“Yes. The boys are kept segregated from the girls, rather carefully. The female—usually female—customers expect to wake up in a body with the seal of virginity still on it.”
“I see. So. We get all these kids loaded, by some miracle, before the Bharaputrans arrive in force—”
“Speed is of the essence, yes.”
“As usual. But the Bharaputrans will be all over us if there is any little hitch or hold-up. Unlike with the Marilacans at Dagoola IV, I haven’t had weeks and weeks to drill these kids on shuttle-loading procedures. What if, then?”
“Once the clones are loaded into the shuttle they become in effect our hostages. We’ll be safe from lethal fire with them aboard. The Bharaputrans won’t risk their investment as long as any chance of recovery remains.”
“Once they decide all chance is lost, they’ll seek vigorous retribution, to discourage imitators, though.”
“True. We must cloud their minds with doubt.”
“Then their next move—if we get the shuttle airborne—must be to try to blow up the Ariel in orbit before we get there, cutting off our escape.”
“Speed,” he repeated doggedly.
“Contingencies, Miles dear. Wake up. I don’t usually have to restart your brain in the morning—do you want some more tea? No? I suggest, if we suffer dangerous delay downside, that the Ariel take refuge at Fell Station, and we rendezvous with it there.”
“Fell Station? The orbital one?” He hesitated. “Why?”
“Baron Fell is still in a state of vendetta with Bharaputra and Ryoval, isn’t he?”
Jacksonian internecine House politics; he was not as current on them as he should be. He had not even thought of looking for an ally among the other Houses. They were all criminal, all evil, tolerating or sabotaging each other in shifting patterns of power. And here was Ryoval, mentioned again. Why? He took refuge in another wordless shrug. “Getting pinned, trapped on Fell Station with fifty young clones while Bharaputra hustles for control of the jumppoint stations, would not improve our position. No Jacksonian is to be trusted. Run and jump as fast as we can is still the safest strategy.”
“Bharaputra won’t swing Jumpstation Five into line, it’s Fell-owned.”
“Yes, but I want to return to Escobar. The clones can all get safe asylum there.”
“Look, Miles, the jump back on this route is held by the consortium already dominated by Bharaputra. We’ll never get back out the way we jump in, unless you’ve got something up your sleeve—no? Then may I suggest our best escape route is via Jumppoint Five.”
“Do you really see Fell as so reliable an ally?” he inquired cautiously.
“Not at all. But he is the enemy of our enemies. This trip.”
“But the jump from Five leads to the Hegen Hub. We can’t jump into Cetagandan territory, and the only other route out of the Hub is to Komarr via Pol.”
“Roundabout, but much safer.”
Not for me! That’s the damned Barrayaran Empire! He swallowed a wordless shriek.
“The Hub to Pol to Komarr to Sergyar and back to Escobar,” Thorne recited happily. “You know, this could really work out.” It made more notes, leaning across the comconsole, its nightgown shifting and shimmering in the candy lights of the vid display. Then it put its elbows on the console and rested its chin in its hands, breasts compressing, shifting beneath the thin fabric. Its expression grew gently introspective. It glanced up at him at last with an odd, rather sad smile.
“Have any clones ever escaped?” Thorne asked softly.
“No,” he answered quickly, automatically.
“Except for your own clone, of course.”
A dangerous turn in the conversation. “My clone did not escape either. He was simply removed by his purchasers.” He should have tried to escape … what life might he have led, had he succeeded?
“Fifty kids,” Thorne sighed. “Y’know—I really approve of this mission.” It waited, watching him with sharp and gleaming eyes.
Acutely uncomfortable, he suppressed an idiocy such as saying Thank you, but found himself with no remark to put in its place, resulting in an awkward silence.
“I suppose,” said Thorne thoughtfully after the too-long moment, “it would be very difficult for anyone brought up in such an environment to really trust … anyone else. Anyone’s word. Their good will.”
“I … suppose.” Was this casual conversation, or something more sinister? A trap …
Thorne, still with that weird mysterious smile, leaned across their station chairs, caught his chin in one strong, slender hand, and kissed him.
