Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

Chapter Twenty-Two

Tej drew breath against the appalling concussion that had seemed for a moment to crush her lungs, and pushed herself upright from the stack of cases she’d stumbled against. She braced for an aftershock. But except for the humming in her ears, only silence came from the dark, open doorway into the tunnel.

“Rish. Jet!” she gasped, and bolted for the aperture. She held up her cold light, making dull gleams race over the uneven black walls, and ran down the slope. Around the first, or last, bend.

Behind her, she could hear Ivan Xav’s strained shout, “Tej, no!” and the thump of heavy, slippered feet. She didn’t look back.

She dodged through the kink. Another straight, descending stretch. The next kink. She was almost back to the storm sewer pipe; the breach and the bomb hadn’t been much beyond that. What if Rish and Jet were trapped under some fall of dirt, tons of dirt, like the poor sergeant? Could they dig them out before they suffocated—if they weren’t crushed already—and were there any tools back in the lab for—she skidded to a halt.

Filling the tunnel before her feet was a flat stretch of roiling, dark water. The downward slant of the tunnel, here, brought the roof to its level; the water lapped at the tunnel top. A sort of water seal—she could not make out any dirt- or rock-fall beyond it. Though the blast must have both broken open and collapsed the pipe, to dam and back its flow up into the Mycoborer maze. She put one foot into the icy water. How deep did it go? Could she swim through to the other side—or was there no other side, the tunnel over there flattened?

Ivan Xav’s hand grabbed her arm and yanked her back. “No,” he gasped. “Don’t you dare!”

She gulped, and tossed her cold light out as far as it would go. It bobbed a moment and sank slowly; but its glow was quickly occluded in the opaque brown murk of the bubbling water. She could see nothing through it. Scum rings twisted on the moving surface.

As they stared, aghast, Grandmama jogged up—Tej had never seen her move faster than a dignified stride, before, and finding her breathless was weirdly jarring. She stared with them, then, hesitantly, stepped back and put a hand to her belt. The pale oval force-field sprang out around her, buzzing and sputtering.

“No, Lady ghem Estif!” said Ivan Xav. “That bloody thing is shorting out already. It won’t hold, and once the water gets in, it’ll kill you outright.”

Reluctantly, her hand fell once more, and the field died away. Her lips moved numbly in her carved face. “I’m afraid your evaluation is correct, Captain Vorpatril.” She looked…old.

“What can we do?” Tej’s whisper was not, now, for secrecy.

Ivan Xav glanced down where the waves nibbled at his toes. “Back up. Water’s still rising.” They all did so, peering uneasily downward.

“We must return to the lab, and stay inside,” said Grandmama, with a glance around. “The freshest areas of the Mycoborer tunnel have a certain amount of flex and rebound, but that concussion may have cracked the more cured sections. Very unstable, very unsafe.”

“It was pretty hardened around the, the bomb,” said Tej. “What if it collapsed on Rish and Jet? What if they’re buried?”

“Or drowning,” muttered Ivan Xav. “Or buried and drowning, oh God.”

Grandmama hesitated. “If they were close to the explosion, I don’t expect they’ll have survived to experience either. If they weren’t.” The last sentence fragment stopped rather than trailed. She didn’t finish the thought aloud.

Ivan Xav was swearing under his breath, or praying—it was hard to tell which. But, his hand still gripping Tej’s arm too hard, he turned her around, and they all started back.

“It was a squib,” he said after a minute.

“What?” said Tej.

“Sergeant Abelard’s bomb. If it was originally intended for ImpSec, it should have turned this whole city block into a crater. The explosives were deteriorated. Just…not quite enough.”

“But I saw those eye-pins on his collar,” said Tej. Because otherwise she would start talking about Rish and Jet, and saying stupid, hopeful, unlikely things, and the spinning words would hurt like razors. “Would an ImpSec man have been trying to blow up ImpSec?” Maybe he’d been a bomb-disposal man, instead…?

