Diplomatic Immunity b-13

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  The yell became a scream; the ba's hands shot out toward Miles as if in supplication, in denial, in despair. The Cetagandan began to stumble toward him, gray face working in shock and disbelief.

  Roic's power-suited hands locked down over the ba's wrists and hoisted. Wrist bones crackled and popped; blood spurted between the tightening gloved fingers. The ba's body convulsed as it was lifted up. Wild eyes rolled back. The scream transmuted into a weird wail, trailing away. Sandal-clad feet kicked and drummed uselessly at the heavy shin plating of Roic's work suit; toenails split and bled, without effect. Roic stood stolidly, hands up and apart, racking the ba helplessly in the air.

  Miles let the freezer case fall from his fingers. It hit the deck with a thump. With a whispered word, he called back the outgoing audio in his com link. “We've taken the ba prisoner. Send relief troops. In biotainer suits. They won't need their guns now. I'm afraid the ship's an unholy mess.”

  His knees were buckling. He sank to the deck himself, giggling uncontrollably. Corbeau was rising from his pilot's chair; Miles motioned him away with an urgent gesture. “Stay back, Dmitri! I'm about to . . .”

  He wrenched his faceplate open in time. Barely. The vomiting and spasms that wrung his stomach this time were much worse. It's over. Can I please die now?

  Except that it wasn't over, not nearly. Greenlaw had played for fifty thousand lives. Now it was Miles's turn to play for fifty million.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Miles arrived back in the Idris 's infirmary feet first. He was carried by two of the men from Vorpatril's strike force, which had been hastily converted to, mostly, a medical relief team, and as such cleared by the quaddies. His porters almost fell down the unsightly hole Roic had left in the floor. Miles seized back personal control of his locomotion long enough to stand up, under his own power, and lean rather unsteadily against the wall by the door to the bio-isolation ward. Roic followed, carefully holding the ba's remote trigger in a biotainer bag. Corbeau, stiff-faced and pale, brought up the rear dressed in a loose medical tunic and drawstring pants, and shepherded by a medtech with the ba's hypospray in another biotainer sack.

  Captain Clogston came out through the buzzing blue barriers and looked over his new influx of patients and assistants. “Right,” he announced, glowering at the gap in the deck. “This ship is so damned befouled, I'm declaring the whole thing a Level Three Biocontamination Zone. So we may as well spread out and get comfortable, boys.”

  The techs made a human chain to pass the analyzing equipment quickly to the outer chamber. Miles snared the chance for a few brief, urgent words with the two men with medical markings on their suits who stood apart from the rest—the Prince Xav 's military interrogation officers. Not really in disguise, merely discreet—and, Miles had to allow, they were medically trained.

  The second ward was declared a temporary holding cell for their prisoner, the ba, who followed in the procession, bound to a float pallet. Miles scowled as the pallet drifted past, towed on its control lead by a watchful, muscular sergeant. The ba was strapped down tightly, but its head and eyes rolled oddly, and its saliva-flecked lips writhed.

  Above almost anything else, it was essential to keep the ba in Barrayaran hands. Finding where the ba had hidden its filthy bio-bomb on Graf Station was the first priority. The haut race had some genetically engineered immunity to the most common interrogation drugs and their derivatives; if fast-penta didn't work on this one, it would give the quaddies very little in the way of interrogation procedures to fall back upon that would pass Adjudicator Leutwyn's approval. In this emergency, military rules seemed more appropriate than civilian ones. In other words, if they'll just leave us alone we'll pull out the ba's fingernails for them.

  Miles caught Clogston by the elbow. “How is Bel Thorne doing?” he demanded.

  The fleet surgeon shook his head. “Not well, my Lord Auditor. We thought at first the herm was improving, as the filters cut in—it seemed to return to consciousness. But then it became restless. Moaning and trying to talk. Out of its head, I think. It keeps crying for Admiral Vorpatril.”

  Vorpatril? Why? Wait– “Did Bel say Vorpatril?” Miles asked sharply. “Or just, the Admiral ?”

  Clogston shrugged. “Vorpatril's the only admiral around right now, although I suppose the portmaster could be hallucinating altogether. I hate to sedate anyone so physiologically distressed, especially when they've just fought their way out of a drug fog. But if that herm doesn't calm down, we'll have to.”

