Ten minutes and two connections later, he emerged to find himself in a very much older section of town, restored 22nd-century architecture. He didn't have to check for street numbers to spot his destination. The crowd, the barricades, the flashing lights, the police hovercars, fire equipment, ambulance . . . "Damnation," Miles muttered, and started down that side street. He rolled the words back through his mouth, switching gears, to Admiral Naismith's flat Betan accent, "Aw, shit …"
Miles guessed the policeman in charge was the one with the amplifier comm, and not one of the half-dozen in body armor toting plasma rifles. He pushed his way through the crowd and hopped over the barricade. "Are you the officer in charge?"
The constable's head snapped around in bewilderment, then he looked down. At first purely startled, he frowned as he took in Miles's uniform. "Are you one of those psychopaths?" he demanded.
Miles rocked back on his heels, wondering how to answer that one. He suppressed all three of the initial retorts that came to his mind, and chose instead, "I'm Admiral Miles Naismith, commanding, Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet. What's happened here?" He interrupted himself to slowly and delicately extend one index finger and push skyward the muzzle of a plasma rifle being held on him by an armored woman. "Please, dear, I'm on your side, really." Her eyes flashed mistrustfully at him through her faceplate, but the police commander jerked his head, and she faded back a few paces.
"Attempted robbery," said the constable. "When the clerk tried to foil it, they attacked her."
"Robbery?" said Miles. "Excuse me, but that makes no sense. I thought all transactions were by computer credit transfer here. There's no cash to rob. There must be some misunderstanding."
"Not cash," said the constable. "Stock."
The store, Miles noticed out of the corner of his eye, was a wineshop. A display window was cracked and starred. He suppressed a queasy feeling of unease, and plunged on, keeping his voice light. "In any case, I fail to understand this stand-off with deadly weapons over a case of shoplifting. Aren't you overreacting a trifle? Where are your stunners?"
"They hold the woman hostage," said the constable grimly.
"So? Stun them all, God will recognize his own."
The constable gave Miles a peculiar look. He didn't read his own history, Miles guessed—the source of that quote was just across the water from here, for pity's sake.
"They claim to have arranged some sort of dead-man switch. They claim this whole block will go up in flames." The constable paused. "Is this possible?"
Miles paused too. "Have you got ID's on any of these guys yet?"
"No."
"How are you communicating with them?"
"Through the comconsole. At least, we were—they appear to have destroyed it a few minutes ago."
"We will, of course, pay damages," Miles choked.
"That's not all you'll pay," growled the constable.
"Well…" Out of the corner of his eye Miles saw a hovercar labeled euronews network dropping down to the street. "I think it's time to break this up."
He started toward the wineshop.
"What are you going to do?" asked the constable.
"Arrest them. They face Dendarii charges for taking ordnance off-ship."
"All by yourself? They'll shoot you. They're crazy-drunk."
"I don't think so. If I were going to be shot by my own troops, they've had much better opportunities than this."
The constable frowned, but did not stop him.
The autodoors were not working. Miles stood baffled before the glass a moment, then pounded on it. There was shadowy movement behind the iridescent shimmer. A very long pause, and the doors slid open about a third of a meter; Miles turned sideways and slipped through. A man inside shoved them shut again by hand and jammed a metal brace in their slot.
The interior of the wineshop was a shambles. Miles gasped at the fumes in the air, aromatic vapors from shattered bottles. You could get plastered just from breathing. . . . The carpeting squished underfoot.
Miles glanced around, to determine who he wanted to murder first. The one who'd unblocked the door stood out, as he was wearing only underwear.
" 'S Admiral Naismith," the doorman hissed. He came to a tilted attention, and saluted.
"Whose army are you in, soldier?" Miles growled at him. The man's hands made little waving motions, as if to offer explanations by mime. Miles couldn't dredge up his name.
Another Dendarii, in uniform this time, was sitting on the floor with his back to a pillar. Miles squatted down, considering hauling him to his feet, or at least his knees, by his jacket and bracing him. Miles stared into his face. Little red eyes like coals in the caverns of his eye-sockets stared back without recognition. "Eugh," muttered Miles, and rose without further attempt to communicate. That one's consciousness was somewhere in wormhole space.
