Dragon and Thief d-1 Page 3

  The dust slowly began to clear from the air as Draycos worked, gradually settling into a soft coating that seemed to cling to every surface. The faint sounds of wildlife began to be heard, too, bird and insect twitterings as alien as the world they inhabited. Occasionally Draycos noticed his ears twitching as another new noise entered the mix, but he paid no conscious attention to the sounds. His entire focus was on the diamonds.

  But all the concentration in the universe couldn't make up for what was no longer there. Damaged in the crash, the diamonds no longer held the full record of the ambush. Only bits and pieces remained, images here and there. Nothing he could use to positively identify the ships that had attacked them.

  As slowly but inevitably as the settling of the dust around him, he felt his strength begin to drain away. The data reader slipped first from his grasp, the diamonds themselves became too difficult to hold, and all too soon he found himself huddled on the deck beside Polphir's body. He was still three-dimensional, but as he gazed at the tips of his forepaws he thought he could see a hint of flattening in the ridges around the claw sheaths.

  It was an odd sensation to be alone this way for so long. Much like the difference, he decided, between missing a meal and starving to death.

  Still, on one level, it was only fair. All his friends and comrades were already dead. It was merely his turn to follow them.

  And then, from somewhere aft of the command complex, he heard a sound.

  At first it was so soft he thought it was his imagination. Even as it grew louder he was convinced his dying mind was simply playing tricks on him.

  But no. It was real, all right. The sound of footsteps, coming toward him.

  The attackers had arrived to finish the job.

  Draycos took a deep breath. He would have time, maybe, for a single attack before either the weakness or their guns got him. A useless gesture, really.

  But he was a warrior of the K'da. Better to die fighting than to do nothing at all.

  Taking another breath, drawing together every bit of strength that still remained, he silently drew his legs beneath him and waited.

  The footsteps came to the aft doorway. Draycos closed his eyes to slits; and then, suddenly, the intruder was there.

  He was a human. No surprise there—the use of their contact's recognition signals had made it clear that their attackers either were humans or were allied with them. But aside from that single fact, he was not at all what Draycos was expecting.

  He was young, for one thing, if his size was any indication. Humans and Shontine shared many physical similarities, and this human was no larger than a twelve-year-old Shontin boy.

  Of course, Draycos had seen Shontine boys and girls that young pressed into military service in times of desperation. But it was clear that the boy standing in the doorway was no warrior. His clothing was all wrong, for one thing: no helmet, no body armor, no uniform. All he was wearing was a tan shirt and light blue pants, with low brown boots on his feet. He had a heavy-looking brown jacket slung over his shoulder; apparently it was warmer in here than he found comfortable.

  He was at least armed, with what appeared to be a handgun belted at the left side of his waist. But the weapon was far too small to be a proper soldier's field gun. Besides that, a trained soldier should have had it ready in his hand when checking out enemy territory.

  But if he wasn't one of the attackers, who was he?

  "It's just like back there," the boy said, still standing in the doorway as he looked around the control complex. A trained warrior wouldn't stand that long in a doorway, either. "More of the same, only worse."

  Draycos stayed motionless, struggling to understand the words. All the members of the advance team had learned the humans' chief trade language during the long voyage, but with his waning strength even something as simple as translation was becoming difficult. Perhaps he wouldn't have the strength for an attack after all.

  "Wait a second," the boy said suddenly. "There is something new here."

  "What is it?" a much fainter voice asked. Draycos looked around as best he could without moving his head, but he could see no one else. A communicator, then. An advance scout, perhaps, in contact with the true warrior coming behind him?

  "Looks like a little dragon," the boy said, starting across the room toward Draycos. "No kidding—it really does. About the size of a small tiger, all covered with gold scales."

  "Is it alive?"

  "Doesn't look like it," the boy said, still moving forward. Almost within attack range now. "I suppose you want me to check."

  "If you would be so kind," the other voice said. Draycos braced himself...

  And for a moment the mental haze of his approaching death cleared, and a strange thought occurred to him.

