Dragonback 01 Dragon and Thief (3 page)

"No," Uncle Virge said thoughtfully. "But maybe there's something
they
can do for
you
."

Jack lifted his eyes away from the 'nocs, throwing a sideways look
at the soft light inside the airlock. That was a tone of voice he knew
far too well. "Like what?"

"Like maybe after the dust settles we might find something worth
salvaging from the wreck."

"
Uh-huh
."

"Oh, come on, lad, don't use that tone with me," Uncle Virge said,
sounding hurt. "The ship's a goner—you can see that from here.
Whatever's aboard won't do them any good, may they rest in peace."

"And so why don't we pretend we're vultures and see what we can
sift out of the rubble?" Jack suggested.

"Well, if it isn't us, it'll be our friends in the Djinn-90s,"
Uncle Virge pointed out. "They aren't wasting any time checking out
their other prizes, you know."

Frowning, Jack lifted the 'nocs again. Sure enough, the four small
ships were moving into docking positions alongside the three remaining
freighters.

"Still, they ought to be busy up there for quite some time." Uncle
Virge's voice went all soft and silky. "And you know, if they
were
smugglers, whatever they were carrying was probably valuable. Maybe
even valuable enough to pay off Braxton Universis."

Jack shook his head. "I don't want to steal anymore. You know
that."

"You want to stay on the run forever?" Uncle Virge countered.
"This could be a way to square things."

"I'm trying to put the past behind me," Jack insisted.

"And see where it got you," Uncle Virge shot back. "On the run for
a crime you didn't even commit. You see any fairness in
that?
"

Jack sighed. "I don't see much fairness in anything anymore."

"Exactly my point," Uncle Virge said. "Besides, there's no crime
in stealing stolen goods, now, is there?"

"I'm sure you and the law have different opinions on that."

"Jack, my lad," Uncle Virge said, back to that injured tone again.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Jack said, lifting the 'nocs to his eyes
again. He had to turn around to see the freighters; while he'd been
arguing with Uncle Virge, they'd passed over his head on their way to
the western horizon. "Even if they ignore the crash, aren't they going
to spot us as soon as we take off?"

"Only if they can see us," Uncle Virge pointed out reasonably.
"All we have to do is wait until they're out of sight over the horizon,
then take off and head toward the crash site. Before they come back
over the eastern horizon we'll go to ground and wait until they pass
around the other side again. Couldn't be easier."

"How long will it take us to get there?" Jack asked.

"Three, four hours, maybe," Uncle Virge said. "Five at the most."

"And you don't think the guys in the Djinn-90s will be checking it
out themselves?"

"Oh, come on, lad," Uncle Virge said. "Look at the size of those
freighters. It could be days before they finish up there and turn their
attention to the wreck."

Jack chewed at his lip. There was something about this that felt
monumentally stupid. All his instincts were screaming at him to get the
Essenay
out of here the minute everyone's back was turned.

But if there really
was
a way to square things with
Braxton Universis, maybe it was worth a try.

He shook his head bitterly. A month ago, on his fourteenth
birthday, he'd baked himself a birthday cake, with little candles and
everything. Uncle Virge had sung an off-key "Happy Birthday," and Jack
had actually made a secret wish as he blew out the candles.

The wish had been that, after all these years, he could finally
make a normal life for himself.

So much for the mystical power of wishes.

"Shall I fire up the preflight checklist?" Uncle Virge prompted.

Jack let the 'nocs fall to his side. "Sure," he said, turning and
trudging back up the ramp. "Let's go take a look."

Commander Chayd did his best, as did all the remaining Shontine
and K'da. But the
Havenseeker
was too big, its control areas
too widely scattered.

In the end, there really was no hope.

