silent witness.
Auson's medtech borrowed Tung's surgeon for the delicate placement of plastiskin that was to serve Elli Quinn for a face until she could be sent—how? when?—to some medical facility with proper regenerative biotech.
'You don't have to watch this,' Miles murmured to Elena, as he stood discreetly by to observe the procedure.
Elena shook her head. 'I want to.'
'Why?'
'Why do you?'
'I've never seen it. Anyway, it was my bill she paid. It's my duty, as her commander.'
'Well, then, it's mine, too. I worked with her all week.'
The medtech unwrapped the temporary dressings. Skin, nose, ears, lips gone. Subcutaneous fat boiled away. Eyes glazed white and burst, scalp burned off—she tried to speak, a clotted mumble. Miles reminded himself that her pain nerves had been blocked. He turned his back abruptly, hand sneaking to his lips, and swallowed hard.
'I guess we don't have to stay. We're not really contributing anything.' He glanced up at Elena's profile, which was pale but steady. 'How long are you going to watch?' he whispered. And silently, to himself, for God's sake, it might have been you, Elena …
'Until they're done,' she murmured back. 'Until I don't feel her pain anymore when I look. Until I'm hardened—like a real soldier—like my father. If I can block it from a friend, certainly I ought to be able to block it from the enemy—'
Miles shook his head in instinctive negation. 'Look, can we continue this in the corridor?'
She frowned, but then took in his face, pursed her lips, and followed him without further argument. In the corridor he leaned against the wall, swallowing saliva and breathing deeply.
'Should I fetch a basin?'
'No. I'll be all right in a minute.' I hope … The minute passed without his disgracing himself. 'Women shouldn't be in combat,' he managed finally.
'Why not?' said Elena. 'Why is that,' she jerked her head toward the infirmary, 'any more horrible for a woman than a man?'
'I don't know,' Miles groped. 'Your father once said that if a woman puts on a uniform she's asking for it, and you should never hesitate to fire—odd streak of egalitarianism, coming from him. But all my instincts are to throw my cloak across her puddle or something, not blow her head off. It throws me off.'
'The honor goes with the risk,' argued Elena. 'Deny the risk and you deny the honor. I always thought you were the one Barrayaran male I knew who'd allow that a woman might have an honor that wasn't parked between her legs.'
Miles floundered. 'A soldier's honor is to do his patriotic duty, sure—'
'Or hers!'
'Or hers, all right—but all this isn't serving the Emperor! We're here for Tav Calhoun's ten percent profit margin. Or anyway, we were . . .'
He gathered himself, to continue his tour, then paused. 'What you said in there—about hardening yourself—'
She raised her chin. 'Yes?'
'My mother was a real soldier, too. And I don't think she ever failed to feel another's pain. Not even her enemy's.'
They were both silent for long after that.
The officers' meeting to plan for the counterattack was not so difficult as Miles had feared. They took over a conference chamber that had belonged to the refinery's senior management; the breathtaking panorama out the plexiports swept the entire installation. Miles growled, and sat with his back to it.
He quickly slid into the role of referee, controlling the flow of ideas while concealing his own dearth of hard factual information. He folded his arms, and said 'Um,' and 'Hm,' but only very occasionally 'God help us,' because it caused Elena to choke. Thorne and Auson, Daum and Jesek, and the three freed Felician junior officers who had not been brain-drained did the rest, although Miles found he had to steer them gently away from ideas too much like those just demonstrated not to work for the Pelians.
'It would help a great deal, Major Daum, if you could reach your command,' Miles wound up the session, thinking, How can you have misplaced an entire country, for God's sake? 'As a last resort, perhaps a volunteer in one of those station shuttles could sneak on down to the planet and tell them we're here, eh?'
'We'll keep trying, sir,' Daum promised.
Some enthusiastic soul had found quarters for Miles in the most luxurious section of the refinery, previously reserved, like the elegant conference chamber, for senior management. Unfortunately, the housekeeping services had been rather interrupted in the past few weeks. Miles picked his way among personal artifacts from the last Pelian to camp in the executive suite, overlaying yet another strata from the Felician he had evicted in his turn. Strewn clothing, empty ration wrappings, data discs, half-empty bottles, all well stirred by the flipflops in the artificial gravity during the attack. The data discs, when examined, proved all light entertainment. No secret documents, no brilliant intelligence coups. .
Miles could have sworn the variegated fuzzy patches growing on the bathroom walls moved, when he was not looking directly at them. Perhaps it was an effect of fatigue. He was careful not to touch them when he showered. He set the lights to maximum UV when he was done, and sealed the door, reminding himself sternly that he had not demanded the Sergeant's nocturnal company on the grounds that there were Things in his closet since he was four. Aching for sleep, he crawled into clean underwear brought with him.
Bed was a null-gee bubble, warmed womb-like by infra-red. Null-gee sex, Miles had heard, was one of the high points of space travel. He'd never had a chance to try it, personally. Ten minutes of attempting to relax in the bubble convinced him he never would, either, although when heated the smells and stains that permeated the chamber suggested that a minimum of three people had tried it there before him recently. He crawled out nastily and sat on the floor until his stomach stopped trying to turn itself inside out. So much for the spoils of victory.
There was a splendid view out the plexiports of the RG 132's corrugated, gaping hull. Occasionally stress would release in some tortured flake of metal, and it would snap off spontaneously to stir the smattering of other wrinkled bits, clinging to the ship like dandruff. Miles stared at it for a time, then decided to go see if Sergeant Bothari still had that flask of scotch.
The corridor outside his executive suite ended in an observation deck, a crystal and chrome shell arched by the sweep of hard-edged stars in their powdered millions. Furthermore, it faced away from the refinery. Attracted, Miles wandered toward it.
Elena's voice, raised in a wordless cry, shot him out of somnolence into an adrenalin rush. It came from the observation deck; Miles broke into his uneven run.
He swarmed up the catwalk and spun one-handed around a gleaming upright. The dimmed observation deck was upholstered in royal-blue velvet that glowed in the starlight. Liquid-filled settees and benches in odd curving shapes seemed to invite the indolent recliner. Baz Jesek was spread-eagled backward over one, with Sergeant Bothari atop him.
The Sergeant's knees ground into the engineer's stomach and groin, and the great hands knotted about Baz's neck, twisting. Baz's face was maroon, his frantic words strangled inchoate. Elena, her tunic undone, galloped around the pair, hands clenching and unclenching in despair of daring to physically oppose Bothari. 'No, Father! No!' she cried.
Had Bothari caught the engineer trying to attack her? Hot jealous rage shook Miles, dashed immediately by cold reason. Elena, of all women, was capable of defending herself; the Sergeant's paranoias had seen to that. His jealousy went ice green. He could let Bothari kill Baz …
Elena saw him. 'Miles—my lord! Stop him!'
Miles approached them. 'Get off him, Sergeant,' he ordered. Bothari, his face yellow with rage, glanced sideways, then back to his victim. His hands did not slacken.
Miles knelt and laid his hand lightly on the corded muscles of Bothari's arm. He had the sick feeling it was the most dangerous thing he had done in his life. He dropped his voice to a whisper. 'Must I give my orders twice,
