For a minute nothing happened. Jack held position, feeling tiny movements against his skin as Draycos shifted around, studying the door and the office itself. Back when he and Draycos had first met, this little K'da talent hadn't been much more than a curiosity. Draycos had been barely able to speak the language, couldn't read a word of it, and knew absolutely nothing about Orion Arm technology. Sending him to look through locked doors hadn't been much better than giving the job to a trained monkey.
But now, things were different. Draycos was a quick study, and had been eager to learn everything he could about humans and the Orion Arm—
Jack's breath caught suddenly in his throat. For a second there, something about the way Draycos was hanging onto his back had felt different. As if the dragon had somehow been...
He frowned. Slipping was the word that had come to mind.
But Draycos couldn't slip. Could he? In fact, wouldn't sliding off Jack's skin in his two-dimensional form be fatal?
His mind flashed back to their first meeting, when Draycos had been about to die from being too long without a host. If he'd been alone much longer, he would have gone two-dimensional anyway and drifted off into nothingness.
Could something like that be happening now?
He took a deep breath, careful to keep his back pressed firmly against the door.
Steady, he ordered himself. After all, Draycos slipped off Jack's body all the time, every time he popped back into his three-dimensional form. It was just a
matter of timing, that was all. A matter of the dragon doing the transition right as he came off Jack's skin. No problem.
So why was it suddenly feeling so strange?
'Draycos?' he whispered. 'You all right?'
There was no answer. He was opening his mouth to try again when there was a stirring, and the dragon came fully and solidly back onto his skin. 'There are no alarms in the door mechanism that I can see,' he reported from Jack's right shoulder.
'What about the rest of the room?' Jack asked. 'Cameras or motion detectors?'
'There appears to be a single camera in the upper left corner of the room,' the dragon said. 'It is pointed at the door, but covers most of the office.'
'That's it?'
'That was all I could see,' Draycos replied. 'But I do not claim to be an expert yet at these matters.'
'No, but you're probably right,' Jack assured him. 'Gazen's got that overconfident attitude we professional thieves love to see. Besides, here in the middle of the mansion, what does he need security for?'
'We will hope you are correct,' Draycos said. 'What about the camera?'
'Were there wires attached?' Jack asked. 'Or did it seem to be wireless?'
'There were definitely wires,' the dragon said. 'I could see them going into the wall.
Jack nodded. Again, as he would have expected. The signal from wireless systems could be tapped into by someone who knew what he was doing, possibly even from outside the house. And if there was one thing Gazen wouldn't want, it would be strangers looking over his shoulder. 'We should be able to get to them though the wall,' he concluded. 'Anything else?'
'Only a device labeled 'Dropskip Sequencer' built into the lock,' Draycos said.
'It does not appear to be an alarm, but I am certain it has some special purpose.'
Jack's brief surge of overconfidence vanished. 'Oh, it has a purpose, all right,' he said with a sigh. 'A sequencer keeps track of how many times the door has been opened. Practically foolproof, and practically undetectable. Except by K'da poet-warriors.'
'Can it be disconnected?'
Jack shook his head. 'Like I said, foolproof. Even if we were able to take it off, Gazen would know it had been tampered with and figure out someone had been inside. Might as well save ourselves the trouble.'
'What is our plan, then?'
Jack chewed at his lip. His time was sliding away, he knew, the seconds vanishing like peanuts at an elephant convention. He had to get in, get the data, and get out. And he had to do it without Gazen knowing he'd been there.
Or did he?
He scratched his cheek as a new thought suddenly struck him. Did he really care whether Gazen knew he'd been in here? After all, the minute he got the mercenary data they needed, he and Draycos were going to be out of here. Through the front gate, over or around whatever security the Brummgas had hanging around, back to the Essenay, and off this rock.
But to knowingly reveal himself in the middle of a job went against every cubic inch of training Uncle Virgil had hammered into him. Very unprofessional.
Also very stupid.
Draycos was still waiting. 'All right,' Jack said slowly. 'Compromise. We'll take out the camera, but we won't worry about the sequencer.'
'We do not care if Gazen knows someone has been inside?'
'With luck, we'll be long gone before he finds out,' Jack assured him, straightening up.
'Perhaps,' Draycos said doubtfully. 'It does not seem, though, that this thing you call luck has been with us in any great quantity so far.'
'Tell me about it,' Jack said dryly, straightening up from his crouch. 'But it's got to change sometime. Let's get around the other side of that wall and find those camera wires.'
CHAPTER 17
Back aboard the Star of Wonder, the wiring for the purser's office security cameras had been hidden inside the walls. Here, in the middle of the Chookoock family stronghold, the designers had apparently decided not to be so fancy.
The wires from Gazen's camera ran along the outside of the office wall, snugged up close against the ceiling.
It was a place most intruders wouldn't have a hope of reaching without a ladder, Jack included. Fortunately, he had Draycos instead. By standing on Jack's shoulders, the dragon was just able to reach up to the wires. A delicate puncture with one of his claws, and the camera was out of the game.
The lock on the door itself was only a little trickier. With the help of a flat lockpick Jack had hidden in his other shoe, he had it open in under two minutes.
And with less than fifteen minutes gone since they'd sneaked out of Her Thumbleness's room, they were inside Gazen's office.
'Okay,' Jack breathed, standing with his back to the door and giving the room a
quick once-over of his own. It looked clean, all right. Gazen definitely liked his privacy. 'It should be downhill from here.'
'Pardon?'
'It should be easy,' Jack translated, crossing the room and sitting down in Gazen's chair. It was a very comfortable chair, soft and smooth and luxurious, and he found himself feeling a twinge of discomfort as he settled against the smooth material. He shouldn't be even touching something this nice, let alone be sitting in it.
He blinked, an ugly shock running through him. I shouldn't even be touching something this nice? What in space was that supposed to mean? Because he'd certainly touched fancier stuff than this. Way fancier. He could remember standing on a carpet once that would have cost Gazen's entire year's salary, in the middle of a room decorated with original da Vincis and Michelangelos and ancient Chinese urns. What was this nonsense about not being good enough to sit in Gazen's lousy chair?
Because he was a slave, that was why. And even in the short time he'd been playing that role, the whole slave mindset had wiggled its way into him.
Quietly, subtly, and a lot deeper than he'd realized.
