"I think so too," said Miles.
"Then what did you want me for?" She stomped off.
Later she came back with a sleeping mat and a couple of extra rags, and helped put them around and over Suegar for added insulation, then stomped off again.
Tris reported to Miles. "We got those guys who tried to kill you rounded up. What do you want done with 'em?"
"Let them go," said Miles wearily. "They're not the enemy."
"The hell they're not!"
"They're not my enemies, anyway. It was just a case of mistaken identity. I'm just a hapless traveller, passing through."
"Wake up, little man. I don't happen to share Oliver's belief in your 'miracle.' You're not passing through here. This is the last stop."
Miles sighed. "I'm beginning to think you're right." He glanced at Suegar, breathing shallowly and too fast, beside whom he crouched in watch. "You're almost certainly right, by this time. Nevertheless– let them go."
"Why?" she wailed, outraged.
"Because I said to. Because I asked you to. Would you have me beg for them?"
"Aargh! No. All right!" She wheeled away, running he hands through her clipped hair and muttering under her breath.
A timeless time passed. Suegar lay on his side not speaking, though his eyes flicked open now and then to stare unseeing. Miles moistened his lips with water periodically. A chow call came and went without incident or Miles's participation; Beatrice passed by and dropped two rat bars beside them, stared at them with a carefully-hardened gaze of general disapproval, and stalked off.
Miles cradled his injured hand and sat cross-legged, mentally reviewing the catalogue of errors that had brought him to this pass. He contemplated his seeming genius for getting his friends killed. He had a sick premonition that Suegar's death was going to be almost as bad as Sergeant Bothari's, six years ago, and he had known Suegar only weeks, not years. Repeated pain, as he had reason to know, made one more afraid of injury, not less, a growing, gut-wrenching dread. Not again, never again . . .
He lay back and stared at the dome, the white, unblinking eye of a dead god. And had more friends than he knew already been killed by this megalomanic escapade? It would be just like the Cetagandans, to leave him in here all unknowing, and let the growing doubt and fear gradually drive him crazy.
Swiftly drive him crazy—the god's eye blinked.
Miles blinked in sympathetic nervous recoil, opened his eyes wide, stared at the dome as if his eyes could bore right through it. Had it blinked? Had the flicker been hallucinatory? Was he losing it?
It flickered again. Miles shot to his feet, inhaling, inhaling, inhaling.
The dome blinked out. For a brief instant, planetary night swept in, fog and drizzle and the kiss of a cold wet wind. This planet's unfiltered air smelled like rotten eggs. The unaccustomed dark was blinding.
"CHOW CALL!" Miles screamed at the top of his lungs.
Then limbo transmuted to chaos in the brilliant flash of a smart bomb going off beyond a cluster of buildings. Red light glared off the underside of an enormous billowing cloud of debris, blasting upward. A racketing string of similar hits encircled the camp, peeled back the night, deafened the unprotected. Miles, still screaming, could not hear his own voice. A returning fire from the ground clawed the clouds with lines of colored light.
Tris, her eyes stunned, rocketed past him. Miles grabbed her by the arm with his good hand and dug in his heels to brake her, yanking her down so he could scream in her ear.
"This is it! Get the fourteen group leaders organized, make 'em get their first blocks of 200 lined up and waiting all around the perimeter. Find Oliver, we've got to get the Enforcers moving to get the rest waiting their turn under control. If this goes exactly as we drilled it, we'll all get off." I hope. "But if they mob the shuttles like they used to mob the rat bar pile, none of us will. You copy?"
"I never believed—I didn't think—shuttles?"
"You don't have to think. We've drilled this fifty times. Just follow the chow drill. The drill!"
"You sneaky little sonofabitch!" The acknowledging wave of her arm, as she dashed off, was very like a salute.
A string of flares erupted in the sky above the camp, as if a white strobe of lightning went on and on, casting a ghastly illumination on the scene below. The camp seethed like a termite mound kicked over. Men and women were running every which way in shouting confusion. Not exactly the orderly vision Miles had had in mind– why, for example, had his people chosen a night drop and not a daytime one?—he would grill his staff later on that point, after he got done kissing their feet—
"Beatrice!" Miles waved her down. "Start passing the word! We're doing the chow call drill. But instead of a rat bar, each person gets a shuttle seat. Make 'em understand that—don't let anybody go haring off into the night or they'll miss their flight. Then come back here and stay by Suegar. I don't want him getting lost or trampled on. Guard, you copy?"
"I'm not a damn dog. What shuttles?"
The sound Miles's ears had been straining for penetrated the din at last, a high-pitched, multi-faceted whine that grew louder and louder. They loomed down out of the boiling scarlet-tinged clouds like monstrous beetles, carapaced and winged, feet extending even as they watched. Fully armored combat drop shuttles, two, three, six . . . seven, eight . . . Miles's lips moved as he counted. Thirteen, fourteen, by God. They had managed to get #B-7 out of the shop in time.
Miles pointed. "My shuttles."
Beatrice stood with her mouth open, staring upward. "My God. They're beautiful." He could almost see her mind start to ratchet forward. "But they're not ours. Not Cetagandan either. Who the hell . . . ?"
Miles bowed. "This is a paid political rescue."
"Mercenaries?"
"We're not something wriggling with too many legs that you found in your sleeping bag. The proper tone of voice is Mercenaries!— with a glad cry."
"But—but—but—"
"Go, dammit. Argue later."
She flung up her hands and ran.
Miles himself started tackling every person within reach, passing on the order of the day. He captured one of Oliver's tall commando buddies and demanded a boost on his shoulders. A quick look around showed fourteen coagulating knots of people in the mob scattered around the perimeter in nearly the right positions. The shuttles hovered, engines howling, then thumped to the ground one by one all around the camp.
"It'll have to do," Miles muttered to himself. He slapped the commando's shoulder. "Down."
He forced himself to walk to the nearest shuttle, a run on the shuttles being just the scenario he had poured out blood and bone and pride these last—three, four?—weeks to avoid.
A quartet of fully-armed and half-armored troops were the first down the shuttle ramp, taking up guard positions. Good. They even had their weapons pointed in the right direction, toward the prisoners they were here to rescue. A larger patrol, fully armored, followed to gallop off double time, leapfrogging their own covering-fire range into the dark toward the Cetagandan installations surrounding the dome circle. Hard to judge which direction held the most danger– from the continuing fireworks, his fighter shuttles were providing plenty of external distraction for the Cetagandans.
At last came the man Miles most wanted to see, the shuttle's comm officer.
"Lieutenant, uh," he connected face and name, "Murka! Over here!"
Murka spotted him. He fumbled excitedly with his equipment and called into his audio pick-up, "Commodore Tung! He's here, I got him!"
Miles peeled the comm set ruthlessly from the lieutenant's head, who obligingly ducked down to permit the theft, and jammed it on his own head left-handed in time to hear Tung's voice reply tinnily, "Well, for God's sake don't lose him again, Murka. Sit on him if you have to."