Gregor sighed. "Right."
No more playing secret agent. His best efforts had only served to get Gregor nearly murdered. It was time to try less hard, Miles decided.
"Strange," said Gregor, looking at Elena—at the new Elena, Miles guessed—"to think you've had more combat experience than either of us."
"Than both of you," Elena corrected dryly. "Yes, well . . . actual combat . . . is a lot stupider than I'd imagined. If two groups can cooperate to the incredible extent it takes to meet in battle, why not put in a tenth that effort to talk? That's not true of guerilla wars, though," Elena went on thoughtfully. "A guerilla is an enemy who won't play the game. Makes more sense to me. If you're going to be vile, why not be totally vile? That third contract—if I ever get involved in another guerilla war, I want to be on the side of the guerillas."
"Harder to make peace, between totally vile enemies," Miles reflected. "War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with."
"Whoever can be the most vile longest, wins?" Gregor posited.
"Not . . . historically true, I don't think. If what you do during the war so degrades you that the next peace is worse . . ." Human noises from the cargo bay froze Miles in midsentence, but it was Tung and Mayhew returning.
"Come on," Tung urged. "If Arde doesn't keep to schedule, he'll draw attention."
They filed into the cargo hold, where Mayhew held the control leash of a float pallet with a couple of plastic packing crates attached. "Your friend can pass as a fleet soldier," Tung told Miles. "For you, I found a box. It would have been classier to roll you up in a carpet, but since the freighter captain is male, I'm afraid the historical reference would be wasted."
Dubiously, Miles regarded the box. It seemed to lack air holes. "Where are you taking me?"
"We have a regular irregular arrangement, for getting fleet intelligence officers in and out quietly. Got this inner-system freighter captain, an independent owner—he's Vervani, but he's been on the payroll three times before. He'll take you across, get you through Vervani customs. After that you're on your own."
"How much danger is this arrangement to you all?" Miles worried.
"Not a lot," said Tung, "all things considered. He'll think he's delivering more mercenary agents, for a price, and naturally keep his mouth shut. It'll be days before he gets back to even be questioned. I arranged it all myself, Elena and Arde didn't appear, so he can't give them away."
"Thank you," Miles said quietly.
Tung nodded, and sighed. "If only you'd stayed on with us. What a soldier I could've made of you, these last three years."
"If you do find yourselves out of a job as a consequence of helping us," Gregor added, "Elena will know how to put you in touch."
Tung grimaced. "In touch with what, eh?"
"Better not to know," said Elena, helping Miles position himself in the packing crate.
"All right," grumbled Tung, "but . . . all right."
Miles found himself face-to-face with Elena, for the last time till—when? She hugged him, but then gave Gregor an identical, sisterly embrace. "Give my love to your mother," she told Miles. "I often think of her."
"Right. Uh . . . give my best to Baz. Tell him, it's all right. Your personal safety comes first, yours and his. The Dendarii are, are, were . . ." He could not quite bring himself to say,
not important,
or, a
naive dream,
or,
an illusion,
though that last came closest. "A good try," he finished lamely.
The look she gave him was cool, edged, indecipherable—no, readily decodable, he feared.
Idiot,
or stronger words to that effect. He sat down, his head to his knees, and let Mayhew affix the lid, feeling like a zoological specimen being crated for shipment to the lab.
The transfer went smoothly. Miles and Gregor found themselves installed in a small but decent cabin designed for the freighter's occasional supercargo. The ship undocked, free of Aslund Station and danger of discovery, some three hours after they boarded. No Oseran search parties, no uproars . . . Tung, Miles had to admit, still did good work.
Miles was intensely grateful for a wash, a chance to clean his remaining clothes, a real meal, and sleep in safety. The ship's tiny crew seemed allergic to their corridor; he and Gregor were left strictly alone. Safe for three days, as he chugged across the Hegen Hub yet again, in yet another identity. Next stop, the Barrayaran consulate on Vervain Station.
Oh, God, he was going to have to write a report on all this when they got there. True confessions, in the approved ImpSec official style (dry as dust, judging from samples he'd read). Ungari, now, given the same tour, would have produced columns of concrete, objective data, all ready to be reanalyzed six different ways. What had Miles counted?
Nothing, I was in a box.
