MemoryMemory Miles returned
to consciousness with his eyes still closed. His brain seemed to
smolder with the confused embers of some fiery dream, formless
and fading. He was shaken by a fearful conviction that he had
been killed again, till memory and reason began to place this
shredded experience.
His other senses
tried to take inventory. He was in null-gee, his short body
stretched out flat, strapped to a surface and swathed in what
felt like a thin foil med wrap, standard military issue. Wounded?
All limbs seemed present and accounted for. He was still wearing
the soft bodysuit that had lined his now-missing space armor. The
straps were not tight. The complex scent of many-times-refiltered
air, cool and dry, tickled his nostrils. He secretly snaked an
arm free, careful not to rattle the wrap, and touched his bare
face. No control leads, no sensors-no blood-where are my
armor, my weapons, my command headset?
The rescue
mission had been going as smoothly as such missions ever did. He
and Captain Quinn and their patrol had penetrated the hijackers'
ship, found the brig. Blasted through to the captured Barrayaran
ImpSec courier officer, Lieutenant Vorberg, still alive though
addled with sedatives. The medtech had pronounced the hostage
clear of mechanical or chemical boobytraps, and they'd begun the
exhilarating trip through the dark corridors back to the waiting
Dendarii combat shuttle. The hijackers, very much occupied
elsewhere, had made no attempt to jump them. What went wrong?
The sounds around
him were quiet: the bleep of equipment, the hiss of atmosphere
recycling on normal operation, the murmur of voices. One low
animal moan. Miles licked his lips, just to be sure that noise
wasn't coming from himself. He might not be wounded, but somebody
nearby was not in good shape. A tangy whiff of antiseptics
escaped filtration. He slitted open his eyes, prepared to play
unconscious again and think fast if he found himself in enemy
hands.
But he
was-safely, he hoped-in his own Dendarii Fleet combat shuttle,
strapped to one of the four fold-down bunks toward the rear of
the fuselage. The emergency medical station was a familiar sight,
though he didn't usually see it from this angle of view. Blue
Squad's medtech, his back to Miles, hovered by a bunk across the
aisle that held another strapped-down form. Miles couldn't see
any body bags. Only one other casualty. He would add, Good,
except that there weren't supposed to be any casualties.
Only one
casualty, Miles corrected his thought. A violent headache
throbbed at the base of his brain. But he bore no plasma arc
burns, no nerve-disruptor paralysis. No intravenous tubing or
hypospray injector pierced his body, pumping in blood
replacements or synergine against shock. He did not float in a
narcotic haze of painkillers, and no pressure bandages hampered
his slight movements. No sense-blockers. The headache felt like a
poststun migraine. How the hell could I have been stunned
through combat armor?
The Dendarii
medtech, still combat-armored but with helmet and gloves off,
turned and saw Miles's open eyes. "You're awake, sir? I'll
notify Captain Quinn." He hovered briefly over Miles's face,
and flashed a light into his eyes, doubtless checking for
abnormal pupil response.
"How long .
. . was I out? What happened?"
"You had
some kind of seizure, or convulsion. No apparent cause. The field
kit test for toxins didn't turn up anything, but it's pretty
basic. We'll go over you more thoroughly as soon as we're back to
the ship's sick bay."
Not dead
again. Worse. This is still more of the left-overs from the last
time. Oh, hell. What have I done? What have they seen?
He would rather
have been-well, no. He would not rather have been
nerve-disrupted. But almost. "How long?" Miles
repeated.
"The seizure
seemed to last four or five minutes."
It had certainly
taken more than five minutes to get from there to here.
"Then?"
"You've been
unconscious for about a half hour, I'm afraid, Admiral
Naismith."
He'd never been
out so long before. This was the worst attack ever, by far. He'd
prayed the last one would be the last one. Over two months
had passed since his previous unwitnessed, brief collapse.
Dammit, he'd been certain the new medication had worked.
He made to free
himself, fighting out of the heat wrap and bunk straps.
"Please
don't try to get up, Admiral."
"I have to
go forward and get reports."
The medtech
placed a cautious hand upon his chest, and pressed him back onto
the bunk. "Captain Quinn ordered me to sedate you if you
tried to get up. Sir."
Miles almost
barked, And I countermand that order! But they did not
seem to be in the midst of combat now, and the tech had a
medically steely look in his eye, of a man prepared to do his
duty whatever the risks. Save me from the virtuous.
"Is that why I was out so long? Was I sedated?"
