Brothers in Arms (6 page)

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 wine-shop. 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. Prob'ly 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 adrenaline 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-like, into a most degraded little monster. His scorched, damp, bedraggled uniform was flecked with little fluffy 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.

Miles staggered off the tubeway clutching his back.

"Bones?" said Elli worriedly. "Did you do something to your spine?"

"I'm not sure." He stomped along beside her, rather bent. "Muscle spasms—that poor woman must have been fatter than I thought. Adrenaline'll fool you. . . ."

It was no better by the time their little personnel shuttle docked at the
Triumph,
the Dendarii flagship in orbit. Elli insisted on a detour to sickbay.

"Pulled muscles," said his fleet surgeon unsympathetically after scanning him. "Go lie down for a week."

Miles made false promises and exited clutching a packet of pills in his bandaged hand. He was pretty sure the surgeon's diagnosis was correct, for the pain was easing, now that he was aboard his own flagship. He could feel the tension uncoiling in his neck at least, and hoped it would continue all the way down. He was coming down off his adrenaline-induced high, too—better finish his business here while he could still walk and talk at the same time.

He straightened his jacket, brushing rather futilely at the white flecks, and jerked up his chin, before marching into his fleet finance officer's inner sanctum.

It was evening, ship-time, only an hour skewed from London downside time, but the mercenary accountant was still at her post. Vicky Bone was a precise, middle-aged woman, heavy-set, definitely a tech not a troop, whose normal tone of voice was a calming drawl. Now she spun in her station chair and squealed at him, "Oh, sir! Do you have the credit transfer
.
.
.
?" She took in his appearance and her voice dropped to a more usual timbre. "Good God, what happened to you?" As an afterthought, she saluted.

"That's what I'm here to find out, Lieutenant Bone." He hooked a second seat into its floor brackets and swung it around to sit backwards, his arms draped over its back. As an afterthought, he returned her salute. "I thought you reported yesterday that all our resupply orders not essential for orbital life-support were on hold, and that our Earthside credit was under control."

"Temporarily under control," she replied. "Fourteen days ago you told me we'd have a credit transfer in ten days. I tried to time as many expenses as possible to come in after that. Four days ago you told me it would be another ten days—"

"At least," Miles confirmed glumly.

"I've put off as much stuff as I can again, but some of it had to be paid off, in order to get credit extended another week. We've dipped dangerously far into reserve funds since Mahata Solaris."

Miles rubbed a finger tiredly over the seat back. "Yeah, maybe we should have pushed on straight to Tau Ceti." Too late now. If only he were dealing with Sector II Security Headquarters directly. . .

"We would have had to drop three-fourths of the fleet at Earth anyway, sir."

"And I didn't want to break up the set, I know. We stay here much longer, and none of us will be able to leave—a financial black hole. . . . Look, tap your programs and tell me what happened to the downside personnel credit account about 1600 London time tonight."

"Hm?" Her fingers conjured up arcane and colorful data displays from her holovid console. "Oh, dear. It shouldn't have done that. Now where did the money go . . . ? Ah, direct override. That explains it."

"Explain it to me," Miles prodded.

"Well," she turned to him, "of course when the fleet is on station for long at any place with any kind of financial net at all, we don't just leave our liquid assets sitting around."

"We don't?"

"No, no. Anything that isn't actually outgoing is held for as long as possible in some sort of short-term, interest-generating investment. So all our credit accounts are set to ride along at the legal minimum; when a bill comes due, I cycle it through the computer and shoot just enough to cover it from the investment account into the credit account."

"Is this, er, worth the risk?"

"Risk? It's basic good practice! We made over four thousand GSA federal credits on interest and dividends last week, until we fell out of the minimum amount bracket."

"Oh," said Miles. He had a momentary flash about giving up war and playing the stock market instead. The Dendarii Free Mercenary Holding Company? Alas, the Emperor might have a word or two to say about that.

"But these morons," Lieutenant Bone gestured at the schematic representing her version of Danio's adventures that afternoon, "attempted to tap the account directly through its number, instead of through Fleet Central Accounting as everyone has been told and told to do. And because we're riding so low at the moment, it bounced. Sometimes I think I'm talking to the deaf." More lurid bar graphs fountained up at her fingertips. "But I can only run it round and round for so long, sir! The investment account is now empty, so of course it's generating no extra money. I'm not sure we can even make it six more days. And if the credit transfer doesn't arrive then . . ." she flung up her hands, "the whole Dendarii fleet could start to slide, piecemeal, into receivership!"

"Oh." Miles rubbed his neck. He'd been mistaken; his headache wasn't waning. "Isn't there some way you can shift the stuff around from account to account to create, er . . . virtual money? Temporarily?"

"Virtual money?" Her lips curled in loathing.

"To save the fleet. Just like in combat. Mercenary accounting." He clasped his hands together, between his knees, and smiled up at her hopefully. "Of course, if it's beyond your abilities . . ."

Her nostrils flared. "Of course it's not. But the kind of thing you're talking about relies mostly on time lags. Earth's financial network is totally integrated; there are no time lags unless you want to start working it interstellar. I'll tell you what would work, though . . ." Her voice trailed off. "Well, maybe not."