Komarr

CHAPTER TWENTY

Miles barely restrained himself from pressing his face to his courier ship’s airlock window, while waiting for the tube seals from the jump station to finish seating themselves. When the door hissed open at last he swung himself through in one motion, to land on his feet with a thump, and glare around the hatch corridor. His reception committee at the private lock, the ranking ImpSec man aboard and a fellow in blue-and-orange civilian security garb, both braced to attention after only the briefest beat of surprise at his height-he could tell by the way their eyes had to track downward to meet his face-and appearance.

“Lord Auditor Vorkosigan,” the strained-looking ImpSec man, Vorgier, acknowledged Miles. “This is Group-Commander Husavi, who heads Station Security.”

“Captain Vorgier. Commander Husavi. Are there any new developments in the situation in the last,” he glanced at his chrono, “fifteen minutes?” Almost a full three hours had passed since the first message from Vorgier had turned his journey from Komarr orbit into this viscous nightmare of suppressed panic. Never had an ImpSec courier ship seemed to move so slowly, and since no amount of Auditorial screaming at the crew could change the laws of physics, Miles had perforce seethed in silence.

“My men, backed by those of Commander Husavi, are almost into position for our assault,” Vorgier assured him. “We believe we can get an emergency tube seal into place over the outer door of the airlock containing the Vor women before, or almost before, the Komarrans can evacuate the air. The moment the hostages are retrieved, our armored men can enter the Southport bay at will. It will be over in minutes.”

“Too bloody likely,” snapped Miles. “Several engineers have had several hours to prepare for you. These Komarrans may be desperate, but I guarantee they are not stupid. If I can think of putting a pressure-sensitive explosive in the airlock, so can they.”

What a set of mental images Vorgier’s words conjured-a tube seal misapplied or applied too late to the outer skin of the station, Ekaterin’s and the Professora’s bodies blown outward into space-some space-armored ImpSec goon missing his catch-Miles could almost hear his embarrassed, bass Oops over the audio link now, in his mind’s ear. Such a blessing that Vorgier hadn’t confided these details earlier, when Miles would have had all those hours en route to reflect upon them, stuck aboard his courier ship. “The Vor ladies are not expendable. Madame Dr. Vorthys has a weak heart, her husband Lord Auditor Vorthys tells me. And Madame Vorsoisson is-just not expendable. And the Komarrans are the least expendable of all. We want them alive for questioning. Sorry, Captain, but I mislike your plan.”

Vorgier stiffened. “My Lord Auditor. I appreciate your concern, but I believe this will be most quickly and effectively concluded as a military operation. Civilian authority can help best by staying out of the way and letting the professionals do their job.”

The ImpSec deck had dealt him two men in a row of exceptional competence, Tuomonen and Gibbs; why, oh why, couldn’t good things come in threes? They were supposed to, dammit. “This is my operation, Captain, and I will answer personally to the Emperor for every detail of it. I spent the last ten years as an ImpSec galactic agent and I’ve dealt with more damned situations than anyone else on Simon Illyan’s roster and I know just exactly how fucked-up a professional operation can get.” He tapped his chest. “So climb down off your Vor horse and brief me properly.”

Vorgier looked considerably taken aback; Husavi tamped out a smile, which told Miles all too much about how things had been going here. To Vorgier’s credit, he recovered almost instantly, and said, “Come this way, my Lord Auditor, to the operations center. I’ll show you the details, and you can judge for yourself.”

Better. They started off down the corridor, almost quickly enough for Miles’s taste. “Has there been any change or increase in power-draw into the Southport Transport area?”

“Not yet,” Husavi answered. “As you ordered, my engineers shut down their lines to just that necessary to run their life support. I don’t know how much power the Komarrans are able to tap from the local system freighter they have docked there. Soudha has said if we try to capture or remove the ship, they’ll open the airlock on the Vor ladies, so we’ve waited. Our remote sensors don’t indicate any unusual readings from there yet.”

“Good.” Baffling, but good. Miles could not imagine why the Komarrans hadn’t switched on their wormhole-collapsing device yet, in a last-ditch effort to accomplish their long-sought goal. Had Soudha figured out its inherent defect? Corrected it, or tried to? Was it not quite ready yet, and the Komarrans even now frantically preparing it? In any case, once it was powered up they were all in deep-deep, because the Professor and Riva had concluded, with some pretty unreassuring hand-waving, something like a fifty percent probability of an immediate gravitational back-blow from the wormhole the moment it was switched off, ripping the station apart. When Miles had inquired what the technical difference was between a fifty-fifty chance and we don’t know, he hadn’t got a straight answer from them. Further theoretical refinements had come to an abrupt halt, when the news had come through about the stand-off here; the Professor was on his way now to the jump point, just a few hours behind Miles.

