Diplomatic Immunity

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Now what?

Delays, Miles guessed, while the quaddies on Graf Station either readied a pilot or ran the risks of stalling about delivering one into such a hazard, and suppose none volunteered? While Vorpatril marshaled his strike team, while the three quaddie officials trapped in the freight nacelle—well, didn't sit on their hands, Miles bet—while this infection gains on me , while the ba did—what?

Delay is not my friend.

But it was his gift. What time was it, anyway? Late evening—still the same day that had started so early with the news of Bel's disappearance? Yes, though it hardly felt possible. Surely he had entered some time warp. Miles stared at his wrist com, took a deep, terrified breath, and called up Ekaterin's code. Had Vorpatril told her anything of what was happening yet, or had he kept her comfortably ignorant?

“Miles!” she answered at once.

“Ekaterin, love. Where, um . . . are you?”

“The tactics room, with Admiral Vorpatril.”

Ah. That answered that question. In a way, he was relieved that he didn't have to deliver the whole litany of bad news himself, cold. “You've been following this, then.”

“More or less. It's been very confusing.”

“I'll bet. I . . .” He couldn't say it, not so baldly. He dodged, while he mustered courage. “I promised to call Nicol when I had news of Bel, and I haven't had a chance. The news, as you may know, is not good; we found Bel, but the herm has been deliberately infected with a bioengineered Cetagandan parasite that may . . . may prove lethal.”

“Yes, I understand. I've been hearing it all, here in the tactics room.”

“Good. The medics are doing their best, but it's a race against time and now there are these other complications. Will you call Nicol and redeem my word for me? There's not no hope, but . . . she needs to know it doesn't look so good right now. Use your judgment how much to soften it.”

“My judgment is that she should be told plain truth. The whole of Graf Station is in an uproar now, what with the quarantine and biocontamination alert. She needs to know exactly what's going on, and she has a right to know. I'll call her at once.”

“Oh. Good. Thank you. I, um . . . you know I love you.”

“Yes. Tell me something I don't know.”

Miles blinked. This wasn't getting easier; he rushed it in a breath. “Well. There's a chance I may have screwed up pretty badly, here. Like, I may not get out of this one. The situation here is pretty unsettled, and, um . . . I'm afraid my biotainer suit gloves were sabotaged by a nasty little Cetagandan booby trap I triggered. I seem to have got myself infected with the same biohazard that's taken Bel down. The stuff doesn't appear to act very quickly, though.”

In the background, he could just hear Admiral Vorpatril's voice, cursing in choice barracks language not at all consonant with the respect due to one of His Majesty Gregor Vorbarra's Imperial Auditors. From Ekaterin, silence; he strained to hear her breathing. The sound reproduction on these high-grade com links was so excellent, he could hear when she let her breath out again, through those pursed, exquisite warm lips he could not see or touch.

He began again. “I'm . . . I'm sorry that . . . I wanted to give you—this wasn't what I—I never wanted to bring you grief—”

“Miles. Stop that babbling at once.”

“Oh . . . uh, yes?”

Her voice sharpened. “If you die on me out here, I will not be grieved, I will be pissed. This is all very fine, love, but may I point out that you don't have time to indulge in angst right now. You're the man who used to rescue hostages for a living. You are not allowed to not get out of this one. So stop worrying about me and start paying attention to what you are doing. Are you listening to me, Miles Vorkosigan? Don't you dare die! I won't have it!”

That seemed definitive. Despite everything, he grinned. “Yes, dear,” he sang back meekly, heartened. This woman's Vor ancestoresses had defended bastions in war, oh, yes.

“So stop talking to me and get back to work. Right?”

She almost kept the shaken sob out of that last word.

“Hold the fort, love,” he breathed, with all the tenderness he knew.

“Always.” He could hear her swallow. “Always.”

She cut her link. He took it as a hint.

Hostage rescue, eh? If you want something done right, do it yourself . Come to think of it, did this ba have any idea of what Miles's former line of work had been? Or did it assume Miles was just a diplomat, a bureaucrat, another frightened civilian? The ba could not know which of the party had triggered its booby trap on the repair suit remote controls, either. Not that this biotainer suit hadn't been useless for space assault purposes even before it had been buggered all to hell. But what tools were available here in this infirmary that might be put to uses their manufacturers had never envisioned? And what personnel?

The medical crew had military training, right enough, and discipline. They also were up to their collective elbows in other tasks of the highest priority. Miles's very last desire was to pull them away from their cramped, busy lab bench and critical patient care to go play commando with him. Although it may come to that. Thoughtfully, he began walking about the infirmary's outer chamber, opening drawers and cupboards and staring at their contents. A muddy fatigue was beginning to drag at his edgy, adrenaline-pumped high, and a headache was starting behind his eyes. He studiously ignored the terror of it.

He glanced through the blue light bars into the ward. The tech hurried from the bench, heading toward the bathroom with something in his hands that trailed looping tubes.

“Captain Clogston!” Miles called.

The second suited figure turned. “Yes, my lord?”

“I'm shutting your inner door. It's supposed to close on its own in the event of a pressure change, but I'm not sure I trust any remote-controlled equipment on this ship at the moment. Are you prepared to move your patient into a bod pod, if necessary?”

Clogston gave him a sketchy salute of acknowledgment with a gloved hand. “Almost, my lord. We're starting construction on the second blood filter. If the first one works as well as I hope, we should be ready to rig you up very soon, too.”

Which would tie him down to a bunk in the ward. He wasn't ready to lose mobility yet. Not while he could still move and think on his own. You don't have much time then. Regardless of what the ba does . “Thank you, Captain,” Miles called. “Let me know.” He slid the door shut with the manual override.

