Dragonback 05 Dragon and Judge (33 page)

The K'da ignored her. To Alison's horrified disbelief, she gave a
shrill warbling scream and aimed herself at the nearest Brummgan firing
post.

And charged.

Jack had made it perhaps fifty feet up the light shaft when he
heard the sound of rapid footsteps far below. "Langston?"

"Quiet," the other whispered urgently.

But it was too late. Even as Jack craned his neck to look, he saw
the outline of a Golvin head appear in the opening in his former
apartment far below.

The Golvins had found them.

And with that, Jack knew with a wave of utter weariness, it was
all over. The Golvin would run and tell the One, and the One would tell
Frost's men, and they would come and get him.

They would possibly kill Jack. They would certainly kill Draycos.

"Port side near the nose," Langston murmured. "Hatch opens
outward."

Jack frowned as he blinked back sudden tears. "What?"

"The hatch," Langston said. His hand appeared from below, dropping
the Judge-Paladin hat and food onto Jack's chest. "Good luck."

And before Jack could even form a coherent question, Langston
flipped his bow over. With the bow tips clattering along the stones and
his feet running backward along the far wall, he dropped rapidly down
the shaft.

"Langston!" Clenching his teeth, Jack flipped his bow over as
well. If Langston was going to die, he wasn't going to die alone.

But even as he started to slide down the shaft, a pair of K'da
forelegs folded themselves off his arms to catch firmly against the
side walls.
No
, Draycos's thought whispered in his mind.

"We have to help him," Jack insisted.

He is a true warrior, Jack
, Draycos said, his tone firm yet
somehow gentle.
He has made the decision to sacrifice himself for
us, and for the K'da and Shontine people who stand at risk. Our job now
is to make certain his gift was not in vain
.

Tears flooded into Jack's eyes, tears of guilt and anger and
hopelessness. Draycos was right, of course. But that didn't make it any
easier.

Come
, Draycos said, shifting his grip on the side walls.
I
will help you
.

That's all right
, Jack said, turning his bow back right
side up again.
I can do it
.

Shaking away the tears, his ears burning with the sounds of
destruction still going on around him, he resumed his climb.

The first group of Brummgas never had a chance. There were three
of them, and before their pea-sized brains could register what was
happening, Taneem had leaped like a gray Fury into their midst.

The attack was probably nowhere near the level of Draycos's own
warrior skill. But in the white-hot fury of Taneem's righteous anger,
skill and training didn't seem to matter that much. Even as Alison
broke out of her paralysis and ran to her aid, the K'da's claws and
tail and jaws lashed out, sending Brummgas reeling backward or laying
them flat out onto the ground.

In bare seconds, it was all over. Taneem shook herself once as she
stood over her defeated enemies, then found the next group with her
eyes and again charged.

But this time it would be different, Alison knew with a sinking
heart. Taneem's first attack had succeeded largely through the element
of surprise.

But that surprise was gone now. The rest of the battle line had
been alerted, and Alison could see shadowy Brummgan forms turning as
they recognized the new threat coming in along their flank.

The next nearest enemy firing position was over fifty yards away
over open ground. Long before Taneem reached it, Alison knew, the
combined laser fire would cut her to smoking ribbons.

Unless the K'da had help.

Taneem was perhaps halfway to her next target when Alison reached
the remains of her first. So far none of the Brummgas had opened fire,
but any second now that would change. Ignoring the scattered bodies,
Alison scooped up one of the laser rifles and snapped it up to her
shoulder.

And stopped, her mouth dropping open in astonishment.

The Brummgas were running. All of them, along the entire line,
were abandoning their weapons and their posts and lumbering south
toward the main house as fast as their tree-trunk legs would carry them.

What in blazes
. . . ?

Alison looked toward the hedge, wondering if the slaves had
brought up some unexpected and impossible superweapon. But the ones
still on their feet were clearly unarmed, and the ones on the ground
were only now warily starting to get up again.

She looked south, wondering if some silent retreat order had been
given. But there was no one there, and no indication of any reason for
such an order. There was nothing, in fact.

Nothing but Taneem.