"Who cares?" came a hoarse voice from the floor behind a display rack, one of the few that hadn't been violently upended. "Who t'hell cares?"
Oh, we've got the best and brightest here today, don't we? Miles thought sourly. An upright person emerged around the end of the display rack, saying, "Can't be, he's disappeared again …"
At last, someone Miles knew by name. All too well. Further explanation for the scene was almost redundant. "Ah, Private Danio. Fancy meeting you here."
Danio shambled to a species of attention, towering over Miles. An antique pistol, its grip defaced with notches, dangled menacingly from his ham hand. Miles nodded toward it. "Is that the deadly weapon I was called away from my affairs to come collect? They talked like you had half our bleeding arsenal down here."
"No, sir!" said Danio. "That would be against regs." He patted the gun fondly. "Jus' my personal property. Because you never know. The crazies are everywhere."
"Are you carrying any other weapons among you?"
"Yalen has his bowie knife."
Miles controlled a twinge of relief as premature. Still, if these morons were on their own, the Dendarii fleet might not have to get officially sucked into their morass after all. "Did you know that carrying any weapon is a criminal offense in this jurisdiction?"
Danio thought this over. "Wimps," he said at last.
"Nevertheless," said Miles firmly, "I'm going to have to collect them and take them back to the flagship." Miles peered around the display rack. The one on the floor—Yalen, presumably—lay clutching an unsheathed hunk of steel suitable for butchering an entire steer, should he encounter one mooing down the metalled streets and skyways of London.
Miles thought it through, and pointed. "Bring me that knife, Private Danio."
Danio pried the weapon from his comrade's grip. "Nooo …" said the horizontal one.
Miles breathed easier when he had both weapons in his possession. "Now, Danio—quickly, because they're getting nervous out there—exactly what happened here?"
"Well, sir, we were having a party. We'd rented a room." He jerked his head toward the demi-naked doorman who hovered listening. "We ran out of supplies, and came here to buy more, 'cause it was close by. Got everything all picked out and piled up, and then the bitch wouldn't take our credit! Good Dendarii credit!"
"The bitch . . . ?" Miles looked around, stepping over the disarmed Yalen. Oh, ye gods. . . . The store clerk, a plump, middle-aged woman, lay on her side on the floor at the other end of the display rack, gagged, trussed up in the naked soldier's twisted jacket and pants by way of makeshift restraints.
Miles pulled the bowie knife out of his belt and headed for her. She made hysterical gurgling noises down in her throat.
"I wouldn't let her loose if I were you," said the naked soldier warningly. "She makes a lot of noise."
Miles paused and studied the woman. Her greying hair stuck out wildly, except where it was plastered to her forehead and neck by sweat. Her terrorized eyes rolled whitely; she bucked against her bonds.
"Mm." Miles thrust the knife back in his belt temporarily. He caught the naked soldier's name off his unifor
m at last, and made an unwelcome mental connection. "Xaveria. Yes, I remember you now. You did well at Dagoola." Xaveria stood straighter.
Damn. So much for his nascent plan of throwing the entire lot to the local authorities, and praying they were all still incarcerated when the fleet broke orbit. Could Xaveria be detached from his worthless comrades somehow? Alas, it looked like they were all in this together.
"So she wouldn't take your credit cards. You, Xaveria—what happened next?" "Er—insults were exchanged, sir."
"And?"
"And tempers kind of got out of hand. Bottles were thrown, and thrown on the floor. The police were called. She was punched out." Xaveria eyed Danio warily.
Miles contemplated the sudden absence of actors from all this action, in Xaveria's syntax. "And?"
"And the police got here. And we told them we'd blow the place up if they tried to come in,"
"And do you actually have the means to carry out that threat, Private Xaveria?"
"No, sir. It was pure bluff. I was trying to think—well—what you would do in the situation, sir."
This one is too damned observant. Even when he's potted, Miles thought dryly. He sighed, and ran his hands through his hair. "Why wouldn't she take your credit cards? Aren't they the Earth Universals you were issued at the shuttleport? You weren't trying to use the ones left over from Mahata Solaris, were you?"
