Brothers in Arms

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Not necessarily, spoke Galeni's silent quirk of the lips, but he did not interfere with Miles's pitch.

  "You must kill your enemies," snarled Galen.

  Mark's hand and aim sagged, his mouth opening in protest.

  "Now, dammit!" yelled Galen, and made to grab back the nerve disruptor.

  Galeni stepped in front of Miles. Miles scrabbled in his jacket for his second stunner. The nerve disruptor crackled. Miles drew, too late, too goddamn late—Captain Galeni gasped—he's dead for my slowness, my one-last-chance stupidity—face harrowed, mouth open in a silent yell, Miles sprang from behind Galeni and aimed his stunner—

  To see Galen crumple, convulsing, back arching in a bone-cracking twist, face writhing—and slump in death.

  "Kill your enemies," breathed Mark, his face white as paper. "Right. Ah!" he added, raising the weapon again as Miles started forward, "Stop right there!"

  A hiss at Miles's feet—he glanced down to see a thin layer of foam wash past his boots, lose momentum, and recede. In a moment, another. The tide was rising over the ledge. The tide was rising—

  "Where's Ivan?" Miles demanded, his hand clenching on his stunner.

  "If you fire that you'll never know," said Mark.

  His eye hurried nervously, from Miles to Galeni, from Galen's body at his feet to the weapon in his own hand, as if they all added up to some impossibly incorrect sum. His breath was shallow and panicky, his knuckles, wrapped around the nerve disruptor, bone-pale. Galeni was standing very, very still, head cocked, looking down at what lay there, or inward; he did not seem to be conscious of the weapon or its wielder at all.

  "Fine," said Miles. "You help us and we'll help you. Take us to Ivan."

  Mark backed toward the wall, not lowering the nerve disruptor. "I don't believe you."

  "Where are you going to run to? You can't go back to the Komarrans. There's a Barayaran hit squad with murder on its collective mind breathing down your neck. You can't go to the local authorities for protection; you have a body to explain. I'm your only chance."

  Mark looked at the body, at the nerve disruptor, at Miles.

  The soft whirr of a rappel spool unwinding was barely audible over the hiss of the sea foam underfoot. Miles glanced up. Quinn was flying down in one long swoop, like a falcon stooping, weapon in one hand and rappeling spool controlled by the other.

  Mark kicked open the hatch and stumbled backwards into it. "You hunt for Ivan. He's not far. I don't have a body to explain—you do. The murder weapon has your fingerprints on it!" He flung down the nerve disruptor and slammed the hatch closed.

  Miles leapt for the door, fingers scrabbling, but it was already sealed—he came close to snapping some more finger bones. The slide and clank of a locking mechanism designed to defy the force of the sea itself came muffled through the hatch. Miles hissed through his teeth.

  "Should I blow it open?" gasped Quinn, landing.

  "Y— good God, no!" The discoloration on the wall marking high water was a good two meters higher than the top of the hatch. "We might drown London. Try to get it open without damaging it. Captain Galeni!" Miles turned. Galeni had not moved. "You in shock?"

  "Hm? No . . . no, I don't think so." Galeni came out of himself with an effort. He added in a strangely calm, reflective tone, "Later, perhaps."

  Quinn was bent to the hatchway, pulling devices from her pockets and slapping them to the vertical surface, checking readouts. "Electromechanical with a manual override . . . if I use a magnetic . . ."

  Miles reached around and pulled the rappeling harness off Quinn. "Go up," he said to Galeni, "and see if you can find another entrance on the other side. We've got to catch that little sucker!"

  Galeni nodded and hooked up the rappeling harness.

  Miles held out stunner and boot knife. "Want a weapon?" Mark had taken off with all the spare stunners still stuck in his belt.

  "Stunner's useless," Galeni noted. "You'd better keep the knife. If I catch up with him I'll use my bare hands."

  With pleasure, Miles added for him silently. He nodded. They had both been through Barrayaran basic unarmed combat school. Three fourths of the moves were barred to Miles in a real fight at full force due to the secret weakness of his bones; the same was not true of Galeni. Galeni ascended into the night air, bounding up the wall on the almost invisible thread as readily as a spider.

  "Got it!" cried Quinn. The thick hatch swung wide on a deep, dark hole.

