Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

Chapter Twenty-One

Ivan had never thought of his nightmares as being insufficiently imaginative, before tonight. Dark, wet, constricted, underground, check. How had he left out biohazards? After all that, the frigging unexploded bomb just seemed a…a redundant redundancy. And the stray corpse a mere decoration. How did I get into this mess? Miles isn’t even here.

Though the labyrinthine results of the Mycoborer were impressive as well as alarming, he had to admit. The discovery of the supposedly-empty Cetagandan bunker had been interesting, though Ivan wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t found its transmutation to a ghem-generals’ lost treasure vault riveting, as irresistible to him as to any Arqua. But the belated news of its original provenance as a Cetagandan haut bio-lab, which Tej hadn’t let drop till they were almost here—had to make it the most entirely resistible temptation he had ever encountered.

And that idiot Amiri was going inside. Ivan hadn’t had cause to dislike his new brother-in-law before now, but this was just wrong. Amiri turned to politely help his haut grandmama over the threshold of the oval they’d cut into the wall, incidentally compromising any biohazard containment integrity the old lab had still held, but hey, who cared about that? Not the intent Arquas, it seemed. The tall woman bent her head and twitched her long coat through the aperture, as dignified as an aged queen returning to her country after some long exile. Other Arquas filed through eagerly after her. Tej glanced back over her shoulder as she followed, bright-eyed with triumph.

Ivan was not going to be able to get through the rest of this night without inhaling, alas. And Tej had just slipped out of his view, even though he edged closer and craned his neck. He drew a long breath through his filter mask, squeezed himself down, and ducked in after them all.

Arquas were spreading out through the chamber, their bright green-white cold lights held aloft. The place wasn’t huge, about eight by ten meters, though Ivan spotted a stairway going down to another level. But it was crowded with crates and boxes and covered bins: on the floor, under and upon benches and desks and chairs, some in neat, tight stacks—those against the walls reaching the ceiling—others seemingly flung atop the rest in a scattered hurry. A faint plume of dust had settled over the array, fanning from a rubble-filled aperture on the far end, but on the whole the place looked as pristine as the day it had been sealed off. Ivan wondered if he was now breathing hundred-year-old air, a few molecules of which might have passed through the lungs of Prince Xav, or not-yet-mad Prince Yuri, or other famous Barrayaran ancestors.

Lady ghem Estif was staring around with satisfaction; she stepped up on a crate and pulled down her filter mask. Most of the others followed her example. Ivan left his in place as, he noticed nervously, did the biologist Amiri. “We should be able to speak to each other in normal tones, inside here,” she announced to the Arquas at large. “No loud thumps or shouting or screaming, of course.”

No screaming, eh. Good she’d reminded Ivan of that. It was dawning on him that he’d just lost the biggest wager of his recent life; the ramifications were spinning out beyond his boggled imagination. But at least he wasn’t running around the room mad with greed like the Jacksonians…

“This one’s heavy.” Emerald lifted a plastic box atop a pile, and shook it a little. Something slid inside. “Think it could be the gold?”

Tej, Rish, and Pidge crowded around; drawn, Ivan looked over their shoulders as Em pried open the top. Inside was another large, rectangular box, of fine polished wood. The gold clasp yielded to her green fingers; the velvet-lined lid swung up.

“Oh,” said Rish in disappointment. “It’s just a bunch of old knives.”

Tej held one up. “Kind of elegant, though…”

Ivan, getting a good look into the tray of cutlery at last, reached out and plucked it from her hand with trembling fingers. “This is a Time-of-Isolation seal dagger. Count’s sigil on the hilt…dear God, they all are.” The first tray of twenty knives lifted out to reveal another, and a third. Ivan’s eye decoded the arms, Vorinnis, Vortala, Vorfolse, Vorloupulos…holy crap, Vorkosigan as well, and yes, there was a Vorpatril…it was like a roll-call of the old Council of Counts. “It’s a complete set. A complete set of seal-daggers from all sixty Counts-palatine in existence a hundred years back.” Some brilliant connoisseur ghem-officer’s collection…

“Do they have any value?” Tej inquired ingenuously. “They don’t look all that fancy.”

