Dragonback 01 Dragon and Thief (19 page)

Jack had been wrong about one thing: there was not, in fact,
enough room in there for anyone to dance. Both walls were lined with
locked deposit boxes of various sizes, with only a narrow walkway down
the middle. "Let me see, now," the purser said, studying a pocket
computer he'd pulled from a belt pouch. "Box 48 is free. That one will
have plenty of room for your data tube. Unless you think your uncle may
want to add other items later in the voyage?"

"Oh," Jack said, frowning. "I hadn't thought of that."

He stepped into the vault, as if trying to get a closer look at
the boxes. They were, he noted with a small bit of relief, standard
coded-key types that he should be able to open with his multitool. That
part, at least, should be easy.

"Because I know he has some other nice things," he went on,
pressing his back tightly against one side of the vault as he pretended
to study the boxes on the other side. On his skin, he could feel
Draycos shift position as the dragon curled himself over the deposit
box doors and peered inside. "How big are these other boxes?"

"They're different sizes," the purser said. "The ones like 48 are
three by three by twenty . . ."

He began to rattle off his list of box sizes. Jack pretended to
listen, moving slowly down the line of boxes. Draycos was still
shifting position, but so far he hadn't given the signal.

The purser had finished his list by the time Jack made it to the
far end of the vault. "And how much are the different rental fees?" he
asked, waiting for Draycos to come out of his curve and get all the way
onto his back again.

He felt the dragon do so. Turning around, he pressed his back
against the other side of the vault.

"There's no cost for any of them," the purser said, a note of
puzzlement creeping into his voice. He was probably used to people
wanting to step into his vault. He probably
wasn't
used to
people wanting to make a vacation home out of the place.

Which meant that Jack had better wrap this up quick, before the
man's surprise turned into suspicion.

"Because there's that necklace he got for Aunt Louise," Jack said,
as if talking to himself. "And the antique humidor—that's pretty big. I
don't know if he's going to want to keep that in the cabin or not."

Draycos stirred one final time, and the tip of a claw delicately
touched Jack's ribs.

The dragon had found the cylinder.

"No," Jack said as if suddenly making up his mind. "No, number 48
should do just fine."

He turned around, stepping away from the boxes, and idly ran a
fingertip down the boxes he'd been leaning against. "I guess he can
always come and change to one of these bigger boxes if he needs to,
right?"

"Certainly," the purser said. "If you'll step out here, I'll code
a key for you."

Jack's finger touched Box 125; and as it did so, Draycos touched a
claw to his side again.

Bingo.

"Sure," Jack said, walking out of the vault. The purser went in
and slid a key into the lock of Box 48. He connected the key to a thin
wire leading to his pocket computer and started tapping buttons.

As he did so, Jack looked casually over at the inside of the vault
door. It was there, right where he'd seen it on nearly all the walk-in
vaults he'd watched Uncle Virgil crack. Most Orion Arm safety
regulators considered it prudent, most safe-crackers considered it
stupid, and most vault owners never considered it at all.

A small red lever labeled
Emergency Door Release
, and a
set of glow-in-the-dark instructions on how to use it.

The purser finished his coding and stepped out of the vault. "Here
you go," he said, pulling the wire off the key and handing it to Jack.
"You can go ahead and put in your data tube now."

"Thank you." Jack took the key and went back into the vault. The
key hummed in the lock of Box 48 and popped it open, and he put the
data tube inside. He closed it, the key hummed again, and the box was
locked. "When do you close tonight?" he asked as he left the vault.

"We're open until midnight," the purser told him, pushing the
vault door shut. "We reopen at six in the morning."

"I'll tell my uncle that," Jack said, crossing to the counter and
waiting for the purser to open up that section for him again. The
purser did so; and from this side, Jack could see that there
was
a button down there that he had to push first. "Thank you."

"Good evening, young man."

