“If I needed him at all, I’d need him urgently. In the circumstances, I’d fear a sudden rise in the market price. Besides, accidents happen. Look at the accident that happened to poor Baron Fell’s clone, in your keeping.”
The temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees, and Miles cursed is tongue. That episode was apparently still classified information in these parts, or at least some kind of hot button. The Baron studied him, if not with more respect, then with increased suspicion. “If you wish another clone made for transplant purposes, Admiral, you’ve come to the right place. But this clone is not for sale.”
“This clone does not belong to you,” Miles snapped out, too quickly. No—steady on. Keep it cool, keep his real thoughts buried deep, maintain that smarmy surface persona that could actually cut a deal with Baron Bharaputra without vomiting. Cool. “Besides, there’s that ten-year lead time. It’s not some long-anticipated death from old age that concerns me. It’s the abrupt surprise sort.” After a pause, and with a heroic effort, he choked out, “You need not waive the property damage charges, of course.”
“I need not do anything at all, Admiral,” the Baron pointed out. Coolly.
Don’t bet on it, you Jacksonian bastard. “Why do you want this particular clone, Baron? Considering how readily you could make yourself another.”
“Not that readily. His medical records reveal he was quite a challenge.” Vasa Luigi tapped the side of his aquiline nose with one forefinger, and smiled without much humor.
“Do you plan punishment? A warning to other malefactors?”
“He will doubtless regard it so.”
So, there was a plan for Mark, or at least an idea that smelled of some profit. “Nothing in the direction of our Barrayaran progenitor, I trust. That plot is long dead. They know about us both.”
“I admit, his Barrayaran connections interest me. Your Barrayaran connections interest me too. It is obvious from the name that you took for yourself that you’ve long known where you came from. Just what is your relationship with Barrayar, Admiral?”
“Queasy,” he admitted. “They tolerate me, I do them a favor now and then. For a price. Beyond that, mutual avoidance. Barrayaran Imperial Security has a longer arm even than House Bharaputra. You don’t want to attract their negative attention, I assure you.”
Vasa Luigi’s brows rose, politely skeptical. “A progenitor and two clones … three identical brothers. And all so short. Among you, I suppose you make a whole man.”
Not to the point; the Baron was casting for something, information, presumably. “Three, but hardly identical,” said Miles. “The original Lord Vorkosigan is a dull stick, I am assured. The limitations of Mark’s capacities, he has just demonstrated, I fear. I was the improved model. My creators planned higher things for me, but they did their job too well, and I began planning for myself. A trick neither of my poor siblings seems to have mastered.”
“I wish I could talk with your creators.”
“I wish you could too. They are deceased.”
The Baron favored him with a chill smile. “You’re a cocky little fellow, aren’t you?”
Miles stretched his lips in return, and said nothing.
The Baron sat back, tenting his fingers. “My offer stands. The clone is not for sale. But every thirty minutes, the fines will double. I advise you to close your deal quickly, Admiral. You will not get a better.”
“I must have a brief consultation with my Fleet accountant,” Miles temporized. “I will return your call shortly.”
“How else?” Vasa Luigi murmured, with a small smile at his own wit.
Miles cut the comm abruptly, and sat. His stomach was shaking, hot red waves of shame and anger radiating outward through his whole body from the pit of his belly.
“But the Fleet accountant isn’t here,” Quinn pointed out, sounding slightly confused. Lieutenant Bone had indeed departed with Baz and the rest of the Dendarii from Escobar.
“I … don’t like Baron Bharaputra’s deal.”
“Can’t ImpSec rescue Mark later?”
“I am ImpSec.”
Quinn could hardly disagree; she fell silent.
“I want my space armor,” he growled petulantly, hunching in his station chair.
“Mark has it,” said Quinn.
“I know. My half-armor. My command headset.”
“Mark has those too.”
“I know.” His hand slapped down hard on the arm of the chair, the harsh crack in the quiet chamber making Quinn flinch. “A squad leader’s helmet, then!”
“What for?” said Quinn in a flat, unencouraging tone. “No crusades here, you said.”
“I’m cutting myself a better deal.” He swung to his feet. His blood beat in his ears, hotter and hotter. “Come on.”
The seat straps bit into his body as the drop shuttle blew its clamps and accelerated away from the side of the Peregrine. Miles glanced up over the pilot’s shoulder for a quick check of the planet’s curvature sliding across the window, and a glimpse of his two fighter-shuttles falling away from the mothership to cover them. They were followed the Peregrine’s second combat drop shuttle, the other half of his two-pronged attack. His faint feint. Would the Bharaputrans take it seriously? You hope. He turned his attention back to the glittering digital data-world supplied by his command headset, glad he was not stuck with a squad leader’s helmet after all. He’d commandeered Elena Bothari-Jesek’s downside-team captain’s gear, while she rode the tactics room back aboard the Peregrine. Bring it back without any unsightly holes through it, damn you, she’d told him, her face pale with unexpressed anxiety. Practically everything he wore was liberated. An oversized nerve-disruptor shield-net suit had its cuffs turned up and held with elastic bands at wrists and ankles. Quinn had insisted on it, and as nerve-disruptor damage was his particular nightmare, he hadn’t argued. Sloppy fatigues, held ditto. The plasma-mirror field pack straps cinched the extra fabric around his body reasonably well. Two pairs of thick socks kept his borrowed boots from sliding around. It was all very annoying, but hardly his greatest concern while trying to pull together a downside raid on thirty minutes’ notice.
His greatest concern was their landing site. On top of Thorne’s building would have been his first choice, but the shuttle pilot claimed that the whole building would collapse if they tried to set the shuttle down on it, and anyway the roof was peaked, not flat. The next closest possible site was occupied by the Ariel’s dead and abandoned shuttle. The third-choice site looked like it was going to a long walk, especially on the return journey when Bharaputra’s security would have had time to set up counter measures. Straight up the slot was not his preferred attack style. Well, maybe Sergeant Kimura and Yellow Squad in the second drop shuttle would give Baron Bharaputra something more urgent to think about. Take care your shuttle, Kimura. It’s our only back-up, now. I should have brought the whole damned fleet.
He ignored his own shuttle’s clanks and screams of deceleration as they hit the atmosphere—it was an excellent hell-drop, but it couldn’t go fast enough to suit him—and watched the progress of his high cover in the colored codes and patterns of his helmet data display, the startled Bharaputran fighter-shuttles that had been guarding the Peregrine now found their attention suddenly divided. They wasted a few futile shots against the Peregrine itself, wavered after Kimura, then turned to pursue Miles’s attack formation. One Bharaputran was blown to bits for its attempt almost immediately, and Miles whispered a pithy commendation for his Dendarii fighter pilot into his recorder on the spot. The other Bharaputran, unnerved, broke away to await reinforcements. Well, that had been easy. It was the trip back that was going to be maximum fun. He could feel the adrenalin high starting already, stranger and sweeter than a drug-rush through his body. It would last for hours, then depart abruptly, leaving him a burnt-out husk with hollow eyes and voice. Was it worth it? It will be if we win.