Diplomatic Immunity (33 page)

The medical crew had military training, right enough, and discipline. They also were up to their collective elbows in other tasks of the highest priority. Miles's very last desire was to pull them away from their cramped, busy lab bench and critical patient care to go play commando with him.
Although it may come to that.
Thoughtfully, he began walking about the infirmary's outer chamber, opening drawers and cupboards and staring at their contents. A muddy fatigue was beginning to drag at his edgy, adrenaline-pumped high, and a headache was starting behind his eyes. He studiously ignored the terror of it.

He glanced through the blue light bars into the ward. The tech hurried from the bench, heading toward the bathroom with something in his hands that trailed looping tubes.

"Captain Clogston!" Miles called.

The second suited figure turned. "Yes, my lord?"

"I'm shutting your inner door. It's supposed to close on its own in the event of a pressure change, but I'm not sure I trust any remote-controlled equipment on this ship at the moment. Are you prepared to move your patient into a bod pod, if necessary?"

Clogston gave him a sketchy salute of acknowledgment with a gloved hand. "Almost, my lord. We're starting construction on the second blood filter. If the first one works as well as I hope, we should be ready to rig you up very soon, too."

Which would tie him down to a bunk in the ward. He wasn't ready to lose mobility yet. Not while he could still move and think on his own.
You don't have much time then. Regardless of what the ba does
. "Thank you, Captain," Miles called. "Let me know." He slid the door shut with the manual override.

What could the ba know, from Nav and Com? More importantly, what were its blind spots? Miles paced, considering the layout of this central nacelle: a long cylinder divided into three decks. This infirmary lay at the stern on the uppermost deck. Nav and Com was far forward, at the other end of the middle deck. The internal airseal doors of all levels lay at the three evenly spaced intersections to the freight and drive nacelles, dividing each deck longitudinally into quarters.

Nav and Com had security vid monitors in all the outer airlocks, of course, and safety monitors on all the inner section doors that closed to seal the ship into airtight compartments. Blowing out a monitor would blind the ba, but also give warning that the supposed prisoners were on the move. Blowing out
all
of them, or all that could be reached, would be more confusing . . . but still left the problem of giving warning. How likely was the ba to carry out its harried, or perhaps insane, threat of ramming the station?

Dammit, this was so
unprofessional
 . . . Miles halted, arrested by his own thought.

What were the standard operating procedures for a Cetagandan agent—anyone's agent, really—whose covert mission was going down the toilet? Destroy all the evidence: try to make it to a safe zone, embassy, or neutral territory. If that wasn't possible, destroy the evidence and then sit tight and endure arrest by the locals, whoever the locals might be, and wait for one's own side to either bail or bust one out, depending. For the really, really critical missions, destroy the evidence and commit suicide. This last was seldom ordered, because it was even more seldom carried out. But the Cetagandan ba were so conditioned to loyalty to their haut masters—and mistresses—Miles was forced to consider it a more realistic possibility in the present case.

But splashy hostage-taking among neutrals or neighbors, blaring the mission all over the news, most of all—
most
of all, the public use of the Star Crèche's most private arsenal . . . This wasn't the modus operandi of a trained agent. This was goddamned
amateur
work. And Miles's superiors used to accuse
him
of being a loose cannon—hah! Not any of his most direly inspired messes had ever been as forlorn as this one was shaping up to be—for both sides, alas. This gratifying deduction did not, unfortunately, make the ba's next action more predictable. Quite the reverse.

"M'lord?" Roic's voice rose unexpectedly from Miles's wrist com.

"Roic!" cried Miles joyfully. "Wait. What the hell are you doing on this link? You shouldn't be out of your suit."

"I might ask you the same question, m'lord," Roic returned rather tartly. "If I had time. But I had to get out of t' pressure suit anyway to get into this work suit. I think . . . yes. I can hang the com link in my helmet. There." A slight chink, as of a faceplate closing. "Can you still hear me?"

"Oh, yes. I take it you're still in Engineering?"

"For now. I found you a real nice little pressure suit, m'lord. And a lot of other tools. Question is how to get it to you."

"Stay away from all the airseal doors—they're monitored. Have you found any cutting tools, by chance?"

