The warrior's apprentice (28 page)

“You’ll like this, then, Admiral Naismith.” Auson, bursting with news, erupted at last. “Four of Oser’s independent Captain-owners took their ships and jumped out of Tau Verde local space in the last two days. From the transmissions we intercepted, I don’t think they’ll be coming back, either.”

“Glorious,” breathed Miles. “Oh, well done...”

He looked to Elena. Pride there, too, strong enough even to nudge out some of the pain in her eyes. “As I thought—intercepting that fourth payroll was vital to the success of the strategy. Well done, Commander Bothari.”

She glowed back at him, hesitantly. “We missed you. We—took lot of casualties.”

“I anticipated we would. The Pelians had to be laying for us, by then.” He glanced at Tung, who was making a small shushing gesture at Elena. “Was it much worse than we’d calculated?”

Tung shook his head. “There were moments when I was ready to swear she didn’t know she was beaten.

There are certain situations into which you do not ask mercenaries to follow you—”

“I didn’t ask anyone to follow me,” said Elena. “They came on their own.” She added in a whispered aside to Miles, “I just thought that was what boarding battles were like. I didn’t know it wasn’t supposed to be that bad.”

Tung spoke to Miles’s alarmed look. “We would have paid a higher price if she hadn’t insisted you’d put her in charge and refused to withdraw when I ordered. Then we would have paid much for nothing—that ratio works out to infinity, I believe.” Tung gave Elena a nod of judicious approval, which she returned gravely. Ivan looked rather stunned.

A low-voiced argument penetrated from the corridor; Thorne, and the surgeon. Thorne was saying, “You’ve got to. This is vital—”

Thorne towed the protesting surgeon into the cubicle. “Admiral Naismith! Commodore Tung! Oser’s here!”

“What!”

“With his whole fleet—what’s left of it—they’re just out of range. He’s asking permission to dock his flagship.”

“That can’t be!” said Tung. “Who’s guarding the wormhole?”

“Yes, exactly!” cried Thorne. “Who?” They stared at each other in elated, wild surmise.

Miles sprang to his feet, fought off a wave of dizziness, clutched his gown behind him. “Get my clothes,” he enunciated.

Hawk-like, Miles decided, was the word for Admiral Oser. Greying hair, a beak of a nose, a bright, penetrating stare, fixed now on Miles. He had mastered the look that makes junior officers search their consciences, Miles thought. He stood up under it, and gave the real mercenary Admiral a slow smile, there in the docking bay. The sharp, cold, recycled air was bitter in his nostrils, like a stimulant. You could get high on it, surely.

Oser was flanked by three of his Captain-employees and two of his Captain-owners, and their seconds. Miles trailed the whole Dendarii staff, Elena on his right hand, Baz on his left.

Oser looked him up and down. “Damn,” he murmured. “Damn...” He did not offer his hand, but stood and spoke; deliberate, rehearsed cadences.
 
“Since the day you entered Tau Verde local space, I’ve felt your presence. In the Felicians, in the tactical situation turning under me, in the faces of my own men—” his glance passed over Tung, who smiled sweetly, “even in the Pelians. We have been grappling in the dark, we two, at a distance, long enough.”

Miles’s eyes widened. My God, is Oser about to challenge me to single combat? Sergeant Bothari, help! He jerked his chin up, and said nothing.

“I don’t believe in prolonging agonies,” said Oser. “Rather than watch you enspell the rest of my fleet man by man—while I still possess a fleet to offer—I understand the Dendarii Mercenaries are looking for recruits.”

It took Miles a moment to realize he had just heard one of the most stiff-necked surrender speeches in history. Gracious. We are going to be gracious as hell, oh, yes... He held out his hand; Oser took it.

“Admiral Oser, your understanding is acute. There’s a private chamber, where we can work out the details...”
 
General Halify and some Felician officers were watching at a distance from a balcony overlooking the docking bay. Miles’s glance crossed Halify’s. And so my word to you, at least, is redeemed.