They turned a corner and entered a lift-tube. Miles asked, “What’s the current status of the station evacuation?”

Husavi replied, “We’ve waved off all incoming ships that could be diverted. A couple had to dock in order to refuel, or they couldn’t have made it to an alternate station.” He waited till they’d exited into another corridor before continuing. “We’ve managed to remove most of the transient passengers and about five hundred of our nonessential personnel so far.”

“What story are you giving them?”

“We’re telling them it’s a bomb scare.”

“Excellent.” And effectively true.

“Most are cooperating. Some aren’t.”

“Hm.”

“But there’s a serious problem with transportation. There are simply not enough ships in range to remove everyone in less than ten hours.”

“If the power-draw to the Southport bay spikes suddenly, you’ll have to start shuttling people over to the military station.” Though Miles was by no means sure the gravitational event, if it occurred, wouldn’t suck in and damage or destroy the military station as well. “They’ll have to help out.”

“Captain Vorgier and I discussed this possibility with the military commander, my lord. He wasn’t happy with the prospect of a sudden influx of, um, randomly selected, uncleared persons onto his station.”

Miles bet not. “I’ll speak with him.” He sighed. Vorgier’s “operations center” turned out to be the local ImpSec offices; the central communications chamber did indeed bear a passing resemblance to a warship’s tactics room, Miles had to allow. Vorgier called up a holovid display of the Southport docks and locks area, one with rather better technical detail than the one Miles had spent the last hour studying.

He ran over the expected placement of his men and the projected timing and technique of his assault. It wasn’t a bad plan, as assaults went. In his youth, out on covert ops, Miles had come up with things just as bravura and idiotic on equally short notice. All right… more idiotic, he admitted ruefully himself. Someday, Miles, his boss ImpSec Chief Simon Illyan had once said to him, I hope you live to have a dozen subordinates just like you. Miles hadn’t realized till now that had been a formal curse on Illyan’s part.

Vorgier’s sales pitch kept fading out in Miles’s mind, displaced by an instant-replay of the recording of the last message from Ekaterin, which Vorgier had thoughtfully supplied Miles by tight-beam. He’d memorized every nuance of it in the last three hours. I’m in a loading bay control booth-they’re forcing the door open— She hadn’t said anything about the novel device. Unless some report had been going to follow the Tell Lord Vorkosigan-tell ImpSec-part, which had been rudely interrupted by the red-faced Soudha’s paw abruptly descending on the comconsole control. Nothing could be seen in the fuzzy background, however computer-enhanced, but the bay control booth. And the mathematician, Cappell, gripping wrench he looked ready to use for something other than tightening bolts, but evidently hadn’t; ImpSec had received vids in the loading bay airlock’s safety channel of both women being bundled alive into it, before Soudha had cut off the signal off. Those brief images too burned in Miles’s brain. “All right, Captain Vorgier,” Miles interrupted. “Hold your plan as a possible last resort.”

“To be implemented under what circumstances, my Lord Auditor?”

Over my dead body, Miles did not reply. Vorgier might not understand it wasn’t a joke. “Before we start blowing walls in, I want to try to negotiate with Soudha and his friends.”

“These are Komarran terrorists. Madmen-you can’t negotiate with them!”

The late Baron Ryoval had been a madman. The late Ser Galen had been a madman, without question. And the late General Metzov hadn’t exactly been rowing with both oars in the water, either, come to think of it. Miles had to admit, there had been a definite negative trend to all those negotiations. “I’m not without experience in the problem, Vorgier. But I don’t think Dr. Soudha is a madman. He’s not even a mad scientist. He’s merely a very upset engineer. These Komarrans may in fact be the most sensible revolutionaries I’ve ever met.”

He stood a moment, staring unseeing at Vorgier’s colorful, ominous tactical display, the logistics of the station evacuation warring in his head with guesses about the Komarrans’ state of mind. Delusion, political passion, personality, judgment… visions of Ekaterin’s terror and despair spun in his back-brain. If so spacious a containment as a Komarran dome gave her claustrophobia… stop it. He pictured a thick sheet of glass sliding down between him and that personal maelstrom of anxiety. If his authority here was absolute, so was his obligation to keep his thinking clear.

“Every hour buys lives. We’ll play for time. Get me a channel to the military station’s commander,” Miles ordered. “After that, we’ll see whether Soudha will answer his comconsole.”

