Bel, straightening uniform and hair after the last drag across the loading bay, pursed its lips. “There were maybe five or ten minutes between the time the lock cycled, and the time the security guard arrived to check it. Maybe twenty minutes max after that before all sorts of people were looking around outside. In thirty minutes . . . yes, one person could just about have dumped the body, run to another bay and jumped in a small craft, zipped around, and collected it again.”
“Good. Get me a list of everything that went out a lock in that period.” For the sake of the listening quaddie guards he remembered to add a formal, “If you please, Portmaster Thorne.”
“Certainly, Lord Auditor Vorkosigan.”
“Seems damned odd to go to all that trouble to remove the body but leave the blood, though. Timing? Tried to get back to clean up, but it was too late? Something very, very strange to hide about the body?”
Maybe just blind panic, if the murder had not been planned in advance. Miles could imagine someone who was not a spacer shoving a body out an airlock, and only then realizing what poor concealment it really was. That didn't exactly jibe with a subsequent swift and handy outside pickup, though. And no quaddie qualified as not-a-spacer.
He sighed. “This is not getting us much forwarder. Let's go talk to my idiots.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Graf Station Security Post Three lay on the border between the free fall and the grav sides of the station, with access to both. Construction quaddies in yellow shirts and shorts, and a few legged downsiders similarly dressed, were at work on repairs around the main grav-side entrance. Miles, Ekaterin, and Roic were escorted through by Bel and one of their quaddie outriders, the other having been left on dour guard at the Kestrel 's docking hatch. The workers turned their heads to stare, frowning, as the Barrayarans passed.
They wound via a couple of corridors down one level, where they found the control booth at the portal to the grav-side detention block. A quaddie and a downsider were just collaborating on raising a new, possibly more plasma-fire-resistant, window into place in its frame; beyond, another yellow-clad quaddie could be seen putting the finishing touches on a monitor array while a uniformed quaddie in a Security floater, upper arms crossed, watched glumly.
In the tool-cluttered staging area in front of the booth they found Sealer Greenlaw and Chief Venn, now supplied with floaters, awaiting them. Venn immediately made sure to point out to Miles all the repairs completed and still in progress, in detail, with approximate costs, with a chronicle appended of all the quaddies who had been injured in the imbroglio, including names, ranks, prognoses, and the distress suffered by their family members. Miles made acknowledging yet neutral noises, and went into a short counter-riff on the missing Solian and the sinister testimony of the blood on the loading bay deck, with a brief dissertation on the logistics of his ejected body being spirited away by a possible outboard coconspirator. This last gave Venn pause, at least temporarily; his face twinged, like a man in stomach pain.
While Venn went to arrange Miles's entry to the cellblock with the guard in the control booth, Miles glanced at Ekaterin, and a little doubtfully around the less-than-inviting staging area. “Do you want to wait here, or sit in?”
“Do you want me to sit in?” she asked, with a lack of enthusiasm in her voice that even Miles could sense. “Not that you don't draft anyone in sight, as needed, but surely I'm not needed for this.”
“Well, perhaps not. But it looks like it might be a trifle boring out here.”
“I don't have quite your allergic response to boredom, love, but to tell the truth, I was rather hoping I could get more of a look around the station while you were tied up here this afternoon. The glimpses we saw on the way in seemed quite enticing.”
“But I want Roic.” He hesitated, the security triage problem turning in his head.
She glanced across in friendly speculation at Bel, listening. “I admit I would be glad for a guide, but do you really think I need a bodyguard here?”
Insult seemed possible, though only from quaddies who knew whose wife she was, but assault, Miles had to admit, seemed unlikely. “No, but . . .”
Bel smiled cordially back at her. “If you would accept my escort, Lady Vorkosigan, I would be pleased to show you around Graf Station while the Lord Auditor conducts his interviews.”
Ekaterin brightened still further. “I would like that very much, yes, thank you, Portmaster Thorne. If things go well, as we must hope they do, we might not be here very long. I feel I should seize my opportunities.”
Bel was more experienced than Roic in everything from hand-to-hand combat to fleet maneuvers, and vastly less likely to blunder into trouble here through ignorance. “Well . . . all right, why not? Enjoy.” Miles touched his wrist com. “I'll call when I'm about finished. Maybe you can go shopping.” He waved them off, smiling. “Just don't haul home any severed heads.” He glanced up to find Venn and Greenlaw both staring at him in some dismay. “Ah—family joke,” he explained weakly. The dismay did not abate.
Ekaterin smiled back, and sailed out on Bel's cheerfully proffered arm. It occurred to Miles belatedly that Bel was notably universal in its sexual tastes, and that maybe he ought to have warned Ekaterin that she needn't be especially delicate in redirecting Bel's attentions, should any be offered. But surely Bel wouldn't . . . on the other hand, maybe they'd just take turns trying things on.
Reluctantly, he turned back to business.
The Barrayaran prisoners were stacked three to a cell in chambers meant for two occupants, a circumstance about which Venn half complained, half apologized. Security Post Three, he gave Miles to understand, had been unprepared for such an abnormal influx of recalcitrant downsiders. Miles murmured comprehension, if not necessarily sympathy, and refrained from observing that the quaddies' cells were larger than the sleeping cabins housing four aboard the Prince Xav .
Miles began by interviewing Brun's squad commander. The man was shocked to find his exploits receiving the high-powered attention of an actual Imperial Auditor, and as a result defaulted to a thick MilSpeak in his account of events. The picture Miles unpacked behind such formal phrases as penetrated the perimeter and enemy forces amassed still made him wince. But allowing for the changed point of view, his testimony did not materially contradict the Stationer version of the events. Alas.
Miles spot-checked the squad commander's story with another cell full of fellows, who added details unfortunate but not surprising. As the squad had been attached to the Prince Xav , none of them were personally acquainted with Lieutenant Solian, posted on the Idris .
Miles emerged and tested an argument on the hovering Sealer Greenlaw. “It is quite improper for you to continue holding these men. The orders they were following, though perhaps ill thought out, were not in fact illegal in Barrayaran military definition. If their orders had been to plunder, rape, or massacre civilian quaddies, they would have been under a legal military obligation to resist them, but in fact they were specifically ordered not to kill. If they had disobeyed Brun, they could have faced court-martial. It's double jeopardy, and seriously unfair to them.”
“I will consider this contention,” said Greenlaw dryly, with the For about ten seconds, after which I shall toss it out the nearest airlock hanging unspoken.
“And, looking ahead,” added Miles, “you can't wish to be stuck housing these men indefinitely. Surely it would be preferable for us to take them,” he just managed to convert off your hands to, “with us when we leave.”