came jogging. That accounted for all the Barrayarans that had been in the tower; any outer-perimeter backup was now cut off from them by the cordon of local police. The Barrayarans had apparently given up on their mysteriously vanished quarry and were in pull-out mode, hoping to exit via Tower Seven as quickly as possible without having to explain themselves to a bunch of unsympathetic Earthmen. The Cetagandans, who had actually witnessed the supposed Admiral Naismith run this way, were still in hunting array, though their rear guard was presumably closing up with the pressure from the locals coming on strong behind.
No sign of the rear guard yet; no sign of Quinn being dragged along as a prisoner. Miles didn't know whether to hope for that or not. It would be very nice to know she was still alive, but fiendishly difficult to extract her from the Cetagandans' clutches before the constables closed in. Least-cost scenario called for letting her be stunned/arrested with the mob of them, and reclaiming her from the police at their leisure—but suppose some Cetagandan goon decided in the heat of the final crunch that dead women couldn't talk? Miles jittered like a boiling kettle at the thought.
Perhaps he should have jacked up Ivan and Mark and attacked. The breakable leading the disabled and the unreliable in an assault on the unknown … no. But would he have done more, done less, for any other officer in his command? Was he so worried about his command logic being ambushed by his emotions that he was now erring in the opposite direction? That would be a betrayal of both Quinn and the Dendarii. . . .
The lead Cetagandan darted into the line of sight of the lead Barrayaran. They both fired instantly, and dropped each other in a heap.
'Stunner reflexes,' muttered Miles. 'S' wonderful.'
'My God,' said Ivan, entranced to the point of wholly forgetting his hermetic enclosure, 'it's just like the proton annihilating the anti-proton. Poof!'
The remaining Barrayarans, strung out along the corridor, flattened to the wall. The Cetagandan dropped to the floor and crawled to his downed comrade. A Barrayaran popped out into the corridor and blitzed him, the Cetagandan's return shot going wide. Two of the four Barrayarans hurried to the unconscious bodies of their mystery opponents. One prepared to offer covering fire, the other began checking them out, weapons, pockets, clothing. He naturally turned up no IDs. The baffled Barrayaran was just pulling off a shoe to dissect—Miles felt he would continue on to the body itself momentarily—when a distorted amplified voice began booming down the corridor from their rear. Miles could not quite make out the echo-splintered words, but the sense of it was clearly, 'Here! Halt! What's all this, then?' ' One of the Barrayarans helped another load up themstunned one for a shoulder-carry; it had to have been the biggest man who'd been hit, Boots himself. They were close enough to the fisheye that Miles could make out the carrier's legs shake slightly as he straightened and began staggering south under his burden, two men taking the point before and the remaining one the rear guard behind.
The doomed little army had gone perhaps four steps when another pair of Cetagandans appeared around the south curve. One was firing his stunner back over his shoulder as he ran. His attention was so divided, he did not see his partner go down to the Barrayaran point men's stunner fire until he tripped over the sprawling body and fell headlong. He kept his clutch on his own stunner, turned his fall into a controlled roll, and snapped off return fire. One of the Barrayaran point men went down.
The Barrayaran rear guard leapfrogged forward around the burdened middle man and helped his partner zap the rolling Cetagandan, then ran forward with him, hugging the wall. Unfortunately, they overshot the arc of concealment at the same moment as a blast of massed, unaimed stunner fire from beyond the curvature was clearing the corridor for some forward push from the unknowns—police combat team, Miles deduced both from the tactic and the feet that the Cetagandan had been firing in that direction. Men met energy wave with predictable results.
The remaining Barrayaran stood in the corridor bending under the weight of his unconscious comrade and cursing steadily, his eyes squeezed shut as if to shut out the sheer overwhelming embarrassment of it all. When the police appeared behind him he clumped in a circle to face them and raised his hands in surrender as best he could, flipping his empty palms out and letting his stunner clatter to the floor.
