The Vor Game

What combat?'

He who hesitates, is had. 'Are you in or out?'

Auson's moon face took on a cunning look. 'I'm in—if he apologizes.'

'What? This meatmind thinks—'

'Apologize to the man, Tung dear,' Miles sang through his teeth, 'and let's get on. Or the Triumph gets a captain who can be its own first mate. Who, among other manifold virtues, doesn't argue with me.'

'Of course not, the little Betan flipsider's in love,' snapped Auson. 'I've never been able to figure out if it wants to get screwed or bugger you—'

Miles smiled and held up a restraining hand. 'Now, now.' He nodded toward Elena, who had holstered her stunner in favor of a nerve disrupter. Pointed steadily at Auson's head.

Her smile reminded Miles unsettlingly of one of Sergeant Bothari's. Or worse, of Cavilo's. 'Have I ever mentioned, Auson, how much the sound of your voice irritates me?' she inquired.

'You wouldn't fire,' said Auson uncertainly.

'I wouldn't stop her,' Miles lied. 'I need your ship. It would be convenient—but not necessary—if you would command her for me.' His gaze flicked like a knife toward his putative Chief of Staff/Tac. 'Tung?'

With ill-grace, Tung mouthed a nobly-worded, if vague, apology to Auson for past slurs on his character, intelligence, ancestry, appearance—as Auson's face darkened Miles stopped Tung's catalogue in mid-list and made him start over. 'Keep it simpler.'

Tung took a breath. 'Auson, you can be a real shithead sometimes, but dammit, you can fight when you have to. I've seen you. In the tight and the bad and the crazy, I'll take you at my back before any other captain in the fleet.'

One side of Auson's mouth curled up. 'Now, that's sincere. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your concern for my safety. How tight and bad and crazy do you think this is going to get?'

Tung, Miles decided, had a most unsavory chuckle.

The captain-owners were brought in one by one, to be persuaded, bribed, blackmailed and bedazzled till Miles's mouth was dry, throat raw, voice hoarse. Only the Peregrine's captain tried to physically fight. He was stunned and bound, and his second-in-command given the immediate choice between brevet promotion and a long walk out a short airlock. He chose promotion, though his eyes said, Another day. As long as that other day came after the Cetagandans, Miles was satisfied.

They moved to the larger conference chamber across from the Tactics Room for the strangest Staff conference Miles had ever attended. Oser was fortified with a booster shot of fast-penta and propped up at the head of the table like a stuffed and smiling corpse. At least two others were tied to their chairs gagged. Tung traded his yellow pajamas for undress greys, commodore's insignia pinned hastily over his captain's tags. The reaction of the audience to Tung's initial tactical presentation ranged from dubious to appalled, overcome (almost) by the pelting headlong pace of the actions demanded of them. Tung's most compelling argument was the sinister suggestion that if they didn't set themselves up as the wormhole's defenders, they might be required to attack through it later against a prepared Cetagandan defense, a vision that generated shudders all around the table. It could be worse was always an unassailable assertion.

Partway through, Miles massaged his temples and leaned over to whisper to Elena, 'Was it always this bad, or have I just forgotten?'

She pursed her lips thoughtfully and murmured back, 'No, the insults were better in the old days.' Miles muffled a grin.

Miles made a hundred unauthorized claims and unsupported promises, and at last things broke up, each to their duty stations. Oser and the Peregrines captain were marched away under guard to the brig. Tung paused only to frown down at the brown felt slippers. 'If you're going to command my outfit, son, would you please do an old soldier a favor and get a pair of regulation boots?' At last only Elena remained.

'I want you to re-interrogate General Metzov,' Miles told her. 'Pull out all the Ranger tactical disposition data you can—codes, ships on-line, off-line, last known positions, personnel oddities, plus whatever he may know about the Vervani. Edit out any unfortunate references he may make to my real identity, and pass it on to Ops, with the warning that not everything Metzov thinks is true, necessarily is. It may help.'

'Right.'

Miles sighed, slumping wearily on his elbows at the empty conference table. 'You know, the planetary patriots like the Barrayarans—us Barrayarans—have it wrong. Our officer cadre thinks that mercenaries have no honor, because they can be bought and sold. But honor is a luxury only a free man can afford. A good Imperial officer like me isn't honor-bound, he's just bound. How many of these honest people have I just lied to their deaths? It's a strange game.'

'Would you change anything, today?'

'Everything. Nothing. I'd have lied twice as fast if I'd had to.'

'You do talk faster in your Betan accent,' she allowed.

'You understand. Am I doing the right thing? If I can bring it off. Failure being automatically wrong.' Not a path to disaster, but all paths. . . .

Her brows rose. 'Certainly.'

His lips twisted up. 'So you,' whom I love, 'my Barrayaran lady who hates Barrayar, are the only person in the Hub I can honestly sacrifice.'

She tilted her head in consideration of this. 'Thank you, my lord.' She touched her hand to the top of his head, passing out of the chamber.

Miles shivered.

15

Miles returned to Oser's cabin for a fast perusal of the admiral's comconsole files, trying to get a handle on all the changes in equipment and personnel that had occurred since he'd last commanded, and to assimilate the Dendarii/Aslunder intelligence picture of events in the Hub. Somebody brought him a sandwich and coffee, which he consumed without tasting. The coffee was no longer working to keep him alert, though he was still keyed to an almost unbearable tension.

As soon as we undock, I'll crash in Oser's bed. He'd better spend at least some of the thirty-six hours transit time sleeping, or he'd be more liability than asset upon arrival. When he would have to deal with Cavilo, who made him feel like the proverbial unarmed man in the battle of wits even when he was at his best.

Not to mention the Cetagandans. Miles considered the historical three-legged-race between weapons development and tactics.

Projectile weapons for ship-to-ship combat in space had early been made obsolete by mass shielding and laser weapons. Mass shielding, designed to protect moving ships from space debris encountered at normal-space speeds up to half-cee, shrugged off missiles without even trying. Laser weapons in turn had been rendered useless by the arrival of the Sword-swallower, a Betan-developed defense that actually used the enemy fire as its own power source; a similar principle in the plasma mirror, developed in Miles's parents' generation, promised to do the same to the shorter-range plasma weapons. Another decade might see plasma all phased out.

The up-and-coming weapon for ship-to-ship fighting in the last couple of years seemed to be the gravitic imploder lance, a modification of tractor-beam technology; variously-designed artificial-gravity shields were still lagging behind in protection from it. The imploder beam made ugly twisty wreckage where it hit mass. What it did to a human body was a horror.

But the energy-sucking imploder lance's range was insanely short, in terms of space speeds and distances,