Dragonback 05 Dragon and Judge (23 page)

"At least we're not in a quick slaughter." Jack filled his lungs
with dusty air. "Hey, Bolo," he called. "How's it going?"

"It's going okay," Bolo's voice came back. "You got a good arm
there, boy."

"Thanks," Jack said. "You
do
realize, don't you, that
killing a Judge-Paladin is a death-sentence offense?"

"What,
you
?" the other said contemptuously. "Don't make me
laugh."

"I didn't mean me," Jack corrected. "I was talking about my
parents. You know—Stuart and Ariel?"

For a moment Bolo didn't speak. "I'll be frunged," he said at
last, his tone oddly changed. "You're the
Palmers
' kid?"

"That's right," Jack said, a shiver running through him. Palmer.
So that was his real last name. "I take it you're the one who murdered
them?"

"Hey, I offered them a chance to be smart," Bolo said. The
strangeness in his voice was gone, and he was all business again. "Just
like I did for you a minute ago. They didn't take me up on it, either."

"I guess it runs in the family," Jack gritted out, forcing back a
sudden flood of rage. He couldn't afford to let his emotions color his
thinking. Not now. "Maybe you should have put it as a percentage of the
mine. Is there really enough stuff in here to take that kind of risk?"

"I have no idea," Bolo said. "But it must have been worth it to
someone
in the Triost boardroom. Or maybe to one of the bidders. No one told
me, and I didn't ask."

Jack frowned. "What bidders?"

"The companies trying to buy us up," Bolo said. "I suppose you
want to know which one won?"

"Unless you want to let me out for a couple of hours to do my own
research."

Bolo gave a low chuckle. "Sorry. Maybe you should just wait and
ask your parents. You'll be joining them soon enough."

A painful knot formed in the pit of Jack's stomach. "Maybe; maybe
not," he said as calmly as he could. "I figure you'll run out of
bullets before I run out of rocks. And don't forget the Golvins know
where I am."

Bolo snorted. "I wouldn't count on them if I were you."

"Why not?" Jack asked. "Do they understand bribes better than I
do?"

"They understand fear," Bolo said darkly. "I made it very clear to
them the last time what would happen if they told anyone what had
happened, or came anywhere near this mine, or made any other sort of
trouble."

"I take it I fit into that third category?" Jack suggested.

"You don't even rank that high," Bolo said. "You're just a little
follow-up work I should have taken care of eleven years ago. If you
don't mind my asking, how exactly did I miss you?"

"I had help," Jack said. "I suppose fear's a good enough
motivator. But you really should have spread it around a little more
instead of just threatening the leaders. And Foeinatw, too, of course."

"Who?"

"Four-Eight-Naught-Two," Jack said. "The one who called a couple
of weeks ago and told you I was here."

"Oh, right," Bolo said. "Him."

"Yes,
him
," Jack said, feeling a trickle of contempt. The
man couldn't even remember the names of the people he'd bribed or
bullied or threatened into helping him. "Too bad he wasn't the one
flying the day they ran into me at the spaceport."

"Yes, it was," Bolo agreed, his voice darkening. "Mostly too bad
for you."

"We'll see," Jack said. "Who ended up buying up Triost?"

"We back to that again?" Bolo said. "You're awfully nosy— you know
that?"

"What do you care?" Jack countered. "I'm already dead, right?"

"You're making a recording, aren't you?" Bolo asked. "Getting all
this nice confession on perm. You don't really think anything like
that's going to survive the morning, do you?"

"You'll find out at your trial," Jack said. "Who bought Triost?"

Bolo chuckled. "Good one, kid. At my trial. You've got
spirit—gotta give you that."

"Thanks," Jack said. "Who bought up Triost?"

"The rich get richer, kid," Bolo said. "First law of the universe.
Braxton Universis."

Jack caught his breath. Braxton Universis. The megacorporation
owned and operated by Cornelius Braxton.

The man whose life Jack and Draycos had saved only four months
ago. If he'd hired Bolo eleven years ago to murder Jack's parents . . .

"Well, it's been nice talking to you," Bolo went on. "But I've got
places to go and things to do. You got two choices here: come out of
hiding and make it quick and painless, or stay where you are and make
it a lot harder on yourself."