  Yes, he could attack this intruder as he'd planned. He could probably even kill the boy before he lost his hold on this universe and vanished into death and oblivion.

  Or, instead, he could use that same last bit of strength to try to connect with him.

  "Still not moving," the boy said. "I guess it's dead. Too bad—it's pretty neat looking. Huh—those gold scales have little bits of red on them, too, right at the edges. Cool."

  It was a gamble, Draycos knew. A terrible, desperate gamble. Throughout their history, the K'da had met only two species who could act as hosts to them. There wasn't a chance in a hundred that these humans could do so.

  And if the connection failed, there would be no attack. Draycos had strength enough for only a single action.

  "Still not moving," the boy reported.

  Draycos came to a decision. He was a K'da warrior, and he could not attack an untrained and unprepared opponent without clear cause. The boy stopped and leaned close....

  Draycos leaped.

  Chapter 4

  It was about the last thing Jack would ever have expected: for one of the "dead" bodies aboard the wrecked ship to suddenly come alive and charge at him. With a startled gasp he jumped backwards, reflexively throwing up an arm in front of his eyes. There was a flash of gold right in his face—he blinked—

  And then, without a sound, it was gone. He spun around, nearly losing his balance on the litter-strewn deck.

  The dragon had vanished.

  Only then did he remember the tangler belted at his waist. He yanked out the weapon and popped off the safety catch, breathing hard and trembling with reaction as he looked wildly around. The dragon was gone, all right.

  Only one small problem: there wasn't any place it could have gone to. It couldn't possibly have made it across the room and out the doorway back there, not in the half second it had taken Jack to turn around. With most everything solid in the room lying in broken piles on the floor, there was no place in the room itself for it to hide.

  So where was it?

  "Jack!" Uncle Virge's voice called urgently from the comm clip on his shirt collar. "What is it? What's going on? Come on, lad, speak up."

  "That dragon," Jack said. To his embarrassment, his voice was trembling. He hated when it did that. "It jumped at me. At least, I thought it did."

  "What happened? Did it bite you? Claw you?"

  "I—no, I don't think so," Jack said, still looking around. "I mean, I don't feel anything."

  "Check your clothes," Uncle Virge ordered. "Look for rips or blood. Sometimes you don't feel injuries like that right away."

  Jack glanced down at his shirt. "No, there's nothing. It just jumped at me and then disappeared."

  "What do you mean, disappeared? Disappeared where?"

  Jack didn't answer. The immediate shock of the incident was beginning to fade... and as it did so, he suddenly became aware that there was something odd about the way his skin felt. Almost as if there was a thin coating of paint or something on his chest and back.

  He reached in under his shirt collar and touched his shoulder. It was skin, all right, normal everyday skin. It certainly didn't feel any different than usual to his fingertips. His back didn't feel any differ
ent, either, as he slid his hand down along his shoulder blade as far as it would go.

  But the odd sensation persisted.

  "Jack?"

  "Hang on a second," Jack said, draping his leather jacket across the back of a broken chair and sliding his tangler back into its holster. Working a finger under the sealing seam running down the front of his shirt, he unsealed it and pulled it open.

  He caught his breath. There, angling across his chest and stomach, was a wide golden band. It wrapped around his rib cage at both the top and bottom, disappearing around toward his back. Like a tuxedo cummerbund that hadn't been put on straight, he thought, or maybe the formal sash he'd sometimes seen military leaders wearing. There was texturing to it, too, he saw. A golden fish-scale pattern, with a sliver of red at the edge of each scale.

  The same pattern as the vanished dragon.

  A horrible thought struck him. Pulling the shirt free from his jeans, he slid it all the way off his right arm so that it was hanging on his left arm and shoulder. Twisting his head around, he looked down at his right shoulder.

  To find himself gazing directly into the dragon's face.

  "Ye-oup!" he yelped, jerking his head back and jumping three feet to his left.

