Lois Bujold - Brothers in Arms

Unless it was psychologically disguised, of course. Take that big shuttleport maintenance float truck over there, for instance, speeding along busily, hugging the ground. They were all over the place; the eye quickly became used to their irregular passing. If he were going to launch an attack, Miles decided, one of those would definitely be the vehicle of choice. It was wonderfully doubtful. Until it fired first, no defending Dendarii could be sure he or she wasn't-about to randomly murder some hapless stray shuttleport employee. Criminally embarrassing, that, the sort of mistake that wrecked careers.

The float truck shifted its route. Barth twitched and Miles stiffened. It looked awfully like an interception course. But dammit, no windows or doors were opening, no armed men were leaning out to take aim with so much as a slingshot. Miles and Barth both drew their legal stunners anyway. Miles tried to separate himself from Barth as Barth tried to step in front of him, another precious moment's confusion.

And then the now-hurtling float truck was upon them, rising into the air, blotting out the bright morning sky. Its smooth sealed surface offered no target a stunner would matter to. The method of his assassination was at last clear to Miles. It was to be death by squashing.

Miles squeaked and spun and scrambled, trying to get up a sprint. The float truck fell like a monstrous brick as its anti-grav was abruptly switched off. It seemed like overkill, somehow; didn't they know his bones could be shattered by an overloaded grocery pallet? There'd be nothing left of him but a revolting wet smear on the tarmac.

He dove, rolled—only the blast of displaced air as the truck boomed to the pavement saved him. He opened his eyes to find the skirt of the truck centimeters in front of his nose, and recoiled onto his feet as the maintenance vehicle rose again. Where was Barth? The useless stunner was still clutched convulsively in Miles's right hand, his knuckles scraped and bleeding.

Ladder handholds were recessed into a channel on the truck's gleaming side. If he were on it he couldn't be under it—Miles shook the stunner from his grip and sprang, almost too late, to cling to the handholds. The truck lurched sideways and flopped again, obliterating the spot where he'd just been lying. It rose and fell again with an angry crash. Like an hysterical giant trying to smash a spider with a slipper. The impact knocked Miles from his precarious perch, and he hit the pavement rolling, trying to save his bones. There was no crack in the floor here to scuttle into and hide.

A line of light widened under the truck as it rose again. Miles looked for a reddened lump on the tarmac, saw none. Barth? No, over there, crouched at a distance screaming into his wrist comm. Miles shot to his feet, zigged, zagged. His heart was pounding so hard it seemed his blood was about to burst from his ears on adrenalin overload, his breathing half-stopped despite his straining lungs. Sky and tarmac spun around him, he'd lost the shuttle—no, there—he started to sprint toward it. Running had never been his best sport. They'd been right, the people who'd wanted to disbar him from officer's training on the basis of his physicals. With a deep vile whine the maintenance truck clawed its way into the air behind him.

The violent white blast blew him forward onto his face, skidding over the tarmac. Shards of metal, glass, and boiling plastic spewed across him. Something glanced numbly across the back of his skull. He clapped his arms over his head and tried to melt a hole down into the pavement by heat of fear alone. His ears hammered but he could only hear a land of roaring white noise.

A millisecond more, and he realized he was a stopped target. He jerked onto his side, glaring up and around for the falling truck. There was no more falling truck.

A shiny black aircar, however, was dropping swiftly and illegally through shuttleport traffic control space, no doubt lighting up boards and setting off alarms on the Londoners' control computers. Well, it was a lost cause now to try and be inconspicuous. Miles had it pegged as Barrayaran outer-perimeter backup even before he glimpsed the green uniforms within, by virtue of the fact that Barth was running toward it eagerly. No guarantee that the three Dendarii sprinting toward them from his personnel shuttle had drawn the same conclusions, though. Miles sprang to his—hands and knees. The abrupt if aborted movement rendered him dizzy and sick. On the second attempt he made it to his feet.

Barth was trying to drag him by the elbow toward the settling aircar. "Back to the embassy, sir!" he urged.

A cursing grey-uniformed Dendarii skidded to a halt a few meters away and aimed his plasma arc at Barth. "Back off, you!" the Dendarii snarled.

Miles stepped hastily between the two as Barth's hand went to his jacket. "Friends, friends!" he cried, flipping his hands palm-out toward both combatants. The Dendarii paused, doubtful and suspicious, and Barth clenched his fists at his sides with an effort.

Elli Quinn cantered up, swinging a rocket-launcher one-handed, its stock nestled in her armpit, smoke still trickling from its five-centimeters-wide muzzle. She must have fired from the hip. Her face was flushed and terrorized.

Sergeant Barth eyed the rocket-launcher with suppressed fury. "That was a little close, don't you think?" he snapped at Elli. "You damn near blew him up with your target." Jealous, Miles realized, because he hadn't had a rocket launcher.

Elli's eyes widened in outrage. "It was better than nothing. Which was what you came equipped with, apparently!"

Miles raised his right hand—his left shoulder spasmed when he tried to raise the other arm—and dabbed gingerly at the back of his head. His hand came away red and wet. Scalp wound, bleeding like a stuck pig but not dangerous. Another clean uniform shot.

"It's awkward to carry major ordnance on the tubeway, Elli," Miles intervened mildly, "nor could we have gotten it through shuttleport security." He paused and eyed the smoking remnant of the float truck. "Even they couldn't get weapons through shuttleport security, it seems. Whoever they were."

He nodded significantly toward the second Dendarii who, taking the hint, went off to investigate,

"Come away, sir!" Barth urged anew. "You're injured. The police will be here. You shouldn't be mixed up in this."

Lieutenant Lord Vorkosigan shouldn't be mixed up in this, he meant, and he was absolutely right. "God, yes, Sergeant. Go. Take a circuitous route back to the embassy. Don't let anyone trace you."

"But sir—"

"My own security—which has just demonstrated its effectiveness, I think—will take over now. Go."

"Captain Galeni will have my head on a platter if—"

"Sergeant, Simon Illyan himself will have my head on a platter if my cover is blown. That's an order. Go!"

The dreaded Chief of Imperial Security was a name to conjure with. Torn and distressed, Barth allowed Miles to chivvy him toward the aircar. Miles breathed a sigh of relief as it streaked away. Galeni really would lock him in the basement forever if he went back now.

The Dendarii guard was returning, grim and a little green, from the scattered remains of the float truck. "Two men, sir," he reported. "At least, I think they were male, and there were at least two, judging from the number of, um, parts remaining."

Miles looked at Elli and sighed. "Nothing left to question, eh?"

She shrugged an insincere apology. "Oh—you're bleeding . . ." She closed on him fussily.

Damn. If there had been something left to question, Miles would have been in favor of shoveling it onto the shuttle and taking off, clearance or no clearance, to continue his investigation in the Triumph's sickbay unimpeded by the legal constraints that would doubtless delay the local authorities. The London constables could scarcely be more unhappy with him anyway. From the looks of things he'd be dealing with them again shortly. Fire equipment and shuttleport vehicles were converging on them even now.