Help, thought Ekaterin. I'm being kidnapped by a Komarran terrorist. Her cry, as they turned down another corridor and passed a woman in a food service uniform, came out a low moan. The woman barely glanced at them. Not an unusual sight, this, two very jumpsick transients being towed to their connecting ship, or to a hostel, or maybe to the infirmary. Or the morgue . . . Heavy stun, Ekaterin had been given to understand, knocked people out for hours. This must be light stun. Was this a favor? She could not feel her limbs, but she could feel her heart beating, thudding heavily in her chest as adrenaline struggled uselessly with her unresponsive peripheral nervous system.
More turns, more drops, more levels. Was her map cube still in her pocket? They passed out of passenger-country, into more utilitarian levels devoted to freight and ship repair. At last they turned in at a door labeled SOUTHPORT TRANSPORT, LTD. in the same logo style as on the coveralls, and AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY in larger red print. Arozzi led them around a turn, through some more airseal doors, and down a ramp into a large loading bay. It smelled cold, all oil and ozone and a sharp sick scent of plastics. They were at the outermost skin of the station, anyway, whatever direction they'd come. She'd seen the Southport logo before, Ekaterin realized; it was one of those minor, shoestring-budgeted local-space shipping companies that eked out a living in the few interstices left by the big Komarran family firms.
A tall, squarely-built man, also in worker's coveralls, trod across the bay toward them, his footsteps echoing. It was Dr. Soudha. "Dinner at last," he began, then he caught sight of the float pallet. "What the hell . . . ? Roz, what is this? Madame Vorsoisson!" He stared at her in astonishment. She stared back at him in muzzy loathing.
"I ran smack into her when I was coming away from the food concourse," explained Arozzi, grounding the float pallet. "I couldn't help it. She recognized me. I couldn't let her run and report, so I stunned her and brought her here."
"Roz, you fool! The last thing we need right now is hostages! She's sure to be missed, and how soon?"
"I didn't have a choice!"
"Who's this other lady?" He gave the Professora a weirdly polite, harried, how-d'you-do nod.
"My name is Helen Vorthys," said the Professora.
"Not Lord Auditor Vorthys's wife—?"
"Yes." Her voice was cold and steady, but as sensation returned Ekaterin could feel the slight tremble in her body.
Soudha swore under his breath.
Ekaterin swallowed, ran her tongue around her mouth, and struggled to sit up. Arozzi rescued his boxes, then belatedly drew his stunner again. A woman, attracted by the raised voices, approached around a stack of equipment. Middle-aged, with frizzy gray-blond hair, she also wore Southport Transport coveralls. Ekaterin recognized Lena Foscol, the accountant.
"Ekaterin," husked Aunt Vorthys, "who are these people? Do you know them?"
Ekaterin said loudly, if a little thickly, "They're the criminals who stole a huge sum of money from the Terraforming Project and murdered Tien."
Foscol, startled, said "What? We did no such thing! He was alive when I left him!"
"Left him chained to a railing with an empty oxygen canister, which you never checked. And then called me to come get him. An hour and a half too late." Ekaterin spat scorn. "An exquisite setup. Madame. Mad Emperor Yuri would have considered it a work of art."
"Oh," Foscol breathed. She looked sick. "Is this true? You're lying. No one would go out-dome with an empty canister!"
"You knew Tien," said Ekaterin. "What do you think?"
Foscol fell silent.
Soudha was pale. "I'm sorry, Madame Vorsoisson. If that was what happened, it was an accident. We intended him to live, I swear to you."
Ekaterin let her lips thin, and said nothing. Sitting up, with her legs swung out to the deck, she was able to get a less dizzying view of the loading bay. It was some thirty meters across and twenty deep, strongly lit, with catwalks and looping power lines running across the ceiling, and a glass-walled control booth on the opposite side from the broad entry ramp down which they'd come. Equipment lay scattered here and there around a huge object dominating the center of the chamber. Its main part seemed to consist of a wriggly trumpet-shaped cone made of some dark, polished substance—metal? glass?—resting in heavily padded clamps on a grounded float cradle. A lot of power connections slotted in at its narrow end. The mouth of the bell was more than twice as tall as Ekaterin. Was this the "secret weapon" Lord Vorkosigan had posited?
