"Flap? Ivan, you're the first word we've had from home since we left Beta Colony. The blockade, you know—although you seem to have passed through it like so much smoke . . ."
"The old bird was clever, I'll give her that. I never knew older women could—"
"The flap," Miles rerouted him urgently.
"Yes. Well. The first report we had at home, from Beta Colony, was that you had been kidnapped by some fellow who was a deserter from the Service—"
"Oh, ye gods! Mother—what did Father—"
"They were pretty worried, I guess, but your mother kept saying that Bothari was with you, and anyway somebody at the Embassy finally thought to talk with your Grandmother Naismith, and she didn't think you'd been kidnapped at all. That calmed your mother down a lot, and she, um, sat on your father—anyway, they decided to wait for further reports."
"Thank God."
"Well, the next reports were from some military agent here in Tau Verde local space. Nobody would tell me what was in them—well, nobody would tell my mother, I guess, which makes sense when you think about it. But Captain Illyan was running in circles between Vorkosigan House and General Headquarters and the Imperial Residence and Vorhartung Castle twenty-six hours a day for while. It didn't help that all the information they got was three weeks out of date, either—"
"Vorhartung Castle?" murmured Miles in surprise. "What does the Council of Counts have to do with this?"
"I couldn't figure it either. But Count Henri Vorvolk was pulled out of class at the Academy three times to attend secret committee sessions at the Counts, so I cornered him—seems there was some fantastic rumor going around that you were in Tau Verde local space building up your own mercenary fleet, nobody knew why—at least, I thought it was a fantastic rumor—" Ivan stared around at the little sickbay cubicle, at the ship it implied. "Anyway, your father and Captain Illyan finally decided to send a fast courier to investigate."
"Via Beta Colony, I gather. Ah—did you happen to run across a fellow named Tav Calhoun while you were there?"
"Oh, yeah, the crazy Betan. He hangs around the Barrayaran Embassy—he has a warrant for your arrest, which he waves at whoever he can catch going in or out. The guards won't let him in anymore."
"Did you actually talk to him?"
"Briefly. I told him there was a rumor you'd gone to Kshatryia."
"Really?"
"Of course not. But it was the farthest place I could think of. The clan," Ivan said smugly, "should stick together."
"Thanks . . ." Miles mulled this over. "I think." He sighed. "I guess the best thing to do is wait for your Captain Dimir, then. He might at least be able to give us a ride home, which would solve one problem." He looked up at his cousin. "I'll explain it all later, but I have to know some things now—can you keep your mouth shut a while? Nobody here is supposed to know who I really am." A horrid thought shook Miles. "You haven't been going around asking for me by name, have you?"
"No, no, just Miles Naismith," Ivan assured him. "We knew you were travelling with your Betan passport. Anyway, I just got here last night, and practically the first person I met was Elena."
Miles breathed relief, and turned to Elena. "You say Baz is out there? I've got to see him."
She nodded, and withdrew, walking a wide circle around Ivan.
"Sorry to hear about old Bothari," Ivan offered when she'd left. "Who'd have thought he could do himself in cleaning weapons after all these years? Still, there's a bright side—you've finally got a chance to make time with Elena, without him breathing down your neck. So it's not a dead loss."
Miles exhaled carefully, faint with rage and reminded grief. He does not know, he told himself. He cannot know. . . . "Ivan, one of these days somebody is going to pull out a weapon and plug you, and you're going to die in bewilderment, crying, 'What did I say? What did I say?'"
"What did I say?" asked Ivan indignantly.
Before Miles could go into detail, Baz entered, flanked by Tung and Auson, Elena trailing. The chamber was jammed. They all seemed to be grinning like loons. Baz waved some plastic flimsies triumphantly in the air. He was lit like a beacon with pride, scarcely recognizable as the man Miles had found five months ago cowering in a garbage heap.
"The surgeon says we can't stay long, my lord," he said to Miles, "but I thought these might do for a get-well wish."
Ivan started slightly at the honorific, and stared covertly at the engineer.
Miles took the sheets of printing. "Your mission—were you able to complete it?"