"I'm, uh . . . pretty sure that's what these are, yes."

"Then move as far to the stern as you can get, and cut straight up through the ceiling to the middle deck. Try to avoid damaging the air ducts and grav grid and control and fluid conduits, for now. Or anything else that would make the boards light up in Nav and Com. Then we can place you for the next cut."

"Right, m'lord. I was thinking something like that might do."

A few minutes ran by, with nothing but the sound of Roic's breathing, broken with a few under-voiced obscenities as, by trial and error, he discovered how to handle the unfamiliar equipment. A grunt, a hiss, a clank abruptly cut off.

The rough-and-ready procedure was going to play hell with the atmospheric integrity of the sections, but did that necessarily make things any worse, from the hostages' point of view? And a pressure suit, oh bliss! Miles wondered if any of the powered work suits had been sized extra-small. Almost as good as space armor, indeed.

"All right, m'lord," came the welcome voice from his wrist com. "I've made it to the middle deck. I'm moving back now . . . I'm not exactly sure how close I am under you."

"Can you reach up to tap on the ceiling? Gently. We don't want it to reverberate through the bulkheads all the way to Nav and Com." Miles threw himself prone, opened his faceplate, tilted his head, and listened. A faint banging, apparently from out in the corridor. "Can you move farther toward the stern?"

"I'll try, m'lord. It's a question of getting these ceiling panels apart . . ." More heavy breathing. "There. Try now."

This time, the rapping seemed to come from nearly under Miles's outstretched hand. "I think that's got it, Roic."

"Right, m'lord. Be sure you're not standing where I'm cutting. I think Lady Vorkosigan would be right peeved with me if I accidentally lopped off any of your body parts."

"I think so too." Miles rose, ripped up a section of friction matting, skittered to the side of the infirmary's outer chamber, and held his breath.

A red glow in the bare deck plate beneath turned yellow, then white. The dot became a line, which grew, wavering in an irregular circle back to its beginning. A thump, as Roic's gloved paw, powered by his suit, punched up through the floor, tearing the weakened circle from its matrix.

Miles nipped over and stared down, and grinned at Roic's face staring up in worry through the faceplate of another repair suit. The hole was too small for that hulking figure to squeeze through, but not too small for the pressure suit he handed up through it.

"Good job," Miles called down. "Hang on. I'll be right with you."

"M'lord?"

Miles tore off the useless biotainer suit and crammed himself into the pressure suit in record time. Inevitably, the plumbing was female, and he left it unattached. One way or another, he didn't think he would be suited up for very long. He was flushed and sweating, one moment too hot, the next too cold, though whether from incipient infection or just plain overdriven nerves he scarcely knew.

The helmet supplied no place to hang his wrist com, but a bit of medical tape solved that problem in a moment. He lowered the helmet over his head and locked it into place, breathing deeply of air that no one controlled but him. Reluctantly, he set the suit's temperature to chilly.

Then he slid to the hole and dangled his legs through. "Catch me. Don't squeeze too hard—remember, you're powered."

"Right, m'lord."

"Lord Auditor Vorkosigan," came Vorpatril's uneasy voice. "What are you doing?"

"Reconnoitering."

Roic caught his hips, lowering him with exaggerated gentleness to the middle deck. Miles glanced up the corridor, past the larger hole in its floor, to the airseal doors at the far end of this sector. "Solian's security office is in this section. If there's any control board on this bloody ship that can monitor without being monitored in turn, it'll be in there."

He tiptoed down the corridor, Roic lumbering in his wake. The deck creaked beneath the armsman's booted feet. Miles tapped out the now-familiar code to the office door; Roic barely squeezed through behind him. Miles slid into the late Lieutenant Solian's station chair and flexed his fingers, contemplating the console. He drew a breath and bent forward.

Yes, he could siphon off views from the vid monitors of every airlock on the ship—simultaneously, if desired. Yes, he could tap into the safety sensors on the airseal doors. They were designed to take in a good view of anyone near—as in, frantically pounding on—the doors. Nervously, he checked the one for this middle rear section. The vista, if the ba was even looking at it with so much else going on, did not extend as far as Solian's office door. Whew. Could he bring up a view of Nav and Com, perhaps, and spy secretly upon its current occupant?

