The truck thumped to a halt at last. The door slid aside, and first Bothari then Cordelia emerged to find themselves in the middle of nowhere: a gravel-surfaced road over a culvert, in the dark, in the country, in an unfamiliar district of unknown loyalties.
"They'll pick you up at Kilometer Marker Ninety-six," the truck driver said, pointing to a white smudge in the dimness that appeared to be merely a painted rock.
"When?" asked Cordelia desperately. For that matter, who were
they
?
"Don't know." The man returned to his truck and drove off in a spray of gravel from the hoverfan, as if he were already pursued.
Cordelia perched on the painted boulder and wondered morbidly which side was going to leap out of the night first, and by what test she might tell them apart. Time passed, and she entertained an even more depressed vision of no one picking them up at all.
But at last a darkened lightflyer floated down out of the night sky, its engines pitched to eerie near-silence. Its landing feet crunched in the gravel. Bothari crouched beside her, his useless knife gripped in his hand. But the man awkwardly levering himself up out of the passenger seat was Lieutenant Koudelka. "Milady?" he called uncertainly to the two human scarecrows. "Sergeant?" A breath of pure delight puffed from Cordelia as she recognized the pilot's blonde head as Droushnakovi.
My home is not a place, it is people, sir. . . .
With Bothari's hand on her elbow, at Koudelka's anxious gesture Cordelia fell gratefully into the padded backseat of the flyer. Droushnakovi cast a dark look over her shoulder at Bothari, wrinkled her nose, and asked, "Are you all right, Milady?"
"Better than I expected, really. Go, go."
The canopy sealed, and they rose into the air. Vent fans powered up, cycling filtered air. Colored lights from the control interface highlighted Kou's and Drou's faces. A technological cocoon. Cordelia glanced at systems readouts over Droushnakovi's shoulder, and then up through the canopy; yes, dark shapes paced them, guardian military flyers. Bothari saw them, too, his eyes narrowing in approval. Some fraction of tension eased from his body.
"Good to see you two—" some subtle cue of their body language, some hidden reserve, kept Cordelia from adding
together again.
"I gather you got that accusation about the comconsole sabotage straightened out in good order?"
"As soon as we got the chance to stop and fast-penta that guard corporal, Milady," Droushnakovi answered. "He didn't have the nerve to suicide before questioning."
"He was the saboteur?"
"Yes," answered Koudelka. "He'd intended to escape to Vordarian's troops when they arrived to capture us. Vordarian apparently suborned him months ago."
"That accounts for our security problems. Or does it?"
"He passed information about our route, the day of the sonic grenade attempt." Koudelka rubbed at his sinuses in memory.
"So it was Vordarian behind that!"
"Confirmed. But the guard doesn't seem to have known anything about the soltoxin. We turned him inside out. He wasn't a high-level conspirator, just a tool."
Nasty flow of thought, but, "Has Illyan reported in yet?"
"Not yet. Admiral Vorkosigan hopes he may be hiding in the capital, if he wasn't killed in the first fighting."
"Hm. Well, you'll be glad to know Gregor's all right—"
Koudelka held up an interrupting hand. "Excuse me, Milady. The Admiral ordered—you and the Sergeant are not to debrief anything about Gregor to anyone except Count Piotr or himself."
"All right. Damn fast-penta. How is Aral?"
"He's well, Milady. He ordered me to bring you up to date on the strategic situation—"
Screw the strategic situation, what about my baby? Alas, the two seemed inextricably intertwined.
"—and answer any questions you had."
Very well. "What about our baby? Pi—Miles?"
"We've heard nothing bad, Milady."
"What does that mean?"
"It means we've heard nothing," Droushnakovi put in glumly.
Koudelka shot her an irate look, which she shrugged off with a twitch of one shoulder.
"No news may be good news," Koudelka went on. "While it's true Vordarian holds the capital—"
"And therefore ImpMil, yes," said Cordelia.
"And he's publicizing names of hostages related to anyone in our command structure, there's been no mention of, of your child, in the lists. The Admiral thinks Vordarian simply doesn't realize that what went into the replicator was viable. Doesn't know what he's got."
"Yet," bit off Cordelia.
"Yet," Koudelka conceded reluctantly.
"All right. Go on."
