Dragon And Soldier

Jack sighed. "Forget it."

He got a few more steps before Draycos spoke again. "I am still confused."

"A tangler is a nonlethal weapon," Jack explained tiredly. Draycos could go off on bu

"I understand the difference," Draycos said, a little stiffly. "I am a K'da warrior. My surprise is that someone from your former profession would not be familiar with many different styles of weapons."

Jack shook his head. "You've got it backwards," he said. "Someone in my former profession couldn't afford not to be choosy about his choice of guns. Ever hear of felony murder?"

"No."

"A felony is a major crime," Jack explained. A few trees ahead, he could see a section of jagged rocks. It looked like as good a place as any for target practice. "Like armed robbery or kidnapping or something."

"Or murder," Draycos added quietly.

Jack shivered. He'd already seen what Draycos and his K'da warrior ethic thought about murderers. "Anyway, felony murder is when someone dies while you're committing a crime like that."

"Even if you did not intend for it to happen?"

"Even if it wasn't even your fault," Jack said. "No matter how it happens, if you were the one committing the crime, you can be charged with murder. That's why Uncle Virgil and I never, ever carried weapons that could kill."

"Interesting," Draycos said thoughtfully. "K'da and Shon-tine law requires intent to be considered. Is this universal in the Orion Arm?"

"On most Internos planets it is," Jack told him. "A lot of the alien worlds do things differently."

"Stop," Draycos said suddenly.

Jack froze, half concealed behind a particularly large tree. "What?" he demanded, his eyes nicking around.

"Beyond this tree is open ground," Draycos said. "You must go low to cross it."

"Oh, for—" Jack threw a glare down at his shirt. "It is only a training exercise, you know."

"Then let us properly train you," Draycos said. "Go low."

Jack sighed. "Just what I've always wanted," he muttered, slinging the Gompers over his back and getting down on his hands and knees. "My own personal drill sergeant."

"Use your center joints," Draycos advised. "You will stay lower and be able to move more quickly."

"My center—? Oh. Knees and elbows."

"Correct. I am surprised they have not already taught you that."

Jack frowned as he started across the patch of open ground toward the rocks ahead. Come to think of it, why hadn't they?

The knees-elbows waddle was easier than he would have expected. It was still a lot more awkward than just walking, though. Reaching a convenient notch in the rocks, he carefully eased his head up for a look.

He was at the edge of a large gravel pit that stretched out for probably a hundred yards, maybe fifty feet deep at its lowest point. A dozen electronic targets had been set up at various places in the pit.

"Nothing like starting us off at long-range work," Jack muttered, unlimbering his rifle and flipping off the safety. "Whatever happened to 'Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes'?"

"Pardon?"

"Skip it." At least there was a conveniently shaped notch on top of one of the rocks where he could brace the rifle. Setting the muzzle into the notch, he started to get to his knees.

"Keep your head down," a girl's voice ordered.

Frowning, Jack rolled over onto his side and looked behind him.

It was Alison Kayna.

Chapter 6

She was coming from the trees behind him, wriggling across the open ground using the same elbows-and-knees crawl Dray-cos had just taught him. Naturally, she was doing it better. "What did you say?" he asked.

"I said keep your head down," she repeated, angling toward a section of rock near Jack's. "They'll have snipers targeting us from the far side of the gravel pit."

Jack shrunk down a little behind the protection of the rocks. "Snipers?"

"You don't think this is just target practice, do you?" Alison asked, puffing a little as she reached the rocks. "You've seen the games Grisko likes to play. You think he'd pass up a golden opportunity like this?"

"A golden opportunity for what?" Jack demanded. Suddenly the rock he was leaning against didn't feel nearly so solid and secure anymore. "Blowing our heads off?"

"Oh, get real," she scolded, unslinging her Gompers from across her back. "They'll just be using marker lasers."

"Never heard of them."

"They cause a mild skin reaction. You don't even feel it, but the mark shows up like a spot of sunburn."

Jack began to breathe a little easier. "Temporary, I hope."

"It lasts a day or two." Alison eased an eye up into a gap between two rocks. "Shows where you got careless."

"Nice of them to tell us about this," Jack grumbled, rolling back onto his stomach and sidling his way over toward a lower and better protected gap in the rocks. "Good thing you know your way around this stuff."

"I did some research," Alison said. "I gather you didn't."

"Not really," Jack said. He lined up his sights on one of the distant targets, wondering if someone across the way was lining up sights on him. "I figured they'd be giving us all the training we needed."

"I wasn't talking about training," Alison said. "But that's another point."

Carefully, Jack squeezed the trigger. There was a brief flash of laser light accompanied by a soft hiss, and the spent power cartridge ejected from the chamber. It rolled across the grass, trailing the stink of chemical reactant behind it. "What's another point?"

"The training." There was a hiss from her direction as she squeezed off a shot of her own. "Doesn't it strike you as odd that we haven't even gotten to look at real weapons until now?"

Jack shrugged, lining up on another target. "It's only been five days," he pointed out.

"Out of a total of ten," she countered. "Ten days of basic training, then off we go. With most armies, this would run six weeks or more."

"Yeah, but most of them would be going off to real wars," Jack reminded her. "We'll just be doing garrison support duty."

"That's what Grisko says," she said ominously. There were two more hisses from her position. "You run into a boy named Rogan Mbusu yet?"

"Sure," Jack said. "Short kid, big ears. Claims to be fourteen."

Alison snorted. "Yeah, I've talked to him," she said scornfully. "He's lucky if he's even seen twelve. Legally, you know, you're only supposed to indenture kids fourteen and older."

"So the Edge bends the rules a little," Jack said. "What's your point?"

"My point is I don't want to do even garrison duty with some kid who's too young to know which end of his rifle goes where," she said darkly. "Garrison workers can get just as dead as regular troops, you know."

Jack grimaced. "You sound like my uncle. How come you know so much?"

"Like I said, research," she said.

"Like my Aunt Fa

Her lips compressed into a thin line. "If you must know, this is my second try at this," she said. "I washed out of the first mere group I was indentured to."

"And you came back for more?"

She shot him an icy glare. "My parents need the money.

Yours don't?" Without waiting for a reply, she turned back to her shooting.

Which was just as well, since Jack didn't have a ready answer for that one.

For a few minutes they shot side by side in silence. Jack alternated between several targets, wondering how he was doing. Probably pretty lousy. Grisko would have a way of matching up the hits to each of the trainees' guns after they were all done, but that didn't do Jack any good right now.