Roic said apprehensively, "What are you thinking of doing, m'lord?"

"I'm thinking that a surprise attack that has to stop to bore through six or seven bulkheads to get to the target isn't going to be surprising enough. Though we may come to that. I'm running out of time." He blinked, hard, then thought
to hell with it
and opened his faceplate to rub his eyes. The vid image unblurred in his vision, but still seemed to waver around the edges. Miles didn't think the problem was in the vid plate. His headache, which had started as a stabbing pain between his eyes, seemed to be spreading to his temples, which throbbed. He was shivering. He sighed and closed the faceplate again.

"That bio-shit—the admiral said you got t' same bio-shit the herm has. The crap that melted Gupta's friends."

"When did you talk to Vorpatril?"

"Just before I talked to you."

"Ah."

Roic said lowly, "I should've been t' one to run those remote controls. Not you."

"It had to be me. I was more familiar with the equipment."

"Yes." Roic's voice went lower. "You should've brought Jankowski, m'lord."

"Just a guess—based on long experience, mind you . . ." Miles paused, frowning at the security display. All right, so Solian didn't have a monitor in every cabin, but he had to have private access to Nav and Com if he had anything . . . "But I suspect there will be enough heroism before this day is done to go around. I don't think we're going to have to ration it, Roic."

" 'S not what I meant," said Roic, in a dignified tone.

Miles grinned blackly. "I know. But think of how hard it would have been on Ma Jankowski. And all the not-so-little Jankowskis."

A soft snort from the com link taped inside Miles's helmet apprised him that Ekaterin was back, listening in. She would not interrupt, he suspected.

Vorpatril's voice sounded suddenly, breaking his concentration. The admiral was sputtering. "The spineless scoundrels! The four-armed bastards! My Lord Auditor!" Ah, Miles was promoted again. "The goddamn little mutants are giving this sexless Cetagandan plague-vector a jump pilot!"

"What?" Miles's stomach knotted. Tighter. "They found a volunteer? Quaddie, or downsider?" There couldn't be that large a pool of possibilities to choose from. The pilots' surgically installed neuro-controllers had to fit the ships they guided through the wormhole jumps. However many jump pilots were currently quartered—or trapped—on Graf Station, chances were that most would be incompatible with the Barrayaran systems. So was it the
Idris
's own pilot or relief pilot, or a pilot from one of the Komarran sister ships . . . ?

"What makes you think he's a volunteer?" snarled Vorpatril. "I can't bloody
believe
they're just handing . . ."

"Maybe the quaddies are up to something. What do they say?"

Vorpatril hesitated, then spat, "Watts cut me out of the loop a few minutes ago. We were having an argument over whose strike team should go in, ours or the quaddie militia's, and when. And under whose orders. Both at once with no coordination struck me as a supremely bad idea."

"Indeed. One perceives the potential hazards." The ba was beginning to seem a trifle outnumbered. But then there were its bio-threats . . . Miles's nascent sympathy died as his vision blurred again. "We
are
guests in their polity . . . hang on. Something seems to be happening at one of the outer airlocks."

Miles enlarged the security vid image from the lock that had suddenly come alive. Docking lights framing the outer door ran through a series of checks and go-aheads. The ba, he reminded himself, was probably looking at this same view. He held his breath. Were the quaddies, under the mask of delivering the demanded jump pilot, about to attempt to insert their own strike force?

The airlock door slid open, giving a brief glimpse of the inside of a tiny, one-person personnel pod. A naked man, the little silver contact circles of a jump pilot's neural implant gleaming at mid-forehead and temples, stepped through into the lock. The door slid shut again. Tall, dark-haired, handsome but for the thin pink scars running, Miles could now see, all over his body in a winding swathe. Dmitri Corbeau. His face was pale and set.

"The jump pilot has just arrived," Miles told Vorpatril.

"
Dammit
. Human or quaddie?"

Vorpatril was really going to have to work on his diplomatic vocabulary. . . . "Downsider," Miles answered, in lieu of any more pointed remark. He hesitated, then added, "It's Lieutenant Corbeau."