Lois Bujold - Captain Vorpatril's alliance

Morozov went on jovially, “After all, a man who can’t persuade his own wife to trust him is a man in trouble in many ways.”

So many ways. Ivan could only nod.

The military compound’s guest quarters proved to resemble a small, faintly shabby hotel, designed to temporarily house officers, dependents, or civilian contract employees either in transit to elsewhere, or downside on Komarr for duties too brief to billet them in permanent housing. Its security, Tej judged, was only fair, but still vastly better than anything she’d had to rely upon lately, and it didn’t feel like a prison. Ivan Xav escorted Tej and Rish to a clean if narrow chamber with two beds, and, yawning, himself went to ground in a room directly across the hall. As Tej’s very first wedding night ever, this would have left something to be desired, if she hadn’t been so exhausted by the disruptions of the past days as to fall asleep nearly as fast as she could pull up her covers.

When they awoke the next morning Ivan Xav had already gone off to aide-de-camp his admiral some more, though he left a note of reassurance, scrawled on the back of a flimsy and shoved under their door. Captain Morozov turned up to escort them to a long, chatty brunch in a private room off the ImpSec building cafeteria, where he asked yet more uncomfortably shrewd questions, seeming as satisfied with the evasions as the answers, which was a bit disquieting, on reflection. In the afternoon, a uniformed enlisted man arrived with all of their and Ivan Xav’s remaining possessions from his rental flat, and dumped them on Rish’s bed to be sorted out. Minus the groceries, evidently abandoned; Tej would rather have liked to have kept the emptied groats box for a souvenir.

Tej sat herself down at the room’s little comconsole and began to try to study up on Barrayaran history. Which the Barrayarans appeared, from a first glance, to have made far too much of. Rish, trammeled by the confined space as usual—these past months had been especially hard on her—started her dance exercises, or as least as many of the thousand-moves-kata as she could fit into the constricted area. She had wandered into their tiny bathroom to practice the neck, face, ear, eye, and eyebrow movements in front of the mirror—ten reps each—when a hearty knock on the door shot Tej from her chair and almost out of the window. Only one floor up, now, so unlikely to be lethal—had Ivan Xav arranged that?

In any case, it was his voice that called, “Hi, Tej, you in there?” Trying to calm her pounding heart, she went to unlock the door.

He stuck his head in and said, “Saddle up, ladies. Our shuttle awaits.”

“So soon?” said Tej, as Rish came out of the lav.

“Hey, you two may have slept in, but it’s been a long day for me.”

“No, I mean, I thought—I thought this thing with the smugglers might have thrown you off schedule.”

“It’s Service Security’s problem now. That’s what delegation is for. They’re scrambling like mad to cover their lapse—this is the sort of rattlesnake they’re supposed to hand to Desplains, neatly pithed, pinned on a card, and labeled, not the other way around. Very disorienting for ’em. Though all of their further reports will doubtless catch up with us en route . Travel time with the boss is not break time, alas.” He gathered up his delivered gear and went off to pack his duffle.

The ride up to orbit on the military shuttle felt like escape from a deeper pit than just a gravity well. Tej stared out her tiny window. Scabrous patches of green terraforming clung like lichen around the barren, poisonous planet, and the lights of the dome arcologies, strung like bright beads along the faint monorail lines, made promises for the future, but not for the now. For someone who’d spent as much time growing up on space installations as Tej, Solstice Dome ought to have felt spacious, but it hadn’t. If a place wasn’t going to be a proper station, it ought to be a proper planet, but Komarr had seemed to be something caught between.

I don’t know where I’m going. But this wasn’t it . Was she going to have to sort through the entire Nexus by process of elimination to find her final destination? I hope not .

The shuttle docked, and Ivan Xav led them on a very short walk through the military orbital station to another portal. A zero-gee float through a personnel flex tube gave Tej a bare glimpse of a ship about the size of a rich man’s yacht, but not nearly as cheery-looking—an effect of the warty weapons housings studding the armored skin, perhaps. The tube spat them out into a small hatch bay, neat but decidedly utilitarian. Three men awaited them: an armed soldier in ship gear, an unarmed enlisted man in a plain green uniform, and a spare, gray-haired man in a less-plain green uniform like Ivan Xav’s. He did not particularly exude arrogance, but Tej recognized how a person stood or moved when they owned the place, and this man did; it hardly needed Ivan Xav’s salute and, “Admiral Desplains, sir,” to identify him. “May I present to you my wife, Lady Tej Vorpatril, and her personal assistant, Lapis Lazuli, also known as Rish.”

The admiral returned the salute in a more perfunctory manner. His polite smile broadened into something more genuinely welcoming, or maybe that was just genuinely amused, as he looked over his guests. Somebody must have warned him about Rish, for he didn’t gawk. “Lady Vorpatril. Miss, ah, Lazuli. Welcome aboard the JP-9 . My ship has no more memorable name, I’m afraid.”

Tej gathered her wits enough to return, “Thank you for inviting us, sir,” and didn’t correct Rish’s address. A Chief of Operations wasn’t exactly a House baron, more like a senior House security officer, but it might be well to treat him just as circumspectly.

“I understand you were of material aid in helping us trap our home-grown smugglers, yesterday,” Desplains went on.

Not at all sure what Ivan Xav had told him, Tej tried smiling mysteriously, and murmured, “They were no friends to me or mine.”

“So Captain Morozov gave me to believe,” said Desplains.

Oh. Of course Morozov had to be reporting to someone. Their chats hadn’t been just for his entertainment, or his back-files, however much he managed to make one feel so. “Has Morozov much special training in interrogation?” Tej asked, belatedly curious.

“Actually, he trains interrogators,” said Desplains. “One of our top men, you know.” He dragged his gaze back up to her face—so, old but not dead, though Tej had trouble estimating Barrayarans’ ages. “I begin to see why Captain Vorpatril’s chivalrous inspiration took the form it did, Lady Vorpatril. I suddenly realize his duties with me have not left you much time together since your wedding yesterday, ah, morning was it?”

“Not any,” she confirmed. She tried a doleful look on him, curious to see what would happen.

It won a quirky smile, anyway. “We shall have to find some way to make it up to you. In the meanwhile, Ivan, show our guests around the ship and give them the safety drill.”

He made a motion to the enlisted man, who collected their bags. Tej and Rish parted reluctantly with theirs, till Ivan Xav whispered, opaquely but reassuringly, “Admiral’s bâtman, it’s all right.” As they left the hatch bay, Desplains and the other bent their heads together in some conference.

The ship was small and the tour brief, as the engineering and Nav-and-Com areas were evidently off-limits. While they were about this, Tej more felt than heard the faint thumps and clanks that told her they had detached from the station and were on their way already. The amenities were few: a kind of dining room-gathering place that Ivan Xav dubbed the wardroom, a small observation lounge, a compact but well-equipped exercise room that Rish eyed with interest. Tej guessed a crew of less than twenty, split among shifts, and a capacity of perhaps a dozen passengers, maybe twice that in an emergency. The jump-pinnace was bigger and slower than a fast courier, but not by much.