"Did you see our attackers?" The voice, Jack noted uneasily, moved with him, still tingling his shoulder.

"Well..." Jack hesitated, wondering how much to say. "We saw the battle," he said. "It looked like the guys in the little ships went aboard the big ones afterward. Are there more of your people up there?"

There was a soft sigh, even more snakelike than the voice. "They were my people," Draycos said. "They are all dead now."

"We don't know that," Jack said, feeling an obscure urge to be comforting. "Those Djinn-90s can't have had that many soldiers to put aboard."

"There is no one left to fight them," the dragon said sadly. "The K'da and Shontine were already dead."

"All of them?" Uncle Virge's voice asked, sounding surprised.

"All of them," Draycos said. "The weapon that was used against us kills all that it touches. It does not leave survivors."

Jack thought back to the purple tornadoes he'd seen playing against the freighters' sides. A weapon that killed right through hull plates? "What about you?" he asked. "You survived."

"An unintended mercy," Draycos said. "We were already falling, and they thought merely to save themselves further effort."

Jack took a deep breath. It was pretty obvious by now what was going on. He still hoped he was wrong; but right or wrong, it was time to take the plunge and find out for sure. "You're on my back, aren't you?" he asked. "Wrapped around me like a—well, like a thin sheet of plastic."

"Yes," Draycos said.

"You're what?" Uncle Virge demanded. "You're where?"

"It's like he's a picture painted there," Jack said. "Or a full-body tattoo, like you see sometimes on Zhandig music stars."

"What do you mean, like a tattoo?" Uncle Virge said, sounding every bit as bewildered as Jack felt. "How can something alive be like a tattoo?"