'Yeah,' Jack muttered, hunching his shoulders with indecision. Intriguing though this might be, he still had troubles of his own. The last thing he could afford right now was to take on passengers.
Especially a passenger who looked like a bright gold dragon. That was definitely not the way to keep a low profile. 'Look, Draycos—'
'Before you decide, I must add one other piece of information,' the dragon said. 'The reason we are standing amid the wreckage of my ship is that my people were attacked. Moreover, we were attacked by the ultimate weapon of the Valahgua, our mortal enemies.'
Jack shook his head. 'Never heard of them. Uncle Virge?'
'No reference on the books,' the other said.
'I would not expect you to know of them,' Draycos said.
'Like us, they live a long way from here. Our voyage took nearly two years, human measure, and carried us across a great void of space.'
'You mean like from another spiral arm?' Jack hazarded, trying to visualize the map of the Milky Way galaxy from the limited and highly informal schooling Uncle Virgil had given him between jobs. All of explored space, both the human-colonized regions as well as all the other known alien species and planets, lay along the broad band of stars called the Orion Arm. To get here from outside that band would be quite a trip.
'That is correct,' Draycos confirmed. 'We came in hopes of fleeing the Valahgua and their terrible weapon. Yet the weapon was here waiting for us.'
'They must have followed you.'
'Impossible,' Draycos said. 'As I said, their weapon was here ahead of us.'
'And on human-designed ships, too,' Uncle Virge pointed out. 'Unless your Valahgua fly Djinn-90s.'
'The only explanation was that we were betrayed,' Draycos said. 'You have to help me find those responsible.'
'Oh, no I don't,' Jack retorted. 'Look, I'm sorry your people got nailed. But this isn't any of my business.'
'You are wrong,' Draycos said firmly. 'The Death chooses no favorites, be they Shontine or K'da or human. There is no defense against it, and there is no bargaining with the Valahgua. If they have formed a secret alliance with one of the species in this region, all of your people are in deadly danger.'
'What do you mean, no defense?' Uncle Virge asked.
'There is no material that can block the weapon,' Draycos said. 'Its range is short, but all within that range die. We must bring warning to your people.'
Jack made a face. 'Yes, well, that might be a little difficult,' he said. 'You see—'
'Quiet!' Draycos cut him off suddenly.
'What?' Jack whispered.
'Footsteps,' Draycos whispered back. 'Someone is coming.'
Chapter 5
Jack was still holding the alien data reader. Flipping up his shirttail, he stuffed the gadget into one of the back pockets of his jeans. 'How many?' he whispered.
'Only one set of footsteps,' Draycos murmured back. The dragon head had again lifted out of Jack's shoulder, the long snout poking out under the edge of the shirt. 'He moves cautiously, like a warrior.'
'Or a cop,' Jack muttered, crossing as silently as he could to the chair where he'd hung his jacket. He couldn't hear the footsteps himself, but he didn't doubt the dragon's pointy little ears for a minute. 'Any other way out of here?'
'There is the bubble,' Draycos said. The snout lifted to point toward the ceiling. 'But the ladder is no longer secure.'
Jack looked up as he got his arms into his jacket sleeves. It was a good twenty feet up to the first landing, plus another ten feet to a second landing and then the broken glass of the bubble. And the ladder did indeed look pretty rickety.
But the chance of a two-story fall was still better than tangling with a trained soldier. Or with a cop. 'I'll risk it,' he said, shifting direction toward the ladder. He reached it, got a grip on the uprights—
'Solidify!' a hard, flat voice snapped from the doorway behind him.
Jack froze in place, wincing. Caught like a rat in a box; and he still hadn't heard any footsteps. Whoever this guy was, he was way too good for Jack's liking. 'Don't shoot,' he called, putting some near-panic into his voice. 'Please don't shoot.'
'Turn around,' the voice ordered. 'Keep your hands up.'
Jack obeyed, turning just far enough to keep his right shoulder toward the newcomer. The tangler belted at his left hip was a short-range weapon, and he wanted to keep it his little secret as long as possible.
The figure standing just inside the room to the right of the doorway was big and wide and definitely not human. He was a Brummga, most of his round face obscured by his helmet. He was dressed in a mismatched collection of ground-soldier combat gear, with a dark red helmet, blue protector vest, and green combat fatigues. A small orange medkit hung from the left side of his belt beside some kind of wand in a narrow, brown-and-white-striped holster. The combined effect of his body shape and the colorful outfit made him look rather comical.
But there was nothing funny about the shoulder-slung weapon pointed in Jack's direction. It was black and shiny and nasty looking, and would probably make a serious mess if the Brummga pulled the trigger. Whatever thoughts Jack might have had about using his tangler vanished quietly into the morning mists.
But he had to do something. If these Valahgua guys Draycos had mentioned didn't want any witnesses to their
