Mirror Dance b-9

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “What?”

  Succinctly, for a Jacksonian, Lilly again described her interest in the fate of the absconded geneticist. “Yours is the organization that made Hugh Canaba completely disappear. Yours is the organization that lifted ten thousand Marilacan prisoners of war from under the noses of their Cetagandan captors on Dagoola Four, though I admit they have spectacularly not-disappeared. Somewhere between those two proven extremes lies the fate of my little family. You will pardon my tiny joke if I say you appear to me to be just what the doctor ordered.”

  Naismith’s eyes widened; he rubbed his face, sucked air through his teeth, and managed a strained-looking grin. “I see. Ma’am. Well. In fact, such a project as you suggest might be quite negotiable, particularly if you think you might like to join Dr. Canaba. I’m not prepared to pull it out of my pockets this afternoon, you understand—”

  Lilly nodded.

  “But as soon as I make contact with my back-up, I think something might be arranged.”

  “Then as soon as you make contact with your back-up, return to us, Admiral, and your clone-twin will be made available to you.”

  “No—!” began the hot woman, half-rising; her comrade caught her arm and shook her head, and she sank back into her seat. “Right, Bel,” she muttered.

  “We’d hoped to take him today,” said the mercenary, glancing at him. Their eyes intersected joltingly. The Admiral looked away, as if guarding himself from some too-intense stimulus.

  “But as you can see, that would strip me of what seems to be my main bargaining chip,” Lilly murmured. “And the usual arrangement of half in advance and half on delivery is obviously impractical. Perhaps a modest monetary retainer would reassure you.”

  “They seem to have taken good care of him so far,” said the brown-haired officer in an uncertain voice.

  “But it would also,” the Admiral frowned, “give you an opportunity to auction him to other interested parties. I would caution you against starting a bidding war in this matter, ma’am. It could become the real thing.”

  “Your interests are protected by your uniqueness, Admiral. No one else on Jackson’s Whole has what I want. You do. And, I think, vice versa. We are very well suited to deal.”

  For a Jacksonian, this was bending over backward to encourage. Take it, close the deal! he thought, then wondered why. What did these people want him for? Outside, a gust of wind whipped the snowfall to a blinding, whirling curtain. It ticked on the windows.

  It ticked on the windows… .

  Lilly was the next to be aware, her dark eyes widening. No one else had noticed yet, the cessation of that silent glitter. Her startled gaze met his, as his head turned back from his first stare outward, and her lips parted for speech.

  The window burst inward.

  It was a safety-glass; instead of slicing shards, they were all bombarded by a hail of hot pellets. The two mercenary women shot to their feet, Lilly cried out, and Hawk leaped in front of her, a stunner appearing in his hand. Some kind of big aircar was hovering at the window: one, two … three, four huge troopers leaped through.

  Transparent biotainer gear covered nerve-disruptor shield-suits; their faces were fully hooded and goggled. Hawk’s repeated stunner fire crackled harmlessly over them.

  You’d get farther if you threw the damned stunner at them! He looked around wildly for a projectile weapon, knife, chair, table-leg, anything to attack with. Over one of the mercenary women’s pocket comm links a tinny voice was crying, “Quinn, this is Elena. Something just dropped the building’s force screen. I’m reading energy discharges—what the hell is going on in there? You want back-up?”

  “Yes!” screamed the hot woman, rolling aside from a stunner beam, which followed her, crackling, across the carpet. Stunner-tag. The assault was a snatch, not an assassination, then. Hawk finally recovered the wit to pick up the round table and swing with it. He hit one trooper but was stunner-dropped by another. Lilly stood utterly still, watching grimly. A gust of cold wind fluttered her silk pant legs. Nobody aimed at her.

  “Which one’s Naismith?” boomed an amplified voice from one of the biotainered troopers. The Dendarii must have disarmed for the parley; the brown-haired mere closed hand-to-hand on an intruder. Not an option open to him. He grabbed Rowan’s hand and dodged behind a chair, trying to get a clear run toward the exit tube.

  “Take ’em both,” the leader shouted over the din. A trooper leaped toward the lift tube to cut them off; the rectangular facet of his stunner discharger winked in the light as he found near-point-blank aim.

