do not face the proper direction.'
'There are some in the washroom that do,' Jack said. 'High up on the walls. You should be able to see the HQ and most of the area around it from there.'
'Good.' Draycos rose higher off Jack's skin and stretched his neck, the movement shaking his head completely out of concealment. 'Hold your breath.'
Frowning, Jack took a deep breath and held it. For perhaps twenty seconds the dragon sat there like a statue, his golden scales seeming to glow in the pale light. Every few seconds his ears would twitch; and then, abruptly, he nodded. 'They are all asleep,' he said, dropping lightly onto the floor beside Jack's cot. 'I will need your watch.'
Jack handed it over. 'They said reveille would be at four-thirty,' he warned the dragon. 'Don't pull a Cinderella on me.'
'Pardon?'
'Skip it,' Jack said, resettling the blankets over his shoulders and rolling onto his side. It had been a long day, and he suddenly realized he was very tired indeed. 'Just don't be late. And try not to wake me up when you get home.'
Chapter 5
Reveille came precisely at four-thirty, a raucous trumpet blare that sent bunks jerking all through the barracks. Thirty seconds later, Sergeant Grisko himself came striding through the door, bellowing for all the greasy maggot-infested sacks of lard to get their hind ends out of bed and stand at attention.
'Sloppy, maggots,' he growled when the teens were standing stiffly at the ends of their bunks. 'What do you think this is, summer camp? Well, it's not. Who do you think I am, your mother? Well, I'm not.'
He stomped slowly down the room between the lines, looking each recruit up and down as he went, describing in vivid detail exactly what he thought of them, their parents, their expectations, and their chances of becoming successful soldiers. It was highly intimidating, as it was no doubt meant to be.
At the same time, Jack couldn't help but admire the range of the man's vocabulary. He'd spent a fair amount of time over the years in the company of Uncle Virgil's associates, and he'd always assumed their language was as vile as it got.
Grisko's loud defense of the cooking staff the previous evening had already put him in the same high-level cursing league as those men. Only now did Jack realize how restrained the sergeant's mess hall tirade had actually been.
And this was just the first early-morning wakeup. He wondered how much the man still had in reserve.
He reached Jack ... and suddenly stopped cold. 'What in the name of Cutter's Hind End are you supposed to be?' he demanded, looking Jack up and down. 'Sir?' Jack asked between stiff lips. 'Is this some kind of joke?' Grisko bit out, waving a hand at him.
Jack looked down at Draycos, back in his proper place wrapped around his body. 'It's a tattoo, sir.'
'It's a tattoo, sir,' Grisko mimicked. 'Get rid of it.' Jack blinked. 'Sir?'
'I said get rid of it,' Grisko snapped. 'Wash it off, sandblast it off—whatever it takes.'
'But it's a tattoo,' Jack protested. 'It doesn't come off.' Grisko had been starting to turn back toward the door. Instead, he turned back to Jack, gazing down his nose directly into Jack's face. 'Are you arguing with me, Montana?' he asked, his voice suddenly very quiet. 'Are you disobeying a direct order?'
'No, sir,' Jack said, thinking fast. 'Request permission to return home to visit a removal clinic.'
The corner of Grisko's mouth twitched into something that was probably as close to a smile as he ever got. 'That's better,' he said. 'When I give you an order, you jump to obey it. Clear?'
'Yes, sir,' Jack said.
'Good,' Grisko said. 'Permission denied. You don't skip out on basic for anything. You'll get it removed during first liberty.'
He made a precise about-face, just like the ones Jack and the others had practiced the previous afternoon, except that Grisko got it right. 'All right, maggots,' he announced, starting back down the line. 'You've got five minutes to suit up in fatigues and report to the mess hall. Thirty minutes from right now, you will have eaten and assembled on the Number Three parade ground. Now move!'
They spent the morning practicing more drills and formations. By the time the lunch trumpet sounded some of them were nearly as good at turns and about-faces as Grisko.
Not that Grisko would ever admit that, of course. To hear him talk and complain, they would never be anything more than undisciplined, incompetent maggots.
Though as Jack watched some of his fellow recruits fumbling around, he had to admit the sergeant might have a point.
After lunch it was more drills, this time with their candy-cane weapons. The extra weight didn't seem that important at first, but after the first hour of spinning it back and forth the Gompers flash rifle in particular began to feel like it was made of solid lead. By midafternoon, whatever crispness had been in their movements was long gone. An hour after that, a couple of the younger kids were whimpering under their breath with the effort.
That was a mistake. Sergeant Grisko disliked whimpering even more than he disliked full-body dragon tattoos. Each time he caught even a hint of it, he stopped the drill flat and laid into the offender.
One of them was Rogan Mbusu, the eleven-year-old masquerading as fourteen who had so admired Jack's dragon back at the recruitment center. By the time Grisko finished with him and stalked away, Rogan was nearly in tears.
There were, however, two notable exceptions to the group's overall fatigue and clumsiness. One of them was Jommy Randolph, the boy who had complained to Jack about his indenture at the recruitment center. For all his dread back then, he seemed to be quickly settling into the role of the perfect trainee.
Maybe he was good at this. Or maybe he was simply fighting hard to keep from getting shown up.
Because the other exception was Alison Kayna.
Jack found himself watching her as they went through the drills. She was two rows up from Jack's position in the formation and a little to the right, easy enough for him to see without turning his head. Like Jommy, she was quick to pick up the techniques and routines. Unlike Jommy, she didn't seem to be working all that hard at it.
Uncle Virgil had often said that there were only two types of people who could
