Dragonback 01 Dragon and Thief (4 page)

Of course, Draycos had seen Shontine boys and girls that young
pressed into military service in times of desperation. But it was clear
that the boy standing in the doorway was no warrior. His clothing was
all wrong, for one thing: no helmet, no body armor, no uniform. All he
was wearing was a tan shirt and light blue pants, with low brown boots
on his feet. He had a heavy-looking brown jacket slung over his
shoulder; apparently it was warmer in here than he found comfortable.

He
was
at least armed, with what appeared to be a handgun
belted at the left side of his waist. But the weapon was far too small
to be a proper soldier's field gun. Besides that, a trained soldier
should have had it ready in his hand when checking out enemy territory.

But if he wasn't one of the attackers, who was he?

"It's just like back there," the boy said, still standing in the
doorway as he looked around the control complex. A trained warrior
wouldn't stand that long in a doorway, either. "More of the same, only
worse."

Draycos stayed motionless, struggling to understand the words. All
the members of the advance team had learned the humans' chief trade
language during the long voyage, but with his waning strength even
something as simple as translation was becoming difficult. Perhaps he
wouldn't have the strength for an attack after all.

"Wait a second," the boy said suddenly. "There
is
something new here."

"What is it?" a much fainter voice asked. Draycos looked around as
best he could without moving his head, but he could see no one else. A
communicator, then. An advance scout, perhaps, in contact with the true
warrior coming behind him?

"Looks like a little dragon," the boy said, starting across the
room toward Draycos. "No kidding—it really does. About the size of a
small tiger, all covered with gold scales."

"Is it alive?"

"Doesn't look like it," the boy said, still moving forward. Almost
within attack range now. "I suppose you want me to check."

"If you would be so kind," the other voice said. Draycos braced
himself . . .

And for a moment the mental haze of his approaching death cleared,
and a strange thought occurred to him.

Yes, he could attack this intruder as he'd planned. He could
probably even kill the boy before he lost his hold on this universe and
vanished into death and oblivion.

Or, instead, he could use that same last bit of strength to try to
connect with him.

"Still not moving," the boy said. "I guess it's dead. Too bad—it's
pretty neat looking. Huh—those gold scales have little bits of red on
them, too, right at the edges. Cool."

It was a gamble, Draycos knew. A terrible, desperate gamble.
Throughout their history, the K'da had met only two species who could
act as hosts to them. There wasn't a chance in a hundred that these
humans could do so.

And if the connection failed, there would be no attack. Draycos
had strength enough for only a single action.

"Still not moving," the boy reported.

Draycos came to a decision. He was a K'da warrior, and he could
not attack an untrained and unprepared opponent without clear cause.
The boy stopped and leaned close . . . .

Draycos leaped.

It was about the last thing Jack would ever have expected: for one
of the "dead" bodies aboard the wrecked ship to suddenly come alive and
charge at him. With a startled gasp he jumped backwards, reflexively
throwing up an arm in front of his eyes. There was a flash of gold
right in his face—he blinked—

And then, without a sound, it was gone. He spun around, nearly
losing his balance on the litter-strewn deck.

The dragon had vanished.

Only then did he remember the tangler belted at his waist. He
yanked out the weapon and popped off the safety catch, breathing hard
and trembling with reaction as he looked wildly around. The dragon was
gone, all right.

Only one small problem: there wasn't any place it could have gone
to. It couldn't possibly have made it across the room and out the
doorway back there, not in the half second it had taken Jack to turn
around. With most everything solid in the room lying in broken piles on
the floor, there was no place in the room itself for it to hide.

So where was it?

"Jack!" Uncle Virge's voice called urgently from the comm clip on
his shirt collar. "What is it? What's going on? Come on, lad, speak up."

"That dragon," Jack said. To his embarrassment, his voice was
trembling. He hated when it did that. "It jumped at me. At least, I
thought it did."

"What happened? Did it bite you? Claw you?"

"I—no, I don't think so," Jack said, still looking around. "I
mean, I don't feel anything."

