Young Miles (25 page)

The personnel shortage was not, unfortunately, amenable to like treatment. Double shifts that became triple shifts tended to end in loss of efficiency from exhaustion. Miles took a stab at another approach.

Two bottles of Felician wine, quality unknown. A bottle of Tau Cetan liqueur, pale orange, not green, fortunately. Two nylon and plastic folding camp stools, a small and flimsy plastic table. A half-dozen silvery strip-packs of Felician delicacies—Miles hoped they were delicacies—exact composition mysterious. The last gleanings of non-rotted fresh fruit from the refinery's damaged hydroponics section. It ought to be enough. Miles loaded Bothari's arms with the looted picnic, gathered up the overflow, and marched off toward the prison section.

Mayhew raised an eyebrow as they passed him in a corridor. "Where are you going with all that?"

"Courting, Arde." Miles grinned. "Courting."

The Pelians had left a makeshift brig, a storage area hastily vented, plumbed, and partitioned into a series of tiny, bleak metal boxes. Miles would have felt more guilty about locking human beings in them if it had not been a case of turn-about.

They surprised Captain Tung hanging by one hand from the overhead light fixture and working, as yet vainly, on levering its cover apart with a flattened snap torn from his uniform jacket.

"Good afternoon, Captain," Miles addressed the dangling ankles with sunny good cheer. Tung scowled down upon him, estimation in his eyes; measured Bothari, found the sum of the calculation not in his favor, and dropped to the floor with a grunt. The guard locked the door again behind them.

"What were you going to do with it if you got it apart?" Miles asked curiously, looking up.

Tung swore at him, like a man spitting, then clamped into recalcitrant silence. Bothari set up the table and stools, dumped out the groceries, and leaned against the wall by the door, skeptical. Miles sat down and opened a bottle of wine. Tung remained standing.

"Do join me, Captain," Miles invited cordially. "I know you haven't had supper yet. I was hoping we might have a little chat."

"I am Ky Tung, Captain, Oseran Free Mercenary Fleet. I am a citizen of the People's Democracy of Greater South America, Earth; my social duty number is T275-389-42-1535-1742. This 'chat' is over." Tung's lips flattened together in a granite slit.

"This is not an interrogation," Miles amplified, "which would be far more efficiently conducted by the medical staff anyway. See, I'll even give you some information." He rose, and bowed formally. "Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Miles Naismith." He gestured at the other stool. "Do, please, sit down. I spend enough time with a crick in my neck."

Tung hesitated, but finally sat, compromising by making it on the edge of his seat.

Miles poured wine, and took a sip. He groped for one of his grandfather's wine connoisseur phrases as a conversation opener, but the only one that sprang to his memory was "thin as piss," which didn't seem exactly inviting. He wiped the lip of the plastic cup on his sleeve, instead, and pushed it toward Tung. "Observe. No poison, no drugs."

Tung folded his arms. "The oldest trick in the book. You take the antidote before you come in."

"Oh," said Miles. "Yes, I suppose I could have done that." He shook a packet of rather rubbery protein cubes out between them, and eyed them almost as dubiously as Tung did. "Ah. Meat." He popped one in his mouth and chewed industriously. "Go ahead, ask me anything," he added around a mouthful.

Tung struggled with his resolve, then blurted, "My troops. How are they?"

Miles promptly detailed a list, by full name, of the dead, and of the wounded and their current medical status. "The rest are under lock and key, as you are; excuse me from mapping their exact locations for you—just in case you can do more with that light than I think you can."

Tung sighed sadness and relief, and absently helped himself to a protein cube.

"Sorry things got so messy," Miles apologized. "I realize how it must burn you to have your opponent blunder to victory. I'd have preferred something neater and more tactical myself, like Komarr, but I had to take the situation as I found it."

Tung snorted. "Who wouldn't? Who do you think you are? Lord Vorkosigan?"

Miles inhaled a lungful of wine. Bothari abandoned the wall to pound him, not very helpfully, on the back, and glare suspiciously at Tung. But by the time Miles had regained his breath he had regained his balance. He mopped his lips.

"I see. You mean Admiral Aral Vorkosigan of Barrayar. You, ah, confused me a bit—he's Count Vorkosigan, now."

