He appeared behind the three soldiers still shooting into Jack's tree, boiling up without warning from a drift of dead leaves that had hidden him from both eyes and infrared detectors. Before they could even react, his forepaws took out two of them, slapping against the sides of their heads hard enough to send them cartwheeling in opposite directions.
The third was faster than the others. He swung around and dropped to one knee, trying to swing his gun around to this new threat. But Draycos was already in motion, leaping over the soldier's gun and past his shoulder. The dragon's tail whipped around the man's neck as he passed, gagging him as it slapped across his windpipe and yanked him backward off-balance. The action also brought Draycos's own momentum to a sudden halt, dropping him to the ground behind the man.
Draycos had just hit the matted leaves when the two remaining soldiers opened fire with their tanglers. The first shot, aimed where Draycos would have been if he'd continued his arcing leap, missed completely, zipping past to explode its netting over one of the distant bushes.
The second shot, instead of missing, clipped the corner of the kneeling soldier's arm. Some of the threads whipped around his face and chest, Draycos managing to snatch his tail out of the way just in time. The rest of the threads spread out harmlessly though the air over the K'da's head.
Not enough of the threads were wrapped around the soldier for the shock capacitor to knock him out. But it didn't matter. Draycos had already twisted around, slapping the side of the man's neck with one paw as he snatched the tangler from his hands with the other. As the stunned soldier toppled over, Draycos dived to the side, staying behind him so as to use his body as a shield against the two remaining gunners. Flipping the barrel of the tangler up over the other's ribs, Draycos fired.
But the two soldiers weren't there anymore. They had ducked to either side, taking cover behind nearby bushes as Draycos's shots went harmlessly past.
They were fiddling with their weapons, probably switching to machine-gun mode, when Jack maneuvered the barrel of his own weapon through the mass of tangler threads around him and nailed them both.
It took a while for Jack to work his way through the masses of tangler threads and get back down the tree. Long enough, in fact, for Draycos to go examine the two more distant soldiers and then return to the four he and Jack had first taken out. "That was fun," Jack puffed as he unslung his gun again and peered in the direction of the creek. "Where are the ones who were up in the trees?"
Draycos twisted his neck back toward the creek. "They don't appear to be approaching," he said. "I do not understand why not."
"Maybe we can find out," Jack suggested. Crouching down, he unfastened the nearest soldier's helmet and slipped it over his own head.
"—not move," a familiar voice growled. Familiar, yet unexpected.
It was Colonel Frost. The man they thought they'd heard leaving the planet.
"The others aren't responding," another voice protested.
"And you think getting yourselves waxed along with them will do them any good?" Frost shot back.
Jack cleared his throat. "Oh, come on, Frost, be a sport," he said into the helmet's microphone. "Let them try their luck. We don't mind. Besides, it's got to be pretty uncomfortable sitting up there in those trees."
There was a brief silence. "Very good, Morgan," Frost said, his voice three shades darker than the night around them. "You and the K'da both. I don't suppose you sustained any injuries?"
"Nothing worth mentioning," Jack assured him. "A few more of your men are a little worse for wear, though. I thought you'd left us."
"I'm not going anywhere," Frost promised coldly. "This K'da of yours is tougher than I expected. Certainly tougher than I was told. I'm beginning to understand why the Valahgua want them wiped out."
"You're probably also beginning to understand why they're sitting behind the lines and letting you and Neverlin and the Chookoock family do all the work and take all the risks," Jack said. "Not to mention absorbing all the damage. You've got to be asking yourself right now whether or not it's really worth it."
Frost gave a soft chuckle. "Believe me, boy, it's worth it," he said. "New technology is the golden ring these days, especially when you have a company like Braxton Universis standing ready to market it."
"Only you haven't got Braxton Universis," Jack reminded him.
"We will," Frost said confidently. "And from what I saw on those Shontine advance ships, we all stand to make a very tidy profit on this operation."
"Your soldiers here on the ground might have a different opinion."
"Soldiers are expendable," Frost said bluntly. "That's their job. Besides, most of them will recover just fine. Your K'da doesn't seem to have the stomach for killing."
Jack looked at Draycos. The dragon's tail was swishing almost gently through the air, but there was a look in his eyes that sent a shiver down Jack's back. "I wouldn't count on that if I were you," he warned Frost.
"Maybe," the colonel said offhandedly. "All I know is that people who hide in the middle of civilians and herd animals are cowards."
Jack grinned tightly. So Frost had completely missed the point of why they'd brought the Erassvas and Phookas along. "Look who's talking," he countered. "You want to come out here personally so we can have this out man-to-man?"
"Don't be absurd," Frost scoffed. "Duels went out with flintlock pistols, and they were never anything but stupid to begin with. But let's talk about you. Aren't you tired yet of running and living off ration bars?"
"Oh no, I love forests," Jack assured him. "More than that, I love taking out mercenaries. You must be running pretty low on them by now. Is that where your ship went? To scare up a few replacements?"
"You'll see," Frost promised. "But I'll grant you that this is taking far more of my time and energy than I'd planned. So what exactly do you want? Maybe we can come to some agreement."
"What I want is to be left alone," Jack said. "But for now, I'll settle for you clearing your tree-sitters out of our way. They can come collect this bunch, and you can fly them back to your base camp to get patched up."
"As I said, no stomach for killing," Frost said contemptuously.
"As I said, don't count on Draycos's kind heart," Jack said, putting some darkness of his own into his voice. "We're getting tired of playing tag out here, and we now have a couple of nicely lethal weapons of our own. So get your men out of our way, and keep them out."
"Or you'll commit cold-blooded murder?"
"I'll commit cold-blooded self-defense," Jack countered. "And don't forget, Neverlin wants me alive."
"For now," Frost said icily. "But that may change. Either way, I certainly don't need to keep those Erassvas or their herd animals alive. Or that girl you have with you, either. Who is she, by the way?"
"Just a hitchhiker," Jack said. "Speaking of hitchhikers, how did you get that tracking transmitter into my ship?"
"What makes you think there was a transmitter aboard?" Frost countered blandly.
"I gather it worked off the ECHO drive," Jack continued. "What did it do, use the drop-power to boost out some kind of signal as soon as we popped back into normal space?"
"Actually, the gadget sends a sort of ripple across hyperspace itself," Frost said. "A nearby ship with the right equipment can pick it up and follow you straight in."
"Cute," Jack said. "Cutting-edge technology, no doubt."
"Not even on the market yet," Frost said smugly. "And when it is, it'll go exclusively to StarForce and the Internos Police. Had I mentioned the advantages of having Braxton Universis in your pocket?"
"Maybe once or twice," Jack said. "So are you going to send someone to pick up your trash? Or are Draycos and I going to have to start clearing the table ourselves?"