"No, sir. I
only gave you synergine. Your vital signs were stable, and I was
afraid to give you anything else till I had some better idea what
we were dealing with."
"What about
my squad? Are we all out? The Barrayaran hostage, did we get him
out all right?"
"Everybody
got out all right. The Barrayaran, um . . . will live. I
retrieved his legs; there's a good chance the surgeon will be
able to reattach them." The medtech glanced around, as if
seeking comradely assistance.
"What?
How was he injured?"
"Uh . . .
I'll call Captain Quinn for you, sir."
"You do
that," growled Miles.
The medtech
ducked away into free fall, and murmured urgently into an
intercom on the far wall. He returned to his patient-Lieutenant
Vorberg? IVs were pumping plasma and medications into the man
through sites on both an arm and his neck. The rest was concealed
by heat foil. At a light-signal from the forward bulkhead, the
medtech hastily strapped himself into his station jump seat, and
the shuttle went through a quick series of accelerations,
decelerations, and attitude adjustments, in preparation for
locking on to its mother ship.
Properly, upon
docking the injured hostage was rushed out first. In two parts.
Miles gritted his teeth in dismay at the sight of the soldier
clutching a large cold-container who followed the medtech and
float pallet. There did not seem to be much blood smeared around,
though. Miles had just given up waiting for Quinn and was
releasing himself from his medical restraints when she appeared
from the flight deck and floated down the aisle toward him.
She had doffed
the helmet and gloves from her space armor, and pulled back her
bodysuit's hood to free her dark, sweat-flattened curls. Her
beautifully sculpted face was pale with tension, her brown eyes
dark with fear. But his little three-ship fleet could be in no
immediate danger, or she would be attending to it, not to him.
"Are you all right?" she asked hoarsely.
"Quinn,
what-no. Give me a general status report first."
"Green Squad
got the hijacked ship's crew out. All of them. There was a bit of
equipment damage-the insurance company's not going to be as
ecstatic as the last time-but our Life Bonus is safe and
warm."
"Praise be
to God and Sergeant Taura. And our hijackers?"
"We took
their big ship and nineteen prisoners. Three enemy killed. All
secured there; our prize crew is aboard cleaning up. Six or eight
of the bastards escaped in their jump-pinnance. It's weak on
armament-this far from the nearest jump point, the Ariel
can overtake them at our leisure. Your decision, whether to stand
off and blow them up, or attempt capture."
Miles rubbed his
face. "Interrogate those prisoners. If this is the same
bloody-handed lot that took the Solera last year, and
murdered all the passengers and crew, Vega Station will pay a
reward, and we can collect three times for the same mission.
Since the Vegans are offering the same reward for the proof of
their deaths, record everything carefully. We'll demand
surrender. Once." He sighed. "I take it things did not
run exactly according to plan. Again."
"Hey. Any
hostage-rescue ploy that gets everyone out alive is a success by
any sane standard. Assuming our fleet surgeon doesn't reattach
your poor Barrayaran's legs left-to-right or backwards, this is a
one-hundred-percenter."
"Er . . .
yes. What happened when . . . I went down? What happened
to Vorberg?"
"Friendly
fire, unfortunately. Though it didn't seem all that friendly at
the time. You fell over-surprised the hell out of us. Your suit
emitted a lot of garbage telemetry, then your plasma arc locked
on." She raked her hands through her hair.
Miles glanced at
the heavy-duty plasma arc built into the right arm of Quinn's
space armor, twin to his own. His heart sank into his churning
stomach. "Oh, no. Oh, shit. Don't tell me."
"I'm afraid
so. You kneecapped your own rescuee. Neat as could be, right
across both legs. Luckily-I guess-the beam cauterized as it
sliced, so he didn't bleed to death. And he was so tanked on
drugs, I'm not even sure he felt much. For a moment I thought
some enemy had taken over remote control of your suit, but the
engineers swear that isn't possible anymore. You blew out a bunch
of walls-it took four of us to sit on your arm till we could take
the medic's can-opener to your armor and get in and get you
disconnected. You were thrashing around-you damn near took us out
too. In pure desperation, I stunned you on the back of your neck,
and you went limp. I was afraid I'd killed you."
Quinn was a
little breathless, describing this. Her lovely face was not,
after all, the original, but a replacement after her own violent
encounter with plasma fire, over a decade ago. "Miles, what
the hell was going on with you?"
