The lead Pelian ships were just coming into range of the refinery. Miles held his breath as though it could force his people to hold their fire. They were spread lonely, thin, and nervous out there. There were more weapons in place than Miles had personnel to man them, even with computer-controlled fire—especially since control systems had been plagued with bugs during installation that were still not all worked out. Baz had labored to the last instant—was still laboring, for all Miles knew, and Elena alongside him. Miles wished he could have justified keeping her beside himself, instead.
The lead Pelian spewed a glittering string of dandelion bombs, arcing toward the solar collectors.
Not again,
Miles groaned inwardly, seeing two weeks' repairs about to be wasted. The bombs puffed into their thousands of separate needles. Space was suddenly laced with threads of fire as the defense weaponry labored to knock them out. Should have fired an instant sooner. The Pelian ship itself exploded into pelting debris as someone on Miles's side scored a direct, perhaps lucky, hit. A portion of the debris continued on its former track and speed, almost as dangerous in its mindless momentum as the clever guided weapons.
The ships coming up behind it began to peel and swerve, shocked out of their beeline complacency. Auson and Thorne in their respective ships now swung in from either side, like a pair of sheepdogs gone mad and attacking their flock. Miles beat his fist on the panel before him in a paroxysm of joy at the beauty of the formation. If only he'd had a third warship to completely box their flanks, none of the Pelians would make it home to complain. As it was, they were squeezed into a flat layer, carefully precalculated to present its maximum target area to the refinery's defenses.
Auson, beside him, shared his enthusiasm. "Lookatem! Lookatem! Right down the gullet, just like you claimed they would—and Gamad swore you were crazy to strip the solar side—Shorty, you're a frigging genius!"
Miles's thrill was mitigated by the sober reflection of what names he'd have earned by guessing wrong. Relief made him dizzy. He leaned back in the station chair and let out a long, long breath.
A second Pelian ship burst into oblivion, and a third. A numeral buried in a crowded corner of Miles's readouts flipped quietly from a minus to a plus figure. "Ah ha!" Miles pointed. "We've got 'em now! They're starting to accelerate again. They're breaking off the attack."
Their momentum gave the Pelians no choice but to sweep through the refinery area. But all their attention now was on making it as fast a trip as possible. Thorne and Auson swung in behind to speed them on their way.
A Pelian ship corkscrewed past the installation, and fired—what? Miles's computers could present no interpretation of the—beam? Not plasma, not laser, not driven mass, for which the central factory was able to generate some shielding, the huge solar collectors necessarily being left to fend for themselves. It was not immediately apparent what damage it had done, or even if it were a hit. Strange . . .
Miles closed his hand gently around the Pelian ship's representation in his hologram, as if he could work sympathetic magic. "Captain Auson. Let's try and catch this one."
"Why bother? He's scooting for home with his buddies—"
Miles lowered his voice to a whisper. "That's an order."
Auson braced. "Yes, sir!"
Well, it works sometimes, Miles reflected.
The communications officer achieved a fully scrambled channel to the
Ariel,
and the new objective was transmitted. Auson, growing enthused, chortled at the chance to try his new ship's limits. The ghost imager, confusing the enemy's aim with multiple targets, proved particularly useful; through it they discovered the mystery beam's range limit and odd large time lag between shots. Recharging, perhaps? They bore down rapidly upon the fleeing Pelian.
"What's the script, Mr. Naismith?" Auson inquired. "Stop-or-we-blast-you?"
Miles chewed his lip thoughtfully. "I don't think that would work. I'd guess our problem is more likely to be keeping them from self-destructing when we get close. Threats would fall flat, I'm afraid. They're not mercenaries."
"Hm." Auson cleared his throat, and busied himself with his displays.
Miles suppressed a sardonic smile, for the sake of tact, and turned to his own readouts. The computers presented him with a clairvoyant vision of overtaking the Pelian, then paused, waiting politely on his merely human inspiration. Miles tried to think himself into the Pelian captain's skin. He balanced time lag, range, and the speed with which they could close on the Pelian at maximum red-line boost.
"It's close," he said, watching his holograph. The machine rendered a vivid and chilling display of what might happen if he missed bracketing his timing.
