Dragonback 05 Dragon and Judge (7 page)

"And you think it should be . . .?"

"Truth."

Jack looked at the hat in his hands. "We stand before," he began
hesitantly. "We stand behind,

"We seek the truth with heart and mind.

From sun to sun the dross refined,

Lest any soul be cast adrift.

"We are the few who stand between

the darkness and the noontime sheen.

Our eyes and vision clear and keen:

To find the truth, we seek and sift.

"We toil alone, we bear the cost,

To soothe all those in turmoil tossed,

And give back hope, where hope was lost:

Our lives, for them, shall be our gift."

For a long moment they stood together in silence, and Draycos felt
the subtle movement of Jack's shirt as a pair of teardrops hit it.
"Jack?" he asked quietly. "Are you all right?"

"I hate this place, Draycos," the boy said, swiping a hand across
his eyes.

"I understand," Draycos said quietly, the images of his own places
of great sorrow drifting like ghosts across his memory. "After the
dinner tonight, once everyone's asleep, we'll take the shuttle and go
back to the spaceport."

"Good." Abruptly Jack spun around on the path. "Let's get it over
with."

The long-range shuttle Alison was taken aboard had average
engines, purely functional interior design, and standard if reasonably
comfortable seats.

The starship the shuttle rendezvoused with flipped every one of
those descriptives on its head. It was large and long and sleek, fast
and powerful and elegant, with all the proper trim of a top-class
corporate star yacht.

And long before the gold nameplate beside the docking station came
into view, she knew what ship it had to be.

The
Advocatus Diaboli
.

Memories flickered back to her as Sideburns brought the ship to
dock. Jack had been aboard this ship four months ago, when Arthur
Neverlin tried to blackmail him into helping in Neverlin's scheme to
murder Cornelius Braxton, founder and head of Braxton Universis. Jack
and Draycos had managed to turn the tables on his plan and expose his
treachery.

At the time, of course, everyone had assumed that it was just a
particularly nasty attempt at a corporate takeover. Now that Alison
knew the full story, though, she could see how much nastier the big
picture really was.

And as far as she knew, the only thing standing in the way of
Neverlin's plan was the fact that he didn't know where the refugee
fleet was supposed to meet Draycos's advance team. That information had
been carefully locked away aboard the four advance team ships.

They were apparently counting on Alison to get it for them.

The past four hours of contemplation on such matters had led her
to the inevitable conclusion as to who she would find aboard this ship.
But though her face was properly prepared for the encounter, she still
couldn't quite suppress a shiver as the shuttle's docking hatch opened
into the
Advocatus Diaboli
.

And she came face-to-face with Colonel Maximus Frost.

Fresh from the trouble on Rho Scorvi, too. Though he had long
since cleaned off the grime of that world, there was still something of
that encounter's fatigue around his eyes. It was a fatigue Alison knew
all too well: the weariness of having pushed and schemed and fought,
only to have victory snatched away at the last second.

But there was more than just tiredness in his eyes. There was also
a deep, simmering anger.

"This is her?" Frost demanded, looking Alison up and down.

"This is her," Mustache confirmed. "Alison Kayna."

For another moment Frost studied Alison's face, and she found
herself holding her breath. But the colonel merely grunted. "Fine," he
said. "You two can go."

"Right," Mustache said. "A word of advice: don't let her near your
locker." He stepped back into the shuttle, and with a thud both ships'
hatches closed and sealed.

"I hope you're as good as they say you are," Frost warned. "For
your sake."

"I'm good at what I do," Alison said, hoping that wasn't just
bluster.

"We'll find out," Frost said. "It's going to take nine days to
reach Brum-a-dum in this tub. Your meals will be delivered to your
stateroom, and you'll be allowed out at my convenience and pleasure.
Questions?"

"Not right now," Alison said. "If I do, I'm sure the room has an
intercom."

"And feel free to use it," Frost said with an edge of sarcasm. His
eyes narrowed slightly. "I've seen you before, Kayna. I know I have."

