Lois Bujold - Barrayar

“So, you set yourself up with Imperial airs after all, eh?” jibed Piotr. “Is that what this is, hubris?”

Aral grimaced in profound irritation. “On the contrary, sir. If I’m to have no income but my admiral’s half-pay, I cannot afford to pass up rent-free quarters.”

A movement in the scudding clouds caught Cordelia’s eye. She squinted uneasily. “What’s wrong with that lightflyer?” she murmured half to herself.

The speck grew, jinking oddly. It trailed smoke. It stuttered over the lake, straight at them. “God, I wonder if it’s full of bombs?”

“What?” said Aral and Piotr together, and stepped quickly to the window with her, Aral on her right hand, Piotr on her left.

“It has ImpSec markings,” said Aral.

Piotr’s old eyes narrowed. “Ah?”

Cordelia mentally planned a sprint down the back hall and out the end door. There was a bit of a ditch on the other side of the drive, if they went flat in it maybe … but the lightflyer was slowing at the end of its trajectory. It wobbled toward a landing on the front lawn. Men in Vorkosigan livery and ImpSec green and black cautiously surrounded it. The flyer’s damage was clearly visible now, a plasma-slagged hole, black smears of soot, warped control surfaces—it was a miracle it flew at all.

“Who—?” said Aral.

Piotr’s squint sharpened as a glimpse of the pilot winked through the damaged canopy. “Ye gods, it’s Negri!”

“But who’s that with—come on!” Aral flung over his shoulder, running out the door. They charged in his wake, around into the front hall, bursting out the door and churning down the green slope.

The guards had to pry open the warped canopy. Negri fell into their arms. They laid him on the grass. He had a grotesque burn a meter long on the left side of his body and thigh, his green uniform melted and charred away to reveal bleeding white bubbles, cracked—open flesh. He shivered uncontrollably.

The short figure strapped into the passenger seat was Emperor Gregor. The five-year-old boy was weeping in terror, not loudly, just muffled, gulping, suppressed whimpers. Such self-control in one so young seemed sinister to Cordelia. He should be screaming. She felt like screaming. He wore ordinary play-clothes, a soft shirt and pants in dark blue. He was missing one shoe. An ImpSec guard unhooked his seat belt and dragged him out of the flyer. He cringed from the man and stared at Negri in utter horror and confusion. Did you think adults were indestructible, child? Cordelia grieved.

Kou and Drou materialized from their separate holes in the house, to goggle along with the rest of the guards. Gregor spotted Droushnakovi, and flew to her like an arrow, to wind his hands tightly in her skirt. “Droushie, help!” His crying dared to become audible, then. She wrapped her arms around him and lifted him up.

Aral knelt by the injured ImpSec chief. “Negri, what happened?”

Negri reached up and grabbed his jacket with his working right hand. “He’s trying for a coup—in the capital. His troops took ImpSec, took the comm center—why didn’t you respond? HQ surrounded, infiltrated—bad fighting now at the Imperial Residence. We were on to him—about to arrest—he panicked. Struck too soon. I think he has Kareen—”

Piotr demanded, “Who has, Negri, who?”

“Vordarian.”

Aral nodded grimly. “Yes …”

“You—take the boy,” gasped Negri. “He’s almost on top of us …” His shivers oscillated into convulsions, his eyes rolling back whitely. His breath stuttered in resonant chokes. His brown eyes refocused in sudden intensity. “Tell Ezar—” The convulsions took him again, racking his thick body. Then they stopped. All stop. He was no longer breathing.

“Sir,” said Koudelka urgently to Vorkosigan, “the secured comconsole was sabotaged.” The ImpSec guard commander at his elbow nodded confirmation. “I was just coming to tell you. …” Koudelka glanced fearfully at Negri’s body, laid out on the grass. Two ImpSec men now knelt beside it frantically applying first aid: heart massage, oxygen, and hypospray injections. But the body remained flaccid under their pummeling, the face waxy and inert. Cordelia had seen death before, and recognized the symptoms. No good, fellows, you won’t call this one back. Not this time. He’s gone to deliver that last message to Ezar in person. Negri’s last report …

“What time-frame on the sabotage?” demanded Vorkosigan. “Delayed or immediate?”

“It looked like immediate,” reported the guard commander. “No sign of a timer or device. Somebody just broke open the back and smashed it up inside.”

Everyone’s eyes went to the ImpSec man who had been assigned the guard post outside the comconsole room. He stood, dressed like most of the others in black fatigues, disarmed between two of his fellows. They had followed their commander out when the uproar began on the front lawn. The prisoner’s face was about the same lead-grey color as Negri’s, but animated by flickering fear.

“And?” Vorkosigan said to the guard commander. “He denies doing it,” shrugged the commander. “Naturally.”

Vorkosigan looked at the arrestee. “Who went in after me?”

The guard stared around wildly. He pointed abruptly at Droushnakovi, still holding the whimpering Gregor. “Her.”

“I never!” said Drou indignantly. Her clutch tightened.

Vorkosigan’s teeth closed. “Well, I don’t need fast-penta to know that one of you is lying. No time now. Commander, arrest them both. We’ll sort it out later.” Vorkosigan’s eyes anxiously scanned the northern horizon. “You,” he pointed to another ImpSec man, “assemble every piece of transport you can find. We evacuate immediately. You,” this to one of Piotr’s armsmen, “go warn them in the village. Kou, grab the files, take a plasma arc and finish melting down that comconsole, and get back to me.”

Koudelka, with one anguished look back over his shoulder at Droushnakovi, stumped off toward the house. Drou stood stiffly, stunned and angry and frightened, the cold wind fluttering her skirts. Her brows drew down at Vorkosigan. She scarcely noticed Koudelka’s departure.

“You going to Hassadar first?” said Piotr to his son in a strange mild tone.

“Right.”

Hassadar, the Vorkosigan’s District capital: Imperial troops were quartered there. A loyal garrison?

“Not planning to hold it, I trust,” said Piotr.

“Of course not. Hassadar,” Vorkosigan’s wolf-grin winked on and off, “shall be my first gift to Commodore Vordarian.”

Piotr nodded, as if satisfied. Cordelia’s head spun. Despite Negri’s surprise, neither Piotr nor Aral seemed at all panicked. No wasted motion; no wasted words.

“You,” said Aral to Piotr in an undertone, “take the boy.” Piotr nodded. “Meet us—no. Don’t tell even me where. You contact us.”

“Right.”

“Take Cordelia.”

Piotr’s mouth opened; it closed saying only, “Ah.”

“And Sergeant Bothari. For Cordelia. Drou being—temporarily—off duty.”

“I must have Esterhazy, then,” said Piotr.

“I’ll want the rest of your men,” said Aral.

“Right.” Piotr took his Armsman Esterhazy aside, and spoke to him in low tones; Esterhazy departed upslope at a dead run. Men were scattering in every direction, as their orders proliferated down their command chain. Piotr called another liveried retainer to him, and told him to take his groundcar and start driving west.

“How far, m’lord?”

“As far as your ingenuity can take you. Then escape if you can, and rejoin m’lord Regent, eh?”

The man nodded, and galloped off like Esterhazy.

“Sergeant, you will obey Lady Vorkosigan’s voice as my own,” Aral told Bothari.