"Shall we swim through space?" Tung imitated fish fins with his waving fingers, and puffed his cheeks. "Oser controls the equipment. Including my ship. The Triumph is everything I've accumulated in a thirty-year career. Which I lost through your machinations. Somebody owes me another. If not Oser, then . . ."Tung glowered significantly at Miles.
"I tried to give you a fleet in trade," said Miles, harried. "How'd you lose control of it—old strategist?"
Tung tapped a finger to his left breast, to indicate a touche. "Things went well at first, for a year, year and a half after we departed Tau Verde. Got two sweet little contracts in a row out toward the East-net —-small-scale commando operations, sure things. Well, not too sure– kept us on our toes. But we brought them off."
Miles glanced at Elena. "I'd heard about those, yes."
"On the third, we got into troubles. Baz Jesek had gotten more and more involved with equipment and maintenance—he is a good engineer, I'll give him that—I was tactical commander, and Oser—I thought by default, but now I think design—took up the administrative slack. Could have been good, each doing what he did best, if Oser'd been working with and not against us. In the same situation, I'd have sent assassins. Oser employed guerrilla accountants.
"We took a bit of a beating on that third contract. Baz was up to his ears in engineering and repairs, and by the time I got out of sickbay, Oser'd lined up one of his no-combat specials—wormhole guard duty work. Long-term contract. Seemed like a good idea at the time. But it gave him a wedge. With no actual combat going on, I …" Tung cleared his throat, "got bored, didn't pay attention. Oser'd outflanked me before I realized there was a war on. He sprang the financial reorganization on us—"
"I told you not to trust him, six months before that," Elena put in with a frown, "after he tried to seduce me."
Tung shrugged uncomfortably. "It seemed like an understandable temptation."
"To bang his commander's wife?" Elena's eyes sparked. "Anyone's wife? I knew then he wasn't level. If my oaths meant nothing to him, how little did his own?"
"He did take no for an answer, you said," Tung excused himself. "If he'd kept leaning on you, I'd have been willing to step in. I thought you ought to be flattered, ignore it, and go on."
"Overtures of that sort contain a judgment of my character that I find anything but flattering, thank you," Elena snapped.
Miles bit his knuckles, hard and secretly, remembering his own longings. "It might just have been an early move in his power-play," he put in. "Probing for weaknesses in his enemies' defenses. And in this case, not finding them."
"Hm." Elena seemed faintly comforted by this view. "Anyway, Ky was no help, and I got tired of playing Cassandra. Naturally, I couldn't tell Baz. But Oser's double-dealing didn't come as a complete surprise to all of us."
Tung frowned, frustrated. "Given the nucleus of his own surviving ships, all he had to do was swing the votes of half the other captain-owners. Auson voted with him. I could have strangled the bastard. "You lost Auson yourself, with your moaning about the Triumph, Elena put in, still acerb. "He thought you threatened his captaincy of it."
"Tung shrugged. "As long as I was Chief-of-Staff/Tactical, in charge during actual combat, I didn't think he could really hurt my ship. I was content to let the Triumph ride along as if owned by the fleet corporation. I could wait—till you got back," his dark eyes glinted at Miles, "and we found out what was going on. And then you never came back."
"The king will return, eh?" murmured Gregor, who had been listening with fascination. He raised an eyebrow at Miles.
"Let it be a lesson to you," Miles murmured back through set teeth. Gregor subsided, less humorous.
Miles turned to Tung. "Surely Elena disabused you of any such immediate expectation."
"I tried," muttered Elena. "Although … I suppose, I couldn't help hoping a bit myself. Maybe you'd . . . quit your other project, come back to us."
If I flunked out of the Academy, eh? "It wasn't a project I could quit, short of death."
"I know that now."
"In five minutes, max," put in Arde Mayhew, "I've either got to lock into the transfer station traffic control for docking, or else cut for the Ariel. Which is it going to be, folks?"
"I can put over a hundred loyal officers and non-coms at your back at a word," said Tung to Miles. "Four ships."
"Why not at your own back?"
"If I could, I would have already. But I'm not going to tear the fleet apart unless I can be certain of putting it back together again. All of it. But with you as leader, with your reputation—which has grown in the retelling—"
"Leader? Or figurehead?" The image of that pike bobbed in Miles's mind's eye again.
Tung's hands opened noncommittally. "As you wish. The bulk of the officer cadre will go for the winning side. That means we must appear to be winning quickly, if we move at all. Oser has about another hundred personally loyal to himself, which we're going to have to physically overpower if he insists on holding out—which suggests to my mind that a well-timed assassination could save a lot of lives."
"Jolly. I think you and Oser have been working together too long, Ky. You're starting to think alike. Again. I did not come here to seize command of a mercenary fleet. I have other priorities." He schooled himself not to glance at Gregor.
"What higher priorities?"
"How about, preventing a planetary civil war? Maybe an interstellar one?"
"I have no professional interest in that." It almost succeeded in being a joke.
Indeed, what were Barrayar's agonies to Tung? "You do if you're on the doomed side. You only get paid for winning, and only get to spend your pay if you live, mercenary."
Tung's narrow eyes narrowed further. "What do you know that I don't? Are we on the doomed side?"
I am, if I don 't get Gregor back. Miles shook his head. "Sorry. I can't talk about that. I've got to get to—" Pol closed to him, the Consortium station blocked, and now Aslund become even more dangerous, "Vervain." He glanced at Elena. "Get us both to Vervain." "You working for the Vervani?" Tung asked.
"No."
"Who, then?" Tung's hands twitched, so tense with his curiosity they seemed to want to squeeze out information by main force.
Elena noticed the unconscious gesture too. "Ky, back off," she said sharply. "If Miles wants Vervain, Vervain he shall have."
Tung looked at Elena, at Mayhew. "Do you back him, or me?"
Elena's chin lifted. "We're both oath-sworn to Miles. Baz too."
"And you have to ask why I need you?" said Tung in exasperation to Miles, gesturing at the pair. "What is this larger game, that you all seem to know all about, and I, nothing?"
"I don't know anything," chirped Mayhew. "I'm just going by Elena."
"Is this a chain of command, or a chain of credulity?"
"There's a difference?" Miles grinned.
"You've exposed us, by coming here," Tung argued. "Think! We help you, you leave, we're left naked to Oser's wrath. There's too many witnesses already. There might be safety in victory, none in half-measure."
Miles looked with anguish at Elena, picturing her, quite vividly inl light of his recent experiences, being shoved out an airlock by evil, witless goons. Tung noted with satisfaction the effect of his plea on Miles and sat smugly back. Elena glared at Tung.