"Like clockwork—well, not exactly, there were some bad moments in a train station—you should see the rail system they have on Tau Verde IV. The engineering—magnificent. Barrayar missed something by going from horseback straight to air transport—"
"The mission, Baz!"
The engineer beamed. "Take a look. Those are the transcripts of the latest dispatches between Admiral Oser and the Pelian high command."
Miles began to read. After a time, he began to smile. "Yes . . . I'd understood Admiral Oser had a remarkable command of invective when, er, roused. . . ." Miles's gaze crossed Tung's, blandly. Tung's eyes glinted with satisfaction.
Ivan craned his neck. "What are they? Elena told me about your payroll heists—I take it you managed to mess up their electronic transfer, too. But I don't understand—won't the Pelians just repay, when they find the Oseran fleet wasn't credited?"
Miles's grin became quite wolfish. "Ah, but they were credited—eight times over. And now, as I believe a certain Earth general once said, God has delivered them into my hand. After failing four times in a row to deliver their cash payment, the Pelians have demanded the electronic overpayment be returned. And Oser," Miles glanced at the flimsies, "is refusing. Emphatically. That was the trickiest part, calculating just the right amount of overpayment. Too little, and the Pelians might have just let it go. Too much, and even Oser would have felt bound to return it. But just the right amount . . ." He sighed, and cuddled back happily into his pillow. He would have to commit some of Oser's choicest phrases to memory, he decided. They were unique.
"You'll like this, then, Admiral Naismith." Auson, bursting with news, erupted at last. "Four of Oser's independent Captain-owners took their ships and jumped out of Tau Verde local space in the last two days. From the transmissions we intercepted, I don't think they'll be coming back, either."
"Glorious," breathed Miles. "Oh, well done . . ."
He looked to Elena. Pride there, too, strong enough even to nudge out some of the pain in her eyes. "As I thought—intercepting that fourth payroll was vital to the success of the strategy. Well done, Commander Bothari."
She glowed back at him, hesitantly. "We missed you. We—took a lot of casualties."
"I anticipated we would. The Pelians had to be laying for us, by then." He glanced at Tung, who was making a small shushing gesture at Elena. "Was it much worse than we'd calculated?"
Tung shook his head. "There were moments when I was ready to swear she didn't know she was beaten. There are certain situations into which you do not ask mercenaries to follow you—"
"I didn't ask anyone to follow me," said Elena. "They came on their own." She added in a whispered aside to Miles, "I just thought that was what boarding battles were like. I didn't know it wasn't supposed to be that bad."
Tung spoke to Miles's alarmed look. "We would have paid a higher price if she hadn't insisted you'd put her in charge and refused to withdraw when I ordered. Then we would have paid much for nothing—that ratio works out to infinity, I believe." Tung gave Elena a nod of judicious approval, which she returned gravely. Ivan looked rather stunned.
A low-voiced argument penetrated from the corridor; Thorne, and the surgeon. Thorne was saying, "You've got to. This is vital—"
Thorne towed the protesting surgeon into the cubicle. "Admiral Naismith! Commodore Tung! Oser's here!"
"What!"
"With his whole fleet—what's left of it—they're just out of range. He's a
sking permission to dock his flagship."
"That can't be!" said Tung. "Who's guarding the wormhole?"
"Yes, exactly!" cried Thorne. "Who?" They stared at each other in elated, wild surmise.
Miles sprang to his feet, fought off a wave of dizziness, clutched his gown behind him. "Get my clothes," he enunciated.
Hawk-like, Miles decided, was the word for Admiral Oser. Greying hair, a beak of a nose, a bright, penetrating stare, fixed now on Miles. He had mastered the look that makes junior officers search their consciences, Miles thought. He stood up under it, and gave the real mercenary admiral a slow smile, there in the docking bay. The sharp, cold, recycled air was bitter in his nostrils, like a stimulant. You could get high on it, surely.
Oser was flanked by three of his Captain-employees and two of his Captain-owners, and their seconds. Miles trailed the whole Dendarii staff, Elena on his right hand, Baz on his left.
