Borders of Infinity

holovid-projected by his command headset into the air at a corner of his vision.

Miles did a calculation in his head, and lowered his voice. 'Are we going to be able to lift the last load?'

'Depends on how fast we can lift the first three,' said Tung. His ordinarily stoic face was more unreadable than ever, betraying neither hope nor fear.

Which depends in turn on how effectively I managed to drill them all . . . What was done was done; what was coming was not yet. Miles wrenched his attention to the immediate now.

'Have you found Elli and Elena yet?'

'I have three patrols out searching.'

He hadn't found them yet. Miles's guts tightened. 'I wouldn't have even attempted to expand this operation in midstream if I hadn't known they were monitoring me, and could translate all those oblique hints back into orders.'

'Did they get 'em all right?' asked Tung. 'We argued over some of their interpretations of your double-talk on the vids.'

Miles glanced around. 'They got 'em right . . . you got vids of all this?' A startled wave of Miles's hand took in the circle of the camp.

'Of you, anyway. Right off the Cetagandan monitors. They burst-transmitted them all daily. Very—er— entertaining, sir,' Tung added blandly.

Some people would find entertainment in watching someone swallow slugs, Miles reflected. 'Very dangerous . . . when was your last communication with them?'

'Yesterday.' Tung's hand clamped on Miles's arm, restraining an involuntary leap. 'You can't do better than my three patrols, sir, and I haven't any to spare to go looking for you.'

'Yah, yah.' Miles slapped his right fist into his left palm in frustration before remembering that was a bad idea. His two co-agents, his vital link between the dome and the Dendarii, missing. The Cetagandans shot spies with depressing consistency. After, usually, a series of interrogations that rendered death a welcome release. . . . He tried to reassure himself with logic. If they'd blown their covers as Cetagandan monitor techs, and been interrogated, Tung would have run into a meat grinder here. He hadn't, ergo, they hadn't. Of course, they might have been killed by friendly fire, just now. . . . Friends. He had too many friends to stay sane in this crazy business.

'You,' Miles retrieved his clothes from the still-waiting soldier, 'go over there,' he pointed, 'and find a redhaired lady named Beatrice and an injured man named Suegar. Bring them to me. Carry him carefully, he has internal injuries.'

The soldier saluted and marched off. Ah, the pleasure again of being able to give a command without having to follow it up with a supporting theological argument. Miles sighed. Exhaustion waited to swallow him, lurking at the edge of his adrenalin-spurred bubble of hyperconsciousness. All the factors—shuttles, timing, the approaching enemy, distance to the get-away jump point, formed and reformed in all their possible permutations in his mind. Small variations in timing in particular multiplied into major troubles. But he'd known it would be like this back when he'd started. A miracle they'd got this far. No—he glanced at Tung, at Thorne—not a miracle, but the extraordinary initiative and devotion of his people. Well done, oh, well done. . . .

Thorne helped him as he fumbled to dress himself one-handed. 'Where the hell is my command headset?' Miles asked.

'We were told you were injured, sir, and in a state of exhaustion. You were scheduled for immediate evacuation.'

'Damn presumptuous of somebody . . .' Miles bit back ire. No place in this schedule for running errands topside. Besides, if he had his headset, he'd be tempted to start giving orders, and he wasn't yet sufficiently briefed on the internal complexities of the operation from the Dendarii fleet's point of view. Miles swallowed his observer status without further comment. It did free him for rear guard.

Miles's batman reappeared, with Beatrice and four drafted prisoners, carrying Suegar on his mat to lay at Miles's feet.

'Get my surgeon,' Miles said. His soldier obediently trotted off and found her. She knelt beside the semi- conscious Suegar and pulled the encode from his back. A knot of tension unwound in Miles's neck at the reassuring hiss of a hypospray of synergine.

'How bad?' Miles demanded.

'Not good,' the surgeon admitted, checking her diagnostic viewer. 'Burst spleen, oozing hemorrhage in the stomach—this one had better go direct to surgery on the command ship. Medtech—' she motioned to a Dendarii waiting with the guards for the return of the shuttle, and gave triage instructions. The medtech swathed Sue-gar in a thin foil heat wrap.

'I'll make sure he gets there,' promised Miles. He shivered, envying the heat wrap a little as the drizzly acid fog beaded in his hair and coiled into his bones.

Tung's expression and attention were abruptly absorbed by a message from his comm set. Miles, who had yielded Lieutenant Murka's headset back to him so that he might continue his duties, shifted from foot to foot in agony for news. Elena, Elli, if I've killed you . . .

Tung spoke into his pick-up. 'Good. Well done. Report to the A7 drop site.' A jerk of his chin switched channels. 'Sim, Nout, fall back with your patrols to your shuttle drop site perimeters. They've been found.'

Miles found himself bent over with his hand supported on gelid knees, waiting for his head to clear, his heart lurching in huge slow gulps. 'Elli and Elena? Are they all right?'

'They didn't call for a medtech . . . you sure you don't need one yourself? You're green.'

'I'm all right.' Miles's heart steadied, and he straightened up, to meet Beatrice's questing eyes. 'Beatrice, would you please go get Tris and Oliver for me? I need to talk to them before the next shuttle relay goes up.'

She shook her head helplessly and wheeled away. She did not salute. On the other hand, she didn't argue, either. Miles was insensibly cheered.

The booming racket around the dome circle had died down to the occasional whine of small-arms fire, human cry, or blurred amplified voice. Fires burned in the distance, red-orange glows in the muffling fog. Not a surgically clean operation . . . the Cetagandans were going to be extremely pissed when they'd counted their casualties, Miles judged. Time to be gone, and long gone. He tried to keep the poisoned encodes in mind, as anodyne to the vision of Cetagandan clerks and techs crushed in the rubble of their burning buildings, but the two nightmares seemed to amplify instead of cancelling each other out.

Here came Tris and Oliver, both looking a little wild-eyed. Beatrice took up station at Tris's right shoulder.

'Congratulations,' Miles began, before they could speak. He had a lot of ground to cover and not much time left. 'You have achieved an army.' A wave of his arm swept the orderly array of prisoners—ex-prisoners—spread across the camp in their shuttle groups. They waited quietly, most seated on the ground. Or was it the Cetagandans who had ingrained such patience in them? Whatever.

'Temporarily,' said Tris. 'This is the lull, I believe. If things hot up, if you lose one or more shuttles, if somebody panics and it spreads—'

'You can tell anybody who's inclined to panic they can ride up with me if it'll make them feel better. Ah— better also mention that I'm going up in the last load,' said Miles.

Tung, dividing his attention between this confab and his headset, grimaced in exasperation at this news.

'That'll settle 'em,' grinned Oliver.

'Give them something to think about, anyway,' conceded Tris.

'Now I'm going to give you something to think about. The new Marilac resistance. You're it,' said Miles. 'My employer originally engaged me to rescue Colonel Tremont, that he might raise a new army and carry on the fight. When I found him … as he was, dying, I had to decide whether to follow the letter of my contract, and deliver a catatonic or a corpse, or the spirit—and deliver an army. I chose this, and I chose you two. You must carry on Colonel Tremont's work.'

'I was only a field lieutenant,' began Tris in horror, in chorus with Oliver's, 'I'm a grunt, not a staff officer. Colonel Tremont was a genius—'