Auson glanced over his shoulder at the miniature fireworks, and muttered something about "—frigging suicidal . . ." , which Miles chose to ignore.
"I want all our engineering people suited up and ready to board," Miles said at last. "They know they can't outrun us; my guess is they'll rig some go-to-hell with a time delay, all pile into their lifeboat shuttle, and try to blow the ship up in our faces. But if we don't waste time on the shuttle, and are quick enough getting in the back door as they go out the side, we might disarm it and take—whatever that was—intact."
Auson's lips puckered in worried disapproval at this plan. "Take all my engineers? We could blast the shuttle out of its clamps, when we get close enough to get the accuracy—trap them all aboard—"
"And then try to board a manned warship with four engineers and myself?" Miles interrupted. "No, thanks. Besides, cornering them just might trigger the sort of spectacular suicide move I want to prevent."
"What'll I do if you're not quick enough getting their booby-trap disarmed?"
A black grin stole over Miles's face. "Improvise."
The Pelians, it appeared, were not enough of a suicide squadron to spurn the thin chance of life their shuttle gave them. Into this narrow crack of time Miles and his technicians slipped, blasting their way, crude but quick, through the code-controlled air lock.
Miles cursed the discomfort of his over-large pressure suit. Loose places rubbed and skidded on his skin. Cold sweat, he discovered, was a term with a literal meaning. He glanced up and down the curving corridors of the unfamiliar dark ship. The engineering techs parted at a run, each to their assigned quadrant.
Miles took a fifth and less likely direction, to make a quick check of tactics room, crew's quarters, and bridge for destructive devices and any useful intelligence left lying around. Blasted control panels and melted data stores met him everywhere. He checked the time; barely five minutes, and the Pelian shuttle would be safely beyond the range of, say, radiation from imploded engines.
A triumphant crow pierced his ears over his suit comm link. "I've done it! I've done it!" cried an engineering tech. "They had rigged an implosion! Chain reaction broken—I'm shutting down now."
Cheers echoed over the comm link. Miles sagged into a station chair on the bridge, heart lumping; then it seemed to stop. He keyed his comm link for a general broadcast, overriding and at volume. "I don't think we should assume there was only one booby-trap laid, eh? Keep looking for at least the next ten minutes."
Worried groans acknowledged the order. For the next three minutes the comm links transmitted only ragged breathing. Miles, dashing through the galley in search of the captain's cabin, inhaled sharply. A microwave oven, its control panel ripped out and hastily cross-wired, timer ticking away, had a high-pressure metal oxygen canister jammed into it. The nutrition technician's personal contribution to the war effort, apparently. In two minutes it would have taken out the galley and most of the adjoining chambers. Miles tore it apart and ran on.
A tear-streaked voice hissed over the comm link. "Oh, shit. Oh, shit!"
"Where are you, Kat?"
"Armory. There's too many. I can't get them all! Oh, shit!"
"Keep working! We're on our way." Miles, taking the chance, ordered the rest of his crew to the armory on the double, and ran. A true light guided him as he arrived, overriding the infrared display on the inside of his helmet faceplate. He swung into a storage chamber to find the tech crawling along a row of gleaming ordnance.
"Every dandelion bomb in here is set to go off!" she cried, sparing one glance at him. Her voice shook, but her hands never stopped patting out the reset codes. Miles, lips parted in concentration, watched over her shoulder and then began to repeat her movements on the next row. The great disadvantage to crying in fear in a space suit, Miles discovered, was that you could not wipe either your face or your nose, although the sonic cleaners on the inside of the faceplate saved that valuable informative surface from a sneeze. He sniffed surreptitiously. His stomach sent up a throat-burning, acid belch. His fingers felt like sausages. I could be on Beta Colony right now—I could be home in bed—I could be home
under
my bed. . . .
Another tech joined them, Miles saw out of the corner of his eye. No one spared attention for social chit-chat. They worked together in silence broken only by the uneven rhythm of hyperventilation. His suit reduced his oxygen flow in stingy disapproval of his state of mind. Bothari would never have let him join the boarding party—maybe he shouldn't have ordered him to duty at the refinery. On to the next bomb—and the next—and the—there was no next. Finished.