"The overall situation isn't as bad as we feared at first. Vordarian holds Vorbarr Sultana, his own District and its military bases, and he's put troops in Vorkosigan's District, but he only has about five district counts who are his committed allies. About thirty of the other counts were caught in the capital, and we can't tell their real allegiance while Vordarian holds guns to their heads. Most of the twenty-three remaining Districts have reiterated their oaths to my Lord Regent. Though a couple are waffling, who have relatives in the capital or who are in dicey strategic positions as potential battlefields."
"And the space forces?"
"I was just coming to them, yes, Milady. Over half of their supplies come up from the shuttleports in Vordarian's District. For the moment, they're still holding out for a clear result rather than moving in to create one. But they've refused to openly endorse Vordarian. It's a balance, and whoever can tip it their way first will start a landslide. Admiral Vorkosigan seems awfully confident." Cordelia was not sure from the lieutenant's tone if he altogether shared that confidence. "But then, he has to. For morale. He says Vordarian lost the war the hour Negri got away with Gregor, and the rest is just maneuvering to limit the losses. But Vordarian holds Princess Kareen."
"Doubtless one of the losses Aral is anxious to limit. Is she all right? Vordarian's goons haven't abused her?"
"Not as far as we know. She seems to be under house arrest in her own rooms in the Imperial Residence. Several of the more important hostages have been secluded there."
"I see." She glanced sideways in the dim cabin at Bothari, who did not change expression. She waited for him to ask after Elena, but he said nothing. Droushnakovi stared bleakly into the night, at the mention of Kareen.
Had Kou and Drou made up? They seemed cool, civil, all duty and on duty. But whatever surface apologies had passed, Cordelia sensed no healing in them. The secret adoration and will-to-trust was all gone from the blue eyes that now and then flicked from the control interface to the man in the passenger seat. Drou's glances were merely wary.
Lights glowed ahead on the ground, the spatter of a middle-sized city, and beyond it, the jumbled geometrics of a sprawling military shuttleport. Drou went through code-check after code-check, as they approached. They spiraled down to a pad that lit for them, peopled with armed guards. Their guard-flyers passed on overhead to their own landing zones.
The guards surrounded them as they exited the flyer, and escorted them as fast as Koudelka's pace would permit to a lift tube. They went down, took a slide-walk, and went down again through blast doors. Tanery Base clearly featured a hardened underground command post. Welcome to the bunker. And yet a throat-catching whiff of familiarity shook Cordelia for a terrifying moment of confusion and loss. Beta Colony did a lot better on the interior decorating than these barren corridors, but she might have descended to the utility level of some buried Betan city, safe and cool. . . .
I want to go home.
There were three green-uniformed officers, talking in a corridor. One was Aral. He saw her. "Thank you, dismissed, gentlemen," he said in the middle of someone's sentence, then more consciously, "We'll continue this shortly." But they lingered to goggle.
He looked no worse than tired. Her heart ached to look at him, and yet . . . Following you has brought me here. Not to the Barrayar of my hopes, but to the Barrayar of my fears.
With a voiceless "Ha!" he embraced her, hard to him. She hugged him back.
This is a good thing. Go away, World
. But when she looked up the World was still waiting, in the form of seven watchers all with agendas.
He held her away, and scanned her anxiously up and down. "You look terrible, dear Captain."
At least he was polite enough not to say, You
smell
terrible. "Nothing a bath won't cure."
"That is not what I meant. Sickbay for you, before anything." He turned to find Sergeant Bothari first in line.
"Sir, I must report in to my lord Count," Bothari said.
"Father's not here. He's on a diplomatic mission from me to some of his old cronies. Here, you, Kou—take Bothari and set him up with quarters, food chits, passes, and clothes. I'll want your personal report immediately I've seen to Cordelia, Sergeant."
"Yes, sir." Koudelka led Bothari away.
"Bothari was amazing," Cordelia confided to Aral. "No—that's unjust. Bothari was Bothari, and I shouldn't have been amazed at all. We wouldn't have made it without him."
Aral nodded, smiling a little. "I thought he would do for you."
"He did indeed."
Droushnakovi, taking up her old position at Cordelia's elbow the moment Bothari vacated it, shook her head in doubt, and followed along as Aral steered Cordelia down the corridor. The rest of the parade followed less certainly.
