Miles Errant (12 page)

The engineer dropped back to the docking bay deck with a thump. "Yes, Admiral, I think Kaymer can take care of this for you all right. How many of these drop shuttles did you say you had?"

"Twelve." Fourteen minus two equalled twelve. Except in Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet mathematics, where fourteen minus two shuttles equalled two hundred and seven dead.
Stop that,
Miles told the calculating jeerer in the back of his head firmly.
It does no one any good now.
 

"Twelve." The engineer made a note. "What else?" He eyed the battered shuttle.

"My own engineering department will be handling the minor repairs, now that it looks as if we'll actually be holding still in one place for a while. I wanted to see to this ramp problem personally, but my second in command, Commodore Jesek, is chief engineer for my fleet, and he wants to talk to your jump tech people about re-calibrating some of our Necklin rods. I have a jump pilot with a head wound, but jumpset implant micro-neurosurgery is not one of Kaymer's specialties, I understand. Nor weapons systems?"

"No, indeed," the engineer agreed hastily. He touched a burn on the shuttle's scarred surface, perhaps fascinated by the violence it silently witnessed, for he added, "Kaymer Orbital mainly services merchant vessels. A mercenary fleet is something a bit unusual in this part of the wormhole nexus. Why did you come to us?"

"You were the lowest bidder."

"Oh—not Kaymer Corporation. Earth. I was wondering why you came to Earth? We're rather off the main trade routes, except for the tourists and historians. Er . . . peaceful."

He wonders if we have a contract here,
Miles realized. Here, on a planet of nine billion souls, whose combined military forces would make pocket change of the Dendarii's five thousand—right.
He thinks I'm out to make trouble on old mother Earth? Or that I'd break security and tell him even if I was. . . .
 "Peaceful, precisely," Miles said smoothly. "The Dendarii are in need of rest and refitting. A peaceful planet off the main nexus channels is just what the doctor ordered." He cringed inwardly, thinking of the doctor bill pending.

It hadn't been Dagoola. The rescue operation had been a tactical triumph, a military miracle almost. His own staff had assured him of this over and over, so perhaps he could begin to believe it true.

The break-out on Dagoola IV had been the third largest prisoner-of-war escape in history, Commodore Tung said. Military history being Tung's obsessive hobby, he ought to know. The Dendarii had snatched over ten thousand captured soldiers, an entire POW camp, from under the nose of the Cetagandan Empire, and made them into the nucleus of a new guerrilla army on a planet the Cetagandans had formerly counted on as an easy conquest. The costs had been so small, compared to the spectacular results—except for the individuals who'd paid for the triumph with their lives, for whom the price was something infinite, divided by zero.

It had been Dagoola's aftermath that had cost the Dendarii too much, the infuriated Cetagandans' vengeful pursuit. They had followed with ships till the Dendarii had slipped through political jurisdictions that Cetagandan military vessels could not traverse; hunted on with secret assassination and sabotage teams thereafter. Miles trusted they had outrun the assassination teams at last.

"Did you take all this fire at Dagoola IV?" the engineer went on, still intrigued by the shuttle.

"Dagoola was a covert operation," Miles said stiffly. "We don't discuss it."

"It made a big splash in the news a few months back," the Earthman assured him.

My head hurts. . . . 
Miles pressed his palm to his forehead, crossed his arms, and rested his chin in his hand, twitching a smile at the engineer. "Wonderful," he muttered. Commander Quinn winced.

"Is it true the Cetagandans have put a price on your life?" the engineer asked cheerfully.

Miles sighed. "Yes."

"Oh," said the engineer. "Ah. I'd thought that was just a story." He moved away just slightly, as if embarrassed, or as if the air of morbid violence clinging to the mercenary were a contagion that could somehow rub off on him, if he got too close. He just might be right. He cleared his throat. "Now, about the payment schedule for the design modifications—what had you in mind?"

"Cash on delivery," said Miles promptly, "acceptance to follow my engineering staff's inspection and approval of the completed work. Those were the terms of your bid, I believe."

"Ah—yes. Hm." The Earthman tore his attention away from the machinery itself; Miles felt he could see him switching from technical to business mode. "Those are the terms we normally offer our established corporate customers."

