“Ah, your Vorinnis girl is around here somewhere—there she is.” General Haines nodded to a short figure in ISWA dress greens, which entailed skirts which were, Jole understood, not as uncomfortable in this heat as trousers and boots. She stood awkwardly on the other side of the garden gripping an untasted drink. “I had to explain to her that a last-minute personal invitation from the Vicereine did, actually, outrank her afternoon’s filing.”
“Good. They only met in passing the other day. Did you present her yet?”
“A while ago. She seemed a tad tongue-tied.”
“Well, Cordelia will get her over that in due course. See she gets home to base as well, please; I have an, uh…unscheduled conference scheduled with the Vicereine after this.”
Haines nodded, giving the girl a calculating glance. “How’s she working out for you?”
Jole shrugged. “All right so far. She’s keen, and it’s clear she picked up a little Vorbarr Sultana polish on her last rotation—or maybe that’s her Vor blood talking, there.” He hesitated, considering. “When it comes to divvying up resources and personnel, Sergyar command has always been third in line for everything.”
Haines sighed. “I’ve figured that out.”
“Komarr command always gets first pick, on the theory that they’ll be the hot seat if there is one, and Home Fleet is a close second. They arm-wrestle all the time over the best men. We get what’s left. What’s left, it turns out, are a lot of the best women. Send us more, I’d say.” He added after a prudent moment, “No, you can’t filch this one.”
Haines snorted, but gave up mentally filling his vacant org chart. Jole gave him a cordial nod and moved off, stalking-horse fashion, to give anyone who wanted a shot at him their chance. It was frequently the fastest way to find what he was looking for, provided that he was looking for trouble.
“Ah, Admiral Jole!” a voice hailed him. Jole fixed an affable smile on his face and turned.
The incumbent civilian mayor of Kareenburg and one of his councilman stirrup-riders approached him. Observing this, his two front-running opponents in the upcoming civic elections also closed in. They all gave each other wary, familiar nods.
“So glad to have caught you,” said Mayor Yerkes. “Tell me, is the rumor true that you plan to close the base next year?”
“Certainly not, sir,” said Jole. “I don’t know how these stories get started—do you?”
Yerkes ignored this slight conversational speed bump. “The activity among the civilian contractors must indicate something.”
“It’s no secret that His Imperial Majesty has granted permission to open a second base,” said Jole smoothly, thinking, Now that the General Staff has finally fought the appropriation through the Council of Counts. Possibly the closest most of them had come to a shooting war in Vorbarr Sultana for some years. “A single downside base has always been insufficient for defensive depth, not only in case of attack, but in the event of a natural disaster. The late Viceroy Vorkosigan had urged this expansion practically from the moment he set foot on Sergyar. You may be certain his widow will see his vision realized.”
“Yes, but where?” put in Madame Moreau.
“That issue is still being discussed.” Actually, it was down to a coin toss between Gridgrad or New Hassadar. Personally, Jole hankered for both, but he wasn’t going to get them—certainly not simultaneously. The choice of final site was still a secret closely held, to limit the burst of financial speculation that would inevitably follow its disclosure.
“You must know more.”
“I wouldn’t say that, ma’am.”
Mayor Yerkes gave him a look of amused frustration. Moreau and her co-challenger, Kuznetsov, just looked frustrated. In assorted ways, Kareenburg’s downside military base was still the largest economic entity in the area, though now being edged out by the expanding government offices and the busy civilian shuttleport acting as entrepôt for the steady stream of new colonists. In any case, after a few more probing questions, the trio coasted off to test their luck with Haines. A futile effort, but Jole couldn’t blame them for trying.
Lieutenant Vorinnis, who had spotted him just before he’d been surrounded by the anxious mayoral candidates, angled over to him. “Sir. General Haines said I should accompany him, sir…?”
“Quite right, Lieutenant.”
The girl visibly relaxed. Jole inquired lightly, “So, what did you think of the Vicereine, now you’ve had a chance to exchange a few more words?”
“She wasn’t as scary as I thought.” Though Vorinnis said this as if she were still unsure. “I know she’s a grandmother, but she doesn’t seem very…grandmotherish. As if she’s ignoring the categories.”
Jole smiled. “She’s always done that,” he conceded. “But you should have met her before…” Before half her light was extinguished.
“Not much chance of that, sir.”
“No, I suppose not.” He glanced out over the top of her dress beret. “Heads-up; we’re about to get Cetagandans.” She wheeled to follow his nod.
Despite his ghem-lord status, the Cetagandan consul in Kareenburg conformed to local, casual styles—shirt and trousers which, while doubtless comfortable, somehow managed to look about five times more expensive than what anyone else wore. His cultural attaché was unfortunately stuck, like Haines, in dress unsuitable for the sunny afternoon, dark with a heavy over-robe. Also ghem, he came complete with his clan’s formal face paint: blue and green swirls slashed with gold in an ornate pattern, giving him a vaguely subaqueous air. A lesser ghem in a lesser venue would usually make do these days with a small colored decal on the cheekbone, as, indeed, the consul himself had, appropriately to his garb. The overdressed attaché was either a nervous novice, or had been oddly unadvised by his superiors. The consul, who’d finally noted Jole’s arrival, spoke a word in his subordinate’s ear and guided him in Jole’s direction.
As the two ghem lords sidled around the other guests toward him, Jole ran a mental review of the current disposition of everything moving upside, but as of the morning report all was quiet and routine. The multi-jump wormhole link to the nearest of the Cetagandan Empire’s eight primary worlds, Rho Ceta, had its terminus on the route between Komarr and Sergyar, closer to the former; therefore in a position to cut the route and the Barrayaran Empire off from Sergyar and everything that lay beyond it on that side. Which was why Komarr command held the jump-points militarily for several empty systems in, handing off about three-fourths of the way to the Rho Cetan command doing the same for their side.
The last overtly hostile move in force that the Cetagandans had made in that quarter had been over forty years ago, in the second year of Aral’s regency for the young Emperor Gregor. On the heels of Vordarian’s Pretendership—an attempted palace coup on Barrayar that had nearly brought down Aral’s shaky new government—Cetaganda had sought to wrest away conquered Komarr and newly discovered Sergyar from Barrayaran hands. The attack force never made it through the chain of jump-points doggedly held by the Barrayaran Admiral Kanzian, soon backed in turn by reinforcements led by Aral himself. Aral had then returned home to an awkward combination of a hero’s welcome and a local uprising on Komarr.
According to Aral, it had been the Cetagandan plan for all three events to occur simultaneously. Such a pile-up might have overwhelmed even him, but the Pretendership had ended abruptly many months before anyone could have predicted, and the restive Komarrans, whose agenda hadn’t actually included exchanging a Barrayaran occupation for a Cetagandan one despite their willingness to accept aid, had been divided and laggard. So Aral had been able to take on his crises one at a time instead of all together. It had made for a hellish few years, Jole gathered. But Cetaganda hadn’t tried again through that route.