  “Like hell!” yelled the Admiral, cannoning into the trooper. The trooper stumbled and his aim went wild. The last thing he saw as he and Rowan dove for the lift tube was a stunner beam from the leader taking Naismith in the head. Both the other Dendarii were down.

  They descended with agonizing slowness. If he and Rowan could get to the force screen generator, could they get it turned back on and trap the attackers inside? Stunner fire sizzled after them, starry bursts on the walls. They twisted in air, somehow landed on their feet, and stumbled backward into the corridor. No time to explain—he grabbed Rowan’s hand and slapped it flat to the Durona-keyed lock-pad, and hit the power-off square with his elbow. The trooper pursuing them yelped and fell three meters, not quite head-first.

  He winced at the thud, and towed Rowan down the corridor. “Where are the generators?” he yelled over his shoulder at her. Other Duronas, alarmed, were appearing from all directions. A pair of green-clad Fell guards burst into the corridor’s far end and pelted toward the penthouse lift-tube. But what side were they on? He pulled Rowan into the nearest open doorway.

  “Lock it!” he gasped. She keyed the door shut. They were in some Durona’s residence suite. A cul-de-sac made a poor bolt-hole, but help seemed to be on the way. He just wasn’t sure for whom. Something just dropped your force screen… . From the inside. It could only have been dropped from the inside. He half-bent, mouth wide for air, lungs on fire, heart racing and chest aching, a dizzy darkness clouding his vision. He stumbled to the dangerous window anyway, trying to get a handle on the tactical situation. Muffled shouts and thumps penetrated from the wall by the corridor.

  “How t’hell’d those bastards get your screen down?” he wheezed to Rowan, clutching the windowsill. “Didn’t hear an explosion—traitor?”

  “I don’t know,” Rowan replied anxiously. “That’s outer-perimeter security. Fell’s men are supposed to be in charge of it.”

  He stared out over the icy parking lot of the compound. A couple more green-clad men were running across it, shouting, pointing upward, taking cover behind a parked vehicle, and struggling to get a projectile-weapon aimed. Another guard made urgent negative gestures at them; a miss could take out the penthouse and everyone in it. They nodded and waited.

  He craned his neck, face to the glass, trying to see upward and to the left. The armored aircar loomed, still hovering at the penthouse window.

  The assailants were withdrawing already. Damn! No chance with the force-screen. I’m too slow. The aircar rocked as the troopers hastily re-boarded. Hands flashed, and a thick little grey-clad figure was dragged across the gap, six heart-stopping flights above the concrete. A limp trooper was dragged across too. They were leaving no wounded for questioning. Rowan, teeth clenched, pulled him back. “Get out of the line of fire!”

  He resisted her. “They’re getting away!” he protested. “We should fight them now, on our own turf—”

  Another aircar rose from the street, beyond the old and obsolete compound wall. A small civilian model, unarmed and unarmored, it fought for altitude. Through its canopy he could see a blurred grey-clad figure at the controls, a white flash of teeth set in a grimace. The assailants’ armored car yawed away from the window. The Dendarii aircar tried to ram it, to force it down. Sparks sprayed, plastic cracked, and metal screeched, but the armored car shook it off; it pinwheeled to the pavement and landed with a terminal crunch.

  �
��Rented, I bet,” he groaned, watching. “Gonna have to pay for it. Good try, it almost worked—Rowan! Are any of those aircars down there yours?”

  “You mean the group’s? Yes, but—”

  “Come on. We’ve got to get down there.” But the building was crawling with security by now. They’d be nailing everyone to the wall till identified and cleared. He could scarcely leap out the window and fly down the five flights, though he longed to. Oh, for a cloak of invisibility.

  Oh. Yes!

  “Carry me! Can you carry me?”

  “I suppose, but—”

  He raced to the door, and fell backwards into her arms as it opened again.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Do it, do it, do it!” he hissed through his teeth. She dragged him sack out into the corridor. He studied the chaos through slitted eyes, gasping realistically. Assorted agitated Duronas milled behind a cordon of Fell security now blocking the entry to the penthouse. “Get Dr. Chrys to take my feet,” he muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

  Temporarily too overwhelmed to argue, Rowan cried, “Chrys, help me! We have to get him downstairs.”