What could the ba know, from Nav and Com? More importantly, what were its blind spots? Miles paced, considering the layout of this central nacelle: a long cylinder divided into three decks. This infirmary lay at the stern on the uppermost deck. Nav and Com was far forward, at the other end of the middle deck. The internal airseal doors of all levels lay at the three evenly spaced intersections to the freight and drive nacelles, dividing each deck longitudinally into quarters.

Nav and Com had security vid monitors in all the outer airlocks, of course, and safety monitors on all the inner section doors that closed to seal the ship into airtight compartments. Blowing out a monitor would blind the ba, but also give warning that the supposed prisoners were on the move. Blowing out all of them, or all that could be reached, would be more confusing . . . but still left the problem of giving warning. How likely was the ba to carry out its harried, or perhaps insane, threat of ramming the station?

Dammit, this was so unprofessional . . . Miles halted, arrested by his own thought.

What were the standard operating procedures for a Cetagandan agent—anyone's agent, really—whose covert mission was going down the toilet? Destroy all the evidence: try to make it to a safe zone, embassy, or neutral territory. If that wasn't possible, destroy the evidence and then sit tight and endure arrest by the locals, whoever the locals might be, and wait for one's own side to either bail or bust one out, depending. For the really, really critical missions, destroy the evidence and commit suicide. This last was seldom ordered, because it was even more seldom carried out. But the Cetagandan ba were so conditioned to loyalty to their haut masters—and mistresses—Miles was forced to consider it a more realistic possibility in the present case.

But splashy hostage-taking among neutrals or neighbors, blaring the mission all over the news, most of all—most of all, the public use of the Star Cr?che's most private arsenal . . . This wasn't the modus operandi of a trained agent. This was goddamned amateur work. And Miles's superiors used to accuse him of being a loose cannon—hah! Not any of his most direly inspired messes had ever been as forlorn as this one was shaping up to be—for both sides, alas. This gratifying deduction did not, unfortunately, make the ba's next action more predictable. Quite the reverse.

“M'lord?” Roic's voice rose unexpectedly from Miles's wrist com.

“Roic!” cried Miles joyfully. “Wait. What the hell are you doing on this link? You shouldn't be out of your suit.”

“I might ask you the same question, m'lord,” Roic returned rather tartly. “If I had time. But I had to get out of t' pressure suit anyway to get into this work suit. I think . . . yes. I can hang the com link in my helmet. There.” A slight chink, as of a faceplate closing. “Can you still hear me?”

“Oh, yes. I take it you're still in Engineering?”

“For now. I found you a real nice little pressure suit, m'lord. And a lot of other tools. Question is how to get it to you.”

“Stay away from all the airseal doors—they're monitored. Have you found any cutting tools, by chance?”

“I'm, uh . . . pretty sure that's what these are, yes.”

“Then move as far to the stern as you can get, and cut straight up through the ceiling to the middle deck. Try to avoid damaging the air ducts and grav grid and control and fluid conduits, for now. Or anything else that would make the boards light up in Nav and Com. Then we can place you for the next cut.”

“Right, m'lord. I was thinking something like that might do.”

A few minutes ran by, with nothing but the sound of Roic's breathing, broken with a few under-voiced obscenities as, by trial and error, he discovered how to handle the unfamiliar equipment. A grunt, a hiss, a clank abruptly cut off.

The rough-and-ready procedure was going to play hell with the atmospheric integrity of the sections, but did that necessarily make things any worse, from the hostages' point of view? And a pressure suit, oh bliss! Miles wondered if any of the powered work suits had been sized extra-small. Almost as good as space armor, indeed.

“All right, m'lord,” came the welcome voice from his wrist com. “I've made it to the middle deck. I'm moving back now . . . I'm not exactly sure how close I am under you.”

“Can you reach up to tap on the ceiling? Gently. We don't want it to reverberate through the bulkheads all the way to Nav and Com.” Miles threw himself prone, opened his faceplate, tilted his head, and listened. A faint banging, apparently from out in the corridor. “Can you move farther toward the stern?”

“I'll try, m'lord. It's a question of getting these ceiling panels apart . . .” More heavy breathing. “There. Try now.”

This time, the rapping seemed to come from nearly under Miles's outstretched hand. “I think that's got it, Roic.”

“Right, m'lord. Be sure you're not standing where I'm cutting. I think Lady Vorkosigan would be right peeved with me if I accidentally lopped off any of your body parts.”

“I think so too.” Miles rose, ripped up a section of friction matting, skittered to the side of the infirmary's outer chamber, and held his breath.

A red glow in the bare deck plate beneath turned yellow, then white. The dot became a line, which grew, wavering in an irregular circle back to its beginning. A thump, as Roic's gloved paw, powered by his suit, punched up through the floor, tearing the weakened circle from its matrix.

Miles nipped over and stared down, and grinned at Roic's face staring up in worry through the faceplate of another repair suit. The hole was too small for that hulking figure to squeeze through, but not too small for the pressure suit he handed up through it.

“Good job,” Miles called down. “Hang on. I'll be right with you.”

“M'lord?”

Miles tore off the useless biotainer suit and crammed himself into the pressure suit in record time. Inevitably, the plumbing was female, and he left it unattached. One way or another, he didn't think he would be suited up for very long. He was flushed and sweating, one moment too hot, the next too cold, though whether from incipient infection or just plain overdriven nerves he scarcely knew.

The helmet supplied no place to hang his wrist com, but a bit of medical tape solved that problem in a moment. He lowered the helmet over his head and locked it into place, breathing deeply of air that no one controlled but him. Reluctantly, he set the suit's temperature to chilly.

