Lois Bujold - Captain Vorpatril's alliance

“I’d be willing to take that for a prophecy, right about now,” he admitted.

“The never give up part sounded good, too.”

“Yeah,” he sighed.

They rested, and waited.

Ivan thought he might have dozed off for a little, but biology ruled all things; thirst and a need to pee drove them both back upstairs all too soon. Together. Tej had said together. She had meant together, hadn’t she?

This time, yes. Thank God for do-overs.

Team Arqua, under the Baronne’s capable direction, had addressed biology’s most immediate demands. Several large plastic bins had been emptied of old clothing.

Some were now filled with turbid water, slowly settling. One was set up in a corner behind a stall made of yet more priceless boxes, adequate camp toilet and with a tightly fitting lid that they might have cause to be grateful for later. A drip-filter was measuring out drinks, rather slowly for the crowd, but sips were shared around in fine antique glassware, its gold leaf showing sigils suggesting the—alas, incomplete—set had been the personal property of the infamous Count Pierre “Le Sanguinaire” Vorrutyer, that Ivan didn’t even attempt to mentally appraise.

Imola had returned, trousers soaked to his thighs; he sat back in his surly huddle and didn’t say much. The water was now lapping the outer wall of the bunker.

Shiv, Amiri, and Ivan then combined to switch the vacuum-handle to the other side of the door slab, and heave it back up into place, just beating the rising tide. The jagged seam around the slab grew dark and wet at a steady pace, creeping upward, but only a small dribble leaked through, to be captured by some mats found downstairs.

Ivan was impressed by Shiv’s level-headedness in this emergency, which set the tone and the example for his whole family, bluntly curbing the potential chaos. But then, anyone who had once suffered defeat by Admiral Aral Vorkosigan in a pitched space battle likely had much higher standards for emergencies than most mortals.

The thought of his uncle caused stern lectures on prisoner-of-war regulations to rise to Ivan’s mind, so he supervised the waking of Goons One and Two to allow them to piss and drink. He didn’t argue, though, when Shiv put the woozy men back to sleep with another stun shot, along with Imola, who had started to restively complain again, for good measure. Unconsciousness would slow their metabolisms and breathing, right? It was all for the common good.

The younger women in the crowd, including Tej, then began to sort through the piles of clothing that had given up their containers to the drinking water reserves. No new lethality sprang from the benign diversion, and Ivan slowly relaxed. It was almost all fine court wear, in both Cetagandan and Barrayaran styles, including some old military dress uniforms that Amiri, and in a bit Ivan, were compelled to somewhat sheepishly model, ghem and Vor respectively. The Cetagandan garb was challengingly complex, with a non-obvious fastening etiquette that Lady ghem Estif was drawn into advising upon.

It was while they were engaged upon this enterprise that Pearl picked up and shook out a long outer-coat, and something fell out of the folds to the floor with a clink. Ivan controlled his flinch.

“Oh!” said Lady ghem Estif. She bent and swept it up into her palm, and stared avidly. “I certainly didn’t expect to find this there!”

“What is it, Grandmama?” Tej inquired; the females gathered around to look.

“My old brooch.” The old haut woman smiled. “I thought it was lost.”

Ivan, stiff in some dead Barrayaran prince’s uniform that was a trifle too small for him, wandered over to see. It was not a very pretty piece of jewelry; an array of beads that looked more like ball bearings, set in a symmetrical array. Cetagandan then-modern art? But it seemed to mean a lot to the old lady, for she instantly fastened it to the inmost layer of her clothing.

“Very good, Pearl!”

The fashion show was brought to a close by the gradual fading of the cold lights. Ivan skinned out of the scratchy wool and heavy, rather greenish gold braid, roused to a new and unexpected pity for his military ancestors, and gratefully redonned his weekend civvies, manky as they now were with the night’s exertions. The Baronne cracked a new light and set it up on a central box. People drifted away in small groups to the edges of the chamber, to make bedrolls of sorts out of the fine fabrics. Sleeping was encouraged, on the basis of slowed breathing all around.

The confiscated but otherwise useless wristcoms of Imola and his minions at least allowed them to track the time; about three hours before the late winter dawn, Ivan judged. If it had been a work day, he’d be getting up in about an hour. He and Tej cuddled in by one wall; Shiv and Udine by another. The remaining Jewels, Pearl and Emerald, made themselves a bedroll, and Pidge and Amiri anchored close by, not quite intruding on their space. Lady ghem Estif alone sat up, her eyes gleaming in the shadows, watching who-knew-what parade of memories pass before her mind’s eye.

Ivan snuffled up around Tej, using her as a comfy body pillow, and let his face hide itself in her hair. The scent of it was soothing. He had an edgy relationship with darkness, just at the moment, but maybe letting his eyes close would make it seem more natural. He was certainly too keyed up to sleep…

Ivan shot awake into a deep thrumming noise that seemed to come from the very walls, reverberating directionlessly around the room. The cold light propped on the box fell over and rolled to the floor. Another cold light snapped into existence from Shiv and Udine’s side of the room; Ivan added one of his own and sat up, raising it high. Tej was awake and on her feet already, looking sleep-shocked. Ivan clambered up after her.

“What the hell is that ?” shouted Amiri, as the thunder continued unabated. It shifted, changed pitch, stopped for a moment, then started up again.

Ivan moved around, trying to get a bearing; he eventually decided up by process of elimination.

“Either Vorbarr Sultana is undergoing a surprise bombardment from space,” he shouted back, “or some engineers are shifting a hell of a lot of dirt in a hurry with a heavy-duty grav-lifter.”

Welcome as this sign was, it occurred to Ivan that being directly under a big grav-lifter at work was not the healthiest possible location, especially if the operators were working blind. “Stay away from the middle of the room!” he shouted. Where there any stronger places, like doorways, to cluster under? No, not exactly. Would downstairs be safer? Maybe…He was about to suggest this when the noise stopped.

He couldn’t decide if the thunder or the silence was more unnerving. Everyone around the room was staring upward now, with a range of expressions ranging from hope to fear, with a few side jaunts—Lady ghem Estif’s expression was bland in its haut mask; Shiv’s was blackly ironic. Tej…stuck tight to Ivan. That worked for him.

The uproar started and stopped again a dozen agonizing times in the next hour. It was getting louder…closer…the vibrations took on a strange, whiny, lighter timbre. Weird thumps followed from the ceiling—roof—however you wanted to think of it.

An ear-splitting shriek; dust began to sift down from a circle slowly being drawn over the center of the room. Ivan darted forward and rescued the seal-dagger box, then skittered back to Tej’s side, trying to calculate the weight of a two-meter-wide disc of very thick, very peculiarly reinforced plascrete, and its probable momentum after a three-meter drop. Would it go right through the floor to the chamber below? Possibly…