Diplomatic Immunity (35 page)

"They are going to have to wait a lot. This is my next order in the Emperor's Voice. Clear copy everything—
everything
—you have on record here from the past twenty-four hours and squirt it back on an open channel, at the highest priority, to the Imperial Residence, to the Barrayaran high command on Barrayar, to ImpSec HQ, and to ImpSec Galactic Affairs on Komarr. And," he took a breath, and raised his voice to override Vorpatril's outraged cry of
Clear copy! At a time like this?
"marked from Lord Auditor Miles Vorkosigan of Barrayar to the most urgent, personal attention of ghem-General Dag Benin, Chief of Imperial Security, the Celestial Garden, Eta Ceta, personal, urgent, most urgent, by Rian's hair this one's real, Dag. Exactly those words."

"
What?
" screamed Vorpatril, then hastily lowered his tone to an anguished repeat, "What? A rendezvous at Marilac can only mean imminent war with the Cetagandans! We can't hand them that kind of intelligence on our position and movements—gift-wrapped!"

"Obtain the complete, unedited Graf Station Security recording of the interrogation of Russo Gupta and send it along too, as soon as you possibly can. Sooner."

New terror shook Miles, a vision like a fever dream: the grand façade of Vorkosigan House, in the Barrayaran capital of Vorbarr Sultana, with plasma fire raining down upon it, its ancient stone melting like butter; two fluid-filled canisters exploding in steam. Or a fog of plague, leaving all the House's protectors dead in heaps in the halls, or fled to die in the streets; two almost ripe replicators running down unattended, stopping, slowly chilling, their tiny occupants dying for lack of oxygen, drowning in their own amniotic fluid. His past and his future, all destroyed together . . . Nikki, too—would he be swept up with the other children in some frantic rescue, or left uncounted, unmissed, fatally alone? Miles had fancied himself growing into a good stepfather to Nikki—that was called into deep question now, eh?
Ekaterin, I'm sorry . . . 
 

It would be hours—days—before the new tight-beam could get back to Barrayar and Cetaganda. Insanely upset people could make fatal mistakes in mere minutes. Seconds . . . "And if you are a praying man, Vorpatril, pray that no one will do anything stupid before it gets there. And that we will be believed."

"Lady Vorkosigan," Vorpatril whispered urgently. "Could he be hallucinating from the disease?"

"No, no," she soothed. "He's just thinking too fast, and leaving out all the intervening steps. He does that. It can be very frustrating. Miles, love, um . . . for the
rest
of us, would you mind unpacking that a little more?"

He took a breath—and two or three more—to stop his trembling. "The ba. It's not an agent on a mission. It's a criminal. A renegade. Perhaps insane. I believe it hijacked the annual haut child-ship to Rho Ceta, sent the vessel into the nearest sun with all aboard—probably murdered already—and made off with its cargo. Which trans-shipped through Komarr, and which left the Barrayaran Empire on a trade ship belonging to Empress Laisa
personally
—and just how incriminating
that
particular detail is going to look to certain minds inside the Star Crèche, I shrink to imagine. The Cetagandans think
we
stole their babies, or colluded in the theft, and, dear God, murdered a
planetary consort
, and so they are about to make war on us by
mistake
!"

"Oh," said Vorpatril blankly.

"The ba's whole safety lay in perfect secrecy, because once the Cetagandans got on the right trail they would never rest till they tracked this crime down. But the perfect plan cracked when Gupta didn't die on schedule. Gupta's frantic antics drew Solian in, drew you in, drew me in . . ." His voice slowed. "Except, what in the world does the ba want those haut infants
for
?"

Ekaterin offered hesitantly, "Could it be stealing them for someone else?"

"Yes, but the ba aren't
supposed
to be subornable."

"Well, if not for pay or some bribe, maybe blackmail or threat? Maybe threat to some haut to whom the ba
is
loyal?"

"Or maybe some faction in the Star Crèche," Miles supplied. "Except . . . the ghem-lords do factions. The haut lords do factions. The Star Crèche has always moved as one—even when it was committing arguable treason, a decade ago, the haut ladies took no separate decisions."

"The
Star Crèche
committed treason?" echoed Vorpatril in astonishment. "This certainly didn't get out! Are you sure? I never heard of any mass executions that high in the Empire back then, and I should have." He paused, and added in a baffled tone, "How could a bunch of haut-lady baby-makers commit treason, anyway?"

