Captain Vorpatril's alliance mv-14

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “Oh.”

  “I think mine are hung with my black fatigues in my closet.”

  “Do Barrayaran soldiers only wear them with the fatigues?”

  “They’re not for every day, at least not at HQ. Just if you’re out in the field. Going into some dicey situation, say. There was an argument going around Ops for subcutaneous identity inserts, with electronic trackers, but the troops didn’t like it, and then somebody pointed out that if we could find our guys with a ping, so might an enemy, and the idea died in committee.” Not to mention the possibility that the bad guys could be their guys, in some civil fracas. It had happened before.

  “So…” She hesitated, looking over her shoulder at him, where he waited in what he hoped was a good tactical position on what had become his side of the bed. “So if you were going into danger, that’s how I’d know?”

  “I would hope you would know because I’d tell you.”

  “No…” Her gaze on him grew thoughtful. “I’m not sure you would.”

  He cleared his throat. “Anyway, why do you ask?”

  “I, uh…saw one today, and I wondered. About you.”

  “Where?”

  “I—found it on the floor of a parking garage. Here, wait…” She padded out, and padded back in again a minute later, a thin chain that clinked and winked dangling from her hand.

  Ivan rolled up and received it, turning it over and reading the inscription. “This is a really old style. Mine look different. Somebody must have saved it for a souvenir. Maybe it dropped out of his pocket.” Ivan’s imagination flashed another, sadder picture. “Or hers.”

  “That would make sense.”

  “I bet they’ll want it back. Which garage?”

  “Um, I don’t remember. There were so many.”

  “Maybe I can look this fellow up tomorrow, in the Ops archives.”

  “Oh! Can you?” Tej looked briefly cheered, then alarmed. “But maybe…I’d like to keep it as a souvenir myself.” Her hand reached uncertainly after the relic.

  “If you want that, I can give you my old set. From when I was a lieutenant.” Ivan’s even older set, from when he’d been an ensign, had gone with some girlfriend or another and not come back, Ivan suddenly remembered. Proving that, as a girl-leash, they didn’t work, despite the name, though it seemed as if they ought to.

  Tej at last sat on the edge of the bed, still looking abstracted. His stretch for her halted in midair when her next question was, “Ivan Xav…do you know anything much about old Barrayaran military plastic explosives?”

  He sank back, flummoxed. “I hope you didn’t find any of that on the floor of a garage!”

  “No, no.”

  “How old?”

  “Really old. Twenty years, maybe more?”

  “I had a munitions course back at the Academy, but that was all about current stuff.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Er…seventeen years?”

  “But that’s almost twenty years.”

  Ivan blinked. “So it is. Um.” He re-marshaled his forces. “Anyway, if you ever run across anything that looks the least suspicious, what you do is call a bomb squad. Or call me, and I’ll call a bomb squad.”

  “Is that what you’d do?”

  “Of course! Well, except for that old guerilla cache Miles and Elena and I found up in the Dendarii Mountains when we were kids. But we were being very stupid kids, as everyone from Uncle Aral on down explained, very memorably, after the—never mind that now. Anyway, the point is, people can still find old, dangerous stuff lying around on this planet, and civilians shouldn’t fool with it.” Untangling himself from this digression, Ivan finally got back to the important question, which was, “Why do you ask?”

  “No reason,” Tej said airily.

  Right. Avocados probably did shifty better than Tej. It was most un-Jacksonian of her.

  “It was just something I was reading about,” she added, finding who-knew-what in his expression. Consternation, belike.

  “How’s about,” said Ivan after a minute, “I take some personal leave?” And to hell with whether any busy-ImpSec-body thought he was admitting to being a security risk. “If your family’s only going to be here for a while, I should seize the chance to get to know them better. It only makes sense.”

  “Oh!” She looked briefly pleased, then dismayed. “I wouldn’t want to interfere with your work. I know your career is very important.”

  “We’re not at war. This week, anyway. Ops can suffer along without me for a few days without collapsing, I expect. They always have before.”

