Dragonback 01 Dragon and Thief (20 page)

For a moment the dragon was silent. Jack shuffled the cards, not
daring to look up at him. Once before, he'd wondered what K'da warriors
did to someone who disobeyed orders. Now, he found himself wondering
what they did to deserters.

"Uncle Virge does not think you should follow the K'da warrior
ethic," Draycos said at last.

Jack looked up sharply. "What makes you say that?"

"You and he discussed it," Draycos said. "In the Vagran spaceport."

Jack made a face. He'd forgotten how good the dragon's ears were.
"That was a private conversation, you know."

"My apologies," Draycos said. He didn't sound all that apologetic.
"The fact remains that Uncle Virge sees all actions and plans of action
in terms of whether they will aid you or harm you."

"What's wrong with that?" Jack demanded. "Who else is going to
think about what I need?"

"I agree that you should take care of yourself," Draycos said.
"But there should also be more to guide your decisions and actions than
simply your own comfort or safety."

"Let me guess," Jack growled. "Doing for others. The noble cause
of good versus evil. Sacrificing yourself for a higher purpose. Am I
getting warm?"

"You speak with scorn," Draycos said calmly. "But you are correct.
There are times when each person must choose his path based solely on
what he knows to be right."

Jack sniffed. "The K'da warrior ethic."

"It has nothing to do with warriors," Draycos said. "Nor does it
depend on whether you are alone or surrounded by friends and allies. It
is a decision of the will, guided by the inner knowledge of right and
wrong."

He cocked his head. "Do you still know right and wrong, Jack
Morgan?"

"If we go up against Cornelius Braxton, I'll probably die," Jack
said bluntly. "Even if I live, I'll go to prison on Vagran for two
murders I didn't commit. Is that what you want?"

"If you do not stand against him, the two Wistawki will still be
dead," Draycos reminded him. "And you will have to live with the
knowledge that their murderer was not brought to justice. Is that what
you
want?"

"I could live with it," Jack said stubbornly.

The green eyes continued to bore into him. Jack tried to hold that
gaze, but after a few seconds he gave up. "No, not really," he conceded.

"And you will also know that through their deaths another person
was harmed," Draycos went on. "The owner of the cylinder you intend to
steal."

"So what do you want me to do?" Jack asked. "Throw
my
life
away, too? Add one more death to this whole ugly list?"

"I do not suggest you deliberately sacrifice your life without
care," Draycos said. "That is not the way of a warrior. We will be
subtle and quiet, and use all the skill and cunning we possess. But the
cylinder must be returned to its rightful owner, and that owner warned
of the attack against him or her."

Jack shook his head. "I already told you, Draycos. We can't fight
Cornelius Braxton and win."

"Then do not fight him because you expect to win," Draycos said.
"Fight him because it is the right thing to do."

Jack snorted. "Like pulling that guy Dumbarton out of the hot dirt
on Iota Klestis?"

"Yes," Draycos said. "I do not expect any gain from that action.
Nor do I expect Dumbarton to be grateful if our lives should cross
again. I did it because it was right."

Jack looked down at the cards in his hand. Uncle Virge would argue
strongly against this, he knew. He would remind Jack that there was no
one to look after Jack Morgan but Jack Morgan himself. He would point
out that high-level corporate warfare was none of Jack's business, and
that the sooner he got himself out of the middle of it the better.

But Uncle Virge wasn't here.

"Easy for you to say," he muttered. "I'm the one on the hot seat.
You've got nothing to lose."

"On the contrary," Draycos said. "I have the lives of all my
people."

Jack looked up, startled. "What?"

"The man behind the desk in the
Advocatus Diaboli,
"
Draycos said. "You perhaps did not recognize his voice. It was the same
human who led those searching the
Havenseeker
."

Jack felt his stomach churn. "Yeah, I recognized it, too," he
admitted. "I guess . . . I hoped I was wrong."

