The Vor Game

to choose. She seemed tougher, more willing to speak her mind—this was good—yet her thoughts had a bitter tang. Not good. That bitterness made him ache.

'Have you been all right?' he asked her hesitantly. 'Apart from this command structure mess, that is. Tung treating you right? He was supposed to be your mentor. On-the-job, for you, the training I was getting in the classroom . . .'

'Oh, he's a good mentor. He stuffs me with military information, tactics, history … I can run every phase of a combat drop patrol now, logistics, mapping, assault, withdrawal, even emergency shuttle take-offs, and landings, if you don't mind a few bumps. I'm almost up to really handling my fictional rank, at least on fleet equipment. He likes teaching.'

'It seemed to me you were a little . . . tense, with him.'

She tossed her head. 'Everything is tense, just now. It's not possible to be 'apart from' this command structure mess, thank you. Although … I suppose I haven't quite forgiven Tung for not being infallible about it. I thought he was, at first.'

'Yeah, well, there's a lot of fallibility going around these days,' Miles said uncomfortably. 'Uh . . . how's Baz?' Is your husband treating you right? he wanted to demand, but didn't.

'He's well,' she replied, not looking happy, 'but discouraged. This power struggle was alien to him, repugnant, I think. He's a tech at heart, he sees a job that needs doing, he does it . . . Tung hints that if Baz hadn't buried himself in Engineering he might have foreseen —prevented—fought the takeover, but I think it was the other way around. He couldn't lower himself to fight on Oser's back-stabbing level, so he withdrew to where he could keep his own standards of honesty … for a little while longer. This schism's affected morale all up and down the line.'

'I'm sorry,' said Miles.

'You should be.' Her voice cracked, steadied, harshened. 'Baz felt he'd failed you, but you failed us first, when you never came back. You couldn't expect us to keep up the illusion forever.'

'Illusion?' said Miles. 'I knew … it would be difficult, but I thought you might . . . grow into your roles. Make the mercenaries your own.'

'The mercenaries may be enough for Tung. I thought they might be for me, too, till we came to the killing. … I hate Barrayar, but better to serve Barrayar than nothing, or your own ego.'

'What does Oser serve?' Gregor asked curiously, brows raised at this mixed declamation about their homeworld.

'Oser serves Oser. 'The fleet,' he says, but the fleet serves Oser, so it's just a short circuit,' said Elena. 'The fleet is no home-country. No building, no children . . . sterile. I don't mind helping out the Aslunders, though, they need it. A poor planet, and scared.'

'You and Baz—and Arde—could have left, gone off on your own,' began Miles.

'How?' said Elena. 'You gave us the Dendarii in charge. Baz was a deserter once. Never again.'

All my fault, right, thought Miles. Great.

Elena turned to Gregor, who had acquired a strange guarded expression on his face while listening to her charges of abandonment 'You still haven't said what you're doing here in the first place besides putting your feet in things. Was this supposed to be some son of secret diplomatic mission?'

'You explain it,' said Miles to Gregor, trying not to grit his teeth. Tell her about the balcony, eh?

Gregor shrugged, eyes sliding aside from Elena's level look. 'Like Baz, I deserted. Like Baz, I found it was not the improvement I'd hoped for.'

'You can see why it's urgent to get Gregor back home as quickly as possible,' Miles put in. 'They think he's missing. Maybe kidnapped.' Miles gave Elena a quick edited version of their chance meeting in Consortium Detention.

'God.' Elena's lips pursed. 'I see why it's urgent to you to get him off your hands, anyway. If anything happened to him in your company, fifteen factions would cry 'Treason plot!''

'That thought has occurred to me, yes,' growled Miles.

'Your father's Centrist coalition government would be the first thing to fall,' Elena continued. 'The military right would get behind Count Vorinnis, I suppose, and square off with the anti-centralization liberals. The French speakers would want Vorville, the Russian Vor-tugalov—or has he died yet?'

'The far-right blow-up-the-wormhole isolationist loonie faction would field Count Vortrifrani against the anti-Vor pro-galactic faction who want a written constitution,' put in Miles glumly. 'And I do mean field.'

'Count Vortrifrani scares me,' Elena shivered. 'I've heard him speak.'

'It's the suave way he mops the foam from his lips,' said Miles. 'The Greek minorists would seize the moment to attempt secession—'

'Stop it!' Gregor, who had propped his forehead on his hands, said from behind the barrier of his arms.

'I thought that was your job,' said Elena tartly. At his bleak look, raising his head, she softened, her mouth twisting up. 'Too bad I can't offer you a job with the fleet. We can always use formally-trained officers, to train the rest if nothing else.'

'A mercenary?' said Gregor. 'There's a thought. . . .'

'Oh, sure. A lot of our people are former regular military folk. Some are even legitimately discharged.'

Fantasy lit Gregor's eye with brief amusement. He sighted down his grey-and-white jacket sleeve. 'If only you were in charge here, aye, Miles?'

'No!' Miles cried in a suffused voice.

The light died. 'It was a joke.'

'Not funny.' Miles breathed carefully, praying it would not occur to Gregor to make that an order. . . . 'Anyway, we're now trying to make it to the Barrayaran Consul on Vervain Station. It's still there, I hope. I haven't heard news for days—what's going on with the Vervani?'

'As far as I know, it's business as usual, except for the heightened paranoia,' said Elena. 'Vervain's putting its resources into ships, not stations—'

'Makes sense, when you've got more than one wormlike to guard,' Miles conceded.

'But it makes Aslund perceive the Vervani as potential aggressors. There's an Aslunder faction that's actually urging a first strike before the new Vervani fleet comes on-line. Fortunately, the defensive strategists have prevailed so far. Oser has set the price for a strike by us prohibitively high. He's not stupid. He knows the Aslunders couldn't back us up. Vervain hired a mercenary fleet as a stopgap too—in fact, that's what gave the Aslunders the idea to hire us. They're called Randall's Rangers, though I understand Randall is no more.'

'We shall avoid them,' Miles asserted fervently.

'I hear their new second officer is a Barrayaran. You might be able to swing some help, there.'

Gregor's brows rose in speculation. 'One of Illyan's plants? Sounds like his work.'

Was that where Ungari had gone? 'Approach with caution, anyway,' Miles allowed.

'About time,' Gregor commented under his breath.

'The Ranger's commander's name is Cavilo—'

'What?' yelped Miles.

Elena's winged brows rose. 'Just Cavilo. Nobody seems to know if it's the given or surname—'

'Cavilo is the person who tried to buy me—or Victor Rotha—at the Consortium Station. For twenty thousand Betan dollars.'

Elena's brows stayed up. 'Why?'

'I don't know why.' Miles rethought their goal. Pol, the Censortium, Aslund . . . no, it still came up Vervain. 'But we definitely avoid the Vervani's meres. We step off the ship and go straight to the Consul, go to ground, and don't even squeak till Illyan's men arrive to take us home, Momma. Right.'

Gregor sighed. 'Right.'

No more playing secret agent. His best efforts had only served to get Gregor nearly murdered. It was time to try less hard, Miles decided.

'Strange,' said Gregor, looking at Elena—at the new Elena, guessed—'to think you've had more combat