The deliberately blank chamber in which Miles sat might as easily have been on the nearby military station, or a ship lying several thousand kilometers off-station, as the few hundred meters from the Southport bay it actually was. Soudha’s location, when his face formed at last over the vid-plate, was not so anonymous; he sat in the same glass-walled control booth from which Ekaterin had sent her alarm. Miles wondered what techs were monitoring the corridors for moves on ImpSec’s part, and who was keeping a nervous finger on the personnel airlock’s outer door control. Had they arranged it as a dead-man’s switch?

Soudha’s face was drawn and sincerely weary, no more the bland bluff liar. Lena Foscol sat tensely to the right of his station chair on a rolling stool, looking like some frumpy vizier. Madame Radovas too looked on, her face half-shadowed behind him, and Cappell stood off to the side, almost out of focus. Good. A Komarran stockholders’ voting quorum, if he read the signs right. At least they honored his Imperial Auditor’s authority to that extent.

“Good evening, Dr. Soudha,” Miles began.

“You’re out here?” Soudha’s brows rose as he took in the lack of transmission lag.

“Yes, well, unlike Administrator Vorsoisson, I got out of my chains at the experiment station alive. I still don’t know if you intended me to survive.”

“He didn’t really die, did he?” Foscol interrupted.

“Oh, yes.” Miles made his voice deliberately soft. “I got to watch, just as you arranged. Every filthy minute of it. It was a remarkably ugly death.”

She fell silent. Soudha said, “This is all beside the point now. The only message we want to receive from you people is that you have the jumpship ready to transport us to the nearest neutral space-Pol, or Escobar-whereupon you will get your Vor ladies back. If it’s not that, I’m cutting this com.”

“I have a few pieces of free information for you, first,” said Miles. “I don’t think they’re ones you anticipate.”

Soudha’s hand hovered. “Go on.”

“I’m afraid your wormhole-collapser no longer qualifies as a secret weapon. We caught up with your specs on file at Bollan Design. Professor Vorthys invited Dr. Riva, of Solstice University, in to consult. Are you aware of her reputation?”

Soudha nodded warily; Cappell’s eyes widened. Madame Radovas stared wearily. Foscol looked deeply suspicious.

“Well, putting together your specs, the data from the soletta accident, and Riva’s physics-there was a mathematician by the name of Dr. Yuell in there too, if the name means anything to you-the Empire’s top failure analyst and the Empire’s top five-space expert have concluded that you did not, in fact, manage to invent a wormhole-collapser. What you managed to invent was a wormhole-boomerang. Riva says that when the five-space waves amplified the wormhole’s resonance past its phase boundaries, instead of collapsing, the wormhole returned the energy to three-space in the form of a gravitational pulse. Tangling with this pulse was what destroyed the soletta array and the ore ship, and-I’m sorry, Madame Radovas-killed Dr. Radovas and Marie Trogir. The probable-cause crew finally found her body a few hours ago, I regret to report, wrapped up in some of the wreckage they’d retrieved almost a week back.”

Only a puff of breath from Cappell marked his grief, but water glittered in his eyes. Check, thought Miles. I thought he’d protested too much. Nobody looked surprised, merely oppressed.

“So if you succeed in getting your thing working, what you will actually do is destroy this station, the five thousand or so people aboard, and yourselves. And tomorrow morning, Barrayar will still be there.” Miles let his voice fall to a near whisper. “All for nothing, and less than nothing.”

“He lies,” said Foscol fiercely into the shocked silence. “He lies.”

Soudha gave a weird snort, ran his hands through his hair, and shook his head. Then, to Miles’s dismay, he laughed out loud.

Cappell stared at his colleague. “Do you really think that’s why? That it malfunctioned like that?”

“It would explain,” began Soudha. “It would explain… oh, God.” He trailed off. “I thought it was the ore ship,” he said at last. “Interfering somehow.”

“I should also mention,” Miles put in, still uneasily watching Soudha’s odd reaction, “that ImpSec has arrested all the Waste Heat personnel and their families you left back at the Southport Transport facility at Solstice. And then there are all your other relatives and friends, the innocents who knew nothing. The hostage game is a bad game, a sad and ugly game that’s a lot easier to start than end. The worst versions I’ve seen ended up with neither side in control, or getting anything they wanted. And the people who stand to lose the most in it frequently aren’t even playing.”

“Barrayaran threats.” Foscol lifted her chin. “Do you think, after all this, we can’t stand up to you?”

“I’m sure you can, but for what reason? There aren’t too many prizes left in this mess. The biggest one is gone; you can’t shut off Barrayar. You can’t keep your secret or shield anyone you left behind on Komarr. About the only thing you can do now is kill more innocent people. Great goals can call for great sacrifices, yes, but your possible rewards are steadily shrinking.” Yes, that was it; don’t raise the pressure, lower the wall.

