Dragonback 03 Dragon and Slave Read Online Free Page B

carefully
between the wires, he continued on.
    The doorknob was gimmicked, too. A fairly sloppy job, really; but
then, Gazen hadn't had that much time to play with.
    No sonics or laser-grids or field-effect alarms greeted him as he
eased the bedroom door open. Stepping out into the corridor, he closed
the door silently behind him and headed for the stairs.
    He ran into three more alarms along the way, including two motion
detectors and another set of tripwires. Now that he knew the score,
though, he spotted them easily and had them neutralized in a couple of
minutes.
    The safe was "hidden"—though Jack hesitated to even use that
term—behind a decorative wooden slab mounted on the wall. One end of
the slab held a Brummgan-style clock, with all twenty-six hours of
their day marked off, while the other sported a dozen military-style
ribbons.
    Gazen had missed a bet: the slab itself wasn't wired. Either the
slavemaster had run out of time to set his booby-traps, or else he
hadn't expected Jack to get this far.
    The safe was a standard keypad type, thought by many to be
impossible to break into. Not exactly a piece of cake, but hardly a
plate of stale cabbage, either. Pulling out his equipment, Jack set to
work, resisting the urge to see how much of Uncle Virge's promised half
hour he had left. He wasn't supposed to know about the deal, after all,
and if Gazen noticed him looking at his watch he might wonder why.
    Maybe that had been the real reason for putting all those extra
alarms in the gatekeeper's bedroom and hallway, in fact. Maybe Gazen
wasn't so much worried about testing Jack's abilities as he was in
trying to cheat Uncle Virge out of that extra ten thousand per minute.
    If that was his goal, the safe itself was going to be a
disappointment for him. It might look like a top-class system, but
under a spark-catcher stethoscope it turned out to be as electronically
noisy as any Jack had ever cracked. Less than five minutes after he
started, he set down his equipment, worked the handle, and swung the
safe door open.
    And as he did so, the darkened room suddenly blazed with light.

CHAPTER 4

    Jack spun around so fast that he almost lost his balance,
remembering to look startled and terrified. "Wha—?" he gasped, his
voice breaking off into an astonished squeak.
    That last part didn't take any acting at all. Suddenly, it seemed,
the whole room was filling up with Brummgas. Each of them wore a
close-fitting helmet and a sort of armored tunic done up in a bright
pattern of red, black, and white. Some of them were waving slapsticks
his direction; others had handguns out and pointed.
    There was only one thing to do when facing that many weapons. Jack
froze into a statue, making sure his hands were open and in full view
of everyone.
    The next few minutes were a swirling tangle of movement and noise
and confusion. The two Brummgas who got to Jack first grabbed him and
pulled him away from the safe. They ran their large hands over his
whole body like bread-making machines gone crazy, pulling off his
jacket and comm clip, emptying each pocket, even tearing off his belt
with the hidden money pockets on the inside.
    Then they passed him off to another pair behind them and began
gathering up his backpack and the rest of his equipment. His new
handlers searched him again, then handed him off to the next in line,
who passed him to the ones behind them. Jack wondered if he was going
to make it all the way around the room before someone figured out what
exactly to do with him.
    But then this last pair of Brummgas spun him around, and Jack
found himself face to face with a human male.
    He was a big man, muscular, with shoulders nearly as wide as those
of the Brummgas standing around him. His face was lined and unshaven,
his hair cut short in military fashion, and his clothes looked like
they'd been thrown on hastily in a very dark room. The effect was
almost comical.
    Until Jack looked into his eyes.
    They were cold eyes. Hard eyes. Eyes