Then he slid to the hole and dangled his legs through. “Catch me. Don't squeeze too hard—remember, you're powered.”

“Right, m'lord.”

“Lord Auditor Vorkosigan,” came Vorpatril's uneasy voice. “What are you doing?”

“Reconnoitering.”

Roic caught his hips, lowering him with exaggerated gentleness to the middle deck. Miles glanced up the corridor, past the larger hole in its floor, to the airseal doors at the far end of this sector. “Solian's security office is in this section. If there's any control board on this bloody ship that can monitor without being monitored in turn, it'll be in there.”

He tiptoed down the corridor, Roic lumbering in his wake. The deck creaked beneath the armsman's booted feet. Miles tapped out the now-familiar code to the office door; Roic barely squeezed through behind him. Miles slid into the late Lieutenant Solian's station chair and flexed his fingers, contemplating the console. He drew a breath and bent forward.

Yes, he could siphon off views from the vid monitors of every airlock on the ship—simultaneously, if desired. Yes, he could tap into the safety sensors on the airseal doors. They were designed to take in a good view of anyone near—as in, frantically pounding on—the doors. Nervously, he checked the one for this middle rear section. The vista, if the ba was even looking at it with so much else going on, did not extend as far as Solian's office door. Whew. Could he bring up a view of Nav and Com, perhaps, and spy secretly upon its current occupant?

Roic said apprehensively, “What are you thinking of doing, m'lord?”

“I'm thinking that a surprise attack that has to stop to bore through six or seven bulkheads to get to the target isn't going to be surprising enough. Though we may come to that. I'm running out of time.” He blinked, hard, then thought to hell with it and opened his faceplate to rub his eyes. The vid image unblurred in his vision, but still seemed to waver around the edges. Miles didn't think the problem was in the vid plate. His headache, which had started as a stabbing pain between his eyes, seemed to be spreading to his temples, which throbbed. He was shivering. He sighed and closed the faceplate again.

“That bio-shit—the admiral said you got t' same bio-shit the herm has. The crap that melted Gupta's friends.”

“When did you talk to Vorpatril?”

“Just before I talked to you.”

“Ah.”

Roic said lowly, “I should've been t' one to run those remote controls. Not you.”

“It had to be me. I was more familiar with the equipment.”

“Yes.” Roic's voice went lower. “You should've brought Jankowski, m'lord.”

“Just a guess—based on long experience, mind you . . .” Miles paused, frowning at the security display. All right, so Solian didn't have a monitor in every cabin, but he had to have private access to Nav and Com if he had anything . . . ”But I suspect there will be enough heroism before this day is done to go around. I don't think we're going to have to ration it, Roic.”

“ 'S not what I meant,” said Roic, in a dignified tone.

Miles grinned blackly. “I know. But think of how hard it would have been on Ma Jankowski. And all the not-so-little Jankowskis.”

A soft snort from the com link taped inside Miles's helmet apprised him that Ekaterin was back, listening in. She would not interrupt, he suspected.

Vorpatril's voice sounded suddenly, breaking his concentration. The admiral was sputtering. “The spineless scoundrels! The four-armed bastards! My Lord Auditor!” Ah, Miles was promoted again. “The goddamn little mutants are giving this sexless Cetagandan plague-vector a jump pilot!”

“What?” Miles's stomach knotted. Tighter. “They found a volunteer? Quaddie, or downsider?” There couldn't be that large a pool of possibilities to choose from. The pilots' surgically installed neuro-controllers had to fit the ships they guided through the wormhole jumps. However many jump pilots were currently quartered—or trapped—on Graf Station, chances were that most would be incompatible with the Barrayaran systems. So was it the Idris 's own pilot or relief pilot, or a pilot from one of the Komarran sister ships . . . ?

“What makes you think he's a volunteer?” snarled Vorpatril. “I can't bloody believe they're just handing . . .”

“Maybe the quaddies are up to something. What do they say?”

Vorpatril hesitated, then spat, “Watts cut me out of the loop a few minutes ago. We were having an argument over whose strike team should go in, ours or the quaddie militia's, and when. And under whose orders. Both at once with no coordination struck me as a supremely bad idea.”

“Indeed. One perceives the potential hazards.” The ba was beginning to seem a trifle outnumbered. But then there were its bio-threats . . . Miles's nascent sympathy died as his vision blurred again. “We are guests in their polity . . . hang on. Something seems to be happening at one of the outer airlocks.”

Miles enlarged the security vid image from the lock that had suddenly come alive. Docking lights framing the outer door ran through a series of checks and go-aheads. The ba, he reminded himself, was probably looking at this same view. He held his breath. Were the quaddies, under the mask of delivering the demanded jump pilot, about to attempt to insert their own strike force?

The airlock door slid open, giving a brief glimpse of the inside of a tiny, one-person personnel pod. A naked man, the little silver contact circles of a jump pilot's neural implant gleaming at mid-forehead and temples, stepped through into the lock. The door slid shut again. Tall, dark-haired, handsome but for the thin pink scars running, Miles could now see, all over his body in a winding swathe. Dmitri Corbeau. His face was pale and set.

“The jump pilot has just arrived,” Miles told Vorpatril.

“Dammit . Human or quaddie?”

Vorpatril was really going to have to work on his diplomatic vocabulary. . . . ”Downsider,” Miles answered, in lieu of any more pointed remark. He hesitated, then added, “It's Lieutenant Corbeau.”

A stunned silence: then Vorpatril hissed, “Son-of-a-bitch . . . !”

