"No," Draycos agreed, his tongue darting out again. "It smells like something dead."

Jack hissed softly between his teeth as the smell suddenly clicked. "You're right," he said. "It's dead meat. Freshly dead meat, in fact."

And where there was freshly dead meat... "Let's get out of here," he muttered, throwing a quick look around as he broke into a jog.

"Is there danger?" Draycos asked, his head rising up farther out of Jack's shoulder.

"Stay down, will you?" Jack growled as he drew his tangler. The extra weight whenever Draycos went three-dimensional always threw him off balance. "Yeah, there's danger. Dead meat means scavengers. Fresh dead meat means scavengers who don't mind killing." He reached the edge of a stack of crates and carefully looked around it.

There they were: at least a dozen cat-sized animals with dirty black-and-white speckled fur, ratlike faces, and wicked-looking teeth and claws. Most of them were gathered around an unidentifiable carcass, still chewing away. Others squatted a little ways off, busily grooming themselves after their meal.

The carcass, he noticed with a sick feeling in his stomach, was wearing the remains of a maintenance coverall.

"Heenas," he whispered to Draycos. He backed carefully away from the corner, feeling sweat gathering on his forehead.

There was a sudden weight on his shoulder. He glanced around to find Draycos's head rising up from his back, twisted to look behind them. "Draycos—"

"Behind you!" the dragon snapped.

Jack spun around, the tangler swinging around with him.

Ten feet away, moving silently toward him like miniature lions stalking their prey, were eight more heenas. Their yellow eyes looked impossibly bright in the dim light. Their fur stuck straight out from their bodies, making them look even bigger than they already were. The three in front were already crouching, ready to spring.

Lowering his aim, Jack fired.

The tangler cartridge caught two of the front three heenas in its milky-white threads. The third was too fast, managing to jump sideways out of range. The two trapped animals squealed as the tangler's shock capacitor sparked, putting them out of the fight.

The other heenas, without any sound or reaction, continued toward him.

Jack backed up to the stack of crates, his heart pounding in his ears as he did the math. There were six heenas in front of him, plus the dozen he'd already spotted just around the corner. That made eighteen, plus any more that might be skulking around somewhere else.

Problem was, there were only seven cartridges left in his tangler. He had a spare clip, but he doubted he'd get a chance to use it. The dead maintenance worker was grisly evidence of how fast a pack of heenas could move when they wanted to.

"Do not fire," Draycos said from his shoulder. Jack had just enough time to frown—

And then, with the usual surge of weight, the dragon sprang off his chest and shoulder, shoving aside shirt and jacket as he emerged.

Only this wasn't the nice shiny golden dragon Jack had rescued from the wrecked K'da ship.

This dragon was pure black.

Jack gasped with surprise. Draycos landed on the graytop directly in front of the heenas, his head and forelegs low, his tail arched over his head like a scorpion's. For maybe half a second they all just stood there, the six vicious pack animals and the single K'da warrior facing them. The heenas bared their teeth; Draycos gave a low, warning growl.

As if that was the signal they had been waiting for, the heenas attacked.

The one in the lead leaped directly toward Draycos's snout, its claws extended toward his face. The other five charged toward the dragon's sides, two toward his left and three toward his right, veering wide to keep out of reach of his forelegs. Jack had been right; the heenas were fast.

But Draycos was faster.

The heena going for the dragon's face went first, spinning away with a single startled squeak as Draycos batted it aside in midair with his paw. Even before it disappeared around the side of a stack of crates, the dragon had jumped sideways over the two heenas coming in toward his left, escaping from the center of their encircling maneuver.

They spun around and shifted direction. This time, all five charged him together.

Slashing with his forelegs, moving almost too fast for Jack to see, he batted them away one by one into the gloom.

Jack stood with his back against the stack of crates, his tangler hanging almost forgotten in his hand as he watched Draycos send them flying. His mind flashed back to the leaps the dragon had made aboard the Havenseeker; clearly, K'da had tremendous muscular strength.

Draycos was down to his last enemy when the ones that had been feeding around the corner came charging at him, probably alerted by the noise. Two broke off from the pack and veered toward Jack, who snapped out of his paralysis in time to get them with another tangler shot. The rest headed straight for Draycos.

Six-to-one odds had been no contest. It was now quickly apparent that even at twelve to one the heenas didn't have a chance. Draycos waded into the pack, slashing and biting, his tail whipping about with blinding speed and deadly accuracy. Twice it looked to Jack as if they were surely going to overwhelm him, but both times he leaped out of their midst just in time. Landing outside their circle, he continued his slashing attack at the ones on the edge, throwing the whole pack into confusion.

And then, without warning, he leaped straight back toward the stack of crates behind Jack. Automatically, Jack ducked; and as he glanced up, he saw a heena dropping toward him from the top of the stack. Before he could even start to bring up his tangler, Draycos intercepted the attacker, batting it away with his tail.

The dragon's momentum carried him back into the crates, but like a cat he twisted around and got his feet up in time. For a second he hung there on the boxes the way he had from the tree outside his wrecked ship, his brilliant green eyes looking brighter than ever against the black scales. Then, shoving himself off the crates, he landed again on the graytop between Jack and the heenas. Crouching down with his tail raised, he gave another growl.

That was enough for the heenas. Still without a sound, they turned and scattered, scurrying around the stacked crates and vanishing into the dark.

Jack hadn't realized he was holding his breath. Now, he let it out in a huff. "Wow," was all he could think to say.

Draycos's neck twisted around, his eyes searching the shadows for more enemies. Then, slowly, he straightened up and turned back to Jack. "Are you injured?" he asked.

"No," Jack said, gazing at the dragon in fascination. At close range, he could see now that the scales weren't entirely black: the little sliver of red at the edge of each one was still there. "No. I'm fine. Thanks to you."

Draycos cocked his head to the side. "Yet you seem disturbed."

"Just a little sandbagged, that's all," Jack assured him. Was the gold color starting to creep back into the dragon's scales? "You've been calling yourself a warrior; but up to now all I've seen you do is zap people with their own weapons and fire missiles from the Essenay's control board. I didn't know you could fight like that."

"A warrior must be adept in all forms of combat," Draycos said.

"I guess so," Jack said. No mistake; Draycos's scales were definitely turning gold again. "That color change is pretty cool, too."

"It is a side effect of K'da combat rage," Draycos told him, lifting up a foreleg to study it. "Our blood is black. As it flows more strongly to our muscles, some of it displaces the color in our scales. Do humans not have a similar danger response?"

"Not really," Jack said. "Well, maybe a little," he corrected himself. "Our faces get hot when we're mad or scared. On some people it shows a little."