  “Oh—” Given the impression that this was some kind of medical emergency, Dr. Chrys asked no questions. She grabbed his ankles, and within seconds they were forcing their way through the mob. Two Doctors Durona carrying a white-faced, injured-looking fellow at a run—green-clad armed men stepped hastily aside and waved them on.

  As they reached the ground floor Chris tried to gallop toward the clinic area. For a moment he was yanked two ways, then he freed his feet from the astonished Dr. Chrys, and pulled away from Rowan. She gave chase, and they arrived at the outer door together.

  The guards’ attention was focused on the efforts of the two men with the projectile launcher; his eyes followed their aim to the shadowy form of their retreating target, being swallowed by the snowy clouds. No, no, don’t shoot … ! The launcher burped; the bright explosion rocked the car but did not bring it down.

  “Take me to the biggest, fastest thing you can make go,” he gasped to Rowan. “We can’t let them get away.” We can’t let Fell’s men blow it up, either. “Hurry!”

  “Why?”

  “Those goons just kidnapped my, my … brother,” he panted. ’Gotta follow. Bring ’em down if we can, follow if we can’t. The Dendarii must have reinforcements of some kind, if we don’t lose :hem. Or Fell. Lilly’s his, his liegewoman, isn’t she? He has to respond. Or someone does.” He was shivering violently. “Lose ’em and we’ll never get ’em back. They’re figuring on it.”

  “What the hell would we do if we caught them?” Rowan objected. ’They just tried to kidnap you, and you want to run after them? That’s i job for security!”

  “I am—I am …” What? What am I? His frustrated stutters segued into a confetti-scramble of perception. No, not again—

  His vision cleared with the hiss of a hypospray, biting cold on his arm. Dr. Chrys was supporting him, and Rowan had one thumb pressed against his eyelid, holding it up while she stared into his eye, while her other hand slipped the hypospray back into her pocket. A kind of glassy bemusement descended upon him, as if he were wrapped in cellophane. “That should help,” said Rowan.

  “No, it doesn’t,” he complained, or tried to. His words came out a mumble.

  They had dragged him out of the lobby, out of sight near one of the lift tubes to the underground part of the clinic. He had only lost moments to the convulsion, then. There was still a chance—he struggled in Chrys’s grip, which tightened.

  The snap of women’s steps, not a guard’s boots, rounded the corner. Lilly appeared, her face set and her nostrils flaring, flanked by Dr. Poppy.

  “Rowan. Get him out of here,” Lilly said, in a voice dead-level in tone despite its breathlessness. “Georish will be downside himself to investigate this one. He has to never have been here. Our attackers seem to have been one of Naismith’s enemies. The story will be that the Dendarii came here looking for Naismith’s clone, but didn’t find him. Chrys, get rid of the physical evidence in Rowan’s room, and hide those files. Go!”

  Chrys nodded and ran. Rowan took over holding him on his feet. He had an odd tendency to slump, as if he were melting. He blinked against the drug. No, we have to go after—

  Lilly tossed Rowan a credit chit, and Dr. Poppy handed her a couple of coats and a medical bag. “Take him out the back door and disappear. Use the evacuation codes. Pick a place at random and go to ground, not one of our properties. Report in on a secured line from a separate location. By then I should know what I can salvage from this mess.” Her wrinkled lips peeled back on ivory teeth set in anger. “Move, girl.”

  Rowan nodded obediently, and didn’t argue at all, he noticed indignantly. Holding him firmly by the arm, she guided his stumbling feet down a freight lift-tube, through the sub-basement, and into the underground clinic. A concealed doorway on its second level opened onto a narrow tunnel. He felt like a rat scurrying through a maze. Rowan stopped three times to key through some security device.

  They came out in some other building’s under-level, and the door disappeared behind them, indistinguishable from the wall. They continued on through ordinary utility tunnels. “You use this route often?” he panted.

  “No. But every once in a while we want to get something in or out not recorded by our gate guards, who are Baron Fell’s men.”

  They emerged finally in a small underground parking garage. She led him to a little blue lightflyer, elderly and inconspicuous, and bundled him into the passenger seat. “This isn’ righ’,” he complained, thick-tongued. “Admiral Naismith—someone should go after Admiral Naismith.”

