Diplomatic Immunity

It would be hours—days—before the new tight-beam could get back to Barrayar and Cetaganda. Insanely upset people could make fatal mistakes in mere minutes. Seconds . . . ”And if you are a praying man, Vorpatril, pray that no one will do anything stupid before it gets there. And that we will be believed.”

“Lady Vorkosigan,” Vorpatril whispered urgently. “Could he be hallucinating from the disease?”

“No, no,” she soothed. “He's just thinking too fast, and leaving out all the intervening steps. He does that. It can be very frustrating. Miles, love, um . . . for the rest of us, would you mind unpacking that a little more?”

He took a breath—and two or three more—to stop his trembling. “The ba. It's not an agent on a mission. It's a criminal. A renegade. Perhaps insane. I believe it hijacked the annual haut child-ship to Rho Ceta, sent the vessel into the nearest sun with all aboard—probably murdered already—and made off with its cargo. Which trans- shipped through Komarr, and which left the Barrayaran Empire on a trade ship belonging to Empress Laisa personally —and just how incriminating that particular detail is going to look to certain minds inside the Star Cr?che, I shrink to imagine. The Cetagandans think we stole their babies, or colluded in the theft, and, dear God, murdered a planetary consort , and so they are about to make war on us bymistake !”

“Oh,” said Vorpatril blankly.

“The ba's whole safety lay in perfect secrecy, because once the Cetagandans got on the right trail they would never rest till they tracked this crime down. But the perfect plan cracked when Gupta didn't die on schedule. Gupta's frantic antics drew Solian in, drew you in, drew me in . . .” His voice slowed. “Except, what in the world does the ba want those haut infants for ?”

Ekaterin offered hesitantly, “Could it be stealing them for someone else?”

“Yes, but the ba aren't supposed to be subornable.”

“Well, if not for pay or some bribe, maybe blackmail or threat? Maybe threat to some haut to whom the ba is loyal?”

“Or maybe some faction in the Star Cr?che,” Miles supplied. “Except . . . the ghem-lords do factions. The haut lords do factions. The Star Cr?che has always moved as one—even when it was committing arguable treason, a decade ago, the haut ladies took no separate decisions.”

“The Star Cr?che committed treason?” echoed Vorpatril in astonishment. “This certainly didn't get out! Are you sure? I never heard of any mass executions that high in the Empire back then, and I should have.” He paused, and added in a baffled tone, “How could a bunch of haut-lady baby-makers commit treason, anyway?”

“It didn't quite come off. For various reasons.” Miles cleared his throat.

“Lord Auditor Vorkosigan. This is your com link, yes? Are you there?” a new voice, and a very welcome one, broke in.

“Sealer Greenlaw!” Miles cried happily. “Have you made it to safety? All of you?”

“We are back aboard Graf Station,” replied the Sealer. “It seems premature to call it safety. And you?”

“Still trapped aboard the Idris . Although not totally without resources. Or ideas.”

“I urgently need to speak to you. You can override that hothead Vorpatril.”

“Ah, my com link is sustaining an open audio link with Admiral Vorpatril now, ma'am. You can speak to both of us at once, if you like,” Miles put in hastily, before she could express herself even more freely.

She hesitated only fractionally. “Good. We absolutely need Vorpatril to hold, repeat, hold any strike force of his. Corbeau confirms the ba does have some sort of a remote control or deadman switch on his person, apparently linked back to the biohazard it has hidden aboard Graf Station. The ba is not bluffing.”

Miles glanced up in surprise at his silent vid of Nav and Com. Corbeau was seated now in the pilot's station chair, the control headset lowered over his skull, his expressionless face even more absent. “Corbeau confirms! How? He was stark naked—the ba is watching him every second! Subcutaneous com link?”

“There was no time to find and insert one. He undertook to blink the ship's running lights in a prearranged code.”

“Whose idea was that?”

“His.”

Quick colonial boy. The pilot was on their side. Oh, but that was good to know. . . . Miles's shivering was turning to shudders.

“Every adult quaddie on Graf Station not on emergency duty is out looking for the bio-bomb now,” Greenlaw continued, “but we have no idea what it looks like, or how big it is, or if it is disguised as something else. Or if there is more than one. We are trying to evacuate as many children as possible into what ships and shuttles we have on hand, and seal them off, but we can't even be sure of them , really. If you people do anything to set this mad creature off—if you launch an unauthorized strike force before this vicious threat is found and safely neutralized—I swear I will give our militia the order to shoot them out of space myself. Do you copy, Admiral? Confirm.”

“I hear you,” said Vorpatril reluctantly. “But ma'am—the Imperial Auditor himself has been infected with one of the ba's lethal bio-agents. I cannot—I will not—if I have to sit here and do nothing while listening to him die—”

“There are fifty thousand innocent lives on Graf Station, Admiral—Lord Auditor!” Her voice failed for a second; returned stiffly. “I am sorry, Lord Vorkosigan.”

“I'm not dead yet,” Miles replied rather primly. A new and most unwelcome sensation struggled with the tight fear grinding in his belly. He added, “I'm going to switch off my com link for just a moment. I'll be right back.”

Motioning Roic to keep still, Miles opened the door to the security office, stepped into the corridor, opened his faceplate, leaned over, and vomited onto the floor. No help for it. With an angry swipe, he turned his suit temperature back up. He blinked back the green dizziness, wiped his mouth, went back inside, seated himself again, and called his link back on. “Continue.”

He let Vorpatril's and Greenlaw's arguing voices fade from his attention, and studied his view of Nav and Com more closely. One object had to be there, somewhere . . . ah. There it was, a small, valise-sized cryo-freezer case, set carefully down next to one of the empty station chairs near the door. A standard commercial model, no doubt bought off the shelf from some medical supplier here on Graf Station sometime in the past few days. All of this , this entire diplomatic mess, this extravagant trail of deaths winding across half the Nexus, two empires teetering on the verge of war, came down to that . Miles was reminded of the old Barrayaran folktale, about the evil mutant magician who kept his heart in a box to hide it from his enemies.

Yes . . .

“Greenlaw,” Miles broke in. “Do you have any way to signal back to Corbeau?”

“We designated one of the navigation buoys that broadcasts to the channels of the pilots on cyber-neuro control. We can't get voice communication through it—Corbeau wasn't sure how it would emerge, in his perceptions. We are certain we can get some kind of simple code blink or beep through it.”

“I have a simple message for him. Urgent. Get it through if you possibly can, however you can. Tell him to open all the inner airseal doors in the middle deck of the central nacelle. Kill the security vids there, too, if he can.”

“Why?” she asked suspiciously.

“We have personnel trapped there who are going to die shortly if he doesn't,” Miles replied glibly. Well, it was true.

“Right,” she rapped back. “I'll see what we can do.”

He cut his outgoing voice link, turned in his station chair, and made a throat-cutting motion for Roic to do the same. He leaned forward. “Can you hear me?”