“H'sh. The ba is finally coming on.” Miles adjusted the volume, and opened his faceplate again so that Vorpatril could overhear too. As long as Roic kept his suit sealed, it was . . . no worse than ever. Yeah, and how bad is that, again?

“Turn toward the security module and open your mouth,” the ba's voice instructed coolly and without preamble over the lock vid monitor. “Closer. Wider.” Miles was treated to a fair view of Corbeau's tonsils. Unless Corbeau harbored a poison-filled tooth, no weapons were concealed therein.

“Very well . . .” The ba continued with a chill series of directions for Corbeau to go through a humiliating sequence of gyrations which, while not as thorough as a body cavity search, gave at least some assurance that the jump pilot carried nothing there , either. Corbeau obeyed precisely, without hesitation or argument, his expression rigid and blank.

“Now release the pod from the docking clamps.”

Corbeau rose from his last squat and stepped through the lock to the personnel hatch entry area. A chink and a clank—the pod, released but unpowered, drifted away from the side of the Idris.

“Now listen to these instructions. You will walk twenty meters toward the bow, turn left, and wait for the next door to open for you.”

Corbeau obeyed, still almost expressionless, except for his eyes. His gaze darted about, as if he searched for something, or was trying to memorize his route. He passed out of sight of the lock vids.

Miles considered the peculiar pattern of old worm scars across Corbeau's body. He must have rolled, or been rolled, across a bad nest. A story seemed written in those fading hieroglyphs. A young colonial boy, perhaps the new boy in camp or town—tricked or dared or maybe just stripped and pushed? To rise again from the ground, crying and frightened, to the jangle of some cruel mockery . . .

Vorpatril swore, repetitively, under his breath. “Why Corbeau? Why Corbeau ?”

Miles, who was frantically wondering the same thing, hazarded, “Perhaps he volunteered.”

“Unless the bloody quaddies bloody sacrificed him. Instead of risking one of their own. Or . . . maybe he's figured out another way to desert.”

“I . . .” Miles held his words for a long moment of thought, then let them out on a breath, “think that would be doing it the hard way.” It was a sticky suspicion, though. Just whose ally might Corbeau prove?

Miles caught Corbeau's image again as the ba walked him through the ship toward Nav and Com, briefly opening and closing airseal doors. He passed through the last barrier and out of vid range, straight-backed, silent, bare feet padding quietly on the deck. He looked . . . cold.

Miles's attention was jerked aside by the flicker of another airlock sensor alarm. Hastily, he called up the image of another lock—just in time to see a quaddie in a green biotainer suit whap the vid monitor mightily with a spanner while beyond, two more green figures sped past. The image shattered and went dark. He could still hear, though—the beep of the lock alarm, the hiss of a lock door opening—but no hiss when it closed. Because it did not close, or because it closed on vacuum? Air, and sound, returned as the lock cycled. The lock, therefore, had opened on vacuum; the quaddies had made their getaway into space around the station.

That answered his question about their biotainer suits—unlike the Idris 's cheaper issue, they were vacuum-rated. In Quaddiespace, that made all kinds of sense. Half a dozen station locks offered refuge within little more than a few hundred meters; the fleeing quaddies would have their pick, in addition to whatever pods or shuttles hovered nearby able to swoop down on them and take them inboard.

“Venn and Greenlaw and Leutwyn just escaped out an airlock,” he reported to Vorpatril. “Good timing.” Shrewd timing, to go just when the ba was both distracted by the arrival of its pilot and, with the real possibility of a getaway now in hand, less inclined to carry out the station-ramming threat. It was exactly the right move, to leak hostages from the enemy's grip at every opportunity. Granted, this use of Corbeau's arrival was ruthlessly calculated in the extreme. Miles could not be sorry. “Good. Excellent! Now this ship is entirely cleared of civilians.”

“Except for you, m'lord,” Roic pointed out, started to say something else, intercepted the dark look Miles cast over his shoulder, and ran down in a mumble.

“Ha,” muttered Vorpatril. “Maybe this will change Watts's mind.” His voice lowered, as if directed away from his audio pickup, or behind his hand. “What, Lieutenant?” Then murmured, “Excuse me,” Miles was not certain to whom.

So, only Barrayarans left aboard now. Plus Bel—on the ImpSec payroll, therefore an honorary Barrayaran for all mortal accounting purposes. Miles smiled briefly despite it all as he considered Bel's probable outraged response to such a suggestion. The best time to insert a strike force would be before the ship started to move, rather than to attempt to play catch-up in mid-space. At some point, Vorpatril was probably going to stop waiting for quaddie permission to launch his men. At some point, Miles would agree.

Miles returned his attention to the problem of spying on Nav and Com. If the ba had knocked out the monitor the way the passing quaddies just had, or even merely thrown a jacket over the vid pickup, Miles would be out of luck . . . ah. Finally. An image of Nav and Com formed over his vid plate. But now he had no sound. Miles gritted his teeth and bent forward.

The vid pickup was apparently centered over the door, giving a good view over the half dozen empty station chairs and their dark consoles. The ba was there, still dressed in the Betan garb of its discarded alias, jacket and sarong and sandals. Although a pressure suit—one—abstracted from the Idris 's supplies lay nearby, flung over the back of a station chair. Corbeau, still vulnerably naked, was seated in the pilot's chair, but had not yet lowered his headset. The ba held up a hand, said something; Corbeau frowned fiercely, and flinched, as the ba pressed a hypospray briefly against the pilot's upper arm and stepped back with a flash of satisfaction on its strained face.

