The Vor Game

control; the blast doors between his group and Cavilo's began to draw back. Slowly, not suddenly, at a rate carefully calculated to inspire dread without startling.

Pull broadcast on all channels plus loudspeaker. It was absolutely essential to Miles's plan that he get in the first word.

'Cavilo!' he shouted. 'Deactivate your weapons and freeze, or I'll blow Gregor to atoms!'

Body language was a wonderful thing. It was amazing, how much expression could come through the blank shining surface of space armor. The littlest armored figure stood openhanded, stunned. Bereft of words; bereft, for precious seconds, of reactions. Because, of course, Miles had just stolen her opening line. Now what do you have to say for yourself, love? It was a desperate ploy. Miles had judged the hostage-problem logically insoluble; therefore, clearly the only thing to do was make it Cavilo's problem instead of his own.

Well, he'd obtained as much as the freeze part, anyway. But he dared not let the standoff stand. 'Drop it, Cavilo! It only takes one nervous twitch to convert you from Imperial fiancee to no one of importance at all. And then to no one at all. And you're making mereal tense.'

'You said he was safe,' Cavilo hissed to Gregor. 'His meds must be further off-dose than I thought,' Gregor replied, looking anxious. 'No, watch—he's bluffing. I'll prove it.'

Hands held out open to his sides, Gregor walked straight toward the plasma cannon. Miles's jaw fell open, behind his faceplate. Gregor, Gregor, Gregor . . . !

Gregor gazed steadily into Elena's faceplate. His step never quickened or faltered. He stopped only when his chest touched the beaded tip of the cannon. It was an enormously dramatic and arresting moment. Miles was so lost in appreciation, it took him that long to move his finger an imperceptible few centimeters and hit the button on his control box that closed the blast doors.

The shield hadn't been programmed for slow-closure; it banged shut faster than the eye could follow. Brief noises, from the other side, of plasma fire, shouts; Cavilo screaming at one of her men just in time to stop him from the fatal error of firing a mine at the wall of a closed chamber he himself occupied. Then silence.

Miles dropped his plasma rifle, tore off his helmet. 'God almighty, I wasn't expecting that. Gregor, you're a genius.' Gently, Gregor raised a finger and moved the tip of the plasma cannon aside. 'Don't worry,' said Miles. 'None of our weapons are charged. I didn't want to risk any accidents.'

'I was almost certain that was the case,' Gregor murmured. He stared back over his shoulder at the blast doors. 'What would you have done if I'd been asleep on my feet?' ,,.

'Kept talking. Tried for various compromises. I had a trick or two yet. But behind the other blast door, there's a squad with live weapons. In the end, if she didn't bite, I was prepared to surrender.'

'That's what I was afraid of.'

Some peculiar muffled noises penetrated the blast doors. 'Elena, take over,' said Miles. 'Mop up. Take Cavilo alive if possible, but I don't want any Dendarii to die trying. Take no chances, trust nothing she says.'

'I have the picture.' Elena waved a salute, and motioned to her squad, which broke up to insert weapons- charges. Elena began to confer over the command-channel headset with the leader of the twin squad waiting on Cavilo's other side and with the commander of the Ariel's combat shuttle, closing in from space.

Miles motioned Gregor along the corridor, removing him as swiftly as possible from the region of potential messiness. 'To the tactics room, and I'll fill you in. You have some decisions to make.'

They entered a lift-tube, and rose. Miles breathed easier with every meter he increased the range between Gregor and Cavilo.

'My biggest worry,' Miles said, 'till we spoke face-to-face, was that Cavilo really had done what she thought she had, fogged your mind. I didn't see where she could be getting her ideas except from you. Wasn't sure what I could do in that case, except play along till I could hand you over to higher experts on Barrayar. If I survived. I didn't know how fast you'd see through her.'

'Oh, at once,' shrugged Gregor. 'She had the same hungry smile Vordrozda used to get. And a dozen lesser cannibals, since. I can smell a power-hungry flatterer at a thousand meters, now.'