“We did not,” husked Cappell, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, “go through all this just to deliver the weapon of the century straight into Barrayaran hands.”

“It’s already there. As a weapon, it appears to have some fundamental defects, so far. But Riva says there’s evidence you got more power out of the wormhole than you put into it. This suggests possible future peaceful, economic uses, when the phenomena are better understood.”

“Really?” said Soudha, sitting up. “How did she figure? What are her numbers?”

“Soudha!” said Foscol reprovingly. Madame Radovas winced, and Soudha subsided, albeit reluctantly, staring at Miles through narrowed eyes.

“On the other hand,” Miles continued, “until further research assures us that collapsing a wormhole is indeed quite impossible, none of you are going anywhere, and especially not to any other planetary government. It’s one of those ugly military decisions, y’know? And I’m afraid it’s mine.” The Vor ladies are not expendable, he’d told Vorgier. Was he lying then, or now? Well, if he couldn’t figure it out, maybe the Komarrans couldn’t either.

“You are all headed, inexorably, for a Barrayaran prison,” he went on. “The devil’s bargain part about being Vor, which lot of people including some Vor overlook, is that our lives are made for sacrifice. There is no threat, no torture, no slow murder you can apply to two Barrayaran women that will change your outcome.”

Was this the right tack? Above the vid-plate their listening images were undersized, a little ghostly, hard to read. Miles wished he were having this conversation face-to-face. Half the subliminal clues, of body language, of the subtle nuances of expression and voice, were washed out in transmission and unavailable to his instincts. But handing himself over to them person to augment their hostage collection could only have served to stiffen their wavering resolve. The memory of a woman’s hand, slipping through his fingers into a screaming fog, flickered through his mind; his fists clenched helplessly in his lap. Never again, you said. Not expendable, you said. He watched the Komarrans’ faces intently for all flickers of expression he could get, reflections of truth, lies, belief, suspicion, trust.

“There are advantages to prisons,” he went on persuasively, “Some of them are comfortably furnished, and unlike graves, sometimes, eventually, you can get out of them again. Now, I am willing, in exchange for your peaceful surrender and cooperation, to personally guarantee your lives. Not, note, your freedom-that will have to wait. But time passes, old crises are succeeded by new ones, people change their minds. Live ones do, anyway. There are always those amnesties, in celebration of this or that public event-the birth of an Imperial heir, for instance. I doubt any of you will be forced to spend as much as a full decade in prison.”

“Some offer,” said Foscol bitterly.

Miles let his brows rise. “It’s an honest one. You have a better hope of amnesty than Tien Vorsoisson does. That ore freighter pilot will enjoy no visits from her children. I reviewed her autopsy, did I mention? All the autopsies. If I have a moral claim, it’s that I’m bargaining away the rights of the dead soletta-keepers’ families to any justice for their slain. There ought to be civil trials for manslaughter over this.”

Even Foscol looked away at these words.

Good. Go on. The more time he burned, the better, and they were tracking his arguments; as long as he could keep Soudha from cutting the com, he was making some twisty sort of progress. “You bitch endlessly about Barrayaran tyranny, but somehow I don’t think you folks took a vote of all Komarran planetary shareholders, before you attempted to seal-or steal— their future. And if you could have, I don’t think you would have dared. Twenty years ago, even fifteen years ago, maybe you could have counted on majority support. By ten years ago, it was already too late. Would your fellows really want to close off their nearest market now, and lose all that trade? Lose all their relatives who’ve moved to Barrayar, and their half-Barrayaran grandchildren? Your trade fleets have found their Barrayaran military escorts bloody useful often enough. Who are the true tyrants here-the blundering Barrayarans who seek, however awkwardly, to include Komarr in their future, or the Komarran intellectual elitists who seek to exclude all but themselves from it?” He took a deep breath to control the unexpected anger which had boiled up with his words, aware he was teetering on the edge with these people. Watch it, watch it. “So all that remains for us is to try and salvage as many lives as possible from the wreckage.”

After a little time, Madame Radovas asked, “How would you guarantee our lives?” They were the first words she had spoken, though she had listened intently throughout.

“By my order, as an Imperial Auditor. Only Emperor Gregor himself could gainsay it.”

“So… why won’t Emperor Gregor gainsay it?” asked Cappell skeptically.

“He’s not going to be happy about any of this,” Miles answered frankly. And I’m going to have to give him the report, God help me. “But… if I lay my word on the line, I don’t think he’ll deny me.” He hesitated. “Or else I will have to resign.”

Foscol snorted. “How nice for us, to know that after we are dead, you will resign. What a consolation.”

Soudha rubbed his lips, watching Miles… watching his truncated image, Miles reminded himself. He was not the only one missing body cues. The engineer was silent, thinking… what?