"Oh, yeah? Still alive, is he?" remarked Tung, interested.

"Very much so."

"Have you ever read his book on Komarr?"

"Book? Oh, the Komarr report. Yes, I'd heard it had been picked up by a couple of military schools, off-planet—off Barrayar, that is."

"I've read it eleven times," Tung said proudly. "Most succinct military memoir I've ever seen. The most complex strategy laid out logically as a wiring diagram—politics, economics, and all—I swear the man's mind must operate in five dimensions. And yet I find most people haven't heard of it. It should be required reading—I test all my junior officers on it."

"Well, I've heard him say that war is the failure of politics—I guess they've always been a part of his strategic thinking."

"Sure, when you get to that level—" Tung's ears pricked. "Heard? I didn't think he'd done any interviews—do you happen to remember where and when you saw it? Can copies be had?"

"Ah . . ." Miles trod a thin line. "It was a personal conversation."

"You've
met
him?"

Miles had the unnerving sensation of suddenly acquiring half a meter of height in Tung's eyes. "Well, yes," he admitted cautiously.

"Do you know—has he written anything like the Komarr Report about the Escobar invasion?" Tung asked eagerly. "I've always felt it should be a companion volume—defensive strategy next to offensive—get the other half of his thinking. Like Sri Simka's two volumes on Walshea and Skya IV."

Miles placed Tung at last; a military history nut. He knew the type very, very well. He suppressed an exhilarated grin.

"I don't think so. Escobar was a defeat, after all. He never talks about it much—I understand. Maybe a touch of vanity there."

"Mm," allowed Tung. "It was an amazing book, though. Everything that seemed so totally chaotic at the time revealed this complete inner skeleton—of course, it always seems chaotic when you're losing."

It was Miles's turn to prick his ears. "At the time? Were you at Komarr?"

"Yes, I was a junior lieutenant in the Selby Fleet, that Komarr hired—what an experience. Twenty-three years ago, now. Seemed like every natural weak point in mercenary-employer relations got blown up in our faces—and that was before the first shot was even fired. Vorkosigan's intelligence pathfinders at work, we learned later."

Miles made encouraging noises, and proceeded to pump this unexpected spring of reminiscence for all it was worth. Pieces of fruit became planets and satellites; variously shaped protein bits became cruisers, couriers, smart bombs and troop carriers. Defeated ships were eaten. The second bottle of wine introduced other well-known mercenary battles. Miles frankly hung on Tung's words, self-consciousness forgotten.

Tung leaned back at last with a contented sigh, full of food and wine and emptied of stories. Miles, knowing his own capacity, had been nursing his own wine to the limits of politeness. He swirled the last of it around in the bottom of his cup, and essayed a cautious probe.

"It seems a great waste for an officer of your experience to sit out a good war like this, locked in a box."

Tung smiled. "I have no intention of staying in this box."

"Ah—yes. But there may be more than one way to get out of it, don't you see. Now, the Dendarii Mercenaries are an expanding organization. There's a lot of room for talent at the top."

Tung's smiled soured. "You took my ship."

"I took Captain Auson's ship, too. Ask him if he's unhappy about it."

"Nice try—ah—Mr. Naismith. But I have a contract. A fact that, unlike some, I remember. A mercenary who can't honor his contract when it's rough as well as when it's smooth is a thug, not a soldier."

Miles fairly swooned with unrequited love. "I cannot fault you for that, sir."

Tung eyed him with amused tolerance. "Now, regardless of what that ass Auson seems to think, I have you pegged as a hotshot junior officer in over his head—and sinking fast. Seems to me it's you, not I, who's going to be looking for a new job soon. You seem to have at least an average grasp of tactics—and you
have
read Vorkosigan on Komarr—but any officer who can get Auson and Thorne hitched together to plow a straight line shows a genius for personnel. If you get out of this alive, come see me—I may be able to find something on the exec side for you."

Miles sat looking at his prisoner in openmouthed appreciation of a chutzpah worthy of his own. Actually, it sounded pretty good. He sighed regret. "You honor me, Captain Tung. But I'm afraid I too have a contract."

"Pigwash."

"Beg pardon?"