“I looked him up,” said Ivan Xav. “Yesterday. Maybe it’s day before yesterday, by now.” His stricken gaze darted around the tunnel, permanently night but for the jerking cold-light beams poking between his and Grandmama’s tight grips. “He was one of Negri’s boys, but all his records say is that he disappeared during the Pretendership. He could have been on the Lord Regent’s side, trying to take out the building when Vordarian’s troops held it. Or he could have been one of Vordarian’s—they had men inside all the corps, the whole military was divided—either before or after. Once…” He swallowed. “Once Simon might have known. Which. Offhand.”

They stepped back inside the lab, where, apparently, some argument between Dada and Ser Imola had just ended; at any rate, Imola was sitting on the floor clutching his jaw and moaning, and Dada was rubbing his knuckles and being very narrow-eyed. He looked up at them, gaze widening. “Did you find—” he began, then, seeing their faces, cut himself off. “What did you find?”

“We can’t tell how much of the tunnel is collapsed, if any, because evidently the blast cracked that storm sewer,” said Grandmama. “Water was pouring in. It had filled the portion of the tunnel nearest the pipe already.”

“We can’t get past,” said Tej.

“It’s rising,” said Ivan Xav.

“Can it get this high?” asked the Baronne, coming up behind Dada in time to hear this. Her hand clutched his shoulder; his hand rose and pressed hers.

“It might,” said Ivan Xav. “I suppose it depends on how many of those damned random Mycoborer branches lie below our level. And how hard it’s been raining out there tonight.”

Dada moved quickly through the doorway, and bent down to examine the oval slab of wall that had been removed. “Hm.” He called back over his shoulder, “Amiri made most of his cuts angled inward, good boy. If we can find something for sealant, we should be able to boost this back up in place; the pressure of the water on the outside will hold it. If it comes to that.”

“I guarantee,” said Ivan Xav, “that we have ImpSec’s full attention right now. I expect they’ll find that access well in the garage pretty quick. If anyone can get through from that side…well, they’ll get to us somehow. Sooner or later.”

“Does—I hate to bring this up—but does anyone out there actually know we’re in here?” said Pidge, joining the circle collecting around the aperture.

“Star,” said Tej after a minute. “Ser Imola’s men.”

“If they didn’t just toss her in the back of their van and all take off, when the job went up,” said Emerald. “If they had half a brain among them, that’s what they should have done.”

“They likely just about did have that,” sighed Dada. “Damned cheap rental meat.”

“Ivan Xav,” said Amiri, looking around at him in fresh hope. “Surely they’ll miss you.”

“When I don’t show up at work in a couple of days, sure,” said Ivan Xav. Then stopped. And said, “Ah. No, they won’t. I’m on leave. Nobody’s expecting me.” He walked over to the still-unconscious man he’d stunned, bent, and stripped him of his wristcom. Stepping out through the aperture, he looked up, then began trying to punch through a call. Nobody tried to impede him.

Unfortunately, no one had to. Nothing went through. He came back and parted the protesting Imola from his fancier one, and tried again.

“We’re pretty far underground…” said Tej, watching over his shoulder.

“Cheap civilian models,” he growled, shaking it and trying again. “Mine would have worked here.” Still no signal. “Damn.”

“Simon will figure it out,” said Tej, trying to inject a note of confidence as she followed him back inside. “Wouldn’t he?”

“Simon,” said Ivan Xav, rather through his teeth, “for some reason—you might know why, Shiv—is under the impression that you all haven’t even started to tunnel yet. Let alone arrived at your goal. All the Arquas suddenly disappearing off the face of Barrayar…might have more than one hypothesis to account for it. In Simon’s twisty mind.”

“And you, too? Without a word?” said Amiri.

“I’ve been kidnapped before,” said Ivan Xav. “You would be amazed how many memories tonight is bringing back to me. All of them unpleasant.”

Tej would have held his hand, but she wasn’t sure it would be taken in good part, just now. He was looking a bit wild.

They all were. And maybe she was, too, because Ivan Xav reached out and gripped hers, and gave her a tight grimace that might have been intended for a smile.

“No sign of Rish and Jet?” said Em, in a constricted voice.

Tej shook her head, throat too thick to speak.

“They might…maybe they were on the other side of it, when that explosion went off,” Em tried. “Maybe they got out. Maybe…ImpSec will find them over there. Or—Imola said he didn’t see them, and they can’t have got past him, so maybe they went to hide up one of the other branches.”

