Dragonback 05 Dragon and Judge (2 page)

"Montenegro and Vers'tekim," the computer said. The record of the
Iota Klestis battle disappeared from the display and was replaced by a
star map. "Montenegro is about twenty hours away, Vers'tekim about
thirty-two—"

"We'll take Vers'tekim," Jack said, his voice suddenly odd.

"Montenegro's closer," Alison pointed out.

"I said we're going to Vers'tekim," Jack said in a voice that left
no room for argument.

He looked over at the computer camera/speaker/microphone module.
"And on the way," he said, "we're going to stop off at Semaline."

"Semaline?" Alison echoed. "What in space is on Semaline?"

Jack didn't answer, but continued to stare at the computer camera.
"Jack?" Alison said. "Yo. Jack?"

"Uncle Virge, what's on Semaline?" Draycos asked.

"Go ahead, Uncle Virge," Jack invited. "Tell them."

"Nothing much," Uncle Virge said. His voice was calm enough, but
Draycos could hear the stress beneath it. "There's a lockbox in one of
the banks at the NorthCentral Spaceport. We used to drop by sometimes
when our cash supply was low."

"No,
we
didn't," Jack corrected darkly. "Uncle Virgil did.
He never even let me out of the ship there, let alone let me go to the
bank with him."

"It's nothing you need to worry about, Jack lad," Uncle Virge
said, his voice low and earnest. "Maybe some other day."

"Some other day is now, Uncle Virge," Jack said firmly. "We're
stopping at Semaline, and I'm checking out that lockbox."

"The lives of Draycos's people are at stake," Uncle Virge
objected. "Go ahead—ask
him
if this is the time for unnecessary
side trips."

"Actually, I have no objection," Draycos said.

Alison frowned at Draycos over her shoulder. "You don't?"

"We have nearly two months until the refugee fleet arrives,"
Draycos reminded her. "This will only take a few hours."

"A few hours can make all the difference between victory and
defeat," Uncle Virge countered. "Shall I cite you a few historical
examples?"

"No need," Draycos said, hearing his voice darken. "I have more
than enough of my own."

There was a moment of awkward silence. Even Uncle Virge apparently
couldn't think of anything to say. "So; Semaline it is," Jack said,
climbing out of the seat. Alison and Draycos moved aside, and he
brushed past without looking at either of them. "Give it your best
speed," he added as he left the cockpit.

"Whatever you want, Jack lad," Uncle Virge muttered.

Jack was lying on his bunk in his cabin, staring at the ceiling
with his arms tucked behind his head, when Draycos arrived. "Are you
all right?" the K'da asked, padding across the room.

"Sure," Jack said. His voice sounded oddly distant. "I just wanted
to be alone for a while, that's all."

"Shall I leave?"

"No, that's all right," Jack said. "I was just thinking about
Semaline."

"You remember it well?"

"That's just it—I hardly remember it at all," Jack told him. "Just
a few scattered images." He shook his head. "You'd think I'd have
clearer memories of the place where my parents died."

Draycos felt his tail arch. "I didn't know that."

Jack shrugged. "That's what Uncle Virge told me, anyway. Like I
said, I don't really remember."

"You
were
only three at the time," Draycos reminded him.

For a moment Jack was silent. "You think it's wrong for me to want
to go there?" he asked at last.

Draycos hesitated. "In general, no," he said, choosing his words
carefully. "The past is important to all of us."

"But you don't think this is the right time?"

"We do seem to have troubles and concerns enough just now,"
Draycos reminded him. "Still, as long as you don't intend to launch a
complete examination of your life there, I see no problem with stopping
by."

"I just want to see what Uncle Virgil has stashed in that
lockbox," Jack promised. "Then we're out of there and off to
Vers'tekim."

"Where you'll let Alison try to break into the Malison Ring
computer?"

Jack made a face. "Don't
you
start with me, too. Anyway,
what makes you think she's any better at computer hacking than I am?"

"Nothing in particular," Draycos said. "But your techniques just
now didn't succeed. There seems little point in refusing to allow
Alison to try her methods."

"I suppose not," Jack conceded. "Fine. It can be her turn next."

