Timothy Zahn - Dragon And Soldier

"We're here," Jack announced, shutting off the engines and sliding out of his seat. "Let's make tracks."

Draycos looked up from the neat row of grenades he had laid out from the rear of the compartment to just behind Jack's seat. "Pardon?"

"Let's get out of here," Jack clarified. "Come aboard."

With Draycos on his back, Jack picked his way through the splintered wood and other debris outside. The Essenay was waiting just outside the entrance, bobbing slighdy on its lifters with an air of worried impatience. "Come on, lad, come on," Uncle Virge urged as Jack ran up the ramp. "Those other fighters will be here any minute."

"Then let's give them something to light their way," Jack said as he raced to the cockpit and slid into the pilot's seat. "I want a quick laser burst straight in the hole we made."

"Targeted where?" Uncle Virge asked.

"Targeted on the back of the transport we made the hole with," Jack said, doing a quick check of the Essenay's weapons systems.

"The transport?" Uncle Virge asked, sounding confused. "But—?"

"Never mind," Jack said. "You just aim. I'll fire."

"We should move back," Draycos murmured. "The blast could be considerable."

"Good point," Jack agreed, keying the Essenay into a fast backward drift. "Everyone ready?"

"I suppose," Uncle Virge said. Draycos didn't answer.

"Good," Jack said. "Here goes."

The lasers flickered, and he held his breath. If this didn't work ...

And then, from the entrance came a flash of return light, then the roiling flicker of fire. The rest of the Lynx's fuel had caught. "That should do it," Jack said, pulling the Essenay around and heading for the sky. "Let's grab some distance before the grenades go."

"The grenades?" Uncle Virge echoed. "Jack, lad—"

And then, the grenades went.

It was even more spectacular than Jack had expected. The sides of the main building blew out as a ring of fire sliced horizontally outward in all directions. The tower, directly above the explosion, shot probably half a dozen feet straight up, then toppled over. It landed on one of the two side buildings, crashing through its roof.

A few seconds after it had begun, it was over. The buildings had collapsed into shattered ruin, with everything flammable in them burning furiously. It was like one of the triumphal bonfires Jack had read about, except that there was no one here celebrating anything.

Maybe the Agri who had worked so hard to create the mine would thank him. Eventually.

He took a deep breath. "Well," he said, to no one in particular. "I guess that's that."

"It is indeed," Uncle Virge agreed, sounding rather awestruck himself. "Never let it be said that you do things halfway, Jack lad."

Jack pursed his lips. Maybe. Maybe not. For now, he could only hope he'd accomplished what he'd set out to do. "We'd better get out of here before those fighters arrive," he said, reaching for the controls. "You with me, Draycos?"

"I am here," the dragon said softly. "Yes; let us go."

"Sorry, lad," Uncle Virge said, his voice as quiet and apologetic and sincere as a professional fundraiser. "I'm afraid the Shamshir Mercenaries keep pretty sloppy records on their competitors' aircraft. There isn't any way we're going to be able to trace those Djinn-90s from this."

"Uh-huh," Jack said, gazing across the table with a fascinated repugnance as he watched Draycos tearing into his fourth soup bowl full of hamburger, tuna fish, chocolate sauce, and motor oil.

It wasn't that he couldn't understand the dragon's hunger. After all, Draycos hadn't had much to eat for the past three weeks. But the thought of that particular food combination still sent Jack's own taste buds screaming for cover. "So that's it, huh?"

"That's it," Uncle Virge confirmed. "And if I may say so, you might recall that I thought the idea was doomed idiocy from the start. So now we can get on with a proper job of saving Draycos's people?"

"By which you mean turning him over to the Star-Force?" Jack suggested.

Draycos looked up, his long tongue nicking a bit of tuna fish off one corner of his snout. "We cannot do that, Jack," he protested. "It is too dangerous."

"Relax," Jack said, taking a sip of his fizzy-soda. Yes, Uncle Virge had sounded quiet and apologetic and sincere, all right. Unfortunately for him, Jack had heard that tone of voice before. Many times before. "You know, Draycos, for being such a clever K'da poet-warrior, you're kind of slow on the uptake sometimes."

The dragon's neck arched warningly. "What do you mean?" he asked, his voice ominous.

"Relax," Jack hastened to reassure him. Apparently, the dragon wasn't in a mood for joking. "Watch and learn."

He cleared his throat. "Okay, Uncle Virge," he said. "So we don't have anything on the Djinn-90s. What interesting tidbits did you happen to find in the Shamshir data?"

"You only asked for the Djinn-90 information," Uncle Virge reminded him.

"I know what I asked for," Jack said firmly. "Quit stalling. What did you find?"

There was a moment of sulky silence. "There's one small piece that might be considered interesting," Uncle Virge conceded at last. "But, really, it's so minuscule—"

"I said quit stalling," Jack interrupted. "Give."

"It's just an item about the Brummgas," Uncle Virge groused. "Remember how you ran into a Brummga on Iota Klestis, at the site of Draycos's crash?"

"Like I'd forget," Jack said with a grimace. If Draycos hadn't used Jack's tangler gun on the big alien, both he and the dragon would have wound up very dead. "And Lieutenant Cue Ball had a couple on his staff, too, hanging around looking ugly," he added. "So?"

"So at least from the Shamshir data," Uncle Virge said grudgingly, "it looks like all the Brummgas in the various mercenary forces come from the same place."

Jack sat up a little straighter. "What do you mean, the same place?" he asked. "The same city? Same province?"

Uncle Virge sighed audibly. "Same dealer."

Draycos's neck was still arched. "What do you mean by 'dealer'?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," Jack said grimly. "But I can guess. Are you talking about a slave dealer, Uncle Virge?"

"Well, of course, mercenaries are considered skilled labor," Uncle Virge hedged. "And Brummgan law isn't quite, shall we say, up to Internos standards—"

"They deal in slavery," Draycos cut him off.

Uncle Virge sighed again. "Yes."

Draycos hissed like he had a bad taste in his mouth, his neck crest stiffer than Jack had ever seen it. "The indenture of children was barbaric enough," he bit out, his eyes glittering like lasers filtered through a pair of emeralds. "But for intelligent beings to be owned like animals—"

"Easy, pal, easy," Jack said hastily, holding up his hands. "Don't get mad at me. Or at the Internos government, for that matter. Like I've told you before, we humans aren't in charge of everything that happens out there."

"What about the Trade Association?" Draycos demanded. "Are there not laws concerning such things?"

"There are some, sure," Jack said. "But you can only enforce what you can see. And there are only so many Judge-Paladins to go around. Come on—we're trying."

Slowly, the crest softened. "I understand," he murmured. "It is still an abomination."

"No argument there," Jack agreed, shivering. He'd seen a group of slaves on one of the worlds he and Uncle Virgil had visited once. The memory of their haunted eyes and faces had stuck with him ever since. "But in this case, it could be a useful abomination."

"What do you mean?" Draycos asked.

"Nothing good," Uncle Virge cut in. "You can wager your teeth and tail on that. Jack—look, lad—"

"We need to find those mercenaries, Uncle Virge," Jack said. "And since we aren't having any luck tracing their fighters, maybe we can trace their personnel."