Miles marched across the broad expanse, the whole herd, all Dendarii now, strung out behind him. Let’s see, Miles thought, the Pied Piper of Hamlin led all the rats into the river—he looked back—and all the children he led to a mountain of gold. What would he have done if the rats and the children had been inextricably mixed?

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

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Miles reclined on a liquid-filled settee in the refinery’s darkside observation chamber, hands behind his head, and stared into the depths of a space no longer empty. The Dendarii fleet glittered and winked, riding at station in the vacuum, a constellation of ships and men.

In his bedroom at the summer place at Vorkosigan Surleau, he had owned a mobile of space warships, classic Barrayaran military craft held in their carefully balanced arrangement by nearly invisible threads of great tensile strength. Invisible threads. He pursed his lips, and blew a puff of breath toward the crystalline windows as if he might set the Dendarii ships circling and dancing.

Nineteen ships of war and over 3000 troops and techs. “Mine,” he said experimentally. “All mine.” The phrase did not produce a suitable feeling of triumph. He felt more like a target.

In the first place, it was not true. The actual ownership of those millions of Betan dollars worth of capital equipment out there was a matter of amazing complexity. It had taken four solid days of negotiations to work out the “details” he had so casually waved his hand over in the docking bay. There were eight independent captain-owners, in addition to Oser’s personal possession of eight ships. Almost all had creditors. At least ten percent of “his” fleet turned out to be owned by the First Bank of Jackson’s Whole, famous for its numbered accounts and discreet services; for all Miles knew, he was now contributing to the support of gambling rackets, industrial espionage, and the white slave trade from one end of the wormhole nexus to the other. It seemed he was not so much the possessor of the Dendarii mercenaries as he was their chief employee.

The ownership of the Ariel and the Triumph was made particularly complex by Miles’s capture of them in battle. Tung had owned his ship outright, but Auson had been deeply in debt to yet another Jackson’s Whole lending institution for the Ariel. Oser, when still working for the Pelians, had stopped payments after its capture, and left the, what was it called?—Luigi Bharaputra and Sons Household Finance and Holding Company of Jackson’s Whole Private Limited—to collect on its insurance, if any. Captain Auson had turned pale upon learning that an inquiry agent from said company would be arriving soon to investigate.

The inventory alone was enough to boggle Miles’s mind, and when it came to the assorted personnel contracts—his stomach would hurt if it still could. Before Oser had arrived, the Dendarii had been due for a tidy profit from the Felician contract. Now the profit for 200 must be spread to support 3000.

Or more than 3000. The Dendarii kept ballooning. Another free ship had arrived through the wormhole just yesterday, having heard of them through God-knewwhat rumor mill, and excited would-be recruits from Felice managed to turn up with each new ship from the planet. The metals refinery was operating as a refinery again, as control of local space fell into the hands of the Felicians; their forces were even now gobbling up Pelian installations all over the system.

There was talk of re-hiring to Felice, to blockade the wormhole in turn for the former underdogs. The phrase, “Quit while you’re winning,” popped unbidden into Miles’s mind whenever this subject came up; the proposal secretly appalled him. He itched to be gone from here before the whole house of cards collapsed. He should be keeping reality and fantasy separate in his own mind.

at least, even while mixing them as much as possible in others.

Voices whispered from the catwalk, reflected to his ear by some accident of acoustics. Elena’s alto captured his attention.

“You don’t have to ask him. We’re not on Barrayar, we’re never going back to Barrayar—”

“But it will be like having a little piece of Barrayar to take with us,” Baz’s voice, gentle and amused as Miles had never heard it, followed. “A breath of home in airless places. God knows I can’t give you much of that ‘right and proper’ your father wanted for you, but all the pittance I can command shall be yours.”

“Mm.” Her response was unenthusiastic, almost hostile. All references to Bothari seemed to fall on her like hammer blows to dead flesh these days, a muffled thud that sickened Miles but brought no response from Elena herself.

They emerged from the catwalk, Baz close behind her. He smiled at his leige-lord in shy triumph. Elena smiled too, but not with her eyes.

“Deep meditation?” she inquired lightly. “It looks more like staring out the window and biting your nails to me.”