Or down one. Tej had an instant and unwanted flash of it, freezing water pouring into some Mycoborer side-channel, knocking the two off their feet, making the slope too slippery to scramble up…

“Or maybe…” Em ran down, which relieved Tej of the urge to slap her silent. But for a snap decision on Dada’s part, it would have been Em out there with their youngest brother, Tej reminded herself.

Ivan Xav hesitated, then said, “Couldn’t you use the Mycoborer to tunnel out?”

Tej was briefly thrilled with her Barrayaran husband’s simple genius, but Grandmama frowned; she said, “It consumes oxygen as well…at a rate of…hm.”

“Don’t bother trying to calculate it,” sighed Amiri. “The box is back at the entryway with the rest of our supplies.”

A sickly silence. All around.

“How many cold lights do we have?” asked Pearl, patting her pockets. She came up with a single spare.

This triggered a general inventory. Most of the Arquas were carrying one or two extras; Ivan Xav harbored a double-dozen, plus a couple he quietly palmed to an inside pocket when almost no one else was looking.

“Rather a lot,” the Baronne concluded. “But space them out. Don’t start any others till the ones we have run down.”

The eight cold lights presently providing their bright chemical glow made the lab seem a well-lit workspace. Tej imagined it with only one or two, and the word that rose in her mind was haunted. And not just with all the history.

“Water?” said Pidge, and gestured inarticulately when Tej gave her a look. “I mean water that’s safe to drink.”

“I might find something to filter some,” said Grandmama. “Boil…no, likely not.”

“We brought plenty of food to keep everyone going all night,” said Pearl glumly. “Too bad it’s all back at the entrance with everything else.”

Em swallowed, and said, “Air…? These walls are pretty tightly sealed.”

Perfectly sealed, as Tej understood it, except for their new door and maybe the old one, filled with rubble.

“The rooms are rather large,” said Amiri, his voice thin with a worry that undercut the actual sense of his words. “And there are two of them.”

“And the tunnel,” said Tej. “And…there might be some oxygen exchange through the surface of the water out there?”

“Works till we have to seal the door on it,” said Pidge. “But there are twelve of us in here breathing.”

Quite a few Arqua gazes swiveled to Imola, still sitting on the floor beside his unconscious hirelings and listening in growing horror.

“Nine would last longer,” said Pearl, tentatively.

“Premature,” growled Dada, “though tempting. Very tempting.”

“Yes, but if we were going to do it at all, sooner is better than later,” argued Pidge, in a tone that attempted to simulate lawyerly reason. Tej was almost glad that she quavered a little.

“Nevertheless,” said the Baronne. Her tone was cool; her gaze calculating; her word mollifying; yet Imola shrank from her more than he had Pidge. No quaver there.

“Those two,” choked Imola, with an abrupt gesture at his snoring followers. “You could have those two.” He contemplated the inert forms, then offered, as if by way of a selling point, “They’d never know…”

“I’ll be sure to mention you said so,” purred Dada, “when they wake up.” He strolled away to look over the contents of the chamber some more; scouting for ideas, Tej suspected, rather than treasure. Dada had never run short of ideas that she knew of; he merely made more.

Ivan Xav looked at Imola and just shook his head. He leaned over and murmured to the man, “Look on the bright side. With all these other constraints, it’s unlikely we’ll have time to work around to the cannibalism.” He bared his teeth in an unfriendly smile.

Imola flinched.

“Still, probably better not to indulge in, um, too much heavy exercise,” Amiri offered. “Just…sit or move quietly.”

“Mm,” said Pearl. She and Pidge moved off to poke, quietly, though a few more boxes. Opening presents seemed a lot less riveting now than it had been at first.

Tej was watching Ivan Xav running his fingers along the side of a bin, lips moving as he estimated the number of papers packed inside, when a sharp scrape, a loud pop, a dull yellow flash of light, and a yelp rising to a screech whipped her head around.

Pearl had pried open the top of some ornately-enameled bottle that she’d unearthed, which had exploded. Whatever liquid it contained had splashed upon her black jacket, dancing with blue and yellow flames. She recoiled, flung the bottle away, and leaped aside.

“Pearl, don’t run, don’t run!” Ivan Xav bellowed. Pearl, mouth open and astonished, only had three steps to do just that before Ivan Xav brought her down. “Drop and roll, roll!”

