Dragon and Thief

But there were still Vance and Myers to think about. Braxton didn't seem the type to hire bodyguards who couldn't shoot straight. "Thanks for the offer," he murmured back. "But I think I'll stick it out."

"They're going to kill me, Jack," Braxton reminded him. "As Raven said, I really don't want to die with other lives on my conscience."

Jack frowned sideways at him. Braxton's face was set in hard lines; but at the same time Jack could tell that the man meant it.

It seemed a far cry from the hard, cold, merciless industrial giant that everyone thought of when Cornelius Braxton's name was mentioned. Maybe Braxton was rearranging his way of thinking now that he could see his own death approaching.

Or maybe the public image wasn't what the man was really like at all.

"It's okay," he told Braxton. "And don't give up hope. Not yet."

Braxton glanced around. "All right," he said. "If you say so."

"Over here," Raven said, taking Braxton's shoulder and guiding him into a right-hand turn. They went through a door with the now familiar—at least to Jack—Authorized Perso

"Say good-bye to civilization," Raven advised as the elevator doors slid open. "Next stop'll be the cargo section."

Jack had held out some hope that in the confined space of an elevator car Draycos would finally have a chance to act. But accidentally or otherwise, Raven had neatly squashed that one. The car he ushered them into wasn't one of the regular passenger elevators, but instead a cargo lift. It was nearly the size of Jack's stateroom, and Vance and Myers went immediately to opposite corners.

Raven stepped well back, too. Now that secrecy wasn't important anymore, all three men drew their guns out of hiding. Myers touched the button, and the car started down.

"Jack?" a voice murmured in Jack's right ear.

Jack measured the distances with his eyes. Too far. Besides, there was no cover anywhere for him and Braxton to duck behind when the shooting started. "Not here," he murmured back, keeping his lips motionless.

"We are ru

"Don't you think I know that?" Jack retorted quietly. "It just won't work in here."

"Hey," Myers said, jabbing his gun toward Jack. "Did anyone think to check this clown for a comm clip?"

"Harper ran him," Raven told him. "He was clean."

"Then who's he talking to?" Myers demanded. "Maybe I ought to do a little more thorough search, if you know what I mean."

"He was talking to me," Braxton spoke up. "Is that a problem?"

"What about?" Myers asked.

"None of your business," Braxton said calmly. "Most condemned men are allowed a last meal. You should at least be gracious enough to allow us a last conversation."

"Yeah?" Myers growled, starting forward. "Maybe we're not feeling gracious today, huh?"

"It's all right, Myers," Raven said, waving the other back. "Let them talk."

Myers glared some more, but he returned to his corner without argument. "Thanks," Jack murmured to Braxton.

Braxton nodded, his eyes on Raven. "You know, Mr. Raven, there's no reason you have to kill our young friend here," he commented. "There are several techniques that can be used to block his memories of this entire trip."

"Sorry," Raven said, shaking his head. "I know all about those techniques. I don't trust any of them."

"I could make it worth your while," Braxton offered.

Raven gri

"This is an account Neverlin doesn't know about," Braxton persisted. "One he'll never find on his own. A little extra money never hurt anyone."

"A little extra loose end can hurt plenty," Raven retorted. "Now shut up."

Braxton looked at the other two. "Myers? Vance? Either of you interested?"

"I said shut up!" Raven snarled, gesturing with his gun. "Or I'll drop you right here."

Braxton gave up. The rest of the elevator ride was made in silence.

The doors opened onto a corridor that was clearly one of the ship's working areas. No fancy carvings or carpeting or even textured wall coverings here. Everything was plain synth-wall and scuffless flooring, with wires and conduits ru

It was better than a lot of places Jack had been in. Still, coming from the fancier parts of the liner, it seemed shockingly bleak and shabby. A very depressing place to have to die in.

Raven was obviously thinking the same thing. "Sorry about the decor," he said as Vance led them around a corner into a cross-corridor. "I would have ordered flowers, only you weren't supposed to go down for another couple of weeks."

"You didn't get any flowers for those Wistawki, either," Jack murmured. If he was going to get Raven to confess to the murders, this was the time for it. "The ones you shot on Vagran. You didn't seem to care at all about them, in fact."

Raven snorted. "What, get misty-eyed over a bunch of dumb animals? Who cares if a couple of them get shot?"

"You thought enough people would care to make it worth framing me for their murders," Jack reminded him.

"I probably still will, too," Raven said with a shrug. "Might as well get that off the books, and you're as good a fall guy as anyone. Especially since you won't be around to tell your side of it."

"Unless Drabs turns on you," Jack pointed out.

"Don't worry, Drabs knows what side of the bread gets the butter," Raven assured him.

"Maybe," Jack said. "But like you, he was willing to stab Mr. Braxton in the back. Maybe he'll do the same to you if he gets the chance."

Raven snorted. "Nice try. I can handle Drabs."

"Well, then, maybe the Brummga will turn," Jack said. "He was a witness, too, remember."

"A Brummga?" Braxton asked, frowning. "There aren't any Brummgas in my security force."

"You know, kid, you talk way too much," Raven growled. "How about you shut up for the rest of the trip?"

Jack sighed. "Sure."

Three minutes and two corridors later, they reached the cargo hold.

Like everything else on the Star of Wonder, it was a pretty impressive place. It was big, for starters, built more along the lines of a warehouse than a simple storage room. The ceiling was high, maybe twenty feet up, with a grid of lifter-crane rails crisscrossing it and at least three heavy-duty cranes riding them. Hanging a few feet below the ceiling between the rails was another grid, this one a network of service catwalks. Rows of lights set into the ceiling made the room almost as bright as day.

Over the door they'd entered by, and clustered together into four more groups in different parts of the ceiling, were the familiar battery-equipped emergency lights. There were, unfortunately, almost certainly no security cameras hidden inside them as there had been in those in the purser's office.

Stacked neatly on the well-lit floor were piles of crates, protected by acceleration webbing, with open aisles between them. All of the stacks were too tall to see over; most of them reached nearly to the catwalks overhead.

It reminded Jack of the Vagran spaceport, and for that first hopeful moment he wondered if he might be lucky enough for the cargo to be laid out in the same sort of maze. If it was, and if he and Braxton could get just a few seconds ahead of their captors, they might at least have a chance of making a game of hide-and-seek out of this.

But then he got a second glance, and the brief hope melted away. The Vagran warehouse floor had been laid out in randomly sized rectangles, which was what had accounted for the crooked walkways. Here, though, the rectangles were all the same size, with the aisles between them as straight as Parprin city streets. Anyone trying to escape down one of them would be shot in the back before he got fifteen feet.