(novel) Lois McMaster Bujold (ebook) - Vorkosigan 05 - Brothers In Arms

325 Pages·2016·0.97 MB·English

by  Bujold Lois McMaster

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Chapter One
His combat drop shuttle crouched still and silent in the repairs
docking bay—malevolent, to Miles’s jaundiced eye. Its metal and
fibreplas surface was scarred, pitted and burned. It had seemed such a
proud, gleaming, efficient vessel when it was new. Perhaps it had
undergone psychotic personality change from its traumas. It had been
new such a short few months ago. . . .
Miles rubbed his face wearily, and blew out his breath. If there
was any incipient psychosis floating around here, it wasn’t contained
in the machinery. In the eye of the beholder indeed. He took his
booted foot off the bench he’d been draped over and straightened up,
at least to the degree his crooked spine permitted. Commander Quinn,
alert to his every move, fell in behind him.
"There," Miles limped down the length of the fuselage and
pointed to the shuttle’s portside lock, "is the design defect I’m chiefly
concerned about."
He motioned the sales engineer from Kaymer Orbital Shipyards
closer. "The ramp from this lock extends and retracts automatically,
with a manual override—fine so far. But its recessed slot is inside the
hatch, which means that if for any reason the ramp gets hung up, the
door can’t be sealed. The consequences of which I trust you can
imagine." Miles didn’t have to imagine them; they had burned in his
memory for the last three months. Instant replay without an off switch.
"Did you find this out the hard way at Dagoola IV, Admiral
Naismith?" the engineer inquired in a tone of genuine interest.
"Yeah. We lost . . . personnel. I was damn near one of them."
"I see," said the engineer respectfully. But his brows quirked.
How dare you be amused. . . . Fortunately for his health, the
engineer did not smile. A thin man of slightly above average height,
he reached up the side of the shuttle to run his hands along the slot in
question, pull himself up chin-up fashion, peer about and mutter notes
into his recorder. Miles resisted an urge to jump up and down like a
frog and try to see what he was looking at. Undignified. With his own
eye-level even with the engineer’s chest, Miles would need about a
one-meter stepladder even to reach the ramp slot on tiptoe. And he
was too damn tired for calisthenics just now, nor was he about to ask
Elli Quinn to give him a boost. He jerked his chin up in the old
involuntary nervous tic, and waited in a posture of parade rest
appropriate to his uniform, his hands clasped behind his back.
The engineer dropped back to the docking bay deck with a
thump. "Yes, Admiral, I think Kaymer can take care of this for you all
right. How many of these drop shuttles did you say you had?"
"Twelve," Fourteen minus two equalled twelve. Except in
Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet mathematics, where fourteen minus
two shuttles equalled two hundred and seven dead. Stop that, Miles
told the calculating jeerer in the back of his head firmly. It does no one
any good now.
"Twelve." The engineer made a note. "What else?" He eyed the
battered shuttle.
"My own engineering department will be handling the minor
repairs, now that it looks like well actually be holding still in one place
for a while. I wanted to see to this ramp problem personally, but my
second in command, Commodore Jesek, is chief engineer for my fleet,
and he wants to talk to your Jump tech people about re-calibrating
some of our Necklin rods. I have a Jump pilot with a head wound, but
Jumpset implant micro-neurosurgery is not one of Kaymer’s
specialties, I understand. Nor weapons systems?"
"No, indeed," the engineer agreed hastily. He touched a burn on
the shuttle’s scarred surface, perhaps fascinated by the violence it
silently witnessed, for he added, "Kaymer Orbital mainly services
merchant vessels. A mercenary fleet is something a bit unusual in this
part of the wormhole nexus. Why did you come to us?"
"You were the lowest bidder."
"Oh—not Kaymer Corporation. Earth. I was wondering why you
came to Earth? We’re rather off the main trade routes, except for the
tourists and historians. Er . . . peaceful."
He wonders if we have a contract here, Miles realized. Here, on a
planet of nine billion souls, whose combined military forces would
make pocket change of the Dendarii’s five thousand—right. He thinks
I’m out to make trouble on old mother Earth? Or that I’d break
security and tell him even if I was. . . . "Peaceful, precisely," Miles
said smoothly. "The Dendarii are in need of rest and refitting. A
peaceful planet off the main nexus channels is just what the doctor
ordered." He cringed inwardly, thinking of the doctor’s bill pending.
It hadn’t been Dagoola. The rescue operation had been a tactical
triumph, a military miracle almost. His own staff had assured him of
this over and over, so perhaps he could begin to believe it true.
