'What? What?'
'They're coming for us.'
'Who's coming for who, what the hell is going on,
'I had a berth on a freighter, I thought, but they dumped me off here. Without pay,' Gregor explained rapidly. 'Stiffed me. I didn't have so much as a half-mark on me. I tried to get something on an outbound ship, but before I could, I got arrested for vagrancy. Jacksonian law is insane,' he added reflectively. ''
'I know. Then what?'
'They were apparently making a deliberate sweep, press-gang style. Seems some enterpreneur is selling tech-trained work gangs to the Aslunders, to work on their Hub station, which is running behind schedule.'
Miles blinked. 'Slave labor?'
'Of a sort. The carrot is, when the sentence is up, we're to be discharged on Aslund Station. Most of these techs don't seem to mind too much. No pay, but we—they—will be fed and housed, and escape Jacksonian security, so in the end they'll be no worse off than when they started, broke and unemployed. Most of them seem to think they'll find berths outbound from Aslund eventually. Being without funds is not such a heinous crime, there.'
Miles's head pounded. 'They're taking you away?'
Tension pooled in Gregor's eyes, contained, not permitted to seep over into the rest of his stiff face. 'Right now, I think.'
'God! I can't let—'
'But how did you find me here—' Gregor began in turn, then looked in frustration up the room, where blue-smocked men and women were grumbling to their feet. 'Are you here to—'
Miles stared around frantically. The blue-clad man on the cot next to his now lay on his side, watching them with a bored glower. He wasn't over-tall. . . .
'You!' Miles scrambled overboard, and crouched at the man's side. 'You want to get out of this trip?'
The man looked slightly less bored. 'How?'
'Trade clothes. Trade ID's. You take my place, I take yours.'
The man looked suspicious. 'What's the catch?'
'No catch. I got a lot of credit. I was going to buy my way out of here in a while.' Miles paused. 'There's going to be a surcharge for my resisting arrest, though.'
'Ah.' A catch identified, the man looked slightly more interested.
'Please! I have to go with—with my friend. Right now.' The babble was rising, as the techs assembled in the room's far end by the exit. Gregor wandered around behind the man's cot.
The man pursed his lips. 'Naw,' he decided. 'If whatever you're in for is worse than this, I don't want anything to do with it.' He swung to a sitting position, preparing to rise and join the line.
Miles, still crouched on the floor, raised his hands in supplication. 'Please—'
Gregor, perfectly placed, pounced. He grabbed the man around the neck in a neat choke and flipped him over the side of his cot, out of sight. Thank God the Barrayaran aristocracy still insisted on military training for its scions. Miles staggered to his feet, the better to obscure the view from up the room. Some small thumping noises came from the floor. In a few moments, a prisoner's blue smock skidded under the cot to fetch up at Miles's sandaled feet. Miles squatted and pulled it on over his green silks—fortunately, it was a bit oversized—then struggled into the loose trousers that followed. Some shoving sounds, as the man's unconscious body was pushed out of sight under the cot, and Gregor stood, panting slightly, very white. 'I can't get these damn belt strings,' Miles said. They skittered from his trembling hands.
Gregor tied up Miles's pants, and rolled up his overlong trouser legs. 'You need his ID, or you can't get food or register your work-credits,' Gregor hissed out of the corner of his mouth, and leaned artistically against the end of the cot in an idle pose.
Miles checked his pocket and found the standard computer card. 'All right.' He stood next to Gregor, teeth bared in a weird grin. 'I'm about to pass out.'
Gregor's hand locked his elbow. 'Don't. It'll draw attention.' They walked up the room and slipped into the end of the shuffling, complaining, blue-clad line. A sleepy-looking guard at the door checked them out, running a scanner over the IDs. '. . . twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five. That's it. Take 'em away.'
They were turned over to another set of guards, not in the uniform of the Consortium but some minor Jacksonian House livery, gold and black. Miles kept his face down as they were herded out of Detention. Only Gregor's hand kept him on his feet. They passed through a corridor, another corridor, down a lift tube—Miles nearly threw up during the drop—another corridor.
It was clearly an intra-system carrier, not a jump ship, and not very large. The men were separated from the women and directed down opposite ends of a corridor lined with cabin doors leading to four-bunk cubicles. The prisoners spread out, selecting their quarters without apparent interference from the guards.
Miles make a quick count and multiplication. 'We can get one toourselves, if we try,' he whispered urgently to Gregor. He ducked into the nearest, and they hit the door control quickly. Another prisoner made to follow them in, to be met with a united snarl of 'Back off!' He withdrew hastily. The door did not slide open again.
The cabin was dirty, and lacked such amenities as bedding for the mattresses, but the plumbing worked. As Miles got a drink of lukewarm water he heard and felt the hatch close, and the ship undock. They were safe for the moment. How long?
'When do you think that guy you choked is going to wake up?' Miles asked Gregor, who sat on the edge of one bunk.
'I'm not sure. I've never choked a man before.' Gregor looked sick. 'I … felt something strange, under my hand. I'm afraid I might have broken his neck.'
'He was still breathing,' Miles said. He walked to the opposite lower bunk and prodded it. No sign of vermin. He seated himself gingerly. The severe shakes were passing off, leaving only a tremula, but he still felt weak in the knees. 'When he wakes up—as soon as they find him, whether he wakes up or not—it's not going to take them long to figure out where I went. I should have just waited, and followed you, and bought you back. Assuming I could bid myself free. This was a
Gregor stared. 'I thought you knew what you were doing. Isn't Illyan right behind you?'
'Not as far as I know.'
'I thought you were in Illyan's department now. I thought you were sent to find me. This . . . isn't some kind of bizarre rescue?'
'No!' Miles shook his head, and immediately regretted the motion. 'Maybe you'd better begin at the beginning.'
'I'd been on Komarr for a week. Under the domes. High-level talks on wormhole route treaties—we're still trying to get the Escobarans to permit passage of our military vessels. There's some idea of letting their inspection teams seal our weapons during passage. Our general staff thinks it's too much, theirs thinks it's too little. I signed a couple of agreements—whatever the Council of Ministers shoved in front of me—'
'Dad makes you
'Oh, yes. Anyway, there was a military review that afternoon. And a state dinner in the evening, which broke up early, a couple of the negotiators had to catch ships. I went back to my quarters, some oligarch's old town house. Big place at the edge of the dome, near the shuttleport. My suite was high in this building. I went out on the balcony—it didn't help much. Still felt claustrophobic, under the dome.'
'Komarrans don't like open air, either,' Miles noted in fairness. 'I knew one who had breathing problems— like asthma—whenever he had to go outside. Strictly psychosomatic.'
Gregor shrugged, gazing at his shoes. 'Anyway, I noticed . . . there were no guards in sight. For a change. I don't know why the hole, there'd been a man there earlier. They thought I was asleep, I guess. It was after midnight. I couldn't sleep. I was leaning over the balcony, and thinking, if I toppled off . . .' Gregor hesitated.
'It would be quick,' Miles supplied dryly. He knew that state of mind, oh yes.
Gregor glanced up at him, and smiled ironically. 'Yes. I was a little drunk.'