"The Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet is an established corporation. Registered out of Jackson's Whole."

"Mm, yes, but—how shall I put this—the most exotic risk our normal customers usually run is bankruptcy, for which we have assorted legal protections. Your mercenary fleet is, um . . ."

He's wondering how to collect payment from a corpse, Miles thought.

"—a lot riskier," the engineer finished candidly. He shrugged an apology.

An honest man, at least.

"We shall not raise our recorded bid. But I'm afraid we're going to have to ask for payment up front."

As long as we're down to trading insults . . . "But that gives us no protection against shoddy workmanship," said Miles.

"You can sue," remarked the engineer, "just like anybody else."

"I can blow your—" Miles's fingers drummed against his trouser seam where no holster was tied. Earth, old Earth, old civilized Earth. Commander Quinn, at his shoulder, touched his elbow in a fleeting gesture of restraint. He shot her a brief reassuring smile—no, he was not about to let himself get carried away by the—exotic—possibilities of Admiral Miles Naismith, Commanding, Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet. He was merely tired, his smile said. A slight widening of her brilliant brown eyes replied,
Bullshit, sir.
But that was another argument, which they would not continue here, out loud, in public.

"You can look," said the engineer neutrally, "for a better offer if you wish."

"We have looked," said Miles shortly.
As you well know. "
Right. Um . . . what about . . . half up front and half on delivery?"

The Earthman frowned, shook his head. "Kaymer does not pad its estimates, Admiral Naismith. And our cost overruns are among the lowest in the business. That's a point of pride."

The term
cost overrun
made Miles's teeth hurt, in light of Dagoola. How much did these people really know about Dagoola, anyway?

"If you're truly worried about our workmanship, the monies could be placed in an escrow account in the control of a neutral third party, such as a bank, until you accept delivery. Not a very satisfactory compromise from Kaymer's point of view, but—that's as far as I can go."

A neutral third
Earther
party, thought Miles. If he hadn't checked up on Kaymer's workmanship, he wouldn't be here. It was his own cash flow Miles was thinking about. Which was definitely not Kaymer's business.

"You having cash flow problems, Admiral?" inquired the Earther with interest. Miles fancied he could see the price rising in his eyes.

"Not at all," Miles lied blandly. Rumors afloat about the Dendarii's liquidity difficulties could sabotage a lot more than just this repair deal. "Very well. Cash up front to be held in escrow." If he wasn't to have the use of his funds, neither should Kaymer. Beside him, Elli Quinn drew air in through her teeth. The Earther engineer and the mercenary leader shook hands solemnly.

Following the sales engineer back toward his own office, Miles paused a moment by a viewport that framed a fine view of Earth from orbit. The engineer smiled and waited politely, even proudly, watching his gaze.

Earth. Old, romantic, historic Earth, the big blue marble itself. Miles had always expected to travel here someday, although not, surely, under these conditions.

Earth was still the largest, richest, most varied and populous planet in scattered humanity's entire worm-hole nexus of explored space. Its dearth of good exit points in solar local space and governmental disunity left it militarily and strategically minor from the greater galactic point of view. But Earth still reigned, if it did not rule, culturally supreme. More war-scarred than Barrayar, as technically advanced as Beta Colony, the end-point of all pilgrimages both religious and secular—in light of which, major embassies from every world that could afford one were collected here. Including, Miles reflected, nibbling gently on the side of his index finger, the Cetagandan. Admiral Naismith must use all means to avoid them.

"Sir?" Elli Quinn interrupted his meditations. He smiled briefly up at her sculptured face, the most beautiful his money had been able to buy after the plasma burn and yet, thanks to the genius of the surgeons, still unmistakably Elli. Would that every combat casualty taken in his service could be so redeemed. "Commodore Tung is on the comconsole for you," she went on.

His smile sagged. What now? He abandoned the view and marched off after her to take over the sales engineer's office with a polite, relentless, "Will you excuse us, please?"

His Eurasian third officer's bland, broad face formed above the vid plate.

"Yes, Ky?"

