"I could make it quicker."
"One hour," the secretary repeated. "HQ will send a car for you."
"Oh. Thanks." Useless to ask for more information over a comconsole; Miles's machine was more secured than a commercial model, but not that much more.
The secretary cut the com. Well, it would give him time to take another cold shower, and dress properly. After his second bath of the day he pulled a set of fresh-pressed undress greens out of his closet, and set about transferring his ImpSec silver eyes to their place on the collar, in front of the—ahem!—battered red lieutenant's tabs he'd been wearing for eight bleeding years. The rank tabs were duplicates, but the eye-of-Horus pins, built up in molecular layers of tarnish-proof silver in a hidden pattern, were issued one set (right-and left-facing) to a soldier. Name and serial number were engraved on the back, and woe to the man who lost his. ImpSec eyes were as hard to counterfeit as money, and as powerful. When Miles was finished, his appearance was as neat as for any interview with the Emperor. Neater. Gregor had less immediate control over his destiny than Illyan did.
It was all sympathetic magic. When you couldn't do something truly useful, you tended to vent the pent-up energy in something useless but available, like snappy dressing. Still he was downstairs and waiting ten minutes before the ImpSec groundcar showed up at the front portico.
When he arrived this time at Illyan's office, the door to the inner chamber was open. The secretary waved him through.
Illyan looked up from his own oversized, overworked comconsole desk, and nodded in return to Miles's slightly-sharper-than-analyst's salute. He reached for a control, and the door to the outer office slid closed, and secure-locked itself. The locking was an unusual gesture, and Miles quelled a rising hope that it meant that this time, something bloody big was in the works, something really challenging.
There was a chair waiting, good. Illyan had been known, when particularly furious, to keep one standing till the yelling part was done. Not that Illyan ever raised his voice; he tended to the devastatingly well-chosen word to convey his emotions, a style Miles admired and hoped to emulate. But there was a peculiar tension in the ImpSec chief today. Grim, much more so than normal. Miles seated himself, and gave Illyan a short nod, signifying his commander had all his attention: I'm ready. Let's go.
Illyan leaned not forward, but back, studying Miles across the wide black surface of the desk. "You told my secretary you had something you wanted to add to your last report?"
Shit. Now or never. But the confession of his little medical problem would be certain to totally derail whatever mission assignment was coming up. Never it is, then. I'll fix it myself, later. As soon as possible. "Nothing important now. What's up?"
Illyan sighed, and drummed his fingers once, introspectively, on the black glass before him. "I received a disturbing report from Jackson's Whole."
Miles's breath drew in. I died there once. "Admiral Naismith is notably unwelcome in those parts, but I'm ready for a rematch. What have the bastards done now?"
"This is not a new mission, nor a new report. This is in relation to your last … I can hardly call it a mission, since I never ordered it. Your last adventure there." Illyan looked up at him.
"Oh?" said Miles cautiously.
"Complete copies of your cryo-revival surgeon's medical records finally surfaced. It took some time, due to the confusion of the Durona Group s hurried departure from Jackson's Whole, with their records scattered between Escobar and House Fell. House Fell, needless to say, was not forthcoming with extra data. It took even more time for the records to be received and processed by my analysis section, and to finally be read in detail by someone who realized their significance and implications. Some months, in fact."
Miles's belly went abruptly very cold, as if in memory of his freezing death. He had a sudden insight as to the exact state of mind of a person who fell/jumped/was pushed from the top of a very tall building, in that subjectively stretched eternity it took for them to reach the pavement below. We have just made a major mistake. Oh, yes.
"What bothers me most, of course," Illyan went on, "is not your seizures themselves, but the fact that you concealed them from the ImpSec physicians who were trying to return you fit for duty. You lied to them, and through them, to me."
Miles swallowed, searching his paralyzed consciousness for a defense for the indefensible. What couldn't be defended could only be denied. He pictured himself chirping brightly, What seizures, sir? No. "Dr. Durona . . . said they would go away on their own." She had, dammit, she had. "Or . . . they might," he corrected. "At that time, I thought they had."
Illyan grimaced. He picked a cipher-card from his desktop, and held it up between thumb and forefinger. "This," he stated, "is my latest independent report from the Dendarii. Including your fleet surgeons medical reports. The ones she kept in her cabin, not in her sick bay office. They were not easy to obtain. I've been waiting for them. They came in last night."
He had a third observer. I might have known. I should have figured it.
"Do you want to try to play any more little guessing games about this?" Illyan added dryly.
"No, sir," Miles whispered. He hadn't meant it to come out a whisper. "No more games."
"Good." Illyan rocked slightly in his station chair, and tossed the card back to the desktop. His face looked like death itself. Miles wondered what his own face looked like. As wide-eyed as an animal in the headlights, as viewed from a groundcar traveling toward it at a hundred kilometers an hour, he suspected.
"This"—Illyan pointed to the cipher-card—"was a betrayal of the subordinates who depended on you as well as of the superiors who trusted you. And it was a knowing betrayal, proved on Lieutenant Vorberg's body. Do you have anything to say in your defense?"
If the tactical situation was bad, change your ground. If you can't win, change the rules. Miles s internal tension shot him up out of his chair, to pace back and forth before Illyan's desk. His voice rose. "I have served you, body and blood—and I've bled plenty—for nine years, sir. Ask the Marilacans how well I've served you. Ask a hundred others. Over thirty missions, and only two that could remotely be classified as failures. I've laid my life on the line dozens of times, I've literally laid it down. Does that suddenly count for nothing now?"
"It counts"—Illyan inhaled—"for much. That's why I am offering you a medical discharge without prejudice, if you resign now."
"Resign? Quit? This is your idea of a favor? ImpSec has made worse scandals than this disappear—I know you can do more than that, if you choose!"
"It's the best way. Not just for you, but for your name's sake. I have thought this through from every angle. I've been thinking about it for weeks."
This is why he called me home. No mission. There never was. Only this. I was screwed from before the beginning. No chance.
"After serving your father for thirty years," Illyan continued, "I can do no less. And no more."
Miles froze. "My father . . . asked for this? He knows?"
"Not yet. Apprising him is a task I leave to you. This is one last report I do not care to make."