Jack left the office and headed back in the direction of the
lounge. "You found the cylinder?" he asked, just to make sure. "Yes,"
Draycos said. "There were also several data tubes and a small box of
jewelry inside."

"Jewelry, huh?" Jack commented. Just ahead on the left was a door
marked
Authorized Personnel Only
. "I wonder if the cylinder
belongs to a woman."

"Could a woman be a likely target for Braxton Universis?" Draycos
asked.

"Oh, sure," Jack said, glancing both ways down the corridor as he
reached the door. No one was looking. He tapped the plate, the door
slid open, and he ducked through.

Behind the door was a narrow service hallway. Four or five doors
led off it to the right, while the end was blocked by a heavy-looking
door with a keypad.

Unlike the door he'd entered through, that one would be locked.
Fortunately, he didn't need to go that far. What he was looking for
should be right here in the corridor.

"Women control lots of corporations," he went on, starting slowly
down the hallway. As he walked he ran his fingers along the molded
plastic wall on his left, the wall of the purser's office. "Or I
suppose the jewelry could be just a gift."

"What do you search for?" Draycos asked, the top of his head
rising slightly out of Jack's shoulder.

"Keep down, will you?" Jack growled. "Did you happen to notice the
emergency lights back in the purser's office? Small boxes on the walls
near the ceiling with lights sticking out of them?"

"I did."

"The boxes contain the lights' batteries," Jack explained. "Here,
they almost certainly also contain hidden security cameras. We'll need
to knock them out."

His fingers paused, feeling the slight unevenness beneath the
plastic wall that meant he'd found a vertical support. "This should be
it," he said, turning around and pressing his back to the wall. "There
should be a junction box somewhere near here—a small square thing with
five wires coming out one side and two out the other. See if you can
find it."

Obediently, Draycos shifted around again on his skin. "Well?" Jack
asked.

There was no answer. Jack moved slowly along the wall, feeling his
heart starting to pound again. Any minute now one of the ship's crew
could stumble across him here. The last thing he wanted was to have to
come up with a story about why he was leaning against a wall in a place
he wasn't supposed to be.

"I believe I have found it," Draycos spoke up in that strange
near-far voice that seemed to go with this particular K'da trick. "Are
the wires black with silver striping?"

"That's them," Jack confirmed. "Okay, get back aboard; I'm going
to turn around."

The dragon drew back from the wall and returned to his back. Jack
turned around and held out a hand to the wall. "Show me where it was."

Some weight came onto his forearm. His jacket sleeve puffed out
slightly as Draycos's foreleg appeared, sliding out the cuff along
Jack's wrist. One of the claws extended and scratched a small curved
mark into the wall.

"Great," Jack said as the weight of the dragon's leg melted back
onto his skin. Fortunately, this jacket material was more flexible than
the leather of his normal coat. "Next stop is the monitor room."

"What is that?"

"The place where people watch the view from the security cameras,"
Jack explained as he sneaked out of the service corridor and back into
the passenger areas. "Especially those in the purser's office."

"You have not spoken of this part of your plan," Draycos said,
sounding suspicious.

"Don't worry, we're not going looking for a fight," Jack assured
him. "I'm a thief, not a one-man army."

"You are a former thief," Draycos corrected. "And there are two of
us."

"Yeah. Whatever."

Not surprisingly, the monitor room hadn't been marked on the floor
plans in Jack's stateroom. However, the main security office
had
been shown, and it seemed reasonable that the people staring at the
monitor screens would be someplace nearby.

They were, hidden behind another locked door at the end of another
dead-end service hallway. "Okay," Jack muttered, moving down the
service hallway as quietly as he could. Too late, now, he wondered if
this hallway had its own security camera. If it did, he could expect
company any minute now.

But no one appeared, and no voice demanded to know what he was
doing there. Chewing at his lip, he kept going.

Aside from the door at the far end, this hallway had only two
other doors leading off of it. They were situated opposite each other
near the far end. As he got closer, he could see that the door on the
left had a number and the word
Electrical
on it, while the one
on the right said
Storage
.

