"What about all the Barrayarans on Komarr and Sergyar who will never see their families again? Cut off, not ever knowing their fate . . ." Mine, for instance. "They'll be the same as dead, to each other. It will be the Time of Isolation all over again." She shivered in horror at the cascading images of shock and grief.
"So be glad you're on the good side of the wormhole," Madame Radovas snapped. At Ekaterin's cold stare, she relented a little. "It won't be like your old Time of Isolation at all. You have a fully developed planetary industrial base, now, and a much larger population, which has experienced a hundred-year-long inflow of new genes. There are plenty of other worlds which scarcely maintain any galactic contact, and they get along just fine."
The Professora's eyes slitted open. "I think you are underestimating the psychological impact."
"What you Barrayarans do to each other, afterwards, is not my responsibility," said Madame Radovas. "As long as you can never do it to us again."
"How . . . do you expect to die?" asked Ekaterin. "Take poison together? Walk out an airlock?" And will you kill us first?
"I expect you Barrayarans will take care of those details, when you figure out what happened," said Madame Radovas. "Foscol and Cappell think we will escape, afterwards, or that we might be permitted to surrender. I think it will be the Solstice Massacre all over again. We even have our very own Vorkosigan for it. I'm not afraid." She hesitated, as if contemplating her own brave words. "Or at any rate, I'm too tired to care anymore."
Ekaterin could understand that. Unwilling to murmur agreement with the Komarran woman, she fell silent, staring unseeing across the loading bay.
Dispassionately, she considered her own fear. Her heart beat, yes, and her stomach knotted, and her breath came a bit too fast. Yet these people did not frighten her, deep down, nearly as much as she thought they ought to.
Once upon a time, shortly after one of Tien's unfathomable uncomfortable jealous jags had subsided back to whatever fantasy world it came from, he'd earnestly assured her that he had thrown his nerve disruptor (illegally owned because he did not carry it in issuance from their District liege lord) from a bridge one night, and got rid of it. She hadn't even known he'd possessed it. These Komarrans were desperate, and dangerous in their desperation. But she had slept beside things that scared her more than Soudha and all his friends. How strange I feel.
There was a tale in Barrayaran folklore about a mutant who could not be killed, because he hid his heart in a box on a secret island far from his fortress. Naturally, the young Vor hero talked the secret out of the mutant's captive maiden, stole the heart, and the poor mutant came to the usual bad end. Maybe her fear failed to paralyze her because Nikki was her heart, and safe away, far from here. Or maybe it was because for the first time in her life, she owned herself whole.
A few meters away across the loading bay, Soudha crossed again to the novel device, aimed the remote at the float cradle, and adjusted its position fractionally. Cappell called some question from the other side of the bay, and Soudha set the remote down on the edge of the cradle and paced along one of the power cables, examining it closely, till he reached the wall slot Cappell was fussing over. They bent their heads together over some loose connection or other. Cappell yelled a question to the man in the glass booth, who shook his head, and went out to join them.
If I think about this, the chance will be gone. If I think about this, even my mutant's heart will fail me.
Had she the right to take this much risk upon herself? That was the real fear, yes, and it shook her to her core. This wasn't a task for her. This was a task for ImpSec, the police, the army, a Vor hero, anyone but her. Who are not here. But oh, if she tried and failed, she failed for all Barrayar, for all time. And who would take care of Nikki, if he lost both parents in the space of barely a week? The safe thing to do was to wait for competent grownup male people to rescue her.
Like Tien, yeah?
"Are you getting any warmer now, Aunt Vorthys?" Ekaterin asked. "Have you stopped shivering?" She rose, and bent over her aunt with her back to Madame Radovas, and pretended to tuck the blanket tighter, while actually loosening it. Madame Radovas was shorter than Ekaterin, and slighter, and twenty-five years older. Now, Ekaterin mouthed to the Professora.