He had little to offer but gut feel based on a limited view snatched while dodging what seemed like every security goon in the system. Maybe he should center his report on the security forces, eh? One ensign's opinion. The general staff would be so impressed.
So what was his opinion, by now? Well, Pol didn't seem to be the source of the troubles in the Hegen Hub; they were reacting, not acting. The Consortium seemed supremely uninterested in military adventures; the only party weak enough for the eclectic Jacksonians to take on and beat was Aslund, and there would be little profit in conquering Aslund, a barely terraformed agricultural world. Aslund was paranoid enough to be dangerous, but only half-prepared, and shielded by a mercenary force waiting only the right spark to itself split into warring factions. No sustained threat there. The action, the energy for this destabilization, by elimination must be coming from or via Vervain. How could one find out . . . no. He'd sworn off secret agenting. Vervain was somebody else's problem.
Miles wondered wanly if he could persuade Gregor to give him an Imperial pardon from writing a report, and if Illyan would accept it. Probably not.
Gregor was very quiet. Miles, stretched out on his bunk, tucked his hands behind his head and smiled to conceal worry, as Gregor—somewhat regretfully, it seemed to Miles—put aside his stolen Dendarii uniform and donned civilian clothes contributed by Arde Mayhew. The shabby trousers, shirt, and jacket hung a little short and loose on Gregor's spare frame; so dressed he seemed a down-on-his-luck drifter, with hollow eyes. Miles secretly resolved to keep him away from high places.
Gregor regarded him back. "You were weird, as Admiral Naismith, you know? Almost like a different person."
Miles shrugged himself up onto one elbow. "I guess Naismith is me with no brakes. No constraints. He doesn't have to be a good little Vor, or any kind of a Vor. He doesn't have a problem with subordination, he isn't subordinate to anyone."
"I noticed." Gregor ordered the Dendarii uniform in Barrayaran regulation folds. "Do you regret having to duck out on the Dendarii?"
"Yes . . . no . . . I don't know."
Deeply.
The chain of command, it seemed, pulled both ways on a middle link. Pull hard enough, and that link must twist and snap. . . . "I trust you don't regret escaping contract slavery."
"No . . . it wasn't what I'd pictured. It was peculiar, that fight at the air lock, though. Total strangers wanting to kill me without even knowing who I was. Total strangers trying to kill the Emperor of Barrayar, I can understand. This . . . I'm going to have to think about this one."
Miles allowed himself a brief crooked grin. "Like being loved for yourself, only different."
Gregor gave him a sharp glance. "It was strange to see Elena again, too. Bothari's dutiful daughter . . . she's changed."
"I'd meant her to," Miles avowed.
"She seems quite attached to her deserter husband."
"Yes," Miles said shortly.
"Had you meant that too?"
"Not mine to choose. It . . . follows logically, from the integrity of her character. I might have foreseen it. Since her convictions about loyalty just saved both our lives, I can hardly . . . hardly regret them, eh?"
Gregor's brow rose, an oblique gloss.
Miles bit down irritation. "Anyway, I hope she'll be all right. Oser's proved himself dangerous. She and Baz seem to be protected only by Tung's admittedly eroding power base."
"I'm surprised you didn't take up Tung's offer." Gregor grinned as briefly as Miles had. "Instant admiralty. Skip all those tedious Barrayaran intervening steps."
"Tung's offer?" Miles snorted. "Didn't you hear him? I thought you said Dad made you read all those treaties. Tung didn't offer command, he offered a fight, at five to one odds against. He sought an ally, front-man, or cannon-fodder, not a boss."
"Oh. Hm." Gregor settled back on his bunk. "That's so. Yet I still wonder if you'd have chosen something other than this prudent retreat if I hadn't been along." His lids were hooded over a sharp glance.
Miles choked on visions. A sufficiently liberal interpretation of Illyan's vague "use Ensign Vorkosigan to clear the Dendarii Mercenaries from the Hub" might be stretched to include . . . no. "No. If I hadn't run into you, I'd be on my way to Escobar with Sergeant-nanny Overholt. You, I suppose, would still be installing lights." Depending, of course, on what the mysterious Cavilo—Commander Cavilo?—had planned for Miles once he'd caught up with him in Consortium Detention.
