Brothers in Arms b-8

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Thought it might, Miles thought smugly. He made a few more little escaping-motions. She clamped to him like a limpet. "No, please … if you don't tell me, I shall surely investigate it on my own."

  "Well …" Miles paused. "It's all rather old data, from our point of view. I can tell you a few things, I suppose, since it impinges upon me so personally. But it is not for public dissemination. You must give me your word of that, first."

  "A Barrayaran Vor lord's word is his bond, is it not?" she said. "I never reveal my sources."

  "Very well," nodded Miles, pretending he was under the impression she'd promised, though her words in fact had said nothing of the sort. He nabbed a pair of chairs, and they settled themselves out of the way of the roboservers clearing the banquet debris. Miles cleared his throat, and launched himself.

  "The biological construct who calls himself Admiral Naismith is … perhaps the most dangerous man in the galaxy. Cunning—resolute—both Cetagandan and Barrayaran Security have attempted, in the past, to assassinate him, without success. He's started to build himself a power-base, with his Dendarii Mercenaries. We still don't know what his long-range plans for this private army are, except that he must have some."

  Vallerie's finger went to her lips doubtfully. "He seemed—pleasant enough, when I spoke with him. Allowing for the circumstance. A brave man, certainly."

  "Aye, there's the genius and the wonder of the man," cried Miles, then decided he'd better tone it down a bit. "Charisma. Surely the Cetagandans, if it was the Cetagandans, must have intended something extraordinary for him. He's a military genius, you know."

  "Wait a moment," she said. "He is a true clone, you say—not just an exterior copy? Then he must be even younger than yourself."

  "Yes. His growth, his education, were artificially accelerated, apparently to the limits of the process. But where have you seen him?"

  "Here in London," she answered, started to say more, and then stopped. "But you say Barrayar is trying to kill him?" She drew away from him slightly. "I think perhaps I'd better let you trace him yourselves."'

  "Oh, not anymore." Miles laughed shortly. "Now we just keep track of him. He'd dropped out of sight recently, you see, which makes my own security extremely nervous. Clearly, he must have been originally created for some sort of substitution plot aimed ultimately against my father. But seven years ago he went renegade, broke away from his captors-creators, and started working for himself. We—Barrayar—know too much about him now, and he and I have diverged too much, for him to attempt to replace me at this late date."

  She eyed him. "He could. He really could."

  "Almost." Miles smiled grimly. "But if you could ever get us in the same room, you'd see I was almost two centimeters taller than he is. Late growth, on my part. Hormone treatments …" His invention must give out soon—he babbled on. …

  "The Cetagandans, however, are still trying to kill him. So for, that's the best proof we have that he's' actually their creation. Clearly, he must know too much about something. We'd dearly love to know what." He favored her with an inviting canine smile, horribly false. She drew back slightly more.

  Miles let his fists close angrily. "The most offensive thing about the man is his nerve. He might at least have picked another name for himself, but he flaunts mine. Perhaps he became used to it when he was training to be me, as he must have done once. He speaks with a Betan accent, and takes my mother's Betan maiden name for his surname, Betan-style, and do you know why?"

  Yeah, why, why . . . ?

  She shook her head mutely, staring at him in repelled fascination.

  "Because by Betan law regarding clones, he would actually be my legal brother, that's why! He attempts to gain a false legitimacy for himself. I'm not sure why. It may be a key to his weakness. He must have a weakness, somewhere, some chink in his armor—" besides hereditary insanity, of course—He broke off, panting slightly. Let her think it was from suppressed rage, and not suppressed terror.

  The ambassador, thank God, was motioning at him from across the room, his party assembled to depart. "Pardon me, ma'am," Miles rose. "I must leave you. But, ah … if you encounter the false Naismith again, I should consider it a great service if you would get in touch with me at the Barrayaran embassy."

  Pour quoi? her lips moved slightly. Rather warily, she rose too. Miles bowed over her hand, executed a neat about-face, and fled.

  He had to restrain himself from skipping down the steps to the Palais de London in the ambassador's wake. Genius. He was a frigging genius. Why hadn't he thought of this cover story years ago? Imperial Security Chief Illyan was going to love it. Even Galeni might be slightly cheered.

