Read Dragonback 06 Dragon and Liberator for Free Online Page B

"Provided
he gets out of jail before they fly."
    "If he doesn't, Taneem and I will just have to deal with them,"
Alison said. "I've got to go. Don't try to call me here."
    "Thanks, I had figured that part out," Uncle Virge said
sardonically. "Take care of yourself, lass. You and Taneem."
    "I will. Good luck."
    She keyed off the microphone. "Do you truly believe you and I can
handle all this by ourselves?" Taneem asked.
    "What, you mean that thing at the end?" Alison asked. "No, of
course not. That was just for Jack's benefit. Sometimes the best way to
get someone on the job is to hint that he can't do it."
    "That seems rather . . . I don't know the word."
    Alison sighed. "The word is cynical ," she said. "Or maybe manipulative ."
    "You can change," Taneem reminded her quietly. "All people
have that capability."
    "I know." Reaching down, Alison scratched Taneem briefly behind
her ears. "But to tell you the truth, I kind of like myself just the
way I am. Go back out to the main office and listen at the door, will
you, while I close down here?"
    Taneem nodded and trotted back out of the nook. Alison leaned over
to close the door between them, then quickly reset the transmitter's
frequency.
    The man waiting at the other end of the connection picked up
instantly. With the word manipulative running through her mind,
Alison launched into the report she hadn't wanted Taneem to hear.
    Fortunately, this one was much shorter than the conversation with
Uncle Virge had been. Within a minute she was finished and had signed
off. Resetting the controls to their original positions, she rejoined
Taneem in the main office.
    The K'da was by the door, her ear leaned against it. "Any change?"
Alison called softy as she sat down at Neverlin's desk.
    Taneem shook her head as she moved away from the door. "Both
guards are still there," she said, coming to Alison's side. "You have a
plan?"
    "I do," Alison said as she keyed on the desk computer terminal.
The system was code-locked, of course, but Alison had her own version
of Jack's sewer-rat technique for getting into uncooperative computers.
"The trick with military organizations like this is to know how things
get done," she continued. "The key is that every order goes through at
least two levels of command before it gets where it's supposed to go."
    "Even in a group this small?"
    "Even here," Alison assured her. The mole program did its work,
and the menu came up. Scrolling down the assignment roster, she found
that the two guards currently standing outside the office door were a
human named Rennie and a Brummga named Grisfel.
    "What I'm doing now is issuing a new set of orders to the night
duty officer," she explained as she typed. "I'm telling him to send our
guards out there to the main conference room for a brief consultation
with Colonel Frost."
    Taneem was silent a moment. "But surely they'll quickly discover
the orders are false."
    "Of course they will," Alison said. "But they won't be able to
trace which of the ship's computers sent the message." She smiled
grimly as she added a second order to the list. "And you might be
surprised how easily suspicious minds like Neverlin's and Frost's can
be nudged in the wrong direction."
    She logged both orders and shut down the computer. "Come on
aboard," she said, holding out her hand. "One last job and we'll be
ready to go."
    Selecting the largest and longest-range needle transmitter from
her sewing kit, she slid it into the carpet beside one of the desk
legs, out of the normal traffic pattern, the way her father had taught
her. The carpet wasn't thick enough to hide the needle completely, but
no one was likely to see it unless he was specifically looking for it.
    Then, making sure she hadn't left behind any other trace of her
presence, she stepped to the door and set her burglar's pickup
microphone against the panel.
    Frost's mercenaries were nothing if not efficient. Barely two
minutes later she heard a faint comm clip voice from outside the
office.