"Okay," he muttered to Draycos. " 'Storage' here will probably be
security stuff. It'll be seriously locked, and we'll be in real trouble
if we get caught messing with it."

He turned to the other door. "So let's try in here."

That door was locked, too, but not seriously. A minute with his
multitool and Jack had it open. Checking both ways down the hallway, he
slipped inside, closing the door behind him.

It was a typical electrical closet, like a hundred others he'd
seen in a lifetime of lurking in shadows. Most of the space was taken
up by a large electrical switchboard, with wires connecting to a
hundred different in-plugs and out-plugs. Other wires were laid out
neatly along the walls, going off to other rooms in the area.

But Jack didn't really care about any of that. What he
did
care about were the two large air vents set into the wall, one near the
ceiling, the other near the floor.

It was another minute's work with the multitool to take the
grating off the lower vent. Twisting his neck awkwardly in the cramped
space, he eased his head into the opening. With cool air flowing down
the back of his neck he found himself gazing at a similar grill a few
feet away. It was the air system grill in the monitor room, and the air
flow was going in that direction.

Perfect.

"Okay," he muttered, easing his head back out and fastening the
grating back in place. "That's it."

He opened the door and cautiously looked outside. The hallway was
still empty. A dozen nervous steps later, and he was safely back in the
passenger area of the liner.

"We will obtain the cylinder now?" Draycos asked as Jack strode
along.

Jack shook his head. "First we go back to the room," he said.
"I've got a couple more things I have to do."

"And then?"

Jack took a deep breath. "Then I guess the job is on."

Jack stopped at one of the dining rooms first, following Uncle
Virgil's standard rule that you never went into a job on an empty
stomach. He made sure to order far more than he wanted, and brought the
leftovers back to the stateroom where Draycos would have the privacy he
needed.

As the dragon attacked the rest of the medium-rare T-bone steak,
Jack sat at the writing desk putting together a small but very smelly
smoke bomb.

It didn't take long. One of his duties for Uncle Virgil had been
to create diversions, both for the jobs themselves and also sometimes
for when things went suddenly sour and they had to run for their lives.
Uncle Virgil had taught him a lot about such things, and Jack had
picked up other bits and pieces from some of Uncle Virgil's friends.
Even on a luxury starliner, he'd had no trouble buying or scrounging
everything he'd needed.

The rest of the preparations didn't take very long, either.
Soon—much too soon—everything was ready.

After that, there was nothing to do but wait.

"You are troubled," Draycos said.

Jack looked up from the solitaire game he had laid out on the
writing desk. Draycos had finished his meal and was lying on his
stomach beside the bed, his head laid along his front paws in that
doglike resting pose of his. All the dragon needed, Jack thought, was a
roaring fireplace behind him to complete the picture. "What?"

"I said you are troubled," Draycos repeated, raising his head to
look more closely at Jack. "Are you concerned about the mission?"

"Maybe a little," Jack said, looking down at his game. He didn't
remember this card layout at all. Apparently, he'd been playing on pure
autopilot. "No, I think it'll go all right. The people who designed the
system couldn't possibly have expected the approach we're going to use.
No, it should work."

"Than what is your concern?"

Slowly, Jack began collecting the cards. "I've been thinking," he
said. "I'm wondering if maybe we should forget this whole
toss-the-rock-in-the-water thing of yours."

"The
koi shike?
"

"Yeah, that," Jack said. "Maybe we should just switch the
cylinders like they told us to and leave it at that."

Draycos's green eyes were glittering. "Do you suggest we allow
them to succeed?"

"Look, Draycos, they're going to succeed no matter what we do,"
Jack said. "I mean, this is
Cornelius Braxton
we're talking
about. If he wants this cylinder, or if he wants the cylinder's owner
out of his way, then sooner or later he's going to do it.
And
he'll roll over anyone who gets in front of him."

He looked away from Draycos's gaze. "Why should that be us?"