  Miles frowned and hurried into the isolation ward. Clogston followed. Miles pulled off his helmet, fished his wrist com back out of it, and clutched the vital link safely in his hand. A tech was making up the hastily cleared second bunk, readying it for the infected Lord Auditor, presumably.

  Bel now lay on the first bunk, dried off and dressed in a pale green Barrayaran military-issue patient tunic, which seemed at first heartening progress. But the herm was gray-faced, lips purple-blue, eyelids fluttering. An IV pump, not dependent upon potentially erratic ship's gravity, infused yellow fluid rapidly into Bel's right arm. The left arm was strapped to a board; plastic tubing filled with blood ran from under a bandage and into a hybrid appliance bound around with quantities of plastic tape. A second tube ran back again, its dark surface moist with condensation.

  “ 'S balla,” Bel moaned. “ 'S balla.”

  The fleet surgeon's lips pursed in medical displeasure behind his faceplate. He edged forward to glance at a monitor. “Blood pressure's way up, too. I think it's time to knock the poor bugger back out.”

  “Wait.” Miles elbowed to the edge of Bel's bunk to put himself in Bel's line of sight, staring down at the herm in wild hope. Bel's head jerked. The eyelids flickered up; the eyes widened. The blue lips tried to move again. Bel licked them, took a long inhalation, and tried once more. “Adm'ral! Portent. 'S basti'd hid it in the balla. Tol' me. Sadist'c basti'd.”

  “Still going on about Admiral Vorpatril,” Clogston muttered in dismay.

  “Not Admiral Vorpatril. Me,” breathed Miles. Did that witty mind still exist, in the bunker of its brain? Bel's eyes were open, shifting to try to focus on him, as if Miles's image wavered and blurred in the herm's sight.

  Bel knew a portent. No. Bel was trying to say something important. Bel wrestled death for the possession of its own mouth to try to get the message out. Balla? Ballistic? Balalaika? No—ballet!

  Miles said urgently, “The ba hid its bio-bomb at the ballet—in the Minchenko Auditorium? Is that what you're trying to say, Bel?”

  The straining body sagged in relief. “Yeh. Yeh. Get 's word out. In the lights, I thin'.”

  “Was there only one bomb? Or were there more? Did the ba say, could you tell?”

  “Don' know. 'S homemade, I thin'. Check. Purch'ses . . .”

  “Right, got it! Good work, Captain Thorne.” You always were the best, Bel . Miles turned half away and spoke forcefully into his wrist com, demanding to be patched through to Greenlaw, or Venn, or Watts, or somebody in authority on Graf Station.

  A ragged female voice finally replied, “Yes?”

  “Sealer Greenlaw? Are you there?”

  Her voice steadied. “Yes, Lord Vorkosigan? Do you have something?”

  “Maybe. Bel Thorne reports the ba said that it hid the bio-bomb somewhere in the Minchenko Auditorium. Possibly behind some lights.”

  Her breath drew in. “Good. We'll concentrate our trained searchers in there.”

  “Bel also thinks the bomb was something the ba rigged itself, recently. It may have made purchases on Graf Station in the persona of Ker Dubauer that could give you a clue as to how many it could have devised.”

  “Ah! Right! I'll get Venn's people on it.”

  “Note, Bel's in pretty bad shape. Also, the ba could have been lying. Get back to me when you know something.”

  “Yes. Yes. Thank you.” Hastily, she cut her com. It occurred to Miles to wonder if she was locked down in protective bio-isolation right
now too, as he was about to be, trying to shape the critical moment at a similar frustrating remove.

  “Basti'd,” Bel muttered. “Paralyzed me. Put me in s' damn bod pod. Tol' me. Then zipped it up. Left me to die, 'magining . . . Knew . . . it knew about Nicol 'n me. Saw my vid cube. Where's m' vid cube?”

  “Nicol is safe,” Miles assured Bel. Well, as much as any quaddie on Graf Station at the moment—if not safe, at least warned . Vid cube? Oh, the little imager full of Bel's hypothetical children. “Your vid cube is put away safely.” Miles had no idea if this last was true or not—the cube might be still in Bel's pocket, destroyed with the herm's contaminated clothes, or stolen by the ba. But the assertion gave Bel ease. The exhausted herm's eyes closed again, and its breathing steadied.