Kat rose, and pointed to one bomb in the array. "Three seconds! Three seconds, and—" She burst into unabashed tears, and fell on Miles. He patted her shoulder clumsily.
"There, there—cry all you want. You've earned it—" He killed his comm link broadcast momentarily, and inhaled a powerful sniff.
Miles tottered out of his newly captured ship into the refinery docking station clutching an unexpected prize—a suit of Pelian battle armor nearly small enough to fit him. The plumbing, not surprisingly, was female, but Baz could surely convert it. He spotted Elena among his reception committee, and held it up proudly. "Look what I found!"
She wrinkled her nose in puzzlement. "You captured a whole ship just to get a suit of armor?"
"No, no! The other thing. The—the weapon, whatever it was. This is the ship whose shot penetrated your shielding—did it hit anything? What did it do?"
One of the Felician officers glowered—oddly, at Elena. "It punched a hole—well, not a hole—right through the prison section. It was losing air, and
she
let them all out."
His people, Miles noticed, were moving about in groups of three or more.
"We haven't got them half rounded up yet," the Felician complained. "They're hiding all over the station."
Elena looked distressed. "I'm sorry, my lord."
Miles rubbed his temples. "Uh. I suppose I'd better have the Sergeant at my back, then, for a while."
"When he wakes up."
"What?"
Elena frowned at her boots. "He was guarding the prison section alone, during the attack—he tried to stop me, from letting them out."
"Tried? And didn't succeed?"
"I shot him with my stunner. I'm afraid he's going to be rather angry—is it all right if I stick with you for a while?"
Miles pursed his lips in an involuntary silent whistle. "Of course. Were any prisoners—no, wait." He raised his voice. "Commander Bothari, I commend your initiative. You did the right thing. We are here to accomplish a specific tactical objective, not perpetrate mindless slaughter." Miles stared down the Felician junior lieutenant, what's his name, Gamad, who shrank under his gaze. He went on more quietly to Elena. "Were any prisoners killed?"
"Two, whose cells were actually penetrated by the electron orbital randomizer—"
"By the what?"
"Baz called it an electron orbital randomizer. And—and eleven asphyxiated that I couldn't get to in time." The pain in her eyes knifed him.
"How many would have died if you hadn't released them?"
"We lost air in the whole section."
"Captain Tung—?"
Elena spread her hands. "He's around here somewhere, I guess. He wasn't among the thirteen. Oh—one of his jump pilots was, though. And we haven't found the other one yet. Is that important?"
Miles's heart sank into his foaming stomach. He wheeled to the nearest mercenary. "Pass on this order at once. Prisoners are to be re-captured alive, with as little injury as possible." The woman hurried to obey. "If Tung's on the loose, you'd better stick by me," Miles told Elena. "Dear God. Well, I guess I'd better have a look at this hole that isn't a hole, then. Where did Baz come up with that jawbreaking name for it?"
"He said it's a Betan development from a few years back. It never sold very well, because all you have to do to defend from it is re-phase the mass shielding—he told me to tell you he was on it, and should have the shields reprogrammed by tonight."
"Oh." Miles paused, crushed. So much for his fantasy of returning the mystery beam to Barrayar to lay at the Emperor's feet, Captain Illyan agog, his father amazed. He'd pictured it as a splendid offering, proof of his military prowess. More like when the cat drags in a dead horned hopper, to be chased off with brooms. He sighed. At least he had a suit of space armor now.
Miles, Elena, Gamad, and an engineering tech started toward the prison section, several structures down the linked chain of the refinery. Elena fell in beside Miles.
"You look so tired. Hadn't you better, uh, take a shower and get some rest?"
"Ah, yes, the stink of dried terror, well warmed in a pressure suit." He grinned up at her, and tucked his helmet firmly under his arm, like a beheaded ghost. "Wait'll you hear about my day. What does Major Daum say about the defense nexus now? I suppose I'd better get a full battle report from him—he at least seems to have his thinking straight—" Miles eyed the back of the lieutenant in weary distaste.
Lieutenant Gamad, whose hearing was evidently keener than Miles had supposed, glanced back over his shoulder. "Major Daum's killed, sir. He and a tech were switching weapons posts, and their flitter was hit by high-speed debris—nothing left. Didn't they tell you?"