  Chapter Five

  Miles camped in the corridor outside Captain Galeni's office the day the courier returned for the second time from Sector HQ. Exercising great restraint, Miles did not trample the man in the doorway as he exited, but he let him clear the frame before plunging within.

  Miles came to parade rest before Galeni's desk. "Sir?"

  "Yes, yes, Lieutenant, I know," said Galeni irritably, waving him to wait. Silence fell while screen after screen of data scrolled above Galeni's vid plate. At the end Galeni sat back, creases deepening between his eyes.

  "Sir?" Miles reiterated urgently.

  Galeni, still frowning, rose and motioned Miles to his station. "See for yourself."

  Miles ran it through twice. "Sir—there's nothing here." »

  "So I noticed."

  Miles spun to face him. "No credit chit—no orders—no explanation—no nothing. No reference to my affairs at all. We've waited here twenty bleeding days for nothing. We could have walked to Tau Ceti and back in that time. This is insane. This is impossible."

  Galeni leaned thoughtfully on his desk on one splayed hand, staring at the silent vid plate. "Impossible? No. I've seen orders lost before. Bureaucratic screw-ups. Important data mis-addressed. Urgent requests filled away while waiting for someone to return from leave. That sort of thing happens."

  "It doesn't happen to me," hissed Miles through his teeth.

  One of Galeni's eyebrows rose. "You are an arrogant little vorling." He straightened. "But I suspect you speak the truth. That sort of thing wouldn't happen to you. Anybody else, yes. Not you. Of course," he almost smiled, "there's a first time for everything."

  "This is the second time," Miles pointed out. He glowered suspiciously at Galeni, wild accusations boiling behind his lips. Was this some bourgeois Komarran's idea of a practical joke? If the orders and credit chit weren't there, they had to have been intercepted. Unless the queries hadn't been sent at all. He had only Galeni's word that they had. But it was inconceivable that Galeni would risk his career merely to inconvenience an irritating subordinate. Not that a Barrayaran captain's pay was much loss, as Miles well knew.

  Not like eighteen million marks.

  Miles's eyes widened, and his teeth closed behind set lips. A poor man, a man whose family had lost all its great wealth in, say, the Conquest of Komarr, could conceivably find eighteen million marks tempting indeed. Worth risking—much for. It wasn't the way he would have read Galeni, but what, after all, did Miles really know about the man? Galeni hadn't spoken one word about his personal history in twenty days' acquaintance.

  "What are you going to do now, sir?" Miles jerked out stiffly.

  Galeni spread his hands. "Send again."

  "Send again. That's all?"

  "I can't pull your eighteen million marks out of my pocket, Lieutenant."

  Oh, no? We'll just see about that. . . . He had to get out of here, out of the embassy and back to the Dendarii. The Dendarii, where he had left his own fully professional information-gathering experts gathering dust, while he'd wasted twenty days in immobilized paralysis. … If Galeni had indeed diddled him to that extent, Miles swore silently, there wasn't going to be a hole deep enough for him to hide in with his eighteen million stolen marks.

  Galeni straightened and cocked his head, eyes narrowed and absent.
"It's a mystery to me." He added lowly, almost to himself, "… and I don't like mysteries."

  Nervy . . . cool. . . Miles was struck with admiration for an acting ability almost equal to his own. Yet if Galeni had embezzled his money, why was he not long gone? What was he waiting around for? Some signal Miles didn't know about? But he would find out, oh, yes he would. "Ten more days," said Miles.

  Again.

  "Sorry, Lieutenant," said Galeni, still abstracted.

  You will be. . . . "Sir, I must have a day with the Dendarii. Admiral Naismith's duties are piling up. For one thing, thanks to this delay we're now absolutely forced to raise a temporary loan from commercial sources to stay current with our expenses. I have to arrange it."

  "I regard your personal security with the Dendarii as totally insufficient, Vorkosigan."

  "So add some from the embassy if you feel you have to. The clone story surely took some of the pressure off."

  "The clone story was idiotic," snapped Galeni, coming out of himself.

  "It was brilliant," said Miles, offended at this criticism of his creation. "It completely compartmentalizes Naismith and Vorkosigan at last. It disposes of the most dangerous ongoing weakness of the whole scam, my . . . unique and memorable appearance. Undercover operatives shouldn't be memorable."