Jack frowned, trying to wrench his mind away from Braxton and
Braxton Universis. "Thanks, but I kind of like it here."

"That's good," Bolo said. " 'Cause this is where you're going to
spend what's left of your life. So long, kid."

From around the corner came the sound of running footsteps.
Draycos whipped his tail, hurling a stone blindly around the curve.

And suddenly the whole tunnel exploded in a flash of light and an
earsplitting thunderclap.

A massive shock wave caught Jack across the face and chest like a
full-body slap, hurling him backward down the tunnel.

But even as he dropped toward the rocky floor, he sensed Draycos
leaping past him. A fraction of a second later, he slammed into the
K'da as they both hit the floor. They rolled over a couple of times and
came to a halt.

"You all right?" Jack asked, wiping dust and grit off his face as
he scrambled to his feet. For a second his knees wobbled, and he had to
grab the slurry pipe for support.

The K'da said something, but Jack's ears were still ringing too
hard from the explosion to hear it. "What?" he asked. "No— come here."
Brushing at his shirt with one hand, he held out the other toward
Draycos.

Draycos put a paw on his hand and slithered up his sleeve onto his
back.
I am unhurt
, the K'da's reassurance came into Jack's
mind, bypassing his dazed hearing.
You
?

"I'm okay," Jack said, blinking a few times. The tunnel was filled
with dust that was only slowly starting to settle. "The guy's
consistent, anyway. He used a bomb on my parents, and now he tried to
use one on me."

Draycos's snout rose from Jack's shoulder and his tongue flicked
out twice.
I do not sense any airflow, Jack. We may be trapped in
here
.

Jack smiled tightly. "I'll bet that's what Bolo thinks, too. Let's
take a look."

His flashlight was a few feet farther down the tunnel, glowing
faintly through the pile of rock chips that had partially buried it.
Jack retrieved it, then backtracked to the site of the explosion.

Bolo had done a good job. The tunnel near the intersection was
completely blocked by a pile of shattered rock. "Probably a shaped
charge set against the ceiling," Draycos said as Jack played his light
over the top of the pile.

"Had it all ready to go, too," Jack agreed. "I wonder what he
would have done if I'd refused to come to the mine with him."

"Perhaps there would now be no Great Assembly Hall, either,"
Draycos said.

Jack grimaced. "Yeah." Taking a deep breath—and instantly
regretting it as the floating dust set off a coughing fit—he turned
around. "I guess we'd better get started."

"Will you need help?" Draycos asked.

"No, I can handle it," Jack assured him. "You stay here and keep
an ear out for any other tricks Bolo might have up his sleeve."

It took a few minutes for Jack to reach the end of the tunnel. It
took another minute for him to cut away the protective plastic from one
of the two diggers with his multitool. His one fear, that the diggers'
power cells would have drained over the past eleven years, proved
unfounded. A minute of trial and error as he figured out the controls,
and he and the machine were on their way back up the tunnel.

He arrived at the blockage to find Draycos digging carefully at
one edge of the rock pile. Beside the K'da, the slurry pipe against the
wall had been freshly sliced open. "All set," Jack announced. He
pointed at the pipe. "Getting bored?"

"I was concerned the air might fail before we finish," Draycos
explained. "Fortunately, the collapse doesn't seem to have damaged the
pipe."

"Good," Jack said, holding out a hand. "Come on aboard— there's
not enough room here for all of us."

A minute later Draycos was on his back, and Jack plowed his new
toy into the rock pile.

The job went surprisingly quickly, though as Jack thought about it
he realized that a machine designed to eat into a solid rock face would
have little trouble with what were basically just very large chunks of
gravel. The toothed roller on the front end dug into the pile, taking
in the rocks and sending them back into a set of grinders where they
were chewed up still further before being ejected out the machine's
back end.

Every couple of minutes the pile would shift, scattering the rocks
and sending more dust into the air. But the fresh breeze from the
slurry pipe helped blow it clear. Fifteen minutes into the task, Jack
could already see a gap at the top of the pile. Five minutes after
that, the pile was low enough that he could see the huge dome Bolo's
explosive had blasted in the ceiling.

