Brothers in Arms (27 page)

"You two are more alike than either of you realize, I think," Miles murmured. "So what's your proposition, Ser Galen? Why have you called us all here?"

Galen's right hand went to his jacket, then slowed. He smiled, tilted his head as if asking permission, disarmingly.
Here comes the second stunner,
thought Miles.
Coyly, pretending to the last minute that it's not really a weapon.
Miles didn't flinch, but an involuntary calculation did flash through his mind as to just how fast he could vault the railing, and how far he could swim underwater holding his breath in a strong surf. Wearing boots. Galeni, cool as ever, didn't move either.

Even when the weapon Ser Galen abruptly displayed turned out to be a lethal nerve disruptor.

"Some stand-offs," said Galen, "are more equal than others." His smile tightened to a parody of itself. "Pick up those stunners," he added to the clone, who stooped and gathered them up and stuck them in his belt.

"Now what are you going to do with that?" said Miles lightly, trying not to let his eye be hypnotized, nor his mind paralyzed, by the silver bell-muzzle. Shiny beads, bells and whistles.

"Kill you," Galen explained. His eyes flicked to his son, and away, toward and away; he focused on Miles as if to steady his high resolve.

So why are you still talking instead of firing?
Miles didn't speak that thought aloud, lest Galen be struck by its good sense.
Keep him talking, he wants to say more, is driven to say more.
"Why? I don't see how that will serve Komarr at this late hour, except maybe to relieve your feelings. Mere revenge?"

"Nothing mere about it. Complete. My Miles will walk out of here as the only one."

"Oh, come on!" Miles didn't have to call on his acting ability to lend outrage to his tone; it came quite naturally. "You're not still stuck on the bloody substitution plot! Barrayaran Security is all warned, they'll spot you at once now. Can't be done." He glanced at the clone. "You going to let him run you head first into a flash-disposer? You're dead meat the moment you present yourself. It's useless. And it's not
necessary."

The clone looked distinctly uneasy, but jerked up his chin and managed a proud smile. "I'm not going to be Lord Vorkosigan. I'm going to be Admiral Naismith. I did it once, so I know I can. Your Dendarii are going to give us a ride out of here—and a new power base."

"Ngh!" Miles made a hair-tearing gesture. "D'you think I'd have walked in here if that were even remotely possible? The Dendarii are warned too. Every patrol leader out there—and you'd better believe I have patrols out there—is carrying a med scanner. First order you give, you'll be scanned. If they find leg bone where my synthetics should be, they'll blow your head off. End plot."

"But my leg bones
are
synthetics," said the clone in a puzzled tone.

Miles froze. "What? You told me your bones didn't break—"

Galen swiveled his head round at the clone. "When did you tell him that?"

"They don't," the clone answered Miles. "But after yours were replaced, so were mine. Otherwise the first cursory med scan I got would have given it all away."

"But you still don't have the pattern of old breaks in your other bones . . . ?"

"No, but that would take a much closer scan. And once the three are eliminated I should be able to avoid that. I'll study your logs—"

"The three what?"

"The three Dendarii who know you are Vorkosigan."

"Your pretty bodyguard, and the other couple," Galen explained vindictively to Miles's look of horror. "I'm sorry you didn't bring her. Now we shall have to hunt her down."

Was that a fleeting queasy look on Mark's face? Galen caught it too, and frowned faintly.

"You still couldn't bring it off," argued Miles. "There are five thousand Dendarii. I know hundreds of them by name, on sight. We've been in combat together. I know things about them their own mothers don't, not in any log. And they've seen me under every kind of stress. You wouldn't even know the right jokes to make. And even if you succeed for a time, become Admiral Naismith as you once planned to become Emperor—where is Mark then? Maybe Mark doesn't want to be a space mercenary. Maybe be wants to be a, a textile designer. Or a doctor—"

"Oh," breathed the clone, with a glance down his twisted body,
"not
a doctor . . ."

"—or a holovid programmer, or a star pilot, or an engineer. Or very far away from
him."
Miles jerked his head at Galen; for a moment the clone's eyes filled with a passionate longing, as quickly masked. "How will you ever find out?"

"It's true," said Galen, looking at the clone through suddenly narrowed eyes, "you must pass for an experienced soldier. And you've never killed."

The clone shifted uneasily, looking sideways, at his mentor.

