Brothers in Arms

Mark backed toward the wall, not lowering the nerve disrupter. 'I don't believe you.'

'Where are you going to run to? You can't go back to the Komarrans. There's a Barrayaran hit squad with murder on its collective mind breathing down your neck. You can't go to the local authorities for protection; you have a body to explain. I'm your only chance.'

Mark looked at the body, at the nerve disrupter, at Miles.

The soft whirr of a rappel spool unwinding was barely audible over the hiss of the sea foam underfoot. Miles glanced up. Quinn was flying down in one long swoop, like a falcon stooping, weapon in one hand and rappeling spool controlled by the other.

Mark kicked open the hatch and stumbled backwards into it. 'You hunt for Ivan. He's not far. I don't have a body to explain—you do. The murder weapon has your fingerprints on it!' He flung down the nerve disrupter and slammed the hatch closed.

Miles leapt for the door, fingers scrabbling, but it was already sealed—he came close to snapping some more finger bones. The slide and clank of a locking mechanism designed to defy the force of the sea itself came muffled through the hatch. Miles hissed through his teeth.

'Should I blow it open?' gasped Quinn, landing.

'Y—good God, no!' The discoloration on the wall marking high water was a good two meters higher than the top of the hatch. 'We might drown London. Try to get it open without damaging it. Captain Galeni!' Miles turned. Galeni had not moved. 'You in shock?'

'Hm? No … no, I don't think so.' Galeni came out of himself with an effort. He added in a strangely calm, reflective tone, 'Later, perhaps.'

Quinn was bent to the hatchway, pulling devices from her pockets and slapping them to the vertical surface, checking readouts. 'Electromechanical with a manual override … if I use a magnetic …'

Miles reached around and pulled the rappeling harness off Quinn. 'Go up,' he said to Galeni, 'and see if you can find another entrance on the other side. We've got to catch that little sucker!'

Galeni nodded and hooked up the rappeling harness.

Miles held out stunner and boot knife. 'Want a weapon?' Mark had taken off with all the spare stunners still stuck in his belt.

'Stunner's useless,' Galeni noted. 'You'd better keep the knife. If I catch up with him I'll use my bare hands.'

With pleasure, Miles added for him silently. He nodded. They had both been through Barrayaran basic unarmed combat school. Three fourths of the moves were barred to Miles in a real fight at full force due to the secret weakness of his bones; the same was not true of Galeni. Galeni ascended into the night air, bounding up the wall on the almost-invisible thread as readily as a spider.

'Got it!' cried Quinn. The thick hatch swung wide on a deep, dark hole.

Miles yanked his handlight out of his belt and hopped through. He glanced back at Galen's grey-faced body, lapped by foam, released from obsession and pain. There was no mistaking the stillness of death for the stillness of sleep or anything else; it was the absolute. The nerve-disruptor beam must have hit his head square on. Quinn dragged the hatch shut again behind them, and paused to stuff equipment back into her pockets as the door's mechanism twinkled and beeped, slid and clanked, rendering the lower Thames watershed safe again.

They both scrambled up the corridor. A mere five meters farther on they came to their first check, a T- intersection. This main corridor was lighted, and curved away out of sight in both directions.

'You go left, I'll go right,' said Miles.

'You shouldn't be alone,' Quinn objected.

'Maybe I should be twins, eh? Go, dammit!'

Quinn threw up her hands in exasperation and ran.

Miles sprinted in the other direction. His footsteps echoed eerily in the corridor, deep in the synthacrete mountain. He paused a moment, listened; heard only Quinn's light fading scuff. He ran on, past hundreds of meters of blank synthacrete, past dark and silent pumping stations, past pumping stations lit up and humming quietly. He was just wondering whether he could have missed an exit—an overhead access port?—when he spotted an object on the corridor floor. One of the stunners, fallen from Mark's belt as he ran in panic. Miles swooped it up with a quick ah-ha! of bared teeth, and holstered it as he ran on.

He keyed open his wrist comm. 'Quinn?' The corridor curved suddenly into a sort of stark foyer with lift tube. He must be under one of the watch-towers. Beware Authorized Personnel about. 'Quinn?'

He stepped into the lift tube and rose. Oh, God, which level had Mark got off at? The third floor he passed opened out onto a glass-walled, lobby-looking area, with doors and the night beyond. Clearly an exit. Miles swung out of the lift tube.

A total stranger, wearing civilian jacket and pants, whirled at the sound of his footstep and dropped to one knee. The silver flash of a parabolic mirror twinkled in his raised hands, a nerve-disruptor muzzle. 'There he is!' the man cried, and fired.

Miles recoiled back into the lift tube so fast he rebounded off the far wall. He grabbed for the safety ladder at the side of the tube and began slapping up the rungs faster than the anti-grav field could lift him. He wriggled his facial muscles, shot with pins and needles from the nimbus of the disrupter beam. The man's shoes, Miles realized, gleaming out from the bottom of his trousers, had been Barrayaran regulation Service boots. 'Quinn!' he yelped into his wrist comm again.

The next level up opened onto a corridor without gunmen in it. The first three doors Miles tried were locked. The fourth swished open onto a brightly lit office, apparently deserted. On a quick jog around it Miles's eye was caught by a slight movement in the shadows under a console. He bent down to face two women in blue Tidal Authority tech coveralls cowering beneath. One squeaked and covered her eyes; the second hugged her and glared defiantly at Miles.

Miles tried a friendly smile. 'Ah . . . hello.'

'Who are you people?' said the second woman in rising tones.

'Oh, I'm not with them. They're, um . . . hired killers.' A just description, after all. 'Don't worry, they're not after you. Have you called the police yet?'

She shook her head mutely.

'I suggest you do so immediately. Ah—have you seen me before?'

She nodded.

'Which way did I go?'

She cringed back, clearly terrorized at being cornered by a psychotic. Miles spread his hands in silent apology, and made for the door. 'Call the police!' he called back over his shoulder. The feint beep of comconsole keys being pressed drifted down the corridor after him.

Mark was nowhere on this level. The lift tube grav field had now been turned off by someone; the auto safety bar was extended across the opening and the red glow of the warning light filled the corridor. Miles stuck his head cautiously into the lift tube, to spy another head on the level below looking up; he jerked his head back as a nerve disruptor crackled.

A balcony ran right around the outside of the tower. Miles slipped through the door at the seaward end of the corridor and looked around, and up. Only one more floor above. Its balcony was readily reachable by the toss of a grappler. Miles grimaced, pulled out his spool, and made the toss; got a firm hook around the railing above on the first try. A swallow, a brief heart-stopping dangle over the tower, dyke, and growling sea forty meters below, and he was clambering onto the next balcony.

He tiptoed to the glass doorway and checked down the corridor. Mark was crouched, silhouetted by the red light, near the entrance to the lift tube, stunner drawn. The—unconscious, Miles trusted—form of a man in tech coveralls lay sprawled on the corridor floor.

'Mark?' Miles called softly, and jerked back. Mark snapped around and let off a stunner burst in his direction. Miles put his back against the wall and called, 'Cooperate with me, and I'll get you out of this alive. Where's Ivan?'

This reminder that Mark still held a trump card had the expected calming effect. He did not fire again. 'Get me out of this and I'll tell you where he is,' he countered.

Miles grinned into the darkness. 'All right. I'm coming in.' He slipped round the door and joined his image,