  "What makes you think that vid reporter will ever share her discoveries with the Cetagandans anyway?"

  "We were seen together. By millions on the holovid, for God's sake. Oh, they'll be around to ask her questions, all right, one way or another." A slight twinge of fear—but surely the Cetagandans would send somebody to pump the woman subtly. Not just snatch, drain, and dispose of her, not a publicly prominent Earth citizen right here on Earth.

  "In that case, why the hell did you pick the Cetagandans as Admiral Naismith's putative creators? The one thing they'll know for sure is that they didn't do it."

  "Verisimilitude," explained Miles. "If even we don't know where the clone really came from, they might not be so surprised that they hadn't heard of him till now either."

  "Your logic has a few glaring weaknesses," sneered Galeni. "It may help your long-term scam, possibly. But it doesn't help me. Having Admiral Naismith's corpse on my hands would be just as embarrassing as having Lord Vorkosigan's. Schizoid or no, not even you can compartmentalize yourself to that extent."

  "I am not schizoid," Miles bit off. "A little manic-depressive, maybe," he admitted in afterthought.

  Galeni's lips twitched. "Know thyself."

  "We try, sir."

  Galeni paused, then chose perhaps wisely to ignore that one. He snorted and went on. "Very well, Lieutenant Vorkosigan. I'll assign Sergeant Earth to supply you with a security perimeter. But I want you to report in no less than every eight hours by secured comm link. You may have twenty-four hours' leave."

  Miles, drawing breath to marshall his next argument, was bereft of speech. "Oh," he managed. "Thank you, sir." And why the hell did Galeni just flip-flop like that? Miles would give blood and bone to know what was going on behind that deadpan Roman profile right now.

  Miles withdrew in good order before Galeni could change his mind again.

  The Dendarii had chosen the most distant hardstand of those available for rent at the London shuttleport for security, not economy. The fact that the distance also made it the cheapest was merely an added and delightful bonus. The hardstand was actually in the open, at the far end of the field, surrounded by lots of empty, naked tarmac. Nothing could sneak up on it without being seen. And if any—untoward activity—did happen to take place around it, Miles reflected, it was therefore less likely to fatally involve innocent civilian bystanders. The choice had been a logical one.

  It was also a damned long walk. Miles tried to step out briskly, and not scurry like a spider across a kitchen floor. Was he getting a trifle paranoid, as well as schizoid and manic-depressive? Sergeant Earth, marching along beside him uncomfortably in civvies, had wanted to deliver him to the shuttle's hatch in the embassy's armored groundcar. With difficulty Miles had persuaded him that seven years of painfully careful subterfuge would go up in smoke if Admiral Naismith was ever seen getting out of a Barrayaran official vehicle. The good view from the shuttle hardstand was something that cut two ways, alas. Still, nothing could sneak up on them.

  Unless it was psychologically disguised, of course. Take that big shuttleport maintenance float truck over there, for instance, speeding along busily, hugging the ground. They were all over the place; the eye quickly became used to their irregular passing. If he were going to launch an attack, Miles decided, one of those would definitely be the vehicle of choice. It was wonderfully doubtful. Until it fired first, no defending Dendarii could be sure he or she wasn't-about to randomly murder some hapless stray shuttleport employee. Criminally embarrassing, that, the sort of mistake that wrecked careers.

  The float truck shifted its route. Barth twitched and Miles stiffened. It looked awfully like an interception course. But dammit, no windows or doors were opening, no armed men were leaning out to take aim with so much as a slingshot. Miles and Barth both drew their legal stunners anyway. Miles tried to separate himself from Barth as Barth tried to step in front of him, another precious moment's confusion.

  And then the now-hurtling float truck was upon them, rising into the air, blotting out the bright morning sky. Its smooth sealed surface offered no target a stunner would matter to. The method of his assassination was at last clear to Miles. It was to be death by squashing.

  Miles squeaked and spun and scrambled, trying to get up a sprint. The float truck fell like a monstrous brick as its anti-grav was abruptly switched off. It seemed like overkill, somehow; didn't they know his bones could be shattered by an overloaded grocery pallet? There'd be nothing left of him but a revolting wet smear on the tarmac.