Oser looked him up and down. "Damn," he murmured. "Damn . . ." He did not offer his hand, but stood and spoke; deliberate, rehearsed cadences.
"Since the day you entered Tau Verde local space, I've felt your presence. In the Felicians, in the tactical situation turning under me, in the faces of my own men—" his glance passed over Tung, who smiled sweetly, "even in the Pelians. We have been grappling in the dark, we two, at a distance, long enough."
Miles's eyes widened. My God, is Oser about to challenge me to single combat? Sergeant Bothari, help! He jerked his chin up, and said nothing.
"I don't believe in prolonging agonies," said Oser. "Rather than watch you enspell the rest of my fleet man by man—while I still possess a fleet to offer—I understand the Dendarii Mercenaries are looking for recruits."
It took Miles a moment to realize he had just heard one of the most stiff-necked surrender speeches in history. Gracious. We are going to be gracious as hell, oh, yes. . . . He held out his hand; Oser took it.
"Admiral Oser, your understanding is acute. There's a private chamber, where we can work out the details . . ."
General Halify and some Felician officers were watching at a distance from a balcony overlooking the docking bay. Miles's glance crossed Halify's. And so my word to you, at least, is redeemed.
Miles marched across the broad expanse, the whole herd, all Dendarii now, strung out behind him. Let's see, Miles thought, the Pied Piper of Hamlin led all the rats into the river—he looked back—and all the children he led to a mountain of gold. What would he have done if the rats and the children had been inextricably mixed?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Miles reclined on a liquid-filled settee in the refinery's darkside observation chamber, hands behind his head, and stared into the depths of a space no longer empty. The Dendarii fleet glittered and winked, riding at station in the vacuum, a constellation of ships and men.
In his bedroom at the summer place at Vorkosigan Surleau, he had owned a mobile of space warships, classic Barrayaran military craft held in their carefully balanced arrangement by nearly invisible threads of great tensile strength. Invisible threads. He pursed his lips, and blew a puff of breath toward the crystalline windows as if he might set the Dendarii ships circling and dancing.
Nineteen ships of war and over 3000 troops and techs. "Mine," he said experimentally. "All mine." The phrase did not produce a suitable feeling of triumph. He felt more like a target.
In the first place, it was not true. The actual ownership of those millions of Betan dollars' worth of capital equipment out there was a matter of amazing complexity. It had taken four solid days of negotiations to work out the "details" he had so casually waved his hand over in the docking bay. There were eight independent captain-owners, in addition to Oser's personal possession of eight ships. Almost all had creditors. At least ten percent of "his" fleet turned out to be owned by the First Bank of Jackson's Whole, famous for its numbered accounts and discreet services; for all Miles knew, he was now contributing to the support of gambling rackets, industrial espionage, and the illicit sex trade from one end of the wormhole nexus to the other. It seemed he was not so much the possessor of the Dendarii mercenaries as he was their chief employee.
The ownership of the Ariel and the Triumph was made particularly complex by Miles's capture of them in battle. Tung had owned his ship outright, but Auson had been deeply in debt to yet another Jackson's Whole lending institution for the Ariel. Oser, when still working for the Pelians, had stopped payments after its capture, and left the, what was it called?—Luigi Bharaputra and Sons Household Finance and Holding Company of Jackson's Whole Private Limited—to collect on its insurance, if any. Captain Auson had turned pale upon learning that an inquiry agent from said company would be arriving soon to investigate.
The inventory alone was enough to boggle Miles's mind, and when it came to the assorted personnel contracts—his stomach would hurt if it still could. Before Oser had arrived, the Dendarii had been due for a tidy profit from the Felician contract. Now the profit for 200 must be spread to support 3000.
Or more than 3000. The Dendarii kept ballooning. Another free ship had arrived through the wormhole just yesterday, having heard of them through God-knew-what rumor mill, and excited would-be recruits from Felice managed to turn up with each new ship from the planet. The metals refinery was operating as a refinery again, as control of local space fell into the hands of the Felicians; their forces were even now gobbling up Pelian installations all over the system.