Drugs? Surely even the ba was not mad enough to drug a jump pilot upon whose neural function it would shortly be betting its life. Some disease inoculation? The same problem applied, although something latent might do—Cooperate, and later I will let you have the antidote . Or pure bluff, a shot of water, perhaps. The hypospray seemed altogether too crude and obvious as a Cetagandan drug administration method; it hinted at bluff to Miles's mind, though perhaps not to Corbeau's. One had no choice but to turn control over to the pilot when he lowered his headset and plugged the ship into his mind. It made pilots hard to effectively threaten.

It did rather put paid to Vorpatril's paranoid fear that Corbeau had turned traitor, volunteering for this as a way to get a free ride out of his quaddie detention cell and his dilemmas. Or did it? Regardless of prior or secret agreements, the ba would not simply trust when it could, it would think, guarantee.

Over his wrist com, muffled as from a distance, Miles heard a sudden, startling bellow from Admiral Vorpatril: “What? That's impossible. Have they gone mad? Not now . . .”

After a few more moments passed without further enlightenment, he murmured, “Um, Ekaterin? Are you still there?”

Her breath drew in. “Yes.”

“What's going on?”

“Admiral Vorpatril was called away by his communications officer. Some sort of priority message from Sector Five headquarters just arrived. It seems to be something very urgent.”

On the vid image in front of him, Miles watched as Corbeau began to run through preflight checks, moving from station to station under the hard, watchful eyes of the ba. Corbeau made sure to move with disproportional care; apparently, from the movement of his rather stiff lips, explaining each move before he touched a console. And slowly, Miles noted. Rather more slowly than necessary, if not quite slowly enough to be obvious about it.

Vorpatril's voice, or rather, Vorpatril's heavy breathing, returned at last. The admiral appeared to have run out of invective. Miles found that considerably more disturbing than his previous naval bellowing.

“My lord.” Vorpatril hesitated. His voice dropped to a sort of stunned growl. “I have just received Priority One orders from Sector Five HQ to marshal my escort ships, abandon the Komarran fleet, and head for fleet rendezvous off Marilac at maximum possible speed.”

Not with my wife, you don't , was Miles's first gyrating thought.

Then he blinked, freezing in his seat.

The other function of the military escorts Barrayar donated to the Komarran trade fleets was to quietly and unobtrusively maintain an armed force dispersed through the Nexus. A force that could, in the event of a truly dire emergency, be collected rapidly so as to present a convincing military threat at key strategic points. In a crunch it might otherwise be too slow, or even diplomatically or militarily impossible, to get any force from the homeworlds through the wormhole jumps of intervening local space polities to the mustering places where it could do Barrayar some good. But the trade fleets were out there already.

The planet of Marilac was a Barrayaran ally at the back door of the Cetagandan Empire, from Barrayar's point of view, in the complex web of wormhole jump routes that strung the Nexus together. A second front, as Rho Ceta's immediate neighborly threat to Komarr was considered the first front. Granted, the Cetagandans had the shorter lines of communication and logistics between the two points of contact. But the strategic pincer still beat hell out of the sound of one hand clapping, particularly with the potential addition of Marilacan forces. The Barrayarans would only be marshaling at Marilac in order to offer a threat to Cetaganda.

Except that, when Miles and Ekaterin had left Barrayar on this belated honeymoon trip, relations between the two empires had been about as—well, cordial was perhaps not quite the right term—about as unstrained as they had been in years. What the hell could have changed that, so profoundly, and so quickly?

Something has stirred up the Cetagandans around Rho Ceta, Gregor had said.

A few jumps out from Rho Ceta, Guppy and his smuggler friends had off-loaded a strange live cargo from a Cetagandan government ship, one with lots of fancy markings. A screaming-bird pattern, perhaps? Along with one, and only one person—one survivor? After which the ship had tilted away, on a dangerous in-bound course for the system's suns. What if that trajectory hadn't been a swing around? What if it had been a straight dive, with no return?

“Sonuvabitch,” breathed Miles.

“My lord?” said Vorpatril. “If—”

“Quiet ,” snapped Miles.

The admiral's silence was shocked, but it held.

Once a year, the most precious cargoes of the haut race left the Star Cr?che on the capital world of Eta Ceta. Eight ships, bound each for one of the planets of the Empire so curiously ruled by the haut. Each carrying that year's cohort of haut embryos, genetically modified and certified results of all the contracts of conception so carefully negotiated, the prior year, between the members of the great constellations, the clans, the carefully cultivated gene-lines of the haut race. Each load of a thousand or so nascent lives conducted by one of the eight most important haut ladies of the Empire, the planetary consorts who were the steering committee of the Star Cr?che. All most private, most secret, most never-to-be-discussed with outsiders.

How was it that a ba agent could not go back for more copies, if it lost such a cargo of future haut lives in transit?

When it wasn't an agent at all. When it was a renegade .

“The crime isn't murder,” Miles whispered, his eyes widening. “The crime is kidnapping .”

The murders had come subsequently, in an increasingly panicked cascade, as the ba, with good reason, attempted to bury its trail. Well, Guppy and his friends had surely been planned to die, as eyewitnesses to the fact that one person had not gone down with the rest on the doomed ship. A ship hijacked, if briefly, before its destruction—all the best hijackings were inside jobs, oh, yes. The Cetagandan government must be going insane over this.

“My lord, are you all right—?”

Ekaterin's voice, in a fierce whisper: “No, don't interrupt him. He's thinking. He just makes those funny leaking noises when he's thinking.”

