The Warrior`s Apprentice

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The three ships dove and wove in an intricate evasion pattern. Around them, twenty more darted, as if hawks hunted in packs. The three ships sparked, blue, red, yellow, then dissolved in a brilliant rainbow glare.

Miles leaned back in his station chair in the Triumph's tactics room and rubbed his bleary eyes. "Scratch that idea." He vented a long sigh. If he couldn't be a soldier, perhaps he had a future as a designer of fireworks displays.

Elena drifted in, munching a ration bar. "That looked pretty. What was it?"

Miles held up a didactic finger. "I have just discovered my twenty-third new way to get killed this week." He waved toward the holograph display. "That was it."

Elena glanced across the room to her father, apparently asleep, on the friction matting. "Where is everybody?"

"Catching sleep. I'm just as glad not to have an audience while I attempt to teach myself first-year tactics. They might begin to doubt my genius."

She gave him an odd look. "Miles—how serious are you about this blockade busting?"

He glanced up to the outside screens, which showed the same boring view of what might be called the backside of the metals refinery they had displayed since the ship had been parked after the counterattack. The Triumph was now being dubbed Miles's flagship. With the arrival of the Felician forces, filling the refinery's crews quarters, he had decamped, secretly relieved, from the squalid luxury of the executive suite to the more restful austerity of Tung's former quarters.

"I don't know. It's been two weeks since the Felicians promised us that fast courier to leg on out of here, and they haven't produced it yet. We're going to at least have to break through the blockade …" He hastened to erase the worry in her face. "At least it gives me something to do while we wait. This machine is more fun than chess or Strat-O any day."

He hopped up, and gestured her with a courtly bow toward the next station chair. "Look, I'll teach you how to operate it. Show you a game or two. You'll be good."

"Well …"

He introduced her to a couple of elementary tactics patterns, demystifying them by calling them "play." "Captain Koudelka and I used to play something like this." She caught on quickly. It had to be some kind of criminal injustice, that Ivan Vorpatril was even now deeply engaged in officer's training for which Elena could not even be considered.

He went through his half of the patterns automatically, while his mind circled again around his real life military dilemma. This was just the sort of thing he would have been taught how to do at the Imperial Service Academy, he thought with an inward sigh. There was probably a book on it. He wished he had a copy; he was getting mortally tired of having to re-invent the wheel every fifteen minutes. Although it was just barely possible there was no way for three small warships and a battered freighter to take out an entire mercenary fleet. The Felicians could offer little assistance, beyond the use of the refinery as a base. Of course, Miles's presence there benefited them at least as much as their support did him, as Pelian-repellant.

He glanced up at Elena, and pushed the importunate strategic hassles from his mind. Her strength and sharpness were blooming these days, in her new challenges. All she'd ever needed was a chance, it seemed. Baz shouldn't have it all his own way. He glanced over to see if Bothari was really asleep, and screwed up his courage. The tactics room with its swivel chairs was not well-arranged for nuzzling, but he would try. He went to her shoulder, and leaned over it, manufacturing some helpful instruction.

"Mr. Naismith?" blatted the intercom. It was Captain Auson, calling from Nav and Com. "Put the outside channels on, I'm coming down."

Miles snapped out of his haze, cursing silently. "What's up?"

"Tung's back."

"Uh, oh. Better scramble everybody."

"I am."

"What's he brought? Can you tell yet?"

"Yes, it's strange. He's standing just out of range in what looks like a Pelian inner-system passenger ship, maybe a little troop-carrier or something, and saying he wants to talk. With you. Probably a trick."

Miles frowned, mystified. "Well, pipe it down, then. But keep scrambling."

In moments the Eurasian's familiar face appeared, larger than life. Bothari was now up, at his usual post by the door, silent as ever; he and Elena didn't talk much since the incident in the damaged prison section. But then, they never had.

"How do you do, Captain Tung. We meet again, I see." The subtle vibrations of the ship changed, as it powered up and began to move into open space.

"We do indeed." Tung smiled, tight and fierce. "Is that job offer still open, son?"

The two shuttles sandwiched themselves together, belly to belly like a pair of mismatched limpets, in space midway between their mother ships. There the two men met face-to-face in privacy, but for Bothari, tense and discreet just out of earshot, and Tung's pilot, who remained equally discreetly aboard Tung's shuttle.

"My people are loyal to me," said Tung. "I can place them at your service, every one."

