Lois Bujold - Mirror Dance

The snap of women’s steps, not a guard’s boots, rounded the corner. Lilly appeared, her face set and her nostrils flaring, flanked by Dr. Poppy.

“Rowan. Get him out of here,” Lilly said, in a voice dead-level in tone despite its breathlessness. “Georish will be downside himself to investigate this one. He has to never have been here. Our attackers seem to have been one of Naismith’s enemies. The story will be that the Dendarii came here looking for Naismith’s clone, but didn’t find him. Chrys, get rid of the physical evidence in Rowan’s room, and hide those files. Go!”

Chrys nodded and ran. Rowan took over holding him on his feet. He had an odd tendency to slump, as if he were melting. He blinked against the drug. No, we have to go after—

Lilly tossed Rowan a credit chit, and Dr. Poppy handed her a couple of coats and a medical bag. “Take him out the back door and disappear. Use the evacuation codes. Pick a place at random and go to ground, not one of our properties. Report in on a secured line from a separate location. By then I should know what I can salvage from this mess.” Her wrinkled lips peeled back on ivory teeth set in anger. “Move, girl.”

Rowan nodded obediently, and didn’t argue at all, he noticed indignantly. Holding him firmly by the arm, she guided his stumbling feet down a freight lift-tube, through the sub-basement, and into the underground clinic. A concealed doorway on its second level opened onto a narrow tunnel. He felt like a rat scurrying through a maze. Rowan stopped three times to key through some security device.

They came out in some other building’s under-level, and the door disappeared behind them, indistinguishable from the wall. They continued on through ordinary utility tunnels. “You use this route often?” he panted.

“No. But every once in a while we want to get something in or out not recorded by our gate guards, who are Baron Fell’s men.”

They emerged finally in a small underground parking garage. She led him to a little blue lightflyer, elderly and inconspicuous, and bundled him into the passenger seat. “This isn’ righ’,” he complained, thick-tongued. “Admiral Naismith—someone should go after Admiral Naismith.”

“Naismith owns a whole mercenary fleet.” Rowan strapped herself into the pilot’s seat. “Let them tangle with his enemies. Try to calm down and catch your breath. I don’t want to have to dose you again.”

The flyer rose into the swirling snow and rocked uncertainly in the gusts. The city sprawling below them disappeared quickly into the murk as Rowan powered them up. She glanced aside at his agitated profile. “Lilly will do something,” she reassured him. “She wants Naismith too.”

“It’s wrong,” he muttered. “It’s all wrong.” He huddled in the jacket Rowan had wrapped around him. She turned up the heat.

I’m the wrong one. It seemed he had no intrinsic value but his mysterious hold on Admiral Naismith. And if Admiral Naismith was removed from the Deal, the only person still interested in him would be Vasa Luigi, wanting vengeance upon him for crimes he couldn’t even remember committing. Worthless, unwanted, lonely and scared … His stomach churned in pain, and his head throbbed. His muscles ached, tense as wire.

All he had was Rowan. And, apparently, the Admiral, who had come searching for him. Who had very possibly risked his life to recover him. Why? I have to do … something.

“The Dendarii Mercenaries. Are they all here? Does the Admiral have ships in orbit, or what? How much back-up does he have? He said it would take time for him to contact his back-up. How much time? Where did the Dendarii come in from, a commercial shuttleport? Can they call down air support? How many—how much— where—” His brain tried madly to assemble data that wasn’t there into patterns for attack.

“Relax!” Rowan begged. “There’s nothing we can do. We’re only little people. And you’re in no condition. You’ll drive yourself into another convulsion if you keep on like this.”

“Screw my condition! I have to—I have to—”

Rowan raised wry eyebrows. He lay back in his seat with a sick sigh, drained. I should have been able to do this … to do something… . He listened to nothing, half-hypnotized by the sound of his own shallow breathing. Defeated. Again. He didn’t like the taste. He brooded at his pale and distorted reflection on the inside of the canopy. Time seemed to have become viscous.

The lights on the control panel died. They were suddenly weightless. His seat straps bit him. Fog began to stream up around them, faster and faster.

Rowan screamed, fought and banged the control panel. It flickered; momentarily, they had thrust again. Then lost it again. They descended in stutters. “What’s wrong with it, damn it!” Rowan cried.

He looked upward. Nothing but icy fog—they dropped below cloud level. Then above them, a dark shape loomed. Big lift van, heavy… .

“It’s not a systems failure. We’re being intermittently field-drained,” he said dreamily. “We’re being forced down.”

Rowan gulped, concentrated, trying to keep the flyer level in the brief bursts of control. “My God, is it them again?”

“No. I don’t know … maybe they had some back-up.” With adrenalin and determination, he forced his wits to function through the sedative-haze. “Make a noise!” he said. “Make a splash!”

“What?”

She didn’t understand. She didn’t catch it. She should have— somebody should have—”Crash this sucker!” She didn’t obey.

“Are you crazy?” They lurched to ground right-side-up and intact in a barren valley, all snow and crackling scrub.

“Somebody wants to make a snatch. We’ve got to leave a mark, or we’ll just disappear off the map without a trace. No comm link,” he nodded toward the dead panel. “We have to make footprints, set fire to something, something!” He fought his seat straps for escape.

Too late. Four or five big men surrounded them in the gloom, stunners at ready. One reached up and unlatched his door, and dragged him out. “Be careful, don’t hurt him!” Rowan cried fearfully, and scrambled after. “He’s my patient!”

“We won’t, ma’am,” one of the big parka-clad men nodded politely, “but you mustn’t struggle.” Rowan stood still.

He stared around wildly. If he made a sprint for their van, could he—? His few steps forward were interrupted when one of the goons grabbed him by his shirt and hoisted him into the air. Pain shot through his scarred torso as the man twisted his hands behind his back. Something coldly metallic clicked around his wrists. They were not the same men who’d broken into the Durona Clinic, no resemblance in features, uniforms, or equipment.

Another big man crunched through the snow. He pushed back his hood, and shone a hand light upon the captives. He appeared about forty-standard, with a craggy face, olive brown skin, and dark hair stripped back in a simple knot. His eyes were bright and very alert. His black brows bent in puzzlement, as he stared at his prey.

“Open his shirt,” he told one of the guards.

The guard did so; the craggy man shone the hand-light on the spray of scars. His lips drew back in a white grin. Suddenly, he threw back his head and laughed out loud. The echoes of his voice lost themselves in the empty winter twilight. “Ry, you fool! I wonder how long it will take you to figure it out?”

“Baron Bharaputra,” Rowan said in a thin voice. She lifted her chin in a quick defiant jerk of greeting.

“Dr. Durona,” said Vasa Luigi in return, polite and amused. “Your patient, is he? Then you won’t refuse my invitation to join us. Please be our guest. You’ll make it quite the little family reunion.”