"It was the same human," Draycos said firmly. "Thus I face the
same decision you do. Do I obey his orders, and sacrifice the owner of
the cylinder, and be free afterward to seek him out? Or do I take my
stand here against him, and thus risk the lives of all the K'da and
Shontine?"

Jack sighed. "You're not thinking this through," he said. "Bad
enough when it was just your Valahgua and some pirates or mercenaries
they picked up along the way. But with Braxton Universis in the game .
. ."

He shook his head. "We can't fight the whole Orion Arm, Draycos,"
he said quietly. "I don't know what Braxton has against your people, or
how he got involved with this. But we can't fight him
and
whoever else he's got in his pocket
and
this Death weapon."

For a moment the dragon was silent. "If what you say is true, the
odds against us are indeed immense," he said at last. "But again, odds
do not alter the rightness or wrongness of a course of action. And I
believe we have already determined what that right course of action
should be."

Jack smiled wanly. "So in other words, you want to take on Braxton
Universis," he said. "Just you and me."

"We must of course begin with just you and me," Draycos agreed.
"But that does not mean we will not gather allies to our side as we go.
The owner of the cylinder, for one, may be grateful for our assistance."

Jack shook his head again. "I can just hear what Uncle Virge would
have to say about this."

"I can imagine that, as well," Draycos said. "But the question is
what
you
have to say."

Jack sighed. "The Orion Arm's a big place," he said. "Even
Cornelius Braxton must have better things to do than track down some
punk-nosed kid who messed up on him. Sure, let's give it a shot."

Draycos ducked his head. "I am proud of you, Jack," he said.
"Though you are only a boy, you have the spirit of a K'da warrior."

"Yeah, well, let's hope that spirit doesn't get permanently
separated from the rest of me tonight," Jack said sourly, looking at
his watch. "It's after eleven. I guess we'd better start getting ready."

The
Essenay
, he knew, would be waiting at the rendezvous
point on Aldershot by now. Dimly, he wondered what Uncle Virge would do
when he simply vanished.

The purser's office was set to close at midnight. Jack got there
at exactly five minutes till.

The purser and his two assistants were in the process of closing
up for the night as Jack stepped in through the door. "Oh, wait a
minute," he called, putting a little pleading into his voice. "Please?
Am I too late to put something else in the safe?"

"Not at all, young sir," the purser assured him, coming over to
the counter. "Your uncle remembered something else?"

"Yeah." Jack shook his head. "He is so absentminded sometimes."

"No problem," the purser said. "Come on back."

He opened the counter section and walked Jack to the back. Again
making sure Jack couldn't see the keypad, he opened the vault. "You
have your key?"

"Right here," Jack said, pulling out the key and an
expensive-looking jewelry case. Like the data tube he'd put in earlier,
he'd bought the jewelry case at one of the liner's gift shops. But of
course the purser wouldn't know that. "I really appreciate this."

"Not a problem," the purser said, finishing the combination and
pulling open the safe door.

Jack stepped inside and opened Box 48. Laying the jewelry case
carefully inside, he closed and locked the box again. "That it?" the
purser asked as Jack stepped out of the vault.

"Yes, thank you," Jack said, pausing right by the edge of the door.

Now came the tricky part. Cupping his right hand around the cuff
link he was palming, he threw a quick look at each of the purser's
assistants. Busy with their computers, neither was looking his
direction.

"Watch yourself," the purser warned. Leaning his weight against
the door, he started to push it closed.

"I'm okay," Jack said, glancing sideways at the hidden security
cameras over the office door. They could be more of a problem, but it
didn't look like either of them would have a clear view, either.

The door swung almost closed; and with a sudden twitch of his
right wrist, Jack sent the cufflink he was holding clattering onto the
floor toward the counter. "Blast!" he said.

It was probably the oldest distraction in the universe. But as
Uncle Virgil had been fond of pointing out, the old tricks got old
precisely because they worked. Even as he continued pushing the vault
door closed, the purser's eyes automatically went to the cuff link
bouncing across his floor.

And as Jack threw up his hands in a gesture of frustration, his
left hand dipped for a split-second behind the nearly closed door.