From the Celestial Garden's point of view, a Star Cr?che child-ship had disappeared on what should have been a safe route to Rho Ceta. Every rescue force and intelligence agent the Cetagandan empire owned would have been flung into the case. If it were not for Guppy, the tragedy might have passed as some mysterious malfunction that had sent the ship tumbling, out of control and unable to signal, to its fiery doom. No survivors, no wreckage, no loose ends. But there was Guppy. Leaving a messy trail of wildly suggestive evidence behind him with every flopping footfall.

How far behind could the Cetagandans be, by now? Too close for the ba's comfort, obviously; it was a wonder, when Guppy had popped up on the hostel railing, that the ba hadn't just died of heart failure without any need for the rivet gun. But the ba's trail, marked by Guppy with blazing flares, led straight through from the scene of the crime to the heart of a sometimes-enemy empire—Barrayar. What were the Cetagandans making of it all?

Well, we have a clue now, don't we?

“Right,” breathed Miles, then, more crisply, “Right. You're recording all this, I trust. So my first order in the Emperor's Voice, Admiral, is to countermand your rendezvous orders from Sector Five. That was what you were about to ask for, yes?”

“Thank you, my Lord Auditor, yes,” said Vorpatril gratefully. “Normally, that would be a call I would rather die than disregard, but . . . given our present situation, they are going to have to wait a little.” Vorpatril wasn't self-dramatizing; this was delivered as a plain statement of fact. “Not too long, I hope.”

“They are going to have to wait a lot. This is my next order in the Emperor's Voice. Clear copy everything—everything —you have on record here from the past twenty-four hours and squirt it back on an open channel, at the highest priority, to the Imperial Residence, to the Barrayaran high command on Barrayar, to ImpSec HQ, and to ImpSec Galactic Affairs on Komarr. And,” he took a breath, and raised his voice to override Vorpatril's outraged cry of Clear copy! At a time like this? “marked from Lord Auditor Miles Vorkosigan of Barrayar to the most urgent, personal attention of ghem-General Dag Benin, Chief of Imperial Security, the Celestial Garden, Eta Ceta, personal, urgent, most urgent, by Rian's hair this one's real, Dag. Exactly those words.”

“What? ” screamed Vorpatril, then hastily lowered his tone to an anguished repeat, “What? A rendezvous at Marilac can only mean imminent war with the Cetagandans! We can't hand them that kind of intelligence on our position and movements—gift-wrapped!”

“Obtain the complete, unedited Graf Station Security recording of the interrogation of Russo Gupta and send it along too, as soon as you possibly can. Sooner.”

New terror shook Miles, a vision like a fever dream: the grand fa?ade of Vorkosigan House, in the Barrayaran capital of Vorbarr Sultana, with plasma fire raining down upon it, its ancient stone melting like butter; two fluid-filled canisters exploding in steam. Or a fog of plague, leaving all the House's protectors dead in heaps in the halls, or fled to die in the streets; two almost ripe replicators running down unattended, stopping, slowly chilling, their tiny occupants dying for lack of oxygen, drowning in their own amniotic fluid. His past and his future, all destroyed together . . . Nikki, too—would he be swept up with the other children in some frantic rescue, or left uncounted, unmissed, fatally alone? Miles had fancied himself growing into a good stepfather to Nikki—that was called into deep question now, eh? Ekaterin, I'm sorry . . .

It would be hours—days—before the new tight-beam could get back to Barrayar and Cetaganda. Insanely upset people could make fatal mistakes in mere minutes. Seconds . . . ”And if you are a praying man, Vorpatril, pray that no one will do anything stupid before it gets there. And that we will be believed.”

“Lady Vorkosigan,” Vorpatril whispered urgently. “Could he be hallucinating from the disease?”

“No, no,” she soothed. “He's just thinking too fast, and leaving out all the intervening steps. He does that. It can be very frustrating. Miles, love, um . . . for the rest of us, would you mind unpacking that a little more?”

He took a breath—and two or three more—to stop his trembling. “The ba. It's not an agent on a mission. It's a criminal. A renegade. Perhaps insane. I believe it hijacked the annual haut child-ship to Rho Ceta, sent the vessel into the nearest sun with all aboard—probably murdered already—and made off with its cargo. Which trans-shipped through Komarr, and which left the Barrayaran Empire on a trade ship belonging to Empress Laisa personally —and just how incriminating that particular detail is going to look to certain minds inside the Star Cr?che, I shrink to imagine. The Cetagandans think we stole their babies, or colluded in the theft, and, dear God, murdered a planetary consort , and so they are about to make war on us bymistake !”

“Oh,” said Vorpatril blankly.

“The ba's whole safety lay in perfect secrecy, because once the Cetagandans got on the right trail they would never rest till they tracked this crime down. But the perfect plan cracked when Gupta didn't die on schedule. Gupta's frantic antics drew Solian in, drew you in, drew me in . . .” His voice slowed. “Except, what in the world does the ba want those haut infants for ?”

Ekaterin offered hesitantly, “Could it be stealing them for someone else?”

“Yes, but the ba aren't supposed to be subornable.”

“Well, if not for pay or some bribe, maybe blackmail or threat? Maybe threat to some haut to whom the ba is loyal?”

“Or maybe some faction in the Star Cr?che,” Miles supplied. “Except . . . the ghem-lords do factions. The haut lords do factions. The Star Cr?che has always moved as one—even when it was committing arguable treason, a decade ago, the haut ladies took no separate decisions.”

“The Star Cr?che committed treason?” echoed Vorpatril in astonishment. “This certainly didn't get out! Are you sure? I never heard of any mass executions that high in the Empire back then, and I should have.” He paused, and added in a baffled tone, “How could a bunch of haut-lady baby-makers commit treason, anyway?”