“Ordinary Vor seal daggers from the Time of Isolation can go for ten thousand marks up. Way up, if it’s from anyone famous. Ten times that, from a count or prince. My cousin Miles has one that’s literally priceless.” Which he used as a letter opener, Ivan recalled. “A complete set…with provenance…” Ivan tried to do the multiplication in his spinning head. “Six to ten million?”

“Barrayaran marks or Betan dollars?” Shiv inquired, coming over.

“Either,” said Ivan, shaken. Very belatedly, he realized he should have said, Oh, it’s just a bunch of dusty, rusty old knives. If you don’t want them, I’ll take them off your hands…

And that was only the first crate. This place held hundreds of them.

He suddenly wanted to run around the room madly breaking open bins. And screaming.

Jet pried open the top of another crate and peered within. “What’s this?” he asked the air, looking nonplussed. Ivan craned his neck; it looked like a pile of old electronics, and some slate slats.

Lady ghem Estif, crossing from one side of the room to the other by threading her way through the piles, stopped to look over his shoulder. Her frown echoed his. After a long pause, she pronounced, “Artwork.” And after another, “Or perhaps a weapon. Not sure. Just set it aside, for now.”

Ceremonial objects, wasn’t that the catch-all term? Ivan thought wildly. He turned to find himself looking through the faded plastic side of another bin; it seemed to be packed tightly with flimsies. Or maybe papers, back then. He lifted it down from its pile of brethren, popped the top, and was retroactively relieved not to have the contents turn to dust—someone ought to be being careful with all this stuff—but, remembering he was already wearing gloves, tried to thumb through the top layer. Real, old-fashioned paper, yes. Some of the pages stuck together. His eye picked out the salutation on a hand-written letter, faded brown ink, Dear Yuri, but of course no saying it was that Yuri…gingerly, he wriggled it out. His wildly skipping glance caught only some talk about requisitions, and the closing salutation, Your brother in a better grade of arms, Xav.

…Duv Galeni would have a stroke.

“What’s that?” asked Shiv, at his elbow. Ivan flinched. His brain finally catching up with his mouth, he said airily, “Not much. Just some old papers and letters.” Hastily, he turned the page face down and closed the lid of the bin, tapping it sealed again, firmly. And, just for luck, returned it to the top of its stack. “Probably not worth hauling out. Go for the gold, eh?”

“Oh, that as well,” said Shiv.

On the other side of the chamber Pearl had found another stack of small, heavy cases, locked and with some Ninth Satrapy seal incised on the tops. Star brought over a flat metal bar looted from a lab bench drawer; together, they pried the top case open. Pearl held up a cylindrical roll that gleamed through its plastic wrapper. “Ah, here are the gold coins. You were right, Grandmama.”

Lady ghem Estif was now moving around to all the cupboards and old, dead refrigeration units in the lab, examining their insides intently; she waved blasé acknowledgement of this. “That’s nice, dear.”

Tej and Rish bopped over to see; Ivan replaced the dagger in its velvet slot, controlled an urge to slip the Vorpatril blade into his pocket, reverently closed and latched the lid, and followed.

Pearl broke open the wrapper and let the coins spill out in a bright clinking stream, handing them around for closer examination.

“Those Ninth Satrapy coins are worth way more than their face value on the collector’s market,” Ivan observed. “Most of them were melted down after the Occupation, and the currency was burned. Although…” He noted the stacks of cases, and gave up on the multiplication, “You might not want to let all those out at once, or you’ll crash the prices.”

Shiv’s paw descended on his shoulder in an approving grip. “Good thinking, Ivan Xav. We’ll make a Jacksonian of you yet.” Though he, too, rolled a few of the coins around curiously in his hand. His sample went back into his pocket when he was done.

Shiv stepped up on a couple of crates and looked over the room with a calculating eye. “I know you’re all excited to be opening presents, children, and so am I,” he called out over the stacks. “But work before pleasure.”

