Brothers in Arms

hatch was jammed open; black clouds shot with yellow dendrites of lightning boiled beyond. The shuttle lurched, and muddy, wounded men and women in scorched Dendarii combat gear slid and screamed and swore. Miles skidded to the open hatch, still clutching the jar, and stepped out.

Part of the time he floated, part of the time he fell. A crying woman plummeted past him, arms reaching for help, but he couldn't let go of the jar. Her body burst on impact with the ground.

Miles landed feet first on rubbery legs, and almost dropped the jar. The mud was thick and black and sucked at his knees.

Lieutenant Murka's body, and Lieutenant Murka's head, lay just where he'd left them on the battleground. His hands cold and shaking, Miles pulled the brain from the jar and tried to shove the brainstem down the plasma-bolt-cauterized neck. It stubbornly refused to hook in.

'He doesn't have a face anyway,' criticized Lieutenant Murka's head from where it lay a few meters off. 'He's going to look ugly as sin, walking around on my body with that thing sticking up.'

'Shut up, you don't get a vote, you're dead,' snarled Miles. The slippery brain slithered through his fingers into the mud. He picked it back out and tried clumsily to rub the black goop off on the sleeve of his Dendarii Admiral's uniform, but the harsh cloth scrubbed up the convoluted surface of Mark's brain, damaging it. Miles patted the tissue surreptitiously back into place, hoping no one would notice, and kept trying to shove the brain stem back in the neck.

Miles's eyes flipped open and stared wide. His breath caught. He was shaking and damp with sweat. The light fixture burned steadily in the unwavering ceiling of the cell, the bench was hard and cold on his back. 'God. Thank God,' he breathed.

Galeni loomed over him worriedly, one arm supporting himself against the wall. 'You all right?'

Miles swallowed, breathed deeply. 'You know it's a bad dream when waking up here is an improvement'

One of his hands caressed the cool, reassuring solidity of the bench. The other found no stitches across his forehead, though his head did feel like somebody had been doing amateur surgery on it. He blinked, squeezed his eyes shut, opened them again, and with an effort made it up on his right elbow. His left hand was swollen and throbbing. 'What happened?'

'It was a draw. One of the guards and I stunned each other. Unfortunately, that left one guard still on his feet. I woke up maybe an hour ago. It was max stun. I don't know how much time we've lost.'

'Too much. It was a good try, though. Dammit.' He stopped just short of pounding his bad hand on the bench in frustration. 'I was so close. I almost had him.'

'The guard? It looked like he had you.'

'No, my clone. My brother. Whatever he is.' Flashes of his dream came back to him, and he shuddered. 'Skittish fellow. I think he's afraid he's going to end up in a jar.'

''Eh?'

'Eugh.' Miles attempted to sit up. The stun had left him feeling nauseous. Muscles spasmed jerkily in his arms and legs. Galeni, clearly in no better shape, tottered back to his own bench and sat.

Some time later the door opened. Dinner, thought Miles.

The guard jerked his stunner at them. 'Both of you. Out.' The second guard backed him up from behind, several meters beyond hope of reach, with another stunner. Miles did not like the looks on their faces, one solemn and pale, the other smiling nervously.

'Captain Galeni,' Miles suggested in a voice rather higher in pitch than he'd meant it to come out as they exited, 'I think it might be a good time for you to talk to your father, now.'

A variety of expressions chased across Galeni's face: anger, mulish stubbornness, thoughtful appraisal, doubt.

'That way.' The guard gestured them toward the lift tube. They dropped down, toward the garage level.

'You can do this, I can't,' Miles coaxed Galeni in a sotto voce singsong out of the corner of his mouth.

Galeni hissed through his teeth: frustration, acquiescence, resolve. As they entered the garage, he turned abruptly to the closer guard and jerked out unwillingly, ''I wish to speak to my father.'

'You can't.'

'I think you had better let me.' Galeni's voice was dangerous, edged, at last, with fear.

'It's not up to me. He gave us our orders and left. He's not here.'

'Call him.'

'He didn't tell me where he would be.' The guard's voice was tight and irritated. 'And if he had, I wouldn't anyway. Stand over there by that lightflyer.'

'How are you going to do it?' asked Miles suddenly. 'I really am curious to know. Think of it as my last request.' He sidled over toward the lightflyer, his eyes shifting in search of cover, any cover. If he could vault over or dodge around the vehicle before they fired . . .

'Stun you, fly you out over the south coast, drop you in the water,' the guard recited. 'If the weights work loose and you wash ashore, the autopsy would show only that you'd drowned.'

'Not exactly a hands-on murder,' Miles observed. 'Easier for you that way, I expect.' These men were not professional killers, if Miles read them right. Still, there was a first time for everything. That pillar over there was not wide enough to stop a stun bolt.

The array of tools on the far wall presented possibilities … his legs were cramping furiously. . . .

'And so the Butcher of Komarr gets his at last,' the solemn guard observed in a detached voice. 'Indirectly.' He raised his stunner. 'Wait!' squeaked Miles.

'What for?'

Miles was still groping for a reply when the garage doors slid open.

'Me!' yelled Elli Quinn. 'Freeze!'

A Dendarii patrol streamed past her. In the instant it took the Komarran guard to shift his aim, a Dendarii marksman dropped him. The second guard panicked and bolted for the lift tube. A sprinting Dendarii tackled him from behind, and had him laid out face down on the floor with his hands locked behind him within seconds.

Elli strolled up to Miles and Galeni, pulling a sonic eavesdropper-sensor from her ear. 'Gods, Miles, I couldn't believe it was your voice. How did you do that?' As she took in his appearance, an expression of extreme disquiet stole over her face.

Miles captured her hands and kissed them. A salute might have been more proper, but his adrenalin was still pumping and this was more heartfelt. Besides, he wasn't in uniform. 'Elli, you genius! I should have known the clone couldn't fool you!'

She stared at him, almost recoiling, her voice circling upward in pitch. 'What clone?'

'What do you mean, what clone? That's why you're here, isn't it? He blew it—and you came to rescue me —didn't you?'

'Rescue you from what? Miles, you ordered me a week ago to find Captain Galeni, remember?'

'Oh,' said Miles. 'Yes. So I did.'

'So we did. We've been sitting outside this block of housing units all night, waiting to pick up a positive voiceprint analysis on him, so we could notify the local authorities. They don't appreciate false alarms. But what finally came over the sensors suggested we'd better not wait for the local authorities, so we took a chance—visions of us being arrested en masse for breaking and entering dancing in my head—'

A Dendarii sergeant drifted up and saluted. 'Damn, sir, how'd you do that?' He trotted on waving a scanner without waiting for reply.

'Only to find you'd beaten us to it.'

'Well, in a sense, yes …' Miles massaged his throbbing forehead. Galeni stood scratching his beard and taking it all in without comment. Galeni could say nothing at noticeable volume.

'Remember, three or four nights ago when you took me to be kidnapped so's I could penetrate the opposition and find out who they were and what they wanted?'

'Yeah …'

'Well,' Miles took a deep breath, 'it worked. Congratulations. You have just converted an absolute disaster into a major intelligence coup. Thank you, Commander Quinn. By the way, the guy you walked out of that empty