"You realize," Miles pointed out mildly, "that if you wished to re-take your ship, that would be an ideal ploy. Load my forces with yours, and strike at will. Can you prove you're not a Trojan Horse?"

Tung sighed agreement. "Only as you proved that memorable lunch was not drugged. In the eating."

"Mm." Miles pulled himself back down into his seat in the gravityless shuttle, as if he could so impose orientation on body and mind. He offered Tung a soft-drink bulb, which Tung accepted without hesitation or comment. They both drank, Miles sparingly; his stomach was already starting to protest null-gee. "You also realize, I cannot give you your ship back. All I have to offer at the moment is a captured Pelian putt-putt, and perhaps the title of Staff Officer."

"Yes, I understand that."

"You'll have to work with both Auson and Thorne, without bringing up, um, past frictions."

Tung looked less than enthusiastic, but he replied, "If I have to, I can even do that." He snapped a squirt of fruit juice out of the air. Practice, thought Miles enviously.

"My payroll, for the moment, is entirely in Felician millifenigs. Do you, ah—know about millifenigs?"

"No, but at a guess from the Felician's strategic situation, I'd suppose they'd make an eye-catching toilet paper."

That's about right." Miles frowned. "Captain Tung. After going to a great deal of trouble to escape two weeks ago, you have gone to what looks like an equal amount of trouble to return to join what can only be described as the losing side. You know you can't have your ship back, you know your pay is at best problematical—I can't believe it's all for my native charm. Why?"

"It wasn't that much trouble. That delightful young lady—remind me to kiss her hand—let me out," observed Tung.

"That 'delightful young lady' is Commander Bothari to you, sir, and considering what you owe her, you can bloody well confine yourself to saluting her," snapped Miles, surprising himself. He swallowed a squirt of fruit drink to hide his confusion.

Tung raised his eyebrows, and smiled. "I see."

Miles dragged his mind back to the present. "Again. Why?"

Tung's face hardened. "Because you are the only force in local space with a chance of giving Oser a prick in the ass."

"And just when did you acquire this motivation?"

Hard, yes, and inward. "He violated our contract. In the event of losing my ship in combat, he owed me another command."

Miles jerked his chin up, inviting Tung to go on.

Tung's voice lowered. "He had a right to chew me out, yes, for my mistakes—but he had no right to humiliate me before my people …" His hands were clenched, ivory-knuckled, on the arms of his seat. His drink bulb floated away, forgotten.

Miles's imagination filled in the picture. Admiral Oser, angry and shocked at this sudden defeat after a year of easy victories, losing his temper, mishandling Tung's hot damaged pride—foolish, that, when it would have been so easy to turn that pride redoubled to his own service—yes, it rang true.

"And so you come to my hand. Ah—with all your officers, you say? Your pilot officer?" Escape, escape in Tung's ship possible again? Escape from the Pelians and Oserans, thought Miles soberly. It's escape from the Dendarii that's beginning to look difficult.

"All. All but my communications officer, of course."

"Why 'of course'?"

"Oh, that's right, you don't know about his double life. He's a military agent, assigned to keep watch on the Oseran fleet for his government. I think he wanted to come—we've gotten to know each other pretty well these past six years—but he had to follow his primary orders." Tung chucked. "He apologized."

Miles blinked. "Is that sort of thing usual?"

"Oh, there's always a few, scattered through all the mercenary organizations." Tung gave Miles a sharp look. "Haven't you ever had any? Most captains throw them out as soon as they catch on, but I like them. They're generally extremely well-trained, and more trustworthy than most, as long as you're not fighting anybody they know. If I'd had occasion to fight the Barrayarans, God forbid, or any of their—well, the Barrayarans are not particularly troubled with allies—I'd have been sure to drop him off somewhere first."

"B—" choked Miles, and swallowed the rest. Ye gods. Had he been recognized? If the man were one of Captain Illyan's agents, almost certainly. And what the devil had the man made of the recent events, seen from the Oseran point of view? Miles could kiss goodbye any hope of keeping his late adventures secret from his father, then.

His fruit drink seemed to slosh, viscous and nasty, on the roof of his stomach. Damn null-gee. He'd better wind this up. A mercenary Admiral didn't need a reputation for space sickness to go with his more obvious disabilities. Miles wondered briefly how many key command decisions in history had been flicked out in the compelling urgency of some like biological necessity.

