want his ship, or his house,
or wherever it is he came from.
And
I want everyone who's still
there."

There was a series of faint acknowledgments. "Okay, kid, let's
go," Dumbarton said, swinging Jack around toward the wrecked ship. As
he did so, Jack felt a brief tug of extra weight down by his left hip.
"You want to walk on your own, or—?"

He never finished the question. From behind Jack came the faint
crackle of an electrical discharge; and without warning, Dumbarton's
grip loosened, and Jack found himself dropping through the encircling
arms to land flat on his rear in the blazing hot dirt.

Stifling a yelp, he scrambled to his feet, legs and rear end
feeling flash-toasted even through his jeans. Dumbarton was sprawled on
his back, his eyes shut, his mouth hanging half open. Beside him on the
ground, humming softly as it automatically recharged itself, lay his
slapstick.

"About time," Jack muttered, wincing as he brushed the bits of
dirt off his rear.

There was a sudden burst of gold in front of his face, and Draycos
leaped into view, landing on the ground beside the fallen man. A quick
slash of his claws, and the comm clip on the man's shoulder went
spinning away into the smoke. "I apologize for the delay," the dragon
said. "I had hoped that with your capture they would call off the
search. That would have given us more time."

"No, they want the complete package," Jack said. Still, for a
lizard, this Draycos was pretty smart. "Let's not wait till they figure
out that they don't even have me," he added, pulling open his jacket
and shirt and offering Draycos his chest. "Get aboard and let's go."

To his surprise, Draycos stepped instead behind Dumbarton and
began digging with his front paws into the hot dirt beneath the man's
shoulders. "First help me move him to this tree," the dragon said.

Jack blinked. "Why?"

"Because he might otherwise burn to death," Draycos explained. He
had a grip on the man's shoulders now and was straining to lift him up.
"At the very least, his hands and neck will be severely burned."

"I thought he killed your people," Jack protested. "What do you
care if he dies or not?"

"I am a warrior of the K'da," Draycos said firmly as he started to
drag the man back toward the nearest tree trunk. "We kill only when
necessary, and in battle. We do not slaughter helpless enemies."

"He was sure going to help them kill
us
, you know," Jack
reminded him.

"Will you help me, or not?"

Jack shook his head in disgust. "I don't believe this," he said
under his breath. But he stepped to Draycos's side and took one of the
man's arms. A minute later they had him propped up against the tree,
his head sagging onto his chest, his hands lying in his lap out of the
dirt. "There," Jack said, stepping back. "Happy?"

"It will do," Draycos said. Brushing the dirt off his front paws,
he leaped up at Jack and flattened himself out around his torso again.
"Now: to your ship."

"Assuming there's still a ship to go to," Jack muttered, slapping
his hands against sudden hot spots on his chest and stomach. His first
thought was that the heat was coming from Draycos himself, but he saw
now that it was merely bits of dirt that had been clinging to Draycos's
back paws, dirt that had been left behind when the dragon went
two-dimensional.

This whole thing, he decided, was definitely going to take some
getting used to.

"Will your companion not defend it?" Draycos asked from his now
customary headrest on Jack's right shoulder.

"Not very well," Jack told him. "Just keep your fingernails
crossed."

"Pardon?"

"Skip it," Jack said, scooping up Dumbarton's slapstick and
stuffing it through the back of his belt where it would be handy if he
needed it. Or, more likely, if Draycos needed it. "Come on."

They reached the top of the ridge without seeing or hearing anyone
else and started down. Here, outside the crash zone, the forest was
alive with color, bright reds and yellows splashed against more subdued
blues and blue-greens. Spindly bushes shared space with the
thick-trunked trees, along with the curly-fry grass that seemed to grow
everywhere on this part of Iota Klestis. Here and there Jack caught a
glimpse of a bird or large insect flying about on its own business.