"It didn't quite come off. For various reasons." Miles cleared his throat.

"Lord Auditor Vorkosigan. This is your com link, yes? Are you there?" a new voice, and a very welcome one, broke in.

"Sealer Greenlaw!" Miles cried happily. "Have you made it to safety? All of you?"

"We are back aboard Graf Station," replied the Sealer. "It seems premature to call it safety. And you?"

"Still trapped aboard the
Idris
. Although not totally without resources. Or ideas."

"I urgently need to speak to you. You can override that hothead Vorpatril."

"Ah, my com link is sustaining an open audio link with Admiral Vorpatril now, ma'am. You can speak to both of us at once, if you like," Miles put in hastily, before she could express herself even more freely.

She hesitated only fractionally. "Good. We absolutely need Vorpatril to hold, repeat,
hold
any strike force of his. Corbeau confirms the ba
does
have some sort of a remote control or deadman switch on his person, apparently linked back to the biohazard it has hidden aboard Graf Station. The ba is not bluffing."

Miles glanced up in surprise at his silent vid of Nav and Com. Corbeau was seated now in the pilot's station chair, the control headset lowered over his skull, his expressionless face even more absent. "
Corbeau
confirms! How? He was stark naked—the ba is watching him every second! Subcutaneous com link?"

"There was no time to find and insert one. He undertook to blink the ship's running lights in a prearranged code."

"Whose idea was that?"

"His."

Quick
colonial boy. The pilot was on their side. Oh, but that was good to know. . . . Miles's shivering was turning to shudders.

"Every adult quaddie on Graf Station not on emergency duty is out looking for the bio-bomb now," Greenlaw continued, "but we have no idea what it looks like, or how big it is, or if it is disguised as something else. Or if there is more than one. We are trying to evacuate as many children as possible into what ships and shuttles we have on hand, and seal them off, but we can't even be sure of
them
, really. If you people do anything to set this mad creature off—if you launch an unauthorized strike force before this vicious threat is found and safely neutralized—I swear I will give our militia the order to shoot them out of space myself. Do you copy, Admiral? Confirm."

"I hear you," said Vorpatril reluctantly. "But ma'am—the Imperial Auditor himself has been infected with one of the ba's lethal bio-agents. I cannot—I will not—if I have to sit here and do nothing while listening to him die—"

"There are fifty
thousand
innocent lives on Graf Station, Admiral—Lord Auditor!" Her voice failed for a second; returned stiffly. "I am sorry, Lord Vorkosigan."

"I'm not dead yet," Miles replied rather primly. A new and most unwelcome sensation struggled with the tight fear grinding in his belly. He added, "I'm going to switch off my com link for just a moment. I'll be right back."

Motioning Roic to keep still, Miles opened the door to the security office, stepped into the corridor, opened his faceplate, leaned over, and vomited onto the floor.
No help for it.
With an angry swipe, he turned his suit temperature back up. He blinked back the green dizziness, wiped his mouth, went back inside, seated himself again, and called his link back on. "Continue."

He let Vorpatril's and Greenlaw's arguing voices fade from his attention, and studied his view of Nav and Com more closely. One object had to be there, somewhere . . . ah. There it was, a small, valise-sized cryo-freezer case, set carefully down next to one of the empty station chairs near the door. A standard commercial model, no doubt bought off the shelf from some medical supplier here on Graf Station sometime in the past few days. All of
this
, this entire diplomatic mess, this extravagant trail of deaths winding across half the Nexus, two empires teetering on the verge of war, came down to
that
. Miles was reminded of the old Barrayaran folktale, about the evil mutant magician who kept his heart in a box to hide it from his enemies.

Yes . . . 

"Greenlaw," Miles broke in. "Do you have any way to signal
back
to Corbeau?"

"We designated one of the navigation buoys that broadcasts to the channels of the pilots on cyber-neuro control. We can't get voice communication through it—Corbeau wasn't sure how it would emerge, in his perceptions. We are certain we can get some kind of simple code blink or beep through it."

"I have a simple message for him. Urgent. Get it through if you possibly can, however you can. Tell him to open all the inner airseal doors in the middle deck of the central nacelle. Kill the security vids there, too, if he can."