He stuck out his hand. "Captain Tung, I accept your service."

Tung took it. "Admiral Naismith—it is Admiral Naismith now, I understand?"

Miles grimaced. "So it would appear."

A half-suppressed grin turned one corner of Tung's mouth. "I see. I shall be pleased to serve you, son."

When he had left, Miles sat eyeing his drink bulb for a moment. He gave it a squeeze, and it snapped. Bright red fruit drink marinated his eyebrows, chin, and tunic front. He swore under his breath, and floated off in search of a towel.

The Ariel was late. Thorne, accompanied by Arde and Baz, was supposed to be escorting the Betan weapons through to Felician-controlled airspace, and then bringing the fast jump courier back, and they were late. It took two days for Miles to persuade General Halify to relinquish Tung's old crew from their cells; after that, there was nothing to do but watch and wait, and worry.

Five days behind schedule, both ships appeared in the monitors. Miles got Thorne on the com, and demanded, with an edge in his voice, the reason for the delay.

Thorne positively smirked. "It's a surprise. You'll like it. Can you meet us now in the docking bay?"

A surprise. God, now what? Miles was at last beginning to sympathize with Bothari's stated taste for being bored. He stalked to the docking bay, nebulous plans for bracing his laggard subordinates rotating in his brain.

Arde met him, grinning and bouncing on his heels. "Just stand right here, my lord." He raised his voice. "Go ahead, Baz!"

"Hup, hup, hup!" There came a great shuffling thumping from the flex tube. Out of it marched, double-time, a ragged string of men and women. Some wore uniforms, both military and civilian types, others civilian clothes in a wild assortment of various planetary fashions. Mayhew directed them into a standard square formation, where they stood more-or-less to attention.

There was a group of a dozen or so black-uniformed Kshatryan Imperial mercenaries who formed their own tight little island in the sea of color; on closer look, their uniforms, though clean and mended, were not all complete. Odd buttons, shiny seats and elbows, lopworn boot heels—they were long, long from their distant home, it seemed. Miles's temporary fascination with them was shattered at the appearance of two dozen Cetagandan ghem-fighters, variously dressed, but all with full formal face paint freshly applied, looking like an array of Chinese temple demons. Bothari swore, and clapped his hand to his plasma arc at the sight of them. Miles motioned him to parade rest.

Freighter and passenger liner tech uniforms, a whiteskinned, white-haired man in a feathered g-string—Miles, taking in the polished bandolier and plasma rifle he also bore, was not inclined to smile—a dark-haired woman in her thirties of almost supernatural beauty, engrossed with directing a crew of four techs—she glanced toward him, then frankly stared, a very odd look on her face. He stood a little straighter. Not a mutant, ma'am, he thought irritably. When the flex tube emptied at last, perhaps a hundred people stood before him in the docking bay. Miles's head whirled.

Thorne, Baz, and Arde all appeared at his elbow, looking immensely pleased with themselves.

"Baz—" Miles opened his hand in helpless supplication. "What is this?"

Jesek stood to attention. "Dendarii recruits, my lord!"

"Did I ask you to collect recruits?" He had never been that drunk, surely.. .

"You said we didn't have enough personnel to man our equipment. So I applied a little forward momentum to the problem, and—there you are."

"Where the devil did you get them all?"

"Felice. There must be two thousand galactics trapped there by the blockade. Merchant ship personnel, passengers, business people, techs, a little of everything. Even soldiers. They're not all soldiers, of course. Not yet."

"Ah." Miles cleared his throat. "Hand-picked, are they?"

"Well . . ." Baz scuffed his boot on the deck, and studied it, as if looking for signs of wear. "I gave them some weapons to field-strip and reassemble. If they didn't try to shove the plasma arc power cartridge in the nerve disruptor grip slot, I hired 'em."

Miles wandered up and down the rows, bemused. "I see. Very ingenious. I doubt I could have done better myself." He nodded toward the Kshatryans. "Where were they going?"

"That's an interesting story," put in Mayhew. "They weren't exactly trapped by the blockade. Seems some local Felician magnate of the, uh, sub-economy, had hired them for bodyguards a few years ago. About six months back they botched the job, rendering themselves unemployed. They'll do about anything for a ride out of here. I found them myself," he added proudly.

"I see. Ah, Baz—Cetagandans?" Bothari had not taken his eyes from their gaudy fierce faces since they had exited the flex tube.

