Lois Bujold: Komarr

“There are advantages to prisons,” he went on persuasively, “Some of them are comfortably furnished, and unlike graves, sometimes, eventually, you can get out of them again. Now, I am willing, in exchange for your peaceful surrender and cooperation, to personally guarantee your lives. Not, note, your freedom-that will have to wait. But time passes, old crises are succeeded by new ones, people change their minds. Live ones do, anyway. There are always those amnesties, in celebration of this or that public event-the birth of an Imperial heir, for instance. I doubt any of you will be forced to spend as much as a full decade in prison.”

“Some offer,” said Foscol bitterly.

Miles let his brows rise. “It’s an honest one. You have a better hope of amnesty than Tien Vorsoisson does. That ore freighter pilot will enjoy no visits from her children. I reviewed her autopsy, did I mention? All the autopsies. If I have a moral claim, it’s that I’m bargaining away the rights of the dead soletta-keepers’ families to any justice for their slain. There ought to be civil trials for manslaughter over this.”

Even Foscol looked away at these words.

Good. Go on. The more time he burned, the better, and they were tracking his arguments; as long as he could keep Soudha from cutting the com, he was making some twisty sort of progress. “You bitch endlessly about Barrayaran tyranny, but somehow I don’t think you folks took a vote of all Komarran planetary shareholders, before you attempted to seal-or steal— their future. And if you could have, I don’t think you would have dared. Twenty years ago, even fifteen years ago, maybe you could have counted on majority support. By ten years ago, it was already too late. Would your fellows really want to close off their nearest market now, and lose all that trade? Lose all their relatives who’ve moved to Barrayar, and their half-Barrayaran grandchildren? Your trade fleets have found their Barrayaran military escorts bloody useful often enough. Who are the true tyrants here-the blundering Barrayarans who seek, however awkwardly, to include Komarr in their future, or the Komarran intellectual elitists who seek to exclude all but themselves from it?” He took a deep breath to control the unexpected anger which had boiled up with his words, aware he was teetering on the edge with these people. Watch it, watch it. “So all that remains for us is to try and salvage as many lives as possible from the wreckage.”

After a little time, Madame Radovas asked, “How would you guarantee our lives?” They were the first words she had spoken, though she had listened intently throughout.

“By my order, as an Imperial Auditor. Only Emperor Gregor himself could gainsay it.”

“So… why won’t Emperor Gregor gainsay it?” asked Cappell skeptically.

“He’s not going to be happy about any of this,” Miles answered frankly. And I’m going to have to give him the report, God help me. “But… if I lay my word on the line, I don’t think he’ll deny me.” He hesitated. “Or else I will have to resign.”

Foscol snorted. “How nice for us, to know that after we are dead, you will resign. What a consolation.”

Soudha rubbed his lips, watching Miles… watching his truncated image, Miles reminded himself. He was not the only one missing body cues. The engineer was silent, thinking… what?

“Your word?” Cappell grimaced. “Do you know what a Vorkosigan’s word means to us?”

“Yes,” said Miles levelly. “Do you know what it means to me?”

Madame Radovas tilted her head, and her quiet stare became, if possible, more focused.

Miles leaned forward into the vid pickup. “My word is all that stands between you and ImpSec’s aspiring heroes coming through your walls. They don’t need the corridors, you know. My word went down on my Auditor’s oath, which holds me at this moment unblinking to a duty I find more terrific than you can know. I only have one name’s oath. It cannot be true to Gregor if it is false to you. But if there’s one thing my father’s heartbreaking experience at Solstice taught, it’s that I’d better not put my word down on events I do not control. If you surrender quietly, I can control what happens. If ImpSec has to detain you by force, it will be up to chance, chaos, and the reflexes of some overexcited young men with guns and gallant visions of thwarting mad Komarran terrorists.”

“We are not terrorists,” said Foscol hotly.

“No? You’ve succeeded in terrifying me,” Miles said bleakly. Her lips thinned, but Soudha looked less certain.

“If you unleash ImpSec, the consequences will be your doing,” said Cappell.

“Almost correct,” Miles agreed. “If I unleash ImpSec, the consequences will be my responsibility. It’s that devil’s distinction between being in charge and being in control. I’m in charge; you’re in control. You can imagine how much this thrills me.”

Soudha snorted. One corner of Miles’s mouth tilted up in unwilling response. Yeah, Soudha knows all about that one, too.

Foscol leaned forward. “This is all a smoke screen. Captain Vorgier said they were sending for a jumpship. Where’s it?”

“Vorgier was lying for time, which was his clear duty. There will not be a jumpship.” Shit, that did it. There were only two ways this could go now. There were only two ways it could go before.

“We have a pair of hostages. Do we have to space one of them to prove we’re serious?”

“I believe you are deathly serious. Which one gets to watch, the aunt or the niece?” Miles asked softly, settling back again. “You claim to not be mad terrorists, and I believe you. You’re not. Yet. You are also not murderers; I actually accept that all the deaths you’ve left in your wake were accidents. So far. But I also know that line gets easier to slip over with practice. Please observe that you have now gone as far as you can without turning yourselves into a perfect replica of the enemy you set out to oppose.”

He let those last words hang in the air for a time, for emphasis.

“Vorkosigan’s right, I think,” said Soudha unexpectedly. “We’ve come to the end of our choices. Or to the beginning of another set. One that isn’t the set I signed up for.”

“We have to stick together, or it’s no good,” said Foscol urgently. “If we have to space one of them, I vote for that hell-cat Vorsoisson.”

“Would you do it with your own hands?” said Soudha slowly. “Because I think I decline.”

“Even after what she did to us?”

What in God’s name did gentle Ekaterin do to you? Miles kept his expression as blank as he could, his body still.

Soudha hesitated. “Seems it made no difference after all.”

Cappell and Madame Radovas both began to speak at once, but Soudha held up a restraining hand. He blew out his breath like a man in pain. “No. Let us continue as we began. The choice is plain. Stop now-unconditional surrender-or call Vorkosigan’s bluff. Now, it’s no secret to you I thought the time to go into hiding for a later try was before we ever left Komarr.”

“I’m sorry I voted against you the last time,” Cappell said to Soudha.

Soudha shrugged. “Yeah, well… If we’re going to quit, the time’s come.”

No, it hasn’t, Miles thought frantically. This was too abrupt. There was time for another ten hours of chit chat at the very least. He wanted to slide them to surrender, not stampede them to suicide. Or murder. If they believed him about the defects of their device, as they appeared to, it must soon occur to them that they could hold the whole station hostage, if they didn’t mind the self-immolating aspect. Well, if they weren’t going to think of that themselves, far be it from him to point it out. He leaned back in his station chair, and chewed on the side of his finger, and watched, and listened.