"I'm sure she'll appreciate that."

"As much as she appreciates anything we do," Jack growled. "I just
can't figure her out. She picks at me about twice an hour—"

"More often if you've actually done something to annoy her,"
Draycos murmured.

"Yeah, well—yeah," Jack said. "But every time we try to drop-kick
her off the ship, she refuses to go."

"She has Taneem to think about now," Draycos reminded him.
"They're beginning to share the same symbiotic bond that you and I do."

"And, what, Alison thinks the two of them will be safer from
Neverlin and the Valahgua if they hang around us?" Jack shrugged.

"Maybe. I don't know, though. I still think she's working some
angle."

"Perhaps," Draycos said. "Only time will tell."

Jack snorted gently. "Or else time will slap us flat across the
head," he muttered. "I guess we'll find out which."

Jack couldn't remember ever having walked the soil of Semaline.
But the soil itself, or at least the aromatic variety around the
NorthCentral Spaceport, had most certainly found its way into the ship
during their brief visits.

Now, as he walked down the
Essenay
's ramp, the
half-remembered smells flooded across his face like a softly smothering
blanket. For a moment his feet seemed to tangle against each other, as
if unwilling to move him deeper into the aroma.

"Are you all right?" Draycos asked quietly from his right shoulder.

"I'm fine," Jack assured him, working on getting his stride going
again. "I just . . . there's a smell here that really gets to me."

The K'da's head, flattened into its two-dimensional form across
Jack's shoulder, rose slightly against his shirt, his tongue flicking
out briefly as he tasted the air. "I don't detect anything dangerous,"
he said.

"I didn't say it was dangerous," Jack countered tartly. "I just
said it got to me."

Draycos didn't answer, and Jack grimaced.
That
had been
rude. "Sorry," he apologized. "I guess I'm a little on edge."

"Maybe you should reconsider letting Alison go with you," Uncle
Virge suggested from the comm clip on his left shirt collar. "I could
be out there in two minutes," Alison's voice seconded.

Jack squared his shoulders. Whatever was on this world, he could
handle it. He and Draycos.
Not
he and Alison Kayna. "Thanks,
but I can do this," he said. "You just take care of Taneem. Help her
with her English lessons if you get bored."

"Jack, lad—" Uncle Virge began.

"And
you
just take care of
them
, okay?" Jack cut
him off. "I can
do
this."

Uncle Virge sighed. "Whatever you say."

The spaceport was laid out in a series of concentric rings, with
the ground and air transport pickup point in the center. "Odd design,"
Draycos commented as the trickles of passengers and crews from the
docking slots on the outer edges began to form themselves into a more
densely packed inward-moving crowd. "Why would anyone deliberately
build a spaceport that actually
creates
congestion?"

"You got me, buddy symbiont," Jack said, dodging out of the way as
a couple of Compfrins pushed past him. "Maybe they don't
want
big crowds coming through here. It's only a small regional spaceport,
you know, on a small out-of-the-way world."

"Not a very wealthy one, either," Draycos commented.

"No, but it
could
have been," Jack said as he ducked past
a group of chattering Jantris through the doorway into the next ring
inward. "There are supposed to be some really nice beryllium and
iridium deposits in the Golvin territories east of here."

"Why weren't they developed?"

Jack shrugged. "Uncle Virgil told me that some mining corporation
had managed to get the whole area tangled up in red tape and paperwork."

Something brushed his back, pulling at the light jacket he'd put
on to help conceal the tangler belted at his waist. Jack twitched
himself free and kept moving. The brush came again, more insistent this
time. Again, Jack pulled away, then turned to see what the problem was.

He found himself gazing half a head down at a Golvin. The alien's
long face was gazing up at him, his thin, wiry body visibly trembling.
He wore nothing but a knee-length tan-colored vest covered with bulging
pockets. "Is there a problem?" Jack asked.

"It is he," the Golvin said, his voice sounding like sandpaper
rubbing across slate. "It is the Jupa."

"The Jupas are gone," another Golvin voice objected from behind
Jack. Jack turned to find that two more of the wiry creatures had come
up behind him. They joined the first in pawing at his jacket, their
wide noses snuffling like bloodhounds on a fresh scent.