  Her eyes were bright, like those of an animal in the headlights. “Good, that’s settled. Let’s make love!”

  It was a patent diversion. Dammit, she’d be faking orgasms, next.

  * * *

  …But not, it appeared, yet.

  This means she likes me, right? some awkward young Ivan who still lived at the bottom of his brain urged, just before the physiologically induced lights-out.

  Surly old Ivan could only think, Ivan, you idiot.

  And not one Ivan on the whole pathetic committee had yet been able to muster aloud the only question that mattered. Tej, will you stay?

  Chapter Twenty

  On the next morning’s drive Tej found herself threading through a new part of the city, an unexpected suburban sprawl north of the ridges that cradled the river valley and the Old Town. Barrayarans seemed to date all their activities in terms of famous military events—before the Occupation, during Mad Yuri’s War, after the Pretender’s War—but in this rare case, by a peaceful one: the area had mostly been built up since Gregor took the reins, or in other words, in the past two decades.

  Tej turned in at a modest industrial park, and found a slot for the rented groundcar in front of what was soon to be a rather bewildered minor pipe-laying firm. Star took her notecase and headed purposefully for the door, but for a change Dada did not go with her, nor instruct Tej to stay with the vehicle. Instead, he gestured Tej after him, and walked off toward the street. Tej turned up the collar of her coat against the thick, chilly fog—a change from the recent rains—and followed.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To see a man I know.”

  “Does he expect us?”

  “Not yet.”

  No appointment, no comconsole contact, and the rental car, which had a mapping system that also served to precisely locate the vehicle for anyone who might be wanting to follow its movements, had a legitimate place to be. Well, faux-legitimate. Tej found herself growing unwillingly alert.

  Dada added, “I’m not keen on bringing in an outsider, but we’re now expecting and in fact counting on our visa not being extended. Time grows tight. A reliable contact said she’d used him as a carrier, not long back, and found the results satisfactory. He’ll be open to our business. And, if he has his wits about him, future business.”

  They walked two blocks and crossed over to another utilitarian building, and through a door with a sign over it reading Imola & Kovaks, Storage and Transshipping. A harried-looking human receptionist presiding over a cluttered counter, which gave Tej a small, unwanted flashback to her days at Swift Shipping, looked up and said, “May I help you, sir, ma’am?”

  “Would you please tell Ser Imola that an old friend is here to see him.”

  “He’s very busy this morning, but I’ll ask.” Standard clerk-speak prep, Tej recognized from experience, for greasing an unwanted visitor back out the door. “What name should I say?”

  “Selby.”

  A brief intercom exchange, and the clerk was escorting them upstairs to another office, also cluttered. A man on the high side of middle age, dressed in relatively unmilitary Barrayaran casual business garb, looked up over his comconsole desk, frowning; his frown changed to an expression of astonishment. A touch of his hand extinguished the current display. “Thank you Jon,” he said. “Please close the door.” The clerk, disappointed in his curiosity, did so. Only then did t
he man surge up and around his desk to grasp both of Dada’s hands and say, “Shiv Arqua, you old pirate! I heard you were dead!”

  “An exaggeration. Again. Though not by much, this time.” Dad smiled without showing his teeth, and turned to Tej, but then turned back. “And what name are you going by, these days?”

  “Vigo Imola.”

  “Vigo, meet my daughter, Baronette Tejaswini Arqua.”

  Tej shook hands, wondering. Formerly, on these business stops with her sisters or mother, she had been named our driver, or not introduced at all, or left with the car. “People usually call me Tej.” Or Lady Vorpatril, but none of her family had used her new name yet. She stifled an unruly urge to trot it out here; Dada was plainly going into dealing-mode.

  “Delightful! I would guess she gets her looks from her mother?” Imola’s gaze swept her up and down; he scored a point, or two, by not lingering on her chest. “Mostly.”

  “Fortunately,” said Dada, with his low laugh. Their host pulled up a pair of serviceable chairs, and gestured them both to sit.