Moving smoothly but not suddenly, she turned, paced toward Madame Radovas, and flung the blanket over the woman's head as she jumped to her feet. The chair banged over backward. Another two paces and she was able to wrap her arms around the smaller woman, pinning her arms to her side. The stunner's beam splashed, buzzing, on the deck at their feet, and the nimbus made Ekaterin's legs tingle. She lifted Madame Radovas off her feet and shook her. The stunner clattered to the deck, and Ekaterin kicked it toward her aunt, who was fighting to get upright on her cot. Ekaterin flung the blanket-muffled Komarran woman away from her as hard as she could, turned, and sprinted for the float cradle.
She snatched up the remote control and spun away toward the glass control booth as fast as her legs could push her, her sweating bare feet firm against the smooth surface. The men at the wall outlet shouted and started toward her. She didn't look back.
She galloped around the corner and up the two stairs to the booth in one leap. She batted frantically at the door control pad. The door took forever to slide shut; Cappell was almost to the steps before she was able, after two tries with her shaking fingers, to activate the lock. Cappell hit the door with a resounding thud and began pounding on it.
She did not, dared not, look back to see what was happening to the Professora. Instead, she raised the remote and pointed it through the glass at the float cradle. The controls included six buttons and a four-pronged knob. She'd never been good at this sort of coordination. Fortunately, subtlety was not her object now.
The third stab of her fingers on a button found the up vector. All too slowly, the float cradle began to rise off the loading bay deck. Perhaps there were some sort of sensors in it which kept it level; the first four combinations she tried seemed to do nothing. Finally, she was able to make the thing begin to rotate. It bumped into the catwalks above, making nasty grinding noises. Good. Power cables snapped off and whipped around; the strange man barely dodged the spitting sparks. Soudha was screaming, trying to jump up at the glass wall in front of her. She could barely hear him. The glass, after all, was supposed to stand up to vacuum. He scrambled back and aimed a stunner at her. The beam splashed harmlessly off the window.
At last, she was able to make the sensor program appear on the remote's little readout. She canceled its running instructions, and then the cradle became more lively. She'd achieved an almost 180-degree rotation, bottom to top. Then she turned the cradle's power off.
It was only about a four-meter drop from the catwalks to the deck. She had no idea what material the huge horn was fabricated from. She anticipated having to try a couple of times, to achieve some dent or crack Soudha could not repair in the day it would take for her and her aunt to be missed at the ferry. Instead, the bell burst like—like a flower pot.
The boom shook the bay. Shards big and small skittered off across the deck like shrapnel. One jagged piece whanged past centimeters from Soudha's head and smacked into the booth's glass, and Ekaterin ducked involuntarily. But the glass held. Amazing material. She was glad the device's horn hadn't been cast of it. Laughter bubbled out of her throat, bravura berserker joy. She wanted to destroy a hundred devices. She turned on the float cradle's power again and bounced the smashed remains on the deck a few more times, just because she could. The Maiden of the Lake fires back!
The Professora was sitting on the deck by the far wall, bent over. Not running away, not even close to making an escape. Not good. Madame Radovas was on her feet and had recovered her stunner. Cappell the mathematician was beating on the control booth's door with a meter-long high-torque wrench he'd found somewhere. Arozzi, his face running with blood from a flying piece of horn-shrapnel, dissuaded him before he rendered it unopenable; Soudha came running up with a handful of el
ectronic tools, and he and Arozzi disappeared below the door's window. Scratchy sounds penetrated by the door lock, more sinister even than Cappell's frantic blows.
Ekaterin caught her breath and looked around the control booth. She couldn't empty the air from the loading bay, her aunt was out there, too. There, there was the comconsole. Should she have gone for it first? No, she was doing this in the right order. No matter how screwed up ImpSec's response was, no matter how misapplied or incompetent their tactics, they could not possibly lose Barrayar now.