That seemed an un-Jacksonian sentiment, but it was perhaps how Shiv had become a top-dog Jacksonian, Ivan reflected.

Shiv went on, “We’ll need to save the complete inventory for later, in some more secure space. Time is as much of the essence as treasure tonight. Location, location, location, they say; and this is not one to linger in.”

A faint, disappointed-but-not-disagreeing moan from his progeny scattered about the room acknowledged this pronouncement.

Shiv’s eye fell on his eldest daughter. “Star, you’re supposed to be guarding the entrance.”

“I locked the door, Dada. And I wanted to see.”

“Yes, yes”—he waved an understanding hand—“but now you have. Back to your post. You, Jet, Em—no, Rish, you go with him, you can keep him on task—go clean up that mess in the tunnel. Each of you carry something with you as you go—we don’t have time for wasted trips tonight. Off with you!”

They each grabbed a coin case—even Jet gave a little grunt, lifting it to his shoulder—and, stepping over the high threshold, filed out the oval hole in the wall.

“Some of it is bound to be trash,” murmured Udine, giving her husband a steadying hand as he stepped down off his makeshift podium. “Those would be wasted trips as well.”

“Mm, true. Well, if the next room down is like this one, we’re going to need more than one van. And more than one night. We can take the obvious items tonight, and leave some of us in here tomorrow during the day to triage the rest.”

She nodded.

Shiv herded more of his children into shifting the coin cases from their stack through the hole in the wall to a staging area in the Mycoborer vestibule. Lady ghem Estif, meanwhile, straightened up from a cupboard on the far side of the room with an “Ah!” of surprised satisfaction. Both Ivan’s and Udine’s heads swiveled around.

“What did you find, Mother?” Udine inquired, zigzagging over to her. Ivan and Tej followed.

Lady ghem Estif held up what might have been a really, really elegant combat utility belt. “My old biotainer girdle. I wonder if it still works?” And, in a bemusing womanly addendum, “I wonder if it still fits?” She slipped out of her coat and cinched it about her waist, and a sincerely delighted smile illuminated her face as she found that yes, it did still fit. One hand went up to fluff her short hair, and the smile twisted.

Her long fingers danced over what was evidently a control panel on the left side. Ivan jumped back as a flickering force-field abruptly sprang out around her, shoving over a stack of boxes, which slid and fell with a few dull thumps; she touched another control, and its spherical shape became a more form-fitting tall oval. She looked as if she were standing inside a narrow, translucent egg.

“Hey, what about no electronic signatures?” Ivan cried in panic. Wait, no, wrong. He wanted them to be surprised by ImpSec, didn’t he? In some way that he had nothing whatsoever to do with, in order to keep his word to Tej. This could be perfect.

Lady ghem Estif glanced upward. “Oh, no one will pick up anything through these walls.”

Crap, thought Ivan. Nonetheless, she turned the sputtering field back off.

Ivan narrowed his eyes in belated recognition. “Wait. I saw something like that before, back on Eta Ceta. When Miles and I had to go as the Barrayaran diplomatic representatives to the late Cetagandan empress’s funeral, twelve, thirteen years ago. The haut-lady bubbles. All the haut women traveled around in these float chairs, with personal shields a lot like that one.”

Lady ghem Estif looked at him in surprise. “Indeed. The biotainer girdles were made a symbol of haut status. Personally, I disapproved of fitting them onto the float chairs—robbing them of their original purpose in pursuit of display. Really, I do sometimes wonder if my old caste is becoming effete. I begin to believe I was well out of it. Young people these days, no sense of the right robust relation of form and function. And they call themselves artists!”

“So,” said Ivan, taken aback to have the formerly-settled insides of his head so abruptly rearranged, “the haut-lady bubbles actually started as biotainers? But they don’t work as suits anymore?”

“Oh, of course they still do that,” murmured Lady ghem Estif, and headed purposefully for the stairs.