  “Naismith owns a whole mercenary fleet.” Rowan strapped herself into the pilot’s seat. “Let them tangle with his enemies. Try to calm down and catch your breath. I don’t want to have to dose you again.”

  The flyer rose into the swirling snow and rocked uncertainly in the gusts. The city sprawling below them disappeared quickly into the murk as Rowan powered them up. She glanced aside at his agitated profile. “Lilly will do something,” she reassured him. “She wants Naismith too.”

  “It’s wrong,” he muttered. “It’s all wrong.” He huddled in the jacket Rowan had wrapped around him. She turned up the heat.

  I’m the wrong one. It seemed he had no intrinsic value but his mysterious hold on Admiral Naismith. And if Admiral Naismith was removed from the Deal, the only person still interested in him would be Vasa Luigi, wanting vengeance upon him for crimes he couldn’t even remember committing. Worthless, unwanted, lonely and scared … His stomach churned in pain, and his head throbbed. His muscles ached, tense as wire.

  All he had was Rowan. And, apparently, the Admiral, who had come searching for him. Who had very possibly risked his life to recover him. Why? I have to do … something.

  “The Dendarii Mercenaries. Are they all here? Does the Admiral have ships in orbit, or what? How much back-up does he have? He said it would take time for him to contact his back-up. How much time? Where did the Dendarii come in from, a commercial shuttleport? Can they call down air support? How many—how much— where—” His brain tried madly to assemble data that wasn’t there into patterns for attack.

  “Relax!” Rowan begged. “There’s nothing we can do. We’re only little people. And you’re in no condition. You’ll drive yourself into another convulsion if you keep on like this.”

  “Screw my condition! I have to—I have to—”

  Rowan raised wry eyebrows. He lay back in his seat with a sick sigh, drained. I should have been able to do this … to do something… . He listened to nothing, half-hypnotized by the sound of his own shallow breathing. Defeated. Again. He didn’t like the taste. He brooded at his pale and distorted reflection on the inside of the canopy. Time seemed to have become viscous.

  The lights on the control panel died. They were suddenly weightless. His seat straps bit him. Fog began to stream up around them, faster and faste
r.

  Rowan screamed, fought and banged the control panel. It flickered; momentarily, they had thrust again. Then lost it again. They descended in stutters. “What’s wrong with it, damn it!” Rowan cried.

  He looked upward. Nothing but icy fog—they dropped below cloud level. Then above them, a dark shape loomed. Big lift van, heavy… .

  “It’s not a systems failure. We’re being intermittently field-drained,” he said dreamily. “We’re being forced down.”

  Rowan gulped, concentrated, trying to keep the flyer level in the brief bursts of control. “My God, is it them again?”

  “No. I don’t know … maybe they had some back-up.” With adrenalin and determination, he forced his wits to function through the sedative-haze. “Make a noise!” he said. “Make a splash!”

  “What?”

  She didn’t understand. She didn’t catch it. She should have— somebody should have—”Crash this sucker!” She didn’t obey.

  “Are you crazy?” They lurched to ground right-side-up and intact in a barren valley, all snow and crackling scrub.

  “Somebody wants to make a snatch. We’ve got to leave a mark, or we’ll just disappear off the map without a trace. No comm link,” he nodded toward the dead panel. “We have to make footprints, set fire to something, something!” He fought his seat straps for escape.

  Too late. Four or five big men surrounded them in the gloom, stunners at ready. One reached up and unlatched his door, and dragged him out. “Be careful, don’t hurt him!” Rowan cried fearfully, and scrambled after. “He’s my patient!”

  “We won’t, ma’am,” one of the big parka-clad men nodded politely, “but you mustn’t struggle.” Rowan stood still.

  He stared around wildly. If he made a sprint for their van, could he—? His few steps forward were interrupted when one of the goons grabbed him by his shirt and hoisted him into the air. Pain shot through his scarred torso as the man twisted his hands behind his back. Something coldly metallic clicked around his wrists. They were not the same men who’d broken into the Durona Clinic, no resemblance in features, uniforms, or equipment.