'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 Fanny,' Jack retorted. 'Come on, you didn't get this from any book.'
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.
'Why 'Dragonback'?' Alison asked suddenly.
Jack frowned. 'What?'
'Grisko called you Dragonback earlier. When you walked off talking to your gun.'
Jack's ears reddened again. Probably the whole group had heard that. Terrific. 'I have a tattoo of a dragon across my back,' he said. 'A big one.'
'Something to do with the old Dragonback warriors?'
'Nope,' Jack assured her. 'In fact, I never even heard of them until a month ago.'
She grunted and resumed her firing. Five minutes later, her clip of cartridges was empty. 'I'm off,' she announced, slinging the Gompers over her back again and starting backwards in a reverse elbows-and-knees crawl. 'Make sure you fire your whole clip before going back if you don't want Grisko to scorch your ears off Hitting the targets once in awhile would be nice, too.'
'Thanks,' Jack said dryly. 'I'll see what I can do.'
'And keep your head down,' she warned.
A minute later, she was gone, vanished into the cover of the trees. 'Well, that was fun,' he muttered.
'She has great courage,' Draycos said. 'I can hear it in her voice.'
'Or else she's just plain stupid,' Jack said, picking a target and firing off a round at it. 'Her and her family both. How do people let themselves get so desperate for money?'
'Many times it is not their fault.'
'Most of the time it is,' Jack said stubbornly.
'That sounds like your Uncle Virgil's philosophy.'
'Leave Uncle Virgil out of this,' Jack said, firing two more shots. Missing both, probably. 'Anyway, he knew how the real world worked.'
There was a short silence, just long enough for Jack to realize that Draycos could easily have reminded him what Uncle Virgil had done for a living. 'Have you no compassion for the weak?' the dragon asked instead.
'Compassion wasn't a big priority where I grew up,' Jack said. 'And I never saw it do anyone any good.'
'No one?'
Jack glanced a glare down at him. 'How come we only have these big moral discussions when Uncle Virge isn't around to help me defend myself?'
'Do such discussions make you uncomfortable?'
Jack shook his head impatiently. 'Can we just skip this?'
'Of course,' Draycos said, as if he hadn't been the one who'd brought it up in the first place. 'Shall I give you my report on the nighttime patrols?'
'Yeah, sure,' Jack said. 'Go ahead.'
'There are four separate teams,' Draycos said. 'Two soldiers in each. They pass within view of the main headquarters' entrance approximately once every twenty minutes.'
'How regular is that twenty minutes?' Jack asked.
'Close, but not exact,' Draycos said. 'The period has ranged from eighteen to twenty-five minutes.'
'Do they always come from the same directions each time?'
'Again, approximately,' the dragon said. 'I have noted slight differences in the direction of approach, but nothing significant.'
'A regular patrol pattern, then,' Jack decided, his annoyance at the dragon forgotten. Draycos might be the local expert on morals and ethics, but putting puzzle pieces together was where Jack got to shine. 'If there's one thing Uncle Virgil taught me to love, it's regular patterns.'
'There may still be alarms on the doors,' Draycos warned.
'I'm sure there are,' Jack agreed. 'And on the computer, too. But I know how to handle those. My biggest worry was getting shot on the way there.'
'Do we then make our attempt tonight?' Jack fired his last two rounds while he considered. 'Let's give it one more night,' he said. 'If the patrol pattern is still the same, we'll go tomorrow.'
'And if we are successful?'
'Well, we're sure not going to hang around any longer than we have to,' Jack told him, slinging his rifle and starting to back up. As before, the technique felt a lot more awkward than Alison had made it look. 'If Uncle Virge is on the ball, he'll have the Essenay stashed somewhere nearby. Once we've pulled everything the Edge has on Djinn-90 fighters, we'll whistle him up and get out of here.'
'And if we do not find what we need?'
'If they've got it, we'll find it,' Jack said confidently. 'If not... well, we'll worry about that when it happens.'
He reached the cover of the trees and stood up. 'Come on. Let's go see how I did.'
'Not very well, I am afraid,' Draycos said. 'But do not be discouraged. Long-range shooting is difficult to master.'
'It could have been a lot harder,' Jack pointed out. 'A machine gun, or even a semiautomatic projectile rifle ...' He trailed off, a strange thought striking him.
'Is there trouble?' Draycos asked.
'I was just thinking,' Jack said slowly. 'A flash rifle doesn't have any kick. No recoil. You understand?'
'Yes.'
'That makes it a lot easier to learn,' Jack went on. 'But it's also a whole lot more expensive to shoot. Does that sound like the kind of weapon you'd want beginners to start with?'
Draycos was silent a moment. 'You are being taught to march and stand in formation,' he said. 'From your books you are being taught the words and expressions soldiers use, and a great deal of technical information. Now you are
