Jack nodded. "Sure looks that way."
"But this can't be," she protested. "How could they—I mean, how come no one's ever seen them before?"
Maybe because they're usually wrapped around Erassvas bodies? "Why would they?" he said instead. "You said the only people who come here are miners and traders."
"None of whom would bother with the forests," she conceded reluctantly.
"And Hren said they usually hide from strangers," Jack reminded her.
"Right," she agreed, her voice going suddenly thoughtful. "So how come we're different?"
Because Hren's figured out I've got one wrapped around my body, too? "No idea," he lied.
He felt her eyes on him. "If you say so."
"I say so." Jack took a deep breath. This might be risky, but he needed to make sure this wasn't some kind of weird look-alike species. "Stay here. I'm going to get a closer look."
"Oh no, you don't," Alison insisted, bringing her gun up. "They've got teeth and they've got claws, and I'm betting they're every bit as fast as they look."
"They also seem very well fed," Jack pointed out. "Most predators don't kill when they're not hungry."
"Jack—"
"Just stay here and keep an eye on them, okay?" Jack cut her off. Without waiting for more argument, he strode off toward the dragons.
He was halfway there when it belatedly occurred to him that even if they were K'da, they might not be civilized. "Draycos?" he muttered, slowing down his pace a little. "What do you think? Are they all right?"
There was no answer. "Draycos?" he repeated. "Come on, buddy, wake up."
"Look at them Jack," Draycos murmured darkly.
Jack glanced down into his shirt. "What?"
"I said look at them," Draycos said, his voice going even darker. "Lying around, not watching for danger or threat, digging grubs—grubs—out of dead wood."
A chill ran up Jacks back. He studied the multicolored dragons as they wandered around, trying to see in them the powerful, clever, deadly poet-warrior that was Draycos. "But they are K'da, aren't they?"
"No," Draycos said bitterly. "Not K'da. Not anymore.
"They are animals."
Over the next half hour the Erassvas gradually filtered into the clearing, lowering themselves in wide heaps onto the grass around the edges. Once settled, they began pulling out the berries they'd been stashing away in their pockets.
And as they ate, the group of K'da did a little dance. A nice, simple, pathetic little dance.
"Maybe they're not real K'da," Jack suggested hopefully as he sat against a tree a short distance away from the Erassvas. "You said yourself they don't smell quite right."
"No, they are K'da," Draycos told him. His earlier anger and bitterness had passed, leaving an even more disturbing emptiness behind. "The change in odor is most likely a result of their diet. A diet of grubs."
Jack winced. There was something about that part in particular that seemed to really bother his partner. Was it because these K'da were no longer true hunters? "Well, at least we now know where you came from," Jack said. "The race of slavers who kidnapped your people all those years ago must have missed a few."
Draycos snorted, a breath of hot air brushing across Jack's chest. "If this was our original home, then our storytellers are liars," he said flatly. "These Erassvas are hardly the proud and noble Dhghem spoken of in so many songs. They are primitives. And they are primitives by choice."
Jack looked over at the robed mounds of flesh munching placidly away at their handfuls of berries. Draycos was right, of course. The Erassvas had clearly had enough contact with the rest of the Orion Arm to learn English, and yet didn't have a single bit of the galactic community's technology. "Some people like their lives just the way they are," he offered.
"And they have no ambition?" Draycos bit out. "No self-pride? No desire for a better life for themselves and their offspring?" His tongue flicked out, tickling briefly against Jack's skin. "What happens here when there is rain or snow? What happens when there is disease or predator attack?"
Jack suppressed a sigh. There were counterarguments for each of those, of course. Some people didn't mind getting wet, while others didn't have much trouble with disease or predators.
But then, this wasn't really about the Erassvas. "Okay, so the K'da here aren't as sophisticated as you are," he said as soothingly as he could. "That doesn't mean anything. There are backwoods cultures all over the Orion Arm that are still composed of intelligent, rational beings."
Draycos didn't answer. "Draycos?" Jack prompted. "Come on, buddy. It's not that bad."
Still no answer. With a sigh, Jack gave up.
