Dragon and Thief d-1

by Timothy Zahn

  Jack shook his head. "I wouldn't bet on that," he warned. "But I don't have anything better to offer."

  He returned the cylinder to its hiding place under the bed and stood up. "I guess the least we can do is go take a look at the safe," he added, stepping to the closet and getting out the suit coat that went with his new shirt and slacks. "You coming?"

  Draycos's response was to leap in through Jack's open-necked shirt. "And then?" the dragon asked from his shoulder.

  Jack took a deep breath. "We'll come up with something. I hope."

  Chapter 18

  The purser's office was bigger than Jack had expected, probably four times as big as his own stateroom. It had a chest-high counter extending across the entire room near the door, where the purser stood dealing with passengers who wanted to store their valuables. Behind the counter, another man and woman dressed in white uniforms worked at computer desks, presumably keeping track of what was in the safe and doing other odd jobs.

  The safe was bigger than Jack had expected, too. It was more like a small bank vault, easily big enough for three or four people to walk inside. Probably big enough for them to dance in, too. There was a flat metal plate over the spot where the keypad or combination dial would be on a normal safe door. There were also two emergency lights set into the upper walls, one pointed at the vault, the other pointed at the door.

  All this he got from a single pass by the open door. The outer door itself, he noted, had a standard lock setup. "We are not going in?" Draycos asked as Jack continued down the corridor.

  "In a minute," Jack said. A hundred feet down the corridor from the purser's office was one of the ship's bars, with a small lounge area across the hallway from it. On the far side of the lounge was a glass wall that looked down onto a casino one deck below. "I thought we might like to come up with a plan first," he added, stepping into the lounge.

  "Would not our room be safer?" Draycos murmured as Jack selected a table by the glass wall, well away from the other half dozen people who were talking or sipping drinks.

  "This is safe enough," Jack assured him, swiveling his chair around so that he could look down into the casino. With his back to the rest of the lounge, no one would see his lips moving as he and Draycos talked.

  At the same time, the faint reflections in the glass would let him keep an eye on the people coming and going in the lounge and corridor behind him. If Snake Voice's agent aboard the Star of Wonder got careless, Jack might be able to spot him.

  It took somewhat longer than the minute Jack had suggested. It took nearly an hour, in fact, plus three fizzy-sodas, for them to hammer out a workable plan.

  At least, Jack hoped it was workable.

  The purser was talking with an elderly woman when Jack returned to the office. He waited behind her as patiently as he could, casually looking around for anything he might have missed on his earlier stroll past the place. It was pretty much as he'd noted then, except that above the door were two more emergency lights. Taking several deep breaths, as Uncle Virgil had taught him to do, he tried to relax.

  Finally, the woman left. "May I help you, young man?" the purser asked with a smile as Jack stepped up to the counter.

  "Yes, sir, I hope so," Jack said, pitching his tone and manner to make himself seem a couple of years younger than he really was. Uncle Virgil had always said that the younger you were, the less likely people were to suspect you of being trouble. "I'm Jack Morgan, Stateroom 332. My uncle wanted me to put one of his data tubes in the safe."

  "Certainly," the purser said. "Do you have a deposit box?"

  "No, not yet," Jack said. "How long will it take to get one?"

  "No time at all," the purser assured him, stepping to one side and lifting a section of the countertop. His other hand, Jack noted, stayed out of sight beneath the edge of the counter as he did so. There must be either a release catch he needed to operate or an alarm he had to deactivate. The purser propped up the section of countertop and pulled open the swinging door beneath it. "If you'll come this way, please?"

  He led the way back to the vault and swung the metal plate back to reveal a keypad set into the door. "If you'll just stand there, sir?" he said, indicating a spot where the plate would block Jack's view of the keypad.

  Jack did as he was told, and the purser began punching in the code. The plate covering the keypad had seemed easy enough to move, with no secret switches the purser had to use first. But Jack had already noticed the heavy ring the purser was wearing on that hand. Probably a short-range radio transmitter that identified him and deactivated the plate's alarms.