'I yield to my master in strategy,' Miles's armored hand made a genuflecting motion. 'Do you know you rescued yourself? She'd have taken you all the way home, even if I hadn't come along.'

'It was easy.' Gregor frowned. 'All that was required was that I have no personal honor at all.' Gregor's eyes, Miles realized, were deathly, devoid of triumph.

'You can't cheat an honest man,' said Miles uncertainly. 'Or Woman. What would you have done, if she'd got you home?'

'Depends.' Gregor stared into the middle distance. 'If she'd managed to get you killed, I suppose I'd have had her executed.' Gregor glanced back, as they stepped out of the tube. 'This is better. Maybe . . . maybe there's some way to give her a fair chance.'

Miles blinked. 'I'd be very careful about giving Cavilo any kind of a chance at all, if I were you. Even with tongs. Does she deserve it? Do you realize what's going on, how many she's betrayed?'

'In part. And yet . . .'

'Yet, what?'

Gregor's tone was so low as to be nearly inaudible. 'I wish she had been real.'

'. . . and that's the present tactical situation in the Hub and Vervain local space, as far as my information goes,' Miles concluded his presentation to Gregor. They had the Ariel's briefing room all to themselves; Arde Mayhew stood guard in the corridor. Miles had begun his speed-precis as soon as Elena reported that the hostile boarders had been successfully secured. He'd paused only to peel out of his ill-fitting armor and back into his Dendarii greys. The armor had been hastily borrowed from the same female soldier who'd lent him kit before, and the plumbing perforce left unconnected.

Miles froze the holovid display in the center of the table. Would that he could freeze real time and events the same way, at the touch of a keypad, that he might halt their terrible rush. 'You'll notice our biggest intelligence holes are in precise information about the Cetagandan forces. I'm hoping the Vervani will plug some of those gaps, if we can persuade them we're their allies, and the Rangers may yield more. One way or another.

'Now—sire—the decision lands on you. Fight or flight? I can detach the Ariel from the Dendarii right now, to run you home, with little loss to this hot and dirty wormhole fight. Firepower and armor, not speed, are going to be at a premium there. There's not much doubt which course my father and Illyan would vote for.'

'No.' Gregor stirred. 'On the other hand, they aren't here.'

'True. Alternately, going to the opposite extreme, do you wish to be commander-in-chief of this mess? In fact, as well as name?'

Gregor smiled softly. 'What a temptation. But don't you think there's a certain . . . hubris, in undertaking field leadership without a prior apprenticing in field followership?'

Miles reddened slightly. 'I—ahem!—face a similar dilemma. You've met the solution, his name's Ky Tung. We'll be conferring with him when we transfer back to the Triumph, later.' Miles paused. 'There are a couple of other things you might do for us. If you choose. Real things.'

Gregor rubbed his chin, watching Miles as he might a play. 'Trot them out. Lord Vorkosigan.'

'Legitimatize the Dendarii. Present them to the Vervani as the Barrayaran pickup force. I can only bluff. Your breath is law. You can conclude a legally binding defensive treaty between Barrayar and Vervain—Aslund too, if we can bring them in. Your greatest value is—sorry—diplomatic, not military. Go to Vervain Station, and deal with these people. And I do mean deal.'

'Safely behind the lines,' Gregor noted dryly.

'Only if we win, on the other side of the jump. If we lose, the lines will come to you.'

'I would I could be a soldier. Some lowly lieutenant, with only a handful of men to care for.'

'There's no moral difference between one and ten thousand, I assure you. You're just as thoroughly damned however many you get killed.'

'I want to be in on the fight. Probably the only chance I'll have in my life for real risk.'

'What, the risk you run every day from lunatic assassins isn't enough thrill for you? You want more?'

'Active. Not passive. Real service.'

'If—in your judgment—the best and most vital service you can give everyone else risking their lives here is