Borders of Infinity

'You are his heirs now. I say so. Look around you. Do I make mistakes in choosing my subordinates?'

After a moment's silence Tris muttered, 'Apparently not.'

'Build yourselves a staff. Find your tactics geniuses, your technical wizards, and put 'em to work for you. But the drive, and the decisions, and the direction, must be yours, forged in this pit. It is you two who will remember this place, and so remember what it is you are doing, and why, always.'

Oliver spoke quietly. 'And when do we muster out of this army, Brother Miles? My time was up during the siege of Fallow Core. If I'd been anywhere else, I could have gone home.'

'Until the Cetagandan army of occupation rolled down your street.'

'Even then. The odds aren't good.'

'The odds were worse for Barrayar, in its day, and they ran the Cetagandans right off. It took twenty years, and more blood than either of you have seen in your lives combined, but they did it,' asserted Miles.

Oliver seemed more struck by this historical precedent than Tris, who said skeptically, 'Barrayar had those crazy Vor warriors. Nuts who rushed into battle, who liked to die. Marilac just doesn't have that sort of cultural tradition. We're civilized—or we were, once. . . .'

'Let me tell you about the Barrayaran Vor,' cut in Miles. 'The loonies who sought a glorious death in battle found it very early on. This rapidly cleared the chain of command of the accumulated fools. The survivors were those who learned to fight dirty, and live, and fight another day, and win, and win, and win, and for whom nothing, not comfort or security, not family or friends or their immortal souls, was more important than winning. Dead men are losers by definition. Survival and victory. They weren't supermen, or immune to pain. They sweated in confusion and darkness. And with not one-half the physical resources Marilac possessed even now, they won. When you're Vor,' Miles ran down a little, 'there is no mustering out.'

After a silence Tris said, 'Even a volunteer patriotic army must eat. And we won't beat the Cetagandans by firing spitballs at them.'

'There will be financial and military aid forthcoming through a covert channel other than myself. If there is a Resistance command to deliver it to.'

Tris measured Oliver by eye. The fire in her burned closer to the surface than Miles had ever seen it, coursing down those corded muscles. The whine of the first returning shuttles pierced the fog. She spoke quite softly. 'And here I thought I was the atheist, Sergeant, and you were the believer. Are you coming with me—or mustering out?'

Oliver's shoulders bowed. With the weight of history, Miles realized, not defeat, for the heat in his eyes matched Tris's. 'Coming,' he grunted.

Miles caught Tung's eyes. 'How we doing?'

Tung shook his head, held up fingers. 'About six minutes slow, unloading upstairs.'

'Right.' Miles turned back to Tris and Oliver. 'I want you both to go up on this wave, in separate shuttles, one to each troopship. When you get there, start expediting the off-loading of your people. Lieutenant Murka will give you your shuttle assignment—' he motioned Murka over, and packed them off.

Beatrice lingered. 'I'm inclined to panic,' she informed Miles in a distant tone. Her bare toe smudged whorls in the dampening dirt.

'I don't need a bodyguard anymore,' Miles said. He grinned. 'A keeper, maybe …'

A smile lighted her eyes that did not yet reach her mouth. Later, Miles promised himself. Later, he would make that mouth laugh.

The second wave of shuttles began to lift, even as the remnants of the returning first wave were still landing. Miles prayed everyone's sensors were operating properly, passing each other in this fog. Their timing could only get more ragged from now on. The fog itself was coagulating into a cold rain, silver needles pelting down.

The focus of the operation was narrowing rapidly now, more of machines and numbers and timing, less of loyalties and souls and fearsome obligations. An emotionally pathological mind, devoid of love and fear, might even call it fun, Miles thought. He began jotting scores left-handed in the dirt, numbers up, down, in transit, remaining, but the dirt was turning to gluey black mud and did not retain the impressions.

'Shit,' Tung hissed suddenly through clenched teeth. The air before his face blurred in a flurry of vid- projected incoming information, his eyes flicking through it with practiced rapidity. His right hand bunched and twitched, as if tempted to wrench off his headset and stamp it into the mud in frustration and disgust. 'That tears it. We just lost two shuttles out of the second wave.'

Which two? Miles's mind screamed. Oliver, Tris … He forced his first question to be, 'How?' I swear, if they crashed into each other, I'm going to go find a wall and beat my head on it till I go numb. . . .

'Cetagandan fighter broke through our cordon. He was going for the troop freighters, but we nailed him in time. Almost in time.'

'You got identifications on which two shuttles? And were they loaded or returning?'

Tung's lips moved in subvocalization. 'A-4, fully loaded. B-7, returning empty. Loss total, no survivors. Fighter shuttle 5 from the Triumph is disabled by enemy fire; pilot recovery now in progress.'

He hadn't lost his commanders. His hand-picked and carefully nurtured successors to Colonel Tremont were safe. He opened his eyes, squeezed shut in pain, to find Beatrice, to whom the shuttle IDs meant nothing, waiting anxiously for interpretation.

'Two hundred dead?' she whispered.

'Two hundred six,' Miles corrected. The faces, names, voices of the six familiar Dendarii fluttered through his memory. The 200 ciphers must have had faces too. He blocked them out, as too crushing an overload.

'These things happen,' Beatrice muttered numbly.

'You all right?'

'Of course I'm all right. These things happen. Inevitable. I am not a weepy wimp who folds under fire.' She blinked rapidly, lifting her chin. 'Give me . . . something to do. Anything.'

Quickly, Miles added for her. Right. He pointed across the camp. 'Got to Pel and Liant. Divide their remaining shuttle groups into blocks of thirty-three, and add them to each of the remaining third-wave shuttle groups. We'll have to send the third wave up overloaded. Then report back to me. Go quick, the rest will be back in minutes.'

'Yessir,' she saluted. For her sake, not his; for order, structure, rationality, a lifeline. He returned the salute gravely.

'They were already overloaded,' objected Tung as soon as she was out of earshot. 'They're going to fly like bricks with 233 squeezed on board. And they'll take longer to load on here and unload topside.'

'Yes. God.' Miles gave up scratching figures in the useless mud. 'Run the numbers through the computer for me, Ky. I don't trust myself to add two and two just now. How far behind will we be by the time the main body of the Cetagandans comes in range? Come close as you can, no fudge factors, please.'

Tung mumbled into his headset, reeled off numbers, margins, timing. Miles tracked every detail with predatory intensity. Tung concluded bluntly. 'At the end of the last wave, five shuttles are still going to be waiting to unload when the Cetagandan fire fries us.'

A thousand men and women . . .

'May I respectfully suggest, sir, that the time has come to start cutting our losses?' added Tung.

'You may, Commodore.'

'Option One, maximally efficient; only drop seven shuttles in the last wave. Leave the last five shuttle loads of prisoners on the ground. They'll be re-taken, but at least they'll be alive.' Tung's voice grew persuasive on this last line.

'Only one problem, Ky. I don't want to stay here.'

'You can still be on the last shuttle up, just like you said. By the way, sir, have I expressed myself yet, sir, on what a genuinely dumb-shit piece of grandstanding that is?'