Draycos was ready. With a brief tug of weight, he shot out of
Jack's sleeve through the gap and into the safe.

Jack's arms continued their upward swing, his left hand moving
clear of the vault door just as it slammed shut with a muffled thud.
"Darn it all, anyway," Jack growled, chasing after the cufflink. "I am
forever losing that thing."

"Let me see it," the purser offered as Jack caught up with the
cufflink and picked it up. "Maybe it can be fixed."

"I don't know how anyone could," Jack said, handing it over. He
didn't know if the man was suspicious or just trying to be helpful, but
it didn't matter. Uncle Virgil had long ago taught him to watch the
details, and he'd made sure to carefully break the cuff link. "See how
this connector piece flops around?"

"Yes, I see," the purser agreed, twisting it back and forth. "We
do have a licensed jeweler aboard, in Gantor Gems down on Deck 17. She
may be able to fix it for you."

"That's a good idea," Jack said as the man handed back the cuff
link. "Maybe I'll go see her tomorrow. Thanks."

"You're welcome," the purser said, ushering him through the
counter opening and out the door. "Have a good night."

Well, a busy night, anyway
, Jack told himself as he left
the office and headed back down the corridor. First stop would be back
to their stateroom for a change of clothing, including the thin plastic
gloves he always carried in a hidden pocket in his jacket, and to pick
up the rest of the props for the night's performance. He just hoped
Draycos would remember the instructions he'd given him for working that
emergency release lever.

He also hoped the dragon wasn't claustrophobic.

He had to walk past the monitor room a half dozen times before the
area was clear enough for him to sneak into the service hallway without
being seen. He got the electrical room door open, slipped inside, and
started work on the air vent grill—

He had it halfway off when there was a sudden commotion outside
his door. He froze, crouched by the vent, sure that he'd been spotted
and that the jig was up.

But the voices and footsteps went past without anyone pounding on
his door or trying to open it. The noise faded away, and he realized to
his limp relief that it had been nothing but the one o'clock shift
change. Wiping the sweat off his forehead, he got back to work.

A minute later the grill was off. Pulling his homemade smoke bomb
from a side pocket, he set it carefully into the air conduit and
started the fuse. In exactly twenty minutes, if he'd done the job
right, the bomb would go off. When it did, the air flow would blow the
smoke straight into the monitor room.

It took him seventeen of those twenty minutes to get back to the
corridor outside the purser's office. Again, it took him a few tries
before he could get into the service hallway without being seen.

Exactly nineteen minutes after setting the bomb, he was in
position.

For that last minute he stood in the hallway, counting down the
seconds in his mind and staring at the curved mark Draycos had made on
the wall. For him, the waiting had always been the hardest part of any
job. That was when all the doubts came swirling in: doubts about
whether he'd covered all the details, whether someone was off their
usual schedule, whether there was some vital bit of information he
didn't know or had forgotten.

Sometimes, there had been doubts of a more serious sort.

Questions about whether he should even be doing this sort of work.

Uncle Virgil had done his best to make sure that last set of
doubts didn't raise their heads very often. When they did, he'd done
his best to brush them aside. That was probably why it hadn't been
until after his death that Jack had been able to even start thinking
about quitting the business.

Yet here he was, at it again. Only this time it was a K'da warrior
who was doing his best to convince him he was doing the right thing.

One of these days, Jack promised himself, he would have to start
thinking these things out for himself.

Twenty minutes. Jack listened hard, but even a loud fire alarm
from the monitor room would be impossible to hear this far away. Still,
if commercial fire procedures hadn't changed in the past couple of
years, everyone should be scrambling out of the monitor room right now
as the place filled with smoke. The firefighters would then go in,
extinguishers at the ready, hunting for the source of the fire.

It wouldn't take them long to find the smoke bomb. Even if they
didn't, the bomb would quickly run out of smoke on its own.

But for those crucial few minutes, no one should be watching the
camera monitors. Which meant no one would notice if a few of those
cameras suddenly blanked out.