Diplomatic Immunity

“Yes, m'lord.” Roic's voice was muffled, through the work suit's thicker faceplate, but sufficiently audible; they neither of them had to shout, in this quiet, little space.

“Greenlaw will never order or permit a strike force to be launched to try to capture the ba. Not hers, not ours. She can't. There are too many quaddie lives up for grabs. Trouble is, I don't think this placating approach will make her station any safer. If this ba really murdered a planetary consort, it'll not even blink at a few thousand quaddies. It'll promise cooperation right up to the last, then hit the release switch on its bio-bomb and jump, just for the off chance that the chaos in its wake will delay or disrupt pursuit an extra day or three. Are you with me so far?”

“Yes, m'lord.” Roic's eyes were wide.

“If we can get as close as the door to Nav and Com unseen, I think we have a chance of jumping the ba ourselves. Specifically, you will jump the ba; I will supply a distraction. You'll be all right. Stunner and nerve disruptor fire will pretty much bounce off that work suit. Needler spines wouldn't penetrate immediately either, if it comes to that. And it would take longer than the seconds you'll need to cross that little room for plasma arc fire to burn through it.”

Roic's lips twisted. “What if he just fires at you? That pressure suit's notthat good.”

“The ba won't fire at me. That, I promise you. The Cetagandan haut, and their siblings the ba, are physically stronger than anyone but the dedicated heavy-worlders, but they're not stronger than a power suit. Go for his hands. Hold them. If we get that far, well, the rest will follow.”

“And Corbeau? The poor bastard's starkers. Nothing's gonna stop anything fired at him.”

“Corbeau,” said Miles, “will be the ba's last choice of targets. Ah!” His eyes widened, and he whirled about in his station chair. At the edge of the vid image, half a dozen tiny images in the array were quietly going dark. “Get to the corridor. Get ready to run. As silently as you can.”

From his com link, Vorpatril's volume-reduced voice pleaded heartrendingly for the Imperial Auditor to please reopen his outgoing voice contact. He urged Lady Vorkosigan to request the same.

“Leave him alone,” Ekaterin said firmly. “He knows what he's doing.”

“What is he doing?” Vorpatril wailed.

“Something.” Her voice fell to a whisper. Or perhaps it was a prayer. “Good luck, love.”

Another voice, somewhat offsides, broke in: Captain Clogston. “Admiral? Can you reach Lord Auditor Vorkosigan? We've finished preparing his blood filter and are ready to try it, but he's disappeared out of the infirmary. He was right here a few minutes ago . . .”

“Do you hear that, Lord Vorkosigan?” Vorpatril tried somewhat desperately. “You are to report to the infirmary. Now.”

In ten minutes—five—the medics could have their way with him. Miles pushed up from his station chair—he had to use both hands—and followed Roic into the corridor outside Solian's office.

Up ahead in the dimness, the first airseal door across the corridor hissed quietly aside, revealing the cross-corridor to the other nacelles beyond. On the far side, the next door began to slide.

Roic started trotting. His steps were unavoidably heavy. Miles half-jogged behind. He tried to think how recently he had used his seizure-stimulator, how much at risk he was right now for falling down in a fit from a combination of bad brain chemistry and terror. Middling risky, he decided. No automatic weapons for him this trip anyway. No weapons at all, but for his wits. They seemed a meager arsenal, just at the moment.

The second pair of doors opened for them. Then the third. Miles prayed they were not walking into another clever trap. But he didn't think the ba would have any way of tapping, or even guessing, this oblique line of communication. Roic paused briefly, stepping behind the last door edge, and peered ahead. The door to Nav and Com was shut. He gave a short nod and continued forward, Miles in his shadow. As they drew closer, Miles could see that the control panel to the left of the door had been burned out by some cutting tool, cousin, no doubt, to the one Roic had used. The ba had gone shopping in Engineering, too. Miles pointed at it; Roic's face lightened, and a corner of his mouth turned up. Someone hadn't forgotten to lock the door behind them when they'd last left after all, it appeared.

Roic pointed to himself, to the door; Miles shook his head and motioned him to bend closer. They touched helmets.

“Me first. Gotta grab that case before the ba can react. 'Sides, I need you to pull back the door.”

Roic looked around, inhaled, and nodded.

Miles motioned him back down to touch helmets one more time. “And, Roic? I'm glad I didn't bring Jankowski.”

Roic smiled. Miles stepped aside.

Now. Delay was no one's friend.

Roic bent, splayed his gloved hands across the door, pressed, and pulled. The servos in his suit whined at the load. The door creaked unwillingly aside.

Miles slipped through. He didn't look back, or up. His world had narrowed to one goal, one object. The freezer case—there, still on the floor beside the absent communication officer's station chair. He pounced, grabbed, lifted it up, clutched it to his chest like a shield, like the hope of his heart.

The ba was turning, yelling, lips drawn back, eyes wide, its hand snaking for a pocket. Miles's gloved fingers felt for the catches. If locked, toss the case toward the ba. If unlocked . . .

The case snapped open. Miles yanked it wide, shook it hard, swung it.

A silver cascade, the better part of a thousand tiny tissue-sampling cryo-storage needles, arced out of the case and bounced randomly across the deck. Some shattered as they struck, making tiny crystalline singing noises like dying insects. Some spun. Some skittered, disappearing behind station chairs and into crevices. Miles grinned fiercely.

The yell became a scream; the ba's hands shot out toward Miles as if in supplication, in denial, in despair. The Cetagandan began to stumble toward him, gray face working in shock and disbelief.

Roic's power-suited hands locked down over the ba's wrists and hoisted. Wrist bones crackled and popped; blood spurted between the tightening gloved fingers. The ba's body convulsed as it was lifted up. Wild eyes rolled back. The scream transmuted into a weird wail, trailing away. Sandal-clad feet kicked and drummed uselessly at the heavy shin plating of Roic's work suit; toenails split and bled, without effect. Roic stood stolidly, hands up and apart, racking the ba helplessly in the air.

Miles let the freezer case fall from his fingers. It hit the deck with a thump. With a whispered word, he called back the outgoing audio in his com link. “We've taken the ba prisoner. Send relief troops. In biotainer suits. They won't need their guns now. I'm afraid the ship's an unholy mess.”

His knees were buckling. He sank to the deck himself, giggling uncontrollably. Corbeau was rising from his pilot's chair; Miles motioned him away with an urgent gesture. “Stay back, Dmitri! I'm about to . . .”

He wrenched his faceplate open in time. Barely. The vomiting and spasms that wrung his stomach this time were much worse. It's over. Can I please die now?

Except that it wasn't over, not nearly. Greenlaw had played for fifty thousand lives. Now it was Miles's turn to play for fifty million.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Miles arrived back in the Idris 's infirmary feet first. He was carried by two of the men from Vorpatril's strike force, which had been hastily converted to, mostly, a medical relief team, and as such cleared by the quaddies. His porters almost fell down the unsightly hole Roic had left in the floor. Miles seized back personal control of his locomotion long enough to stand up, under his own power, and lean rather unsteadily against the wall by the door to the bio-isolation ward. Roic followed, carefully holding the ba's remote trigger in a biotainer bag. Corbeau, stiff-faced and pale, brought up the rear dressed in a loose medical tunic and drawstring pants, and shepherded by a medtech with the ba's hypospray in another biotainer sack.