"Then perhaps this is a third Jupa they have sent to us," the
first Golvin said firmly. "He smells much as they did."

"But the Jupas are gone," the second Golvin repeated.

"But there is so much that needs to be done," the first countered.
"He smells like the Jupa Stuart and the Jupa Ariel. He must therefore
be
a Jupa."

"Or I'm just a human," Jack interjected, wondering what in space a
Jupa
was. "Maybe what you're smelling is just normal human scent."

"I have smelled other humans," the first Golvin insisted. "You are
a Jupa."

"The One will know the truth," the third Golvin spoke up. "We
should take him to the One."

"Yes, indeed," the first Golvin said, brightening. "You must come
with us, Jupa."

"Wait a minute," Jack protested, trying to pull away. But their
hands had some sort of odd stickiness to them, and the more he pulled
the more he seemed permanently attached. "I can't go with you. I have
to get to the bank."

"You are the Jupa," the first Golvin said firmly. "We have awaited
your arrival for a long time."

"I have to go to the bank," Jack insisted, twisting his arms free
of his jacket. But the three sets of sticky hands merely transferred
themselves to his shirt and jeans. "Look, you're confusing me with
someone else. I'm not who you think I am. Really."

"Jack?" Draycos murmured urgently from his shoulder.

"No—stay down," Jack warned quietly, eyeing the crowd around them.
The last thing he and Draycos needed right now was for the K'da's
existence to burst into public knowledge. He and Alison needed a
certain freedom of movement if they were going to stop Neverlin and the
Valahgua.

The Golvins were moving Jack along now, herding him like a prize
sheep as they headed for one of the exits into the inner transportation
area. Maybe out in the open, Jack thought, he would have a better
chance of escaping.

He was still waiting for that chance when the Golvins ushered him
into the backseat of a cramped, beat-up old air shuttle and piled in
around him. The driver produced a starter from one of his vest's
pockets, and ten seconds later they were in the air and heading east.

It was only then that Jack noticed that both his comm clip and his
tangler were missing.

"Where was he when you lost him?" Alison asked, checking the clip
in her compact Corvine 4mm pistol as she raced toward the airlock.

"Third ring toward the middle," Uncle Virge said, his voice as
agitated as Alison had ever heard it. "He was talking to someone—at
least two people, maybe more—and then the transmission cut off."

So whoever they were, they'd made sure to shut off Jack's comm
clip when they grabbed him. That was a bad sign. "He's got the spare in
his shoe, right?"

"If he can get to it," Uncle Virge said grimly. "There's a comm
clip for you on the shelf in the airlock."

"I've got my own," Alison reminded him.

"This one's already tuned to my frequency and pattern specs."

"Fine," Alison growled. "Whatever."

Taneem was waiting in the airlock, her gray scales shimmering in
the light as she paced restlessly around the room. "There is danger?"
she asked anxiously as Alison picked up the comm clip Uncle Virge had
mentioned and fastened it to her collar.

"Don't know yet," Alison said, trying to put the best possible
light on the situation. Despite her adult K'da body, Taneem was still
not much more than a child intellectually, and scaring her wouldn't do
either of them any good. "Come on—get aboard."

She held out her hand. Taneem lifted a paw and set it on her palm,
and a second later had gone two-dimensional and slithered up Alison's
arm onto her back.

Alison hunched her shoulders, her skin tingling as the K'da slid
across her back to the wraparound position she'd found to be the most
comfortable for her. Even after two weeks of doing this a couple times
a day she still wasn't used to it. "Uncle Virge?" she called, tapping
the comm clip.

"Signal's clear," the computer personality confirmed tightly.
"Watch yourself."

"I will," Alison promised as the hatch popped open and the gangway
ramp slid down to the stained concrete of the landing pad.

From the air, the spaceport had looked rather poorly designed.
Now, as Alison fought her way through the crowds streaming toward the
central bottleneck, she realized just how badly designed it really was.
She kept her eyes open as she walked and shoved and was shoved in turn.
But if Jack was still here, she wasn't spotting him. "Still nothing
from his comm clip?" she asked Uncle Virge.