Timothy Zahn: Dragon and Thief

"Jack? Come on, lad, rise and shine."

"Yeah, yeah," Jack Morgan muttered, turning over in his narrow bed and pulling the covers more tightly around his thin shoulders. It felt early, and he didn't feel much like getting up.

Not much point to getting up, anyway. There was nothing to do here, not unless he wanted to sit around outside the Essenay and pull apart pieces of the grass outside, the stuff that reminded him of bluish-green curly fries. He'd spent part of yesterday doing that, and the thrill of it had faded mighty fast.

"Come on, lad, rise and shine," his uncle's voice came again. This time, the cabin's lights came on, too.

Jack pulled the covers up partway over his head, squeezing his eyes shut against the light and trying hard to hold onto the quick temper that had gotten him into trouble so many times on so many different worlds. Uncle Virgil had been on his case forever about that temper.

But then, Uncle Virgil had also been on his case about his lack of respect for authority, too. Which was kind of funny, considering Uncle Virgil's chosen profession.

"Come on, lad, rise and shine," Uncle Virge said again.

It was insulting, too, on top of everything else. Rise and shine was how you woke up a five-year-old, not someone who'd turned fourteen a full month ago. On some worlds out there you could be a soldier at age fourteen, for Petey's sake. He would bet long odds that soldiers didn't get rise and shine as their wake-up call.

"Come on, lad, rise and shine."

"Why should I?" Jack growled, trying to burrow deeper beneath his covers. "What, the cows need milking? I'm going to be late for school? What?"

"There's something outside you need to see," Uncle Virge said. "Come on, lad, rise—"

"Okay, okay, I'm up, I'm up," Jack snapped the magic words, throwing off the covers and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed as he sat up. The sudden change in altitude made his head go woozy, and he sat there rubbing his eyes until the feeling passed. "You want to maybe turn the lights down a little?"

The light obediently faded from painful to merely annoying. Cautiously, he pried open his eyelids.

The first thing in his line of sight was the display screen on the far wall of his cabin. Normally, the screen was set to show engine status or current nav data or some such ship's function. With most of the Essenay's systems shut down since landing here two days ago, he had reset the screen to show the lush green Iota Klestis landscape stretching out beyond the main airlock hatchway. It was sort of like having a window in his room, though it had been so long since he'd had a normal groundside room with a normal window that he could hardly remember what it was like.

At least, the screen was supposed to show the outside view. At the moment, all it showed was black.

He turned to look at the clock built into the bulkhead beside his bed. No wonder there was nothing to see out there: the glowing numbers read 4:57 a.m. "Are you out of your shrink-wrapped mind?" he demanded. "It's five o'clock in the morning!"

"Go outside," Uncle Virge said. "There's something out there—"

"Yeah, yeah, I heard you," Jack sighed, plucking his jeans from the swing-out arm where they were hanging and pulling them on. Arguing with Uncle Virgil had never been a very rewarding pastime. Arguing with Uncle Virge was even less so. "This had better be good."

He was retrieving a set of electronic binoculars from the airlock's storage cubbyhole when Uncle Virge suddenly cut in again. "Uh-oh," he said, his voice coming now from the airlock intercom speaker. "Get outside, Jack lad. Quickly."

The hatch popped and the gangway slid out to the ground below. "Where?" Jack asked, turning on the 'nocs and peering cautiously out the hatch. He hadn't run into any serious predators since landing, but the planet was bound to have some stashed away somewhere. Was that what Uncle Virge was all worked up about?

"Not there," Uncle Virge said urgently. "Up. Go down the ramp and look up, toward the eastern horizon. Hurry."

Grimacing, Jack trudged down the ramp. If Uncle Virge had hauled him out of bed to show him some cool aurora borealis or something, he was going to take him apart molecule by molecule. Lifting the 'nocs, he focused on the sky to the east.

There were flickers of light up there, all right. But it was no aurora.

It was a space battle.

"Oh, no," Jack groaned, his heart jumping suddenly into his throat. A space battle over his nice, quiet, out-of-the-way hiding place?

"My words exactly, lad," Uncle Virge said, his voice grim. "There were only those four big ships showing when I woke you. I thought we might have stumbled in on a smugglers' rendezvous."

"Terrific," Jack muttered, adjusting the focus as best he could.

Along with the four big ships were four little ones—he could barely make them out at this range, but the glowing light from their drives was easily visible. They were definitely the attackers, firing flurries of missiles as they charged the big ships. He could see some missile trails going the other direction now.

"They're starting to shoot back," Uncle Virge commented. "Seem a bit slow on the uptake."

"Maybe they weren't expecting trouble," Jack said. "You have a make on any of them?"

"Not the big ones," Uncle Virge said. "They look like long-haul freighters, but I don't recognize the design. The little ones are Djinn-90 pursuit craft. A favorite of mercenaries, planetary militaries, and dockyard police throughout the Orion Arm."

Police. Jack had gotten so he cringed even at the word. "So are you saying those are smugglers up there?"

"Not saying they are; not saying they aren't," Uncle Virge said. "Could be it's pirates attacking mining ships."

"You told me there weren't any mines here."

"I said there was nothing on the books on this place," Uncle Virge corrected. "Doesn't mean some ambitious citizen isn't doing something on the quiet. Hold on a minute—what's that?"

Jack frowned, pressing the 'nocs harder to his eyes. In exact unison, something that looked like a slender purple tornado had erupted from each of the four small ships. "Plasma bursts?" he suggested.

"If they are, it's not like anything on the books," Uncle Virge said. "Not like anything else I've ever heard of, either. Doesn't seem to be doing any damage, though."

"Better check that," Jack advised, the back of his neck feeling the strain as the ships' paths carried them higher and higher in the sky over his head. "One of them's dropping out of orbit. Either it's hurt, or else it's trying to get away."

"It might as well save itself the effort," Uncle Virge said. "A ship that size and shape maneuvers like a sleepy brick. There—you see? They've got it targeted again."

Jack nodded silently as the purple tornado caught up with the dodging freighter and began raking across it again. "You think anybody's going to notice us down here?"

"Not likely," Uncle Virge assured him. "We're not putting out any power to speak of, and I've got the chameleon hull-wrap going. Besides, this world is supposed to be uninhabited. Who'd think of looking for anyone here?"

"Right," Jack said. That was, after all, the whole reason he and the Essenay were on Iota Klestis in the first place.

Unless...

"Unless this is some kind of sneak trick," he suggested slowly. "A fake battle they're hoping will smoke us out?"

Uncle Virge gave a clearly audible snort. "You want subtlety, lad, you'd better look someplace besides Braxton Universis. Megacorporations are by definition big, slow, and obvious."

"StarForce, then?" Jack persisted. "Or Internes Police?"

"Megacorporations by a different name," Uncle Virge said. "Besides, we're talking a pretty expensive trick here. Show me any law enforcement agency that has that much spare cash lying around."