The Vor Game

  “You said he was safe,” Cavilo hissed to Gregor.

  “His meds must be further off-dose than I thought,” Gregor replied, looking anxious. “No, watch—he's bluffing. I'll prove it."

  Hands held out open to his sides, Gregor walked straight toward the plasma cannon. Miles's jaw fell open, behind his faceplate. Gregor, Gregor, Gregor ... !

  Gregor gazed steadily into Elena's faceplate. His step never quickened or faltered. He stopped only when his chest touched the beaded tip of the cannon. It was an enormously dramatic and arresting moment. Miles was so lost in appreciation, it took him that long to move his finger an imperceptible few centimeters and hit the button on his control box that closed the blast doors.

  The shield hadn't been programmed for slow-closure; it banged shut faster than the eye could follow. Brief noises, from the other side, of plasma fire, shouts; Cavilo screaming at one of her men just in time to stop him from the fatal error of firing a mine at the wall of a closed chamber he himself occupied. Then silence.

  Miles dropped his plasma rifle, tore off his helmet. “God almighty, I wasn't expecting that. Gregor, you're a genius.” Gently, Gregor raised a finger and moved the tip of the plasma cannon aside. “Don't worry,” said Miles. “None of our weapons are charged. I didn't want to risk any accidents."

  “I was almost certain that was the case,” Gregor murmured. He stared back over his shoulder at the blast doors. “What would you have done if I'd been asleep on my feet?"

  “Kept talking. Tried for various compromises. I had a trick or two yet. But behind the other blast door, there's a squad with live weapons. In the end, if she didn't bite, I was prepared to surrender."

  “That's what I was afraid of."

  Some peculiar muffled noises penetrated the blast doors. “Elena, take over,” said Miles. “Mop up. Take Cavilo alive if possible, but I don't want any Dendarii to die trying. Take no chances, trust nothing she says."

  “I have the picture.” Elena waved a salute, and motioned to her squad, which broke up to insert weapons-charges. Elena began to confer over the command-channel headset with the leader of the twin squad waiting on Cavilo's other side and with the commander of the Ariel's combat shuttle, closing in from space.

  Miles motioned Gregor along the corridor, removing him as swiftly as possible from the region of potential messiness. “To the tactics room, and I'll fill you in. You have some decisions to make."

  They entered a lift-tube, and rose. Miles breathed easier with every meter he increased the range between Gregor and Cavilo.

  “My biggest worry,” Miles said, “till we spoke face-to-face, was that Cavilo really had done what she thought she had, fogged your mind. I didn't see where she could be getting her ideas except from you. Wasn't sure what I could do in that case, except play along till I could hand you over to higher experts on Barrayar. If I survived. I didn't know how fast you'd see through her."

  “Oh, at once,” shrugged Gregor. “She had the same hungry smile Vordrozda used to get. And a dozen lesser cannibals, since. I can smell a power-hungry flatterer at a thousand meters, now."

  “I yield to my master in strategy,” Miles's armored hand made a genuflecting motion. “Do you know you rescued yourself? She'd have taken you all the way home, even if I hadn't come along."

  “It was easy.” Gregor frowned. “All that was required was that I have no personal honor at all.” Gregor's eyes, Miles realized, were deathly, devoid of triumph.

  “You can't cheat an honest man,” said Miles uncertainly. “Or woman. What would you have done, if she'd got you home?"

  “Depends.” Gregor stared into the middle distance. “If she'd managed to get you killed, I suppose I'd have had her executed.” Gregor glanced back, as they stepped out of the tube. “This is better. Maybe ... maybe there's some way to give her a fair chance."

  Miles blinked. “I'd be very careful about giving Cavilo any kind of a chance at all, if I were you. Even with tongs. Does she deserve it? Do you realize what's going on, how many she's betrayed?"

  “In part. And yet..."

  “Yet, what?"

  Gregor's tone was so low as to be nearly inaudible. “I wish she had been real."