  It was like a bank, all right, with all the cute security tricks anyone could ever want. A terrible place to have to break into.

  It was just as well, Jack thought, that he wasn't going to have to do that.

  "There we go," the purser announced, swinging the plate back over the keypad. He pulled on the handle, and the heavy door swung ponderously open.

  Jack had been wrong about one thing: there was not, in fact, enough room in there for anyone to dance. Both walls were lined with locked deposit boxes of various sizes, with only a narrow walkway down the middle. "Let me see, now," the purser said, studying a pocket computer he'd pulled from a belt pouch. "Box 48 is free. That one will have plenty of room for your data tube. Unless you think your uncle may want to add other items later in the voyage?"

  "Oh," Jack said, frowning. "I hadn't thought of that."

  He stepped into the vault, as if trying to get a closer look at the boxes. They were, he noted with a small bit of relief, standard coded-key types that he should be able to open with his multitool. That part, at least, should be easy.

  "Because I know he has some other nice things," he went on, pressing his back tightly against one side of the vault as he pretended to study the boxes on the other side. On his skin, he could feel Draycos shift position as the dragon curled himself over the deposit box doors and peered inside. "How big are these other boxes?"

  "They're different sizes," the purser said. "The ones like 48 are three by three by twenty..."

  He began to rattle off his list of box sizes. Jack pretended to listen, moving slowly down the line of boxes. Draycos was still shifting position, but so far he hadn't given the signal.

  The purser had finished his list by the time Jack made it to the far end of the vault. "And how much are the different rental fees?" he asked, waiting for Draycos to come out of his curve and get all the way onto his back again.

  He felt the dragon do so. Turning around, he pressed his back against the other side of the vault.

  "There's no cost for any of them," the purser said, a note of puzzlement creeping into his voice. He was probably used to people wanting to step into his vault. He probably wasn't used to people wanting to make a vacation home out of the place.

  Which meant that Jack had better wrap this up quick, before the man's surprise turned into suspicion.

  "Because there's that necklace he got for Aunt Louise," Jack said, as if talking to himself. "And the antique humidor—that's pretty big. I don't know if he's going to want to keep that in the cabin or not."

  Draycos stirred one final time, and the tip of a claw delicately touched Jack's ribs.

  The dragon had found the cylinder.

  "No," Jack said as if suddenly making up his mind. "No, number 48 should do just fine."

  He turned around, stepping away from the boxes, and idly ran a fingertip down the boxes he'd been leaning against. "I guess he can always come and change to one of these bigger boxes if he needs to, right?"

  "Certainly," the purser said. "If you'll step out here, I'll code a key for you."

  Jack's finger touched Box 125; and as it did so, Draycos touched a claw to his side again.

  Bingo.

  "Sure," Jack said, walking out of the vault. The purser went in and slid a key into the lock of Box 48. He connected the key to a thin wire leading to his pocket computer and started tapping buttons.

  As he
did so, Jack looked casually over at the inside of the vault door. It was there, right where he'd seen it on nearly all the walk-in vaults he'd watched Uncle Virgil crack. Most Orion Arm safety regulators considered it prudent, most safe-crackers considered it stupid, and most vault owners never considered it at all.

  A small red lever labeled Emergency Door Release, and a set of glow-in-the-dark instructions on how to use it.

  The purser finished his coding and stepped out of the vault. "Here you go," he said, pulling the wire off the key and handing it to Jack. "You can go ahead and put in your data tube now."

  "Thank you." Jack took the key and went back into the vault. The key hummed in the lock of Box 48 and popped it open, and he put the data tube inside. He closed it, the key hummed again, and the box was locked. "When do you close tonight?" he asked as he left the vault.

  "We're open until midnight," the purser told him, pushing the vault door shut. "We reopen at six in the morning."

