"I have a few pieces of free information for you, first," said Miles. "I don't think they're ones you anticipate."
Soudha's hand hovered. "Go on."
"I'm afraid your wormhole-collapser no longer qualifies as a secret weapon. We caught up with your specs on file at Bollan Design. Professor Vorthys invited Dr. Riva, of Solstice University, in to consult. Are you aware of her reputation?"
Soudha nodded warily; Cappell's eyes widened. Madame Radovas stared wearily. Foscol looked deeply suspicious.
"Well, putting together your specs, the data from the soletta accident, and Riva's physics—there was a mathematician by the name of Dr. Yuell in there too, if the name means anything to you—the Empire's top failure analyst and the Empire's top five-space expert have concluded that you did not, in fact, manage to invent a wormhole-collapser. What you managed to invent was a wormhole-boomerang. Riva says that when the five-space waves amplified the wormhole's resonance past its phase boundaries, instead of collapsing, the wormhole returned the energy to three-space in the form of a gravitational pulse. Tangling with this pulse was what destroyed the soletta array and the ore ship, and—I'm sorry, Madame Radovas—killed Dr. Radovas and Marie Trogir. The probable-cause crew finally found her body a few hours ago, I regret to report, wrapped up in some of the wreckage they'd retrieved almost a week back."
Only a puff of breath from Cappell marked his grief, but water glittered in his eyes. Check, thought Miles. I thought he'd protested too much. Nobody looked surprised, merely oppressed.
"So if you succeed in getting your thing working, what you will actually do is destroy this station, the five thousand or so people aboard, and yourselves. And tomorrow morning, Barrayar will still be there." Miles let his voice fall to a near whisper. "All for nothing, and less than nothing."
"He lies," said Foscol fiercely into the shocked silence. "He lies."
Soudha gave a weird snort, ran his hands through his hair, and shook his head. Then, to Miles's dismay, he laughed out loud.
Cappell stared at his colleague. "Do you really think that's why? That it malfunctioned like that?"
"It would explain," began Soudha. "It would explain . . . oh, God." He trailed off. "I thought it was the ore ship," he said at last. "Interfering somehow."
"I should also mention," Miles put in, still uneasily watching Soudha's odd reaction, "that ImpSec has arrested all the Waste Heat personnel and their families you left back at the Southport Transport facility at Solstice. And then there are all your other relatives and friends, the innocents who knew nothing. The hostage game is a bad game, a sad and ugly game that's a lot easier to start than end. The worst versions I've seen ended up with neither side in control, or getting anything they wanted. And the people who stand to lose the most in it frequently aren't even playing."
"Barrayaran threats." Foscol lifted her chin. "Do you think, after all this, we can't stand up to you?"
"I'm sure you can, but for what reason? There aren't too many prizes left in this mess. The biggest one is gone; you can't shut off Barrayar. You can't keep your secret or shield anyone you left behind on Komarr. About the only thing you can do now is kill more innocent people. Great goals can call for great sacrifices, yes, but your possible rewards are steadily shrinking." Yes, that was it; don't raise the pressure, lower the wall.
"We did not," husked Cappell, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, "go through all this just to deliver the weapon of the century straight into Barrayaran hands."
"It's already there. As a weapon, it appears to have some fundamental defects, so far. But Riva says there's evidence you got more power out of the wormhole than you put into it. This suggests possible future peaceful, economic uses, when the phenomena are better understood."
"Really?" said Soudha, sitting up. "How did she figure? What are her numbers?"
"Soudha!" said Foscol reprovingly. Madame Radovas winced, and Soudha subsided, albeit reluctantly, staring at Miles through narrowed eyes.
"On the other hand," Miles continued, "until further research assures us that collapsing a wormhole is indeed quite impossible, none of you are going anywhere, and especially not to any other planetary government. It's one of those ugly military decisions, y'know? And I'm afraid it's mine." The Vor ladies are not expendable, he'd told Vorgier. Was he lying then, or now? Well, if he couldn't figure it out, maybe the Komarrans couldn't either.