"If you have a contract with Felice, it beats me where you got it. I doubt Daum was authorized to make any such agreement. The Felicians are as cheap as their counterparts the Pelians. We could have ended this war six months ago if the Pelians had been willing to pay the piper. But no—they chose to 'economize' and only buy a blockade, and a few installations like this one—and for that, they act like they're doing us a favor. Peh!" Frustration edged his voice with disgust.

"I didn't say my contract was with Felice," said Miles mildly. Tung's eyes narrowed in puzzlement; good. The man's evaluations were entirely too close to the truth for comfort.

"Well, keep your tail down, son," Tung advised. "In the long run more mercenaries have had their asses shot off by their contractors than by their enemies."

Miles took his leave courteously; Tung ushered him out with the panache of a genial host.

"Is there anything else you need?" asked Miles.

"A screwdriver," said Tung promptly.

Miles shook his head and smiled regretfully as the door was closed on the Eurasian. "Damned if I'm not tempted to send him one," said Miles to Bothari. "I'm dying to see what he thinks he can do with that light."

"Just what did all that accomplish?" asked Bothari. "He burned up your time with ancient history and didn't give away anything."

Miles smiled. "Nothing unimportant."

The Pelians attacked from the ecliptic, opposite the sun, taking advantage of the scattered masses of the asteroid belt for what cover they provided. They came decelerating, telegraphing their intention to capture, not destroy; and they came alone, without their Oseran employees.

Miles laughed delightedly under his breath as he limped through the scramble of men and equipment in the refinery docking station corridors. The Pelians could scarcely be following his pet scenario more closely if he'd given them their orders himself. There had been some argument when he'd insisted on placing his farthest outlying pickets and his major weapons on the belt and not the planet side of the refinery. But it was inevitable. Barring subterfuge, a tactic currently exhausted, it was the Pelians' only hope of gaining a measure of surprise. A week ago, it would have done them some good.

Miles dodged some of his galloping troops hurrying to their posts. Pray God he would never find himself on foot in a retreat. He might as well volunteer for the rear guard in the first place, and save being trampled by his own side as well as by the enemy.

He dashed through the flex tube into the
Triumph.
The waiting soldier clanged the lock shut behind him, and hastily blew off the tube seals. As he'd guessed, he was the last aboard. He made his way to the tactics room as the ship maneuvered free of the refinery.

The
Triumph's
tactics room was noticeably larger than the
Ariel's,
and quite as sleek. Miles quailed at the number of empty padded swivel chairs. A scant half of Auson's old crew, even augmented by a few volunteer refinery techs, made scarcely a skeleton crew for the new ship.

Holograph displays were up and working in all their bright confusion. Auson looked up from trying to man two stations at once with relief in his eyes.

"Glad you made it, my lord."

Miles slid into a station chair. "Me too. But please—just 'Mr. Naismith.' No 'my lord.'"

Auson looked puzzled. "The others all call you that."

"Yes, but, um—it's not just a courtesy. It denotes a specific legal relationship. You wouldn't call me 'my husband' even if you heard my wife do so, eh? So what have we got out here?"

"Looks like maybe ten little ships—all Pelian local stuff." Auson studied his readouts, worry creasing his broad face. "I don't know where our guys are. This sort of thing should be just their style."

Miles correctly interpreted "our guys" to mean Auson's former comrades, the Oserans. The slip of tongue did not disturb him; Auson was committed, now. Miles glanced sideways at him, and thought he knew exactly why the Pelians hadn't brought their hired guns. For all the Pelians knew to the contrary, an Oseran ship had turned on them. Miles's eyes glittered at the thought of the dismay and distrust that must now be reverberating through the Pelian high command.

Their ship dove in a high arc toward their attackers. Miles keyed Nav and Com.

"You all right, Arde?"

"For flying blind, deaf, dumb, and paralyzed, not bad," Mayhew said. "Manual piloting is a pain. It's like the machine is operating me. It feels awful."

"Keep up the good work," Miles said cheerfully. "Remember, we're more interested in herding them into range of our stationary weapons than in knocking them off ourselves."

Miles sat back and regarded the ever-changing displays. "I don't think they quite realize how much ordnance Daum brought. They're just repeating the same tactics the Felician officers reported they used the last time. Of course, it worked once. . . ."