  "I'll tell my uncle that," Jack said, crossing to the counter and waiting for the purser to open up that section for him again. The purser did so; and from this side, Jack could see that there was a button down there that he had to push first. "Thank you."

  "Good evening, young man."

  Jack left the office and headed back in the direction of the lounge. "You found the cylinder?" he asked, just to make sure. "Yes," Draycos said. "There were also several data tubes and a small box of jewelry inside."

  "Jewelry, huh?" Jack commented. Just ahead on the left was a door marked Authorized Personnel Only. "I wonder if the cylinder belongs to a woman."

  "Could a woman be a likely target for Braxton Universis?" Draycos asked.

  "Oh, sure," Jack said, glancing both ways down the corridor as he reached the door. No one was looking. He tapped the plate, the door slid open, and he ducked through.

  Behind the door was a narrow service hallway. Four or five doors led off it to the right, while the end was blocked by a heavy-looking door with a keypad.

  Unlike the door he'd entered through, that one would be locked. Fortunately, he didn't need to go that far. What he was looking for should be right here in the corridor.

  "Women control lots of corporations," he went on, starting slowly down the hallway. As he walked he ran his fingers along the molded plastic wall on his left, the wall of the purser's office. "Or I suppose the jewelry could be just a gift."

  "What do you search for?" Draycos asked, the top of his head rising slightly out of Jack's shoulder.

  "Keep down, will you?" Jack growled. "Did you happen to notice the emergency lights back in the purser's office? Small boxes on the walls near the ceiling with lights sticking out of them?"

  "I did."

  "The boxes contain the lights' batteries," Jack explained. "Here, they almost certainly also contain hidden security cameras. We'll need to knock them out."

  His fingers paused, feeling the slight unevenness beneath the plastic wall that meant he'd found a vertical support. "This should be it," he said, turning around and pressing his back to the wall. "There should be a junction box somewhere near here—a small square thing with five wires coming out one side and two out the other. See if you can find it."

  Obediently, Draycos shifted around again on his skin. "Well?" Jack asked.

  There was no answer. Jack moved slowly along the wall, feeling his heart starting to pound again. Any minute now one of the ship's crew could stumble across him here. The last thing he wanted was to have to come up with a story about why he was leaning against a wall in a place he wasn't supposed to be.

  "I believe I have found it," Draycos spoke up in that strange near-far voice that seemed to go with this particular K'da trick. "Are the wires black with silver striping?"

  "That's them," Jack confirmed. "Okay, get back aboard; I'm going to turn around."

  The dragon drew back from the wall and returned to his back. Jack turned around and held out a hand to the wall. "Show me where it was."

  Some weight came onto his forearm. His jacket sleeve puffed out slightly as Draycos's foreleg appeared, sliding out the cuff along Jack's wrist. One of the claws extended and scratched a small curved mark into the wall.

  "Great," Jack said as the weight of the dragon's leg melted back onto his skin. Fortunately, this jacket material was more flexible than the leather of his normal coat. "Next stop is the monitor room."

  "What is that?"

  "The place where people watch the view from the security cameras," Jack explained as he sneaked out of the service corridor and back into the passenger areas. "Especially those in the purser's office."

  "You have not spoken of this part of your plan," Draycos said, sounding suspicious.

  "Don't worry, we're not going looking for a fight," Jack assured him. "I'm a thief, not a one-man army."

  "You are a former thief," Draycos corrected. "And there are two of us."

  "Yeah. Whatever."

  Not surprisingly, the monitor room hadn't been marked on the floor plans in Jack's stateroom. However, the main security office had been shown, and it seemed reasonable that the people staring at the monitor screens would be someplace nearby.

  They were, hidden behind another locked door at the end of another dead-end service hallway. "Okay," Jack muttered, moving down the service hallway as quietly as he could. Too late, now, he wondered if this hallway had its own security camera. If it did, he could expect company any minute now.

  But no one appeared, and no voice demanded to know what he was doing there. Chewing at his lip, he kept going.