"You are all headed, inexorably, for a Barrayaran prison," he went on. "The devil's bargain part about being Vor, which lot of people including some Vor overlook, is that our lives are made for sacrifice. There is no threat, no torture, no slow murder you can apply to two Barrayaran women that will change your outcome."
Was this the right tack? Above the vid-plate their listening images were undersized, a little ghostly, hard to read. Miles wished he were having this conversation face-to-face. Half the subliminal clues, of body language, of the subtle nuances of expression and voice, were washed out in transmission and unavailable to his instincts. But handing himself over to them person to augment their hostage collection could only have served to stiffen their wavering resolve. The memory of a woman's hand, slipping through his fingers into a screaming fog, flickered through his mind; his fists clenched helplessly in his lap. Never again, you said. Not expendable, you said. He watched the Komarrans' faces intently for all flickers of expression he could get, reflections of truth, lies, belief, suspicion, trust.
"There are advantages to prisons," he went on persuasively, "Some of them are comfortably furnished, and unlike graves, sometimes, eventually, you can get out of them again. Now, I am willing, in exchange for your peaceful surrender and cooperation, to personally guarantee your lives. Not, note, your freedom—that will have to wait. But time passes, old crises are succeeded by new ones, people change their minds. Live ones do, anyway. There are always those amnesties, in celebration of this or that public event—the birth of an Imperial heir, for instance. I doubt any of you will be forced to spend as much as a full decade in prison."
"Some offer," said Foscol bitterly.
Miles let his brows rise. "It's an honest one. You have a better hope of amnesty than Tien Vorsoisson does. That ore freighter pilot will enjoy no visits from her children. I reviewed her autopsy, did I mention? All the autopsies. If I have a moral claim, it's that I'm bargaining away the rights of the dead soletta-keepers' families to any justice for their slain. There ought to be civil trials for manslaughter over this."
Even Foscol looked away at these words.
Good. Go on. The more time he burned, the better, and they were tracking his arguments; as long as he could keep Soudha from cutting the com, he was making some twisty sort of progress. "You bitch endlessly about Barrayaran tyranny, but somehow I don't think you folks took a vote of all Komarran planetary shareholders, before you attempted to seal—or steal– their future. And if you could have, I don't think you would have dared. Twenty years ago, even fifteen years ago, maybe you could have counted on majority support. By ten years ago, it was already too late. Would your fellows really want to close off their nearest market now, and lose all that trade? Lose all their relatives who've moved to Barrayar, and their half-Barrayaran grandchildren? Your trade fleets have found their Barrayaran military escorts bloody useful often enough. Who are the true tyrants here—the blundering Barrayarans who seek, however awkwardly, to include Komarr in their future, or the Komarran intellectual elitists who seek to exclude all but themselves from it?" He took a deep breath to control the unexpected anger which had boiled up with his words, aware he was teetering on the edge with these people. Watch it, watch it. "So all that remains for us is to try and salvage as many lives as possible from the wreckage."
After a little time, Madame Radovas asked, "How would you guarantee our lives?" They were the first words she had spoken, though she had listened intently throughout.
"By my order, as an Imperial Auditor. Only Emperor Gregor himself could gainsay it."
"So . . .
why won't Emperor Gregor gainsay it?" asked Cappell skeptically.
"He's not going to be happy about any of this," Miles answered frankly. And I'm going to have to give him the report, God help me. "But … if I lay my word on the line, I don't think he'll deny me." He hesitated. "Or else I will have to resign."
Foscol snorted. "How nice for us, to know that after we are dead, you will resign. What a consolation."
Soudha rubbed his lips, watching Miles . . . watching his truncated image, Miles reminded himself. He was not the only one missing body cues. The engineer was silent, thinking . . . what?
"Your word?" Cappell grimaced. "Do you know what a Vorkosigan's word means to us?"
"Yes," said Miles levelly. "Do you know what it means to me?"
Madame Radovas tilted her head, and her quiet stare became, if possible, more focused.