Draycos regained consciousness slowly, to find himself lying
beneath the nav bubble's control board. He was curled up tightly with
his back to the bulkhead like a K'da cub trying to keep warm on a cold
night, a mound of broken tiles and shattered equipment pressed against
him. The descent through the atmosphere—the heat and buffeting, the
tension and Chayd's calm orders—was etched on his mind like the
brilliant sunlight of morning. But the crash itself was only a vague
memory of noise and chaos, of being thrown violently about as the
ship's hull crumpled beneath him and the nav bubble shattered above him.

For that matter, he couldn't even remember leaving the relative
safety of Polphir's back and becoming fully three-dimensional again.

He had no idea how long he'd been lying there. Long enough for
what was left of the
Havenseeker
to grind its way to a halt,
apparently, because all was now silence and stillness. On the other
hand, the cloud of dust that still hung thick in the air around him
showed that the ship hadn't been down for very long, either. An hour,
perhaps. Maybe less.

Carefully, trying not to choke on the dust, he took a deep breath,
concentrating on the feel of the muscles and bones in his torso as his
chest expanded. There were a few aches and pains, but nothing that
indicated anything more serious than bruises and a few cracked scales
through which blood was slowly oozing. He tried his legs next,
carefully moving and twisting each in turn. The middle joint of his
left rear leg jolted him with a brief stab of pain, but after a little
experimentation he concluded it was only a mild sprain. He catalogued a
few more bruises and cracked scales on various limbs, then moved on to
his neck and tail. Again, he found nothing serious.

Pushing away the collected debris hemming him in, he worked his
way out from under the control panel. Polphir was nowhere to be seen,
the chair he'd been strapped to apparently torn straight off the deck.
Wincing as shards of plastic and metal crunched under his paws, Draycos
walked gingerly to the edge of the bubble floor and looked down to the
main deck.

There, lying amid the rubble, was Polphir.

Draycos's injured leg and the uncertain footing on the main deck
would make a standard K'da leap risky at best. Fortunately, the ladder
he'd climbed up earlier was still in place, though hanging precariously
by a single connector. Climbing down as quickly as he could, he
crunched through more plastic and metal to Polphir's side.

The Shontin was dead.

Draycos would not remember afterward how long he crouched there,
sifting quietly through his memories and saying his silent farewells.
He thought back to their first meeting, after Draycos's host had died,
and to those first few tentative months as symbionts. He had missed
Trachan terribly, and only much later did he learn that his surly
attitude had nearly persuaded Polphir to turn him over to someone else
instead.

But the Shontin had been patient, and Draycos had managed to grow
up a little. In the end, they had worked things out.

It had been lucky for Draycos that they had. At least twice in
their time together it had been only Polphir's quick thinking in the
face of danger that had kept the two of them alive.

But it hadn't all been merely experience and quick thinking.
Polphir had had a fierce loyalty to his symbiont, a loyalty he'd
demonstrated at the Battle of Conkren when he'd deliberately put his
own life on the line for his friend. Draycos still shuddered at that
memory, and still marveled at the miracle that had gotten both of them
out alive.

Now Polphir was gone. And Draycos had been powerless to save him.

Or even to properly mourn him. He and Polphir had been together
for over ten years, as companions, symbionts, and fellow warriors. A
proper farewell to such a relationship could not be accomplished in
less than a week, nor without all of Polphir's close family and friends
on hand to weave their own memories into the great tapestry that would
close off his life.

But what remained of Polphir's close family was a long ways away.
Most of his friends lay dead around him here on the
Havenseeker
's
deck.

And Draycos certainly did not have a week for a proper mourning.
In fact, unless he could find another host, his own life could be
counted now in hours.

"Steady, K'da warrior," he said aloud to himself. His voice was
startlingly loud in the silence, the words echoing oddly from the new
contours and gaps the crash had created. "Rule One: assess the complete
situation before coming to unpleasant conclusions."

As a pep talk, it was a dismal failure. As good military advice,
though, it made sense. Picking his way through the debris, favoring his
injured leg a little, he began to search the ship.