"Hello, Emergency?" Ekaterin panted as the vid-plate activated. "My name is Ekaterin Vorsoisson—" She had to stop, as the automated system tried to route her to her choice of traveler's aids. She rejected Lost & Found, selected Security, and started over, not certain she'd reached a human yet, and praying it would all be recorded. "My name is Ekaterin Vorsoisson. Lord Auditor Vorthys is my uncle. I'm being held prisoner, along with my aunt, by Komarran terrorists at the Southport Transport docks and locks. I'm in a loading bay control booth right now, but they're getting the door open." She glanced over her shoulder. Soudha had defeated the lock; the airseal door, bent from Cappell's efforts with the wrench, whined and refused to retreat into its slot. Soudha and Arozzi put their shoulders to it, grunting, and it inched open. "Tell Lord Auditor Vorkosigan—tell ImpSec—"
Then the swearing Soudha slipped sideways through the door, followed by Cappell still clutching his wrench. Laughing hysterically, tears running down her cheeks, Ekaterin turned to face her fate.
Chapter Twenty
Miles barely restrained himself from pressing his face to this courier ship's airlock window, while waiting for the tube seals from the jump station to finish seating themselves. When the door hissed open at last he swung himself through in one motion, to land on his feet with a thump, and glare around the hatch corridor. His reception committee at the private lock, the ranking ImpSec man aboard and a fellow in blue-and-orange civilian security garb, both braced to attention after only the briefest beat of surprise at his height—he could tell by the way their eyes had to track downward to meet his face—and appearance.
"Lord Auditor Vorkosigan," the strained-looking ImpSec man, Vorgier, acknowledged Miles. "This is Group-Commander Husavi, who heads Station Security."
"Captain Vorgier. Commander Husavi. Are there any new developments in the situation in the last," he glanced at his chrono, "fifteen minutes?" Almost a full three hours had passed since the first message from Vorgier had turned his journey from Komarr orbit into this viscous nightmare of suppressed panic. Never had an ImpSec courier ship seemed to move so slowly, and since no amount of Auditorial screaming at the crew could change the laws of physics, Miles had perforce seethed in silence.
"My men, backed by those of Commander Husavi, are almost into position for our assault," Vorgier assured him. "We believe we can get an emergency tube seal into place over the outer door of the airlock containing the Vor women before, or almost before, the Komarrans can evacuate the air. The moment the hostages are retrieved, our armored men can enter the Southport bay at will. It will be over in minutes."
"Too bloody likely," snapped Miles. "Several engineers have had several hours to prepare for you. These Komarrans may be desperate, but I guarantee they are not stupid. If I can think of putting a pressure-sensitive explosive in the airlock, so can they."
What a set of mental images Vorgier's words conjured—a tube seal misapplied or applied too late to the outer skin of the station, Ekaterin's and the Professora's bodies blown outward into space—some space-armored ImpSec goon missing his catch—Miles could almost hear his embarrassed, bass Oops over the audio link now, in his mind's ear. Such a blessing that Vorgier hadn't confided these details earlier, when Miles would have had all those hours en route to reflect upon them, stuck aboard his courier ship. "The Vor ladies are not expendable. Madame Dr. Vorthys has a weak heart, her husband Lord Auditor Vorthys tells me. And Madame Vorsoisson is—just not expendable. And the Komarrans are the least expendable of all. We want them alive for questioning. Sorry, Captain, but I mislike your plan."
Vorgier stiffened. "My Lord Auditor. I appreciate your concern, but I believe this will be most quickly and effectively concluded as a military operation. Civilian authority can help best by staying out of the way and letting the professionals do their job."
The ImpSec deck had dealt him two men in a row of exceptional competence, Tuomonen and Gibbs; why, oh why, couldn't good things come in threes? They were supposed to, dammit. "This is my operation, Captain, and I will answer personally to the Emperor for every detail of it. I spent the last ten years as an ImpSec galactic agent and I've dealt with more damned situations than anyone else on Simon Illyan's roster and I know just exactly how fucked-up a professional operation can get." He tapped his chest. "So climb down off your Vor horse and brief me properly."
Vorgier looked considerably taken aback; Husavi tamped out a smile, which told Miles all too much about how things had been going here. To Vorgier's credit, he recovered almost instantly, and said, "Come this way, my Lord Auditor, to the operations center. I'll show you the details, and you can judge for yourself."