  * * * *

  “...and that's the present tactical situation in the Hub and Vervain local space, as far as my information goes,” Miles concluded his presentation to Gregor. They had the Ariel's briefing room all to themselves; Arde Mayhew stood guard in the corridor. Miles had begun his speed-precis as soon as Elena reported that the hostile boarders had been successfully secured. He'd paused only to peel out of his ill-fitting armor and back into his Dendarii greys. The armor had been hastily borrowed from the same female soldier who'd lent him kit before, and the plumbing perforce left unconnected.

  Miles froze the holovid display in the center of the table. Would that he could freeze real time and events the same way, at the touch of a keypad, that he might halt their terrible rush. “You'll notice our biggest intelligence holes are in precise information about the Cetagandan forces. I'm hoping the Vervani will plug some of those gaps, if we can persuade them we're their allies, and the Rangers may yield more. One way or another.

  “Now—sire—the decision lands on you. Fight or flight? I can detach the Ariel from the Dendarii right now, to run you home, with little loss to this hot and dirty wormhole fight. Firepower and armor, not speed, are going to be at a premium there. There's not much doubt which course my father and Illyan would vote for."

  “No.” Gregor stirred. “On the other hand, they aren't here."

  “True. Alternately, going to the opposite extreme, do you wish to be commander-in-chief of this mess? In fact, as well as name?"

  Gregor smiled softly. “What a temptation. But don't you think there's a certain ... hubris, in undertaking field leadership without a prior apprenticing in field followership?"

  Miles reddened slightly. “I—ahem!—face a similar dilemma. You've met the solution, his name's Ky Tung. We'll be conferring with him when we transfer back to the Triumph, later.” Miles paused. “There are a couple of other things you might do for us. If you choose. Real things."

  Gregor rubbed his chin, watching Miles as he might a play. “Trot them out. Lord Vorkosigan."

  “Legitimatize the Dendarii. Present them to the Vervani as the Barrayaran pickup force. I can only bluff. Your breath is law. You can conclude a legally binding defensive treaty between Barrayar and Vervain—Aslund too, if we can bring them in. Your greatest value is—sorry—diplomatic, not military. Go to Vervain Station, and deal with these people. And I do mean deal."

  “Safely behind the lines,” Gregor noted dryly.

  “Only if we win, on the other side of the jump. If we lose, the lines will come to you."

  “I would I could be a soldier. Some lowly lieutenant, with only a handful of men to care for."

  “There's no moral difference between one and ten thousand, I assure you. You're just as thoroughly damned however many you get killed."

  “I want to be in on the fight. Probably the only chance I'll have in my life for real risk."

  “What, the risk you run every day from lunatic assassins isn't enough thrill for you? You want more?"

  “Active. Not passive. Real service."

  “If—in your judgment—the best and most vital service you can give everyone else risking their lives here is as a minor field officer, I will of course support you to the best of my ability,” said Miles bleakly.

  “Ouch,” murmured Gregor. “You can turn a phrase like a knife, you know?” He paused. “Treaties, eh?"

  “If you would be so kind, sire."

  “Oh, stop it,” Gregor sighed. “I will play my assigned part. As always."

  “Thank you.” Miles thought of offering some apology, some solace, then thought better of it. “The other wild card is Randall's Rangers. Who are now, unless I miss my guess, in considerable disarray. Their second-in-command has vanished, their commander has deserted at the start of
the action—how was it the Vervani let her make an exit, by the way?"

  “She told them she was going out to confer with you—implied she'd somehow added you to her forces. She was going to jump her fast courier to the hot side immediately thereafter, supposedly."

  “Hm. She may have inadvertently paved our way—is she denying involvement with the Cetagandans?"

  “I don't think the Vervani have caught on yet about the Rangers opening the door to the Cetagandans. At the time we left Vervain Station they were still putting the Rangers’ failures to defend the Cetagandan-side jump down to incompetence."

  “Probably with considerable supporting evidence. I doubt the bulk of the Rangers knew about the betrayal, or it couldn't have stayed secret this long. And whatever inner cadre that was working with the Cetas, were left in the dark when Cavilo took off on her Imperial tangent. You realize, Gregor, you did this? Sabotaged the Cetagandan invasion single-handedly?"

  “Oh,” breathed Gregor, “it took both hands."

