Timothy Zahn - Dragon And Soldier

"Can you not summon it with your comm clip?"

Jack shook his head. "If Uncle Virge is still waiting at November Six, he's way out of comm clip range."

"What about the transmitter in this vehicle? It is more powerful than your comm clip. Could you not tune it to the correct frequency?"

"Sure, but then the conversation wouldn't be encrypted," Jack pointed out. "That means anyone and his toy poodle Mitsy would be able to listen in."

"Perhaps we can use another form of coding," Draycos suggested.

"I don't know how," Jack said. "But it doesn't really matter. I wanted to do a gentle tap into their records so that I could then do a quiet sneak away. But with the Shamshir raid, there's no chance of a quiet sneak anyway. I might as well just bulldoze my way into their mainframe, pull the records, and make a run for it."

"With the Essenay still at November Six?"

"Right, but we've got this now," Jack reminded him, tapping the edge of the control panel. "If we're quick, we should be able to get ourselves down to Uncle Virge before the balloon goes up."

Draycos digested all that. "And you believe you will be able to locate the Kilo Seven outpost?"

"Piece of Boston cream pie." Jack pointed to one of the displays on the board. "Along with not shutting down the transport, the pilot also didn't bother to erase the course memory."

"I see," Draycos murmured. "Convenient."

"And sloppy," Jack said. "But then, they're not real soldiers, are they?"

It had taken Lieutenant Cue Ball fifteen minutes to get them from Kilo Seven to Dahtill City. Ten minutes into the return flight, just as Jack was thinking about cutting their altitude a little, the comm suddenly twittered. "About time," he muttered. "Draycos, how are you at imitating voices?"

"Not very good, I'm afraid," the dragon said.

"Me, neither," Jack said, reaching for the transmission switch. "But maybe I can buy us at least a little more time."

He keyed on the microphone. "Yeah, what do you want?" he demanded in the best imitation of Lieutenant Cue Ball's voice he could manage.

But it wasn't, as he'd expected, some Shamshir flunky wanting to know who had borrowed their transport. "Flying Turtle 505, identify yourself," came an all-too-familiar voice.

Draycos's ears went straight up. "It is Sergeant Grisko," he whispered in Jack's ear.

Jack nodded, feeling suddenly limp with relief. The good guys had finally arrived.

Or at least, the side that wasn't going to be shooting at him had arrived. There were no actual good guys anywhere in this game. "Sir, this is Private Montana," he said, switching back to his normal voice. "Squad Tango Five Zulu. Our group was captured by the Shamshir. I've just escaped."

"Really," Grisko said. "Congratulations."

"Thank you, sir," Jack said. "But they've still got the others. We have to get them out."

"Of course," Grisko said. "Come on in and we'll set something up. You can fly that thing all right?"

"Reasonably well, yes, sir."

"And you're all strapped in?"

"Yes, sir," Jack said, frowning at the speaker. That was a strange question. Come to think of it, Grisko's whole voice was sounding strange. "Shall I put down where our Lynx landed earlier?"

"Sounds good," Grisko said. "Keep 'er steady, and come on in."

The speaker clicked off". "Okay," Jack said, shutting off the comm at his end. "We're set."

"I do not think so," Draycos said, his voice as strange as Grisko's. "Are there emergency escape devices aboard this aircraft?"

Jack frowned. "What in the world—?"

"Do not argue," Draycos snapped, shooting out of Jack's collar to land on the deck behind him. Suddenly the dragon seemed charged with energy and nervous tension.

"We must leave this vehicle at once. Are there escape devices aboard?"

"I can check," Jack said, the urgency in the dragon's voice silencing all questions. "Can you fly this thing?"

"Yes," Draycos said, moving aside to let Jack out of the pilot's seat. "Go. Quickly."

There was a tall storage cabinet built into the wall beside the exit hatchway. Jack started toward it, then changed his mind and instead got down on his knees beside the nearest row of seats.

His second hunch turned out to be right. Strapped beneath each seat was the orange-striped plastic bag of a drop-pack. "Got it," he reported, pulling one free.

"How high must we be to use it?" Draycos asked. He was, Jack saw, curled partially on his side in the pilot's seat, his paws on the transport's controls.

"As high or as low as you want," Jack told him. "It's not like a parachute or hang glider where you need altitude for it to work."

"Then prepare yourself and wait by the door."

"Right," Jack said, ripping open the package tab and heading aft. The drop-pack was similar to the ones he and Uncle Virgil had used once in a midnight skulk onto the roof of a high-rise bank, except that this one had the typical drab-ness of military surplus. By the time he reached the hatchway, he had it on. "Ready," he called.

"Stand prepared to open the hatchway," Draycos ordered. "When I come to you, we will jump."

Jack took a deep breath, checking all the drop-pack's straps one final time. The scariest part was that he still didn't know what had spooked the dragon so badly. But anything that worried a poet-warrior of the K'da was definitely something he wanted to be worried about, too.

His eyes fell on the cabinet beside the hatchway. On impulse, he pulled it open.

Originally, he'd thought to find the drop-packs in there. What he found instead was actually more reasonable considering the Flying Turtle's owners.

The cabinet was a weapons locker. The entire top half was filled with the sort of small machine guns Lieutenant Cue Ball and his men had been carrying, with the middle part taken up by shelves full of ammo clips for the guns. At the bottom, looking almost like an afterthought, was a rack holding six slapsticks.

Jack hesitated. The heavier weapons were tempting, but only for a second. Machine guns were mid-range weapons, which was good; but they were also lethal and very noisy, neither of which was what he wanted right now. The slapsticks, on the other hand, were dead quiet and did nothing but knock out your target with an electric shock.

Of course, you also had to get close enough to physically touch him. But you couldn't have everything. Pulling out one of the slapsticks, he made sure it was fully charged, checked to see that the safety catch was on, then stuck it in his belt.

"Prepare," Draycos called.

"Ready," Jack called back, getting a grip on the drop-pack rip cord with one hand and resting the other on the hatchway release pad.

And suddenly, in a flash of golden scales, Draycos spun around and dived out of the pilot's chair. Hitting the top of one of the rows of seats, he shoved off it and bounded toward the hatch.

Jack was ready. He slapped the release; and as the sudden hurricane of wind tore at his hair and clothes he stretched his hand out toward Draycos.

The outstretched forepaws struck his palm and the dragon melted up his sleeve. Pulling the rip cord, Jack pushed off backwards into the night.

The wind grabbed him, and for a horribly tangled second it threw him around, turning him upside down and twice slapping him in the face. It was like being thrown into a raging river made up of air instead of water.

Then the tiny thrusters built into the drop-pack kicked into action. They turned him upright, slowing both his descent and his forward motion. The wind faded, one last set of tree branches grabbed at his sleeve as he passed, and then his feet slapped more or less gently into the crunchy mat of leaves.

"Whew!" he puffed, regaining his balance and looking around. They had landed in a reasonably clear area on a small rise, giving him a good view forward.