Lois Bujold - The Vor Game

His sinuses throbbed like kettle drums. She shook her head helplessly, and tapped out something on her comconsole.

"I think I had best speed you on your way, before you explode," she told him.

Bent over in his seat wheezing, his water-clouded gaze fell on his brown felt slippers. "Can I at least have a pair of boots for this trip?"

She pursed her lips in a moment of thought. ". . . No," she decided. "It will be more interesting to see you carry on just as you are."

"In this uniform, on Aslund, I'll be like a cat in a dog suit," he protested. "Shot on sight by mistake."

"By mistake … on purpose . . . goodness, you're going to have an exciting time." She keyed the door lock open. He was still sneezing and gasping as the guards came in to take him away. Cavilo was still laughing.

The effects of her poisonous perfume took half an hour to wear off, by which time he was locked in a tiny cabin aboard an inner-system ship. They had boarded via a lock on the Kurin 's Hand; he hadn't even set foot on Vervain Station again. Not a chance of a break for it He checked out the cabin. Its bed and lavatory arrangements were highly reminiscent of his last cell. Space duty, hah. The vast vistas of the wide universe, hah. The glory of the Imperial Service—un-hah. He'd lost Gregor. . . . I may be small, but I screw up big because I'm standing on the shoulders of GIANTS. He tried pounding on the door and screaming into the intercom. No one came. It's a surprise.

He could surprise them all by hanging himself, a briefly attractive notion. But there was nothing up high to hook his belt on.

All right. This courier-type ship was swifter than the lumbering freighter in which he and Gregor had taken three days to cross the system last time, but it wasn't instantaneous. He had at least a day and a half to do some serious thinking, he and Admiral Naismith. It's a surprise. God.

An officer and a guard came for him, very close to the time Miles estimated they would arrive back at Aslund Station's defense perimeter. But we haven't docked yet. This seems premature. His nervous exhaustion still responded to a shot of adrenalin; he inhaled, trying to clear his frenzy-fogged brain back to alertness again. Much more of this, though, and no amount of adrenalin would do him any good. The officer led him through the short corridors of the little ship to Nav and Com.

The Ranger captain was present, leaning over the communication console manned by his second officer. The pilot and flight engineer were busy at their stations.

"If they board, they'll arrest him, and he'll be automatically delivered as ordered," the second officer was saying.

"If they arrest him, they could arrest us too. She said to plant him, and she didn't care if it was head or feet first. She didn't order us to get ourselves interned," said the captain.

A voice from the comm; "This is the picket ship Ariel, Aslund Navy Contract Auxiliary, calling the C6-WG out of Vervain Hubside Station. Cease accelerating, and clear your portside lock for boarding for pre-docking inspection. Aslund Station reserves the right to deny you docking privileges if you fail to cooperate in pre-docking inspection-The voice took on a cheery tone, "I reserve the right to open fire if you don't stand and deliver in one minute. That's enough stalling boys." The voice, once gone ironic, was suddenly intensely familiar. Bel?

"Cease accelerating," the captain ordered, and motioned the second to close the comm channel. "Hey you, Rotha," he called to Miles. "Come over here."

So I'm "Rotha"again. Miles mustered a smarmy smile, and sidled closer. He eyed the viewer, striving to conceal his hungry interest. The Ariel? Yes, there it was in the vid display, the sleek Illyrican-built cruiser . . . did Bel Thorne still command her? How can I get myself onto that ship?

"Don't throw me out there!" Miles protested urgently. "The Oserans are after my hide. I swear, I didn't know the plasma arcs were defective!"

"What plasma arcs?" asked the captain.

"I'm an arms dealer. I sold them some plasma arcs. Cheap. Turns out they had a tendency to lock on overload and blow their user's hand off. I didn't know, I got them wholesale."

The Ranger captain's right hand opened and closed in sympathetic identification. He rubbed his palm unconsciously on his trousers, back of his plasma arc holster. He studied Miles, frowning sourly. "Headfirst it is," he said after a moment. "Lieutenant, you and the corporal take this little mutant to the portside personnel lock, pack him in a bod-pod, and eject him. We're going home."

"No," said Miles weakly, as they each took an arm. Yes! He dragged his feet, careful not to offer enough resistance to risk his bones. "You're not going to space me . . . !" The Ariel, my God. . . .

"Oh, the Aslunder merc'll pick you up," said the captain. "Maybe. If they don't decide you're a bomb, and try to set you off in space with plasma fire from their ship or something." Smiling slightly at this vision, he turned back to the comm, and intoned in a bored traffic-control sing-song, "Ariel, ah, this is the C6-WG. We chose to, ah, change our filed flight plan and return to Vervain Station. We therefore have no need for pre-docking inspection. We are going to leave you a, ah, small parting gift, though. Quite small. What you choose to do with it is your problem. . . ."

The door to Nav and Com closed behind them. A few meters of corridor and a sharp turn brought Miles and his handlers to a personnel hatch. The corporal held Miles, who struggled; the lieutenant opened a locker and shook out a bod-pod.

The bod-pod was a cheap inflatable life-support unit designed to be entered in seconds by endangered passengers, suitable either for Pressurization emergencies or abandoning ship. They were also dubbed idiot-balloons. They required no knowledge to operate because they had no controls, merely a few hours of recyclable air and a locator-beeper. Passive, foolproof, and not recommended for claustrophobes, they were very cost-effective in saving lives—when adequate pick-up ships arrived in time.

Miles emitted a realistic wail as he was stuffed into the bod-pod's dank, plastic-smelling interior. A jerk of the rip cord, and it sealed and inflated automatically. He had a brief, horrible flashback to the mud-sunken bubble-shelter on Kyril Island, and choked back a real scream. He was tumbled as his captors rolled the pod into the airlock. A whoosh, a thump, a lurch, and he was free-falling in pitch darkness. The spherical pod was little more than a meter in diameter. Miles, half-doubled-up, felt around, his stomach and inner ear protesting the spin imparted by the ejecting kick outward, till his shaking fingers found what he hoped was a cold-light tube. He squeezed it, and was rewarded with a nauseous greenish glow.

The silence was profound, broken only by the tiny hiss of the air recycler and his ragged breathing. Well . . . it's better than the last time somebody tried to shove me out an airlock. He had several minutes in which to imagine all the possible courses of action the Ariel might take instead of picking him up. He had just discarded skin-crawling anticipation of the ship opening fire on him in favor of abandonment to cold dark asphyxiation, when he and his pod were wrenched by a tractor beam.