  In a few hours, I'm going to look like that.

  Then you'd better not waste any time now, eh?

  With a vast distaste, Miles suffered a hovering tech to help him off with his pressure suit and underwear—to be taken away and incinerated, Miles supposed. “If you're tying me down here, I want a comconsole set up by my bunk immediately. No, you can't have that.” Miles fended off the tech, who was now trying to pry loose his com link, then paused to swallow. “And something for nausea. All right, put it around my right arm, then.”

  Horizontal was scarcely better than vertical. Miles smoothed down his own pale green tunic and gave up his left arm to the surgeon, who personally attended to piercing his vein with some medical awl that felt the size of a drinking straw. On the other side a tech pressed a hypospray against his right shoulder—a potion that would kill the dizziness and the cramping in his stomach, he hoped. But he didn't yelp until the first spurt of filtered blood returned to his body. “Crap , that's cold. I hate cold.”

  “Can't be helped, my Lord Auditor,” Clogston murmured soothingly. “We have to lower your body temperature at least three degrees. It will buy time.”

  Miles hunched, uncomfortably reminded that they didn't have a fix for this yet. He stifled a gush of terror, escaping under pressure from the place he'd kept it locked for the past hours. Not for one second would he allow himself to believe that there was no cure to be had, that this bio-shit would drag him under and this time he wouldn't come back up . . . ”Where's Roic?” He raised his right wrist to his lips. “Roic?”

  “I'm in the outer chamber, m'lord. I'm afraid to carry this triggering device through the bio-barrier till we're sure it's disarmed.”

  “Right, good thinking. One of those fellows out there should be the bomb disposal tech I requested. Find him and give it to him. Then ride herd on the interrogation for me, will you?”

  “Yes, m'lord.”

  “Captain Clogston.”

  The doctor glanced down from where he fiddled with the jury-rigged blood filter. “My lord?”

  “The moment you have a medtech—no, a doctor. The moment you have some qualified men free, send them to the cargo hold where the ba has the replicators. I want them to run samples, try to see if the ba has contaminated or poisoned them in any way. Then make sure the equipment's all running all right. It's very important that the haut infants all be kept alive and well.”

  “Yes, Lord Vorkosigan.”

  If the haut babies were inoculated with the same vile parasites presently rioting through his own body, might the replicators' temperature be turned down to chill them all, and slow the disease process? Or would such cold stress the infants, damage them . . . he was borrowing trouble, reasoning in advance of his data. A trained agent, conditioned to the correct disconnect between action and imagination, might have performed such an inoculation, cleaning up every bit of incriminating high-haut DNA before abandoning the scene. But this ba was an amateur. This ba had another sort of conditioning altogether. Yes, but that conditioning must have gone very wrong somehow, or this ba wouldn't have got this far . . .

  Miles added as Clogston turned away, “And give me word on the condition of the pilot, Corbeau, as soon as you have it.” The retreating suited figure raised a hand in acknowledgment.

  In a few minutes, Roic entered the ward; he had doffed the bulky powered work suit, and now wore more comfortable military-issue Level Three biotainer garb.

  “How's it going over there?”

  Roic ducked his head. “Not well, m'lord. T' ba has gone into some sort of strange mental state. Raving, but nothing to the point, and the intelligence fellows say its physiological state is all out of kilter as well. They're trying to stabilize it.”

  “The ba must be kept alive!” Miles struggled half-up, a vision of having himself carried into the next chamber to take charge running through his head. “We have to get it back to Cetaganda. To prove Barrayar is innocent.”

  He sank back and eyed the humming device filtering his blood hung by his left side. Pulling out parasites, yes, but also draining the energy the parasites had stolen from him to create themselves. Siphoning off the mental edge he desperately needed right now.

  He remarshaled his scattering thoughts, and explained to Roic the news Bel had imparted. “Return to the interrogation room and give them the word on this development. See if they can get any cross-confirmation on the hiding place in the Minchenko Auditorium, and especially see if they can get anything that would suggest if there is more than one device. Or not.”