"Check your clothes," Uncle Virge ordered. "Look for rips or
blood. Sometimes you don't feel injuries like that right away."

Jack glanced down at his shirt. "No, there's nothing. It just
jumped at me and then disappeared."

"What do you mean, disappeared? Disappeared where?"

Jack didn't answer. The immediate shock of the incident was
beginning to fade . . . and as it did so, he suddenly became aware that
there was something odd about the way his skin felt. Almost as if there
was a thin coating of paint or something on his chest and back.

He reached in under his shirt collar and touched his shoulder. It
was skin, all right, normal everyday skin. It certainly didn't feel any
different than usual to his fingertips. His back didn't feel any
different, either, as he slid his hand down along his shoulder blade as
far as it would go.

But the odd sensation persisted.

"Jack?"

"Hang on a second," Jack said, draping his leather jacket across
the back of a broken chair and sliding his tangler back into its
holster. Working a finger under the sealing seam running down the front
of his shirt, he unsealed it and pulled it open.

He caught his breath. There, angling across his chest and stomach,
was a wide golden band. It wrapped around his rib cage at both the top
and bottom, disappearing around toward his back. Like a tuxedo
cummerbund that hadn't been put on straight, he thought, or maybe the
formal sash he'd sometimes seen military leaders wearing. There was
texturing to it, too, he saw. A golden fish-scale pattern, with a
sliver of red at the edge of each scale.

The same pattern as the vanished dragon.

A horrible thought struck him. Pulling the shirt free from his
jeans, he slid it all the way off his right arm so that it was hanging
on his left arm and shoulder. Twisting his head around, he looked down
at his right shoulder.

To find himself gazing directly into the dragon's face.

"Ye-oup!" he yelped, jerking his head back and jumping three feet
to his left.

It was like trying to jump away from his own body, and about as
successful. The picture of the dragon didn't disappear or slide off or
anything like that. It was still there, as if it had been painted on
him.

Then, to his utter astonishment, the face rose slowly out of his
skin, like the top of an alligator's head rising up through the surface
of the water. The long upper jaw opened slightly, giving him a glimpse
of sharp teeth—"Don't be afraid," a soft, snakelike voice said.

Jack screeched loud enough to hurt his own ears. His tangler was
in his left hand, though he had no memory of having drawn it, and with
all his strength he slammed the short barrel down on the dragon's head.

But the beast was too fast for him. It sank flat onto his skin
again, and Jack's screech turned to a howl of pain as his attack
succeeded only in bruising his own shoulder. Ignoring the pain, he
struck again and again, stumbling sideways in a useless attempt to get
away. Through the noise of his own panicked babbling, he was distantly
aware that there were two different voices shouting at him.

He ignored them. Voices didn't matter. Nothing mattered but to
somehow get this
thing
off him.

He was still flailing around when his foot caught on something and
he toppled over onto his side.

Or rather, he should have toppled over onto his side. But even as
he tried to get his arm around to break his fall, the feeling on his
skin shifted, and something somehow broke his fall, setting him more or
less gently onto the broken control board he'd been tumbling toward.

But gentle landing or not, the sudden fall snapped him out of his
mindless attack on himself. Gasping for breath, he half sat, half lay
there, his shoulder throbbing with the multiple blows he'd just
brilliantly hammered down on it. In his left ear, he could hear Uncle
Virge's voice shouting from the comm clip on his shirt collar,
demanding to know what was happening.

In his right ear, the snakelike voice he'd heard earlier was
speaking again.

"Everyone . . . shut . . . up," he ordered between gasps. "You
hear me? Everyone just shut
up
."

Both voices went obediently silent. Jack took a few more breaths,
trying desperately to calm down. His efforts were only a limited
success. "All right," he said at last. "You—Voice Number Two—the one
who isn't Uncle Virge. Who are you?"

"My name is Draycos," the snake voice replied from somewhere
behind him, the sound tingling strangely against his skin.

