"If so, it's for the first time," Illyan shrugged. And there's a first time for everything, hung unspoken in the air. Illyan turned now to pin Miles with a gaze of grim intensity. "Miles, do you think you would—if required—be capable of playing the part of Admiral Naismith again, for a short time?"
He'd seen it coming, but the words spoken out loud were still a strange cold thrill. To activate that suppressed persona again. . . . It wasn't just a part, Illyan. "I could play Naismith again, sure. It's stopping playing Naismith that scares me."
Illyan allowed himself a wintry smile, taking this for a joke. Miles's smile was a little sicker. You don't know, you don't know what it was like. . . , Three parts fakery and flim-flam, and one part . . . something else. Zen, gestalt, delusion? Uncontrollable moments of alpha-state exaltation. . . . Could he do it again? Maybe he knew too much now. First you freeze, and then you fall. Perhaps it would only be play-acting this time.
Illyan leaned back, held up his hands palm to palm, and let them fell in a releasing gesture. "Very well, Captain Ungari. He's all yours. Use him as you see fit. Your mission, then, is to gather information on the current crisis in the Hegen Hub; secondly, if possible, to use Ensign Vorkosigan to remove the Dendarii Mercenaries from the stage. If you decide to use a bogus contract to pull them out of the Hub, you can draw on the covert ops account for a convincing down-payment. You know the results I want. I'm sorry I can't make my orders more specific in advance of the intelligence you yourself must obtain."
"I don't mind, sir," said Ungari, smiling slightly.
"Hm. Enjoy your independence while it lasts. It ends with your first mistake." Illyan's tone was sardonic, but his eyes were confident, until he turned them toward Miles.
"Miles, you'll be traveling as 'Admiral Naismith,' himself traveling incognito, returning, possibly, to the Dendarii fleet. Should Captain Ungari decide for you to activate the Naismith role, he'll pose as your bodyguard, so as to be always in position to control the situation. It's a little too much to ask Ungari to be responsible for his mission and also your safety, so you'll also have a real bodyguard. This setup will give Captain Ungari unusual freedom of movement, because it will account for your possession of a personal ship—we have a jump pilot and a fast courier we obtained from—never mind where, but it has no connection with Barrayar. It's under Jacksonian registration at present, which fits in nicely with Admiral Naismith's mysterious background. It's so obviously bogus, no one will look for a second layer of, er, bogusity. Illyan paused. "You will, of course, obey Captain Ungari's orders. That goes without saying." Illyan's direct stare was chilly as a Kyrfli Island midnight.
Miles smiled dutifully, to show he took the hint. I'll be good, sir let me off planet! From ghost to goat—was this a promotion?
8
Victor Rotha, Procurement Agent. Sounded like a pimp. Dubiously, Miles regarded his new persona twinned over the vid plate in his cabin. What was wrong with a simple spartan mirror, anyway? Where had Illyan gotten this ship? Of Betan manufacture, it was stuffed with Betan gimmickry of a luxurious order. Miles entertained himself with a gruesome vision of what could happen if the programming on the elaborate sonic tooth-cleaner ever went awry.
"Rotha" was vaguely dressed, with respect to his supposed point-of-origin. Miles had drawn the line at a Betan sarong, Pol Station Six was not nearly warm enough for it. He did wear his loose green trousers held up with a Betan sarong rope, though, and Betan style sandals. The green shirt was a cheap synthetic silk from Escobar, the baggy cream jacket an expensive one of like style. The eclectic wardrobe of someone originally from Beta Colony, who'd been knocking around the galaxy for a while, sometimes up, sometimes down. Good. He muttered to himself aloud, warming up his disused Betan accent, he pottered about the elaborate Owner's Cabin.
They had docked here at Pol Six a day ago without incident. The whole three-week trip from Barrayar had passed without incident. Ungari seemed to like it that way. The ImpSec captain had spent most of the journey counting things, taking pictures and counting ships, troops, security guards both civil and military. They'd managed excuses to stop over at four of the six jump point stations on the route between Pol and the Hegen Hub, with Ungari counting, measuring, sectioning, computer-stuffing, and calculating the whole way. Now they had arrived at Pol's last (or first, depending on your direction of travel) outpost, its toehold in the Hegen Hub itself. At one time, Pol Six had merely marked the jump point, no more than an emergency stop and communications transfer link. No one had yet solved the problem of getting messages through a wormhole jump except by physically transporting them on a jump ship. In the most developed regions of the nexus, comm ships jumped hourly or even more often, to emit a tight-beam burst that traveled at the speed of light to the next jump point in that region of local space where messages were picked up and relayed out in turn, the fastest possible flow of information. In the less developed regions, one simply had to wait, sometimes for weeks or months, for a ship to happen by, and hope they'd remember to drop off your mail. J Now Pol Six didn't just mark, it frankly guarded. Ungari had clicked his tongue in excitement, identifying and adding up Pol Navy ships clustered in the area around the new construction. They'd managed a spiral flight path into dock that revealed every side of the station, and all ships both moored and moving.
"Your main job here," Ungari had told Miles, "will be to giving anyone watching us something more interesting to watch than me. Circulate. I doubt you'll need to expend any special effort to conspicuous. Develop your cover identity—with luck, you may even pick up a contact or two who'll be worthy of further study. Though doubt you'll run across anything of great value immediately; it doesn't work that way."
Now, Miles laid his samples case open on his bed and rechecked them. Just a traveling salesman, that's me. A dozen hand weapons, power packs removed, gleamed wickedly back at him. A row of vids described larger and more interesting weapons systems. An more interesting—you might even say, "arresting"—collection of tiny disks nestled concealed in Miles's jacket. Death. I can get it for you wholesale.
Miles's bodyguard met him at the docking hatch. Why, oh why had Illyan assigned Sergeant Overkill to this mission? Same reason he'd sent him to Kyril Island, because he was trusted, no doubt, but it embarrassed Miles to be working with a man who'd once arrested him. What did Overholt make of Miles, by now? Happily, the big man was the silent type.
Overholt was dressed as informally and eclectically as Miles himself, though with safety boots in place of sandals. He looked exactly like somebody's bodyguard trying to look like a tourist. Much the sort of man small-time arms dealer Victor Rotha would logically employ. Both functional and decorative, he slices, dices, and chops. … By themselves, either Miles or Overholt would be memorable. Together, well . . . Ungari was right. They needn't worry about being overlooked.
Miles led the way through that docking tube and into Pol Six. This docking spoke funneled into a Customs area, where Miles's sample case and person were carefully examined, and Overholt had to produce registration for his stunner. From there they had free run of the transfer station facilities, but for certain guarded corridors leading into the, as it were, militarized zones. Those areas, Ungari had made clear, were his business, not Miles's.