His cry pierced Pearl’s shock; she overcame her flight reflex as he shoved her to the floor and pressed her flat, smothering the acrid conflagration before it could do more than lick her face. Tej jerked toward them, her world gone slow-motion and fast-forward all at once.

Momentarily unwatched, Imola shot to his feet, ripped off the lid from another bin of papers, flung them toward the spreading oil-or-chemical fire, and pelted out the door.

Ivan Xav lurched to his knees and took in this new hazard with eyes sprung wide as Grandmama hastened toward Pearl, sweeping off her coat. The narrow-necked bottle had not broken, but it had spun, trailing the lethal liquid it contained in a flammable spiral. He lunged, grabbed the emptied bin, and upended it hastily over the wobbling bottle, the scribble of oil, and a few fluttering papers that had just reached it. With an ugly flicker, the flames trapped underneath sank and died.

Tej took her second breath. By the time the flush of adrenaline racing through her blood threatened to blow off the top of her head, it was all over.

Ivan Xav, holding the bin down as if it would fight him, shoved himself up, wheezing. He climbed to the top of this new pedestal and stood glaring around the room at the various Arquas, frozen with surprise or hurrying. Grandmama wrapped her coat around Pearl, finishing the job of containment, and a frightened Amiri knelt at her side, checking for damages.

Ivan Xav drew a long breath, and—goodness, he could yell. “Could you people stop trying to come up with novel ways to kill me for just one hour? Or maybe the rest of the night? I would so like that. Just the rest of the night. Just sit down. Just stop doing anything. Sit down and wait sensibly. Earth, water, air, fire—you’re running out of elements, here!”

Amiri looked very impressed by this ringing baritone rant. Grandmama…looked less impressed, if perhaps sympathetic. Rising from Pearl’s side and helping her up, she observed, “In some Old Earth mythologies there was imagined to be a fifth element—metal, as I recall.”

Ivan Xav said through his teeth, “That was a rhetorical remark, not a bloody suggestion.” But he stepped down off his podium and his ire into Tej’s frantic clutch, nonetheless. None of the horrific stuff seemed to have splashed onto him, her shaking fingers found. His hand covered hers, closing it to his chest and stilling the shakes. His jaw unclenched, and he buried his face in her hair.

Dada and the Baronne had clambered through the obstacle course of boxes and crates from the other end of the room. The Baronne’s face was gray; Dada’s, more greenish. The Baronne went to Pearl, and Dada to the aperture to stare out angrily into the utter darkness where his enemy had vanished. Ivan Xav and Tej came over to his side.

Dada ground his teeth, muscles jumping in his jaw. “You were down there. Dead end, you said. Should we chase him?” he inquired of Ivan Xav.

“I wouldn’t bother,” said Ivan Xav, mouth almost equally stiff. “Either he’ll come back on his own, in which case we may as well save our breaths, or he’ll drown himself trying to get out. Thus saving the exertion of cutting his throat, or whatever. I’m for damn sure not willing to sacrifice any more oxygen for his sake.”

“Well, if he doesn’t come back before we have to put the door up, I vote we don’t go look for him,” growled Amiri. Tej could only nod in dark agreement.

Dada gave Ivan Xav a sideways look. “You were very quick, there. And…correct.”

“Training,” said Ivan Xav shortly. He added after a reluctant moment, “And training accidents. You learn these things. One way or another.”

“I see you do.” Dada gave him a short, approving nod.

“What was that stuff?” Tej asked Grandmama, who had run her gloved fingers across a stray splash on the floor and was now sniffing them in chemical inquiry.

“Scent, at one time, I believe. Now merely stink. I don’t think it was supposed to do that.” She glanced around the room. “Kindly do not open anything more that you cannot identify before I’ve had a chance to check it,” she instructed her descendents.

“Or at all,” grumbled Ivan Xav. “Humor me.”

Pidge, eyeing him in a subdued and wary way, sank down on a crate and sat with her hands folded tightly. Pearl, eyeing him more favorably, joined her. She seemed to have suffered only a light sunburn and singed white eyebrows. Pidge put an arm around her, calming her lingering shivers. Tej assisted Ivan Xav in picking up the scattered antique papers, very dry and crackling, and carefully repacking them in their bin. A little inconsistently, he scanned them in covert curiosity as he reordered them.