Undine shrugged and picked up the nearest case, turning toward the hole in the wall. “Tej, Ivan Xav”—a warmer drop in her voice at his name acknowledged his volunteer status—“time to start hauling. Quickly, now.”

Tej dutifully picked up the next crate down, and Ivan, more dubiously, followed suit—its weight tried to pull his arms out of their sockets. What the hell should he be doing down here? It had been all too easy to get sucked into the general excitement and forget that, no, his aims were not those of the rest of the people in this place. Maybe some opportunity would come as he helped lug all this stuff through that damned twisty tunnel—dark and confined, true, but he’d hardly be alone. They’d be just like a line of ants, or termites, or one of those other Earth social insects in their little burrows. But once he’d carried his first load to the access well, he might lay hands on his wristcom again, and then—his eye fell on Tej—then he would have a real dilemma.

Amiri, pausing at the new doorway, called over his shoulder to his sire, “Do you think it will be more efficient to each carry these all the way, or pass them along?”

“Pass along,” Shiv replied without hesitation, also now lugging a case. “Space yourselves evenly as to time, though, not distance. Those switchbacks are going to make slow spots.”

Amiri nodded and stepped through.

Hell, thought Ivan. But he might still work his way back to the access well, just not as directly. Ivan was now almost as reluctant to leave this treasure vault, so barely explored, as he had been to enter it. If he could just—

Amiri stepped backward through the ragged oval aperture, his empty hands reaching out above his head. What was he doing, stretching? No one had yet had time to become that fatigued—

A total stranger with a stunner in his hand, trained on Amiri’s midsection, stepped through after.

Ivan’s heart jumped in his chest; he stumbled to a halt.

Then Pearl, who’d also stepped out to the vestibule, came through likewise walking backward. And then another stunner-armed man, much older, and a third.

Not ImpSec in plainclothes—Ivan wasn’t sure what subliminal signs his backbrain was processing, besides the general absence of Byerly Vorrutyer, though God knew he’d looked up close at enough ImpSec men in his life—but he was sadly sure of it. Ordinary garage security guards? No, they wore uniforms. Very gently, Ivan set down the case he was carrying on the nearest stack, to free his hands, and eased in front of Tej, who had stopped short in shock.

“Do you know what this is?” Ivan murmured to her, almost voicelessly.

“Ser Imola. Dada just hired him to be our carrier. But…”

But the stunners, right. Not a whole lot of doubt about which way they were aimed, either. With only the briefest hiccup, Ivan translated the Jacksonian carrier to the more forthright Barrayaran smuggler. It was a measure of the night’s distractions that Ivan hadn’t even begun to wonder how Shiv had planned to shift all this treasure off-world. The question would have occurred to him eventually, he supposed.

“Oh, hell,” said Shiv Arqua in a tone of boundless disgust, slowly setting down his own case. The stunner in the older man’s hand swiveled to point at him. “Imola, you damned fool.”

“I think not, Shiv,” the older man said affably.

Shiv rolled his eyes. “First of all, your timing is terrible. The least application of thought might have told you that the time to go for us would be tomorrow night, after we’d emptied the vault for you. And you could have caught us and the cargo both. I’ve wondered about you Komarrans ever since the Conquest, really I have.”

“Got the drop on you all, didn’t we? Tomorrow night, you’d have been more on your guard.” Imola glanced around the chamber. “Although I begin to think you were holding out on me after all. Maybe, after we send you on your way, we’ll come back and clear this place out by ourselves.”

“Oh,” breathed Shiv, his anguished glance darting over their assailants’ power weapons and wristcoms, “you won’t be by yourselves. I guarantee it.”

“What a sinful waste of an opportunity,” mourned Udine, sliding up behind her husband. “I could just cry.” Or spit, it looked like. Venom.

“Hello there, Udine,” said Imola, with a nod of greeting and a slight, prudent shift of his aim. “You’ve held up well, I must say. Shiv said you were along. He probably shouldn’t have mentioned you. It was just cruel, to tempt a man like that. Do you have any idea what House Prestene is now offering for Arquas, delivered to their doorstep? Individually or in bulk?”