  Miles yanked his handlight out of his belt and hopped through. He glanced back at Galen's gray-faced body, lapped by foam, released from obsession and pain. There was no mistaking the stillness of death for the stillness of sleep or anything else; it was the absolute. The nerve-disruptor beam must have hit his head square on. Quinn dragged the hatch shut again behind them, pausing to stuff equipment back into her pockets as the door's mechanism twinkled and beeped, slid and clanked, rendering the lower Thames watershed safe again.

  They both scrambled up the corridor. A mere five meters farther on they came to their first check, a T-intersection. This main corridor was lighted, and curved away out of sight in both directions.

  "You go left, I'll go right," said Miles.

  "You shouldn't be alone," Quinn objected.

  "Maybe I should be twins, eh? Go, dammit!"

  Quinn threw up her hands in exasperation and ran.

  Miles sprinted in the other direction. His footsteps echoed eerily in the corridor, deep in the synthacrete mountain. He paused a moment, listened; heard only Quinn's light fading scuff. He ran on, past hundreds of meters of blank synthacrete, past dark and silent pumping stations, past pumping stations lit up and humming quietly. He was just wondering whether he could have missed an exit—an overhead access port?—when he spotted an object on the corridor floor. One of the stunners, fallen from Mark's belt as he ran in panic. Miles swooped it up with a quick ah-ha! of bared teeth, and holstered it as he ran on.

  He keyed open his wrist comm. "Quinn?" The corridor curved suddenly into a sort of stark foyer with lift tube. He must be under one of the watchtowers. Beware Authorized Personnel about. "Quinn?"

  He stepped into the lift tube and rose. Oh, God, which level had Mark got off at? The third floor he passed opened out onto a glass-walled, lobby-looking area, with doors and the night beyond. Clearly an exit. Miles swung out of the lift tube.

  A total stranger, wearing civilian jacket and pants, whirled at the sound of his footstep and dropped to one knee. The silver flash of a parabolic mirror twinkled in his raised hands, a nerve-disruptor muzzle. "There he is!" the man cried, and fired.

  Miles recoiled back into the lift tube so fast he rebounded off the far wall. He grabbed for the safety ladder at the side of the tube and began slapping up the rungs faster than the anti-grav field could lift him. He wriggled his facial muscles, shot with pins and needles from the nimbus of the disruptor beam. The man's shoes, Miles realized, gleaming out from the bottom of his trousers, had been Barrayaran regulation Service boots. "Quinn!" he yelped into his wrist comm again.

  The next level up opened onto a corridor without gunmen in it. The first three doors Miles tried were locked. The fourth swished open onto a brightly lit office, apparently deserted. On a quick jog around it Miles's eye was caught by a slight movement in the shadows under a console. He bent down to face two women in blue Tidal Authority tech coveralls cowering beneath. One squeaked and covered her eyes; the second hugged her and glared defiantly at Miles.

  Miles tried a friendly smile. "Ah . . . hello."

  "Who are you people?" said the second woman in rising tone.

  "Oh, I'm not with them. They're, um . . . hired killers." A just description, after all. "Don't worry, they're not after you. Have you called the police yet?"

  She shook her head mutely.

  "I suggest you do so immediately. Ah—have you seen me before?"

  She nodded.

  "Which way did I go?"

  She cringed back, clearly terrorized at being co
rnered by a psychotic. Miles spread his hands in silent apology, and made for the door. "Call the police!" he called back over his shoulder. The faint beep of comconsole keys being pressed drifted down the corridor after him.

  Mark was nowhere on this level. The lift tube grav field had now been turned off by someone; the auto safety bar was extended across the opening and the red glow of the warning light filled the corridor. Miles stuck his head cautiously into the lift tube, to spy another head on the level below looking up; he jerked his head back as a nerve disruptor crackled.

  A balcony ran right around the outside of the tower. Miles slipped through the door at the seaward end of the corridor and looked around, and up. Only one more floor above. Its balcony was readily reachable by the toss of a grappler. Miles grimaced, pulled out his spool, and made the toss; got a firm hook around the railing above on the first try. A swallow, a brief heart-stopping dangle over the tower, dike, and growling sea forty meters below, and he was clambering onto the next balcony.