The chamber grew really quiet when everyone stopped talking. Tej was half-tempted to start another argument just to drive back the heavy silence. Instead, she and Ivan Xav followed Grandmama back downstairs, Tej because she hadn’t seen that level yet, Ivan Xav evidently with some notion of sharing his light to improve the general visibility down there, or thinking that one wasn’t enough. Or just to keep an eye out for the next emergency.

“As long as we don’t run short of lights before we run out of air,” he muttered.

“I suppose the ideal would be to have them both run out together,” Tej mused.

“I’d rather have the light last longer.”

Tej decided not to try to argue with the illogic of this. It wasn’t as if they had a choice anyway.

The room below was similar to the one above, except for a few separated office cubicles on one end. Grandmama commenced trying cabinets and former freezers once more.

“Something special you’re looking for, Lady ghem Estif?” Ivan Xav inquired politely. “Can we help?”

She waved away the suggestion. “Just…memories, so far. With which you cannot aid me, I’m afraid, Captain.”

Ivan Xav shifted a few crates into a makeshift sort of sofa; he and Tej sat, and he eased back and put his arm around her. She leaned into him, wondering how many tens-of-millions-worth in anybody’s currency they were sitting on—for that much money, it should have been more comfortable. The old lab was cool, not cold, the steady temperature of deep underground, and not especially clammy, but his warmth was welcome nonetheless. For some reason she was put in mind of their first night back on Komarr, not-quite-cuddling on his couch and watching the vid of the unexpectedly graceful legless dancers in free fall. She’d been more afraid then than she was now. Strange.

“Ah!” said Grandmama from the other side of the room. “Filters!” Clutching her prize, she made her way back up the stairs.

“There’s a help,” Tej said. “At least we’ll have something to drink.”

“But then we’ll have to piss,” said Ivan Xav. “I suppose we can go out in the tunnel. Pretend we’re camping, or on maneuvers.”

“Or we might find some pots in here.”

A smile moved his lips for the first time since the near-fire. “Priceless porcelain vases from the Time-of-Isolation, perhaps? Did they make porcelain back them? Not sure. Or carved jadeite bowls, those were popular once, I think. Worth thousands, now. Hell, maybe some ghem-general collected old Barrayaran Imperial chamber pots. I know they had those, seen ’em in the Residence. For all I know, still used by the more conservative Vorish guests.”

A little laugh puffed her lips.

It was quiet for a time. “Now what?” she said after a while, wondering if it would help any to breathe less deeply. Likely not.

“Now what what?” He sounded, if not sleepy, very tired.

She was exhausted, she realized. What time was it? So late it was early, it felt like. Some cusp of night. “What did you do the last time you were stuck in a hole like this? To pass the time?”

“It wasn’t a hole like this. It was a lot darker. And smaller. And wetter. Though air was not an issue. This is practically a palace, by comparison.”

“Still.”

“Well. First there was a lot of screaming. And pounding on the walls. And more screaming.”

“I don’t think that would help, here.”

“It didn’t help there, either. Screaming back at death doesn’t help. Pounding on the walls till your hands bleed…doesn’t help.”

She captured one now, and stroked it till it unclenched, releasing the memory. “What does help?”

“Well, Miles. Eventually. Though I note that he’s on another planet right now. Mind you, he wasn’t much help—the first thing he wanted me to do was hide from the bad guys by going back down in that bloody hole.”

“Did you?”

“Well, yes.”

“Why?”

“It…was the right thing to do. At the time. It all worked out, anyway.”

“And then?”

“Huh?”

“You said first. What was next?”

“Oh. When I was still trapped. I actually got, um, a little strange after a while. I tried to sing myself all the old Imperial scout camp songs that I could remember, from when I was a spotty whelp. And then the rude versions. Except I couldn’t remember enough of them, and then I ran out.” He added after a minute, “But then, I was alone.” And after another minute, “Don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but I kinda wish I was alone again. And you…back in our bed, maybe. Sleeping dreamlessly.”

She returned his apologetic hug. “Same to you.”