And how had they ever got it, and themselves, past the ImpSec manhunt? ImpSec was surely checking every shuttle that left the planetary surface—now, Ekaterin realized. This thing could have been transported weeks ago, before the hunt even started. And ImpSec was probably concentrating its attention on jumpships and their passengers, not on freight tugs trapped in local space. Soudha's conspirators had had years to develop their false ID. They acted as though they owned this place—maybe they did.
Foscol spoke to Ekaterin's fraught silence, almost as tight-lipped as Ekaterin herself. "We are not murderers. Not like you Barrayarans."
"I've never killed anyone in my life. For not-murderers, your body count is getting impressive," Ekaterin shot back. "I don't know what happened to Radovas and Trogir, but what about the six poor people on the soletta crew, and that ore freighter pilot—and Tien. That's eight at least, maybe ten." Maybe twelve, if I don't watch my step.
"I was a student at Solstice University during the Revolt," Foscol snarled, clearly very rattled by the news about Tien. "I saw friends and classmates shot in the streets, during the riots. I remember the out-gassing of the Green Park Dome. Don't you dare—a Barrayaran!—sit there and make mouth at me about murder."
"I was five years old at the time of the Komarr Revolt," said Ekaterin wearily. "What do you think I ought to have done about it, eh?"
"If you want to go back in history," the Professora put in dryly, "you Komarrans were the people who let the Cetagandans in on us. Five million Barrayarans died before the first Komarran ever did. Crying for your past dead is a piece of one-downsmanship a Komarran cannot win."
"That was longer ago," said Foscol a little desperately.
"Ah. I see. So the difference between a criminal and a hero is the order in which their vile crimes are committed," said the Professora, in a voice dripping false cordiality. "And justice comes with a sell-by date. In that case, you'd better hurry. You wouldn't want your heroism to spoil."
Foscol drew herself up. "We aren't planning to kill anyone. All of us here saw the futility of that kind of heroics twenty-five years ago."
"Things don't seem to be running exactly according to plan, then, do they?" murmured Ekaterin, rubbing her face. It was becoming less numb. She wished she could say the same for her wits. "I notice you don't deny being thieves."
"Just getting some of our own back," glinted Foscol.
"The money poured into Komarran terraforming doesn't do Barrayar any direct good. You were stealing from your own grandchildren."
"What we took, we took to make an investment for Komarr that will pay back incalculable benefit to our future generations," Foscol returned.
Had Ekaterin's words stung her? Maybe. Soudha looked as though he was thinking furiously, eyeing the two Barrayaran women. Keep them arguing, Ekaterin thought. People couldn't argue and think at the same time, or at least, a lot of people she'd met seemed to have that trouble. If she could keep them talking while her body recovered a little more from the stun, she could . . . what? Her eye fell on a fire and emergency alarm at the base of the entry ramp, maybe ten steps away. Alarm, false alarm, the attention of irate authorities drawn to Southport Transport . . . Could Arozzi stun her again in less than ten steps? She leaned back against her aunt's legs, trying to look very limp, and let one hand curl around the Professora's ankle, as if for comfort. The novel device loomed silently and mysteriously in the center of the chamber.
"So what are you planning to do," Ekaterin said sarcastically, "shut down the wormho
le jump and cut us off? Or are you going to make—" Her voice died as the shocked silence her words had created penetrated. She stared around at the three Komarrans, staring at her in horror. In a suddenly smaller voice she said, "You can't do that. Can you?"