A motion to his left caught his eye, and he looked up as Alison came out of the trees into the clearing. "Enjoying the show?" she asked, sitting down beside him.
"Actually, dance never really did much for me," he said. "How's your head count going?"
"Finished, I think," she said. "Including children, there seem to be about two hundred Erassvas in this particular troop. About half of them are working the vines on the far side of those bushes."
"They don't like the dancing?"
She shrugged. "Maybe the Phookas will do a second show. Speaking of which, I count fifty of them, including the six who are across with the other group."
Which wouldn't include any who might be currently riding various hosts' bodies. But Jack couldn't exactly point that out. "I don't see any young Phookas," he said instead. "You suppose all of the ones here are male?"
"You're welcome to try to find out," Alison said dryly. "Me, I'm staying here. Let me see that tattoo of yours."
The sudden change in subject caught Jack by surprise. "What?"
"Your tattoo," she said patiently. "You didn't have it taken off, did you?"
There was, unfortunately, no way around it. Suppressing a grimace, Jack unfastened his shirt and pulled it open, exposing Draycos's head to view.
"Interesting," she said, studying Jack's shoulder and then looking over at the performing K'da. She looked back at Draycos, back at the K'da. "You realize your tattoo is the spitting image of a Phooka?"
"Really?" Jack asked, feigning surprise. He looked cross-eyed down at his shoulder, as if trying to get a good view of the image there. "Yeah, there is some resemblance, isn't there?"
"Resemblance, nothing," she countered. "It's the same head, same snout, same scale pattern. You've even got a sort of flattened version of that spiny crest that goes over their heads and down their backs."
"I'll take your word for it," Jack said, still pretending he couldn't quite focus on his tattoo. "Huh. That's funny."
"More than just funny," Alison said. "Where did you say you got that done?"
"I didn't say," Jack said. "If you must know, it was in a little shop in New Paris on Gaullia."
"Mm," Alison said, looking again at the dancing K'da. "I wonder how the artist could have known about Phookas."
"Maybe he knows some Erassvas," Jack said. This really wasn't a topic he wanted to get into. "Or maybe he just had a good book about dragons. So where are your friends?"
"My friends?"
"The people you said you'd be rendezvousing with."
"Oh. Them." Alison peered up at the small patches of sky that could be seen through the tangle of tree branches. "Not here, obviously."
"No kidding," Jack said. "You sure you've got the right place?"
"This is definitely it," she assured him. "They could just be late." She made a face. "Or they could have gone to the wrong spot."
"I don't suppose you thought to bring a comm clip."
"Actually, I did," she said, a little coolly. "And I've already tried. If they're here, they must be out of range."
"How about we run it through the Essenay's comm?" Jack suggested. "It's got a lot more range. In fact, why don't we just go ahead and pop the ship into orbit? That way we can cover half the planet at a single gulp "
"Worth a try," Alison agreed, getting to her feet and brushing some s
tray leaves off her jeans. "Is there any trick to starting up the engines?"
"There's no trick," Jack said. "There's also no need." He tapped his comm clip. "Unc—computer?"
"Computer," Uncle Virge's voice came back instantly.
"I need you to take the ship into low orbit and do an ID broadcast," Jack said. "Alison's comm clip frequency is—" He looked up at her and raised his eyebrows.
"Why don't I just go aboard and plug it in?" she suggested. "I don't like giving comm clip info to strangers."
"And I don't like strangers alone in my ship." Jack countered. "Just give me the frequency, okay?"
"Fine," she said crossly, digging a comm clip from inside her shirt and tossing it to him. "Whatever."
Jack caught it and peered at the markings on the back. "Okay, here it is." He read off the frequency and pattern specs. "Start with a parabolic upper-atmosphere dip," he went on, tossing the clip back to Alison. "If you don't get an answer, expand it to a complete orbit."
"Acknowledged," Uncle Virge said hesitantly. "With all due respect, Master Jack—"
"Carry out your instructions," Jack cut him off. Normal P/S computers never argued with their owners. Uncle Virge, in contrast, never seemed to do anything but. Even if Alison hadn't been standing right there listening, Jack was in no mood to listen to the computer personality's objections. "Alison, what message should he send?"