The engineer turned his hands palm-outwards. "They're trained."

"Do they realize that some Dendarii are Barrayaran?"

"They know I am, and with a name like Dendarii, any Cetagandan would have to make the connection. That mountain range made an impression on them during the Great War. But they want a ride out of here too. That was part of the contract, you see, to keep the price down—almost everybody wants to be discharged outside Felician local space."

"I sympathize," muttered Miles. The Felician fast courier floated outside the docking station. He itched for a closer look. "Well—see Captain Tung, and arrange quarters for them all. And, uh, training schedules …" Yes, keep them busy, while he—slipped away?

"Captain Tung?" said Thorne.

"Yes, he's a Dendarii now. I've been doing some recruiting too. Should be just like a family reunion for you—ah, Bel," he fixed the Betan with a stern eye, "you are now comrades in arms. As a Dendarii, I expect you to remember it."

"Tung." Thorne sounded more amazed than jealous. "Oser will be foaming."

Miles spent the evening running his new recruits' dossiers into the Triumph's computers, by hand, by himself, and by choice, the better to familiarize himself with his leigemen's human grab-bag. They were in fact well chosen; most had previous military experience, the rest invariably possessed some arcane and valuable technical specialty.

Some were arcane indeed. He stopped his monitor to study the face of the extraordinarily beautiful woman who had stared at him in the docking bay. What the devil had Baz been about to hire a banking comm link security specialist as a soldier of fortune? To be sure, she might want off-planet badly enough—ah. Never mind. Her resume explained the mystery; she had once held the rank of ensign in the Escobaran military space forces. She'd had an honorable medical discharge after the war with Barrayar nineteen years ago. Medical discharges must have been a fad then, Miles mused, thinking of Bothari's. His amusement drained away, and he felt the hairs on his arms stir.

Great dark eyes, clean square line of jaw—her last name was Visconti, typically Escobaran. Her first name was Elena.

"No," whispered Miles to himself firmly. "Not possible." He weakened. "Anyway, not likely …"

He read the resume again more carefully. The Escobaran woman had come to Tau Verde IV a year ago to install a comm link system her company had sold to a Felician bank. She must have arrived just days before the war started. She listed herself as unmarried with no dependents. Miles swung around in his chair with his back to the screen, then found himself sneaking another look from the corner of his eye. She had been unusually young to be an officer during the Escobar-Barrayar war—some sort of precocious hot-shot, perhaps. Miles caught himself up ironically, wondering when he'd started feeling so middle-aged.

But if she were, just possibly, his Elena's mother, how had she got mixed up with Sergeant Bothari? Bothari had been pushing forty then, and looked much the same as now, judging from vids Miles had seen from his parents' early years of marriage. No accounting for taste, maybe.

A little reunion fantasy blossomed in his imagination, unbidden, galloping ahead of all proof. To present Elena not merely with a grave, but with her longed-for mother in the flesh—to finally feed that secret hunger, sharper than a thorn, that had plagued her all her life, twin to his own clumsy hunger to please his father—that would be a heroism worth stretching for. Better than showering her with the most fabulous material gifts imaginable—he melted at the picture of her delight.

And yet—and yet … it was only a hypothesis. Testing it might prove awkward. He had realized the Sergeant was not being strictly truthful when he'd said he couldn't remember Escobar, but it might be partly so. Or this woman might be somebody else altogether. He would make his test in private then, and blind. If he were wrong, no harm done.

Miles held his first full senior officers' meeting the next day, partly to acquaint himself with his new henchmen, but mostly to throw the floor open to ideas for blockade-busting. With all this military and ex-military talent around, there had to be someone who knew what they were doing. More copies of the "Dendarii regulations" were passed out, and Miles retired after to his appropriated cabin on his appropriated flagship, to run me parameters of the Felician courier through the computer one more time.

He had upped the courier's estimated passenger capacity for the two-week run to Beta Colony from a crowded four to a squeezed five by eliminating several sorts of baggage and fudging the life-support back-up figures as much as he dared; surely there had to be something he could do to boost it to seven. He also tried very hard not to think about the mercenaries, waiting eagerly for his return with reinforcements. And waiting. And waiting . . .

They should not linger here any longer. The Triumph's tactics simulator had shown that thinking he could break the Oserans with 200 troops was pure megalomania. Still … No. He forced himself to think reasonably.