  He dove, rolled—only the blast of displaced air as the truck boomed to the pavement saved him. He opened his eyes to find the skirt of the truck centimeters in front of his nose, and recoiled onto his feet as the maintenance vehicle rose again. Where was Barth? The useless stunner was still clutched convulsively in Miles's right hand, his knuckles scraped and bleeding.

  Ladder handholds were recessed into a channel on the truck's gleaming side. If he were on it he couldn't be under it—Miles shook the stunner from his grip and sprang, almost too late, to cling to the handholds. The truck lurched sideways and flopped again, obliterating the spot where he'd just been lying. It rose and fell again with an angry crash. Like an hysterical giant trying to smash a spider with a slipper. The impact knocked Miles from his precarious perch, and he hit the pavement rolling, trying to save his bones. There was no crack in the floor here to scuttle into and hide.

  A line of light widened under the truck as it rose again. Miles looked for a reddened lump on the tarmac, saw none. Barth? No, over there, crouched at a distance screaming into his wrist comm. Miles shot to his feet, zigged, zagged. His heart was pounding so hard it seemed his blood was about to burst from his ears on adrenalin overload, his breathing half-stopped despite his straining lungs. Sky and tarmac spun around him, he'd lost the shuttle—no, there—he started to sprint toward it. Running had never been his best sport. They'd been right, the people who'd wanted to disbar him from officer's training on the basis of his physicals. With a deep vile whine the maintenance truck clawed its way into the air behind him.

  The violent white blast blew him forward onto his face, skidding over the tarmac. Shards of metal, glass, and boiling plastic spewed across him. Something glanced numbly across the back of his skull. He clapped his arms over his head and tried to melt a hole down into the pavement by heat of fear alone. His ears hammered but he could only hear a land of roaring white noise.

  A millisecond more, and he realized he was a stopped target. He jerked onto his side, glaring up and around for the falling truck. There was no more falling truck.

  A shiny black aircar, however, was dropping swiftly and illegally through shuttleport traffic cont
rol space, no doubt lighting up boards and setting off alarms on the Londoners' control computers. Well, it was a lost cause now to try and be inconspicuous. Miles had it pegged as Barrayaran outer-perimeter backup even before he glimpsed the green uniforms within, by virtue of the fact that Barth was running toward it eagerly. No guarantee that the three Dendarii sprinting toward them from his personnel shuttle had drawn the same conclusions, though. Miles sprang to his—hands and knees. The abrupt if aborted movement rendered him dizzy and sick. On the second attempt he made it to his feet.

  Barth was trying to drag him by the elbow toward the settling aircar. "Back to the embassy, sir!" he urged.

  A cursing grey-uniformed Dendarii skidded to a halt a few meters away and aimed his plasma arc at Barth. "Back off, you!" the Dendarii snarled.

  Miles stepped hastily between the two as Barth's hand went to his jacket. "Friends, friends!" he cried, flipping his hands palm-out toward both combatants. The Dendarii paused, doubtful and suspicious, and Barth clenched his fists at his sides with an effort.

  Elli Quinn cantered up, swinging a rocket-launcher one-handed, its stock nestled in her armpit, smoke still trickling from its five-centimeters-wide muzzle. She must have fired from the hip. Her face was flushed and terrorized.

  Sergeant Barth eyed the rocket-launcher with suppressed fury. "That was a little close, don't you think?" he snapped at Elli. "You damn near blew him up with your target." Jealous, Miles realized, because he hadn't had a rocket launcher.

  Elli's eyes widened in outrage. "It was better than nothing. Which was what you came equipped with, apparently!"

  Miles raised his right hand—his left shoulder spasmed when he tried to raise the other arm—and dabbed gingerly at the back of his head. His hand came away red and wet. Scalp wound, bleeding like a stuck pig but not dangerous. Another clean uniform shot.

  "It's awkward to carry major ordnance on the tubeway, Elli," Miles intervened mildly, "nor could we have gotten it through shuttleport security." He paused and eyed the smoking remnant of the float truck. "Even they couldn't get weapons through shuttleport security, it seems. Whoever they were."