And ten minutes after that, he was able to shut down the digger
and crawl carefully over what was left of the pile to freedom.

"I suppose the next question is what we do next," Jack muttered to
Draycos as he trudged back up the tunnel. "Bolo and his aircar will be
long gone by now, and from here to anywhere is going to be a really
long walk."

Why not go back to the canyon
?

Jack rolled his eyes. With their ears recovered from the blast
there was no longer any reason not to just talk to each other. Clearly,
Draycos was delighted with this new parlor game he'd learned and was
determined to practice it every chance he got.

Personally, Jack found it a lot harder and more distracting to
focus his thoughts that way. But he supposed the K'da was right. /
have
no problem with that
, he said, concentrating hard on forming each
word in his mind.
The problem's going to be getting someone's
attention from up on the rim. Unless you were thinking of climbing down
with me hanging on to your tail
.

He had a quick mental image of the K'da giving one of his
crack-jawed smiles.
I think that would be a bit more than the
Golvins are ready for just now
.

Ahead, Jack could see a faint glow as the beam from his flashlight
reflected off the white ceramic ceiling of the assembly area. They were
almost home.
So again, what do we do
? he asked.
Wait for
Thonsifi to start wondering what happened to me and get Eithon to fly
her up here
?

That is certainly a possibility
, Draycos said.
We may
need to spend the day here, but surely she will not allow the sun to
set without coming to see if you need assistance
.

I don't know
, Jack replied doubtfully.
Now that we know
why the One wasn't happy to see me in the first place, I don't think
he'd be all that heartbroken if I never came back
.

They had reached the end of the tunnel now. With a sense of
relief, Jack stepped into the big assembly room.

And without warning, a hand lanced out from just inside the room
and grabbed his shirt collar. Before he could do more than gasp, he was
yanked sideways off his feet, the arm shifting around to catch him
around the throat.

"Cute, kid," Bolo's voice grated in his ear. The arm tightened
around Jack's throat, and he felt the muzzle of a gun press up against
the back of his head. "Just tell me everything, huh? I'm already dead,
huh? Where was your friend hiding, the end of the tunnel?"

"I . . . don't know . . . what—" Jack tried to say, pulling at
Bolo's arm as he fought desperately to get air into his lungs.

"Save it," Bolo snarled, squeezing his arm even tighter. "This
slurry pipe here, the one you cut or broke open to get some fresh air?
It's really good at conducting sound, too."

Lifting Jack half off his feet by his neck, Bolo dragged him
around the corner to stand in front of the tunnel entrance. "You—down
in the mine!" he shouted. "I've got your friend. Come out or I'll blow
his head open."

There was no answer. Jack could feel Draycos moving around on his
skin, and could sense that the K'da was trying to talk to him.

But he couldn't understand. He couldn't feel or hear or
concentrate on anything except the arm choking the life out of him.
White sparkles were starting to dance across his vision, and he could
feel his knees starting to wobble as the strength drained out of his
legs. His hands, clutching uselessly at Bolo's arm, were going numb.

"You hear me?" Bolo's voice came distantly in his ears. "Come out!"

The jabbing pressure on the back of Jack's head disappeared. Out
of the corner of his eye he saw Bolo's other hand appear over his
shoulder, pointing his gun down the tunnel.

And suddenly Jack was shoved violently forward against Bolo's arm
as Draycos burst from the back of Jack's shirt between the two of them,
breaking Bolo's grip on Jack's throat.

Someone screamed, but whether it was Draycos or Bolo Jack couldn't
tell in his daze. He staggered forward away from the sudden clattering
noises behind him, one hand clutching his aching throat. The side of
the tunnel loomed ahead of him, and he barely got his other hand up in
time to keep himself from running face-first into the rough stone.

From behind him came a sudden loud thud, and then an equally
sudden silence. Still gasping in air, he turned himself around.

Draycos was crouched on the assembly room floor, his neck arched,
his jaws partially open. His glowing green eyes were on Bolo, sprawled
on the floor beneath him. Bolo's gun was also on the floor, lying in
the dust a couple of feet from the man's limp hand. "Uh-oh," Jack
murmured.