Diplomatic Immunity

local space, to which Miles and Ekaterin had supposedly adjusted on the trip in. All right, so it wasn't the middle of the night, it was early morning.

Miles sat at the wardroom table, straightened his jacket and fastened it to the neck, and touched the control on his station chair. Admiral Vorpatril's face and torso appeared over the vid plate. He was awake, dressed, shaved, and had a coffee cup at his right hand, the rat-bastard.

Vorpatril shook his head, lips tight. “How the hell did you know?” he demanded.

Miles squinted. “I beg your pardon?”

“I just got back the report on Solian's blood sample from my chief surgeon. It was manufactured, probably within twenty-four hours of its being spilled on the deck.”

“Oh.” Hell and damnation. “That's . . . unfortunate.”

“But what does it mean? Is the man still alive somewhere? I'd have sworn he wasn't a deserter, but maybe Brun was right.”

Like the stopped clock, even idiots could be correct sometimes. “I'll have to think about this. It doesn't actually prove if Solian's alive or dead, either way. It doesn't even, necessarily, prove that he wasn't killed there , just not by getting his throat cut.”

Armsman Roic, God bless and keep him forever, set a cup of steaming coffee down by Miles's elbow and withdrew to his station by the door. Miles cleared his mouth, if not his mind, with the first sluicing swallow, and took a second sip to buy a moment to think.

Vorpatril had a head start on both coffee and calculation. “Should we report this to Chief Venn? Or . . . not?”

Miles made a dubious noise in his throat. His one diplomatic edge, the only thing that had given him, so to speak, a leg to stand on here, had been the possibility that Solian had been murdered by an unknown quaddie. This was now rendered even more problematic, it seemed. “The blood had to have been manufactured somewhere. If you have the right equipment, it's easy, and if you don't, it's impossible. Find all such equipment on station—or aboard ships in dock—and the place it was done has to be one of 'em. The place plus the time should lead to the people. Process of elimination. It's the sort of footwork . . .” Miles hesitated, but went on, “that the local police are better equipped to carry out than we are. If they can be trusted.”

“Trust the quaddies? Hardly!”

“What motivation do they have to lie or misdirect us?” What, indeed? “I have to work through Greenlaw and Venn. I have no authority on Graf Station in my own right.” Well, there was Bel, but he had to use Bel sparingly or risk the herm's cover.

He wanted the truth. Ruefully, he recognized that he also would prefer to have a monopoly on it, at least until he had time to figure out how best to play for Barrayar's interests. Yet if the truth doesn't serve us, what does that say about us, eh? He rubbed his stubbled chin. “It does clearly prove that whatever happened in that freight bay, whether murder or cover-up, was carefully planned, and not spontaneous. I'll undertake to speak with Greenlaw and Venn about it. Talking to the quaddies is my job now, anyway.” For my sins, presumably. What god did I piss off this time? “Thank you, Admiral, and thank your fleet surgeon from me for a good job.”

Vorpatril gave a grudgingly pleased nod at this acknowledgment, and Miles cut the com.

“Dammit,” he muttered querulously, frowning into the blank space. “Why didn't anyone pick up this information on the first pass? It's not my job to be a bloody forensic pathologist.”

“I expect,” began Armsman Roic, and stopped. “Uh . . . was that a question, m'lord?”

Miles swung around in his station chair. “A rhetorical one, but do you have an answer?”

“Well, m'lord,” said Roic diffidently. “It's about the size of things here. Graf Station is a pretty big space habitat, but it's really a kind of a small city, by Barrayaran standards. And all these spacer types tend to be pretty law-abiding, in certain ways. All those safety rules. I don't imagine they get many murders here.”

“How many did you used to get in Hassadar?” Graf Station boasted fifty thousand or so residents; the Vorkosigans' District capital's population was approaching half a million, these days.

“Maybe one or two a month, on average. They didn't come in smoothly. Seems there'd be a run of 'em, then a quiet period. More in the summer than the winter, except around Winterfair. Got a lot of multiples then. Most of 'em weren't mysteries , of course. But even in Hassadar there weren't enough really odd ones to keep our forensics folks in practice, y'see. Our medical people were part-timers from the District University, mostly, on call. If we ever got anything really strange, we'd call in one of Lord Vorbohn's homicide investigators from Vorbarr Sultana. They must get a murder every day or so up there—all sorts, lots of experience. I'll bet Chief Venn doesn't even have a forensics department, just some quaddie doctors he taps once in a while. So I wouldn't expect them to be, um, up to ImpSec standards like what you're used to. M'lord.”

“That's . . . an interesting point, Armsman. Thank you.” Miles took another swallow of his coffee. “Solian . . .” he said thoughtfully. “I don't know enough about Solian yet. Did he have enemies? Damn it, didn't the man have even one friend? Or a lover? If he was killed, was it for personal or for professional reasons? It makes a huge difference.”

Miles had glanced through Solian's military record on the inbound leg, and found it unexceptionable. If the man had ever been to Quaddiespace before, it wasn't since he'd joined the Imperial service six years previously. He'd had two prior voyages, with different fleet consortiums and different military escorts; his experiences had apparently included nothing more exciting than handling an occasional inebriated crewman or belligerent passenger.

On average, more than half the military personnel on any tour of nexus escort duty would be new to each other. If Solian had made friends—or enemies—in the weeks since this fleet had departed Komarr, they almost had to have been on the Idris . If his disappearance had been closer to the time of the fleet's arrival in Quaddiespace, Miles would have pegged the professional possibilities to the Idris as well, but the ten days in dock was plenty of time for a nosy security man to find trouble stationside, too.

He drained his cup and punched up Chief Venn's number on the station-chair console. The quaddie security commander had also arrived early to work, apparently. His personal office was evidently on the free fall side of things. He appeared floating sideways to Miles in the vid view, a coffee bulb clutched in his upper right hand. He murmured a polite, “Good morning, Lord Auditor Vorkosigan,” but undercut the verbal courtesy by not righting himself with respect to Miles, who had to exert a conscious effort to keep from tilting out of his chair. “What can I do for you?”

“Several things, but first, a question. When was the last murder on Graf Station?”

Venn's brows twitched. “There was one about seven years ago.”

“And, ah, before that?”

“Three years before, I believe.”

A veritable crime wave . “Did you have charge of those investigations?”

“Well, they were before my time—I became security chief for Graf Station about five years back. But there wasn't that much to investigate. Both suspects were downsider transients—one killed another downsider, the other murdered a quaddie he'd got into some stupid dispute over a payment with. Guilt confirmed by witnesses and fast- penta interrogation. It's almost always downsiders in these affairs, I notice.”

“Have you ever investigated a mysterious killing before?”

Venn righted himself, apparently in order to frown more effectively at Miles. “I and my people are fully trained in the appropriate procedures, I assure you.”

“I'm afraid I must reserve judgment on that point, Chief Venn. I have some rather curious news. I had the Barrayaran fleet surgeon reexamine Solian's blood sample. It appears that the blood in question was artificially produced, presumably using an initial specimen or template of Solian's real blood or tissue. You may wish to have your forensics people—whoever they are—retest your own archived evidence from the freight bay and confirm this.”

Venn's frown deepened. “Then . . . he was a deserter—not murdered after all! No