Dragon and Liberator

He was being put into the rear seat of the police car when he saw the Chookoock shuttles lift again into the sky. He watched them head for the stars, his stomach knotted tight enough to hurt.

Alison and Taneem were on their own now.

CHAPTER 3

The returning shuttles arrived sooner than Alison had expected. Far too soon, unfortunately, for Jack and Draycos to have had time to put together a rescue plan.

Neverlin and Frost were probably thinking along the same lines. They wasted no time getting their troops and the safe aboard and lifting off again.

Alison tried her burglar's pickup a couple of times during the flight. But the safe had apparently been secured someplace away from the passengers, and the background rumble of the engines masked whatever anyone might be saying.

There wasn't much conversation going on inside the safe, either. Taneem would answer any questions that Alison asked her, mostly questions about how the K'da was doing. But aside from that she lay quietly against Alison's skin, neither speaking nor moving.

Maybe she was conserving oxygen. More likely she was just terrified.

The flight didn't last long. An hour and a half after lifting from Brum-a-dum, Alison felt the subtle jolt as the shuttle docked with another vessel. A few minutes later the safe was rocked onto a lift cart and rolled through the shuttle's hatchway. Ten minutes and several turns later, they reached their destination. Another short flurry of rockings and bumps to get them off the cart, and the safe came to rest.

And once again silence descended.

For the next two hours Alison kept her microphone pressed against the safe wall, splitting her attention between the occasional and very distant background noises and the indicator on her gas mask canister.

The gas mask was a marvel of engineering. Along with a small oxygen tank, it included a catalytic reactor that could take their exhaled carbon dioxide and split it back into carbon and oxygen. Without such a converter, a mask that size wouldn't have kept her and Taneem alive for even a single hour, and several times during their quiet vigil Alison gave silent thanks that her father had provided her with such exotic and expensive equipment.

But even so marvelous a gadget had its limits. The carbon storage tube slowly but steadily filled with a black, sootlike powder as the oxygen tank just as slowly but steadily drained.

Finally, just under four hours into their ill-fated mission, Alison decided it was time. "It's been quiet out there for two hours," she told Taneem as she put away the microphone and got out her light. "It should be safe for you to take a look."

"All right," Taneem said softly.

Alison pressed her back hard against the safe's rear wall. She felt the familiar movement across her skin as Taneem leaned in her strange fourth-dimensional way over the metal. There was a pause, and somehow Alison had a sense that the K'da was surprised.

There was another wiggle, and Alison looked down through her open collar as Taneem's gray-scaled head and silver eyes slid back around onto her shoulder. "Is it clear?" she asked.

"Very clear," Taneem said. "And very familiar."

"How familiar?"

"Very," Taneem said again, a hint of wry humor finally peeking through her tension. "We're in the room containing the second safe you opened for Colonel Frost on our journey from Semaline to Brum-a-dum."

Alison felt her mouth drop open. "We're aboard the Advocator Diaboli?"

"Unless there are two such rooms," Taneem said. "You're surprised by this?"

"Well, no, I suppose it makes sense," Alison had to admit. "Neverlin will certainly want to be on hand for the big attack. I guess I'm just surprised he'd risk his own ship instead of bunking in with Frost and the rest of his people on their warships."

"Perhaps he wishes to travel in comfort," Taneem suggested.

"There's that," Alison agreed dryly. "Malison Ring ships aren't known for the kind of luxury Neverlin's accustomed to."

"Malison Ring," Taneem said, her voice suddenly thoughtful.

"What about them?"

"I was just noticing the curious similarity between your names," the K'da said. "Alison, Malison. Odd that I never noticed that before."

"Pure coincidence," Alison assured her. "Malison is an old Earth word meaning a curse. I presume General Davi was thinking he would be a curse to his enemies when he set up the group twelve years ago."

"They began so recently?" Taneem asked. "I assumed they were older than that."

"Not this group, no," Alison said. "But they certainly aren't Davi's first experience with mercenaries. He worked for two other groups, and was one of the commanding officers of a third before he started his own."

The K'da cocked her head, an odd-looking gesture as she lay flattened against Alison's skin. "You seem to know a great deal about them."

"Not really," Alison said. This was starting to drift toward dangerous territory. "Everything I just told you is public record."

"Is General Davi's voiceprint also public record?"