“They can't travel through the air?”

Clogston hesitated. “Well, maybe not until the host starts coughing blood.”

Until , not unless . Miles noted the word choice. “I'm afraid talk of a downgrade is premature anyway. A Cetagandan agent armed with unknown bioweapons—well, unknown except for this one, which is getting too damned familiar—is still on the loose out there.” He inhaled, carefully, and forced his voice to calm. “We've found some evidence suggesting that the agent still may be hiding aboard this ship. You need to secure your work zone from a possible intruder.”

Captain Clogston cursed. “Hear that, boys?” he called to his techs over his suit com.

“Oh, great,” came a disgusted reply. “Just what we need right now.”

“Hey, at least it's something we can shoot ,” another voice remarked wistfully.

Ah, Barrayarans. Miles's heart warmed. “On sight,” he confirmed. These were military medicos; they all bore sidearms, bless them.

His eye flicked over the ward and the infirmary chamber beyond, summing weak points. Only one entry, but was that weakness or strength? The outer door was definitely the vantage to hold, protecting the ward beyond; Roic had taken up station there quite automatically. Yet traditional attack by stunner, plasma arc, or explosive grenade seemed . . . insufficiently imaginative. The place was still on ship's air circulation and ship's power, but this of all sections had to have its own emergency reservoirs of both.

The military-grade Level Five biotainer suits the medicos wore also doubled as pressure suits, their air circulation entirely internal. The same was not true of Miles's cheaper suit, even before he'd lost his gloves; his atmosphere pack drew air from the environs, through filters and cookers. In the event of a pressurization loss, his suit would turn into a stiff, unwieldy balloon, perhaps even rupture at a weak point. There were bod pod lockers on the walls, of course. Miles pictured being trapped in a bod pod while the action went on without him.

Given that he was already exposed to . . . whatever, peeling out of his biotainer suit long enough to get into something tighter couldn't make things any worse, could it? He stared at his hands and wondered why he wasn't dead yet. Could the glop he'd touched have been only a simple corrosive?

Miles clawed his stunner out of his thigh pocket, awkwardly with his mittened hand, and walked back through the blue bars of light marking the bio-barrier. “Roic. I want you to dash back down to Engineering and grab me the smallest pressure suit you can find. I'll guard this point till you get back.”

“M'lord,” Roic began in a tone of doubt.

“Keep your stunner out; watch your back. We're all here, so if you see anything move that isn't quaddie green, shoot first.”

Roic swallowed manfully. “Yes, well, see that you stay here, m'lord. Don't go haring off on your own without me!”

“I wouldn't dream of it,” Miles promised.

Roic departed at the gallop. Miles readjusted his awkward grip on the stunner, made sure it was set to maximum power, and took a stance partly sheltered by the door, staring up the central corridor at his bodyguard's retreating form. Scowling.

I don't understand this.

Something didn't add up, and if he could just get ten consecutive minutes not filled with lethal new tactical crises, maybe it would come to him. . . . He tried not to think about his stinging palms, and what ingenious microbial sneak assault might even now be stealing through his body, maybe even making its way into his brain.

An ordinary imperial servitor ba ought to have died before abandoning a charge like those haut-filled replicators. And even if this one had been trained as some sort of special agent, why spend all that critical time taking samples from the fetuses that it was about to desert or maybe even destroy? Every haut infant ever made had its DNA kept on file back in the central gene banks of the Star Cr?che. They could make more, surely. What made this batch so irreplaceable?

His train of thought derailed itself as he imagined little gengineered parasites multiplying frenetically through his bloodstream, blip-blip-blip-blip .Calm down, dammit. He didn't actually know if he'd even been inoculated with the same evil disease as Bel. Yeah, it might be something even worse . Yet surely some Cetagandan designer neurotoxin—or even some quite ordinary off-the-shelf poison—ought to cut in much faster than this. Although if it's a drug to drive the victim mad with paranoia, it's working really well. Was the ba's repertoire of hell-potions limited? If it had any, why not many? Whatever stimulants or hypnotics it had used on Bel need not have been anything out of the ordinary, by the norms of covert ops. How many other fancy bio-tricks did it have up its sleeve? Was Miles about to personally demonstrate the next one?

Am I going to live long enough to say good-bye to Ekaterin? A good-bye kiss was right out, unless they pressed their lips to opposite sides of some really thick window of glass. He had so much to say to her; it seemed impossible to find where to start. Even more impossible by voice alone, over an open, unsecured public com link. Take care of the kids. Kiss them for me every night at bedtime, and tell them I loved them even if I never saw them. You won't be alone—my parents will help you. Tell my parents . . . tell them . . .

Was this damned thing starting up already, or were the hot panic and choking tears in his throat entirely self-induced? An enemy that attacked you from the inside out—you could try to turn yourself inside out to fight it, but you wouldn't succeed—filthy weapon! Open channel or not, I'm calling her now. . . .

Instead, Venn's voice sounded in his ear. “Lord Vorkosigan, pick up Channel Twelve. Your Admiral Vorpatril wants you. Badly.”

Miles hissed through his teeth and keyed his helmet com over. “Vorkosigan here.”

“Vorkosigan, you idiot—!” The admiral's syntax had shed a few honorifics sometime in the past hour. “What the hell is going on over there? Why don't you answer your wrist com?”

“It's inside my biotainer suit and inaccessible right now. I'm afraid I had to don the suit in a hurry. Be aware, this helmet link is an open access channel and unsecured, sir.” Dammit, where did that sir drop in from? Habit, sheer old bad habit. “You can ask for a brief report from Captain Clogston over his military suit's tight-beam link, but keep it short . He's a very busy man right now, and I don't want him distracted.”

Vorpatril swore—whether generally or at the Imperial Auditor was left nicely ambiguous—and clicked off.

Faintly echoing through the ship came the sound Miles had been waiting for—the distant clanks and hisses of airseal doors shutting down, sealing the ship into airtight sections. The quaddies had made it to Nav and Com, good! Except that Roic wasn't back yet. The armsman would have to get in touch with Venn and Greenlaw and get them to unseal and reseal his passage back up to—

“Vorkosigan.” Venn's voice sounded again in his ear, strained. “Is that you?”

“Is what me?”

“Shutting off the compartments.”

“Isn't it,” Miles tried, and failed, to swallow his voice back down to a more reasonable pitch. “Aren't you in Nav and Com yet ?”

“No, we circled back to the Number Two nacelle to pick up our equipment. We were just about to leave it.”

Hope flared in Miles's hammering heart. “Roic,” he called urgently. “Where are you?”

“Not in Nav and Com, m'lord,” Roic's grim voice returned.

“But if we're here and he's there, who's doing this ?” came Leutwyn's unhappy voice.

“Who do you think ?” Greenlaw ripped back. Her breath huffed out in anguish. “Five people, and not one of us thought to see the door locked behind us when we left—dammit!”