The logical person to leave behind was Elli Quinn of the slagged face. She was no leigewoman of his, really. Then a toss-up between Baz and Arde. Taking the engineer back to Beta Colony would expose him to arrest and extradition; leaving him here would be for his own good, yessir. Never mind that he had been selflessly busting his tail for weeks to serve Miles's every military whim. Never mind what the Oserans would do to all their deserters and everyone associated with them when they finally caught up with them, as they inevitably must. Never mind that it would also most handily sever Baz's romance with Elena, and wasn't that very possibly the real reason. .. ? Logic, Miles decided, made his stomach hurt. Anyway, it was not easy to keep his mind on his work just now. He checked his wrist chronometer. Just a few more minutes. He wondered if it had been silly to lay in that bottle of awful Felician wine, concealed now with four glasses in his cupboard. He need only bring it out if, if, if…

He sighed and leaned back, and smiled across the cabin at Elena. She sat on the bed in companionable silence, screening a manual on weapons drills. Sergeant Bothari sat at a small fold-out table, cleaning and recharging their personal weapons. Elena smiled back, and removed her audio bug from her ear.

"Do you have your physical training program figured out for our, uh, new recruits?" he asked her. "Some of them look like it's been a while since they've worked out regularly."

"All set," she assured him. "I'm starting a big group first thing next day-cycle. General Halify is going to lend me the refinery crew's gym." She paused, then added, "Speaking of not working out for a while—don't you think you'd better come too?"

"Uh .. ." said Miles.

"Good idea," said the Sergeant, not looking up from his work.

"My stomach—"

"It would be a good example to your troops," she added, blinking her brown eyes at him in feigned, he was sure, innocence.

"Who's going to warn them not to break me in half?"

Her eyes glinted. "I'll let you pretend you're instructing them."

"Your gym clothes," said the Sergeant, blowing a bit of dust out of the silvered bell-muzzle of a nerve disruptor and nodding to his left, "are in the bottom drawer of that wall compartment."

Miles sighed defeat. "Oh, all right." He checked his chronometer again. Any minute now.

The door of the cabin slid open; it was the Escobaran woman, right on time. "Good day, Technician Visconti," he began cheerfully. His words died on his lips as she raised a needler and held it in both hands to aim.

"Don't anybody move!" she cried.

An unnecessary instruction; Miles, at least, was frozen in shock, mouth open.

"So," she said at last. Hatred, pain, and weariness trembled her voice. "It is you. I wasn't sure at first. You…"

She was addressing Bothari, Miles guessed, for her needler was aimed at his chest. Her hands shook, but the aim never wavered.

The Sergeant had caught up a plasma arc when the door slid open. Now, incredibly, his hand fell to his side, weapon dangling. He straightened slightly by the wall, out of his firing semi-crouch.

Elena sat cross-legged, an awkward position from which to jump. Her hand viewer fell forgotten to the bed. The audio emitted a thin tinny sound, small as an insect, in the silence.

The Escobaran woman's eyes flicked for a moment to Miles, then back to their target. "I think you'd better know, Admiral Naismith, just what you have hired for your bodyguard."

"Uh . .. Why don't you give me your needler, and sit down, and we'll talk about it—" He held out an open hand, experimentally inviting. Hot shivers that began in the pit of his stomach were radiating outward; his hand shook foolishly. This wasn't the way he'd rehearsed this meeting. She hissed, her needler swinging toward him. He recoiled, and her aim jerked back to Bothari.

"That one," she nodded at the Sergeant, "is an ex-Barrayaran soldier. No surprise, I suppose, that he should have drifted into some obscure mercenary fleet. But he was Admiral Vorrutyer's chief torturer, when the Barrayarans tried to invade Escobar. But maybe you knew that—" her eyes seemed to peel Miles, like flensing knives, for a moment. A moment was quite a long time, at the relativistic speed at which he was now falling.

"I—I—" he stammered. He glanced at Elena; her eyes were huge, her body tense to spring.

"The Admiral never raped his victims himself—he preferred to watch. Vorrutyer was Prince Serg's catamite, perhaps the Prince was jealous. He applied more inventive tortures himself, though. The Prince was waiting, since his particular obsession was pregnant women, which I suppose Vorrutyer's group was obliged to supply—"

Miles's mind screamed through a hundred unwanted connections, no, no, no … So, there was such a thing as latent knowledge. How long had he known not to ask questions he didn't want to hear the answers to? Elena's face reflected total outrage and disbelief. God help him to keep it that way. His stunner lay on Bothari's table, across their mutual line of fire; did he stand a chance of leaping for it?