"No, sir," said Xaveria. He produced his card by way of evidence. It looked all right. Miles turned, to test it in the comconsole at the checkout, only to discover that the comconsole had been shot. The final bullet hole in the holovid plate was precisely centered, must have been intended as the coup de grace, although the console still emitted little wheezing popping noises now and then. He added the price of it to the running tally in his head and winced.
"Actually," Xaveria cleared his throat, "it was the machine that spat it up, sir."
"It shouldn't have done that," Miles began, "unless—" Unless there's something wrong with the central account, his thought finished. The pit of his stomach felt suddenly very cold. "I'll check it out," he promised. "Meanwhile we have to wrap this up and get you out of here without your being fried by the local constables."
Danio nodded excitedly toward the pistol in Miles's hand. "We could blast our way out the back. Make a run for the nearest tubeway."
Miles, momentarily bereft of speech, envisioned plugging Danio with his own pistol. Danio was saved only by Miles's reflection that the recoil might break his arm. He'd smashed his right hand at Dagoola, and the memory of the pain was still fresh.
"No, Danio," Miles said when he could command his voice. "We are going to walk quietly—very quietly—out the front door and surrender."
"But the Dendarii never surrender," said Xaveria.
"This is not a firebase," said Miles patiently. "It is a wineshop. Or at any rate, it was. Furthermore, it is not even our wineshop." Though I shall no doubt be compelled to buy it. "Think of the London police not as your enemies, but as your dearest friends. They are, you know. Because," he fixed Xaveria with a cold eye, "until they get done with you, I can't start."
"Ah," said Xaveria, quelled at last. He touched Danio on the arm. "Yeah. Maybe—maybe we better let the Admiral take us home, eh, Danio?"
Xaveria hauled the ex-bowie knife owner to his feet. After a moment's thought, Miles walked quietly behind red-eye, pulled out his pocket stunner, and placed a light blast to the base of his skull. Red-eye toppled sideways. Miles sent up a short prayer that this final stimulus wouldn't send him into trauma-shock. God alone knew what chemical cocktail it chased, except that it clearly wasn't alcohol alone.
"You take his head," Miles directed Danio, "and you, Yalen, take his feet." There, that effectively immobilized all three of them. "Xaveria, open the door, place your hands on top of your head, and walk, do not run, to where you will submit quietly to arrest. Danio, you follow. That's an order."
"Wish we had the rest of the troops," muttered Danio.
"The only troop you need is a troop of legal experts," said Miles. He eyed Xaveria, and sighed. "I'll send you one."
"Thank you, sir," said Xaveria, and lurched gravely forward. Miles brought up the rear, gritting his teeth.
Miles blinked in the sunlight of the street. His little patrol fell into the arms of the waiting police. Danio did not fight when they started to frisk him, though Miles only relaxed when he saw the tangle-field finally turned on. The constable commander approached, inhaling for speech.
A soft foomp! broke from the door of the wineshop. Blue flames licked out over the slidewalk.
Miles cried out, wheeled, and sprinted explosively from his standing start, gulping a huge breath and holding it. He hurtled through the wineshop doors, into darkness shot through with twisting heat, around the display case. The alcohol-soaked carpeting was growing flames, like stands of golden wheat running in a crazy pattern following concentrations of fumes. Fire was advancing on the bound woman on the floor; in a moment, her hair would be a terrible halo.
Miles dove for her, wriggled his shoulder under her, grunted to his feet. He swore he could feel his bones bend. She kicked unhelpfully. Miles staggered for the door, bright like the mouth of a tunnel, like the gate of life. His lungs pulsed, straining for oxygen against his tightly-closed lips. Total elapsed time, eleven seconds.
In the twelfth second, the room behind them brightened, roaring. Miles and his burden fell to the slidewalk, rolling—he rolled her over and over—flames were lapping over their clothing. People were screaming and yelling at an unintelligible distance. His Dendarii uniform cloth, combat-rated, would neither melt nor burn, but still made a dandy wick for the volatile liquids splashed on it. The effect was bloody spectacular. But the poor clerk's clothing offered no such protection—
He choked on a faceful of foam, sprayed on them by the fireman who had rushed forward. He must have been standing at the ready all this time. The frightened-looking policewoman hovered anxiously clutching her thoroughly redundant plasma-rifle. The fire extinguisher foam was like being rolled in beer suds, only not so tasty—Miles spat vile chemicals, and lay a moment gasping. God, air was good. Nobody praised air enough.