"I think I
had . . . some kind of seizure. Like epilepsy, except that it
doesn't seem to leave any neurological tracks. I'm afraid it
might be an aftereffect from my cryo-revival last year." You
know damned well it is. He touched the twin scars on either
side of his neck, now grown faint and pale, the lesser souvenirs
of that event. Quinn's emergency stunner-treatment explained his
lengthy bout of unconsciousness and subsequent headache. So, the
seizures were no worse than before. . . .
"Oh,
dear," said Quinn. "But is this the first-" She
paused, and looked at him more closely. Her voice went flatter.
"This isn't the first time you've done this, is it."
The silence
stretched; Miles forced himself to speak before it snapped.
"It happened three or four," or five "times
soon after I was brought back from stasis. My cryo-revival
surgeon said they might go away on their own, the way the memory
loss and the shortness of breath have. And after that they seemed
to stop."
"And ImpSec
let you go out on a covert ops field mission with that kind of
time bomb in your head?"
"ImpSec . .
. does not know."
"Miles . .
."
"Elli,"
he said desperately, "they'd pull me right off line duty,
you know they would. Nail my boots to the floor behind some desk
at best. Medical discharge at worst-and that would be the end of
Admiral Naismith. Forever."
She froze,
stricken.
"I figured
if the seizures came back I'd try to solve 'em on my own. I
thought I had."
"Does anybody
know?"
"Not . . .
very many. I didn't want to chance it getting back to ImpSec. I
told the Dendarii fleet surgeon. I swore her to secrecy. We were
working on a causal diagnosis. Haven't got too far yet. Her
specialty's trauma, after all." Yes, like plasma arc burns,
and limb reattachment. At least Lieutenant Vorberg could not be
in better or more experienced hands right now, even if he could
have been magically transported in an instant back to Barrayar's
own Imperial Military Hospital.
Quinn's lips
tightened. "But you didn't tell me. Never mind our personal
relationship, I'm your second in command on this mission!"
"I should
have told you. Obvious in hindsight." Blindingly.
Quinn glanced up
the fuselage of the shuttle, where a medtech from the Peregrine
was wrestling a float pallet in through the hatch. "I still
have some mopping up to supervise. You're going to stay in the
frigging sick bay till I get back, right?"
"I'm back on
track now! It could be months till it happens again. If
ever."
"Right?"
Quinn repeated through her teeth, with an open glare at him.
He thought of
Vorberg, and deflated. "Right," he muttered.
"Thank
you," she hissed.
He scorned the
float pallet, insisting on walking, but otherwise followed the
medtech, feeling horribly subdued. I'm losing control of this.
. . .
As soon as Miles
arrived in sick bay, an anxious tech administered a brain scan,
drew blood, took samples of every fluid his body could be made to
exude, and rechecked every vital sign he possessed. After that,
there was not very much to do but wait for the surgeon. Miles
withdrew discreetly into a small examining room, where his batman
brought him his ship uniform. The man seemed inclined to hover
solicitously and Miles, irritated, sent him away.
This left Miles
alone in a quiet room with nothing to do but think, possibly a
tactical error. Quinn could be trusted with the mopping up, or
why else had he made her his second? She had taken over
competently enough the last time he had been violently removed
from his chain of command, his chest blown out by that sniper's
needle grenade on the mission to Jackson's Whole.
He pulled up and
fastened his gray trousers, and studied his torso, his fingers
tracing the wide spidery burst of scars fading on his skin. The
Jacksonian cryo-revival surgeon had done a superb job. His new
heart and lungs and assorted other organs were nearly fully grown
now, entirely functional. With the latest additions, the brittle
bones that had plagued him since his defective birth were almost
completely replaced by synthetics throughout his body. The
cryo-surgeon had even straightened his spine while she was at it;
there was barely a hint left of the hunchback curvature that,
along with his dwarfish stature, had made his fellow Barrayarans
snigger Mutant! when they thought he could not hear. He'd
even gained a couple more centimeters in height out of the deal,
an expensive little bonus, but it mattered to him. The fatigue
didn't show. To the outward eye, he was in better physical shape
than he'd ever been in his nearly thirty years of life.
There's just
one little hitch.
Of all the
threats that had ever shadowed his hard-won career, this was the
most elusive, the least expected . . . the most fatal. He'd
worked with impassioned concentration, overcoming all doubts as
to his physical disabilities, winning his way to premier status
as Barrayaran Imperial Security's most creative galactic affairs
agent. Where the Barrayaran Empire's regular forces could not
reach, past barriers of politics and distance in the chaining
network of wormhole jump routes that strung the galaxy together,
a supposedly independent mercenary outfit might pop up unimpeded.