  It was like trying to jump away from his own body, and about as successful. The picture of the dragon didn't disappear or slide off or anything like that. It was still there, as if it had been painted on him.

  Then, to his utter astonishment, the face rose slowly out of his skin, like the top of an alligator's head rising up through the surface of the water. The long upper jaw opened slightly, giving him a glimpse of sharp teeth—"Don't be afraid," a soft, snakelike voice said.

  Jack screeched loud enough to hurt his own ears. His tangler was in his left hand, though he had no memory of having drawn it, and with all his strength he slammed the short barrel down on the dragon's head.

  But the beast was too fast for him. It sank flat onto his skin again, and Jack's screech turned to a howl of pain as his attack succeeded only in bruising his own shoulder. Ignoring the pain, he struck again and again, stumbling sideways in a useless attempt to get away. Through the noise of his own panicked babbling, he was distantly aware that there were two different voices shouting at him.

  He ignored them. Voices didn't matter. Nothing mattered but to somehow get this thing off him.

  He was still flailing around when his foot caught on something and he toppled over onto his side.

  Or rather, he should have toppled over onto his side. But even as he tried to get his arm around to break his fall, the feeling on his skin shifted, and something somehow broke his fall, setting him more or less gently onto the broken control board he'd been tumbling toward.

  But gentle landing or not, the sudden fall snapped him out of his mindless attack on himself. Gasping for breath, he half sat, half lay there, his shoulder throbbing with the multiple blows he'd just brilliantly hammered down on it. In his left ear, he could hear Uncle Virge's voice shouting from the comm clip on his shirt collar, demanding to know what was happening.

  In his right ear, the snakelike voice he'd heard earlier was speaking again.

  "Everyone... shut... up," he ordered between gasps. "You hear me? Everyone just shut up."

  Both voices went obediently silent. Jack took a few more breaths, trying desperately to calm down. His efforts were only a limited success. "All right," he said at last. "You—Voice Number Two—the one who isn't Uncle Virge. Who are you?"

  "My name is Draycos," the snake voice replied from somewhere behind him, the sound tingling strangely against his skin.

  Jack twisted around to look, but there was nothing there. The dragon head had disappeared from his shoulder, but out of the corner of his eye he could just see the tip of the snout further around on his back. "I am a poet-warrior of the K'da. Who are you?"

  "I'm Jack Morgan," Jack said, his voice starting to shake again. Now for the big question. "Where are you?"

  "Tell me first how you came to be aboard my ship," Draycos said. "Are you an enemy of the K'da and Shontine?"

  "I'm not an enemy of anyone," Jack protested, scrambling back to his feet. "I saw your ship go down, and I came to check it out. That's all."

  "Did you see our attackers?" The voice, Jack noted uneasily, moved with him, still tingling his shoulder.

  "Well..." Jack hesitated, wondering how much to say. "We saw the battle," he said. "It looked like the guys in the little ships went aboard the big ones afterward. Are there more of your people up there?"

  There was a soft sigh, even more snakelike than the voice. "They were my people," Draycos said. "They are all dead now."

  "We don't know that," Jack said, feeling an obscure urge to be comforting. "Those Djinn-90s can't have had that many soldiers to put aboard."

  "There is no one left to fight them," the dragon said sadly. "The K'da and Shontine were already dead."

  "All of them?" Uncle Virge's voice asked, sounding surprised.

  "All of them," Draycos said. "The weapon that was used against us kills all that it touches. It does not leave survivors."

  Jack thought back to the purple tornadoes he'd seen playing against the freighters' sides. A weapon that killed right through hull plates? "What about you?" he asked. "You survived."

  "An unintended mercy," Draycos said. "We were already falling, and they thought merely to save themselves further effort."

  Jack took a deep breath. It was pretty obvious by now what was going on. He still hoped he was wrong; but right or wrong, it was time to take the plunge and find out for sure. "You're on my back, aren't you?" he asked. "Wrapped around me like a—well, like a thin sheet of plastic."

  "Yes," Draycos said.