The break-out on Dagoola IV had been the third largest prisoner-
of-war escape in history, Commodore Tung said. Military history
being Tung’s obsessive hobby, he ought to know. The Dendarii had
snatched over ten thousand captured soldiers, an entire POW camp,
from under the nose of the Cetagandan Empire, and made them into
the nucleus of a new guerrilla army on a planet the Cetagandans had
formerly counted on as an easy conquest. The costs had been so small,
compared to the spectacular results—except for the individuals who’d
paid for the triumph with their lives, for whom the price was
something infinite, divided by zero.
It had been Dagoola’s aftermath that had cost the Dendarii too
much, the infuriated Cetagandans’ vengeful pursuit. They had
followed with ships till the Dendarii had slipped through political
jurisdictions that Cetagandan military vessels could not traverse;
hunted on with secret assassination and sabotage teams thereafter.
Miles trusted they had outrun the assassination teams at last.
"Did you take all this fire at Dagoola IV?" the engineer went on,
still intrigued by the shuttle.
"Dagoola was a covert operation," Miles said stiffly. "We don’t
discuss it."
"It made a big splash in the news a few months back," the
Earthman assured him.
My head hurts. . . . Miles pressed his palm to his forehead,
crossed his arms and rested his chin in his hand, twitching a smile at
the engineer. "Wonderful," he muttered. Commander Quinn winced.
"Is it true the Cetagandans have put a price on your life?" the
engineer asked cheerfully.
Miles sighed. "Yes."
"Oh," said the engineer. "Ah. I’d thought that was just a story."
He moved away just slightly, as if embarrassed, or as if the air of
morbid violence clinging to the mercenary were a contagion that could
somehow rub off on him, if he got too close. He just might be right.
He cleared his throat. "Now, about the payment schedule for the
design modifications—what had you in mind?"
"Cash on delivery," said Miles promptly, "acceptance to follow
my engineering staff’s inspection and approval of the completed work.
Those were the terms of your bid, I believe."
"Ah—yes. Hm." The Earthman tore his attention away from the
machinery itself; Miles felt he could see him switching from technical
to business mode. "Those are the terms we normally offer our
established corporate customers."
"The Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet is an established
corporation. Registered out of Jackson’s Whole."
"Mm, yes, but—how shall I put this—the most exotic risk our
normal customers usually run is bankruptcy, for which we have
assorted legal protections. Your mercenary fleet is, um . . ."
He’s wondering how to collect payment from a corpse, Miles
thought.
"—a lot riskier," the engineer finished candidly. He shrugged an
apology.
An honest man, at least . . .
"We shall not raise our recorded bid. But I’m afraid we’re going
to have to ask for payment up front."
As long as we’re down to trading insults . . . "But that gives us no
protection against shoddy workmanship," said Miles.
"You can sue," remarked the engineer, "just like anybody else."
"I can blow your—" Miles’s fingers drummed against his trouser
seam where no holster was tied. Earth, old Earth, old civilized Earth.
Commander Quinn, at his shoulder, touched his elbow in a fleeting
gesture of restraint. He shot her a brief reassuring smile—no, he was
not about to let himself get carried away by the—exotic—possibilities
of Admiral Miles Naismith, Commanding, Dendarii Free Mercenary
Fleet. He was merely tired, his smile said. A slight widening of her
brilliant brown eyes replied, Bullshit, sir. But that was another
argument, which they would not continue here, out loud, in public.
"You can look," said the engineer neutrally, "for a better offer if
you wish."
"We have looked," said Miles shortly. As you well know . . .
"Right. Um . . . what about . . . half up front and half on delivery?"
The Earthman frowned, shook his head. "Kaymer does not pad its
estimates, Admiral Naismith. And our cost overruns are among the
lowest in the business. That’s a point of pride."
The term cost overrun made Miles’s teeth hurt, in light of
Dagoola. How much did these people really know about Dagoola,
anyway?
"If you’re truly worried about our workmanship, the monies
could be placed in an escrow account in the control of a neutral third
party, such as a bank, until you accept delivery. Not a very satisfactory
compromise from Kaymer’s point of view, but—that’s as far as I can
go."
A neutral third Earther party, thought Miles. If he hadn’t checked
up on Kaymer’s workmanship, he wouldn’t be here. It was his own
cash flow Miles was thinking about. Which was definitely not
Kaymer’s business.
"You having cash flow problems, Admiral?" inquired the Earther
with interest. Miles fancied he could see the price rising in his eyes.