“It didn't quite come off. For various reasons.” Miles cleared his throat.

“Lord Auditor Vorkosigan. This is your com link, yes? Are you there?” a new voice, and a very welcome one, broke in.

“Sealer Greenlaw!” Miles cried happily. “Have you made it to safety? All of you?”

“We are back aboard Graf Station,” replied the Sealer. “It seems premature to call it safety. And you?”

“Still trapped aboard the Idris . Although not totally without resources. Or ideas.”

“I urgently need to speak to you. You can override that hothead Vorpatril.”

“Ah, my com link is sustaining an open audio link with Admiral Vorpatril now, ma'am. You can speak to both of us at once, if you like,” Miles put in hastily, before she could express herself even more freely.

She hesitated only fractionally. “Good. We absolutely need Vorpatril to hold, repeat, hold any strike force of his. Corbeau confirms the ba does have some sort of a remote control or deadman switch on his person, apparently linked back to the biohazard it has hidden aboard Graf Station. The ba is not bluffing.”

Miles glanced up in surprise at his silent vid of Nav and Com. Corbeau was seated now in the pilot's station chair, the control headset lowered over his skull, his expressionless face even more absent. “Corbeau confirms! How? He was stark naked—the ba is watching him every second! Subcutaneous com link?”

“There was no time to find and insert one. He undertook to blink the ship's running lights in a prearranged code.”

“Whose idea was that?”

“His.”

Quick colonial boy. The pilot was on their side. Oh, but that was good to know. . . . Miles's shivering was turning to shudders.

“Every adult quaddie on Graf Station not on emergency duty is out looking for the bio-bomb now,” Greenlaw continued, “but we have no idea what it looks like, or how big it is, or if it is disguised as something else. Or if there is more than one. We are trying to evacuate as many children as possible into what ships and shuttles we have on hand, and seal them off, but we can't even be sure of them , really. If you people do anything to set this mad creature off—if you launch an unauthorized strike force before this vicious threat is found and safely neutralized—I swear I will give our militia the order to shoot them out of space myself. Do you copy, Admiral? Confirm.”

“I hear you,” said Vorpatril reluctantly. “But ma'am—the Imperial Auditor himself has been infected with one of the ba's lethal bio-agents. I cannot—I will not—if I have to sit here and do nothing while listening to him die—”

“There are fifty thousand innocent lives on Graf Station, Admiral—Lord Auditor!” Her voice failed for a second; returned stiffly. “I am sorry, Lord Vorkosigan.”

“I'm not dead yet,” Miles replied rather primly. A new and most unwelcome sensation struggled with the tight fear grinding in his belly. He added, “I'm going to switch off my com link for just a moment. I'll be right back.”

Motioning Roic to keep still, Miles opened the door to the security office, stepped into the corridor, opened his faceplate, leaned over, and vomited onto the floor. No help for it. With an angry swipe, he turned his suit temperature back up. He blinked back the green dizziness, wiped his mouth, went back inside, seated himself again, and called his link back on. “Continue.”

He let Vorpatril's and Greenlaw's arguing voices fade from his attention, and studied his view of Nav and Com more closely. One object had to be there, somewhere . . . ah. There it was, a small, valise-sized cryo-freezer case, set carefully down next to one of the empty station chairs near the door. A standard commercial model, no doubt bought off the shelf from some medical supplier here on Graf Station sometime in the past few days. All of this , this entire diplomatic mess, this extravagant trail of deaths winding across half the Nexus, two empires teetering on the verge of war, came down to that . Miles was reminded of the old Barrayaran folktale, about the evil mutant magician who kept his heart in a box to hide it from his enemies.

Yes . . .

“Greenlaw,” Miles broke in. “Do you have any way to signal back to Corbeau?”

“We designated one of the navigation buoys that broadcasts to the channels of the pilots on cyber-neuro control. We can't get voice communication through it—Corbeau wasn't sure how it would emerge, in his perceptions. We are certain we can get some kind of simple code blink or beep through it.”

“I have a simple message for him. Urgent. Get it through if you possibly can, however you can. Tell him to open all the inner airseal doors in the middle deck of the central nacelle. Kill the security vids there, too, if he can.”

“Why?” she asked suspiciously.

“We have personnel trapped there who are going to die shortly if he doesn't,” Miles replied glibly. Well, it was true.

“Right,” she rapped back. “I'll see what we can do.”

He cut his outgoing voice link, turned in his station chair, and made a throat-cutting motion for Roic to do the same. He leaned forward. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes, m'lord.” Roic's voice was muffled, through the work suit's thicker faceplate, but sufficiently audible; they neither of them had to shout, in this quiet, little space.

“Greenlaw will never order or permit a strike force to be launched to try to capture the ba. Not hers, not ours. She can't. There are too many quaddie lives up for grabs. Trouble is, I don't think this placating approach will make her station any safer. If this ba really murdered a planetary consort, it'll not even blink at a few thousand quaddies. It'll promise cooperation right up to the last, then hit the release switch on its bio-bomb and jump, just for the off chance that the chaos in its wake will delay or disrupt pursuit an extra day or three. Are you with me so far?”

“Yes, m'lord.” Roic's eyes were wide.

“If we can get as close as the door to Nav and Com unseen, I think we have a chance of jumping the ba ourselves. Specifically, you will jump the ba; I will supply a distraction. You'll be all right. Stunner and nerve disruptor fire will pretty much bounce off that work suit. Needler spines wouldn't penetrate immediately either, if it comes to that. And it would take longer than the seconds you'll need to cross that little room for plasma arc fire to burn through it.”