“Less than your fifteen percent would have been,” said Shiv growled. “Now you’ll get nothing. And so will we.”

“Oh, no,” whispered Tej in Ivan’s ear. “I bet he wants to cryofreeze us. That’s how he smuggles people, to keep them from fighting back. Horrid!”

Ivan could see that temptation; Arquas all over the chamber were shifting about, trying to look unthreatening and not succeeding.

Pearl said uncertainly, “Should we make them stun us, to slow them down?”

“By all means,” said Imola, grinning. “Then we won’t have to listen to you complain. Your transport awaits—my ground-van will hold you all with room to spare. So convenient of you to arrange it for us.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Lady ghem Estif, in a loud but quavery voice. “All of you, just hold still. Someone might be hurt.” She emerged from the stairwell and made her way in a newly tottery manner toward the doorway. Her hand, held out, trembled like that of a frail old woman on the verge of collapse.

“Who’s that?” muttered one of the big goons backing Imola—a few cuts below even budget ninjas, in Ivan’s quick appraisal, but dangerous nonetheless when they were armed with distance weapons and you weren’t. One of them, he saw with indignation, held Ivan’s own good military stunner, no doubt lifted off the bench in the entry vestibule in passing. The grip of the cheap civilian model he’d traded up for peeked from a pocket.

“My grandmother,” said Amiri, suddenly watching hard. “She’s a hundred and thirty years old. You don’t need to hurt her or kidnap her—I bet Prestene doesn’t even have her on their list. She’s of no value to you! You leave her alone!”

“They don’t,” Imola began, then his eyes narrowed suddenly. “Wait, is that Udine’s haut-woman mother—”

His caution fell a moment too late. Ivan poised on the balls of his feet as Lady ghem Estif meandered up to the men and her shaky hand wandered to her belt. With a deep, spluttering snarl, her force-field sprang out at full power and spherical diameter, knocking one man off his feet and pinning the shrieking Imola up against the wall by the door.

Ivan had his target all picked out, the big bastard who’d stolen his stunner. The man tightened his finger on the trigger and fanned the room; nothing happened, except for Ivan hitting him with all the force of his full weight in launch mode and knocking him back through the doorway. The fellow was strong and nasty and…kind of slow, compared to Ivan’s usual sparring partners. Some knuckles to his windpipe, a few nerve jabs; Goon Two willingly gave up the useless stunner to Ivan’s wresting fingers in order to gather himself for a lunge that would put his outweighed opponent on the bottom of the pile, and was thoroughly, if briefly, surprised when the stun beam hit his head at point-blank range instead.

Ivan pushed himself up, breathing, well, not too hard—it was more the adrenaline than the exertion—to find Tej looking down at him with vast approval. The metal bar gripped in her hand was redundant to need, but might have proven a very well-chosen accessory to a Vor lady’s evening garb. He grinned back in sudden exhilaration. His filter mask had been torn off in the struggle; he didn’t bother to try to reaffix it.

“And you said you were just a desk pilot,” murmured Tej.

“But it’s a Barrayaran desk,” he murmured back, and scrambled to his feet. Together, they looked over Ivan’s victim, lying on his back with his legs bent over the jagged doorway. They each took an ankle and dragged him through into the chamber, and out of the path; Tej did not concern herself unduly with his head thumping over the lintel, Ivan was proud to note.

“That was either really brave or really stupid,” said Tej, her admiration tinged by faint doubt, “jumping him unarmed like that.”

Ivan was tempted to claim the first, but was afraid of being tarred with the second. Sheepishly, he admitted the truth instead: “Neither. I could see he had filched my stunner. It’s one of the new issue, with the personally-coded grips. Only the upper ranks have theirs so far. They’re still arguing over whether to give them to the grunts or not.”

“Oh, good,” said Udine in passing. “You mother told me she didn’t think you could be an idiot.”

Imola and his other partner had been overpowered and disarmed. Imola was still whimpering from his contact with the force-field. It must have been just like running up against a really big shock-stick. Driven by a really angry haut woman. Her teeth bared and tight, Lady ghem Estif turned off her antique biotainer field again; with a last blurt of protest, it powered down.