It was an unpleasant duty. The
Havenseeker
's bow was
completely crushed and buried, the few Shontine who had been up there
apparently buried with it. Those who had been below him in the control
complex had also died in the crash. From the control complex aft, the
ship was clogged with debris but otherwise relatively undamaged, and
for awhile Draycos dared to hope that their attackers' sweep with the
Death might have missed someone.

But no. They had done an efficient job of it, leaving nothing
behind but Shontine bodies. Some lay where they had fallen, most where
the crash had sent them sliding. The K'da bodies, of course, were long
gone. Slowly, his head held low, Draycos turned and headed back forward
to the control complex. It was, he thought more than once along the
way, worse than any battlefield from which he had ever faced the
Valahgua. On battlefields, at least, there were always a few survivors.
Here, there was no one but him.

But he would be joining the rest of them soon enough. He had
survived an attack with the Death, and even made it through a ship
crash. But he could not survive for long without a host. Another two
hours, perhaps, and he would fade into a two-dimensional shadow and
disappear forever into nothingness.

Still, he had those two hours. He might as well put them to use.

The sensor station in the control complex had been completely
demolished in the crash. But the piloting console had its own recorder,
which turned out to be relatively undamaged.

The data diamonds, unfortunately, had been jolted out of their
recording slots by the impact and mixed together in a random heap at
the bottom of the recorder housing. Digging them out, he found a
handheld reader and began sorting through them. Before death took him,
perhaps he could at least learn who had done this to them.

Though even as he set to work, he knew down deep that he was
merely distracting himself. Whatever he learned here, that knowledge
would die with him. No K'da or Shontin would ever find this tomb.

The dust slowly began to clear from the air as Draycos worked,
gradually settling into a soft coating that seemed to cling to every
surface. The faint sounds of wildlife began to be heard, too, bird and
insect twitterings as alien as the world they inhabited. Occasionally
Draycos noticed his ears twitching as another new noise entered the
mix, but he paid no conscious attention to the sounds. His entire focus
was on the diamonds.

But all the concentration in the universe couldn't make up for
what was no longer there. Damaged in the crash, the diamonds no longer
held the full record of the ambush. Only bits and pieces remained,
images here and there. Nothing he could use to positively identify the
ships that had attacked them.

As slowly but inevitably as the settling of the dust around him,
he felt his strength begin to drain away. The data reader slipped first
from his grasp, the diamonds themselves became too difficult to hold,
and all too soon he found himself huddled on the deck beside Polphir's
body. He was still three-dimensional, but as he gazed at the tips of
his forepaws he thought he could see a hint of flattening in the ridges
around the claw sheaths.

It was an odd sensation to be alone this way for so long. Much
like the difference, he decided, between missing a meal and starving to
death.

Still, on one level, it was only fair. All his friends and
comrades were already dead. It was merely his turn to follow them.

And then, from somewhere aft of the command complex, he heard a
sound.

At first it was so soft he thought it was his imagination. Even as
it grew louder he was convinced his dying mind was simply playing
tricks on him.

But no. It was real, all right. The sound of footsteps, coming
toward him.

The attackers had arrived to finish the job.

Draycos took a deep breath. He would have time, maybe, for a
single attack before either the weakness or their guns got him. A
useless gesture, really.

But he was a warrior of the K'da. Better to die fighting than to
do nothing at all.

Taking another breath, drawing together every bit of strength that
still remained, he silently drew his legs beneath him and waited.

The footsteps came to the aft doorway. Draycos closed his eyes to
slits; and then, suddenly, the intruder was there.

He was a human. No surprise there—the use of their contact's
recognition signals had made it clear that their attackers either were
humans or were allied with them. But aside from that single fact, he
was not at all what Draycos was expecting.

He was young, for one thing, if his size was any indication.
Humans and Shontine shared many physical similarities, and this human
was no larger than a twelve-year-old Shontin boy.