"Why?" she asked suspiciously.

"We have personnel trapped there who are going to die shortly if he doesn't," Miles replied glibly. Well, it was true.

"Right," she rapped back. "I'll see what we can do."

He cut his outgoing voice link, turned in his station chair, and made a throat-cutting motion for Roic to do the same. He leaned forward. "Can you hear me?"

"Yes, m'lord." Roic's voice was muffled, through the work suit's thicker faceplate, but sufficiently audible; they neither of them had to shout, in this quiet, little space.

"Greenlaw will never order or permit a strike force to be launched to try to capture the ba. Not hers, not ours. She can't. There are too many quaddie lives up for grabs. Trouble is, I don't think this placating approach will make her station any safer. If this ba really murdered a planetary consort, it'll not even blink at a few thousand quaddies. It'll promise cooperation right up to the last, then hit the release switch on its bio-bomb and jump, just for the off chance that the chaos in its wake will delay or disrupt pursuit an extra day or three. Are you with me so far?"

"Yes, m'lord." Roic's eyes were wide.

"If we can get as close as the door to Nav and Com unseen, I think we have a chance of jumping the ba ourselves. Specifically,
you
will jump the ba; I will supply a distraction. You'll be all right. Stunner and nerve disruptor fire will pretty much bounce off that work suit. Needler spines wouldn't penetrate immediately either, if it comes to that. And it would take longer than the seconds you'll need to cross that little room for plasma arc fire to burn through it."

Roic's lips twisted. "What if he just fires at you? That pressure suit's not
that
good."

"The ba won't fire at me. That, I promise you. The Cetagandan haut, and their siblings the ba, are physically stronger than anyone but the dedicated heavy-worlders, but they're not stronger than a power suit. Go for his hands. Hold them. If we get that far, well, the rest will follow."

"And Corbeau? The poor bastard's starkers. Nothing's gonna stop anything fired at him."

"Corbeau," said Miles, "will be the ba's last choice of targets. Ah!" His eyes widened, and he whirled about in his station chair. At the edge of the vid image, half a dozen tiny images in the array were quietly going dark. "Get to the corridor. Get ready to run. As silently as you can."

From his com link, Vorpatril's volume-reduced voice pleaded heartrendingly for the Imperial Auditor to please reopen his outgoing voice contact. He urged Lady Vorkosigan to request the same.

"Leave him alone," Ekaterin said firmly. "He knows what he's doing."

"What
is
he doing?" Vorpatril wailed.

"Something." Her voice fell to a whisper. Or perhaps it was a prayer. "Good luck, love."

Another voice, somewhat offsides, broke in: Captain Clogston. "Admiral? Can you reach Lord Auditor Vorkosigan? We've finished preparing his blood filter and are ready to try it, but he's disappeared out of the infirmary. He was right here a few minutes ago . . ."

"Do you hear that, Lord Vorkosigan?" Vorpatril tried somewhat desperately. "You are to report to the infirmary. Now."

In ten minutes—five—the medics could have their way with him. Miles pushed up from his station chair—he had to use both hands—and followed Roic into the corridor outside Solian's office.

Up ahead in the dimness, the first airseal door across the corridor hissed quietly aside, revealing the cross-corridor to the other nacelles beyond. On the far side, the next door began to slide.

Roic started trotting. His steps were unavoidably heavy. Miles half-jogged behind. He tried to think how recently he had used his seizure-stimulator, how much at risk he was right now for falling down in a fit from a combination of bad brain chemistry and terror. Middling risky, he decided. No automatic weapons for him this trip anyway. No weapons at all, but for his wits. They seemed a meager arsenal, just at the moment.

The second pair of doors opened for them. Then the third. Miles prayed they were not walking into another clever trap. But he didn't think the ba would have any way of tapping, or even guessing, this oblique line of communication. Roic paused briefly, stepping behind the last door edge, and peered ahead. The door to Nav and Com was shut. He gave a short nod and continued forward, Miles in his shadow. As they drew closer, Miles could see that the control panel to the left of the door had been burned out by some cutting tool, cousin, no doubt, to the one Roic had used. The ba had gone shopping in Engineering, too. Miles pointed at it; Roic's face lightened, and a corner of his mouth turned up.
Someone
hadn't forgotten to lock the door behind them when they'd last left after all, it appeared.