“Your word?” Cappell grimaced. “Do you know what a Vorkosigan’s word means to us?”

“Yes,” said Miles levelly. “Do you know what it means to me?”

Madame Radovas tilted her head, and her quiet stare became, if possible, more focused.

Miles leaned forward into the vid pickup. “My word is all that stands between you and ImpSec’s aspiring heroes coming through your walls. They don’t need the corridors, you know. My word went down on my Auditor’s oath, which holds me at this moment unblinking to a duty I find more terrific than you can know. I only have one name’s oath. It cannot be true to Gregor if it is false to you. But if there’s one thing my father’s heartbreaking experience at Solstice taught, it’s that I’d better not put my word down on events I do not control. If you surrender quietly, I can control what happens. If ImpSec has to detain you by force, it will be up to chance, chaos, and the reflexes of some overexcited young men with guns and gallant visions of thwarting mad Komarran terrorists.”

“We are not terrorists,” said Foscol hotly.

“No? You’ve succeeded in terrifying me,” Miles said bleakly. Her lips thinned, but Soudha looked less certain.

“If you unleash ImpSec, the consequences will be your doing,” said Cappell.

“Almost correct,” Miles agreed. “If I unleash ImpSec, the consequences will be my responsibility. It’s that devil’s distinction between being in charge and being in control. I’m in charge; you’re in control. You can imagine how much this thrills me.”

Soudha snorted. One corner of Miles’s mouth tilted up in unwilling response. Yeah, Soudha knows all about that one, too.

Foscol leaned forward. “This is all a smoke screen. Captain Vorgier said they were sending for a jumpship. Where’s it?”

“Vorgier was lying for time, which was his clear duty. There will not be a jumpship.” Shit, that did it. There were only two ways this could go now. There were only two ways it could go before.

“We have a pair of hostages. Do we have to space one of them to prove we’re serious?”

“I believe you are deathly serious. Which one gets to watch, the aunt or the niece?” Miles asked softly, settling back again. “You claim to not be mad terrorists, and I believe you. You’re not. Yet. You are also not murderers; I actually accept that all the deaths you’ve left in your wake were accidents. So far. But I also know that line gets easier to slip over with practice. Please observe that you have now gone as far as you can without turning yourselves into a perfect replica of the enemy you set out to oppose.”

He let those last words hang in the air for a time, for emphasis.

“Vorkosigan’s right, I think,” said Soudha unexpectedly. “We’ve come to the end of our choices. Or to the beginning of another set. One that isn’t the set I signed up for.”

“We have to stick together, or it’s no good,” said Foscol urgently. “If we have to space one of them, I vote for that hell-cat Vorsoisson.”

“Would you do it with your own hands?” said Soudha slowly. “Because I think I decline.”

“Even after what she did to us?”

What in God’s name did gentle Ekaterin do to you? Miles kept his expression as blank as he could, his body still.

Soudha hesitated. “Seems it made no difference after all.”

Cappell and Madame Radovas both began to speak at once, but Soudha held up a restraining hand. He blew out his breath like a man in pain. “No. Let us continue as we began. The choice is plain. Stop now-unconditional surrender-or call Vorkosigan’s bluff. Now, it’s no secret to you I thought the time to go into hiding for a later try was before we ever left Komarr.”

“I’m sorry I voted against you the last time,” Cappell said to Soudha.

Soudha shrugged. “Yeah, well… If we’re going to quit, the time’s come.”

No, it hasn’t, Miles thought frantically. This was too abrupt. There was time for another ten hours of chit chat at the very least. He wanted to slide them to surrender, not stampede them to suicide. Or murder. If they believed him about the defects of their device, as they appeared to, it must soon occur to them that they could hold the whole station hostage, if they didn’t mind the self-immolating aspect. Well, if they weren’t going to think of that themselves, far be it from him to point it out. He leaned back in his station chair, and chewed on the side of his finger, and watched, and listened.

“There’s no benefit in waiting, either way,” Soudha went on. “The risk increases every minute. Lena?”

“No surrender,” said Foscol sturdily. “We go on.” And more bleakly, “Somehow.”

“Cappell?”

The mathematician hesitated a long time. “I can’t stand that Marie died for nothing. Hold out.”

“Myself…” Soudha let his big square hand fall open. “Stop. Now that we’ve lost surprise, this goes nowhere. The only question is how long it takes to arrive.” He turned to Madame Radovas.

“Oh. My turn already? I didn’t want to go last.”

“Yours would be the tie-breaking vote in any case,” said Soudha.