"Hear any more about Illyan?" Cordelia asked.
"Not yet. Did Kou brief you?"
"A sketch, enough for now. I don't suppose any more word's come in on Padma and Alys Vorpatril, then, either?"
He shook his head regretfully. "But neither are they on the list of Vordarian's confirmed captures. I think they're hiding in the city. Vordarian's side is leaking information like a sieve, we'd know if any arrest that important had happened. I can only wonder if our own arrangements are so porous. That's the trouble with these damned civil affrays, everybody has a brother—"
A voice from down the corridor hailed loudly, "Sir! Oh, sir!" Only Cordelia felt Aral flinch, his arm jerking under her hand.
An HQ staffer led a tall man in black fatigues with colonel's tabs on the collar toward them. "There you are, sir. Colonel Gerould is here from Marigrad."
"Oh. Good. I have to see this man now. . . ." Aral looked around hurriedly, and his eye fell on Droushnakovi. "Drou, please escort Cordelia to the infirmary for me. Get her checked, get her—get her everything."
The colonel was no HQ desk pilot. He looked, in fact, as if he'd just flown in from some front line, wherever the "front" was in this war for loyalties. His fatigues were dirty and wrinkled and looked slept-in, their smoke-stink eclipsing Cordelia's mountain-reek. His face was lined with fatigue. But he looked only grim, not beaten. "The fighting in Marigrad has gone house-to-house, Admiral," he reported without preamble.
Vorkosigan grimaced. "Then I want to hopscotch it. Come with me to the tactics room—
what
is that on your arm, Colonel?"
A wide piece of white cloth and a narrower strip of brown circled the officer's black upper left sleeve. "ID, sir. We couldn't tell who we were shooting at, up close. Vordarian's people are wearing red and yellow, 's as close as they could come to maroon and gold, I guess. That's supposed to be brown and silver for Vorkosigan, of course."
"That's what I was afraid of." Vorkosigan looked extremely stern. "Take it off. Burn it. And pass the word down the line. You already have a uniform, Colonel, issued to you by the Emperor. That's who you're fighting for. Let the traitors alter their uniforms."
The colonel looked shocked at Vorkosigan's vehemence, but, after a beat, enlightened; he stripped the cloth hastily from his arm and stuffed it in his pocket. "Right, sir."
Aral let go of Cordelia's hand with a palpable effort. "I'll meet you in our quarters, love. Later."
Later in the week, at this rate. Cordelia shook her head helplessly, took in one last view of his stocky form as if her intensity could somehow digitize and store him for retrieval, and followed Droushnakovi into Tanery Base's underground warren. At least with Drou, Cordelia was able to overrule Vorkosigan's itinerary and insist on a bath first. Almost as good, she found half a dozen new outfits in her correct size, betraying Drou's palace-trained good taste, waiting for her in a closet in Aral's quarters.
The base doctor had no charts; Cordelia's medical records were of course all behind enemy lines in Vorbarr Sultana at present. He shook his head and keyed up a new form on his report panel. "I'm sorry, Lady Vorkosigan. We'll simply have to begin at the beginning. Please bear with me. Do I understand correctly you've had some sort of female trouble?"
No, most of my troubles have been with males.
Cordelia bit her tongue. "I had a placental transfer, let me see, three plus," she had to count it up on her fingers, "about five weeks ago."
"Excuse me, a what?"
"I gave birth by surgical section. It did not go well."
"I see. Five weeks post-partum." He made a note. "And what is your present complaint?"
I don't like Barrayar, I want to go home, my father-in-law wants to murder my baby, half my friends are running for their lives, and I can't get ten minutes alone with my husband, whom you people are consuming before my eyes, my feet hurt, my head hurts, my soul hurts . . . it was all too complicated. The poor man just wanted something to put in his blank, not an essay. "Fatigue," Cordelia managed at last.
"Ah." He brightened, and entered this factoid on his report panel. "Post-partum fatigue. This is normal." He looked up and regarded her earnestly. "Have you considered starting an exercise program, Lady Vorkosigan?"
"Who are Vordarian's men?" Cordelia asked Aral in frustration. "I've been running from them for weeks, but it's like I've only glimpsed them in a rearview mirror. Know your enemy and all that. Where does he get this endless supply of goons?"