  "You're what?" Uncle Virge demanded. "You're where?"

  "It's like he's a picture painted there," Jack said. "Or a full-body tattoo, like you see sometimes on Zhandig music stars."

  "What do you mean, like a tattoo?" Uncle Virge said, sounding every bit as bewildered as Jack felt. "How can something alive be like a tattoo?"

  "What, you think I know?" Jack shot back. "Look, if I could explain it—"

  "Please," Draycos cut in. "Permit me." Jack looked down. The dragon's head had slid back into view on his shoulder and was turning back and forth as if looking for something. "There," Draycos said. "That data reader."

  "Where?" Jack asked, frowning at the debris.

  A second later he jumped again as a sudden bit of extra weight came onto the back of his right arm, and a gold-scaled limb unexpectedly rose up out from that spot. A short finger or toe or whatever it was extended from the paw, pointing to a small flat instrument about three inches square lying among the debris on the deck. "There," Draycos said. "Go and kneel down beside it."

  Swallowing, Jack obeyed. This was the very spot, he noted uneasily, where the dragon had been crouching when he came in. Could this thing be a weapon? "Now what?"

  "I will give you a picture of what I am," Draycos said. "Do you see how the reader lies on the deck? Where they meet, the reader is a two-dimensional object. Do you agree?"

  "Well, no, it's three-dimensional," Jack said. "It has length, width, and thickness."

  "But it is two-dimensional where it meets the deck," Draycos repeated. "At that meeting, it has only length and width. Do you agree?"

  Jack shrugged. "Fine. Whatever you say."

  "It is not a matter of what I say," Draycos said, sounding impatient. "It is a matter of whether you understand. Consider the deck to be a two-dimensional universe, with the data reader as a two-dimensional object existing within it. There is no thickness there, only length and width. Two dimensions only. Do you understand?"

  "I understood before," Jack said, a little impatience of his own starting to peek out through the heavy curtain of weirdness hanging over this whole thing. Having not been killed and eaten on the spot, he was starting to lose some of his initial fear, and he had better things to do than play word games with this Draycos characte
r. "So what?"

  "Very well," Draycos said. "Now lift the data reader so that one edge remains on the deck."

  Jack did as instructed. "Okay. So?"

  "In this picture, the data reader is still two-dimensional," Draycos said. "Yet to an observer within the two-dimensional universe of the deck, it now appears as a one-dimensional portion of a line. It has length only, but no width. The part that would give it width has lifted away along a third dimension."

  Jack stared down at the reader, a funny tingling sensation creeping across the skin at the back of his neck. Was Draycos saying what he thought he was saying? "Are you trying to tell me," he asked slowly, "that you're really three-dimensional, but that you somehow became two-dimensional? Just plain flat? And then that you somehow pasted yourself across my back?"

  "I am still three-dimensional," Draycos said. "As with the data reader, most of my body is now projected along a fourth dimension, outside the bounds of this universe."

  On Jack's left shoulder, the comm clip had gone silent. Apparently, even Uncle Virge couldn't think of anything to say to this one. That was a bad sign. "No," Jack said. "Sorry, but this doesn't make any sense at all."

  "Yet I am here," Draycos reminded him.

  "No," Jack said firmly. He turned his eyes away to the left, away from the dragon head staring up at him from his right shoulder. "This isn't real. It can't be real. It's some kind of trick."

  "Why would I wish to trick you?" Draycos asked, sliding around Jack's back to his left shoulder and again looking up at him. "What purpose would it serve?"

  "Stop doing that!" Jack snapped, twisting his head back the other way. Reaching around, he pulled the hanging sleeve back around and got his right arm into it. "I don't know why. What purpose does anything serve? What do you want?"

  "I want that which all beings desire," Draycos told him. "Life."

  "And what, you can't live anywhere except my back?" Jack demanded sarcastically.

  "No," Draycos said. "I cannot."

  Jack had been about to fasten his shirt's sealing strip again. Now he paused, frowning down at the gold scales on his chest. "What do you mean?"