Madame Radovas fell silent, staring out the control booth’s glass-at the airlock door, across the bay? Miles’s gaze could but help following hers; her turn back caught him at it, and he flinched.

You’ve done it now, boy. Ekaterin’s life and your soul’s oath hang on a frigging Komarran shareholders’ debate. How did you let this happen? This wasn’t in the plans… His eye relocated, and ignored, the code on his comconsole that would launch Vorgier and his waiting troops.

Madame Radovas’s gaze returned to window. She said, to no one in particular, “Our safety before always depended on secrecy. Now even if we get to Pol or Escobar, or further, ImpSec will follow us. There would not ever be a safe time give up our hostages. In exile or not, it will be prisons, always prisoners. I’m tired of being a prisoner, of hope, of fear.”

“You were not a prisoner!” said Foscol. “You were one of us, I thought.”

Madame Radovas looked across at her. “I supported my husband. If I hadn’t-he would still be alive. Lena, I’m tired.” Foscol said tentatively, “Maybe you should rest, before deciding.”

The look she got from Madame Radovas in return for that line made her drop her eyes, and look away. Madame Radovas said to Soudha, “Do you believe him, about the device not working?”

Soudha frowned deeply. “Yes. I’m afraid so. Or I would have acted differently.”

“Poor Barto.” She stared at Miles for a long time in an almost detached wonder.

Encouraged by her apparent dispassion, he asked curiously, why is your vote the tie-breaker?”

“The scheme was my husband’s idea, originally. This obsession has dominated my life for seven years. His voting share is always considered the greatest.”

How very Komarran. Then Soudha had actually been the second-in-command, forced into the dead man’s shoes… was all amazingly irrelevant now. Maybe they’ll name it after him. The Radovas Effect. Belike. “We are both heirs, of a sort, then.”

“Indeed.” The widow’s lips twisted. “You know, I will never forget the look on your face when that fool Vorsoisson told you there was no place on his forms for an Imperial order. I almost laughed out loud, despite it all.”

Miles smiled briefly, scarcely daring to breathe.

Madame Radovas shook her head in disbelief, but not, he thought, of his promises. “Well, Lord Vorkosigan… I’ll take your word. And find out what it’s worth.” She searched the faces of each of her three colleagues, but when she spoke, she looked at him. “I vote to stop now.”

Miles waited tensely for signs of dissension, protest, internal revolt. Cappell struck his fist on the booth’s glass wall, which reverberated, and turned away, his features working. Foscol buried her face in her hands. After that, silence.

“That’s it, then,” said Soudha, bleakly exhausted. Miles wondered if the news of the device’s inherent defect had sapped his will more than any argument. “We surrender, on your word for our lives. Lord Auditor Vorkosigan.” He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. “Now what?”

“A lot of sensible slow moves. First I gently detach ImpSec from its vision of a heroic assault. They were getting pretty worked up, out here. Then you inform the rest of your group. Then disarm whatever booby-traps you’ve set, and pile any weapons you may possess well away from yourselves. Unlock the doors. Then sit down quietly on the loading bay floor with your hands behind your heads. At that point, I’ll let the boys in.” He added prudently, “Please avoid sudden movements, that sort of thing.”

“So be it.” Soudha cut his comm; the Komarrans winked out. Miles shuddered in sudden disorientation, alone again in his little sealed room. The screaming man behind the glass wall in his mind was getting out a battering ram, it felt like.

Miles opened the channel on his comconsole and ordered a medical squad to accompany the arresting officers from ImpSec and Station Security, who were to be armed with stunners and stunners only. He repeated that last command a couple of times, to be sure. He felt as if he’d spent a century in his station chair. When he tried to stand up, he nearly fell over. Then he ran.

Miles’s only compromise with Vorgier’s anxiety for the Imperial Auditor’s personal safety was to march down the ramp into the Southport loading bay behind instead of in front of the security team. The ten or so Komarrans, sitting cross-legged on the floor, twisted around to watch as the Barrayarans entered. After Miles came the tech squad, which spread out looking for booby-traps, and behind them the medical team with a float pallet.

The first thing which caught Miles’s eye after the live target inventory was the upside-down float cradle in the middle of the bay, atop a pile of tangled wreckage. He was able, barely, to recognize it from the diagrams he’d seen back on Komarr of the fifth novel device. His heart lifted at this inexplicable, welcome sight.

He walked around it, staring, and came up to where Soudha was being frisked down and restrained. “My goodness. Your wormhole-collapser appears to have met with an accident. But it won’t do you any good. We have the plans.” Cappell and a man Miles recognized as the engineer who’d fled from Bollan Design stood nearby, glowering at him; Foscol struggled into earshot, barely controlled by her female arresting officer.