  “Where do you two know each other from?” asked Tej. Sometimes she got an answer, after all.

  “In a former life, Vigo was my planetary liaison officer when I was a captain in the Selby Fleet,” said Dada. “Just before I met your mother.”

  “And weren’t those the days,” said Imola, planting himself comfortably behind his desk once more. “Was old Selby insane, to take that defense contract with Komarr?”

  “We were young. And probably thought we were immortal,” said Dada.

  “Yeah, I got over that about then,” said Imola. Imola’s underlying accent was Komarran, Tej judged, overlain by a long residence on Barrayar; in this urban environment, very blended. “Who would’ve thought that a backward planet like this could field such an aggressive fleet?”

  “Not your Komarran comrades, it seems.”

  “Huh.” Imola shook his head at some old military memory. “So what the devil are you doing on Barrayar? I thought House Cordonah had suffered an extremely hostile takeover. Prestene, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, the bastards.” At the name, Dada bit his thumb and made a spitting gesture. “It’s a long story, very roundabout. I’ll tell you the whole tale at some more leisured moment. So, you ended up in the transshipping business.”

  “As you see.” Imola waved around at his unpretentious company offices.

  “Ah…all of it?”

  Ser Imola smiled, reached under his desk, and turned something off. Or on. “Sometimes. If the price is right. And the risks are low. The second being more important than the first, these days.” He heaved a sigh. “I’m not as ambitious as when we were younger. Nor as energetic. Nor as crazy.”

  “Your end should be low risk. The price…we’ll need to discuss.”

  “So what do you have for me?” Imola inquired. “Weight and volume? Perishability? Live or inert? Live costs more.”

  “Inert, as it happens. Weight and volume to be determined, though it won’t be high bulk. But you ship live cargo? How does that jibe with low risk?”

  Imola smiled in satisfaction. “We solve the perishability problem by shipping all such consignments cryo-frozen. The new generation of portable cryochambers being much more reliable, with longer service cycles. Shipping deceased expats or ill-fated tourists who want to be treated or buried back home is a legitimate part of the business, see. I have a contact on the medical side who sends clients my way, or sometimes helps prep them, and if we occasionally slip in a few extras on the manifest, the documentation is all in order.”

  Dada’s brows twitched up. “The cargo takes a risk.”

  “For voluntary cargo, well, they’re willing. For involuntary cargo, their shippers are usually even more willing. Our losses in transit are actually lower. And it’s vastly cheaper, since they don’t have to send handlers along to thwart escapes en route. The method does depend on having adequate cryorevival facilities on the far end, but that’s not my problem.” Imola waved a didactic finger. “The trick, as always, is not to get greedy—not try to ship too often, or too many at once. There are only so many tragic accidents to go around. We reference real ones, whenever we can.”

  Dada nodded approval. “Very clever. I see you’re not too old to innovate.”

  “It was my son-in-law’s idea, to give credit where it’s due. My daughter married this Barrayaran boy, some years after the annexation. I wasn’t thrilled at first, but he’s come along. Junior partner. He’s the Kovaks. Our medical contact is his brother.”

  “Glad to hear you’re keeping it in the family. That’s…almost always safer.” Another brief grimace of a smile.

  “Heh, daughters getting married—that’s a crap shoot to make the old days look sensible. You don’t know what they’ll drag in. My other one married this Komarran fellow, who is completely useless but at least lives five jumps away. You folks’ve got the right idea out in the Whole, Shiv—pre-vetted contracts, money and considerations up front.”

  “Oh, well…” Dada did not follow this up, to Tej’s relief. “Can you get local ground transport—a mid-sized cargo van, say?”

  “I have vans. And loading crews.”

  “That aren’t traceable back to you?”

  “That could be done, too.” Imola’s eyes narrowed with interest.

  “We would do our own loading. Could you get it by this weekend?”

  “Probably.”

  “And very private storage?”

  “Could be made available.”