He did not know if he was supposed to recoil or respond, so did neither, in cross-eyed, panicked paralysis. Thorne’s mouth was warm, and tasted of tea and bergamot, silky and perfumed. Was Naismith screwing—this—too? If so, who did what to whom? Or did they take turns? And would it really be that bad? His terror heightened with an undeniable stirring of arousal. I believe I would die for a lover’s touch. He had been alone forever.
Thorne withdrew at last, to his intense relief, though only a little way, its hand still trapping his chin. After another moment of dead silence, its smile grew wry. “I shouldn’t tease you, I suppose,” it sighed. “There is a sort of cruelty in it, all things considered.”
It released him, and stood, the sensuous langour abruptly switched off. “Back in a minute.” It strode to its cabin washroom, sealing the door behind it.
He sat, unstrung and shaking. What the hell was that all about? And from another part of his mind, You could lose your damned virginity this trip, I bet, and from another, No! Not with that!
Had that been a test? But had he passed, or failed? Thorne had not cried out in accusation, nor called for armed back-up. Perhaps the captain was arranging his arrest right now, by comm link from the washroom. There was no place to run away, aboard a small ship in deep space. His crossed arms hugged his torso. With effort he uncrossed them, placed his hands on the console, and willed his muscles to uncoil. They probably won’t kill me. They’d take him back to the fleet and let Naismith kill him.
But no security squad broke down the door, and soon enough Thorne returned. Nattily dressed in its uniform, at last. It plucked the data cube from the comconsole, and closed its palm over it. “I’ll sit down with Sergeant Taura and this and do some serious planning, then.”
“Ah, yes. It’s time.” He hated to let the precious cube out of his sight. But it seemed he was still Naismith in Thorne’s eyes.
Thorne pursed its lips. “Now that it’s time to brief the crew, don’t you think it would be a good idea to put the Ariel on a communications blackout?”
An outstanding idea, though one he’d been afraid to suggest as too suspicious and strange. Maybe it wasn’t so unusual, on these covert ops. He’d had no certain idea as to when the real Naismith was supposed to return to the Dendarii fleet, but from the mercenaries’ easy acceptance of him, it had to have been expected soon. He’d lived for the past three days in fear of frantic orders arriving by tight-beam and Jump-courier from the real Admiral, telling the Ariel to turn around. Give me a few more days. Just a few more days, and I’ll redeem it all. “Yes. Do so.”
“Very good, sir.” Thorne hesitated. “How are you feeling, now? Everybody knows these black miasmas of yours can run for weeks. But if only you’ll rest properly, I trust you’ll be your usual energetic self in time for the drop mission. Shall I pass the word to leave you alone?”
“I … would appreciate that, Bel.” What luck! “But keep me informed, eh?”
“Oh, yes. You can count on me. It’s a straightforward raid, except for handling that herd of kids, in which I defer to your superior expertise.”
“Right.” With a smile and a cheery salute, he fled across the corridor to the safe isolation of his own cabin. The pulsing combination of elation and his tension headache made him feel as if he were floating. When the door sealed behind him, he fell across his bed and gripped the coverings to hold himself in plac
e. It’s really going to happen!
Later, diligently scanning ship’s logs on his cabin comconsole, he finally found the four-year-old records of the Ariel’s previous visit to Jackson’s Whole. Such as they were. They started out with utterly boring details about an ordnance deal, inventory entries regarding a cargo of weapons to be loaded from House Fell’s orbital transfer station. Completely without preamble, Thorne’s breathless voice made a cryptic entry, “Murka’s lost the Admiral. He’s being held prisoner by Baron Ryoval. I’m going now to make a devil’s bargain with Fell.”
Then records of an emergency combat drop shuttle trip downside, followed by the Ariel’s abrupt departure from Fell Station with cargo only half loaded. These events were succeeded by two fascinating, unexplained conversations between Admiral Naismith, and Baron Ryoval and Baron Fell, respectively. Ryoval was raving, sputtering exotic death threats. He studied the Baron’s contorted, handsome face uneasily. Even in a society that prized ruthlessness, Ryoval was a man whom other Jacksonian power-brokers stepped wide around. Admiral Naismith appeared to have stepped right in something.