“Let’s be sensible and wish for both of us there, while we’re wishing. I mean, it’s not like wishes are rationed.”

“Good point.” Except…she was glad he wasn’t alone to face this unnerving reminder of what sounded, despite his making light of it, like the most terrifying hours of his younger life. It was not an erotic moment; imminent death by suffocation was a bit of a mood-killer. But it was good to just sit, not going anywhere, cuddling contentedly.

“Tej…” he said, and his voice was oddly uncertain. “There’s a question I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while.”

She blinked into the crowding shadows. “Now would probably be a good time to get it in, yeah.”

He drew a long, long breath. It must be important; they’d both been breathing shallowly, when they’d remembered to. “Tej. Will you stay with me for the rest of my life?”

At the little jump of the laugh in her chest, his encircling arm tightened, heartened and heartening. He’d intended her to laugh, she guessed. Ivan Xav was good at that, it occurred to her. Making light in dark places.

“That…might not be too hard a commitment, I suppose. Right now.”

“Well, it’s not the sort of question a fellow wants to take a chance with, you know.” His voice was rueful.

They were both, she noticed, holding on harder. How much courage had that question taken? More than the first time he’d asked, she suspected. She turned her head to watch his profile, looking out into the shadows of the chamber. “Where would I go? Upstairs?”

“I would follow you to the ends of the bunker,” he promised.

Which kind of was the ends of their universe, currently. Who could promise more?

She, too, drew a long breath, because he was worth it. “Do you know what the third thing was I was going to ask you if I’d won our bet? Which I did do, just pointing that out.”

“Tell me, my little wheeler-dealer.”

“I was going to ask if I could stay with you. When my family left.”

“Ah.” His voice brightened; his lips curved up. “Now, isn’t that a happy coincidence.”

“I thought so.” She hitched around and pillowed her head on his shoulder; he stroked her tangled curls.

If it seems too good to be true, her Dada had used to warn Tej, it probably is. A much lesser man than Ivan Xav might have appeared to offer escape enough from her beloved, overpowering, constricting, maddening family. Not quite anyone with a pulse, but such a choice had been scarily close a few times. And then she wouldn’t have this. Maybe only love gave you more than what you’d dealt for.

Oh. So that’s what this is. Oh…

So…if you spurned a miracle because it seemed to come too easily, would you ever get another? She suspected not.

Hang on to this one, then. Hang on for all you’re worth.

Their breathing slowed in their shared warmth; that was good. “You know what I like best about you, Ivan Xav?” she asked, newly shy in her illumination.

He turned his chin into her hair in an inquiring sort of way. “My shiny groundcar? My Vorish insouciance? My astounding sexual prowess? My…my mother? Dear God, you’re not taking me for the sake of getting my um-stepfather?”

“Well, I do like them both very much, but no. What I like best about you, Ivan Xav, is that you’re nice. And you make me laugh.” She smiled now, into his shoulder.

“That…doesn’t seem like much.” He sounded a bit taken aback.

“Yes,” she sighed, “but consider the context.”

He stared out into the dark room. “Ah,” he said after a minute. “Oh.”

Ivan Xav makes light for me. Even here. To the ends of their universe…maybe even to the ends of their lives. Where light would be wanted, she was pretty sure.

They both fell silent for a time, conserving heat together.

Tej stretched the crick in her neck, and said, “Remember the first thing you said to me?”

His face scrunched up. “Hi, there, Nametag, I have this vase to go to Barrayar…?”

She giggled. “No, after that. Do you recall that entire—never mind. But you made an indelible first impression.”

“So did you—you shot me.”

“No, Rish did.” Her breath caught at the name, and Ivan Xav went still; they both looked up toward the face of the lab with the tunnel entrance. But it remained very quiet on the floor above. Tej controlled her wobble; tried to recapture their fragile moment of peace, but maybe all such moments were fleeting. If the good ones fleet, so must the bad ones. If you don’t pack them up and carry them with you, like…like anti-treasures. “Well, we couldn’t let you get away. That would have been…a huge mistake.” Speaking of understatements. The greatest mistake of her life, and she wouldn’t even have known it. The chill of that thought was like some predatory shadow passing overhead…and passing on. He saved my life. In more ways than one. “No. It was about your first rule of picking up girls.”

