Dragon and Liberator

Don't worry about it, Jack assured him, shifting his thoughts firmly away from childhood memories. Okay, we've got six days. Let's start by taking an inventory of what we've got to work with.

CHAPTER 17

For Alison, the next six days went by smoothly and quietly. As near as she could tell, the time had gone equally smoothly for everyone else aboard the Advocatus Diaboli.

Neverlin and Frost met several times, discussing the final details of their plan. Sneaking through the vents, Taneem had managed to get close enough to eavesdrop on one of those talks.

But the two men had kept their voices too low for Alison to pick up more than a few words over Taneem's comm clip. Taneem had tried to repeat some of it to her later, but the conversation had been filled with technical terms that she didn't know and were therefore hard for her to remember.

It was frustrating, but there was nothing Alison could do about it. There were many unanswered questions about the details of Frost's plan, details that could prove critical in the days ahead.

As for Harper, he seemed to be spending most of his time in his stateroom, emerging only for meals or an occasional brief chat with Frost or one of the other Malison Ring mercenaries. Harper did walk around the ship at least once, but as far as Taneem could tell he never approached any of the vital control areas and never left the sight of one of the crew or passengers.

Like Neverlin, Harper seemed perfectly relaxed about the upcoming battle. But maybe that was just the man's personality.

Still, as the hours ticked down toward their arrival at Point Three, even Harper seemed to be picking up some of the tension beginning to pervade the rest of the ship.

Not only the ship but Alison herself. Very soon now she would learn if Jack and Draycos were really aboard the Foxwolf. And if they were, how much damage they had caused.

And at that point, she would have a decision to make.

She didn't want to confront Neverlin and Frost this soon. Not with the K'da/Shontine fleet still several days away.

But if and when Frost took over the job of finding and killing Jack and Draycos, she would have no choice.

The hours became minutes, the voices on the bridge softening as the tension and expectation grew. Taneem lay quietly in the duct, watching Neverlin and Frost and the Valahgua leader through the mesh and reporting as much of the situation as she could to Alison.

Which left Alison absolutely nothing to do except listen to Taneem's whispers, pace restlessly back and forth across the life-pod, and pray that Jack and Draycos had come up with some plan of their own.

And to pray even harder that they were both still alive.

The access crawl space beneath the Foxwolf's main control complex, Jack reflected, was well named.

In his opinion, though, the creatures the ship's designers had expected to be crawling around in here were mice.

Okay, he said, rolling carefully onto his back and shining his light upward. Barely a foot directly above his head was a wide hole in the crawl space ceiling with an orderly tangle of wires and cables of various sizes coming out of it. In ones and twos the cables angled away from the hole, heading off in all directions toward the edges of the crawl space. To his right and left, he could see similar explosions of cables coming from other openings in the low ceiling. Is this the right one?

Draycos's head lifted slightly from his shoulder, peering at the markings by the hole. Yes, he said, sinking back down onto Jack's skin. Do you need me to identify the wires for you?

No, I got it, Jack assured him. A set of soft footsteps angled across Jack's ceiling to his left, reminding him—if he'd needed reminding—that the control complex directly above him was full of bad guys.

With a thick deck between them and him, they weren't likely to hear any noise he might make. Just the same, he was careful not to clink his flashlight as he set it down onto the deck beside his ear.

Reaching into his pockets, he removed his multitool and the cable-and-switch setup he'd put together. Studying the various stripe/spot patterns on the cables above him, he located the ones Draycos had described and set to work.

Jack had been highly trained in the art of bypassing security locks, alarms, and other complex electronics. This job, in comparison, was about as tricky as a walk in the park.

His first task was to connect three of the hyperspace control lines together, being careful not to trigger any flickers the computer might notice. Then he wired in one of the two high-voltage power lines that ran the console's display monitors, running that particular splice through the switch on his cable.