"I was eighteen years old when I fell into their hands. Just graduated, no war lover, but wishing to serve and protect my home—that was no war, out there, that was some personal hell, growing vile in the Barrayaran high command's unchecked power—" She was close to hysteria, as if old cold dormant terrors were erupting in a swarm more overwhelming than even she had anticipated. He had to shut her up somehow—

"And that one," her finger was tight on the trigger of the needler, "was their tool, their best show-maker, their pet. The Barrayarans refused to turn over their war criminals, and my own government bargained away the justice that should have been mine for the sake of the peace settlements. And so he went free, to be my nightmare for the past two decades. But mercenary fleets dispense their own justice. Admiral Naismith, I demand this man's arrest!"

"I don't—it's not—" began Miles. He turned to Bothari, his eyes imploring denial—make it not be true—"Sergeant?"

The explosion of words had spattered over Bothari like acid. His face was furrowed with pain, brow creased with an effort of—memory? His eyes went from his daughter to Miles to the Escobaran, and a sigh went out of him. A man descending forever into hell, vouchsafed one glimpse of paradise, might have such a look on his face. "Lady …" he whispered. "You are still beautiful."

Don't goad her, Sergeant! Miles screamed silently.

The Escobaran woman's face contorted with rage and fear. She braced herself. A stream, as of tiny silver raindrops, sang from the shaking weapon. The needles burst against the wall all around Bothari in a whining shower of spinning, razor-sharp shards. The weapon jammed. The woman swore, and scrabbled at it. Bothari, leaning against the wall, murmured, "Rest now," Miles was not sure to whom.

Miles sprang for his stunner as Elena leaped for the Escobaran. Elena struck the needler sliding across the room and had the woman's arms hooked behind her, twisting in their shoulder sockets with the strength of her terror and rage, by the time he'd brought the stunner to aim. But the woman was resistless, spent. Miles saw why as he spun back to the Sergeant.

Bothari fell like a wall toppling, as if in pieces at the joints. His shirt displayed four or five tiny drops of blood only, scarcely a nosebleed's worth. But they were obliterated in a sudden red flood from his mouth as he convulsed, choking. He writhed once on the friction matting, vomiting a second scarlet tide across the first, across Miles's hands, lap, shirt front, as he scrambled on hands and knees to kneel by his bodyguard's head.

"Sergeant?"

Bothari lay still, watchful eyes stopped and open, head twisted, the blood flung from his mouth soaking into the friction matting. He looked like some dead animal, smashed by a vehicle. Miles patted Bothari's chest frantically, but could not even find the pinhole entrance wounds. Five hits—Bothari's chest cavity, abdomen, organs, must be sliced and stirred to hamburger, within …

"Why didn't he fire?" wailed Elena. She shook the Escobaran woman. "Wasn't it charged?"

Miles glanced at the plasma arc's readouts in the Sergeant's stiffening hand. Freshly charged, Bothari had just done it himself.

Elena took one despairing look at her father's body, and snaked a hand around the Escobaran woman's throat, catching her tunic. Her arm tightened across the woman's windpipe.

Miles rocked back on his heels, his shirt, trousers, hands soaked in blood. "No, Elena! Don't kill her!"

"Why not? Why not?" Tears were swarming down her ravaged face.

"I think she's your mother." Oh, God, he shouldn't have said that …

"You believe those horrible things—" she raged at him. "Unbelieveable lies—" But her hold slackened.

"Miles—I don't even know what some of those words mean . . ."

The Escobaran woman coughed, and twisted her head around, to stare in astonishment and dismay over her shoulder. "This is that one's spawn?" she asked Miles.

"His daughter."

Her eyes counted off the features of Elena's face. Miles did too; it seemed to him the secret sources of Elena's hair, eyes, elegant bone structure, stood before him.

"You look like him." Her great brown eyes held a thin crust of distaste over a bog of horror. "I'd heard the Barrayarans had used the fetuses for military research." She eyed Miles in confused speculation. "Are you another? But no, you couldn't be …"

Elena released her, and stood back. Once, at the summer place at Vorkosigan Surleau, Miles had witnessed a horse trapped in a shed burn to death, no one able to get near it for the heat. He had thought no sound could be more heart-piercing than its death screams. Elena's silence was. She was not crying now.