There was a military maneuver for rendering a wormhole temporarily impassable, which involved sacrificing a ship—and its pilot—at a mid-jump node. But the disruption damped out in a short time. Wormholes opened and closed, yes, but they were astrographic features like stars, involving time scales and energies beyond the present human capacity to control. "You can't do that," Ekaterin said more firmly. "Whatever disruption you create, sooner or later it will become passable again, and then you'll be in twice as much trouble as before." Unless Soudha's conspiracy was just the tip of an iceberg, with some huge coordinated plan behind it for all of Komarr to rise against Barrayaran rule in a new Komarr Revolt. More war, more blood under glass—the domes of Komarr might give her claustrophobia, but the thought of her Komarran neighbors going down to destruction in yet another round of this endless struggle made her sick to her stomach. The revolt had done vile things to Barrayarans, too. If new hostilities were ignited and went on long enough, Nikki would come of an age to be sucked into them. . . . "You can't hold it closed. You can't hold out here. You have no defenses."
"We can, and we will," said Soudha firmly.
Foscol's brown eyes shone. "We're going to close the wormhole permanently. We'll get rid of Barrayar forever, without firing a shot. A completely bloodless revolution, and there will be nothing they can do about it."
"An engineer's revolution," said Soudha, and a ghost of a smile curved his lips.
Ekaterin's heart hammered, and the echoing loading bay seemed to tilt. She swallowed, and spoke with effort: "You're planning to shut the wormhole to Barrayar with the Butcher of Komarr and three-fourths of Barrayar's space-based military forces on this side, and you actually think you're going to get a bloodless revolution? And what about all the people on Sergyar? You are idiots!"
"The original plan," said Soudha tightly, "was to strike at the time of the Emperor's wedding, when the Butcher of Komarr and three-fourths of the space forces would have been safely in Barrayar orbit."
"Along with a lot of innocent galactic diplomats. And not a few Komarrans!"
"I cannot think of a better fate for all the top collaborators," said Foscol, "than to be locked in with their lovely Barrayaran friends. The Old Vor lords are always saying how much better they had it back in their Time of Isolation. We're just giving them their wish."
Ekaterin squeezed the Professora's ankle and climbed slowly to her feet. Upright, she swayed, wishing her unbalance really were artistic fakery to put the Komarrans off-guard. She spoke with deadly venom. "In the Time of Isolation, I would have been dead at forty. In the Time of Isolation, it would have been my job to cut my mutant infants' throats, while my female relatives watched. I guarantee at least half the population of Barrayar does not agree with the Old Vor lords, including most of the Old Vor ladies. And you would condemn us all to go back to that, and you dare to call it bloodless!"
"Then count yourself lucky you're on the Komarran side," said Soudha dryly. "Come on, folks, we have work to do, and less time than ever to do it. Starting from now, all sleep shifts are canceled. Lena, go wake up Cappell. And we have to figure out how to lock these ladies down safely out of the way for a while."
The Komarrans were no longer waiting for the Emperor's wedding to provide their ideal tactical moment, it appeared. How close were they to putting their device into action? Close enough, it appeared, that even the arrival of two unwanted hostages wasn't enough to divert them.
Aunt Vorthys was trying to sit up straighter; Arozzi's eye had returned to the boxes of cooling food at his feet. Now.
Ekaterin launched herself forward, barreling into Arozzi and dashing onward. Arozzi swung around after her, but was temporarily distracted by a blue boot, thrown with surprising accuracy if limited strength by Aunt Vorthys, which bounced off the side of his head. Soudha and Foscol both began sprinting after her, but Ekaterin made it to the alarm and yanked down the lever hard, hanging on it as Arozzi's wavering stun beam found her. It hurt more, this time. Her hands spasmed open, and she fell. The first beat of the klaxon smote her ears before the shock and blackness took her away again.
Ekaterin opened her eyes to see her aunt's face, sideways. She realized she was lying with her head on the Professora's lap. She blinked and tried to lick her lips. Her body was all pins and needles and deep aches. A wave of nausea wrenched her stomach, and she struggled to lean sideways. A couple of spasms did not result in vomiting, however, and after a muffled belch, she rolled back. "Are we rescued?" she mumbled. They did not look rescued to her. They appeared to be sitting on the floor of a tiny lavatory, chilly and hard.
