Lois Bujold - Mirror Dance

“They need no urging.” Fell regarded him coldly. “Be aware, Admiral, if this … situation is not brought to a satisfactory conclusion quickly, Fell Station will not be able to harbor you.”

“Uh … define quickly.”

“Very soon. Within another day-cycle.”

Fell Station surely had enough force to evict the two small Dendarii ships whenever it willed. Or worse than evict. “Understood. Uh … what about unimpeded passage out at Jumppoint Five?” If things did not go well …

“That … you may have to deal for separately.”

“Deal how?”

“If you still had your hostage … I would not desire that you carry Vasa Luigi out of Jacksonian local space. And I am positioned to see that you do not.”

Quinn’s fist slammed down beside the vid plate. “No!” she cried. “No way! Baron Bharaputra is the only card we have to get my, get the cryo-chamber back. We will not give him up!”

Fell recoiled slightly. “Captain!” he reproved.

“We will take him with us if we’re forced out,” Quinn threatened, “and you can all hang out to dry. Or he can walk back from Jumppoint Five without a pressure suit. If we don’t get that cryo-chamber—well, we have better allies than you. And with fewer inhibitions. They won’t care about your profits, or your deals, or your balances. The only question they’ll be asking is whether to start at the north pole, and burn down, or at the south pole, and burn up!”

Fell grimaced angrily. “Don’t be absurd, Captain Quinn. You speak of a planetary force.”

Quinn leaned into the vid pick-up and snarled, “Baron, I speak of a multi-planetary force!”

Bothari-Jesek, startled, made an urgent throat-slicing gesture across her neck, Cut it, Quinn!

Fell’s eyes went hard and bright as glass glints. “You’re bluffing,” he said at last.

“I am not. You’d best believe I am not!”

“No one would do all that for one man. Still less for one corpse.”

Quinn hesitated. Mark’s hand closed on hers upon his shoulder and squeezed hard to say, Control yourself, dammit. She was on the verge of giving away what she’d practically threatened him with death not to reveal. “You may be right, Baron,” she said finally. “You’d better pray you’re right.”

After a long moment of silence, Fell inquired mildly, “And just who is this uninhibited ally of yours, Admiral?”

After an equally long pause, Mark looked up and said sweetly, “Captain Quinn was bluffing, Baron.”

Fell’s lips drew back on an extremely dry smile. “All Betans are liars,” he said softly. His hand moved to cut the comm; his image faded in the usual haze of sparkles. This time it was his cold smile that seemed to linger, bodiless.

“Good job, Quinn,” Mark snarled into the silence. “You’ve just let Baron Fell know how much he could really get for that cryo-chamber. And maybe even who from. Now we have two enemies.”

Quinn was breathing hard, as though she’d been running. “He’s not our enemy; he’s not our friend. Fell serves Fell. Remember that, ’cause he will.”

“But was Fell lying, or was he merely passing on House Bharaputra’s lies?” Bothari-Jesek asked slowly. “What independent line of profit could Fell possibly have on all this?”

“Or are they both lying?” said Quinn.

“What if neither of them are?” asked Mark in irritation. “Have you thought of that? Remember what Norwood—”

A comm beeper interrupted him. Quinn leaned on her hands on the comconsole to listen.

“Quinn, this is Bel. That contact I found agrees to meet us at the Ariel’s docking bay. If you want to be in on the interrogation, you need to pod over now.”

“Yes, right, I’ll be there, Quinn out.” She turned, haggard, and started for the door. “Elena, see that he,” a jerk of her thumb, “is confined to quarters.”

“Yeah, well, after you talk with whatever Bel dragged in, get yourself some rest, huh, Quinnie? You’re unstrung. You almost lost it back there.”

Quinn’s ambiguous parting wave acknowledged the truth of this, without making any promises. As Quinn exited, Bothari-Jesek turned to her station console, to order up a personnel pod to be ready for Quinn by the time she arrived at the hatch.

Mark rose and wandered around the tactics room, his hands thrust carefully into his pockets. A dozen real-time and holo-schematic display consoles sat dark and still; communication and encoding systems lay silent. He pictured the tactics nerve center fully staffed, alive and bright and chaotic, heading into battle. He imagined enemy fire peeling the ship open like a meal tray, all that life smashed and burned and spilled into the hard radiation and vacuum of space. Fire from House Fell’s station at Jumppoint Five, say, as the Peregrine fought for escape. He shuddered, nauseated.

He paused before the sealed door to the briefing chamber. Bothari-Jesek was now engaged in some other communication, some decision having to do with the security of their Fell Station moorings. Curious, he laid his palm upon the lock-pad. Somewhat to his surprise, the door slid demurely open. Somebody had some re-programming to do, if all top-secured Dendarii facilities were keyed to admit a dead man’s palm print. A lot of re-programming—Miles doubtless had it fixed so he could just waft right through anywhere in the fleet. That would be his style.

Bothari-Jesek glanced up, but said nothing. Taking that as tacit permission, Mark walked into the briefing room, and circled the table. Lights came up for him as he paced. Thorne’s words, spoken here, echoed in his head. Norwood said, The Admiral will get out of here even if we don’t. How carefully had the Dendarii examined their recordings of the drop mission? Surely someone had been over them all several times by now. What could he possibly see that they hadn’t? They knew their people, their equipment. But I know the medical complex. I know Jackson’s Whole.

He wondered how far his palm would take him. He slipped into Quinn’s station chair; sure enough, files bloomed for him, opened at his touch as no woman ever had. He found the downloaded records of the drop mission. Norwood’s data was lost, but Tonkin had been with him part of the time. What had Tonkin seen? Not colored lines on the map, but real-time, real-eye, real-ear? Was there such a record? The command helmet had kept such, he knew, if trooper-helmets did too then—ah, ha. Tonkin’s visuals and audio came up on the console before his fascinated eyes.

Trying to follow them gave him an almost instant headache. This was no ballasted and gimballed vid pick-up, no steady pan, but rather the jerky, snatching glances of real head movements. He slowed the replay to watch himself in the lift-tube foyer, a short, agitated fellow in grey camouflage, glittering eyes in a set face. Do I really look like that? The deformities of his body were not so apparent as he’d imagined, under the loose uniform.

He sat behind Tonkin’s eyes and walked with him through the hurried maze of Bharaputra’s buildings, tunnels, and corridors, all the way to the last firefight at the end. Thorne had quoted Norwood correctly; it was right there on the vid. Though he’d been wrong on the time; Norwood was gone eleven minutes by the helmet’s unsubjective clock. Norwood’s flushed face reappeared, panting, the urgent laugh sounded—and, moments later, the grenade-strike, the explosion—almost ducking, Mark hastily shut off the vid, and glanced down at himself as if half-expecting to be branded with another mortal splattering of blood and brains.

If there’s any clue, it has to be earlier. He started the program again from the parting in the foyer. The third time through, he slowed it down and took it step by step, examining each. The patient, finicky, self-forgetful absorption was almost pleasurable. Tiny details—you could lose yourself in tiny details, an anesthetic for brain-pain.