Galen's voice had softened. "You must learn to kill if you expect to survive."

"No, you don't," Miles put in. "Most people go through their whole lives without killing anybody. False argument."

The nerve disruptor's aim steadied on Miles. "You talk too much." Galen's eyes fell one last time on his silent, witnessing son, who raised his chin in defiance, then flicked away as if the sight burned. "It's time to go."

Galen, face hardening decisively, turned to the clone. "Here." He handed him the nerve disruptor. "It's time to complete your education. Shoot them, and let's go."

"What about Ivan?" asked Captain Galeni softly.

"I have as little use for Vorkosigan's nephew as I have for his son," said Galen. "They can skip down to hell hand in hand." His head turned to the clone and he added, "Begin!"

Mark swallowed, and raised the weapon in a two-handed firing stance. "But—what about the credit chit?"

"There is no credit chit. Can't you spot a lie when you hear it, fool?"

Miles raised his wrist comm, and spoke distinctly into it. "Elli, do you have all this?"

"Recorded and transmitted to Captain Thorne in I.Q.," Quinn's voice came back cheerily, thin in the damp air. "D'you want company yet?"

"Not yet." He let his hand fall, stood straight, met Galen's furious eyes and clenched teeth: "As I said. End plot. Let's discuss alternatives."

Mark had lowered the nerve disruptor, his face dismayed.

"Alternatives? Revenge will do!" hissed Galen. "Fire!"

"But—" said the clone, agitated.

"As of this moment, you're a free man." Miles spoke low and fast. "He bought and paid for you, but he doesn't own you. But if you kill for him, he'll own you forever. Forever and ever."

Not necessarily,
spoke Galeni's silent quirk of the lips, but he did not interfere with Miles's pitch.

"You must kill your enemies," snarled Galen.

Mark's hand and aim sagged, his mouth opening in protest.

"Now, dammit!" yelled Galen, and made to grab back the nerve disruptor.

Galeni stepped in front of Miles. Miles scrabbled in his jacket for his second stunner. The nerve disruptor crackled. Miles drew, too late, too goddamn late—Captain Galeni gasped—
he's dead for my slowness, my one-last-chance stupidity—
face harrowed, mouth open in a silent yell, Miles sprang from behind Galeni and aimed his stunner—

To see Galen crumple, convulsing, back arching in a bone-cracking twist, face writhing—and slump in death.

"Kill your enemies," breathed Mark, his face white as paper. "Right. Ah!" he added, raising the weapon again as Miles started forward, "Stop right there!"

A hiss at Miles's feet—he glanced down to see a thin layer of foam wash past his boots, lose momentum, and recede. In a moment, another. The tide was rising over the ledge. The tide was rising—

"Where's Ivan?" Miles demanded, his hand clenching on his stunner.

"If you fire that you'll never know," said Mark.

His eye hurried nervously, from Miles to Galeni, from Galen's body at his feet to the weapon in his own hand, as if they all added up to some impossibly incorrect sum. His breath was shallow and panicky, his knuckles, wrapped around the nerve disruptor, bone-pale. Galeni was standing very, very still, head cocked, looking down at what lay there, or inward; he did not seem to be conscious of the weapon or its wielder at all.

"Fine," said Miles. "You help us and we'll help you. Take us to Ivan."

Mark backed toward the wall, not lowering the nerve disruptor. "I don't believe you."

"Where are you going to run to? You can't go back to the Komarrans. There's a Barayaran hit squad with murder on its collective mind breathing down your neck. You can't go to the local authorities for protection; you have a body to explain. I'm your only chance."

Mark looked at the body, at the nerve disruptor, at Miles.

The soft whirr of a rappel spool unwinding was barely audible over the hiss of the sea foam underfoot. Miles glanced up. Quinn was flying down in one long swoop, like a falcon stooping, weapon in one hand and rappeling spool controlled by the other.

Mark kicked open the hatch and stumbled backwards into it. "You hunt for Ivan. He's not far. I don't have a body to explain—
you
do. The murder weapon has your fingerprints on it!" He flung down the nerve disruptor and slammed the hatch closed.

Miles leapt for the door, fingers scrabbling, but it was already sealed—he came close to snapping some more finger bones. The slide and clank of a locking mechanism designed to defy the force of the sea itself came muffled through the hatch. Miles hissed through his teeth.