"Just the word 'winderlake,' " she said. "If he hears the response 'harborlight,' mark the location and let me know."
"You get that?" Jack asked Uncle Virge.
"Acknowledged."
"Then get going." Jack tapped off the comm clip and gestured to the ground beside him. "Might as well get comfortable," he told Alison. "This could take a while. You tried the berries yet?"
"No, and I don't think you should, either," she said, reluctantly sitting down again. "There's something about the Erassvas' eyes that weirds me out a little."
"Yeah, I noticed that, too," Jack said. "You think there's some kind of mild narcotic in the berries?"
"Or maybe not so mild," Alison said. "And if it's strong enough to affect people their size, it would probably kill either of us. If you're hungry, I've got ration bars in my bag."
"Maybe later." Beyond the trees, he heard the hum as the Essenay lifted into the sky. "What are you going to do if they're not here?"
She shrugged. "Wait, I guess," she said. "That's why I bought all that camping gear." She gestured at her bags. "You don't have to wait with me if you don't want to."
"I don't, and I wasn't planning to," Jack said, feeling a twinge of guilt. He knew how Draycos would feel about abandoning a companion in the middle of nowhere, even a companion as loosely connected as Alison. "But I might stick around another day or two, anyway."
"Well, don't mess up your schedule just for me," she said. "Ah—show's over." She gestured toward the center of the clearing, where the Phookas had finished their dance and were wandering away back into the forest. "Let's see if the rest of the Erassvas come in for a second performance."
"Looks to me like the cast is leaving the stage," Jack said. "Maybe there's a dinner theater later for the—"
"Jack!" Uncle Virge's voice came suddenly from the comm clip. "Incoming ships: one Kapstan long-range transport and two Djinn-90 pursuit fighters."
Jack's breath caught in his throat. Djinn-90s? "Get out of there," he snapped. "Go to ground and hide."
"Too late—they see me," Uncle Virge said grimly. "I'm getting a signal—"
There was the click of a relay. "Hello, Jack Morgan," a dark voice said. "And your slippery uncle Virgil Morgan, too, I presume?"
Jack's first impulse was to lie, to use all of Uncle Virgil's training to convince them that they had the wrong person. The Essenay was running under a false ID, after all. Maybe they weren't really sure it was him.
But no. Neverlin's allies had had plenty of opportunity at Brum-a-drum to record the Essenay's description and parameters. They knew they had the right ship.
And that voice wasn't showing a single scrap of doubt. Lying about it would just be a waste of effort. "Uncle's not here at the moment," Jack said instead. "Can I take a message?"
"Ah," the voice said. "So you're the boy who's been causing my friend Mr. Neverlin such trouble."
"Mr. Neverlin hasn't exactly been giving me a free ride, either," Jack countered. "And you are . . .?"
"Colonel Maximus Frost of the Malison Rang," the voice said. "And I'm very much looking forward to meeting you."
CHAPTER 7
The comm clip went silent. Jack found himself staring down at nothing, his throat tight, his stomach twisting into a knot of fear and anger.
It couldn't be. How could the mercenaries possibly have tracked the Essenay across the Orion Arm to this fifth-rate planet? How could they possibly have known where to find him and Alison?
Alison.
Alison, who'd been so conveniently on the scene to spring him from their trap. Alison, who'd noted and even commented on the Essenay's InterWorld transmitter.
Alison, who'd talked him into coming to this nice little out-of-the-way system in the first place. A place where he and Draycos and the Essenay could quietly disappear.
Jack turned to look at her, expecting to see her Corvine pistol leveled at his stomach, a triumphant smile on her face.
But the gun wasn't pointed at him. And her face was as taut and horrified as he'd ever seen it. "Alison?" he asked carefully.
She twitched; and as if a mask had suddenly dropped into place, the fear vanished from her expression. "I think we've got trouble," she said.
"No kidding," Jack growled, scrambling to his feet. Dodging between and around the strolling Erassvas, he sprinted back down the path to the edge of the forest.