“It wasn’t us,” sighed Soudha. “It was her.” A jerk of his thumb drew Miles’s attention to the inner door of the bay’s personnel airlock. A metal bar was placed crookedly across the airseal door’s jamb; the ends were melted onto floor and wall respectively.

Miles’s eyes widened, and his lips parted in breathless anticipation. “Her?”

“The bitch from hell. Or Barrayar, which is almost the same thing to hear her tell it. Madame Vorsoisson.”

“Remarkable.” The source of several oddly tilted responses on the Komarrans’ part to his recent negotiations began at last to come clear to Miles. “Um… how?”

All three Komarrans tried to answer him at once, with a medley of blame-casting which included a lot of phrases like, if Madame Radovas hadn’t let her out, If you hadn’t let Radovas let her out, How was I supposed to know? The old lady looked sick to me. Still does. If you hadn’t put the remote down right front of her, If you hadn’t left the damned control booth, If you had just moved faster, If you had run for the float cradle and cut the power, So why didn’t you think of that, huh? by which Miles slowly pieced together the most glorious mental picture he’d had all day. All year. For quite a long time, actually.

I’m in love. I’m in love. I just thought I was in love, before, now I really am. I must, I must, I must have this woman! Mine, mine, mine. Lady Ekaterin Nile Vorvayne Vorsoisson Vorkosigan, yes! She’d left nothing here for ImpSec and all the Emperor’s Auditors to do but sweep up the bits. He wanted to roll on the floor and howl with joy, which would be most undiplomatic of him, under the circumstances. He kept his face neutral, and very straight. Somehow, he didn’t think the Komarrans appreciated the exquisite delight of it all.

“When we stuffed her in the airlock I welded it shut,” said Soudha morosely. “I wasn’t going to let her do us a third time.” “Third time?” Miles said. “If that was the second, what was the first?”

“When that idiot Arozzi first brought her down here, she damn near blew the whole thing right then by hitting the emergency alarm.”

Miles glanced aside at the alarm on the nearby wall. “And then what happened?”

“We had a sudden influx of station accident control. I thought I’d never get rid of them.”

“Ah. I see.” How curious. Vorgier never mentioned that part. Later. “You mean we’ve spent the last five hours scrambling to evacuate this station for nothing?”

Soudha smiled sourly. “You coming to me for sympathy, Barrayaran?”

“Heh. Never mind.”

Most of the prisoners were formed up and marched out; with a gesture, Miles ordered Soudha to be held behind.

“Moment of truth, Soudha. Have you booby-trapped this thing?”

“There is a motion-sensitive charge attached to the outer door. Opening it from this side should not set it off.”

With iron self-control, Miles watched as an ImpSec tech torched off the metal bar. It fell to the deck with a clang. He paused in one last moment of sick fear.

“What are you waiting for?” asked Soudha curiously.

“Just pondering the depth of your political ingenuity. Suppose this is set to go off and snatch our prize from us at the last.”

“Now? Why? It’s over,” said Soudha.

“Revenge. Manipulation. Maybe you figure to drive me berserk and trigger a repeat of the Solstice Massacre all over again, writ somewhat smaller. That could be a propaganda coup. Whether it would be worth spending your lives for is all in your point of view, of course. Properly massaged, the incident could help start a new Komarr Revolt, I suppose.”

“You have a really twisted mind, Lord Vorkosigan,” said Soudha, shaking his head. “Was it your upbringing, or your genetics?”

“Yes.” Miles sighed. After a brief moment of reflection, Miles waved the guards on, and Soudha was marched out after his colleagues.

After a go-ahead nod from the Imperial Auditor, the tech tapped the control pad. The inner door whined, sticking halfway. Miles pressed it gently sideways with his boot, and it shuddered open.

Ekaterin was on her feet, between the inner door and the Professora, who sat on the deck wearing her niece’s vest over her own bolero. Ekaterin’s face bore a red bruise, her hair was hanging every which way, her fists were clenched, and she looked perfectly demented and altogether gorgeous, in Miles’s personal opinion. Smiling broadly, he held out both his hands and leaned inside.

She glared back at him. “About time.” She stalked past, muttering in a voice of loathing, “Men!”

After the briefest lurch, Miles managed to convert his open arms into a smooth bow toward the Professora. “Madame Dr. Vorthys. Are you all right?”

“Why, hello, Miles.” She blinked at him, gray faced and very chilled-looking. “I’ve been better, but I believe I’ll survive. ”

“I have a float pallet for you. These sturdy young men will help you to it.”

“Oh, thank you, dear.”