He struggled upright, causing the settee to slither under him, and responded in kind. “Oh, I just told the guard that to keep the tourists out. I actually came up here for a nap.”

Baz grinned at Miles. “My lord. I understand, in the absence of other relations, that Elena’s legal guardianship has fallen to you.”

“Why—so it has. I haven’t had much time to think about it, to tell you the truth.” Miles stirred uneasily at this turn in the conversation, not quite sure just what was coming.

“Right. Then as her leige-lord and guardian, I formally request her hand in marriage. Not to mention the rest of her.” His silly smile made Miles long to kick him in the teeth. “Oh, and as my leige-commander, I request your permission to marry, uh, ‘that my sons may serve you, lord.’ “ Baz’s abbreviated version of the formula was only slightly scrambled.

You’re not going to have any sons, because I’m going to chop your balls off, you lamb-stealing, double-crossing, traitorous—he got control of himself before his emotion showed as more than a drawn, lipless grin. “I see. There— there are some difficulties.” He marshalled logical argument like a shield-wall, protecting his craven, naked rage from the sting of those two honest pairs of brown eyes.

“Elena is quite young, of course—” he abandoned that line at the ire that lit her eye, as her lips formed the soundless word, You—!

“More to the point, I gave my own word to Sergeant Bothari to perform three services for him in the event of his death. To bury him on Barrayar, to see Elena betrothed with all correct ceremony, and, ah—to see her married to a suitable officer of the Barrayaran Imperial Service. Would you see me forsworn?”

Baz looked as stunned as if Miles had kicked him. His mouth opened, closed, opened again. “But—aren’t I your liege-sworn Armsman? That’s certainly the equal of an Imperial officer—hell, the Sergeant was an Armsman himself! Has—has my service been unsatisfactory? Tell me how I have failed you, my lord, that I may correct it!” His astonishment turned to genuine distress.

“You haven’t failed me,” Miles’s conscience jerked the words from his mouth. “Uh . . . But of course, you’ve only served me for four months, now. Really a very short time, although I know it seems much longer, so much has happened...” Miles floundered, feeling more than crippled; legless. Elena’s furious glower had chopped him off at the knees. How much shorter could he afford to get in her eyes? He trailed off weakly. “This is all very sudden...”

Elena’s voice dropped to a gravelled register of rage. “How dare you—” her voice burst in her indrawn breath like a wave, formed again, “What do you owe—what can anybody owe that?” she asked, referring. Miles realized, to the Sergeant. “I was not his chattel and I am not yours, either. Dog in the manger— “

Baz’s hand closed anxiously on her arm, stemming the breakers crashing across Miles. “Elena—maybe this isn’t the best time to bring it up. Maybe later would be better.” He glanced at Miles’s stony face, and winced, confusion in his eyes.

“Baz, you’re not going to take this seriously—”

“Come away. We 11 talk about it.”

She forced her voice back to its normal timbre. “I’ll meet you at the bottom of the catwalk. In a minute.”

Miles nodded a dismissal to Baz for emphasis.

“Well...” the engineer left, walking slowly, and looking back over his shoulder in worry.

They waited, by unspoken agreement, until the soft sound of his steps had gone. When she turned, the anger in her eyes had been displaced by pleading.

“Don’t you see, Miles? This is my chance to walk away from it all. Start new, fresh and clean, somewhere else. As far away as possible.”

He shook his head. He’d have fallen to his knees if he’d thought it would do any good. “How can I give you up? You’re the mountains and the lake, the memories— you have them all. When you’re with me, I’m at home, wherever I am.”

“If Barrayar was my right arm, I’d take a plasma arc and burn it off. Your father and mother knew what he was all the time, and yet they sheltered him. What are they, then?”

“The Sergeant was doing all right—doing well, even, until... You were to be his expiation, don’t you see it-”

“What, a sacrifice for his sins? Am I to form myself into the pattern of a perfect Barrayaran maiden like trying to work a magic spell for absolution? I could spend my whole life working out that ritual and not come to the end of it, damn it!”