  Aside from the door at the far end, this hallway had only two other doors leading off of it. They were situated opposite each other near the far end. As he got closer, he could see that the door on the left had a number and the word Electrical on it, while the one on the right said Storage.

  "Okay," he muttered to Draycos. " 'Storage' here will probably be security stuff. It'll be seriously locked, and we'll be in real trouble if we get caught messing with it."

  He turned to the other door. "So let's try in here."

  That door was locked, too, but not seriously. A minute with his multitool and Jack had it open. Checking both ways down the hallway, he slipped inside, closing the door behind him.

  It was a typical electrical closet, like a hundred others he'd seen in a lifetime of lurking in shadows. Most of the space was taken up by a large electrical switchboard, with wires connecting to a hundred different in-plugs and out-plugs. Other wires were laid out neatly along the walls, going off to other rooms in the area.

  But Jack didn't really care about any of that. What he did care about were the two large air vents set into the wall, one near the ceiling, the other near the floor.

  It was another minute's work with the multitool to take the grating off the lower vent. Twisting his neck awkwardly in the cramped space, he eased his head into the opening. With cool air flowing down the back of his neck he found himself gazing at a similar grill a few feet away. It was the air system grill in the monitor room, and the air flow was going in that direction.

  Perfect.

  "Okay," he muttered, easing his head back out and fastening the grating back in place. "That's it."

  He opened the door and cautiously looked outside. The hallway was still empty. A dozen nervous steps later, and he was safely back in the passenger area of the liner.

  "We will obtain the cylinder now?" Draycos asked as Jack strode along.

  Jack shook his head. "First we go back to the room," he said. "I've got a couple more things I have to do."

  "And then?"

  Jack took a deep breath. "Then I guess the job is on."

  Chapter 19

  Jack stopped at one of the dining rooms first, following Uncle Virgil's standard rule that you never went into a job on an empty stomach. He made sure to order far more than he wanted, and brought the leftovers back to the stateroom where Draycos would have the privacy he needed.

  As the dragon attacked the rest of the
medium-rare T-bone steak, Jack sat at the writing desk putting together a small but very smelly smoke bomb.

  It didn't take long. One of his duties for Uncle Virgil had been to create diversions, both for the jobs themselves and also sometimes for when things went suddenly sour and they had to run for their lives. Uncle Virgil had taught him a lot about such things, and Jack had picked up other bits and pieces from some of Uncle Virgil's friends. Even on a luxury starliner, he'd had no trouble buying or scrounging everything he'd needed.

  The rest of the preparations didn't take very long, either. Soon—much too soon—everything was ready.

  After that, there was nothing to do but wait.

  "You are troubled," Draycos said.

  Jack looked up from the solitaire game he had laid out on the writing desk. Draycos had finished his meal and was lying on his stomach beside the bed, his head laid along his front paws in that doglike resting pose of his. All the dragon needed, Jack thought, was a roaring fireplace behind him to complete the picture. "What?"

  "I said you are troubled," Draycos repeated, raising his head to look more closely at Jack. "Are you concerned about the mission?"

  "Maybe a little," Jack said, looking down at his game. He didn't remember this card layout at all. Apparently, he'd been playing on pure autopilot. "No, I think it'll go all right. The people who designed the system couldn't possibly have expected the approach we're going to use. No, it should work."

  "Than what is your concern?"

  Slowly, Jack began collecting the cards. "I've been thinking," he said. "I'm wondering if maybe we should forget this whole toss-the-rock-in-the-water thing of yours."

  "The koi shike?"

  "Yeah, that," Jack said. "Maybe we should just switch the cylinders like they told us to and leave it at that."

  Draycos's green eyes were glittering. "Do you suggest we allow them to succeed?"

  "Look, Draycos, they're going to succeed no matter what we do," Jack said. "I mean, this is Cornelius Braxton we're talking about. If he wants this cylinder, or if he wants the cylinder's owner out of his way, then sooner or later he's going to do it. And he'll roll over anyone who gets in front of him."