Pidge, now in possession of one of the other stunners, bent to give the struggling Goon One, whom Emerald and Amiri together were barely holding down, a buzz to the back of his neck; he jerked and lay still. Em and Amiri then combined to haul up the shaking older man that Tej had named Imola and push him to the wall.

“I’d be delighted to test the Mycoborer on him,” said Lady ghem Estif in a precisely measured voice, “but I suspect the results would be too slow. Perhaps I can find something faster downstairs.”

“No need,” said Shiv, padding closer to this old friend-enemy. “We’ll do something lower tech.”

Imola watched Shiv approach him with fearful fascination; he realized his new mistake when the taller Udine whirled, grabbed him by the neck, lifted him off his feet, and pressed him to the wall with all her half-haut strength.

“Where are my children, you worthless sack of greed?”

“Glp!” he replied, eyes bulging.

Shiv’s voice in his other ear dropped to a tiger’s purr. “Star, Jet, Rish. You have to have passed them, coming in. What did you do with them?”

Ah, a quick round of good-Cordonah-bad-Cordonah, Ivan recognized. Or bad-Cordonah-worse-Cordonah. He suspected the roles were interchangeable between the two at need. He wouldn’t have interfered for worlds.

“How many more men do you have out there?” Shiv continued.

Udine permitted Imola a breath of air. Prudently, he used the exhalation to gasp, “Only saw one! Tall girl!”

She waited a little, and permitted him another.

“Really! M’boys took her down—put her in the van!”

Another long pause.

“Four, waiting on stragglers! Crossfire, no escape!”

Udine, after another pause that Imola no doubt found quite lengthy, let him drop. He crumpled to the floor, frantically rubbing his neck.

“If that’s so,” said Em in doubt, watching all this, “where are Jet and Rish?”

Tej’s hand had found Ivan’s, during this show; it tightened in alarm.

“And how do we get out, if they’re laying for us at the only exit?” asked Amiri a bit plaintively.

“Oh,” said Shiv sadly, “I imagine all we have to do is sit down and wait a bit. Ivan Xav’s stepda will be along. To collect on his bet.” He added after a tight-jawed moment, “Dammit. We were so close.”

“Who the hell is Ivan Xav?” said Imola, clearly bewildered by these additions to the play-list. “Or his stepda?”

Ivan hunkered down in front of the man. “I am,” he told Imola, with false geniality. “My stepda used to run that big building”—not being quite sure how the lab was turned in relation to ImpSec HQ, or which side the erratic Mycoborer had put them in on, Ivan made his wave vague but generally upward—“full of humorless men whom everybody but you has gone to great pains to not attract. But that’s all right. I’m sure you’ll be getting to know them really well, really soon. And vice versa.”

Ivan thought Imola had processed the ImpSec is coming for you part of this, which really wasn’t much of a stretch at this point, but not the rest. He stared at Ivan in personal bewilderment, then back at Shiv.

“In that case,” he croaked, “maybe we should team up again, huh?”

Shiv just snorted.

“I don’t know, Dada,” said Pidge, tapping the captured stunner thoughtfully in her palm. “Perhaps we should reexamine our op—”

It felt as if a giant’s hands had cupped Ivan and pressed inward at all points at once. He didn’t exactly hear the boom, because his hearing had gone wonky in that instant, but he felt it in his bones. Tej may have yelped; in any case, her mouth moved.

Ivan fell back on his butt. A couple of cases thudded to the floor, knocked off their stacks.

And it was over.

All the Arquas were working their jaws, trying to get their eardrums to pop back. Imola cried, in a voice that sounded as if it were coming from a great distance, “What the hell was that?”

Ivan climbed back up as far as his knees. “Sergeant Abelard’s time bomb,” he managed to get out, over the ringing and hissing and rumbling, most but worryingly not all of which seemed to be coming from inside his own head. “Running thirty-five years late.”