Jack twisted around to look, but there was nothing there. The
dragon head had disappeared from his shoulder, but out of the corner of
his eye he could just see the tip of the snout further around on his
back. "I am a poet-warrior of the K'da. Who are you?"

"I'm Jack Morgan," Jack said, his voice starting to shake again.
Now for the
big
question. "
Where
are you?"

"Tell me first how you came to be aboard my ship," Draycos said.
"Are you an enemy of the K'da and Shontine?"

"I'm not an enemy of anyone," Jack protested, scrambling back to
his feet. "I saw your ship go down, and I came to check it out. That's
all."

"Did you see our attackers?" The voice, Jack noted uneasily, moved
with him, still tingling his shoulder.

"Well . . ." Jack hesitated, wondering how much to say. "We saw
the battle," he said. "It looked like the guys in the little ships went
aboard the big ones afterward. Are there more of your people up there?"

There was a soft sigh, even more snakelike than the voice. "They
were my people," Draycos said. "They are all dead now."

"We don't know that," Jack said, feeling an obscure urge to be
comforting. "Those Djinn-90s can't have had
that
many soldiers
to put aboard."

"There is no one left to fight them," the dragon said sadly. "The
K'da and Shontine were already dead."

"
All
of them?" Uncle Virge's voice asked, sounding
surprised.

"All of them," Draycos said. "The weapon that was used against us
kills all that it touches. It does not leave survivors."

Jack thought back to the purple tornadoes he'd seen playing
against the freighters' sides. A weapon that killed right through hull
plates? "What about you?" he asked. "
You
survived."

"An unintended mercy," Draycos said. "We were already falling, and
they thought merely to save themselves further effort."

Jack took a deep breath. It was pretty obvious by now what was
going on. He still hoped he was wrong; but right or wrong, it was time
to take the plunge and find out for sure. "You're on my back, aren't
you?" he asked. "Wrapped around me like a—well, like a thin sheet of
plastic."

"Yes," Draycos said.

"You're
what?
" Uncle Virge demanded. "You're
where?
"

"It's like he's a picture painted there," Jack said. "Or a
full-body tattoo, like you see sometimes on Zhandig music stars."

"What do you mean, like a tattoo?" Uncle Virge said, sounding
every bit as bewildered as Jack felt. "How can something alive be like
a tattoo?"

"What, you think
I
know?" Jack shot back. "Look, if I
could explain it—"

"Please," Draycos cut in. "Permit me." Jack looked down. The
dragon's head had slid back into view on his shoulder and was turning
back and forth as if looking for something. "There," Draycos said.
"That data reader."

"Where?" Jack asked, frowning at the debris.

A second later he jumped again as a sudden bit of extra weight
came onto the back of his right arm, and a gold-scaled limb
unexpectedly rose up out from that spot. A short finger or toe or
whatever it was extended from the paw, pointing to a small flat
instrument about three inches square lying among the debris on the
deck. "There," Draycos said. "Go and kneel down beside it."

Swallowing, Jack obeyed. This was the very spot, he noted
uneasily, where the dragon had been crouching when he came in. Could
this thing be a weapon? "Now what?"

"I will give you a picture of what I am," Draycos said. "Do you
see how the reader lies on the deck? Where they meet, the reader is a
two-dimensional object. Do you agree?"

"Well, no, it's three-dimensional," Jack said. "It has length,
width, and thickness."

"But it is two-dimensional where it meets the deck," Draycos
repeated. "At that meeting, it has only length and width. Do you agree?"

Jack shrugged. "Fine. Whatever you say."

"It is not a matter of what I say," Draycos said, sounding
impatient. "It is a matter of whether you understand. Consider the deck
to be a two-dimensional universe, with the data reader as a
two-dimensional object existing within it. There is no thickness there,
only length and width. Two dimensions only. Do you understand?"

"I understood before," Jack said, a little impatience of his own
starting to peek out through the heavy curtain of weirdness hanging
over this whole thing. Having not been killed and eaten on the spot, he
was starting to lose some of his initial fear, and he had better things
to do than play word games with this Draycos character. "So what?"