And then, finally, Alison understood. The Brummgas remembered
Draycos's last visit here, all right. And they'd certainly learned from
that experience.

But they hadn't learned how to fight a K'da poet-warrior. They'd
learned to run from him.

Alison filled her lungs. "Don't kill them!" she shouted to Taneem
as she again started after the K'da. Surrendering and fleeing enemies,
she knew, were always to be rewarded with their lives. It encouraged
others to do the same.

She needn't have worried. Taneem passed the first running group of
Brummgas without a glance, continuing on toward the next. Like a good
hunting dog, the K'da was making sure to flush all the birds from their
nests.

And then, from one of the groups of bushes, a lone figure stepped
out of concealment. A human figure, Alison saw, with a shoulder-slung
laser rifle at the ready. "Come on, dragon," he shouted, turning the
rifle toward Taneem. "Come and get me."

It was Gazen.

Alison caught her breath. But Taneem didn't even flinch. Breaking
from her straight-on charge, she turned sharply south, heading in a big
circle across Gazen's line of fire.

"Come on, dragon," Gazen shouted again as he swiveled to keep
facing her. He fired twice, his shots scorching the air in front of and
behind the running K'da. "Come and face me like a warrior."

Alison braked to a halt and dropped to one knee, bringing her
borrowed laser to her shoulder. With Gazen's silhouette partially
obscured by the bushes beside him, she knew this would be a very tricky
shot.

And she would get only one. As soon as that laser light flashed,
he would turn his own weapon on her . . . and unlike Gazen, Alison had
no cover nearby to protect her.

But Taneem couldn't circle forever. Sooner or later, Gazen would
get tired of trying to taunt her into a direct attack, and he would
kill her.

Clenching her teeth, Alison held her breath and squinted down the
barrel at Gazen's profile.

And snapped the weapon up and off target as a handful of racing
figures abruptly appeared from her left and slammed into Gazen's back.
His laser fired once, blasting into the ground in front of him, before
he disappeared beneath a mass of bodies.

Stronlo's rebels had arrived.

By the time Alison reached them, it was all over. "I heard you say
not to kill them," Stronlo said, his voice grim as he panted for air.
"But this one was special."

"I agree," Alison said, looking down at the body that lay
motionless on the grass. She was just as glad that the lack of light
hid the details. "As far as I'm concerned, you're welcome to him."

"Thanks to you and the dragon," Stronlo said

Taneem came up to them. "Is he stopped?" she asked.

"Permanently," Alison said. "Nice move, by the way. Did you
actually see Stronlo coming up behind him, or were you just hoping?"

"Of course I saw them," Taneem said, flipping her tail. "A K'da
warrior strives always to do what is right. But that doesn't mean a
K'da warrior is stupid."

Alison nodded. "I'll remember that."

"What do we do now?" Stronlo asked.

"We wait." Half turning, Alison gestured toward the wall behind
them.

Toward the wall, and the lights of the half-dozen Djinn-90
fighters hovering just beyond its built-in defenses. "The Malison Ring
strike force has arrived," she said. "Let's sit back and see what
happens."

By the time Jack reached the top of the pillar the sounds of
crashing stone and shattered guy wires had ceased. The angled skylight
opening was covered with a clear dome to keep out the rain, but
Draycos's claws made quick work of the fasteners. A minute later, Jack
eased his way to the edge of the pillar and looked down.

To a horrifying sight.

In a dozen places the cropland had been littered by rubble from
the destroyed stone arches. The three Djinn-90 starfighters were moving
slowly along through the air, their lasers blasting methodically away
at the ground ahead of them. Golvins were everywhere, running toward
the edges of the canyon like panicked ants.

There were bodies, too. At least twenty of them that Jack could
see, either beneath sections of the crushed stone or lying in patches
of burning crops.

And at the focus of the starfighters' attack was Langston.

He was sprinting across the ground, zigzagging between stands of
plants and leaping over the irrigation canals, dodging the laser blasts
as Frost's men herded him toward the nearest canyon wall. Behind the
Djinn-90s, a much larger deep-space transport was drifting along,
watching the scene like an approving mother wolf.