Roic's lips twisted. “What if he just fires at you? That pressure suit's notthat good.”

“The ba won't fire at me. That, I promise you. The Cetagandan haut, and their siblings the ba, are physically stronger than anyone but the dedicated heavy-worlders, but they're not stronger than a power suit. Go for his hands. Hold them. If we get that far, well, the rest will follow.”

“And Corbeau? The poor bastard's starkers. Nothing's gonna stop anything fired at him.”

“Corbeau,” said Miles, “will be the ba's last choice of targets. Ah!” His eyes widened, and he whirled about in his station chair. At the edge of the vid image, half a dozen tiny images in the array were quietly going dark. “Get to the corridor. Get ready to run. As silently as you can.”

From his com link, Vorpatril's volume-reduced voice pleaded heartrendingly for the Imperial Auditor to please reopen his outgoing voice contact. He urged Lady Vorkosigan to request the same.

“Leave him alone,” Ekaterin said firmly. “He knows what he's doing.”

“What is he doing?” Vorpatril wailed.

“Something.” Her voice fell to a whisper. Or perhaps it was a prayer. “Good luck, love.”

Another voice, somewhat offsides, broke in: Captain Clogston. “Admiral? Can you reach Lord Auditor Vorkosigan? We've finished preparing his blood filter and are ready to try it, but he's disappeared out of the infirmary. He was right here a few minutes ago . . .”

“Do you hear that, Lord Vorkosigan?” Vorpatril tried somewhat desperately. “You are to report to the infirmary. Now.”

In ten minutes—five—the medics could have their way with him. Miles pushed up from his station chair—he had to use both hands—and followed Roic into the corridor outside Solian's office.

Up ahead in the dimness, the first airseal door across the corridor hissed quietly aside, revealing the cross-corridor to the other nacelles beyond. On the far side, the next door began to slide.

Roic started trotting. His steps were unavoidably heavy. Miles half-jogged behind. He tried to think how recently he had used his seizure-stimulator, how much at risk he was right now for falling down in a fit from a combination of bad brain chemistry and terror. Middling risky, he decided. No automatic weapons for him this trip anyway. No weapons at all, but for his wits. They seemed a meager arsenal, just at the moment.

The second pair of doors opened for them. Then the third. Miles prayed they were not walking into another clever trap. But he didn't think the ba would have any way of tapping, or even guessing, this oblique line of communication. Roic paused briefly, stepping behind the last door edge, and peered ahead. The door to Nav and Com was shut. He gave a short nod and continued forward, Miles in his shadow. As they drew closer, Miles could see that the control panel to the left of the door had been burned out by some cutting tool, cousin, no doubt, to the one Roic had used. The ba had gone shopping in Engineering, too. Miles pointed at it; Roic's face lightened, and a corner of his mouth turned up. Someone hadn't forgotten to lock the door behind them when they'd last left after all, it appeared.

Roic pointed to himself, to the door; Miles shook his head and motioned him to bend closer. They touched helmets.

“Me first. Gotta grab that case before the ba can react. 'Sides, I need you to pull back the door.”

Roic looked around, inhaled, and nodded.

Miles motioned him back down to touch helmets one more time. “And, Roic? I'm glad I didn't bring Jankowski.”

Roic smiled. Miles stepped aside.

Now. Delay was no one's friend.

Roic bent, splayed his gloved hands across the door, pressed, and pulled. The servos in his suit whined at the load. The door creaked unwillingly aside.

Miles slipped through. He didn't look back, or up. His world had narrowed to one goal, one object. The freezer case—there, still on the floor beside the absent communication officer's station chair. He pounced, grabbed, lifted it up, clutched it to his chest like a shield, like the hope of his heart.

The ba was turning, yelling, lips drawn back, eyes wide, its hand snaking for a pocket. Miles's gloved fingers felt for the catches. If locked, toss the case toward the ba. If unlocked . . .

The case snapped open. Miles yanked it wide, shook it hard, swung it.

A silver cascade, the better part of a thousand tiny tissue-sampling cryo-storage needles, arced out of the case and bounced randomly across the deck. Some shattered as they struck, making tiny crystalline singing noises like dying insects. Some spun. Some skittered, disappearing behind station chairs and into crevices. Miles grinned fiercely.

The yell became a scream; the ba's hands shot out toward Miles as if in supplication, in denial, in despair. The Cetagandan began to stumble toward him, gray face working in shock and disbelief.

Roic's power-suited hands locked down over the ba's wrists and hoisted. Wrist bones crackled and popped; blood spurted between the tightening gloved fingers. The ba's body convulsed as it was lifted up. Wild eyes rolled back. The scream transmuted into a weird wail, trailing away. Sandal-clad feet kicked and drummed uselessly at the heavy shin plating of Roic's work suit; toenails split and bled, without effect. Roic stood stolidly, hands up and apart, racking the ba helplessly in the air.

Miles let the freezer case fall from his fingers. It hit the deck with a thump. With a whispered word, he called back the outgoing audio in his com link. “We've taken the ba prisoner. Send relief troops. In biotainer suits. They won't need their guns now. I'm afraid the ship's an unholy mess.”

His knees were buckling. He sank to the deck himself, giggling uncontrollably. Corbeau was rising from his pilot's chair; Miles motioned him away with an urgent gesture. “Stay back, Dmitri! I'm about to . . .”

He wrenched his faceplate open in time. Barely. The vomiting and spasms that wrung his stomach this time were much worse. It's over. Can I please die now?

Except that it wasn't over, not nearly. Greenlaw had played for fifty thousand lives. Now it was Miles's turn to play for fifty million.