Dragonback 06 Dragon and Liberator (20 page)

It wasn't anything obvious or big. Rather, it was a combination of
small things. The ship seemed to go oddly quiet, as if dozens of casual
conversations had been broken off or reduced to whispers. The
background rumble of thudding Brummgan feet likewise softened, as if
the big aliens had suddenly found reasons to stand still.

And as the background noises faded, they were replaced by a sense
of watchful foreboding.

The enemy was on to them.

I think we've worn out our welcome, buddy
, Jack warned as
he continued down the corridor.

I know
, Draycos agreed.
We'd better get to cover
.

Jack chewed at the inside of his cheek as he kept walking.
According to Draycos's directions, the weapons bay should be right
around the next corner.
How far is your bolt-hole from the weapons
bay
?

Not far
, Draycos said.
In fact, there should be an
access point from the bay's interior
.

So if we can get in, we can wreck the Death weapon
and
go
straight down the rabbit hole
?

Theoretically, yes. But that would require us to get past
whatever defenses they've now organized around the Death. I don't think
we can take the risk
,

I don't know
, Jack said thoughtfully.
Unless Langston
changed his mind and turned us in, they have to still be thinking it's
Chiggers going around doing God only knows what. We ought to be able to
keep them thinking that way at least long enough to get through the
next set of guards
.

If that
is
their assumption
, Draycos warned.
If
not, even now they'll be setting a trap for us
.

I'm sure they are
, Jack agreed.
But even laying a trap
implies they don't realize who we are. If they knew they had a K'da
poet-warrior aboard, there should be alarms going off all over the
place right now. Followed by massive quantities of gunfire
.

Assume for the moment that you're right
, Draycos said.
What
would be our plan
?

Assuming I'm right, we should still have one surprise attack's
worth of slack left
, Jack said. Reaching into his side pocket, he
slipped Harper's two-shot tangler into his palm.
I'm thinking we
march straight up to the guards like we own the place, hit them with
Harper's tangler, then go in and wreck the Death weapon. Then we do a
quick fade into the woodwork and work on our new strategy
.

Very well, we'll try it
, Draycos said thoughtfully.
But
save the tangler for future use. When we reach the Brummgas, just get
me as close to them as you can
.

Okay
, Jack said doubtfully.
You sure we want to reveal
you this soon
?

Trust me
, Draycos said.
Just get me close. And let your
arms hang as limp as you can
.

Jack frowned. As
limp
as he could?

But there was no time to ask about it. He turned the corner and
found himself once again facing a door and a pair of armed Brummgas. He
didn't break stride but continued confidently toward them.

The aliens were trying hard to look casual, and they were doing a
rotten job of it. Their postures were stiff, their studiously
unconcerned faces included masses of tense muscles in throat and jaws,
and their hands hovered way too close to their holsters.

But at least they hadn't drawn the second Jack appeared around the
corner. It was looking like his take on the situation had been right.
As
close to them as I can get, right
?

Yes. If possible, get between them
.

"What do you wish?" one of the Brummgas asked, his voice as
pretend casual as his face.

"I need to take a look at the big gun," Jack said. Staying with
his last script ought to make everyone think he didn't suspect they
were on to him. That should persuade them to give him a little more
rope to play with. "The Lordover wanted me to run a quick check on it."

"Very well," the Brummga said. Unlike the last time, Jack noted,
neither of the aliens made any move toward the door release. "Come,"
the Brummga added, gesturing Jack forward.

Obediently, Jack stepped toward them. As he did so, one of the
Brummgas unglued himself from the deck and started forward.
Careful
,
Draycos warned.
He's going to try to intercept you, with the other
staying out of reach as backup
.

I'm on it
. Waiting until the Brummga was nearly to him.
Jack half-turned as if he'd heard something behind him. As he did so,
he gave a little sidestep, just enough to sidle him smoothly past the
approaching Brummga. Jack turned back, doing the same step in reverse,
and landed squarely between the two aliens.
Time you go, buddy
.

Arms limp
, Draycos reminded him. The Brummga already in
motion braked to a halt and reversed direction. Both aliens were now
moving in on him. Jack felt a surge of weight on his chest and inner
arms as the K'da came partially off his skin, pressing out against his
flight suit.

And to Jack's astonishment, his arms abruptly swung upward of
their own accord, his hands jabbing straight toward the Brummgas'
throats.

There was no time for him to even begin curling his hands into
fists. But there was no need. As it had been Draycos's forelegs that
had swung Jack's arms upward in the first place, it was also his paws
that lifted just far enough off of Jack's palms to slam with
devastating force against the Brummgas' throats.

The two aliens dropped like stunned moose, slamming to the deck
with a double thud the whole ship must have felt.
Quick—inside
,
Draycos urged as he melted back onto Jack's skin.

Jack jumped over the prone Brummga blocking his way and hit the
door release. The door slid open, and he sprinted inside.

To find himself facing three more Brummgas.

They were standing between him and the Death weapon, their mouths
widening with surprise even as their eyes began to narrow with anger.

Uh-oh
, Jack thought toward Draycos, the momentum of his
forward rush faltering. The Brummgas reached for the guns belted at
their sides—

With a flash of black-tinged golden scales, Draycos shot out of
Jack's collar, his rear paws shoving hard against the boy's chest as he
arrowed straight for the Brummgas. There was a blur of paws and tail,
and all three Brummgas went down.

"I'm guessing we're finished with the subtle approach?" Jack
suggested, rubbing his chest where the K'da's paws had shoved against
the skin.

"There was no other way," Draycos said, turning to the Death
weapon. "You eliminate the cameras. I'll deal with this."