“Don’t remember that,” he—lied prudently, she suspected.

“You said you’d never give up till I laughed.” She hesitated. “She laughs, you live.”

“I’d be willing to take that for a prophecy, right about now,” he admitted.

“The never give up part sounded good, too.”

“Yeah,” he sighed.

They rested, and waited.

Ivan thought he might have dozed off for a little, but biology ruled all things; thirst and a need to pee drove them both back upstairs all too soon. Together. Tej had said together. She had meant together, hadn’t she?

This time, yes. Thank God for do-overs.

Team Arqua, under the Baronne’s capable direction, had addressed biology’s most immediate demands. Several large plastic bins had been emptied of old clothing.

Some were now filled with turbid water, slowly settling. One was set up in a corner behind a stall made of yet more priceless boxes, adequate camp toilet and with a tightly fitting lid that they might have cause to be grateful for later. A drip-filter was measuring out drinks, rather slowly for the crowd, but sips were shared around in fine antique glassware, its gold leaf showing sigils suggesting the—alas, incomplete—set had been the personal property of the infamous Count Pierre “Le Sanguinaire” Vorrutyer, that Ivan didn’t even attempt to mentally appraise.

Imola had returned, trousers soaked to his thighs; he sat back in his surly huddle and didn’t say much. The water was now lapping the outer wall of the bunker.

Shiv, Amiri, and Ivan then combined to switch the vacuum-handle to the other side of the door slab, and heave it back up into place, just beating the rising tide. The jagged seam around the slab grew dark and wet at a steady pace, creeping upward, but only a small dribble leaked through, to be captured by some mats found downstairs.

Ivan was impressed by Shiv’s level-headedness in this emergency, which set the tone and the example for his whole family, bluntly curbing the potential chaos. But then, anyone who had once suffered defeat by Admiral Aral Vorkosigan in a pitched space battle likely had much higher standards for emergencies than most mortals.

The thought of his uncle caused stern lectures on prisoner-of-war regulations to rise to Ivan’s mind, so he supervised the waking of Goons One and Two to allow them to piss and drink. He didn’t argue, though, when Shiv put the woozy men back to sleep with another stun shot, along with Imola, who had started to restively complain again, for good measure. Unconsciousness would slow their metabolisms and breathing, right? It was all for the common good.

The younger women in the crowd, including Tej, then began to sort through the piles of clothing that had given up their containers to the drinking water reserves. No new lethality sprang from the benign diversion, and Ivan slowly relaxed. It was almost all fine court wear, in both Cetagandan and Barrayaran styles, including some old military dress uniforms that Amiri, and in a bit Ivan, were compelled to somewhat sheepishly model, ghem and Vor respectively. The Cetagandan garb was challengingly complex, with a non-obvious fastening etiquette that Lady ghem Estif was drawn into advising upon.

It was while they were engaged upon this enterprise that Pearl picked up and shook out a long outer-coat, and something fell out of the folds to the floor with a clink. Ivan controlled his flinch.

“Oh!” said Lady ghem Estif. She bent and swept it up into her palm, and stared avidly. “I certainly didn’t expect to find this there!”

“What is it, Grandmama?” Tej inquired; the females gathered around to look.

“My old brooch.” The old haut woman smiled. “I thought it was lost.”

Ivan, stiff in some dead Barrayaran prince’s uniform that was a trifle too small for him, wandered over to see. It was not a very pretty piece of jewelry; an array of beads that looked more like ball bearings, set in a symmetrical array. Cetagandan then-modern art? But it seemed to mean a lot to the old lady, for she instantly fastened it to the inmost layer of her clothing.

“Very good, Pearl!”

The fashion show was brought to a close by the gradual fading of the cold lights. Ivan skinned out of the scratchy wool and heavy, rather greenish gold braid, roused to a new and unexpected pity for his military ancestors, and gratefully redonned his weekend civvies, manky as they now were with the night’s exertions. The Baronne cracked a new light and set it up on a central box. People drifted away in small groups to the edges of the chamber, to make bedrolls of sorts out of the fine fabrics. Sleeping was encouraged, on the basis of slowed breathing all around.