"A bomb!" cried the constable commander.
Miles wriggled onto his back, appreciating the blue slice of sky seen through eyes miraculously unglazed, unburst, unslagged. "No," he panted sadly, "brandy. Lots and lots of very expensive brandy. And cheap grain alcohol. Probably set off by a short circuit in the comconsole."
He rolled out of the way as firemen in white protective garments bearing the tools of their trade stampeded forward. A fireman pulled him to his feet, farther away from the now-blazing building. He came up staring at a person pointing a piece of equipment at him resembling, for a disoriented moment, a microwave cannon. The adrenalin rush washed over him without effect, there was no response left in him. The person was babbling at him. Miles blinked dizzily, and the microwave cannon fell into more sensible focus as a holovid camera.
He wished it had been a microwave cannon. . . . The clerk, released at last, was pointing at him and crying and screaming. For someone he'd just saved from a horrible death, she didn't sound very grateful. The holovid swung her way for a moment, until she was led away by the ambulance personnel. He hoped they'd supply her with a sedative. He pictured her arriving home that night, to husband and children—"And how was the shop today, dear . . . ?" He wondered if she'd accept hush-money, and if so, how much it would be. Money, oh God . . .
"Miles!" Elli Quinn's voice over his shoulder made him jump. "Do you have everything under control?"
They collected stares, on the tubeway ride to the London shuttleport. Miles, catching a glimpse of himself in a mirrored wall while Elli credited their tokens, was not surprised. The sleek, polished Lord Vorkosigan he'd last seen looking back at him before the embassy reception has been transmuted, werewolf-wise, into a most degraded little monster. His scorched, damp, bedraggled uniform was flecked with little fluff
y bits of drying foam. The white placket down the jacket front was filthy. His face was smudged, his voice a croak, his eyes red and feral from smoke irritation. He reeked of smoke and sweat and drink, especially drink. He'd been rolling in it, after all. People near them in line caught one whiff and started edging away. The constables, thank God, had relieved him of knife and pistol, impounded as evidence. Still he and Elli had their end of the bubble-car all to themselves.
Miles sank into his seat with a groan. "Some bodyguard you are," he said to Elli. "Why didn't you protect me from that interviewer?"
"She wasn't trying to shoot you. Besides, I'd just got there. I couldn't tell her what had been going on.
"But you're far more photogenic. It would have improved the image of the Dendarii Fleet."
"Holovids make me tongue-tied. But you sounded calm enough."
"I was trying to downplay it all. 'Boys will be boys' chuckles Admiral Naismith, while in the background his troops burn down London…"
Elli grinned. " 'Sides, they weren't interested in me. I wasn't the hero who'd dashed into a burning building—by the gods, when you came rolling out all on fire—"
"You saw that?" Miles was vaguely cheered. "Did it look good in the long shots? Maybe it'll make up for Danio and his jolly crew, in the minds of our host city."
"It looked properly terrifying." She shuddered appreciation. "I'm surprised you're not more badly burned."
Miles twitched singed eyebrows, and tucked his blistered left hand unobtrusively under his right arm. "It was nothing. Protective clothing. I'm glad not all our equipment design is faulty."
"I don't know. To tell the truth, I've been shy of fire ever since …" her hand touched her face.
"As well you should be. The whole thing was carried out by my spinal reflexes. When my brain finally caught up with my body, it was all over, and then I had the shakes. I've seen a few fires, in combat. The only thing I could think of was speed, because when fires hit that certain point, they expand fast."
Miles bit back confiding his further worries about the security aspects of that damned interview. It was too late now, though his imagination played with the idea of a secret Dendarii raid on Euronews Network to destroy the vid disk. Maybe war would break out, or a shuttle would crash, or the government would fall in a major sex scandal, and the whole wineshop incident would be shelved in the rush of other news events. Besides, the Cetagandans surely already knew Admiral Naismith had been seen on Earth. He would disappear back into Lord Vorkosigan soon enough, perhaps permanently this time.
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