Fell was more controlled, a cold anger. As usual, all the really essential information, including the reason for the visit in the first place, was lost in Naismith’s verbal orders. But he did manage to gather the surprising fact that the eight-foot-tall commando, Sergeant Taura, was a product of House Bharaputra’s genetics laboratories, a genetically-engineered prototype super-soldier.
It was like unexpectedly meeting someone from one’s old home town. In a weird wash of homesickness, he longed to look her up and compare notes. Naismith had apparently stolen her heart, or at least stolen her away, although that did not seem to be the offense Ryoval was foaming about. It was all rather incomprehensible.
He did garner one other, unpleasant fact. Baron Fell was a would-be clone consumer. His old enemy Ryoval in a move of vendetta had apparently arranged to have Fell’s clone murdered before the transplant could take place, trapping Fell in his aging body, but the intent was there. Regardless of Bel Thorne’s contingency planning, he resolved he would have nothing to do with Baron Fell if he could help it.
He blew out his breath, shut down the comconsole, and went back to practicing simulations with the command headset helmet, a manufacturer’s training program that happily had never been deleted from its memory. I’m going to bring this off. Somehow.
Chapter Four
“No reply from the Ariel from this courier-hop either, sir,” Lieutenant Hereld reported apologetically.
Miles’s fists clenched in frustration. He forced his hands flat again along his trouser seams, but the energy only flowed to his feet, and he began to pace from wall to wall in the Triumph’s Nav and Com room. “That’s the third—third? You have been repeating the message with every courier?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The third no-reply. Dammit, what’s holding Bel up?”
Lieutenant Hereld shrugged helplessly at this rhetorical question.
Miles re-crossed the room, frowning fiercely. Damn the time-lag. He wanted to know what was happening right now. Tight-beam communications crossed a local-space region at the speed of light, but the only way to get information through a wormhole was to physically record it, put it on a jumpship, and jump it through to the next relay station, where it was beamed to the next wormhole and jumped again, if it was economically worthwhile to maintain such a service. In regions of heavy message traffic, such couriers jumped as often as every half-hour or even oftener. Between Escobar and Jackson’s Whole, the couriers maintained an every-four-hours schedule. So on top of the delay from the speed of light limitation, was added this other, arbitrary human one. Such a delay could be quite useful sometimes, to people playing complex games with interstellar finances, exchange rates, and futures. Or to independent-minded subordinates wishing to conceal excess information about their activities from their superior officers—Miles had occasionally used the lag for that purpose himself. A couple of clarification requests, and their replies, could buy enough time to bring off all sorts of events. That was why he’d made certain his recall order to the Ariel was personal, forceful, and crystal-clear. But Bel had not returned some counterfeit-demure What do you mean by that, sir? Bel had not replied at all.
“It’s not some fault in the courier-system, is it? Other traffic—is other traffic on the route getting their messages through?”
“Yes, sir. I checked. Information flow is normal all the way through to Jackson’s Whole.”
“They did file a flight plan to Jackson’s Whole, they did actually jump through that exit-point—”
“Yes, sir.”
Four bleeding days ago, now. He considered his mental picture of the wormhole nexus. No mapped jumps leading off this standard shortest route from Escobar to Jackson’s Whole had ever been discovered to go anywhere of interest. He could not imagine Bel choosing this moment to play Betan Astronomical Survey and go exploring. There was the very rare ship that jumped through some perfectly standard route but never materialized on the other side … converted to an unrecoverable smear of quarks in the fabric of space-time by some subtle malfunction in the ship’s Necklin rods or the pilot’s neurological control system. The jump couriers kept track of traffic on such a heavily commercialized route as this, though, and would have reported such a disappearance promptly.
He came—was driven—to decision, and that alone heated his temper a few more degrees. He had grown unaccustomed of late to being chivvied into any action by events not under his own control. This was not in my plans for the day, blast it. “All right, Sandy. Call me a staff meeting. Captain Quinn, Captain Bothari-Jesek, Commodore Jesek, in the Triumph’s briefing room, as soon as they can assemble.”
Hereld raised her brows at the list of names even as her hands moved over the comconsole interface to comply. Inner Circle all. “Serious shit, sir?”