There was talk of re-hiring to Felice, to blockade the wormhole in turn for the former underdogs. The phrase, "Quit while you're winning," popped unbidden into Miles's mind whenever this subject came up; the proposal secretly appalled him. He itched to be gone from here before the whole house of cards collapsed. He should be keeping reality and fantasy separate in his own mind, at least, even while mixing them as much as possible in others'.
Voices whispered from the catwalk, reflected to his ear by some accident of acoustics. Elena's alto captured his attention.
"You don't have to ask him. We're not on Barrayar, we're never going back to Barrayar—"
"But it will be like having a little piece of Barrayar to take with us," Baz's voice, gentle and amused as Miles had never heard it, followed. "A breath of home in airless places. God knows I can't give you much of that 'right and proper' your father wanted for you, but all the pittance I can command shall be yours."
"Mm." Her response was unenthusiastic, almost hostile. All references to Bothari seemed to fall on her like hammer blows to dead flesh these days, a muffled thud that sickened Miles but brought no response from Elena herself.
They emerged from the catwalk, Baz close behind her. He smiled at his liege-lord in shy triumph. Elena smiled too, but not with her eyes.
"Deep meditation?" she inquired lightly. "It looks more like staring out the window and biting your nails to me."
He struggled upright, causing the settee to slither under him, and responded in kind. "Oh, I just told the guard that to keep the tourists out. I actually came up here for a nap."
Baz grinned at Miles. "My lord. I understand, in the absence of other relations, that Elena's legal guardianship has fallen to you."
"Why—so it has. I haven't had much time to think about it, to tell you the truth." Miles stirred uneasily at this turn in the conversation, not quite sure just what was coming.
"Right. Then as her liege-lord and guardian, I formally request her hand in marriage. Not to mention the rest of her." His silly smile made Miles long to kick him in the teeth. "Oh, and as my liege-commander, I request your permission to marry, uh, 'that my sons may serve you, lord.'" Baz's abbreviated version of the formula was only slightly scrambled.
You're not going to have any sons, because I'm going to chop your balls off, you lamb-stealing, double-crossing, traitorous—he got control of himself before his emotion showed as more than a drawn, lipless grin. "I see. There—there are some difficulties." He marshalled logical argument like a shield-wall, protecting his craven, naked rage from
the sting of those two honest pairs of brown eyes.
"Elena is quite young, of course—" He abandoned that line at the ire that lit her eye, as her lips formed the soundless word, You—!
"More to the point, I gave my own word to Sergeant Bothari to perform three services for him in the event of his death. To bury him on Barrayar, to see Elena betrothed with all correct ceremony, and, ah—to see her married to a suitable officer of the Barrayaran Imperial Service. Would you see me forsworn?"
Baz looked as stunned as if Miles had kicked him. His mouth opened, closed, opened again. "But—aren't I your liege-sworn Armsman? That's certainly the equal of an Imperial officer—hell, the Sergeant was an Armsman himself! Has—has my service been unsatisfactory? Tell me how I have failed you, my lord, that I may correct it!" His astonishment turned to genuine distress.
"You haven't failed me." Miles's conscience jerked the words from his mouth. "Uh . . . But of course, you've only served me for four months, now. Really a very short time, although I know it seems much longer, so much has happened . . ." Miles floundered, feeling more than crippled; legless. Elena's furious glower had chopped him off at the knees. How much shorter could he afford to get in her eyes? He trailed off weakly. "This is all very sudden. . . ."
Elena's voice dropped to a gravelled register of rage. "How dare you—" her voice burst in her indrawn breath like a wave, formed again, "What do you owe—what can anybody owe that?" she asked, referring, Miles realized, to the Sergeant. "I was not his chattel and I am not yours, either. Dog in the manger—"
Baz's hand closed anxiously on her arm, stemming the breakers crashing across Miles. "Elena—maybe this isn't the best time to bring it up. Maybe later would be better." He glanced at Miles's stony face, and winced, confusion in his eyes.
"Baz, you're not going to take this seriously—"
"Come away. We'll talk about it."
She forced her voice back to its normal timbre. "I'll meet you at the bottom of the catwalk. In a minute."
Miles nodded a dismissal to Baz for emphasis.