"Not at all," Miles lied blandly. Rumors afloat about the
Dendarii’s liquidity difficulties could sabotage a lot more than just this
repair deal. "Very well. Cash up front to be held in escrow." If he
wasn’t to have the use of his funds, neither should Kaymer. Beside
him, Elli Quinn drew air in through her teeth. The Earther engineer
and the mercenary leader shook hands solemnly.
Following the sales engineer back toward his own office, Miles
paused a moment by a viewport that framed a fine view of Earth from
orbit. The engineer smiled and waited politely, even proudly, watching
his gaze.
Earth. Old, romantic, historic Earth, the big blue marble itself.
Miles had always expected to travel here someday, although not,
surely, under these conditions.
Earth was still the largest, richest, most varied and populous
planet in scattered humanity’s entire wormhole nexus of explored
space. Its dearth of good exit points in solar local space and
governmental disunity left it militarily and strategically minor from
the greater galactic point of view. But Earth still reigned, if it did not
rule, culturally supreme. More war-scarred than Barrayar, as
technically advanced as Beta Colony, the end-point of all pilgrimages
both religious and secular—in light of which, major embassies from
every world that could afford one were collected here. Including,
Miles reflected, nibbling gently on the side of his index finger, the
Cetagandan. Admiral Naismith must use all means to avoid them.
"Sir?" Elli Quinn interrupted his meditations. He smiled briefly
up at her sculptured face, the most beautiful his money had been able
to buy after the plasma burn and yet, thanks to the genius of the
surgeons, still unmistakably Elli. Would that every combat casualty
taken in his service could be so redeemed. "Commodore Tung is on
the comconsole for you," she went on.
His smile sagged. What now? He abandoned the view and
marched off after her to take over the sales engineer’s office with a
polite, relentless, "Will you excuse us, please?"
His Eurasian third officer’s bland, broad face formed above the
vid plate. "Yes, Ky?"
Ky Tung, already out of uniform and into civilian gear, gave him
a brief nod in lieu of a salute. "I’ve just finished making arrangements
at the rehab center for our nine severely wounded. Prognoses are good,
for the most part. And they think they will be able to retrieve four of
the eight frozen dead, maybe five if they’re lucky. The surgeons here
even think they’ll be able to repair Demmi’s Jumpset, once the neural
tissue itself has healed. For a price, of course . . ." Tung named the
price in GSA Federal credits; Miles mentally converted it to
Barrayaran Imperial marks, and made a small squeaking noise.
Tung grinned dry appreciation. "Yeah. Unless you want to give
up on that repair. It’s equal to all the rest put together."
Miles shook his head, grimacing. "There are a number of people
in the universe I’d be willing to double-cross, but my own wounded
aren’t among ’em."
"Thank you," said Tung, "I agree. Now, I’m just about ready to
leave this place. Last thing I have to do is sign a chit taking personal
responsibility for the bill. Are you quite sure you’re going to be able to
collect the pay owed us for the Dagoola operation here?"
"I’m on my way to do that next," Miles promised. "Go ahead and
sign, I’ll make it right."
"Very good, sir," said Tung. "Am I released for my home leave
after that?"
Tung the Earth man, the only Earther Miles had ever met—which
probably accounted for the unconscious favorable feelings he had
about this place, Miles reflected. "How much time off do we owe you
by now, Ky, about a year and a half?" With pay, alas, a small voice
added in his mind, and was suppressed as unworthy. "You can take all
you want."
"Thank you." Tung’s face softened. "I just talked to my daughter.
I have a brand-new grandson!"
"Congratulations," said Miles. "Your first?"
"Yes."
"Go on, then. If anything comes up, we’ll take care of it. You’re
only indispensable in combat, eh? Uh . . . where will you be?"
"My sister’s home: Brazil. I have about four hundred cousins
there."
"Brazil, right. All right." Where the devil was Brazil? "Have a
good time."
"I shall." Tung’s departing semi-salute was distinctly breezy. His
face faded from the vid.
"Damn," Miles sighed, "I’m sorry to lose him even to a leave.
Well, he deserves it."
Elli leaned over the back of his comconsole chair. Her breath
barely stirred his dark hair, his dark thoughts. "May I suggest, Miles,
that he’s not the only senior officer who could use some time off?
Even you need to dump stress sometimes. And you were wounded
too."
"Wounded?" Tension clamped Miles’s jaw. "Oh, the bones.
Broken bones don’t count. I’ve had the damn brittle bones all my life.
I just have to learn to resist the temptation to play field officer. The
place for my ass is in a nice padded tactics-room chair, not on the line.
If I’d known in advance that Dagoola was going to get so—physical,