  He tiptoed to the glass doorway and checked down the corridor. Mark was crouched, silhouetted by the red light, near the entrance to the lift tube, stunner drawn. The—unconscious, Miles trusted—form of a man in tech coveralls lay sprawled on the corridor floor.

  "Mark?" Miles called softly, and jerked back. Mark snapped around and let off a stunner burst in his direction. Miles put his back against the wall and called, "Cooperate with me, and I'll get you out of this alive. Where's Ivan?"

  This reminder that Mark still held a trump card had the expected calming effect. He did not fire again. "Get me out of this and I'll tell you where he is," he countered.

  Miles grinned into the darkness. "All right. I'm coming in." He slipped round the door and joined his image, pausing only to check for a pulse in the neck of the sprawled man. He had one, happily.

  "How are you going to get me out of this?" demanded Mark.

  "Well, now, that's the tricky part," Miles admitted. He paused to listen intently. Someone was on the ladder in the lift tube, trying to climb quietly; not near their level yet. "The police are on their way, and when they arrive I expect the Barrayarans will decamp in a hurry. They won't want to be caught in an embarrassing interplanetary incident which the ambassador would have to explain to the local authorities. This night's operation is already way out of control in that anybody saw 'em at all. Destang will have their blood on the carpet in the morning."

  "The police?" Mark's grip tightened on his stunner; competing fears struggled for ascendancy in his face.

  "Yes. We could try and play hide and seek in this tower till the police finally get here—whenever. Or we could go up to the roof and have a Dendarii aircar pick us off right now. I know which I'd prefer. How about you?"

  "Then I would be your prisoner." Mark's whispering voice blurred with a fear-fueled anger. "Dead now, dead later, what's the difference? I finally figured out what use you had for a clone."

  Mark was seeing himself as a walking body-parts bank again, Miles could tell. Miles sighed. He glanced at his chrono. "By Galen's timetable, I have eleven minutes left to find Ivan."

  A shifty look stole over Mark's face. "Ivan's not up. He's down. Back the way we came."

  "Ah?" Miles risked a flash-peek into the lift tube. The climber had exited at another floor. The hunters were being thorough in their search. By the time they worked their way up here they'd be quite certain of their quarry.

  Miles was still wearing the rappelling harness. Very quietly, careful not to clank, he reached out and fastened the grappler to the safety bar and tested it. "So you want to go down, do you? I can arrange that. But you'd better be right about Ivan. Because if he dies I'll dissect you personally. Heart and liver, steaks and chops."

  Miles stooped, checked his connections, set the spool's rate of spin and stop-point, and positioned himself under the bar, ready for launch. "Climb on."

  "Don't I get straps?"

  Miles glanced over his shoulder and grinned. "You bounce better than I do."

  Looking extremely dubious, Mark stuffed his stunner back in his belt, sidled up to Miles, and gingerly wrapped his arms and legs around Miles's body.

  "You'd better hang on tighter than that. The deceleration at the bottom is going to be severe. And don't scream going down. It would draw attention."

  Mark's grip tightened convulsively. Miles checked once more for unwanted company—the tube was still empty—and thrust over the side.

  Their doubled weight gathered momentum terrifyingly. They fell unimpeded in near-silence for four stories—Miles's stomach was floating near his back teeth, and the sides of the lift tube were a smear of color—then the rappelling spool began to whine, resisting its blurring spin. The straps bit, and Mark's grip hand-to-hand across Miles's collarbone began to pull apart. Miles's right hand flashed up to clamp around Mark's wrist. They braked to a demure stop a centimeter or two above the lift tube's bottom floor, back in the belly of the synthacrete mountain. Miles's ears popped.

  The noise of their descent had seemed thunderous to Miles's exacerbated senses, but no startled heads appeared in the openings above, no weapons crackled. Miles and Mark both nipped back out of the line of sight of the tube, into the little foyer off the tidal barrier's internal access corridor. Miles pressed the control to release his grappler and let the spool rewind; the falling thread made no noise, but the grappler unit clinked hitting bottom, and Miles flinched.

  "Back that way," said Mark, pointing right. They jogged down the corridor side by side. A deep, growling vibration began to drown lighter sounds. The pumping station that had been blinking and humming when Miles had first passed that way was now at work, lifting Thames water to high-tide sea level through hidden pipes. The next station down, previously dark and silent, was now lit, preparing to go into action.