It was as bad as he'd expected. In the distance over the mountains he could see the Essenay swooping and dodging through groups of wispy clouds. The two Djinn-90s were right on its tail, their lasers flashing as they tried to bring it down. "Uncle Virge?" he called. "How are you doing?"
"I'm open to suggestions," the computer's voice came back.
"Try a mirm preah maneuver," Draycos said, his head rising from Jack's skin and pressing against his shirt as the dragon gazed out at the distant battle. "Break to your right. . . now."
The Essenay twisted sideways, dipping lower toward the mountains below. The two pursuit fighters shifted course to stay on it, and then suddenly the Essenay's nose dropped and the ship dived straight down.
Jack caught his breath. But even as the Djinn-90s dived after him, Uncle Virge brought the nose sharply up again and spun the ship nearly a hundred eighty degrees around to point straight back at his attackers.
They reacted instantly, wrenching away to either side to avoid ramming at full speed into the larger ship. But for one of them it was too late. A double burst from the Essenay's meteor-defense lasers caught it squarely in the nose as it maneuvered, shattering it into a ball of flame. The other fighter was luckier, managing to dodge away from the short-range missile Uncle Virge fired at it. The Essenay's lasers flashed at it as it fled, but before they could get a good target-lock the Djinn-90 vanished out of sight behind one of the mountain peaks.
"One down," Uncle Virge said as the Essenay's path curved around toward the forest. "Let's see if I can get back there and pick you up before he comes around the other side."
"We're ready," Jack said. There was the rustling of bushes behind him, and he glanced over his shoulder to see Alison jog into view. "Make it fast."
But Uncle Virge didn't make it fast. In fact, he didn't make it at all.
It happened all at once, with perfect timing and coordination. From high in the sky the Kapstan transport Uncle Virge had mentioned earlier suddenly dropped into view through the clouds, the sun glinting off its stubby wings, its belly weapons raining laser and particle-beam fire down on the Essenay At the same time, the remaining Djinn-90 reappeared from behind the mountains, zigzagging through the peaks as it
charged toward the Essenay's right flank.
Two armed ships. . . and the Essenay was caught between them.
Jack clenched his hands into fists, vaguely aware of Draycos's claws tightening reflexively against his skin. Uncle Virge was trapped like a rat in a cage. If he didn't surrender, and fast, the two attackers would cut the ship in half.
"The Saga of Fristra," Draycos said suddenly, his head melting back onto Jack's skin. "Min kly, then the Saga of Fristra."
Jack blinked. "What—?"
"Jack?" Alison demanded as she came up beside him. She peered up at the mountains, shading her eyes with her hand. "Uh-oh."
"Min kly, then Fristra," Uncle Virge acknowledged, his voice tight. "See you, Jack lad."
"What's a min kly?" Alison asked, throwing a frown at Jack's comm clip.
Jack was still trying to think up a good answer to that when the Essenay twisted suddenly like a hooked fish, spun to the side, and raked the incoming Djinn-90 with a full salvo from its lasers. Half-hidden by the brilliant flashes, a pair of missiles arrowed out in a one-two punch.
The first missile exploded against the side of the mountain as the fighter passed, blanketing the attacker in a flow of shattered ice and rock. The second arced straight into the middle of the avalanche. There was another ball of flame, and now only the Kapstan was left.
But the maneuver had cost the Essenay dearly. Its sideways skid had robbed it of most of its forward momentum, and Jack could see Uncle Virge fighting for stability in the churning mountain winds. Even as the transport dropped lower, its attack intensifying, the Essenay rolled over and plummeted toward the cliffs below. It disappeared behind a peak—
And there was one final violent explosion. The Kapstan veered sharply away, bouncing as it was buffeted by the blast.
Jack stared at the fading light and smoke, his pulse pounding in his ears. "Uncle Virge?" he whispered toward his comm clip. "Uncle Virge?"
There was no answer. In the distance, the Kapstan's pilot had gotten the transport back under control and returned to the area above the final explosion's fading glow. Slowly, it circled the area, its weapons silent.