Miles leaned forward into the vid pickup. "My word is all that stands between you and ImpSec's aspiring heroes coming through your walls. They don't need the corridors, you know. My word went down on my Auditor's oath, which holds me at this moment unblinking to a duty I find more terrific than you can know. I only have one name's oath. It cannot be true to Gregor if it is false to you. But if there's one thing my father's heartbreaking experience at Solstice taught, it's that I'd better not put my word down on events I do not control. If you surrender quietly, I can control what happens. If ImpSec has to detain you by force, it will be up to chance, chaos, and the reflexes of some overexcited young men with guns and gallant visions of thwarting mad Komarran terrorists."
"We are not terrorists," said Foscol hotly.
"No? You've succeeded in terrifying me," Miles said bleakly. Her lips thinned, but Soudha looked less certain.
"If you unleash ImpSec, the consequences will be your doing," said Cappell.
"Almost correct," Miles agreed. "If I unleash ImpSec, the consequences will be my responsibility. It's that devil's distinction between being in charge and being in control. I'm in charge; you're in control. You can imagine how much this thrills me."
Soudha snorted. One corner of Miles's mouth tilted up in unwilling response. Yeah, Soudha knows all about that one, l oo.
Foscol leaned forward. "This is all a smoke screen. Captain Vorgier said they were sending for a jumpship. Where s it?"
"Vorgier was lying for time, which was his clear duty. There will not be a jumpship." Shit, that did it. There were only two ways this could go now. There were only two ways it could go before.
"We have a pair of hostages. Do we have to space one of them to prove we're serious?"
"I believe you are deathly serious. Which one gets to watch, the aunt or the niece?" Miles asked softly, settling back again. "You claim to not be mad terrorists, and I believe you. You're not. Yet. You are also not murderers; I actually accept that all the deaths you've left in your wake were accidents. So far. But I also know that line gets easier to slip over with practice. Please observe that you have now gone as far as you can without turning yourselves into a perfect replica of the enemy you set out to oppose."
He let those last words hang in the air for a time, for emphasis.
"Vorkosigan's right, I think," said Soudha unexpectedly. "We've come to the end of our choices. Or to the beginning of another set. One that isn't the set I signed up for."
"We have to stick together, or it's no good," said Foscol urgently. "If we have to space one of them, I vote for that hell-cat Vorsoisson."
"Would you do it with your own hands?" said Soudha slowly. "Because I think I decline."
"Even after what she did to us?"
What in God's name did gentle Ekaterin do to you? Miles kept his expression as blank as he could, his body still.
Soudha hesitated. "Seems it made no difference after all."
Cappell and Madame Radovas both began to speak at once, but Soudha held up a restraining hand. He blew out his breath like a man in pain. "No. Let us continue as we began. The choice is plain. Stop now—unconditional surrender—or call Vorkosigan's bluff. Now, it's no secret to you I thought the time to go into hiding for a later try was before we ever left Komarr."
"I'm sorry I voted against you the last time," Cappell said to Soudha.
Soudha shrugged. "Yeah, well … If we're going to quit, the time's come."
No, it hasn't, Miles thought frantically. This was too abrupt. There was time for another ten hours of chit chat at the very least. He wanted to slide them to surrender, not stampede them to suicide. Or murder. If they believed him about the defects of their device, as they appeared to, it must soon occur to them that they could hold the whole station hostage, if they didn't mind the self-immolating aspect. Well, if they weren't going to think of that themselves, far be it from him to point it out. He leaned back in his station chair, and chewed on the side of his finger, and watched, and listened.
"There's no benefit in waiting, either way," Soudha went on. "The risk increases every minute. Lena?"
"No surrender," said Foscol sturdily. "We go on." And more bleakly, "Somehow."
"Cappell?"
The mathematician hesitated a long time. "I can't stand that Marie died for nothing. Hold out."
"Myself …" Soudha let his big square hand fall open. "Stop. Now that we've lost surprise, this goes nowhere. The only question is how long it takes to arrive." He turned to Madame Radovas.
"Oh. My turn already? I didn't want to go last."
"Yours would be the tie-breaking vote in any case," said Soudha.
Madame Radovas fell silent, staring out the control booth's glass—at the airlock door, across the bay? Miles's gaze could but help following hers; her turn back caught him at it, and he flinched.