Miles stood back and waved the medtechs forward. The Professora looked perfectly content to be whisked aboard the medical pallet and covered with warm wraps. A cursory examination and a few words of debate resulted in a half-dose of synergine for her, but no IV; then the pallet rose into the air.

“The Professor will be here shortly,” Miles assured her. “In fact, he’ll likely be along before you both are done at the station infirmary. I’ll see he gets sent straight on to you.”

“I’m so pleased.” The Professora motioned him nearer; when he bent over her, she grabbed him by the ear and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Ekaterin was wonderful,” she whispered.

“I know,” he breathed. His eyes crinkled, and she smiled back.

He stepped back from the pallet to Ekaterin’s side, hoping her aunt’s example might inspire her-he wouldn’t mind salvaging some little show of appreciation-“You didn’t seem surprised to see me,” he murmured. The pallet started off, under the guidance of a medtech, and he and Ekaterin followed in procession; the ImpSec technicians politely waited till they’d cleared the chamber to plunge in to the airlock to disarm the charge.

Ekaterin shoved a strand of hair back over one ear with a hand that trembled only slightly. Red bruises glared on her arms, too, as her sleeve slid back. Miles frowned at them. “I knew it had to be our side,” she said simply. “Or else it would have been the other door.”

“Eh. Quite.” Three hours, she’d had, to contemplate that possibility. “My fast courier was slow.”

They turned up the next corridor in reflective silence. Gratifying as it might have been to have her fling herself into his arms and weep relief into-well, if not his shoulder, at least the top of his head-in front of that herd of ImpSec fellows, he had to admit he admired this style even more. So what is this thing you have about tall women and unrequited love? His cousin Ivan would doubtless have some cutting things to say-he growled in anticipation, in his mind. He would deal with Ivan and other hazards to his courtship later.

“Do you know you saved about five thousand lives?” he asked her.

Her dark brows drew down. “What?”

“The novel device was defective. If the Komarrans had managed to get it started, the gravitational back-blow from the wormhole would have taken out this station just like the soletta array, possibly with as few survivors. And I shudder at the thought of the property damage bill. To think how Illyan used to complain about my equipment losses back when I was just covert ops…”

“You mean… it didn’t work after all? I did all that for nothing?” She stopped short, her shoulders sagging.

“What do you mean, nothing? I’ve met Imperial generals who completed their entire careers with less to show for them. You should get a bloody medal, I think. Except that this whole thing is going to end up so classified, they’re going to have to invent a whole new level of classification just to put it in. And then classify the classification.”

Her lips puffed, not quite mirthfully. “What would I do with so useless an object as a medal?”

He thought bemusedly of the contents of a certain drawer at home in Vorkosigan House. “Frame it? Use it as a paperweight? Dust it?”

“Just what I always wanted. More clutter.”

He grinned at her; she smiled back at last, clearly beginning to come off her adrenaline jag, and without breaking down, either. She drew breath and started forward again, and he kept pace. She had met the enemy, mastered her moment, hung three hours on death’s doorstep, all that, and she’d emerged still on her feet and snarling. Oversocialized, hah. Oh, yeah, Da, I want this one.

He stopped at the door to the infirmary; the Professora vanished within, borne off by her medical minions like a lady on a palanquin. Ekaterin paused with him.

“I have to leave you for a time and check on my prisoners. The stationers will take care of you.”

Her brow wrinkled. “Prisoners? Oh. Yes. How did you get rid of the Komarrans?”

Miles smiled grimly. “Persuasion.”

She stared down at him, one side of her lovely mouth curving up. Her lower lip was split; he wanted to kiss it and make it well. Not yet. Timing, boy. And one other thing.

“You must be very persuasive.”

“I hope so.” He took a deep breath. “I bluffed them into believing that I wouldn’t let them go no matter what they did to you and the Professora. Except that I wasn’t bluffing. We could not have let them go.” There. Betrayal confessed. His empty hands clenched.

She stared at him in disbelief; his heart shrank. “Well, of course not!”

“Eh… what?”

“Don’t you know what they wanted to do to Barrayar?” she demanded. “It was a horror show. Utterly vile, and they couldn’t even see it. They actually tried to tell me that collapsing the wormhole wouldn’t hurt anyone! Monstrous fools.”

“That’s what I thought, actually.”

“So, wouldn’t you put your life on the line to stop them?”

“Yes, but I wasn’t putting my life-I was putting yours.”

“But I’m Vor,” she said simply.

His smile and his heart revived, dizzy with delight. “True Vor, milady,” he breathed.

A female medtech was approaching, murmuring anxiously, “Madame Vorsoisson?” Miles yielded to her shepherding motions, gave Ekaterin an analyst’s salute, and turned away. He was humming, off-key, by the time he rounded the first corner.