Dragon and Thief d-1

by Timothy Zahn

  He looked away from Draycos's gaze. "Why should that be us?"

  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.

  Chapter 20

  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.

  Of course, commercial fire procedures could have changed in the past couple of years. If they had, he would find that out very soon.

  He gave the people in the monitor room another minute to clear out completely. Then, pulling out a steak knife he'd borrowed from the dining room, he set the point against the mark Draycos had made on the wall. Hoping fervently that the dragon had made it exactly over the junction box, he shoved the blade into the wall with all his strength.

  There was no flash of fire or crackle of electrical sparks. Nothing at all, in fact, to tell him whether or not the cameras had been knocked out of action.

  If they hadn't been shut down, he would find that out very soon, too.

  Twenty seconds' work with his multitool and he had the door to the purser's office open. Slipping inside, he closed the door behind him and turned on the lights.

  No one was waiting for him inside. Jumping onto and over the counter, he went straight to the vault. With the end of his multitool, he pounded on the door with the thud-thud, thud-thud signal they'd agreed on.

  For a dozen seconds nothing happened. A dozen horrible thoughts ran through Jack's mind in that time. Had Draycos not heard him? Had he panicked in the enclosed space? Was he lying whimpering in a corner, unable to move? Had the release lever malfunctioned, trapping him inside? Had he already suffocated?

  There was a click from the lock, and to his relief the door started to slowly swing outward.

  He grabbed the handle and pulled. The thing was heavier than he'd realized. But they got it open, and Draycos bounded out. "The exit mechanism is indeed as you said," he commented. The dragon was as calm as if he'd just been for a walk in the park, instead of being locked in a large metal coffin for over an hour. "A useful yet puzzling design."

  "It's a safety feature, in case someone gets accidentally locked inside," Jack said, brushing past him into the vault. Setting himself in front of Box 125, he set hurriedly to work. "Like Uncle Virgil once told me, all the best tricks are already done before the magician snaps his fingers."

  "You seem hurried," Draycos said. "Is there trouble?"

  "There's always trouble," Jack told him. "In this case, even if I knocked out the cameras, there's probably a signal that goes off when the vault door is opened."

  "Why did you not disarm it?"

  "I couldn't," Jack told him. "It would be a separate self-contained system. But if I'm fast enough—ah."

  The box popped open. "Get ready to help me close the vault door," Jack told Draycos, pulling out the cylinder and replacing it with
the one from his inner coat pocket. Putting the real cylinder into his pocket, he closed the box and locked it. "Okay, let's go," he said, stepping out of the vault.

  Together, they shoved the door closed. Half a minute later they were outside the purser's office, Draycos riding Jack's back, heading down the corridor toward the lounge where they'd done their planning that afternoon. "Should you not have locked the outer door?" Draycos asked from his headrest on Jack's right shoulder.

  "No point," Jack told him as he stripped off his plastic gloves and tucked them away in a side pocket. Was that the sound of running footsteps he could hear coming down the corridor behind him? No, it was just his imagination. "They already know someone's been in there. Come on, this sort of work always makes me thirsty."

  He was sitting in the bar ordering a fizzy-soda when the first group of security men went pounding past.

  Chapter 21

  He gave the situation back at the purser's office forty minutes and two fizzy-sodas to come to a nice boil. Then, leaving the bar, he strolled back that direction.

  Bad news, Uncle Virgil had often told him, was the only thing in the universe that traveled faster than the speed of light. Jack had never quite believed it; but as he approached the office he had to admit that maybe Uncle Virgil had had a point.

  There were probably twenty people crowded into the corridor outside the door. Many were dressed in fancy and expensive outfits, probably fresh from the Star of Wonders formal late-night activities. Others were dressed more haphazardly, as if they'd been asleep and had just thrown on whatever was handy. Still others were wearing the neat but simple clothing of servants or bodyguards.

  All of them looked anxious. Most of them looked angry.

  Facing them down, his back pressed against the door, was a security man wearing a sergeant's shoulder patches. "I appreciate your concerns, ladies and gentlemen," the sergeant was saying as Jack joined the back of the crowd. "Our investigation of the room is proceeding as quickly as possible. When it's finished, you'll all be allowed to examine your individual deposit boxes."