He managed an edged smile, and tried to lighten his voice. “Seriously annoying only, Lieutenant.”
Not quite. What had his idiot baby brother Mark in mind to do with that commando squad he’d requisitioned? A dozen fully-equipped Dendarii troopers were not trivial firepower. Yet, compared to the military resources of, say, House Bharaputra … enough force to get into a hell of a lot of trouble, but not enough force to shoot their way back out. The thought of his people—Taura, God!—blindly following the ignorant Mark into some tactical insanity, trustingly thinking it was him, drove him wild inside. Klaxons howled and red lights flashed in his head. Bel, why aren’t you answering?
* * *
Miles found himself pacing in the Triumph’s main briefing room, too, around and around the big main tac display table, until Quinn raised her chin from her hands to growl, “Will you please sit down?” Quinn was not as anxious as he; she was not biting her fingernails yet. The ends remained neat, uneclipsed half-moons. He found that faintly reassuring. He swung into a station chair. One of his booted feet began tapping on the friction matting. Quinn eyed it, frowned, opened her mouth, closed it, and shook her head. He stilled the foot and bared his teeth at her in a quick false grin. Happily, before his nervous energy could materialize into some even more irritating compulsive twitch, Baz Jesek arrived.
“Elena is podding over from the Peregrine right now,” Baz reported, seating himself in his usual station chair, and by habit calling up the fleet engineering ops interface from the comconsole. “She should be along in just a few minutes.”
“Good, thanks,” Miles nodded.
The engineer had been a tall, thin, dark-haired, tensely unhappy man in his late twenties when Miles had first met him, almost a decade ago, at the birth of the Dendarii Mercenaries. The outfit had then consisted only of Miles, his Barrayaran bodyguard, his bodyguard’s daughter, one obsolete freighter slated for scrap and its suicidally depressed jump pilot, and an ill-conceived get-rich-quick arms-smuggling scheme. Miles had sworn Baz in as a liege-man to Lord Vorkosigan before Admiral Naismith had even been invented. Now in
his late thirties, Baz remained just as thin, with slightly less dark hair, and just as quiet, but possessed of a serene self-confidence. He reminded Miles of a heron, stalking in some reedy lake-margin, all long stillnesses and economical motions.
As promised, Elena Bothari-Jesek entered the chamber shortly thereafter, and seated herself beside her engineer-husband. Both being on duty, they limited the demonstration of their reunion to the exchange of a smile and a quick hand-touch under the table. She spared a smile for Miles, too. Secondly.
Of all the Dendarii Inner Circle who knew him as Lieutenant Lord Vorkosigan, Elena was surely the deepest inside. Her father, the late Sergeant Bothari, had been Miles’s liege-sworn armsman and personal protector from the day Miles had been born. Age mates, Miles and Elena had been practically raised together, since Countess Vorkosigan had taken a maternal interest in the motherless girl. Elena knew Admiral Naismith, Lord Vorkosigan, and just-plain-Miles as thoroughly—perhaps more thoroughly—as anyone in the universe.
And had chosen to marry Baz Jesek instead … Miles found it comforting and useful to think of Elena as his sister. Foster-sister she nearly was in truth. She was as tall as her tall husband, with cropped ebony hair and pale ivory skin. He could still see the echo of borzoi-faced Sergeant Bothari in the aquiline bones of her features, Bothari’s leaden ugliness transmuted to her golden beauty by some genetic alchemy. Elena, I still love you, dammit… he clipped off the thought. He had Quinn now. Or anyway, the Admiral Naismith half of him did.
As a Dendarii officer, Elena was his finest creation. He’d watched her grow from a shy, angry, off-balance girl, barred from military service on Barrayar by her gender, to squad leader to covert operative to staff officer to ship-master. The retired Commodore Tung had once named her his second-best military apprentice ever. Miles sometimes wondered how much of his on-going maintenance of the Dendarii Mercenaries was really service to Imperial Security, how much was the wild self-indulgence of a very questionable aspect of his own faceted—or fractured—personality, and how much was a secret gift to Elena Bothari. Bothari-Jesek. The true springs of history could be murky indeed.
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