Dragon And Soldier

"Don't tell me," she said. She plucked his pack from the seat beside him, dropped it unceremoniously onto the floor, and sat down. "Let me guess. You were staring at the window because you needed a moment to reflect."

Jack made a face. "That was pathetic. I hope you didn't come all the way over here just for that."

"No, mostly I wanted to see what the view was like out there," she said, craning her neck to look past him. "And to find out what you and Grisko were talking about."

Jack felt his eyes narrowing. "What do you mean?"

She gave him a patient look. "You. Grisko. Talk. Two minutes ago. You need me to spell any of the words for you?"

"No, I've got it, thank you," Jack growled. "Not that it's any of your immediate business, but we were discussing the fact that we're not going to November Six. We're going to Kilo Seven instead."

It was Alison's turn for narrowed eyes. "Why?"

"According to Grisko, the Shamshir moved their transmitter."

For a brief moment he thought he could see an echo of the emotional swirl in her eyes that he'd noticed once before. But then she just nodded. "Oh," she said.

" 'Oh'?" he repeated. "That's all? Just 'oh'?"

"What more is there?" she countered reasonably. "If the transmitter's been moved, we move with it."

He shrugged. "I suppose."

She tilted her head, her eyes shifting down from his face to his chest. "So that's what they're all talking about, huh?"

Jack frowned. "What?"

She nodded toward his chest. "Your dragon tattoo. Nice."

Jack looked down. Sure enough, part of Draycos's jaw was visible through the partially open shirt. "Oh, it's lots nicer than that," he assured her, putting a little boasting into his tone. "It goes all the way around, and then some. See?"

He pulled the collar a little to the side to reveal more of the dragon's face. The last thing he really wanted to do was advertise Draycos's presence this way, and he was pretty sure Draycos felt the same way. But he'd met enough men with tattoos to know you didn't get one with the idea of hiding it. Alison was pretty sharp, and if he didn't brag about his dragon, she might wonder why. "Here—the head's the best part," he went on, reaching for the shirt's sealing seam. "Let me get this open a little more—"

"No, that's all right," Alison said hastily. "Really. I was just wondering if it was like the one the Dragonbacks wore."

"I already told you I never heard of the Dragonbacks until a month ago."

"Maybe you didn't," she pointed out. "But your tattoo artist might have."

"Oh." That angle hadn't occurred to him. "Is it?"

"Is it what? Oh." Alison shook her head. "Not even close. The Dragonbacks had their tattoos between their shoulder-blades, just below the neck. A little dragon, coiled around itself into a circle. Nowhere near as big as yours."

"You seem to know a lot about them."

She shrugged. "Like I said, I do my research. Always terrific to talk to you."

She got up and headed back forward to her own seat. "Interesting," Draycos murmured.

"What is?" Jack asked, turning back to the window. "Her obsession with dragon tattoos?"

"That she noticed your conversation with Sergeant Grisko and wondered about it," Draycos said. "She is quite observant."

Jack closed his shirt down to where it had been before Alison showed up. "Observant and nosy," he agreed. "I wonder if they know this is her second try at joining a mercenary group."

"I do not know," Draycos said. "Do you think you should tell them?"

Jack gazed out the window, weighing his options. Below them, the shadows were lengthening still more. Above them, the sky was definitely begi

The last twenty miles were spent traveling at treetop height, with the Lynx dodging its way around the handful of taller trees and an occasional hill or tall rock.

Jack gazed out at the blur of green shooting past his window, fully expecting to crash and burn any minute. Uncle Virge could have pulled off this kind of maneuver easily. But it wasn't Uncle Virge ru

Fortunately, the pilot knew what he was doing. He ran the course without so much as a single serious bump, and a few minutes later had set them down in a small clearing at the base of a rocky cliff face.

If parts of the Carrion training base had been spartan, the Kilo Seven outpost was downright primitive. The only solid structure was a flimsy looking prefab building about the size of a one-bedroom hotel room. Grisko identified it as the outpost HQ, and the place where Tango Five Zulu would be setting up their computers and listening gear.

The rest of the outpost consisted of four tents scattered beneath the trees. Two of them looked like sleeping quarters for the soldiers, with the other two probably serving as mess tent and storage facility. To the west, downslope from the rest of the camp, was the distinctive narrow tent of a latrine.

Further out, to the north and south of the camp, Jack spotted two small defensive positions. They weren't much, little more than foxholes with a couple of long gun muzzles poking out. Still, it was nice to know that the enemy couldn't overrun the place without the Edge at least being able to put up a fight.

The sun was down by the time they left the Lynx. The mercenaries set to work immediately, unloading their gear and taking it to their assigned tents. Jommy and the rest of Tango Five Zulu were also busy, lugging their computers and other equipment to the headquarters building.

Jack, to his complete lack of surprise, found himself assigned to night sentry duty.

His post was about sixty yards south of the camp, perhaps forty yards beyond the defensive foxhole on that side. All sixty yards of it were downhill. "Here's your cage," Grisko said, stopping beside a tree that looked rather like an elm with a bad skin condition.

"Cage?"

"Your sentry post," Grisko said with exaggerated patience. "Didn't you read the manual?"

"I must have missed that part," Jack murmured. He had read the manual, thank you, and there had been no mention of the term "cage" being used for a sentry post.

But there was nothing to gain by pointing that out. He'd apparently been put on sentry duty for waking up Grisko aboard the transport. He didn't really want to see what would happen if he added to his crimes by arguing with the man.

"Well, then, pay attention now," Grisko growled. He pointed to a group of four small round monitors that had been nailed to the tree trunk. Each of the monitors showed a slightly fuzzy image, and each had a control stick embedded in the trunk beneath it. "There's your Argus system. You do remember Argus systems, don't you?"

"Yes, sir," Jack said, more confidently this time. Argus was a passive observation system for sending images from one area to another. The far end, called the eye, could be up to five hundred feet away, with a fiber-optic cable linking it to one of the monitors here at the sentry post. The direction each viewer was pointing could be shifted by means of a wire control system. The control line ran through its own cable alongside the fiber-optic one, co

Jack could remember thinking when he first read about it that Argus had to be the most ridiculously primitive system in the known universe. It was only later, as he read about electronics and power-source detectors, that he had realized there was actually a good reason for the system. Out here in the middle of a forest, the electronics of a normal sensor system would stand out like a nightlight in a dark room. Argus, on the other hand, would never even be noticed unless the enemy happened to trip over one of the cables.