Bel sighed audibly. “If you wish, Lord Auditor Vorkosigan, I will undertake to personally pilot Lady Vorkosigan out to your flagship.”

But I need you here!

Bel evidently read his look, for the herm added, “Or some pilot of my choosing?”

With an unfeigned reluctance, this time, Miles agreed. The next step was to call Admiral Vorpatril and inform him of his ship's new guest. Vorpatril, when his face appeared above the vid plate on the conference table, passed no comment at the news other than, “Certainly, my Lord Auditor. The Prince Xav will be honored.” But Miles could read in the admiral's shrewd glance his estimation of the increased seriousness of the situation. Miles ascertained that no hysterical preliminary dispatches about the incident had yet been squirted on their several-day trip to HQ; news and reassurances would therefore arrive, thankfully, simultaneously. Aware of their quaddie listeners, Vorpatril made no other remark than a bland request that the Lord Auditor bring him up to date on developments at his earliest convenience—in other words, as soon as he could reach a private secured comconsole.

The meeting broke up. More of Greenlaw's Union militia guards had arrived, and they all exited back into the hostel's lobby, well screened, belatedly, by armed outriders. Miles made sure to walk as far from Ekaterin as possible. In the shattered lobby, quaddie forensics techs, under Venn's direction, were taking vid scans and measurements. Miles frowned up at the balcony, considering trajectories; Bel, walking beside him and watching his glance, raised its eyebrows. Miles lowered his voice and said suddenly, “Bel, you don't suppose that loon could have been firing at you , could he?”

“Why me?”

“Well, just so. How many people does a portmaster usually piss off, in the normal course of business?” He glanced around; Nicol was out of earshot, floating beside Ekaterin and engaged in some low-voiced, animated exchange with her. “Or not-business? You haven't been, oh, sleeping with anyone's wife, have you? Or husband,” he added conscientiously. “Or daughter, or whatever.”

“No,” said Bel firmly. “Nor with their household pets, either. What a Barrayaran view of human motivations you do have, Miles.”

Miles grinned. “Sorry. What about . . . old business?”

Bel sighed. “I thought I'd outrun or outlived all the old business.” The herm eyed Miles sideways. “Almost.” And added after a thoughtful moment, “You'd surely be way ahead of me in line for that one, too.”

“Possibly.” Miles frowned. And then there was Dubauer. That herm was certainly tall enough to be a target. Although how the devil could an elderly Betan dealer in designer animals, who'd spent most of its time on Graf Station locked in a hostel room anyway, have annoyed some quaddie enough to inspire him to try to blow its timid head off? Too damned many possibles, here. It was time to inject some hard data.

CHAPTER NINE

The quaddie pilot of Bel's selecting arrived and whisked Ekaterin off, together with a couple of stern-looking Union Militia guards. Miles watched her go in mild anguish. As she turned to look over her shoulder, walking out the hostel door, he tapped his wrist com meaningfully; she silently raised her left arm, com bracelet glinting, in return.

Since they were all on their way to the Idris anyway, Bel used the delay to call Dubauer down to the lobby again. Dubauer, smooth cheek now neatly sealed with a discreet dab of surgical glue, arrived promptly, and stared in some alarm at their new quaddie military escort. But the shy, graceful herm appeared to have regained most of its self-possession, and murmured sincere gratitude to Bel for recollecting its creatures' needs despite all the tumult.

The little party walked or floated, variously, trailing Portmaster Thorne via a notably un-public back way through the customs and security zone to the array of loading bays devoted to galactic shipping. The bay serving the Idris, clamped into its outboard docking cradle, was quiet and dim, unpeopled except for the two Graf Station security patrollers guarding the hatches.

Bel presented its authorization, and the two patrollers floated aside to allow Bel access to the hatch controls. The door to the big freight lock slid upward, and, leaving their Union Militia escort to help guard the entry, Miles, Roic, and Dubauer followed Bel aboard the freighter.

The Idris , like its sister ship the Rudra , was of a utilitarian design that dispensed with elegance. It was essentially a bundle of seven huge parallel cylinders: the central-most devoted to personnel, four of the outer six given to freight. The other two nacelles, opposite each other in the outer ring, housed the ship's Necklin rods that generated the field to fold it through jump points. Normal-space engines behind, mass shield generators in front. The ship rotated around its central axis to bring each outer cylinder to alignment with the stationside freight lock for automated loading or unloading of containers, or hand loading of more delicate goods. The design was not without added safety value, for in the event of a pressurization loss in one or more cylinders, any of the others could serve as a refuge while repairs were made or evacuation effected.

As they walked now through one freight nacelle, Miles glanced up and down its central access corridor, which receded into darkness. They passed through another lock into a small foyer in the forward section of the ship. In one direction lay passenger staterooms; in the other, personnel cabins and offices. Lift tubes and a pair of stairs led up to the level devoted to ship's mess, infirmary, and recreation facilities, and downward to life support, engineering, and other utility areas.

Roic glanced at his notes and nodded down the corridor. “This way to Solian's security office, m'lord.”

“I'll escort Citizen Dubauer here to its flock,” said Bel, “and catch up with you.” Dubauer made an abortive little bow, and the two herms passed onward into the lock leading to one of the outboard freight sections.

Roic counted doorways past a second connecting foyer and tapped a code into a lock pad near the stern. The door slid aside and the light came up revealing a tiny, spare chamber housing scarcely more than a computer interface and two chairs, and some lockable wall cabinets. Miles fired up the interface while Roic ran a quick inventory of the cabinets' contents. All security-issue weapons and their power cartridges were present and accounted for, all safety equipment neatly packed in its places. The office was void of personal effects, no vid displays of the girl back home, no sly—or political—jokes or encouraging slogans pasted inside the cabinet doors. But Brun's investigators had been through here once already, after Solian had disappeared but before the ship had been evacuated by the quaddies following the clash with the Barrayarans; Miles made a note to inquire if Brun—or Venn, for that matter—had removed anything.

Roic's override codes promptly brought up all of Solian's records and logs. Miles started from Solian's final shift. The lieutenant's daily reports were laconic, repetitive, and disappointingly free of comments on potential assassins. Miles wondered if he was listening to a dead man's voice. By rights, there ought to be some psychic frisson. The eerie silence of the ship encouraged the imagination.

While the ship was in port, its security system did keep continuous vid records of everyone and everything that boarded or departed through the stationside or other activated locks, as a routine antitheft, antisabotage precaution. Slogging through the whole ten days' worth of comings and goings before the ship had been impounded, even on fast forward, was going to be a time-consuming chore. The daunting possibility of records having been altered or deleted, as Brun suspected Solian had done to cover his desertion, would also have to be explored.