  Miles decided not to touch that one. “Anyway—if we can—we need to lock the Rangers down. Get them under control, or at least out from behind everyone's backs."

  “Very well."

  “I suggest a round of good-guy-bad-guy. I'll be happy to take the part of bad guy."

  * * * *

  Cavilo was brought in between two men with hand tractors. She still wore her space armor, now marred and scarred. Her helmet was gone. The armor's weapons packs had been removed, control systems disconnected, and joints locked, turning it into a hundred-kilo prison, tight as a sarcophagus. The two Dendarii soldiers set her upright near the end of the conference table and stepped back with a flourish. A statue with a live head, some Pygmalion-like metamorphosis interrupted and horribly incomplete.

  “Thank you, gentlemen, dismissed,” said Miles. “Commander Bothari-Jesek, please stay."

  Cavilo rolled her short-cropped blonde head in futile resistance, the limit of physically possible motion. She glared furiously at Gregor as the soldiers exited. “You snake,” she snarled. “You bastard."

  Gregor sat with his elbows on the conference table, chin resting in his hands. He raised his head to say tiredly, “Commander Cavilo, both my parents died violently in political intrigue before I was six years old. A fact you might have researched. Did you think you were dealing with an amateur?"

  “You were out of your league from the beginning, Cavilo,” said Miles, walking slowly around her as if inspecting his prize. Her head turned to follow him, then had to swivel to pick up his orbit on the other side. “You should have stuck to your original contract. Or your second plan. Or your third. You should, in fact, have stuck to something. Anything. Your total self-interest didn't make you strong, it made you a rag in the wind, anybody's to pick up. Now, Gregor—though not I—thinks you should be given a chance to earn your worthless life."

  “You haven't got the balls to shove me out the airlock.” Her eyes were slitted with her rage.

  “I wasn't planning to.” Since it clearly made her skin crawl, Miles circled her again. “No. Looking ahead—when this is over—I thought I might give you to the Cetagandans. A treaty tidbit that will cost us nothing, and help turn them up sweet. I imagine they'll be looking for you, don't you?” He fetched up before her and smiled.

  Her face drained. The tendons stood out on her slender neck.

  Gregor spoke. “But if you do as we ask, I will grant you safe passage out of the Hegen Hub, via Barrayar, when this is over. Together with any surviving remnant of your forces that will still follow you. It will give you a two-month head start on the Cetagandan vengeance for this debacle."

  “In fact,” put in Miles, “if you play your part, you could even come out of this a heroine. What fun!"

  Gregor's glower at him was not entirely feigned.

  “I'll get you,” Cavilo breathed to Miles.

  “It's the best deal you'll get today. Life. Salvage. A new start, far from here—very far from here. That, Simon Illyan will assure. Far away, but not unwatched."

  Calculation began to edge out the rage in her eyes. “What do you want me to do?"

  “Not much. Yield up what control you still have of your forces to an officer of our choice. Probably a Vervani liaison, they're paying for you, after all. You will introduce your replacement to your chain of command, and retire to the safety of the Triumph's brig for the duration."

  “There won't be any surviving remnant of the Rangers when this is done!"

  “There is that chance,” Miles conceded. “You were going to throw them all away. Note, please, I'm not offering a choice between this and some better deal. It's this or the Cetagandans. Whose approval of treason is strictly limited to those who deal in their favor."

  Cavilo looked like she wanted to spit, but said, “Very well. I yield. You have your deal."

  “Thank you."

  “But you...” her eyes were chips of blue ice, her voice low and venomous, “you will learn, little man. You're riding high today, but time will bring you down. I'd say, just wait twenty years, but I doubt you're going to live that long. Time will teach you how much nothing your loyalties will buy you. The day they finally grind you up and spit you out, I'm just sorry I won't be there to watch, ‘cause you're gonna be hamburger."

  Miles called the soldiers back in. “Take her away.” It was almost a plea. As the door closed behind the prisoner and her porters, he turned to find Elena's eyes upon him.

  “God, that woman makes me cold,” he shivered.

  “Ah?” Gregor remarked, elbows still planted. “Yet in a weird way, you seem to get along with each other. You think alike."

  “Gregor!” Miles protested. “Elena?” he called for a counter-vote.