Miles drew himself up in dignity. "No, ma'am. Admiral Vorkosigan saw them all safely delivered to an orphanage, I believe. All but . . ."

Elena's lips formed the word, "lies," but there was no more conviction in her. Her eyes sucked at the Escobaran woman with a hunger that terrified Miles.

The door of the cabin slid open again. Arde Mayhew sauntered in, saying, "My lord, do you want these assignments—God almighty!" He nearly tripped, stopping short. "I'll get the medtech, hang on!" He dashed back out.

Elena Visconti approached Bothari's body with the caution one would use toward a freshly-killed poisonous reptile. Her eyes locked with Miles's from opposite sides of the barrier. "Admiral Naismith, I apologize for inconveniencing you. But this was no murder. It was the just execution of a war criminal. It was just," she insisted, her voice edged with passion. "It was." Her voice fell away.

It was no murder, it was a suicide, Miles thought. He could have shot you where you stood at any time, he was that fast. "No …"

Her lips thinned in despair. "You call me a liar too? Or are you going to tell me I enjoyed it?"

"No …" He looked up at her across a vast gulf, one meter wide. "I don't mock you. But—until I was four, almost five years old, I couldn't walk, only crawl. I spent a lot of time looking at people's knees. But if there was ever a parade, or something to see, I had the best view of anybody because I watched it from on top the Sergeant's shoulder."

For answer, she spat on Bothari's body. A spasm of rage darkened Miles's vision. He was saved from a possibly disastrous action by the return of Mayhew and the medtech.

The medtech ran to him, "Admiral! Where are you hit?"

He stared at her stupidly a moment, then glanced down at himself, realizing the red reason for her concern. "Not me. It's the Sergeant." He brushed ineffectually at the cooling stickiness.

She knelt by Bothari. "What happened? Was it an accident?"

Miles glanced up at Elena where she stood, just stood, arms wrapped around herself as if she were cold. Only her eyes traveled, back and forth from the Sergeant's crumpled form to the harsh straightness of the Escobaran. Back and forth, finding no rest.

His mouth was stiff; he made it move by force of will. "An accident. He was cleaning the weapons. The needler was set on auto rapid-fire." Two true statements out of three.

The Escobaran woman's mouth curled in silent triumph and relief. She thinks I have endorsed her justice, Miles realized. Forgive me …

The medtech shook her head, running a hand scanner over Bothari's chest. "Whew. What a mess."

A sudden hope rocketed through Miles. "The cryo chambers—what's their status?"

"All filled, sir, after the counterattack."

"When you triage for them, how—how do you choose?"

"The least messed-up ones have the best hope of revival. They get first choice. Enemies last, unless Intelligence throws a fit."

"How would you rate this injury?"

"Worse than any I've got on ice now, except two."

"Who are the two?"

"A couple of Captain Tung's people. Do you want me to dump one?"

Miles paused, searching Elena's face. She was staring at Bothari's body as if he were some stranger, wearing her father's face, who had suddenly unmasked. Her dark eyes were like deep caverns; like graves, one for Bothari, one for himself.

"He hated the cold," he muttered at last. "Just—get a morgue pack."

"Yes, sir." She exited, unhurried.

Mayhew wandered up, to stare bemused and bewildered on the face of death. "I'm sorry, my lord. I was just beginning to like him, in a kind of weird way."

"Yes. Thank you. Go away." Miles looked up at the Escobaran woman. "Go away," he whispered.

Elena was turning around and around between the dead and the living, like a creature newly caged discovering that cold iron sears the flesh. "Mother?" she said at last, in a tiny voice not at all like her own.

"You keep away from me," the Escobaran woman snarled at her, low-voiced and pale. "Far away." She gave her a look of loathing, contemptuous as a slap, and stalked out.

"Um," said Arde. "Maybe you should come somewhere and sit down, Elena. I'll get you a, a drink of water or something." He plucked at her anxiously. "Come away now, there's a good girl."

She suffered herself to be led, with one last look over her shoulder. Her face reminded Miles of a bombed-out city.

Miles waited for the medtech, in deathwatch for his first leigeman, afraid, and growing more so, unaccustomed. He had always had the Sergeant to be afraid for him. He touched Bothari's face; the shaved chin was rough under his fingertips.

"What do I do now, Sergeant?"