"No," said the Professora in a tone of disgust. Her face was tense and pale, with red bruises showing in the soft skin of her face and neck. Her hair was half down, straggling over her brow. "They gagged me, and dragged us both over behind that thing. The station squad burst in all right, but Soudha made all sorts of fast-talk apologies. He claimed it was an accident when Arozzi stumbled into the wall, and agreed to pay some enormous fine or another for turning in false alarms. I tried to make a noise, but it didn't do any good. Then they locked us in here."
"Oh," said Ekaterin. "Drat." Oversocialized, maybe, but stronger words seemed just as inadequate.
"Just so, dear. It was a good try, though. For a moment, I thought it would work, and so did your Komarrans. They were very upset."
"It will make the next try harder."
"Very likely," agreed her aunt. "We must think carefully what it ought to be. I don't think we can count on a third chance. Brutality does not seem to come naturally to them, but they do act very stressed. I don't believe those are safe people, just now, for all that they know you. When do you think we will be missed?"
"Not very soon," said Ekaterin regretfully. "I sent a message to Uncle Vorthys when I first got in to the station hostel. He may not expect another till we fail to get off the ferry tomorrow night."
"Something will happen then," said the Professora. Her tone of quiet confidence was undercut when she added more faintly, "Surely."
Yes, but what will happen between now and then? "Yes," Ekaterin echoed. She stared around the locked lavatory. "Surely."
Chapter Eighteen
Professor Vorthys's requested experts were due to arrive at the Serifosa shuttleport at nearly the same early hour as Ekaterin departed for her connection with the jump station ferry, so Miles managed to invite himself along on what would otherwise have been a family farewell. Ekaterin did not discuss last night's visit from Venier with her uncle; Miles had no opportunity to urge her, Don't accept any marriage proposals from strangers while you're out there. The Professor loaded her with verbal messages for his wife, and got a good-bye hug. Miles stood with his hands shoved in his pockets, and nodded a cordial safe-journey to her.
What Miles thought of as the Boffin Express, a commercial morning flight from Solstice, landed a short time later. The five-space expert, Dr. Riva, turned out to be a thin, intense, olive-skinned woman of about fifty, with bright black eyes and a quick smile. A stout, sandy young man she had in tow whom Miles first pegged as an undergraduate student was revealed as a mathematics professor colleague, Dr. Yuell.
A high-powered ImpSec aircar waited to whisk them directly out to the Waste Heat experiment station. When they arrived, the Professor led them all upstairs to his nest, which seemed to have acquired more comconsoles, stacks of flimsies, and tables littered with machine parts overnight. To everyone's discomfort, but not to Miles's surprise, ImpSec Major D'Emorie took formal recorded oaths of loyalty and secrecy from the two Komarran consultants. Miles thought the loyalty oath was redundant, since neither academic could have held their current posts without having taken one previously. As for the secrecy oath . . . Miles wondered if either of the Komarran
s had noticed yet that they had no way of leaving the experiment station except by ImpSec transport.
The five of them all then sat down to a lecture conducted by Lord Auditor Vorthys, which seemed halfway between a military briefing and an academic seminar, with a tendency to drift toward the latter. Miles wasn't sure if D'Emorie was there as participant or observer, but then, Miles didn't have much to say either, except to confirm one or two points about the autopsies when he was cued by Vorthys. Miles wondered again whether he might be more useful elsewhere, such as out with the field agents; he could hardly be less useful here, he realized glumly as the mathematical references began flying over his head. When you folks convert all that to the pretty colored shapes on the comconsole, show me the picture. I like my storybooks to have pictures in them. Perhaps he ought to go back to school for two or three years himself, and brush up. He consoled himself with the reflection that it was seldom he found himself in company who made him feel this stupid. It was probably good for his soul.