'Never mind,' Vorkosigan waved him down. 'Thank you, Sergeant.' A distant echo of the voice continued from loudspeakers all over the ship.
'There's no time for anything more elaborate, I'm afraid,' Vorkosigan said, apparently winding up a planning session. 'Go ahead with your engineering idea, Lieutenant Saint Simon; if you can get it in place in time, so much the better. I'm sure we'd all rather be clever than brave.' The lieutenant nodded and hurried out. 'If he can't, I'm afraid we'll have to rush them,' Vorkosigan went on. 'They are perfectly capable of killing everyone aboard and re-recording the log to prove anything they please. Between Darobey and Tafas they have the technical know-how. I want volunteers. Myself and Bothari, of course.'
A unanimous chorus put themselves forward. 'Gottyan and Vorkalloner are both out. I need somebody who can explain things, afterward. Now the battle order. First me, then Bothari, then Siegel's patrol, then Kush's. Stunners only, I don't want stray shots smashing up engineering.' A number of men glanced at the hole in the wall where the speaker had been.
'Sir,' said Vorkalloner desperately, 'I question that battle order. They'll be using disruptors for sure. The first men through the door haven't got a chance.'
Vorkosigan took a few seconds and stared him down. He dropped his eyes miserably. 'Yes, sir.'
'Lieutenant Commander Vorkalloner is right, sir,' an unexpected bass voice put in. Cordelia realized with a start it was Bothari. 'The first place is mine, by right. I've earned it.' He faced his captain, narrow jaw working. 'It's mine.'
Their eyes met in a weird understanding. 'Very well, Sergeant,' conceded Vorkosigan. 'You first, then me, then the rest as ordered. Let's go.'
Vorkosigan paused before her as they herded out. 'I'm afraid I'm not going to make that walk on the esplanade in the summer, after all.'
Cordelia shook her head helplessly, the glimmer of a terrifying idea beginning in the back of her brain. 'I— I—I have to withdraw my parole now.'
Vorkosigan looked puzzled, then waved it aside for a more immediate concern. 'If I should chance to end up like your Ensign Dubauer—remember my preferences. If you can bring yourself to it, I would like it to be by your hand. I'll tell Vorkalloner. Can I have your word?'
'Yes.'
'You'd better stay in your cabin until this is over.'
He reached out to her shoulder, to touch one curl of red hair resting there, then turned away. Cordelia fled down the corridor, Radnov's propaganda droning senselessly in her ears. Her plan blossomed furiously in her mind. Her reason yammered protest, like a rider on a runaway horse; you have no duty to these Barrayarans, your duty is to Beta Colony, to Stuben, to the Rene Magritte—your duty is to escape, and warn …
She swung into her cabin. Wonder of wonders, Stuben and Lai were still there. They looked up, alarmed by her wild appearance.
'Go to sickbay now. Pick up Dubauer and take him to the shuttle. When were Pete and Mac supposed to report back there if they couldn't find him?'
'In—' Lai checked his time, 'ten minutes.'
'Thank God. When you get to sickbay, tell the surgeon that Captain Vorkosigan ordered you to bring Dubauer to me. Lai, you wait in the corridor. You'd never fool the surgeon. Dubauer can't talk. Don't act surprised by his condition. When you get to the shuttle, wait—let me see your chrono, Lai—till 0620 our ship time, then take off. If I'm not back by then I'm not coming. Full power and don't look back. Exactly how many men did Radnov and Darobey have with them?'
'Ten or eleven, I guess,' Stuben said.
'All right. Give me your stunner. Go. Go. Go.'
'Captain, we came here to rescue you!' cried Stuben, bewildered.
Words failed her utterly. She put a hand on his shoulder instead. 'I know. Thank you.' She ran.
Approaching engineering from one deck above, she came to an intersection of two corridors. Down the larger was a group of men assembling and checking weapons. Down the smaller were two men covering an entry port to the next deck, a last checkpoint before territory covered by Radnov's fire. One of them was Yeoman Nilesa. She pounced on him.
'Captain Vorkosigan sent me down,' she lied. 'He wants me to try one last effort at negotiation, as a neutral in the affair.'
'That's a waste of time,' observed Nilesa.
'So he hopes,' she improvised. 'It'll keep them tied up while he's getting ready. Can you get me in without alarming anybody?'
'I can try, I guess.' Nilesa went forward and undogged a circular hatch in the floor at the end of the corridor.
'How many guards on this entrance?' she whispered.
'Two or three, I think.'
The hatch swung up, revealing a man-width access tube with a ladder up one side and a pole down the middle.
'Hey, Wentz!' he shouted down it.
'Who's that?' a voice floated up.
'Me, Nilesa. Captain Vorkosigan wants to send that Betan frill down to talk to Radnov.'
'What for?'
'How the hell should I know? You're the ones who're supposed to have comm pickups in everybody's bunks. Maybe she's not such a good lay after all.' Nilesa shrugged an apology toward her, and she accepted it with a nod.
There was a whispered debate below.
'Is she armed?'
Cordelia, readying both stunners, shook her head.
'Would you give a weapon to a Betan frill?' Nilesa called back rhetorically, watching her preparations in puzzlement.
'All right. Put her in, dog the hatch, and let her drop. If you don't close the hatch before she drops, we'll shoot her. Got that?'
'Yo.'
'What'll I be looking at when I get to the bottom?' she quizzed Nilesa.
'Nasty spot. You'll be standing in a sort of niche in the storeroom off the main control room. You can only get one man at a time through it, and you're pinned in there like a target, with the wall on three sides. It's designed that way on purpose.'
'No way to rush them through it? I mean, you're not planning to?'
'No way in hell.'
'Good. Thanks.'
Cordelia climbed down into the tube, and Nilesa closed the hatch over her with a sound like the lid of a coffin.
'All right,' came the voice from below, 'drop.'
'It's a long way down,' she called back, having no trouble sounding tremulous. 'I'm afraid.'
'Screw it. I'll catch you.'
'All right.' She wrapped her legs and one arm around the pole. Her hand shook as she jammed the second stunner into her holster. Her stomach pumped sour bile into the back of her throat. She swallowed, took a deep breath to keep it there, held her stunner pointed ready, and dropped.
She landed face-to-face with the man below, his nerve disrupter held casually at the level of her waist. His eyes widened as he saw her stunner. Here the Barrayaran custom of all-male crews on warships paid her, for he hesitated just a fraction of a second to shoot a woman. In that fraction she fired first. He slumped heavily over her, head lolling on her shoulder. Bracing, she held him as a shield before her.
Her second shot laid out the next guard as he was bringing his disruptor to aim. The third guard got off a hasty burst that was absorbed by the back of the man she held, although the nimbus of it seared the outer edge of her left thigh. The pain of it flared screamingly, but no sound escaped her clenched teeth. With a wild berserker