  “Right.” Roic nodded. He glanced over Miles's growing array of medical attachments. “By the way, m'lord. Had you happened to mention your seizure disorder to the surgeon yet?”

  “Not yet. There hasn't been time.”

  “Right.” Roic's lips screwed up thoughtfully, in an editorial fashion that Miles chose to ignore. “I'll see to it then, shall I, m'lord?”

  Miles hunched. “Yeah, yeah.”

  Roic trod out of the ward on both his errands.

  The remote comconsole arrived; a tech swung a tray across Miles's lap, laid the vid plate frame upon it, and helped him sit mostly up, with extra pillows at his back. He was starting to shiver again. All right, good, the device was Barrayaran military issue, not just scavenged from the Idris . He had a securable visual link again now. He entered codes.

  Vorpatril's face was a moment or two coming up; riding herd on all this from the Prince Xav 's tactics room, the admiral no doubt had a few other demands on his attention at the moment. He appeared at last with a, “Yes , my lord!” His eyes searched the image of Miles on his vid display. He apparently was not reassured by the view. His jaw tightened in dismay. “Are you all—” he began, but edited this fatuity on the fly to, “How bad is it?”

  “I can still talk. And while I can still talk, I need to record some orders. While we're waiting on the quaddies' search for the bio-bomb—are you following the latest on that?” Miles brought the admiral up to the moment on Bel's intelligence about the Minchenko Auditorium, and went on. “Meanwhile, I want you to select and prepare the fastest ship in your escort that has a sufficient capacity for the load it's going to be carrying. Which will be me, Portmaster Thorne, a medical team, our prisoner the ba and guards, Guppy the Jacksonian smuggler if I can pry him out of quaddie hands, and a thousand working uterine replicators. With qualified medical attendants.”

  “And me,” put in Ekaterin's voice firmly from offsides. Her face leaned briefly into range of Vorpatril's vid pickup, and she frowned at him. She'd seen her husband looking like death on a plate more than once before, though; perhaps she wouldn't be as disturbed as the admiral clearly was. Having an Imperial Auditor get melted to steaming slime on his watch would be a notable black mark, not that Vorpatril's career wasn't in a shambles over this episode already.

  “My courier ship will travel in convoy, carrying Lady Vorkosigan.” He cut across Ekaterin's beginning objection: “I may well need one spokesperson along who isn't in medical quarantine.”

  She settled back with a dubious “Hm.”

  “But I want to make damned sure we're not impeded by any hassles along the way, Admiral, so have your fleet department start working immediately on our pas
sage clearances in all the local space polities we're going to have to cross. Speed. Speed is of the essence. I want to get away the moment we're sure the ba's devil-device has been cleared from Graf Station. At least with us carrying all these biohazards, no one is going to want to stop and board us for inspections.”

  “To Komarr, my lord? Or Sergyar?”

  “No. Calculate the shortest possible jump route directly to Rho Ceta.”

  Vorpatril's head jerked back in startlement. “If the orders I received from Sector Five HQ mean what we think, you'll hardly get passage there . Reception by plasma fire and fusion shells the moment you pop out of the wormhole, would be what I'd expect.”

  “Unpack , Miles,” Ekaterin's voice drifted in.

  He grinned briefly at the familiar exasperation in her voice. “By the time we arrive there, I will have arranged our clearances with the Cetagandan Empire.” I hope . Or else they were all going to be in more trouble than Miles ever wanted to imagine. “Barrayar is bringing their kidnapped haut babies back to them. On the end of a long stick. I get to be the stick.”

  “Ah,” said Vorpatril, his gray brows rising in speculation.

  “Give a head's-up to my ImpSec courier pilot. I plan to start the moment we have everyone and everything transferred aboard. You can start on the everything part now.”

  “Understood, my lord.” Vorpatril rose and vanished out of vid range. Ekaterin moved back in, and smiled at him.

  “Well, we're making some progress at last,” Miles said to her, with what he hoped seemed good cheer, and not suppressed hysteria.

  Her smile twisted up on one side. Her eyes were warm, though. “Some progress? What do you call an avalanche, I wonder?”

  “No arctic metaphors, please. I'm cold enough. If the medicos get this . . . infestation under control en route, perhaps they'll clear me for visitors. We'll want the courier ship later, anyway.”