Dragon and Liberator

She relayed the information about Neverlin's private collection of patrol ships. "I don't know when he's planning to send crews to pick them up," she finished. "But if Jack can get to the depot on Bentre before that, maybe he can do something."

"Such as?"

"Such as making sure Neverlin doesn't get them," Alison said patiently. "Now that the Malison Ring has been alerted to the fact that something fishy is going on with Frost, he shouldn't be able to just waltz into one of their bases and commandeer a large number of their ships. If we can also deep-six these KK-29s, Neverlin should find himself in a bind."

"He'll still have the Valahgua and their weapons."

"Sure, but the fewer ships he has to throw at the refugee fleet, the better the chances the K'da and Shontine will be able to paste all of them before they get close enough to use the Death."

"I don't know," Uncle Virge said doubtfully. "I'm thinking about the three hundred Brummgas Neverlin's already shipped off Brum-a-dum. Even fully crewed, a dozen KK-29s won't carry more than seventy-two of them. Either he's very confident that Frost can grab more ships or else he has those extra ships already stashed away somewhere."

"We do know he's got several Djinn-90s," Alison pointed out.

"Which are single-seat fighters," Uncle Virge countered. "Three-seaters if you throw in the optional gunner and observer. He can't have enough of those to need three hundred Brummgas."

Alison scratched her cheek. Unfortunately, he had a point. "I'll see what I can find out about that," she said. "In the meantime, you and Jack see what you can do about those KK-29s, all right?"

"I'll give him the message," Uncle Virge said heavily. "Provided he gets out of jail before they fly."

"If he doesn't, Taneem and I will just have to deal with them," Alison said. "I've got to go. Don't try to call me here."

"Thanks, I had figured that part out," Uncle Virge said sardonically. "Take care of yourself, lass. You and Taneem."

"I will. Good luck."

She keyed off the microphone. "Do you truly believe you and I can handle all this by ourselves?" Taneem asked.

"What, you mean that thing at the end?" Alison asked. "No, of course not. That was just for Jack's benefit. Sometimes the best way to get someone on the job is to hint that he can't do it."

"That seems rather . . . I don't know the word."

Alison sighed. "The word is cynical," she said. "Or maybe manipulative."

"You can change," Taneem reminded her quietly. "All people have that capability."

"I know." Reaching down, Alison scratched Taneem briefly behind her ears. "But to tell you the truth, I kind of like myself just the way I am. Go back out to the main office and listen at the door, will you, while I close down here?"

Taneem nodded and trotted back out of the nook. Alison leaned over to close the door between them, then quickly reset the transmitter's frequency.

The man waiting at the other end of the connection picked up instantly. With the word manipulative running through her mind, Alison launched into the report she hadn't wanted Taneem to hear.

Fortunately, this one was much shorter than the conversation with Uncle Virge had been. Within a minute she was finished and had signed off. Resetting the controls to their original positions, she rejoined Taneem in the main office.

The K'da was by the door, her ear leaned against it. "Any change?" Alison called softy as she sat down at Neverlin's desk.

Taneem shook her head as she moved away from the door. "Both guards are still there," she said, coming to Alison's side. "You have a plan?"

"I do," Alison said as she keyed on the desk computer terminal. The system was code-locked, of course, but Alison had her own version of Jack's sewer-rat technique for getting into uncooperative computers. "The trick with military organizations like this is to know how things get done," she continued. "The key is that every order goes through at least two levels of command before it gets where it's supposed to go."

"Even in a group this small?"

"Even here," Alison assured her. The mole program did its work, and the menu came up. Scrolling down the assignment roster, she found that the two guards currently standing outside the office door were a human named Rennie and a Brummga named Grisfel.

"What I'm doing now is issuing a new set of orders to the night duty officer," she explained as she typed. "I'm telling him to send our guards out there to the main conference room for a brief consultation with Colonel Frost."

Taneem was silent a moment. "But surely they'll quickly discover the orders are false."

"Of course they will," Alison said. "But they won't be able to trace which of the ship's computers sent the message." She smiled grimly as she added a second order to the list. "And you might be surprised how easily suspicious minds like Neverlin's and Frost's can be nudged in the wrong direction."