So where was Overholt, by now? Had he reported to HQ, tried to contact Ungari, been picked off by Cavilo? Or followed Miles? Too bad Miles couldn't have followed Overholt to Ungari—no, that was circular reasoning. It was all very weird, and they were well out of it.
"We're well out of it," Miles opined to Gregor.
Gregor rubbed the pale grey mark on his face, fading shadow of his shock-stick encounter. "Yeah, probably. I was getting good at the lights, though."
Almost over,
Miles thought as he and Gregor followed the freighter captain through the hatch tube into the Vervain Station docking bay. Well, maybe not quite. The Vervani captain was nervous, obsequious, clearly tense. Still, if the man had managed this spy transfer three times before, he should know what he was doing by now.
The docking bay with its harsh lighting was the usual chilly echoing cavern, arranged to the rigid grid-pattern taste of robots, not human curves. It was in fact empty of humans, its machinery silent. Their path had been cleared before them, Miles supposed, though if he'd been doing it he'd have picked the busiest chaotic period of loading or unloading to slip something past.
The captain's eyes darted from corner to corner. Miles could not help following his glance. They stopped near a deserted control booth.
"We wait here," the freighter captain said. "There are some men coming who will take you the rest of the way." He leaned against the booth wall and kicked it gently with one heel in an idle compulsive rhythm for several minutes. Then he stopped kicking and straightened, head turning.
Footsteps. Half a dozen men emerged from a nearby corridor. Miles stiffened. Uniformed men, with an officer, judging by their posture, but they weren't wearing the garb of either Vervani civil or military security. Unfamiliar short-sleeved tan fatigues with black tabs and trim, and short black boots. They carried stunners, drawn and ready.
But if it walks like an arrest squad, and talks like an arrest squad, and quacks like an arrest squad . . .
"Miles," muttered Gregor doubtfully, taking in the same cues, "is this in the script?" The stunners were pointed their way, now.
"He's pulled this off three times," Miles offered in unfelt reassurance. "Why not a fourth?"
The freighter captain smiled thinly, and stepped away from the wall, out of the line of fire. "I pulled it off twice," he informed them. "The third time, I got caught."
Miles's hands twitched. He held them carefully away from his sides, biting back swear words. Slowly, Gregor raised his hands as well, face wonderfully blank. Score one for Gregor's self-control, as always, the one virtue his constrained life had surely inculcated.
Tung had set this up. All by himself. Had Tung known? Sold by
Tung? No . . . !
"Tung said you were reliable," Miles grated to the freighter captain.
"What's Tung to me?" the man snarled back. "I have a family, mister."
Under the stunners' aim, two—God, goons again!—soldiers stepped forward to lean Miles and Gregor, hands to the wall, and shake them down, relieving them of all their hard-won Oseran weapons, equipment, and multiple IDs. The officer examined the cache. "Yeah, these are Oser's men, all right." He spoke into his wrist comm. "We have them."
"Carry on," a thin voice returned. "We'll be right down. Cavilo out."
Randall's Rangers, evidently, hence the unfamiliar uniforms. But why no Vervani in sight? "Pardon me," Miles said mildly to the officer, "but are you people acting under the misapprehension we are Aslunder agents?"
The officer stared down at him and snorted.
"I wonder if it might not be time to establish our real identity," Gregor murmured tentatively to Miles.
"Interesting dilemma," Miles returned out of the corner of his mouth. "We'd better find out if they shoot spies."
A brisk tapping of boots heralded a new arrival. The squad braced as the sound rounded the corner. Gregor came to attention too, in automatic military courtesy, his straightness looking very strange hung about with Arde Mayhew's clothes. Miles no doubt looked least military of all, with his mouth gaping open in shock. He closed it before something flew in, such as his foot.
Five feet tall and a bit added by black boots with higher-than-regulation heels. Cropped blond hair like a dandelion aureole on that sculptured head. Crisp tan-and-black rank-gilded uniform that fit her body language in perfect complement.
Livia Nu.
The officer saluted. "Commander Cavilo, ma'am."
"Very good, Lieutenant. . . ." Her blue eyes, falling on Miles, widened in unfeigned surprise, instantly covered. "Why,
Victor,
darling," her voice went syrupy with exaggerated amusement and delight, "
fancy
meeting you here. Still selling miracle suits to the unwitting?"