Dragon And Soldier

Chapter 23

The commander was awake by the time Jack let go of Draycos's tail and got himself seated more or less securely on the branches facing him. "You sure there isn't anyone else around?" he muttered as Draycos climbed around behind the prisoner.

The dragon shook his head, but remained silent. Jack understood; he didn't want the prisoner to hear his voice. "Okay," he said briskly. "Let's get this over with." Grabbing hold of the cable tying the man's wrists together, he started to pull him up into a sitting position.

The other responded by trying to grab Jack's hand. "Hey, hey, take it easy," Jack warned, yanking his hand back out of reach. "Don't struggle or try anything stupid. You're fifty feet off the ground in a very leaky tree."

The man seemed to see the logic in that. He grunted behind his gag and subsided. "All we want is a little chat," Jack went on, pulling him upright again. This time the other didn't struggle. "A quiet little chat," he added. "You try shouting for help and we'll have to shut you up. A fair chance we'll lose your balance in the process. Understand?"

The man grunted again. Jack glanced at Draycos, making sure the dragon was standing ready but out of the prisoner's sight. Then, reaching over, he pulled off the gag.

"Montana?" the other rumbled, his voice the croak of a man with too dry a mouth. He worked his lips a moment and tried again. "It's Montana, isn't it?" he demanded.

Jack started. He knew that voice. "Colonel Elkor?" he asked, pulling off the headband and lifting the man's hood.

It was Colonel Elkor, all right, glaring at Jack like he was trying to push him out of the tree by sheer willpower. "Well, well," Jack said, filling in time as he tried to get his brain rebooted. He'd expected Sergeant Grisko or maybe Lieutenant Basht to be leading this charge. To have a full colonel show up meant this was bigger than he'd thought.

"You're a pretty big fish to be flopping around in this size pond," he went on. "I guess I never saw you as the great outdoors type."

"I wondered about you," Elkor growled. "So is Kayna working for you? Or is it the other way around?"

He started to turn. Draycos batted him warningly against the side of the head and he seemed to think better of the idea. "I'll bet it's Kayna who's calling the shots," he decided. "Who are you working for? The Shamshir, or someone else?"

"This is my interrogation, thanks all the same," Jack said. "But just for the record, I'm not working for anyone."

Elkor snorted derisively. "Right. You just felt like a midnight stroll one night. And then, what, you needed to use the latrine?"

Jack shook his head. "I already told you. The Shamshir sneaked into the camp and captured us. I escaped and—"

"Don't play dumb," Elkor cut him off harshly. "I'm talking about back on Carrion."

"Oh," Jack said, a little lamely. "That."

"Oh. That," Elkor mimicked. "Basht was pretty sure it was Kayna. But I wondered about you. If we'd had time to really check out your application—"

"Wait a second," Jack said, frowning as he thought back on that failed midnight raid. Was he suggesting that had been Alison coming up the stairs? "I'm sorry, but I'm confused here. What does Alison have to do with any of this?"

For the first time Elkor's glare seemed to crack a little. "Are you saying that wasn't you in the HQ building?"

Jack hesitated. Common sense, plus years of Uncle Virgil's tirades on the subject, said you never gave away information for free. But he was thoroughly lost here, and he had the odd feeling that Elkor wasn't exactly sitting steady on this stack of blocks either. Maybe it would be worth pooling their information a little.

"I did sneak into the HQ, yes," he told Elkor. "I was looking for some computer data. But I had to run for it when someone headed my direction laying down a sopor gas pattern. I assumed at the time it was a guard."

Elkor snorted again. "Trust me, if it had been one of us you would have known it. Sopor gas is for sissies."

"Or for people who don't want anyone knowing they'd been there," Jack pointed out. "So you think that was Alison?"

Elkor regarded him coolly. "So what computer information were you looking for?"

Jack shrugged. "Fine. Have it your way."

He began shaking out the handkerchief he'd taken from around the colonel's mouth. "Even with the gag, I'll bet they'll be able to hear you from down there. Assuming they ever come back to this area to look, of course."

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."