Dragon and Liberator

Lacing his fingers together behind his head, he closed his eyes and settled down to think.

CHAPTER 16

Back in the monitor room Jack had noticed that the two remaining Death weapons were in the same rooms on the starboard side of the ship as the two he and Draycos had already hit on the port side. One of those rooms had the same direct access to the tween gap as the last room they'd been in.

They would have to do it quickly, of course, before the Brummgas and Valahgua had time to figure out how the whole tween gap thing worked and come up with a way to block it.

Accordingly, as soon as Draycos returned with their supplies Jack laid out his plan. Draycos approved, and they headed out.

They reached the back-door entrance without incident. Draycos did his looking-over-the-wall trick, pinpointing the positions of all eight Brummgas who had taken up guard positions around the weapon.

With the previous attack still fairly recent, Jack figured the aliens would still not be completely up to speed. He was right. Draycos popped the door and Jack instantly opened fire with his tangler, nailing all eight aliens before they could do more than draw their weapons.

Still, they were more alert than he'd hoped. Even as the last one hit the floor the door across the room slid open and the backup group charged in.

Or at least, they tried to charge in. Jack had another clip in his tangler in time to nail the first two as they started through the doorway. They went unconscious as the shock capacitor knocked them cold, and sagged still more or less upright as the milky white tangler threads glued them to the sides of the doorway.

The rest of the Brummgas behind them howled in rage and frustration. A couple of the nearest lifted their guns over the heads of their unconscious comrades and blindly opened fire into the room.

Jack responded by shooting at the flailing arms with more tangler cartridges. That silenced the guns and added a couple more bodies to his makeshift roadblock.

He had drained that clip and was grabbing for a third when Draycos leaped back through the opening beside him. "Go," the K'da said, stretching his forelegs up toward the overhead bar.

Jack grabbed the panel's handles and shoved. As the panel slid shut, he caught a single glimpse of the pile of rubble that was the remains of the Death weapon.

Draycos had the bracing bar ready by the time the panel was back in place. Even so, they nearly didn't make it. A fraction of a second after Jack slid the bar into place there was a terrific thud that seemed to shake the whole bulkhead.

The impact jarred the bar partially loose. Jack and Draycos got to it at the same time, and with two hands and two paws tugging at it they managed to get it back in place before the next blow came. "Head aft," Draycos murmured, touching Jack's hand and sliding up his sleeve. I want to take a different route back to the fire control room, Draycos added as his contact reestablished their telepathic link. There's another section of climbable mesh about twenty feet back.

Jack nodded and headed down the narrow space. That seemed to go well, he commented, wincing at the blows still slamming into the panel behind them. They do seem a mite perturbed, though.

As well they should, Draycos agreed. Three Death weapons down. Only one to go.

Jack grimaced. Actually, it's probably more like two to go, he said reluctantly. Now that they're on to us, they're going to take a hard look at the one I gimmicked.

Will they be able to fix it?

Theoretically, yes, Jack said. Unless they're complete idiots, they'll certainly spot the first booby trap I set. The only question is whether they'll be happy with that, or whether they'll delve deeper and find the other one, too. I'm sorry—I should have tried to do more.

You had limited time and opportunity, Draycos reminded him calmly. If you'd taken too long, either the Brummgas with us or the watchers in the monitor room might have become suspicious. That would have ended the subtle approach right there.