Was this damned thing starting up already, or were the hot panic and choking tears in his throat entirely self-induced? An enemy that attacked you from the inside out—you could try to turn yourself inside out to fight it, but you wouldn't succeed—filthy weapon! Open channel or not, I'm calling her now. . . .
Instead, Venn's voice sounded in his ear. “Lord Vorkosigan, pick up Channel Twelve. Your Admiral Vorpatril wants you. Badly.”
Miles hissed through his teeth and keyed his helmet com over. “Vorkosigan here.”
“Vorkosigan, you idiot—!” The admiral's syntax had shed a few honorifics sometime in the past hour. “What the hell is going on over there? Why don't you answer your wrist com?”
“It's inside my biotainer suit and inaccessible right now. I'm afraid I had to don the suit in a hurry. Be aware, this helmet link is an open access channel and unsecured, sir.” Dammit, where did that sir drop in from? Habit, sheer old bad habit. “You can ask for a brief report from Captain Clogston over his military suit's tight-beam link, but keep it short . He's a very busy man right now, and I don't want him distracted.”
Vorpatril swore—whether generally or at the Imperial Auditor was left nicely ambiguous—and clicked off.
Faintly echoing through the ship came the sound Miles had been waiting for—the distant clanks and hisses of airseal doors shutting down, sealing the ship into airtight sections. The quaddies had made it to Nav and Com, good! Except that Roic wasn't back yet. The armsman would have to get in touch with Venn and Greenlaw and get them to unseal and reseal his passage back up to—
“Vorkosigan.” Venn's voice sounded again in his ear, strained. “Is that you?”
“Is what me?”
“Shutting off the compartments.”
“Isn't it,” Miles tried, and failed, to swallow his voice back down to a more reasonable pitch. “Aren't you in Nav and Com yet ?”
“No, we circled back to the Number Two nacelle to pick up our equipment. We were just about to leave it.”
Hope flared in Miles's hammering heart. “Roic,” he called urgently. “Where are you?”
“Not in Nav and Com, m'lord,” Roic's grim voice returned.
“But if we're here and he's there, who's doing this ?” came Leutwyn's unhappy voice.
“Who do you think ?” Greenlaw ripped back. Her breath huffed out in anguish. “Five people, and not one of us thought to see the door locked behind us when we left—dammit!”
A small, bleak grunt, like a man being hit with an arrow, or a realization, sounded in Miles's ear: Roic.
Miles said urgently, “Anyone who holds Nav and Com has access to all these ship-linked com channels, or will, shortly. We're going to have to switch off.”
The quaddies had independent links to the station and Vorpatril through their suits; so did the medicos. Miles and Roic would be the ones plunged into communications limbo.
Then, abruptly, the sound in his helmet went dead. Ah. Looks like the ba has found the com controls. . . .
Miles leapt to the environmental control panel for the infirmary to the left of the door, opened it, and hit every manual override in it. With this outer door shut, they could retain air pressure, although circulation would be blocked. The medicos in their suits would be unaffected; Miles and Bel would be at risk. He eyed the bod pod locker on the wall without favor. The bio-sealed ward was already functioning on internal circulation, thank God, and could remain so—as long as the power stayed on. But how could they keep Bel cold if the herm had to retreat to a pod?
Miles hurried back into the ward. He approached Clogston, and yelled through his faceplate, “We just lost our ship-linked suit coms. Keep to your tight-beam military channels only.”
“I heard,” Clogston yelled back.
“How are you coming on that filter-cooler?”
“Cooler part's done. Still working on the filter. I wish I'd brought more hands, although there's scarcely room in here for more butts.”
“I've almost got it, I think,” called the tech, crouched over the bench. “Check that, will you, sir?” He waved in the direction of one of the analyzers, a collection of lights on its readout now blinking for attention.
Clogston dodged around him and bent to the machine in question. After a moment he murmured, “Oh, that's clever.”
Miles, crowding his shoulder close enough to hear this, did not find it reassuring. “What's clever?”
Clogston pointed at his analyzer readout, which now displayed incomprehensible strings of letters and numbers in cheery colors. “I didn't see how the parasites could possibly survive in a matrix of that enzyme that ate your biotainer gloves. But they were microencapsulated.”
“What?”
“Standard trick for delivering drugs through a hostile environment—like your stomach, or maybe your bloodstream—to the target zone. Only this time, used to deliver a disease. When the microencapsulation passes out of the unfriendly environment into the—chemically speaking—friendly zone, it pops open, releasing its load. No loss, no waste.”
“Oh. Wonderful. Are you saying I now have the same shit Bel has?”
“Um.” Clogston glanced up at a chrono on the wall. “How long since you were first exposed, my lord?”
Miles followed his glance. “Half an hour, maybe?”
“They might be detectable in your bloodstream by now.”
“Check it.”
“We'll have to open your suit to access a vein.”
“Check it now. Fast .”
Clogston grabbed a sampler needle; Miles peeled back the biotainer wrap from his left wrist, and gritted his teeth as a biocide swab stung and the needle poked. Clogston was pretty deft for a man wearing biotainer gloves, Miles had to concede. He watched anxiously as the surgeon delicately slipped the needle into the analyzer.
“How long will this take?”
“Now that we have the template of the thing, no time at all. If it's positive, that is. If this first sample shows negative, I'd want a recheck every thirty minutes or so to be sure.” Clogston's voice slowed, as he studied his readout. “Well. Um. A recheck won't be necessary.”
“Right,” Miles snarled. He yanked open his helmet and pushed back his suit sleeve. He bent to his secured wrist com and snapped, “Vorpatril!”
“Yes!” Vorpatril's voice came back instantly. Riding his com channels—he must be on duty in either the Prince Xav 's own Nav and Com, or maybe, by now, its tactics room. “Wait, what are you doing on this channel? I thought you had no access.”
“The situation has changed. Never mind that now. What's happening out there?”
“What's happening in there ?”
“The medical team, Portmaster Thorne, and I are holed up in the infirmary. For the moment, we're still in control of our environment. I believe Venn, Greenlaw, and Leutwyn are trapped in the Number Two freight nacelle. Roic may be somewhere in Engineering. And the ba, I believe, has seized Nav and Com. Can you confirm that last?”
“Oh, yes,” groaned Vorpatril. “It's talking to the quaddies on Graf Station right now. Making threats and demands. Boss Watts seems to have inherited their hot seat. I have a strike team scrambling.”
“Patch it in here. I have to hear this.”
A few seconds delay, then the ba's voice sounded. The Betan accent was gone; the academic coolness was fraying. “—name does not matter. If you wish to get the Sealer, the Imperial Auditor, and the others back alive, these are my requirements. A jump pilot for this ship, delivered immediately. Free and unimpeded passage from your system. If either you or the Barrayarans attempt to launch a military assault against the Idris , I will either blow up the ship with all aboard, or ram the station.”