Chapter Six

He ate a sandwich and slurped coffee for dinner in his cabin while he perused Dendarii fleet status reports. Repairs had been completed and approved on the Triumph's surviving combat drop shuttles. And paid for, alas, the money now passed beyond recall. Refit chores were all caught up throughout the fleet, downside leaves used up, spit spat and polish polished off. Boredom was setting in. Boredom and bankruptcy.

The Cetagandans had it all wrong, Miles decided bitterly. It wasn't war that would destroy the Dendarii, it was peace. If their enemies would just stay their hands and wait patiently, the Dendarii, his creation, would collapse all on its own without any outside assistance.

His cabin buzzer blatted, a welcome interruption to the dark and winding chain of his thoughts. He keyed the comm on his desk. "Yes?"

"It's Elli."

His hand leapt eagerly to tap the lock control. "Enter! You're back before I'd expected. I was afraid you'd be stuck down there like Danio. Or worse, with Danio."

He wheeled his chair around, the room seeming suddenly brighter as the door hissed open, though a lumen-meter might not have registered it. Elli waved him a salute and hitched a hip over the edge of his desk. She smiled, but her eyes looked tired.

"Told you," she said. "In feet there was some talk of making me a permanent guest. I was sweet, I was cooperative, I was nearly prim, trying to convince them I wasn't a homicidal menace to society and they really could let me back out on the streets, but I was making no headway till their computers suddenly hit the jackpot. The lab came back with ID's on those two men I … killed, at the shuttleport."

Miles understood the little hesitation before her choice of terms. Someone else might have picked a breezier euphemism—blew away, or offed— distancing himself from the consequences of his action. Not Quinn.

"Interesting, I take it," he said encouragingly. He made his voice calm, drained of any hint of judgment. Would that the ghosts of your enemies only escorted you to hell. But no, they had to hang about your shoulder interminably, waiting until that service was called for. Maybe the notches Danio gouged in the hilts of his weapons weren't such a tasteless idea after all. Surely it was a greater sin to forget a single dead man in your tally. "Tell me about them."

"They turned out to be both known to and desired by the Eurolaw Net. They were—how shall I put this—soldiers of the sub-economy. Professional hit men. Locals."

Miles winced. "Good God, what have I ever done to them?"

"I doubt they were after you of their own accord. They were almost certainly hirelings, contracted by a third party or parties unknown, though I imagine we could both give it a good guess."

"Oh, no. The Cetagandan Embassy is sub-contracting my assassination now? I suppose it makes sense: Galeni said they were understaffed. But do you realize—" he rose and began to pace in his agitation, "this means I could be attacked again from any quarter. Anywhere, any time. By totally un-personally-motivated strangers."

"A security nightmare," she agreed.

"I don't suppose the police were able to trace their employer?"

"No such luck. Not yet, anyway. I did direct their attention to the Cetagandans, as candidates for the motive leg of any method-motive-opportunity triangle they may try to put together."

"Good. Can we make anything of the method and opportunity parts ourselves?" Miles wondered aloud. "The end results of their attempt would seem to indicate they were a trifle under-prepared for their task."

"From my point of view their method looked like it came awfully damn close to working," she remarked. "It suggests, though, that opportunity might have been their limiting factor. I mean, Admiral Naismith doesn't just go into hiding when you go downside, tricky as it would be to find one man among nine billion. He literally ceases to exist anywhere, zip! There was evidence these guys had been hanging around the shuttleport for some days waiting for you."

"Ugh." His visit to Earth was quite spoiled. Admiral Naismith was, it appeared, a danger to himself and others. Earth was too congested. What if his assailants next tried to blow up a whole tubeway car or restaurant to reach their target? An escort to hell by the souls of his enemies was one thing, but what if he were standing beside a class of primary-school children next round?

"Oh, by the way, I did see Private Danio when I was downside," Elli added, examining a chipped fingernail. "His case is coming up for judicial review in a couple of days, and he asked me to ask you to come."

Miles snarled under his breath. "Oh, sure. A potentially unlimited number of total strangers are trying to off me, and he wants me to schedule a public appearance. For target practice, no doubt."

Elli grinned, and nibbled her fingernail off evenly. "He wants a character witness by someone who knows him."

"Character witness! I wish I knew where he hid his scalp collection; I'd bring it just to show the judge. Sociopath therapy was invented for people like him. No, no. The last person he wants for a character witness is someone who knows him." Miles sighed, subsiding. "Send Captain Thorne. Betan, got a lot of cosmopolitan savoir faire, should be able to lie well on the witness stand."

"Good choice," Elli applauded. "It's about time you started delegating some of your work load."

"I delegate all the time," he objected. "I am extremely glad, for instance, that I delegated my personal security to you."

She flipped up a hand, grimacing, as if to bat away the implied compliment before it could land. Did his words bite? "I was slow."

"You were fast enough." Miles wheeled and came to face her, or at any rate her throat. She had folded back her jacket for comfort, and the arc of her black T-shirt intersected her collarbone in a kind of abstract, aesthetic sculpture. The scent of her—no perfume, just woman—rose warm from her skin.

"I think you were right," she said. "Officers shouldn't go shopping in the company store—"

Dammit, thought Miles, I only said that back then because I was in love with Baz Jesek's wife and didn't want to say so—better to never say so—

"— it really does distract from duty. I watched you, walking toward us across the shuttleport, and for a couple of minutes, critical minutes, security was the last thing on my mind."

"What was the first thing on your mind?" Miles asked hopefully, before his better sense could stop him. Wake up man, you could fumble your whole future in the next thirty seconds.

Her smile was rather pained. "I was wondering what you'd done with that stupid cat blanket, actually," she said lightly.

"I left it at the embassy. I was going to bring it," and what wouldn't he give to whip it out now, and invite her to sit with him on the edge of his bed? "but I had some other things on my mind. I haven't told you yet about the latest wrinkle in our tangled finances. I suspect—" dammit, business again, intruding into this personal moment, this would-be personal moment. "I'll tell you about that later. Right now I want to talk about us. I have to talk about us."

She moved back from him slightly; Miles amended his words hastily, "and about duty." She stopped retreating. His right hand touched her uniform collar, turned it over, slid over the smooth cool surface of her rank insignia. Nervous as lint-picking. He drew his hand back, clenched it over his breast to control it.

"I … have a lot of duties, you see. Sort of a double dose. There's Admiral Naismith's duties, and there's Lieutenant Vorkosigan's duties. And then there's Lord Vorkosigan's duties. A triple dose."

Her eyebrows were arched, her lips pursed, her eyes blandly inquiring; supernal patience, yes, she'd wait for him to make an ass of himself at his own pace. His pace was becoming headlong.