  “You're both very twisty,” said Elena doubtfully. “And, er, short.” At Miles's tight-lipped look of outrage she explained, “It's more a matter of pattern than content. If you were power-crazy, instead of, of..."

  “Some other kind of crazy, yes, go on."

  “—you could plot like that. You seemed to kind of enjoy figuring her out."

  “Thank-you-I-think.” He hunched his shoulders. Was it true? Could that be himself in twenty years? Sick with cynicism and unvented rage, a shelled self thrilled only by mastery, power games, control, armor-plate with a wounded beast inside?

  “Let's get back to the Triumph,” he said shortly. “We've all got work to do."

  * * * *

  Miles paced impatiently across the short breadth of Admiral Oser's cabin aboard Triumph. Gregor leaned hip-slung on the edge of the comconsole desk, watching him oscillate.

  “...naturally the Vervani will be suspicious, but with the Cetagandans breathing down their necks they'll have a real will to believe. And deal. You'll want to make it as attractive as possible, to close things up quickly, but of course don't give away any more than you have to—"

  Gregor said dryly, “Perhaps you'd like to come along and operate my holoprompter?"

  Miles stopped, cleared his throat. “Sorry. I know you know more about treaties than I do. I ... babble when I'm nervous, sometimes."

  “Yes, I know."

  Miles managed to keep his mouth shut, though not his feet still, until the cabin buzzer blatted.

  “Prisoners as ordered, sir,” came Sergeant Chodak's voice over the intercom.

  “Thank you, enter.” Miles leaned across the desk and hit the door control.

  Chodak and a squad marched Captain Ungari and Sergeant Overholt into the cabin. The prisoners were indeed just as Miles had ordered; washed, shaved, combed, and provided with fresh pressed Dendarii greys with equivalent rank insignia. They also looked palpably surly and hostile about it.

  “Thank you, Sergeant, you and your squad are dismissed."

  “Dismissed?” Chodak's eyebrows questioned the wisdom of this. “Sure you don't want us to at least stand-to in the corridor, sir? Remember the last time."

  “It won't be necessary this time."

  Ungari's glare d
enied that airy assertion. Chodak withdrew doubtfully, keeping his stunner-aim steady on the pair until the doors closed across his view.

  Ungari inhaled deeply. “Vorkosigan! You mutinous little mutant, I'm going to have you court-martialed, skinned, stuffed, and mounted for this—"

  They had not yet noticed quiet Gregor, still leaning on the comconsole and also wearing courtesy Dendarii greys, though without insignia, there being no Dendarii equivalent for emperor.

  “Uh, sir—” Miles motioned the dark-faced captain's eye toward Gregor.

  “Those are such widely shared sentiments, Captain Ungari, that I'm afraid you might have to stand in line and wait your turn,” Gregor remarked, smiling slightly.

  The remaining air went out of Ungari unvoiced. He braced to attention; to his credit, the uppermost of the wildly mixed emotions on his face was profound relief. "Sire."

  “My apologies, Captain,” said Miles, “for my high-handed treatment of you and Sergeant Overholt, but I judged my plan for retrieving Gregor too, uh, delicate for, for—” your nerves, “I thought I'd better take personal responsibility.” You were happier not watching, really. And I was happier not having my elbow jogged.

  “Ensigns don't have personal responsibility for operations of this magnitude, their commanders do,” Ungari snarled. “As Simon Illyan would have been the first to point out to me if your plan—however delicate—had failed...."

  “Well, then congratulations, sir; you have just rescued the emperor,” snapped Miles. “Who, as your commander-in-chief, has a few orders for you, if you will permit him to get a word in edgewise."

  Ungari's teeth closed. With visible effort, he dismissed Miles from his attention and focused on Gregor. “Sire?"

  Gregor spoke. “As the only members of ImpSec within a couple million kilometers—except for Ensign Vorkosigan, who has other chores—I'm attaching you and Sergeant Overholt to my person, until we make contact with our reinforcements. I may also require courier duties of you. Before we leave the Triumph, please share any pertinent intelligence you may possess with Dendarii Ops; they're now my Imperial, uh..."