"I've just got that sort of face," Alison said, feeling her
heartbeat speeding up. There had been no pictures taken of her for the
past five years—her father had seen to that. And there were precious
few pictures from previous years out where anyone could get hold of
them.

But there was nothing that could be done about personal memories .
. . and if Frost tracked down this particular memory, she was going to
be in very serious trouble indeed. "I don't think I've seen
you
before," she went on. "You have a name?"

He took a moment to consider his answer. "Frost," he said.

"Nice to meet you, Frost," Alison said. "Or would you prefer I
call you by your rank?"

"What makes you think I have one?"

"The way you stand." Alison nodded back at a group of humans and
aliens loitering a little ways down the corridor. "Them, too. You guys
are military of some kind."

"Military of the
best
kind," Frost said. "You can address
me as 'Colonel.' " He gestured to the loitering mercenaries. "Dumbarton?"

One of the men came to full attention. "Sir?"

"You and Mrishpaw escort our guest to her quarters," Frost
ordered. "Make sure she's comfortable."

"Yes, sir." Dumbarton and a typically ugly Brummga stepped
forward. "This way."

The stateroom they took her to was an easy match for the rest of
the ship. It had a raised platform for the surprisingly large bed, with
matching nightstands and a complete wraparound music system. To one
side of the sleeping area was a fair-sized conversation/ entertainment
area with two couches, several small tables, three soft-looking
armchairs, and a complete entertainment center. The whole thing was
separated from the sleeping area by a waist-high wall with a built-in
soothe-scent and the glossy raised edge of a holographic light show
system.

In one corner of the conversation area was an ornate wooden
computer desk, facing outward into the room, with polished brass trim
and a high-backed wooden chair. The part of the chair she could see
over the desktop looked at first glance to be something stiff and
old-fashioned, but beneath the desk's shin-high modesty panel she could
see the chair's modern rollers and the control bars of a fully
adjustable pneuma system. The front of the desk included another light
show system setup.

Off the conversation area, convenient to both it and the sleeping
section, was a bathroom with separate shower and swirl tub enclosures.

Alison spent the first half hour wandering around the suite, the
bug detector from her lip liner pencil humming in one hand, the other
hand resting casually on her shoulder in silent warning for Taneem to
stay put. The
Advocatus Diaboli
's original builders would
hardly have included surveillance equipment, but she thought Frost
might have tried to throw something together in the four hours he'd had
to play with.

He had. He'd installed two microphones, though so amateurishly
that she hardly even needed her detector to find them. One was behind
the desk's privacy panel, the other by the bed behind the intercom
speaker. She got rid of both, then swept the suite again just to make
sure.

And when she was finished, she kicked off her shoes and socks and
climbed into the squishy-soft bed. Pulling the comforter all the way up
to her chin, she settled down for a quiet conversation. "Taneem?" she
murmured. "How you doing, girl?"

"I'm frightened," Taneem murmured back. Her voice was shaking, her
two-dimensional body sliding restlessly along Alison's skin. "I'm
sorry."

"That's okay," Alison said, trying to hide her own growing fears
about this whole thing. "You've been very brave."

"This is the same human who tried to kill us on Rho Scorvi, isn't
it?"

"Yes, it is," Alison confirmed. "But that's all right, because he
doesn't know who we are. Or rather, who
I
am. We absolutely
have to make sure that he never finds out about
you
at all."

"Because he wants to kill Draycos and all others of our kind?"

"
Wants
is the key word," Alison agreed. "But he's not going
to, because you and I and Jack and Draycos aren't going to let him.
That's why we're here."

"Is it?" Taneem asked. "Or is it the money he promised you?"

"No reason I can't have both, is there?" Alison asked, keeping her
voice light.

For a moment Taneem didn't answer, but there was a definite sense
of discomfort to her silence. Alison waited her out, wondering if all
K'da were like this or whether Draycos had been pounding his warriors'
ethic into her during their language lessons. "Perhaps we should have
run," Taneem said at last.