Miles had spent a decade perfecting his cover identity of
"Admiral Naismith," self-styled leader of the Dendarii
Free Mercenary Fleet. Daring Rescues Our Specialty.
Such as the
current mission. The grotty crew of hijackers had run seriously
out of luck the day they'd stolen an unarmed freighter of Zoave
Twilight's planetary registry, and found what they thought was
the prize in the package in the form of a Barrayaran Imperial
Courier, covertly transporting credit chits and vital diplomatic
information. If they'd had any sense of self-preservation at all,
they should have returned Lieutenant Vorberg and his packets,
undamaged and unexamined, immediately to the nearest drop-point,
with profuse apologies.
Instead, they'd
tried to sell him to the highest bidder. Slay them all,
ImpSec Chief Simon Illyan had muttered. The Devil will
recognize his own. Then he'd delegated the details to Miles.
The Emperor did not approve of unauthorized persons impeding his
couriers. Or torturing them, or attempting to market them like
high-information-density slabs of meat. This was one mission
where, although the Dendarii Fleet's official sponsor was the
insurance company covering the Zoave Twilight ship, it wouldn't
hurt to reveal that their cobacker was the Barrayaran Empire.
Good publicity, for the protection of the next courier to run
into similar bad luck.
Assuming it was
luck. Miles itched to go oversee the interrogation of the
prisoners; Illyan's second sharpest concern after the retrieval
of Vorberg alive was to determine if the courier had been
kidnapped by accident or on purpose. If on purpose . . . somebody
had some internal investigating to do. In all, Miles was
extremely glad that sort of messy job did not fall into his area
of expertise.
The surgeon,
still dressed in her sterile garb, entered at last. She put her
hands on her hips, stared at Miles, and sighed. She looked tired.
"How's the
Barrayaran?" Miles ventured. "Will, um . . . he
recover?"
"He's not
too bad. The cuts were very clean, and luckily just below the
knee joints, which saved a world of complications. He'll be about
three centimeters shorter after this."
Miles winced.
"But he'll
be on his feet by the time he gets home," she added,
"assuming that takes about six weeks."
"Ah.
Good." But suppose the random blare of the plasma arc had
taken Vorberg through the knees. Or about a meter higher, cutting
him in half. There were limits to the miracles even his Dendarii
surgical expert could perform. It would not have been a career
high point, after Miles had airily assured his ImpSec chief that
he could rescue Vorberg with scarcely a ripple in his routine, to
return him packed in a body bag. Two body bags. Miles felt faint
with a weird mixture of relief and horror. Oh, God, I'm going
to hate explaining this to Illyan.
The surgeon
studied Miles's scans, muttering medical incantations.
"We're still on baseline, here. No obvious abnormalities
show up. The only way I can get any leverage into this is to have
you monitored while you undergo an attack."
"Hell, I
thought we did every kind of stress and electroshock and stimulus
known to science, to try to trigger something in the lab. I
thought the pills you gave me had brought it under control."
"The
standard anticonvulsant? Were you taking it
properly?" She eyed him suspiciously.
"Yes."
He bit back more profane protestations. "Have you thought of
something else to try?"
"No, which
is why I gave you that monitor to wear around." Her glance
around the examining room did not disclose the device.
"Where is it?"
"In my
cabin."
Her lips thinned
in exasperation. "Let me guess. You weren't wearing it at
the time."
"It didn't
fit under my combat armor."
Her teeth
clenched. "Couldn't you have at least thought to-to disable
your weapons?"
"I could
hardly be of use to my squad in an emergency, disarmed. I might
as well have stayed aboard the Peregrine."
"You were
the emergency. And you certainly should have stayed aboard
the Peregrine."
Or back on
Barrayar. But securing Vorberg's person had been the most
critical part of the operation, and Miles was the only Dendarii
officer ImpSec entrusted with the Barrayaran Imperial recognition
codes. "I-" He bit his tongue on futile defenses, and
started over. "You are quite correct. It won't happen again,
until . . . we get this straightened out. What do we do
next?"
She opened her
hands. "I've run every test I know. Obviously, the
anticonvulsant isn't the answer. This is some kind of
idiosyncratic cryonic damage on a cellular or subcellular level.
You need to get your head to the highest-powered cryo-neurology
specialist you can find."
He sighed, and
shrugged into his black tee shirt and gray uniform jacket.
"Are we done for now? I urgently need to supervise prisoner
interrogation."
"I
suppose." She grimaced. "But do us all a favor. Don't
go armed."
"Yes,
ma'am," he said humbly, and fled.
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