You've done it now, boy. Ekaterin's life and your soul's oath hang on a frigging Komarran shareholders' debate. How did you let this happen? This wasn't in the plans. . . . His eye relocated, and ignored, the code on his comconsole that would launch Vorgier and his waiting troops.
Madame Radovas's gaze returned to window. She said, to no one in particular, "Our safety before always depended on secrecy. Now even if we get to Pol or Escobar, or further, ImpSec will follow us. There would not ever be a safe time give up our hostages. In exile or not, it will be prisons, always prisoners. I'm tired of being a prisoner, of hope, of fear."
"You were not a prisoner!" said Foscol. "You were one of us, I thought."
Madame Radovas looked across at her. "I supported my husband. If I hadn't—he would still be alive. Lena, I'm tired." Foscol said tentatively, "Maybe you should rest, before deciding."
The look she got from Madame Radovas in return for that line made her drop her eyes, and look away. Madame Radovas said to Soudha, "Do you believe him, about the device not working?"
Soudha frowned deeply. "Yes. I'm afraid so. Or I would have acted differently."
"Poor Barto." She stared at Miles for a long time in an almost detached wonder.
Encouraged by her apparent dispassion, he asked curiously, why is your vote the tie-breaker?"
"The scheme was my husband's idea, originally. This obsession has dominated my life for seven years. His voting share is always considered the greatest."
How very Komarran. Then Soudha had actually been the second-in-command, forced into the dead man's shoes . . . was all amazingly irrelevant now. Maybe they'll name it after him. The Radovas Effect. Belike. "We are both heirs, of a sort, then."
"Indeed." The widow's lips twisted. "You know, I will never forget the look on your face when that fool Vorsoisson told you there was no place on his forms for an Imperial order. I almost laughed out loud, despite it all."
Miles smiled briefly, scarcely daring to breathe.
Madame Radovas shook her head in disbelief, but not, he thought, of his promises. "Well, Lord Vorkosigan . . . I'll take your word. And find out what it's worth." She searched the faces of each of her three colleagues, but when she spoke, she looked at him. "I vote to stop now."
Miles waited tensely for signs of dissension, pr
otest, internal revolt. Cappell struck his fist on the booth's glass wall, which reverberated, and turned away, his features working. Foscol buried her face in her hands. After that, silence.
"That's it, then," said Soudha, bleakly exhausted. Miles wondered if the news of the device's inherent defect had sapped his will more than any argument. "We surrender, on your word for our lives. Lord Auditor Vorkosigan." He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. "Now what?"
"A lot of sensible slow moves. First I gently detach ImpSec from its vision of a heroic assault. They were getting pretty worked up, out here. Then you inform the rest of your group. Then disarm whatever booby-traps you've set, and pile any weapons you may possess well away from yourselves. Unlock the doors. Then sit down quietly on the loading bay floor with your hands behind your heads. At that point, I'll let the boys in." He added prudently, "Please avoid sudden movements, that sort of thing."
"So be it." Soudha cut his comm; the Komarrans winked out. Miles shuddered in sudden disorientation, alone again in his little sealed room. The screaming man behind the glass wall in his mind was getting out a battering ram, it felt like.
Miles opened the channel on his comconsole and ordered a medical squad to accompany the arresting officers from ImpSec and Station Security, who were to be armed with stunners and stunners only. He repeated that last command a couple of times, to be sure. He felt as if he'd spent a century in his station chair. When he tried to stand up, he nearly fell over. Then he ran.
Miles's only compromise with Vorgier's anxiety for the Imperial Auditor's personal safety was to march down the ramp into the Southport loading bay behind instead of in front of the security team. The ten or so Komarrans, sitting cross-legged on the floor, twisted around to watch as the Barrayarans entered. After Miles came the tech squad, which spread out looking for booby-traps, and behind them the medical team with a float pallet.
The first thing which caught Miles's eye after the live target inventory was the upside-down float cradle in the middle of the bay, atop a pile of tangled wreckage. He was able, barely, to recognize it from the diagrams he'd seen back on Komarr of the fifth novel device. His heart lifted at this inexplicable, welcome sight.
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