Ivan's voice was suffused. 'I can just see the vid call to Commodore Destang now. 'Uh, sir? We ran into this little problem. Will you come get me … ?* '
'He may prefer to desert,' commented Miles. The two converging police squads came within a breath of repeating the mutual annihilation of their fleeing suspects, but managed to get their true identities communicated just in time. Miles was almost disappointed. Still, nothing could go on forever; at some point the corridor would have become impassable due to the piles of bodies, and the havoc trail off according to the typical senescence curve of a biological system choked on its own waste. It was probably too much to ask that the police clear themselves, as well as the nine assassins, out of the path to escape. Miles was clearly in for another wait. Blast it.
Creaking, Miles stood, stretched, and leaned against the wall with folded arms. It had better not be too long a wait. As soon as the police combat squad called the all-clear, the bomb squad and Tidal Authority techs would appear and start going over every centimeter of the place. The discovery of Miles's little company was inevitable. But not lethal, as long as—Miles glanced down at Mark, hunkering at his feet—no one panicked.
Miles followed Mark's gaze to the scanner display, where the police were checking over the stunned bodies and scratching their heads. The captured Barrayaran was being properly surly and uninformative. As a covert ops agent he was conditioned to withstand torture and fast-penta too; there was little the London constables were likely to get out of him with the methods at their disposal, and he obviously knew it.
Mark shook his head, watching the chaos in the corridor. 'Whose side are you on, anyway?'
'Haven't you been paying attention?' asked Miles. 'This is all for you.'
Mark looked up at him sharply, scowling. 'Why?'
Why, indeed. Miles eyed the object of his fascination. He could see how a clone could get to be an obsession, and vice versa. He jerked up his chin in the habitual tic; apparently unconsciously, Mark did the same. Miles had heard weird tales of strange relationships between people and their clones. But then, anyone who deliberately went out and had a clone made must be kinky to start with. Far more interesting to have a child, preferably with a woman who was smarter, faster, and better-looking than oneself; then there was at least a chance for a bit of evolution in the clan. Miles scratched his wrist. Mark, after a moment, scratched his arm. Miles refrained from deliberately yawning. Better not start anything he couldn't stop.
So. He knew what Mark was. Maybe it was more important to realize what he was not. Mark was not a duplicate of Miles himself, despite Galen's best efforts. Was not even the brother of an only-child's dreams; Ivan, with whom Miles shared clan, friends, Barrayar, private memories of the ever-receding past, was a hundred times more his brother than Mark could ever be. It was just possible he had under-appreciated Ivan's merits. Botched beginnings could never be replayed, though they could be—Miles glanced down at his legs, seeing in his mind's eye the artificial bones within—repaired. Sometimes.
'Yeah, why?' Ivan put in at Miles's lengthening silence.
'What,' piped Miles, 'don't you like your new cousin? Where's your family feeling?'
'One of you is more than enough, thanks. Your Evil Twin here,' Ivan made a horned-finger gesture, 'is more than I can take. Besides, you both keep locking me in closets.'
'Ah, but at least I called for volunteers.'
'Yeah, I know that one. 'I want three volunteers, you, you, and you.' You used to bully me and your bodyguard's daughter around that way even before you were in the military, back when we were little kids. I remember.'
'Born to command.' Miles grinned briefly. Mark's brows lowered, as the apparently tried to imagine Miles as playground bully to the very large and healthy Ivan. 'It's a mental trick,' Miles informed him.
He studied Mark, who squatted uncomfortably, drawing his head down into his shoulders like a turtle against his gaze. Was this evil? Confusion, to be sure. Distortion of spirit as well as body—though Galen could have been only a little more awful as a child's mentor than Miles's own grandfather. But to be properly sociopathic one must be self-centered to an extreme degree, which did not seem to describe Mark; he had hardly been permitted to have a self at all. Maybe he was not self-centered enough. 'Are you Evil?' Miles asked lightly.
'I'm a murderer, aren't I?' sneered Mark. 'What more d'you want?'
'Was that murder? I thought I sensed some element of confusion.'
'He grabbed the nerve disrupter. I didn't want to give it up. It went off.' Mark's face was pale in memory, white and deeply shadowed in the sharp sideways illumination cast by Miles's handlight stuck to the wall. 'I meant