"Unfortunately, there was never any safe time when we could have
done that," Alison said. "From the moment Mustache grabbed my arm, we
were stuck."

"I could have helped you," Taneem said, a bit hesitantly.

Alison's mind flashed back to Taneem's reaction the first time
she'd been forced to kill. "Even with your help, it would have been
dangerous," she told the K'da. "The two men on Semaline were never
close enough together that we could have been sure of taking both out
before they could fight back."

"What then is our plan?" Taneem asked. "Or do we even
have
a plan?"

"Of course we do," Alison assured her, trying to sound more
confident than she felt. "We do what Frost wants and open his safe for
him."

"Because of the money?"

Alison pursed her lips, mindful of Taneem's still limited
intelligence and understanding. "Taneem, do you remember Jack and
Draycos talking about the upcoming meeting that's supposed to take
place between the K'da advance team and the full refugee fleet?"

"Yes, of course," Taneem said, sounding a little insulted by the
question.

"And you also remember that we don't know where that meeting's
supposed to take place?"

"Of course," Taneem said again. "That's why we went to Nikrapapo,
to see if we could learn the location from the Malison Ring computer
there."

"Right," Alison said. "Only it's starting to look like Frost and
his friends don't actually have that information. Not yet. I think it's
in this safe they want me to open."

"Why haven't they opened it themselves?"

"Maybe they tried and couldn't," Alison said. "I think that's why
they've been chasing so hard after Jack these past couple of months.
His Uncle Virgil used to be one of the very best at this sort of thing."

"Then you also must fail in your attempt," Taneem said. Some
weight came onto Alison's shoulder as the K'da lifted her head
partially from the skin. "If the location is in the safe, you must not
open it."

"I wish it was that easy," Alison said. "But it's not. They've got
four safes—maybe only three if the one on Draycos's
Havenseeker
was too badly wrecked in the crash—and the whole Orion Arm to choose
safecrackers from. Sooner or later, somebody will get one of them open."

"Then perhaps we can destroy it?" Taneem suggested hesitantly.
"Perhaps we can destroy all of them?"

"We can't do that," Alison said. "There are just too many things
we don't know."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, for instance, what happens if none of the advance team
shows up at the meeting point?" Alison asked. "Do the refugees just
wait there until someone does? Do they go home? Do they continue on to
Iota Klestis, which Neverlin and Frost already know about?"

Taneem's glowing eyes seemed to dim a bit. "I don't know," she
admitted.

"Neither do I," Alison said. "Besides, this is way too good an
opportunity to pass up. Ever since Draycos's team was attacked, he and
Jack have been playing catch-up."

"What does that mean?"

"Neverlin and his buddies have always had the initiative," Alison
explained. "That means they were always deciding what to do, and Jack
and Draycos were always having to react to their action and try to
block it. But if we can get to the refugee fleet information first,
we'll finally be ahead of the game."

"The game?" Taneem echoed. "Is that what this is to you, Alison? A
game?"

Alison was still trying to come up with a good answer for that
when, behind her, there was a soft click and the stateroom door slid
open.

"What do you want?" she demanded, sitting bolt upright as
Dumbarton and Mrishpaw strode into the room. On her shoulder, she felt
Taneem's weight vanish as the K'da again flattened herself and moved
out of sight. "How
dare
you just waltz in here?"

"Can it, kid," Dumbarton said. "Colonel wants your clothes."

"My
what
?"

"Gotta scan 'em," he said.

Alison clenched her teeth. With Taneem riding her skin . . .
"Fine," she said. "Go on out. I'll toss everything out to you."

"Just do it," Dumbarton growled, not making the slightest move
toward the door. "We haven't got all day."

"I'll tell Colonel Frost," Alison threatened.

Striding over to the intercom on the nightstand, Dumbarton jabbed
one of the buttons. "Colonel?" he said. "Dumbarton. She's being
uncooperative."

"I just want a little privacy," Alison called toward the intercom.

"You think you've got something we haven't all seen before?" Frost
countered.