  Mark stopped. "Here."

  "Where?"

  Mark pointed, "Each pumping chamber has an access hatch, for cleaning and repairs. We put him in there."

  Miles swore.

  The pumping chamber was about the size of a large closet. Sealed, it would be dark, cold, slimy, stinking, and utterly silent. Until the rush of rising water, thrumming with immense force, gushed in to turn it into a death chamber. Rushed in to fill the ears, the nose, the dark-staring eyes; rushed in to fill the chamber up, up, not even one little pocket of air for a frantic mouth; rushed through to batter and twist the body ceaselessly, roiling against the thick unyielding walls until the face was pulped beyond recognition, until, with the tide, the dank waters at last receded, leaving—nothing of value. A clog in the line.

  "You . . ." breathed Miles, glaring at Mark, "lent yourself to this . . . ?"

  Mark wiped his palms together nervously, stepping back. "You're here—I brought you here," he began plaintively. "I said I would. . . ."

  "Isn't this a rather severe punishment for a man who never did you more harm than to snore and keep you awake? Agh!" Miles turned, his back rigid with disgust, and began punching at the hatch lock controls. The last step was manual, turning the bar that undogged the hatch. As Miles pushed the heavy beveled door inward, an alarm began to beep.

  "Ivan?"

  "Ah!" The cry from within was nearly voiceless.

  Miles thrust his shoulders through, flashed his handlight. The hatch was near the top of the chamber; he found himself looking down at the white smudge of Ivan's face half a meter below, looking up.

  "You!" Ivan cried in a voice of loathing, staggering back and slipping in the slime.

  "No, not him," Miles corrected. "Me."

  "Ah?" Ivan's face was lined, exhausted, almost beyond coherent thought; Miles had seen the same look on men who had been in combat too long.

  Miles tossed down his handy-dandy rappelling harness—he shuddered, recalling that he'd almost decided not to include it when he'd been kitting up back in the Triumph—and braced the spool. "Ready to come up?"

  Ivan's lips moved in a mumble, but he wrapped the harness sufficiently around his arm
s. Miles hit the spool control, and Ivan lifted. Miles helped him slither through the hatch. Ivan stood, boots planted apart, hands on knees supporting himself, breathing heavily. His green dress uniform was damp, crumpled and beslimed. His hands looked like dog meat. He must have pounded and scratched, scrabbled and screamed in the dark, muffled and unheard . . .

  Miles swung the hatch back. It clicked firmly. He twirled the manual locking bar. The alarm stopped beeping. Safety circuits reconnected; the pump immediately began to thrum. No greater noise penetrated from the pumping chamber than a monstrous subliminal hiss. Ivan sat down heavily and pressed his face to his knees.

  Miles knelt beside him in worry. Ivan turned his head and managed a sickly grin. "I think," he gulped, "I'm going to take up claustrophobia for a hobby now. . . ."

  Miles grinned back and clapped him on the shoulder. He rose and turned. Mark was nowhere in sight.

  Miles spat, and lifted his wrist comm to his lips. "Quinn? Quinn!" He stepped out into the corridor, looked up and down it, listened intently. The faintest echo of running footsteps was fading in the distance, in the direction opposite the Barrayaran-infested watchtower. "Little shit," Miles muttered. "To hell with him." He re-keyed his comm for the air patrol. "Sergeant Nim? Naismith here."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I've lost contact with Commander Quinn. See if you can raise her. If you can't, start looking for her. I last saw her on foot inside the tidal barrier, halfway between Towers Six and Seven, heading south."

  "Yes, sir."

  Miles turned back and helped pull Ivan to his feet. "Can you walk?" he asked anxiously.

  "Yeah . . . sure," said Ivan. He blinked. "I'm just a little . . ." They started down the corridor. Ivan stumbled a bit, leaning on Miles, then steadied. "I never knew my body could pump that much adrenaline. Or for so long. Hours and hours . . . how long was I in there?"

  "About," Miles glanced at his chrono, "less than two hours."

  "Huh. Seemed longer." Ivan appeared to be regaining his equilibrium somewhat. "Where are we going? Why are you wearing your Naismith-suit? Is M'lady all right? They didn't get her, did they?"