Timothy Zahn - Dragon And Soldier

He reached the handkerchief toward Elkor. The other leaned away, then jerked as Draycos caught his head firmly between his forepaws. "Wait a second," he said hastily. "All right, all right. What do you want to know?"

"I want to know what's going on," Jack told him, lowering the handkerchief but keeping it in sight. "You can start by telling me what happened to the rest of the Edgemen at Kilo Seven."

Elkor's lips compressed into a thin line. "We pulled them out," he said grudgingly. "We knew the Shamshir would be raiding the place and didn't want them getting hurt."

"Oh, I see," Jack said. "You didn't care enough about us to even warn us, but—"

He broke off, staring at the man. Suddenly, it was all making terrible sense. "You called the Shamshir down on us, didn't you?" he said. "You let them capture us."

"One of you was a spy and a traitor," Elkor said. "In the Whinyard's Edge, we know how to deal with traitors."

He smiled unpleasantly, clearly enjoying Jack's discomfort. "Now, now, don't pout," he said, mock-soothingly. "What are you going to do, call foul and run crying home to Mommy? This is the real world, kid. Get used to it."

"What about the others?" Jack asked, ignoring the gibe. "Why didn't you just take Alison and me out and shoot us, if that was what you wanted?"

"Not very sporting to line you up against a wall," Elkor said. "Besides, we didn't just want you dead. We wanted information. We figured that if you were working for the Shamshir, one of you would get a big welcome when they snatched you."

He cocked his head. "Or else one of you would come back and claim to be an escaped hero."

"And if we weren't working for the Shamshir?"

Elkor shrugged. "You were working for someone. Might as well let the Shamshir beat it out of you than bother with it ourselves."

Jack hissed between his teeth. "And of course, you couldn't let us take working computer codes to them," he said. "So you made sure you scrambled them before we landed on Sunright."

"After we landed, actually," Elkor said offhandedly. "Not that it matters."

"No, not really," Jack said. "So who's behind all this?"

Elkor frowned. "Who's behind all what?"

"Who's pulling your strings?" Jack amplified. "Who's really after this mine? Is it Cornelius Braxton?"

Elkor snorted. "Don't be ridiculous. You think someone as big as Braxton would even notice an operation this small?"

"Arthur Neverlin, then?" Jack persisted.

"Never heard of him."

"But then—"

"No one pulls our strings, kid," Elkor cut him off coldly. "No one but us. If whoever you're working for is thinking about trying to bulldoze his way into this, you can tell him to forget it. Once we've got hold of that mine, it's going to be ours, period. No one else is going to get a piece of it. You got that?"

"Yeah, I got it," Jack said. So Lieutenant Cue Ball had been right. Neither mercenary group cared a downwind spit about the people they'd been hired to protect. They were in it for the daublite mine, and that was it. "It's so much easier to fight and kill and steal someone else's mine than go dig one yourselves."

"Mines cost money," Elkor countered. "Lives are cheap. Do the math."

"Yeah, well, some lives are apparently cheaper than others," Jack said. "That still doesn't explain why you threw Jommy and the rest of them to the wolves along with Alison and me."

Elkor sniffed. "What's this 'and me' stuff? Kayna was the chief suspect, not you. You were just one of the known contacts."

Jack blinked. "The what?"

"She talked to you, Montana," Elkor said patiently. "Grisko told us. Alone, and at length, out on the shooting range. Do I have to draw you a picture?"

Jack stared at him in disbelief. "Let me get this straight," he said slowly. "Alison has a chat with, say, Rogan Mbusu, maybe about nothing more classified than the lousy food. And suddenly you're just going to throw him away? Just on the off chance that she might have passed secret information to him?"

"You make the assumption that any of you were worth much to begin with," Elkor said. "You ever hear the term 'cannon fodder'?"

Jack swallowed hard. "Yes."

"It's rather out of date, actually," Elkor went on. "No one but a few primitives use real cannon anymore. But the term still applies."

"Kind of an expensive hobby," Jack murmured. "You still have to pay all of our indenture fees."

"You should read the contract more closely sometime," Elkor suggested blandly. "There are all sorts of neat clauses that cover death or capture in a war zone when the subject has failed to properly defend himself. Another good reason to bring you out here instead of dealing with you back on Carrion."

He lifted his eyebrows. "You did fail to defend yourselves, didn't you? I hadn't heard any reports of gunfire."

For a long moment Jack just looked at him, wondering what Draycos would say if he reached over and pushed the smug son of a snake out of the tree. Uncle Virgil would have, he suspected. Even Draycos, for all his warrior ethic, was crouched there with his eyes burning like those of an avenging angel. He probably wouldn't lift a single claw to save scum like this.

He took a deep breath. No. He'd never been a killer, or even an avenger. He'd been a thief; and even there he was supposed to be reformed.

And he was probably selling Draycos short anyway. The dragon had gotten that look in his eye before, and he hadn't murdered anyone yet.

"You are a small, petty, pathetic little man," he told Elkor quietly. "You deserve to die. With any justice, it'll be at the hands of your own people."

Elkor's mouth twitched in a lopsided smile. "So you don't even have the guts to kill me, huh? You're no soldier, Montana. You never will be."

"I can live with that," Jack told him. "Incidentally, I have lived in the real world, sometimes among people who would have pushed you out of this tree ten minutes ago if you'd done this to them."

Elkor snorted. "If you're hinting that you've got friends, save it," he said. "I don't scare that easily."

"I'm not trying to scare you," Jack said. "And none of them are my friends. I was simply pointing out that none of them ever tried to kill the casual acquaintances of people they were mad at. Even they had more class than that."

"Did I say I needed your approval?" Elkor asked. "Or even wanted it?"

"Hardly," Jack said, suddenly thoroughly weary of this man. "Fine. We're going. Where are your transports?"

A slight frown creased Elkor's forehead. "Why?"

"Why do you think?" Jack retorted. "So we can get out of here. Don't worry, I'm not going to steal it. All I want is to use the comm."

"And you think I'm going to tell you?"

With a sigh, Jack pulled out the small folding knife from his belt pack. He locked it open and waved it under Elkor's eyes. "That cable you're tied with is pretty tough," he reminded the other. "Even with this, it'll take you quite awhile to cut through it. Would you rather use your teeth?"

Elkor eyed the knife. "They're on the west side of the outpost," he muttered. "In a clearing about two hundred yards due west of the sentry cage on that side. But you'll never make it past the guards."

"We'll take our chances." Reaching up, Jack drove the tip of the knife blade into the tree trunk a couple of feet above Elkor's head. "Help yourself after we're gone," he said, pulling the colonel's hood over his eyes again.

Catching Draycos's eye, he nodded. "Come on, buddy," he said. "Let's go."

They headed down the tree, Draycos climbing down backwards as Jack dangled onto his tail beneath him. They reached the ground without incident and headed off through the woods toward the area where Elkor had said the transports were located. If they weren't there, Jack promised himself darkly, he would make sure to send Draycos back up the tree and get his knife back.