Better. They started off down the corridor, almost quickly enough for Miles's taste. "Has there been any change or increase in power-draw into the Southport Transport area?"
"Not yet," Husavi answered. "As you ordered, my engineers shut down their lines to just that necessary to run their life support. I don't know how much power the Komarrans are able to tap from the local system freighter they have docked there. Soudha has said if we try to capture or remove the ship, they'll open the airlock on the Vor ladies, so we've waited. Our remote sensors don't indicate any unusual readings from there yet."
"Good." Baffling, but good. Miles could not imagine why the Komarrans hadn't switched on their wormhole-collapsing device yet, in a last-ditch effort to accomplish their long-sought goal. Had Soudha figured out its inherent defect? Corrected it, or tried to? Was it not quite ready yet, and the Komarrans even now frantically preparing it? In any case, once it was powered up they were all in deep-deep, because the Professor and Riva had concluded, with some pretty unreassuring hand-waving, something like a fifty percent probability of an immediate gravitational back-blow from the wormhole the moment it was switched off, ripping the station apart. When Miles had inquired what the technical difference was between a fifty-fifty chance and we don't know, he hadn't got a straight answer from them. Further theoretical refinements had come to an abrupt halt, when the news had come through about the stand-off here; the Professor was on his way now to the jump point, just a few hours behind Miles.
They turned a corner and entered a lift-tube. Miles asked, "What's the current status of the station evacuation?"
Husavi replied, "We've waved off all incoming ships that could be diverted. A couple had to dock in order to refuel, or they couldn't have made it to an alternate station." He waited till they'd exited into another corridor before continuing. "We've managed to remove most of the transient passengers and about five hundred of our nonessential personnel so far."
"What story are you giving them?"
"We're telling them it's a bomb scare."
"Excellent." And effectively true.
"Most are cooperating. Some aren't."
"Hm."
"But there's a serious problem with transportation. There are simply not enough ships in range to remove everyone in less than ten hours."
"If the power-draw to the Southport bay spikes suddenly, you'll have to start shuttling people over to the military station." Though Miles was by no means sure the gravitational event, if it occurred, wouldn't suck in and damage or destroy the military station as well. "They'll have to help out."
"Captain Vorgier and I discussed this possibility with the military commander, my lord. He wasn't happy with the prospect of a sudden influx of, um, randomly selected, uncleared persons onto his station."
Miles bet not. "I'll speak with him." He sighed.<
br />
Vorgier's "operations center" turned out to be the local ImpSec offices; the central communications chamber did indeed bear a passing resemblance to a warship's tactics room, Miles had to allow. Vorgier called up a holovid display of the Southport docks and locks area, one with rather better technical detail than the one Miles had spent the last hour studying. He ran over the expected placement of his men and the projected timing and technique of his assault. It wasn't a bad plan, as assaults went. In his youth, out on covert ops, Miles had come up with things just as bravura and idiotic on equally short notice. All right . . . more idiotic, he admitted ruefully to himself. Someday, Miles, his boss ImpSec Chief Simon Illyan had once said to him, I hope you live to have a dozen subordinates just like you. Miles hadn't realized till now that had been a formal curse on Illyan's part.
Vorgier's sales pitch kept fading out in Miles's mind, displaced by an instant-replay of the recording of the last message from Ekaterin, which Vorgier had thoughtfully supplied Miles by tight-beam. He'd memorized every nuance of it in the last three hours. I'm in a loading bay control booth—they're getting the door open-- She hadn't said anything about the novel device. Unless some report had been going to follow the Tell Lord Vorkosigan—tell ImpSec—part, which had been so rudely interrupted by the red-faced Soudha's paw abruptly descending on the comconsole control. Nothing could be seen in the fuzzy background, however computer-enhanced, but the dull control booth. And the mathematician, Cappell, gripping a wrench he looked ready to use for something other than tightening bolts, but evidently hadn't; ImpSec had received vids via the loading bay airlock's safety channel of both women being bundled alive into it, before Soudha had cut off the signal feed. Those brief images too burned in Miles's brain.
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