"Should I blow it open?" gasped Quinn, landing.

"Y— good God, no!" The discoloration on the wall marking high water was a good two meters higher than the top of the hatch. "We might drown London. Try to get it open without damaging it. Captain Galeni!" Miles turned. Galeni had not moved. "You in shock?"

"Hm? No . . . no, I don't think so." Galeni came out of himself with an effort. He added in a strangely calm, reflective tone, "Later, perhaps."

Quinn was bent to the hatchway, pulling devices from her pockets and slapping them to the vertical surface, checking readouts. "Electromechanical with a manual override . . . if I use a magnetic . . ."

Miles reached around and pulled the rappeling harness off Quinn. "Go up," he said to Galeni, "and see if you can find another entrance on the other side. We've got to catch that little sucker!"

Galeni nodded and hooked up the rappeling harness.

Miles held out stunner and boot knife. "Want a weapon?" Mark had taken off with all the spare stunners still stuck in his belt.

"Stunner's useless," Galeni noted. "You'd better keep the knife. If I catch up with him I'll use my bare hands."

With pleasure,
Miles added for him silently. He nodded. They had both been through Barrayaran basic unarmed combat school. Three fourths of the moves were barred to Miles in a real fight at full force due to the secret weakness of his bones; the same was not true of Galeni. Galeni ascended into the night air, bounding up the wall on the almost invisible thread as readily as a spider.

"Got it!" cried Quinn. The thick hatch swung wide on a deep, dark hole.

Miles yanked his handlight out of his belt and hopped through. He glanced back at Galen's gray-faced body, lapped by foam, released from obsession and pain. There was no mistaking the stillness of death for the stillness of sleep or anything else; it was the absolute. The nerve-disruptor beam must have hit his head square on. Quinn dragged the hatch shut again behind them, pausing to stuff equipment back into her pockets as the door's mechanism twinkled and beeped, slid and clanked, rendering the lower Thames watershed safe again.

They both scrambled up the corridor. A mere five meters farther on they came to their first check, a T-intersection. This main corridor was lighted, and curved away out of sight in both directions.

"You go left, I'll go right," said Miles.

"You shouldn't be alone," Quinn objected.

"Maybe I should be twins, eh? Go, dammit!"

Quinn threw up her hands in exasperation and ran.

Miles sprinted in the other direction. His footsteps echoed eerily in the corridor, deep in the synthacrete mountain. He paused a moment, listened; heard only Quinn's light fading scuff. He ran on, past hundreds of meters of blank synthacrete, past dark and silent pumping stations, past pumping stations lit up and humming quietly. He was just wondering whether he could have missed an exit—an overhead access port?—when he spotted an object on the corridor floor. One of the stunners, fallen from Mark's belt as he ran in panic. Miles swooped it up with a quick
ah-ha!
of bared teeth, and holstered it as he ran on.

He keyed open his wrist comm. "Quinn?" The corridor curved suddenly into a sort of stark foyer with lift tube. He must be under one of the watchtowers. Beware Authorized Personnel about. "Quinn?"

He stepped into the lift tube and rose. Oh, God, which level had Mark got off at? The third floor he passed opened out onto a glass-walled, lobby-looking area, with doors and the night beyond. Clearly an exit. Miles swung out of the lift tube.

A total stranger, wearing civilian jacket and pants, whirled at the sound of his footstep and dropped to one knee. The silver flash of a parabolic mirror twinkled in his raised hands, a nerve-disruptor muzzle. "There he is!" the man cried, and fired.

Miles recoiled back into the lift tube so fast he rebounded off the far wall. He grabbed for the safety ladder at the side of the tube and began slapping up the rungs faster than the anti-grav field could lift him. He wriggled his facial muscles, shot with pins and needles from the nimbus of the disruptor beam. The man's shoes, Miles realized, gleaming out from the bottom of his trousers, had been Barrayaran regulation Service boots. "Quinn!" he yelped into his wrist comm again.

The next level up opened onto a corridor without gunmen in it. The first three doors Miles tried were locked. The fourth swished open onto a brightly lit office, apparently deserted. On a quick jog around it Miles's eye was caught by a slight movement in the shadows under a console. He bent down to face two women in blue Tidal Authority tech coveralls cowering beneath. One squeaked and covered her eyes; the second hugged her and glared defiantly at Miles.