Jack shivered. "They're going to kill him," he said, the words
twisting in his stomach. "As soon as they find out he's not me, they'll
kill him."

"Then let us make sure his sacrifice is not in vain," Draycos said
from his shoulder. "There—across that bridge."

With an effort, Jack lifted his eyes from the carnage below. His
pillar was attached to the next by a stone arch, with another arch
leading to the next pillar in line. Beyond that, a set of intact guy
wires led the rest of the way to the edge of the canyon.

It would be a tricky climb. Tricky and dangerous both, especially
with his muscle fatigue and Draycos's injuries.

But Draycos was right. It had to be done. Setting his foot on the
arch, Jack looked over toward his goal, the distant bulge in the sand
that hid Langston's wrecked starfighter.

He paused, frowning. There wasn't just one bulge there, he saw
now. There were two, one much larger than the other.

He was still staring in confusion when the larger bulge stirred,
the sand seeming to melt away from it.

And with a sudden gunning of its lifters the
Essenay
shot
over the canyon rim straight toward him.

The ship was hovering above Jack's pillar, its hatch open, before
the transport and starfighters below seemed to catch on to the fact
that their quarry was slipping from their grasp. But by then, it was
too late. The pillar itself blocked most of their frantic laser fire,
and the gap they'd cut for themselves in the aerial obstacles was clear
down at the other end of the canyon.

Five minutes later, with the Djinn-90s still trying desperately to
close the gap, Jack keyed in the stardrive.

Eight men in Malison Ring uniforms were standing guard at the main
gate as Alison led her party across the neatly trimmed lawn toward
them. "That's close enough," the sergeant in charge warned, taking a
step toward her. His shoulder-slung machine gun, she noted, wasn't
quite pointed in her direction. "What do you want?"

"I have a group of slaves here," Alison said, taking another step
and then likewise stopping. Behind her, she sensed Stronlo and the
others doing the same. "All they want is to leave."

The sergeant shook his head. "Sorry. The Patri Chookoock was kind
enough to open his gates and his estate for us. I don't think letting
his slaves walk out the front door would be a proper way to repay his
courtesy."

"Was it courtesy, or was it bowing to the inevitable?" Alison
countered. "I saw the force you brought with you. You could have
knocked your own hole in his wall if you'd had to."

In the light from the driveway markers she saw his eyes narrow.
"You're not a slave," he said. "Who are you?"

"My name's Alison Kayna," Alison told him. "I'm sort of a
negotiator."

"For slaves?"

Alison shrugged. "Slaves need someone to speak for them as much as
anyone else. Probably more so."

"Probably," the sergeant conceded, his eyes flicking to the mixed
group of aliens standing silently behind her. "Sorry, Kayna, but my
orders are to keep the place bottled up until the major finishes his
search. That means nobody leaves."

"But these aren't anybody," Alison reminded him. "By Brum-a-dum
law, they're property."

Behind the sergeant, one of his men stirred. The other mercenaries
didn't look all that comfortable, either. "Yeah, I know," the sergeant
said, his voice darkening with contempt. "But we didn't come here to
free a bunch of slaves."

"You're not here to keep them in, either," Alison countered. "Or
did the Patri Chookoock hire you to do that?"

"Hardly," the sergeant said sourly. "In fact, he may be looking
down the barrel of some real trouble right now, depending on what the
major finds."

"Then you don't owe him anything. Right?"

The sergeant's face pinched uncertainly. "Well . . ."

"Sergeant?" the soldier who had reacted called. "Do we need to
keep this gate closed? It's feeling kind of stuffy over here."

For a long minute the sergeant studied Alison's face. Then, his
lip quirked. "Go ahead and open it," he ordered.

"The gate squad might object," one of the other mercenaries warned.

"Make sure they don't," the sergeant said flatly. "Janus
formation—we don't want anyone sneaking in behind us."

He motioned Alison forward. "You wouldn't mind marching your
livestock past my men, would you?" he asked. "Just to make sure the guy
we're looking for isn't tucked away in the crowd."