  “Deal would be, park your van overnight in a certain underground garage in the Old Town. Send someone in on foot to drive it away in the morning. We might need a second night, in which case best have a different van. One of us will meet you separately to oversee the unloading—some of the cargo may be delicate.”

  Tej tried to picture the implied scene. A bucket brigade of Arquas spaced along the Mycoborer tunnel, silently hand-carting contraband all night? They might just about do it. Heavy loads that could not be broken down might have to be regretfully abandoned—happily, this did not include gold coins. Nothing inside the old lab could be very large, though, or its original owners could not have squeezed it down through the elevator shaft, the one Grandmama had said she’d once been responsible for blowing up, as last haut woman out.

  “Once our target location is cleared and the goods safely stored,” Dada went on, “the transshipping arrangements could be completed at leisure, more carefully. Possibly in small batches.”

  “Where to?”

  “Not known precisely yet. Out of the Barrayaran Empire; some towards the Hegen Hub, some to Escobar.”

  “Makes it hard to calculate a price. You thinking percentage or flat fee?”

  “Until the items reach their final destination and are disposed of, they’re solid, not liquid. I think you might prefer flat fee, now, rather than an unknown amount decanted off an unknown amount, much later.”

  “Why not both?” said Imola. “Flat fee up front, to be sure all possible expenses are covered, and the percentage after success. Say, fifteen percent. That’s pretty usual.”

  Dada winced slightly. “Could be. We need to move quickly and quietly.”

  “For a percentage, I can do quickly and quietly. So do we have a deal?”

  After a short hesitation, Dada rose and reached across the desk; a brief handshake. “Deal.”

  Imola leaned back and prepared to make a note. “So what’s the address of this garage of yours?”

  Dada named it. Imola’s hand froze. “Shiv, do you know what’s across the street from that building?”

  “Oh, yes,” sighed Dada. “Hence our discretion.”

  “You may not have spotted the scanners, but I guarantee any vehicle that parks within three blocks of ImpSec headquarters gets scrutinized somehow. And recorded.”

  “Quite thoroughly scanned, entering that garage, yes. But—not leaving it. That one’s cursory, just to be sure outs match ins. We checked.”
<
br />   “Ah.” Imola frowned, obviously thinking this through. His anonymous van would be arriving empty and innocent, yes. The driver would know nothing…“One of the ways I stay in business around here is that I don’t get involved with local politics. Strictly commercial, I am. Vorbarra District Guard and Imperial Customs are all bad enough. ImpSec—that’s too high up for me. Give you a nosebleed, those boys will.”

  “I have no interest in local politics, myself.”

  “Strictly commercial, is this?”

  “I certainly hope so.”

  “Hm.” Imola stared at the address on his autofiler, evidently memorizing it, then deleted the screen. “You might have said.”

  “You didn’t think I’d pester you with something trivial, did you?”

  “No, I suppose not. You always were a beat ahead of the rest of us, back when.” Imola sighed. “Do give my best to your lady. She’s still with you, I suppose?”

  Dada nodded.

  “And the rest of the clan?”

  “All safe with us, for now.” Dada, Tej noticed, did not go into the distressing details about Ruby and Topaz and Eric.

  “Mustering for a fresh move on Prestene, are you? Or something?”

  “More or less. Or something.” Dada’s lips twitched. “Or we might buy a tropical island.”

  Imola looked nonplussed at this last, but said, “Eh, good luck on that. People just don’t keep up with each other, these scattered times. Does Udine still have her fancy dance troupe? Quite the show, I heard, when you were all on Cordonah Station.”

  “Her Jewels, yes. And they will dance again,” said Dada firmly. “You’ll have to stop by, next you get out that way.”

  After a few more anecdotes about the Good Old Days, which sounded like the Repulsive Old Days to Tej, Dada rose and they extracted themselves, and exited to the street once more. The fog was thinning, or perhaps just condensing into a cold drizzle.

  “Let’s wait in the car,” Dada directed, when they’d made their way back to the pipe-layer’s building. “No point in stepping on Star’s script.”