She stared at him, her lips parted, then shut her mouth abruptly and slammed out the door.
Now he had frightened her, offended her, perhaps even sabotaged her carefully nurtured confidence … He swore at himself, savage. He was sinking in a black and sucking bog, gluey viscous terror sapping his vital forward momentum. He waded on, blindly.
Elena's voice again. "—bouncing off the walls. I think you'll have to sit on him. I've never seen him this bad …"
Miles looked up into the precious, ugly face of his personal killer. Bothari compressed his lips, and sighed. "Right. I'll take care of it."
Elena, eyes wide with concern but mouth calm with confidence in Bothari, withdrew. Bothari grasped Miles by the back of the collar and belt, frog-marched him over to the bed, and sat him down firmly.
"Drink."
"Oh, hell, Sergeant—you know I can't stand scotch. Tastes like paint thinner."
"I will," said Bothari patiently, "hold your nose and pour it down your throat if I have to."
Miles took in the flinty face and prudently choked down a slug from the flask, which he recognized vaguely as confiscated from mercenary stock. Bothari, with matter-of-fact efficiency, stripped him and slung him into bed.
"Drink again."
"Blech." It burned foully down his throat.
"Now sleep."
"Can't sleep. Too much to do. Got to keep them moving. Wonder if I can fake a brochure? I suppose deathgild is nothing but a primitive form of life insurance, at that. Elena can't possibly be right about Thorne. Hope to God my father never finds out about this—Sergeant, you won't … ? I thought of a docking drill with the RG132 …" His protests trailed off to a mumble, and he rolled over and slept dreamlessly for sixteen hours.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A week later, he was still in command.
Miles took to haunting the mercenary ship's control room as they neared their destination. Daum's rendezvous was a rare metals refinery in the system's asteroid belt. The factory was a mobile of chaotic structures strung together by girdering and powersats, winged by its vast solar collectors, junkyard art. A few lights winked, picking out bright reflections and leaving the rest in charitable dimness.
Too few lights, Miles realized as they approached. The place looked shut down. An off shift? Not likely; it represented too large an investment to let stand idle for the sake of its masters' biology. By rights the smelteries should be operating around the clock to feed the war effort. Tow ships with ore chunks should be jockeying for docking space, outgoing freighters should be wheeling away with their military escorts in a traffic-control minuet …
"Are they still answering your recognition codes correctly?" Miles asked Daum. He barely kept himself from shifting from foot to foot.
"Yes." But Daum looked strained.
He doesn't like the looks of this either, Miles thought. "Shouldn't a strategically important installation like this be more actively guarded? Surely the Pelians and the Oserans have got to be trying to knock it out. Where are your picket ships?"
"I don't know." Daum moistened his lips, and stared into the screen.
"We have a live transmission now, sir," the mercenary communications officer reported.
A Felician colonel appeared in the viewscreen.
"Fehun! Thank God!' cried Daum. The tension melted in his face.
Miles let out his breath. For a horrible moment he'd been crushed by a vision of being unable to unload his prisoners along with Daum's cargo, and then what? He was quite as exhausted by the week as Bothari had predicted, and looked forward with a shiver of relief to its ending.
Lieutenant Thorne, coming on station, smiled and gave Miles a neat salute. Miles pictured the look on Thorne's face when the masquerade and betrayal were at last revealed. His ballooning anticipation turned to lead in his stomach. He returned the salute, and concealed his queasiness by turning to watch Daum's conversation. Maybe he could arrange to be elsewhere when the trap was sprung.
"—made it," Daum was saying. "Where is everybody? This place looks deserted."
There was a flash of static, and the military figure in the screen shrugged. "We drove off an attack by the Pelians a few weeks ago. The solar collectors were damaged. We're awaiting the repair crews now."
"How are things at home? Have we freed Barinth yet?"
Another flash of static. The colonel, seated behind his desk, nodded and said, "The war is going well."
The colonel had a tiny sculpture on his desk, Miles noticed, a mosaic horse cleverly formed of assorted scrap electronic parts soldered together, no doubt by some refinery technician in his off hours. Miles thought of his grandfather, and wondered what kind of horses they had on Felice. Had they ever slipped back enough technologically to have used horse cavalry?
"Great!" Daum chortled, avid upon his fellow Felician's face. "I took so long on Beta, I was afraid—so we're still in business! I'll buy you a drink when we get in, you old snake, and we'll toast the Premier together. How is Miram?"
Static. "The family is well," the colonel said gravely. Static. "Stand by for docking instructions."
Miles stopped breathing. The little horse, which had been on the colonel's right hand, was now on his left.
"Yes," agreed Daum happily, "and we can carry on without all this garbage on the channel. Is that you making the white noise?"
There was another blat of static. "Our communications equipment was damaged in an attack by the Pelians a few weeks ago." Now the horse was back on the right. White fuzz on the screen. "Stand by for docking instructions." Now the left. Miles felt like screaming.
Instead he motioned the communications officer to kill the channel.
"It's a trap," Miles said, the instant they were off transmission.
"What?" Daum stared. "Fehun Benar is one of my oldest friends! He wouldn't betray—"
"You haven't been talking to Colonel Benar. You've been having a synthesized conversation with a computer."
"But his voiceprint—"
"Oh, it really was Benar—pre-recorded. Something on his desk was flipping around between those blasts of static. They were being deliberately transmitted to cover the discontinuities—almost. Careless of somebody. They probably recorded his responses in more than one session."
"Pelians," grunted Thorne. "Can't do anything right…"
Daum's tan skin greyed. "He wouldn't betray—"
"They probably had a fair amount of time to prepare. There are—" Miles took a breath, "there are lots of ways to break a man. I bet there was an attack by the Pelians a few weeks ago—only it wasn't driven off.'
It was over, then, surrender inevitable. The RG132 and its cargo would be confiscated, Daum taken prisoner of war, Miles and his leige-people interned, if they weren't shot outright. Barrayaran security would ransom him eventually, Miles supposed, with all due scandal. Then the Betan, Calhoun, with God-knew-what civil charges, then home at last to explain it all before the ultimate tribunal, his father. Miles wondered, if he waived his Class III diplomatic immunity on Beta Colony, could he be jailed there instead? But no, the Betans didn't jail offenders, they cured them.
Daum's eyes were wide, his mouth taut. "Yes," he hissed, convinced. "What do we do, sir?"
You're asking me? thought Miles wildly. Help, help, help … He stared around at the faces in the room, Daum, Elena, Baz, the mercenary technicians, Thorne and Auson. They gazed back with interested confidence, as if he were a goose about to lay a golden egg. Bothari leaned against the wall, his stance for once devoid of suggestions.
"They're asking why our transmission was interrupted," reported the communications officer urgently.