“Not the sacrifice,” he tried to tell her. “The altar, perhaps.”

‘ “Ban!” She began to pace, leopardess on a short chain. Her emotional wounds seemed to work themselves open and bleed before his eyes. He ached to staunch them.

“Don’t you see,” he launched himself again, passionate with conviction, “you’d do better with me. Acting or reacting, we carry him in us. You can’t walk away from him any more than I can. Whether you travel toward or away, he’ll be the compass. He’ll be the glass, full of subtle colors and astigmatisms, through which all new things will be viewed. I too have a father who haunts me, and I know.”

She was shaken, and shaking. “You make me,” she stated, “feel quite ill.”

As she stalked away, Ivan Vorpatril emerged from the catwalk. “Ah, there you are, Miles.”

Ivan circled warily around Elena as they passed, his hands moving in an unconscious protective gesture toward his crotch. One corner of Elena’s mouth turned venomously upward, and she tilted her head in a polite nod. He acknowledged the greeting with a fixed and nervous smile. So much, thought Miles sadly, for his chivalrous plans to protect Elena from Ivan’s unwanted attentions.

Ivan settled himself beside Miles with a sigh. “Have you heard anything from Captain Dimir yet?”

“Not a thing. Are you sure they were coming to Tau Verde, and not suddenly ordered somewhere else? I don’t see how a fast courier could be two weeks late.”

“Oh, God,” said Ivan, “do you think that’s possible? I’m going to be in so much trouble—”

“I don’t know.” Miles tried to assuage his alarm. “Your original orders were to find me, and so far you’re the only one who seems to have succeeded in carrying them out. Mention that, when you ask Father to get you off the hook.”

“Ha,” muttered his cousin. “What’s the use of living with a system of inherited power if you can’t have a little nepotism now and then? Miles, your father doesn’t do favors for anybody.” He gazed out at the Dendarii fleet, and added elliptically, “That’s impressive, y’know?”

Miles was insensibly cheered. “Do you really think so?” He added facetiously, “Do you want to join? It seems to be the hot new fashion around here.”

Ivan chuckled. “No, thanks. I have no desire to diet for the Emperor. Vorloupulous’s law, y’know.”

Miles’s smile died on his lips. Ivan’s chuckle drained away like something going down the sink. They stared at each other in stunned silence.

“Oh, shit...” said Miles at last. “I forgot about Vorloupulous’s law. It never even crossed my mind.”

“Surely nobody could interpret this as raising a private army,” Ivan reassured him feebly. “Not proper livery and maintenance. I mean, they’re not liege-sworn to you or anything—are they?”

“Only Baz and Arde,” said Miles. “I don’t know how Barrayaran law would interpret a mercenary contract. They’re not for life, after all—unless you happen to be killed...”

“Who is that Baz fellow, anyway?” asked Ivan. “He seems to be your right-hand man.”

“I couldn’t have done this without him. He was an Imperial Service engineer, before he—” Miles choked himself off, “quit.” Miles tried to guess what the laws might be about harboring deserters. He hadn’t, after all, originally intended to be caught doing so. Upon reflection, his nebulous plan for returning home with Baz and begging his father to arrange some sort of pardon began to feel more and more like a man falling from an aircraft making plans to land on that soft fluffy cloud rushing up below him. What looked solid at a distance might well turn to fog at closer range.

Miles glanced at Ivan. Then he gazed at Ivan. Then he stared at Ivan. Ivan blinked back in innocent inquiry. There was something about that cheerful, frank face that made Miles hideously uneasy.

“You know,” Miles said at last, “the more I think about your being here, the weirder it seems.”

“Don’t you believe it,” said Ivan. “I had to work for my passage. That old bird was the most insatiable—”

“I don’t mean your getting here—I mean your being sent in the first place. Since when do they pull first-year cadets out of class and send them on Security missions?”

“I don’t know. I assumed they wanted somebody who could identify the body or something.”

“Yes, but they’ve got almost enough medical data on me to build a new one. That idea only makes sense if you don’t think about it too hard.”