Ky Tung, already out of uniform and into civilian gear, gave him a brief nod in lieu of a salute. "I've just finished making arrangements at the rehab center for our nine severely-wounded. Prognoses are good, for the most part. And they think they will be able to retrieve four of the eight frozen dead, maybe five if they're lucky. The surgeons here even think they'll be able to repair Demmi's jumpset, once the neural tissue itself has healed. For a price, of course . . ." Tung named the price in GSA Federal credits; Miles mentally converted it to Barrayaran Imperial marks, and made a small squeaking noise.

Tung grinned dry appreciation. "Yeah. Unless you want to give up on that repair. It's equal to all the rest put together."

Miles shook his head, grimacing. "There are a number of people in the universe I'd be willing to double-cross, but my own wounded aren't among 'em."

"Thank you," said Tung, "I agree. Now, I'm just about ready to leave this place. Last thing I have to do is sign a chit taking personal responsibility for the bill. Are you quite sure you're going to be able to collect the pay owed us for the Dagoola operation here?"

"I'm on my way to do that next," Miles promised. "Go ahead and sign, I'll make it right."

"Very good, sir," said Tung. "Am I released for my home leave after that?"

Tung the Earth man, the only Earther Miles had ever met—which probably accounted for the unconscious favorable feelings he had about this place, Miles reflected. "How much time off do we owe you by now, Ky, about a year and a half?"
With pay, alas,
a small voice added in his mind, and was suppressed as unworthy. "You can take all you want."

"Thank you." Tung's face softened. "I just talked to my daughter. I have a brand-new grandson!"

"Congratulations," said Miles. "Your first?"

"Yes."

"Go on, then. If anything comes up, we'll take care of it. You're only indispensable in combat, eh? Uh . . . where will you be?"

"My sister's home. Brazil. I have about four hundred cousins there."

"Brazil, right. All right." Where the devil was Brazil? "Have a good time."

"I shall." Tung's departing semi-salute was distinctly breezy. His face faded from the vid.

"Damn," Miles sighed, "I'm sorry to lose him even to a leave. Well, he deserves it."

Elli leaned over the back of his comconsole chair. Her breath barely stirred his dark hair, his dark thoughts. "May I suggest, Miles, that he's not the only senior officer who could use some time off? Even you need to dump stress sometimes. And you were wounded too."

"Wounded?" Tension clamped Miles's jaw. "Oh, the bones. Broken bones don't count. I've had the damned brittle bones all my life. I just have to learn to resist the temptation to play field officer. The place for my ass is in a nice padded tactics-room chair, not on the line. If I'd known in advance that Dagoola was going to get so—physical, I'd have sent somebody else in as the fake POW. Anyway, there you are. I had my leave in sickbay."

"And then spent a month wandering around like a cryo-corpse who'd been warmed up in the microwave. When you walked into a room it was like a visit from the Undead."

"I ran the Dagoola rig on pure hysteria. You can't be up that long and not pay for it after with a little down. At least, I can't."

"My impression was there was more to it than that."

He whirled the chair around to face her with a snarl. "Will you back off! Yes, we lost some good people. I don't like losing good people. I cry real tears—in private, if you don't mind!"

She recoiled, her face falling. He softened his voice, deeply ashamed of his outburst. "Sorry, Elli. I know I've been edgy. The death of that poor POW who fell from the shuttle shook me more than . . . more than I should have let it. I can't seem to . . ."

"I was out of line, sir."

The "sir" was like a needle through some voodoo doll she held of him. Miles winced. "Not at all."

Why, why, why, of all the idiotic things he'd done as Admiral Naismith, had he ever established as explicit policy not to seek physical intimacy with anyone in his own organization? It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Tung had approved. Tung was a grandfather, for God's sake; his gonads had probably withered years ago. Miles remembered how he had deflected the first pass Elli had ever made at him. "A good officer doesn't go shopping in the company store," he'd explained gently. Why hadn't she belted him in the jaw for that fatuousness? She had absorbed the unintended insult without comment, and never tried again. Had she ever realized he'd meant that to apply to himself, not her?

When he was with the fleet for extended periods, he usually tried to send her on detached duties, from which she invariably returned with superb results. She had headed the advance team to Earth, and had Kaymer and most of their other suppliers all lined up by the time the Dendarii fleet made orbit. A good officer; after Tung, probably his best. What would he not give to dive into that lithe body and lose himself now? Too late. He'd lost his option.