The confiscated but otherwise useless wristcoms of Imola and his minions at least allowed them to track the time; about three hours before the late winter dawn, Ivan judged. If it had been a work day, he’d be getting up in about an hour. He and Tej cuddled in by one wall; Shiv and Udine by another. The remaining Jewels, Pearl and Emerald, made themselves a bedroll, and Pidge and Amiri anchored close by, not quite intruding on their space. Lady ghem Estif alone sat up, her eyes gleaming in the shadows, watching who-knew-what parade of memories pass before her mind’s eye.

Ivan snuffled up around Tej, using her as a comfy body pillow, and let his face hide itself in her hair. The scent of it was soothing. He had an edgy relationship with darkness, just at the moment, but maybe letting his eyes close would make it seem more natural. He was certainly too keyed up to sleep…

Ivan shot awake into a deep thrumming noise that seemed to come from the very walls, reverberating directionlessly around the room. The cold light propped on the box fell over and rolled to the floor. Another cold light snapped into existence from Shiv and Udine’s side of the room; Ivan added one of his own and sat up, raising it high. Tej was awake and on her feet already, looking sleep-shocked. Ivan clambered up after her.

“What the hell is that?” shouted Amiri, as the thunder continued unabated. It shifted, changed pitch, stopped for a moment, then started up again.

Ivan moved around, trying to get a bearing; he eventually decided up by process of elimination.

“Either Vorbarr Sultana is undergoing a surprise bombardment from space,” he shouted back, “or some engineers are shifting a hell of a lot of dirt in a hurry with a heavy-duty grav-lifter.”

Welcome as this sign was, it occurred to Ivan that being directly under a big grav-lifter at work was not the healthiest possible location, especially if the operators were working blind. “Stay away from the middle of the room!” he shouted. Where there any stronger places, like doorways, to cluster under? No, not exactly. Would downstairs be safer? Maybe…He was about to suggest this when the noise stopped.

He couldn’t decide if the thunder or the silence was more unnerving. Everyone around the room was staring upward now, with a range of expressions ranging from hope to fear, with a few side jaunts—Lady ghem Estif’s expression was bland in its haut mask; Shiv’s was blackly ironic. Tej…stuck tight to Ivan. That worked for him.

The uproar started and stopped again a dozen agonizing times in the next hour. It was getting louder…closer…the vibrations took on a strange, whiny, lighter timbre. Weird thumps followed from the ceiling—roof—however you wanted to think of it.

An ear-splitting shriek; dust began to sift down from a circle slowly being drawn over the center of the room. Ivan darted forward and rescued the seal-dagger box, then skittered back to Tej’s side, trying to calculate the weight of a two-meter-wide disc of very thick, very peculiarly reinforced plascrete, and its probable momentum after a three-meter drop. Would it go right through the floor to the chamber below? Possibly…

But in the event, when the circle completed itself, the slab hung suspended and then, miraculously, fell up. Hooray for grav-tractors!

Cold gray light filled the room, and a woosh of chilly air that made Ivan realize just how much of a damp reek of exhalation had been starting to accumulate down here, accounting for his growing headache if it hadn’t had a dozen other probable causes. Their tunnel door slab groaned, shifted, and abruptly blew out into the Mycobore vestibule, damp but now empty of water. The draft increased, whistling wildly for a moment, then dropped to a steady flow.

A soldier in groundside half-armor dropped through the hole on a rappelling line; his dramatic entrance was spoiled when he landed askew on a pile of boxes, which fell over, and him along with it, though he found his feet at once. A number of Arquas around the chamber prudently held up their hands palm-outward, clearly empty of weaponry. A second man dropped beside the first, as the point man began shouting in excitement into his wristcom, “We’re through, sir! We’ve found them!”

The third man in was the last individual Ivan would ever have expected to see dangling at the end of a rappelling harness: Byerly Vorrutyer, and looking vastly uncomfortable, too, with a few pieces of military gear slapped over his rumpled civilian suit. Ivan handed Tej the precious seal-dagger box and advanced to catch him, and incidentally protect the crates he was in danger of kicking over in his awkward landing.

“I hate heights,” By gasped, as Ivan guided him down to his feet.

“Well, I hate depths,” Ivan returned.

“To each his own, I guess.”

“Evidently.”