Lois Bujold - Diplomatic Immunity

He recalled Ekaterin's description of the passenger who had accosted her and Bel on their outing, that first day— he had the longest, narrowest hands and feet . Bel should get a look at this shortly. Miles let the vid run. The fellow had a somewhat shambling gate when he walked, lifting and setting down those almost clownish feet.

“Where did he come from?” Miles asked Roic.

“His documentation claims he's an Aslunder.” Roic's voice was heavy with disbelief.

Aslund was one of Barrayar's fairly near Nexus neighbors, an impoverished agricultural world in a local space cul-de-sac off the Hegen Hub. “Huh. Almost our neck of the woods.”

“I dunno, m'lord. His Graf Station customs records show him disembarking from a ship he'd joined at Tau Ceti, which arrived here on the day before our fleet was originally due to leave. Don't know if he originated there or not.”

“I'd bet not.” Was there a water-world being settled somewhere on the fringes of the Nexus, whose colonists had chosen to alter their children instead of their environment? Miles hadn't heard of one, but it had to happen sometime. Or was Firka a one-off project, an experiment or prototype of some sort? He'd certainly run into a few of those, before. Neither exactly squared with an origin on Aslund. Though he might have immigrated there . . . Miles made a note to request an ImpSec background search on the fellow in his next report, even though any results were likely to trickle back too late to be of any immediate use. At least, he certainly hoped he'd have this mess wrapped up and shipped out before then.

“He originally tried to get a berth on the Idris , but there wasn't room,” Roic added.

“Ah!” Or maybe that ought to be, Huh?

Miles sat back in his station chair, eyes narrowing. Reasoning in advance of his beloved and much-longed-for fast-penta—posit that this peculiar individual had had some personal contact with Solian before the lieutenant went missing. Posit that he had acquired, somehow, a sample of Solian's blood, perhaps in much the same accidental way that Miles had acquired Dubauer's. Why, then, in the name of reason, would he have subsequently gone to the trouble of running up a fake sample of Solian's blood and dribbling it all over a loading bay and out the airlock?

To cover up a murder elsewhere? Solian's disappearance had already been put down to desertion, by his own commanders. No cover needed: if a murder, it was already nearly the perfect crime at that point, with the investigation about to be abandoned.

A frame? Meant to pin Solian's murder on another? Attractive, but in that case, shouldn't some innocent have been tracked and accused by now? Unless Firka was the innocent, it was a frame with no portrait in it, at present.

To cover up a desertion? Might Firka and Solian be collaborating on Solian's defection? Or . . . when might a desertion not be a desertion? When it was an ImpSec covert ops scam, that's when. Except that Solian was Service Security, not ImpSec: a guard, not a spy or trained agent. Still . . . a sufficiently bright, loyal, highly motivated, and ambitious officer, finding himself in some complex imbroglio, might not wait for orders from on high to pursue a fast-moving long shot. As Miles had reason to know.

Of course, taking risky chances like that could get such an officer killed. As Miles also had reason to know.

Regardless of intent, what had the actual effect of the blood bait been? Or what would it have been if Corbeau and Garnet Five's star-crossed romance hadn't run afoul of Barrayaran prejudices and loutishness? The showy scarlet scenario on the loading bay deck would certainly have reaffixed official attention upon Solian's disappearance; it would almost certainly have delayed the fleet's departure, although not as spectacularly as the real events had. Assuming Garnet Five and Corbeau's problems had been accidental. She was an actress of sorts, after all. They had only Corbeau's word about his wrist com.

He said wistfully, “I don't suppose we have a clear shot of this frog-man lugging out half a dozen liter jugs at any point?”

“Afraid not, m'lord. He went back and forth with lots of packages and boxes at various times, though; they could well have been hid inside something.”

Gah . The acquisition of facts was supposed to clarify thought. This was just getting murkier and murkier. He asked Roic, “Has quaddie security from either of the hostels called yet? Are Dubauer or Firka back yet?”

“No, m'lord. No calls, that is.”

Miles called both to cross-check; neither of his two passengers of interest had yet returned. It was over four hours after midnight, now, 0420 on the twenty-four-hour, Earth-descended clock that Quaddiespace still kept, generations after their ancestors' unmodified ancestors had departed the home world.

After he'd cut the com, Miles asked querulously, “So where the hell have they gone, all night?”

Roic shrugged. “If it was t' obvious thing, I wouldn't look for them to be back till breakfast.”

Miles considerately declined to take notice of Roic's distinct blush. “Our frog-man, maybe, but I guarantee the ba didn't go looking for feminine companionship. There's nothing obvious about any of this.” Decisively, Miles reached for the call pad again.

Instead of Chief Venn, the image of a quaddie woman in a Security gray uniform appeared against the dizzying radial background of Venn's office. Miles wasn't sure what her rank markings decoded to, but she looked sensible, middle-aged, and harried enough to be fairly senior.

“Good morning,” he began politely. “Where's Chief Venn?”

“Sleeping, I hope.” The expression on her face suggested she was going to do her loyal best to keep it that way, too.

“At a time like this?”

“The poor man had a double shift and a half yester . . .” She squinted at him, and seemed to come to some recognition. “Oh. Lord Auditor Vorkosigan. I'm Chief Venn's third-shift supervisor, Teris Three. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Night duty officer, eh? Very good. Yes, please. I wish to arrange for the detainment and interrogation, possibly with fast-penta, of a passenger from the Rudra . His name's Firka.”

“Is there some criminal charge you wish to file?”

“Material witness, to start. I have found reason to suspect he may have something to do with the blood on the floor of the docking bay that started this mess. I want very much to find out for sure.”

“Sir, we can't just go around arresting and drugging anyone we please, here. We need a formal charge. And if the transient doesn't volunteer to be interrogated, you'll have to get an adjudicator's order for the fast-penta.”

That problem, Miles decided, he would bounce to Sealer Greenlaw. It sounded like her department. “All right, I charge him with suspected littering. Incorrect disposal of organics has to be some kind of illegal, here.”

Despite herself, the corner of her mouth twitched. “It's a misdemeanor. Yes, that would do,” she admitted.

“Any pretext that will fix it for you is all right by me. I want him, and I want him as quickly as you can lay hands on him. Unfortunately, he signed out of his hostel at about seventeen-hundred yesterday, and hasn't been seen since.”

“Our security work gang is seriously overstretched, here, on account of yesterday's . . . unfortunate incident. Can this wait till morning, Lord Auditor Vorkosigan?”

“No.”

For a moment, he thought she was going to go all bureaucratic on him, but after screwing up her lips in a thoughtfully aggravated way for a moment, she relented. “Very well. I'll put out a detention order on him, pending Chief Venn's review. But you'll have to see to the adjudicator as soon as we pick him up.”