"Right." Jack leaned down to one of the unconscious Brummgas and
pulled out his gun. A single three-shot burst from the weapon shredded
the camera over the door. He turned to the one in the corner of the
room, waved cheerily at it, and shot it out, too. "Now what?" he asked,
tossing the weapon aside and looking back at Draycos.

The subtle approach was definitely over. Half of the Death weapon
was already scattered across the deck in mangled pieces. Draycos was
still working on the other half, quickly but methodically shredding it
with his claws. "There," the K'da said, flicking his tail toward the
hull-side bulkhead.

Jack frowned. Then he spotted it: a narrow, rectangular section of
wall that was a slightly different color from the plates around it. It
was small, extending vertically only from his eyes to his knees, its
width slightly less than that of his shoulders. "What do I do?" he
asked as he stepped over to it.

"Push at the top and bottom and slide it to your left."

Jack gave it a try. The panel resisted his first attempt. He tried
again, pressing harder. This time it gave way and obediently slid away
to the left, revealing a narrow passageway. "Got it," he called, easing
his head into the opening. It was hard to tell in the faint light
leaking in from their room, but the passageway seemed to go a
considerable distance in both directions, bending visibly to the right
as it followed the curve of the hull.

The floor wasn't solid but was made of a thin, fragile-looking
meshwork, with a lot more of the narrow passageway directly below it.
If the passageway had a ceiling, he couldn't see it in the dim light.

"Inside," Draycos said, loping over from what was left of the
Death. He reached Jack's side and turned to face the door, crouched
ready to leap. "Hurry—I can feel footsteps approaching."

Ducking his head, Jack turned sideways and got one leg through the
opening, easing his weight onto the meshwork. To his relief, it was
stronger than it looked. He got his other leg in and held out his arm.
"Ready," he said.

Still watching the door, Draycos flipped his tail onto Jack's hand
and slithered backward onto his arm.
That was different
, Jack
commented. The panel, he saw, had a pair of handles on the inside.
Gripping them, he gave the panel another sideways shove. It slid back
into position and closed, cutting off the light from the room and
leaving Jack in pitch-darkness.

Just in time. Pressing his ear to the panel, he heard the faint
sound of the room door opening, followed by the much louder noise of
thudding Brummgan feet.

Hold still
, Draycos ordered. His head and part of his upper
body rose from Jack's shoulder, the passageway picking up a faint green
glow as the K'da's eyes rose from the concealment of Jack's flight
suit. Draycos reached up with a paw and with two quick slashes cut off
a section of bar running along the inner side of the passageway.
Brace
it against the entrance
, he instructed, passing it down to Jack's
hand. He sank back onto the boy's skin, leaving only his eyes and the
top of his head still three-dimensional.

Silently, Jack moved the bar into place, wedging it between the
movable panel and the rear of the passageway. Draycos had cut the bar
perfectly, he noted, even to the point of angling the ends slightly so
that it would lie flat against both sides.
Got it
, he said.
Where
now
?

To your left, toward the bow
, Draycos instructed.
The
hull curves inward more strongly in that direction
.

Do we care how strongly the hull curves? Jack
asked as he
set off. The corridor was just a little wider than his shoulders,
allowing him to walk straight instead of having to sidle.

The Brummgas and Valahgua are too big to fit in here
,
Draycos said.
But they can still reach in and shoot
.

Jack swallowed.
Oh
.

Ahead, the light from Draycos's eyes showed their path blocked by
a fat metallic cylinder decorated with a pattern of angled stripes and
spots. It was nearly three feet high and filled the corridor's entire
width. Between the sections of stripes and spots Jack could see
multiple holes dotting its surface.
What
is
this place,
anyway
? he asked as he got one leg up over the top of the cylinder.

It's called the tween gap, a space between the inner and outer
hulls
, Draycos explained.
In an emergency—either serious combat
or an imminent crash situation—the gap can be flooded with a material
called
ghikada.
It comes out as a vaporized fluid, solidifying
quickly and filling the gap
.

We have something like that
, Jack said, nodding as he
shifted his weight onto the cylinder. It was like riding a short but
very fat horse.
It's called crash foam. It's designed to absorb
some of the impact in an accident
.

This is somewhat different
, Draycos said.
Solid
ghikada
is stronger even than hull metal. Its function is not to
absorb damage but to provide an extra shell of protection around most
areas of the ship. It was the reason the
Havenseeker
survived
its crash landing on Iota Klestis as well as it did
.

Handy stuff
, Jack said as he dismounted off the far side of
the cylinder.
How come you wait to the last minute before using it?
Why not keep the tween gap filled all the time
?

Because
ghikada
is strong but unstable
, Draycos
said.
It holds its full strength for only about two hours. After
that it begins to soften, and after a few more hours it has melted
completely into a liquid form
.

From somewhere behind them came the metallic sound of something
hammering against the inner hull wall.
Sounds like they've figured
out where we've gone
, Jack said.
You say this tween gap goes
everywhere in the ship
?

Everywhere except the weapons bays themselves and the three
navigational bubbles
, Draycos said.
Those areas need to be open
to the outer hull in order to function
.

In other words, those sections of the tween gap would be dead
ends.
We should probably avoid those places
, Jack said.
Getting
trapped with your back to a wall is generally considered bad form
.

Don't worry; I have an entirely different refuge in mind
,
Draycos assured him.
We'll need to go up a level to reach it
.

Jack looked at the sheer walls beside him.
How do we do that
?

Just past the next
ghikada
cylinder will be a vertical
section of mesh I'll be able to climb
.

They reached the mesh a few minutes later. Draycos came off Jack's
back, and with Jack gripping his tail he began to climb.

By now the hammering behind them had stopped, but Jack thought he
could hear the hiss of a cutting torch. Apparently, the Brummgas and
Valahgua had given up trying to get the door open and had decided on
the more direct approach.