But splashy hostage-taking among neutrals or neighbors, blaring the mission all over the news, most of all—most of all, the public use of the Star Cr?che's most private arsenal . . . This wasn't the modus operandi of a trained agent. This was goddamned amateur work. And Miles's superiors used to accuse him of being a loose cannon—hah! Not any of his most direly inspired messes had ever been as forlorn as this one was shaping up to be—for both sides, alas. This gratifying deduction did not, unfortunately, make the ba's next action more predictable. Quite the reverse.

“M'lord?” Roic's voice rose unexpectedly from Miles's wrist com.

“Roic!” cried Miles joyfully. “Wait. What the hell are you doing on this link? You shouldn't be out of your suit.”

“I might ask you the same question, m'lord,” Roic returned rather tartly. “If I had time. But I had to get out of t' pressure suit anyway to get into this work suit. I think . . . yes. I can hang the com link in my helmet. There.” A slight chink, as of a faceplate closing. “Can you still hear me?”

“Oh, yes. I take it you're still in Engineering?”

“For now. I found you a real nice little pressure suit, m'lord. And a lot of other tools. Question is how to get it to you.”

“Stay away from all the airseal doors—they're monitored. Have you found any cutting tools, by chance?”

“I'm, uh . . . pretty sure that's what these are, yes.”

“Then move as far to the stern as you can get, and cut straight up through the ceiling to the middle deck. Try to avoid damaging the air ducts and grav grid and control and fluid conduits, for now. Or anything else that would make the boards light up in Nav and Com. Then we can place you for the next cut.”

“Right, m'lord. I was thinking something like that might do.”

A few minutes ran by, with nothing but the sound of Roic's breathing, broken with a few under-voiced obscenities as, by trial and error, he discovered how to handle the unfamiliar equipment. A grunt, a hiss, a clank abruptly cut off.

The rough-and-ready procedure was going to play hell with the atmospheric integrity of the sections, but did that necessarily make things any worse, from the hostages' point of view? And a pressure suit, oh bliss! Miles wondered if any of the powered work suits had been sized extra-small. Almost as good as space armor, indeed.

“All right, m'lord,” came the welcome voice from his wrist com. “I've made it to the middle deck. I'm moving back now . . . I'm not exactly sure how close I am under you.”

“Can you reach up to tap on the ceiling? Gently. We don't want it to reverberate through the bulkheads all the way to Nav and Com.” Miles threw himself prone, opened his faceplate, tilted his head, and listened. A faint banging, apparently from out in the corridor. “Can you move farther toward the stern?”

“I'll try, m'lord. It's a question of getting these ceiling panels apart . . .” More heavy breathing. “There. Try now.”

This time, the rapping seemed to come from nearly under Miles's outstretched hand. “I think that's got it, Roic.”

“Right, m'lord. Be sure you're not standing where I'm cutting. I think Lady Vorkosigan would be right peeved with me if I accidentally lopped off any of your body parts.”

“I think so too.” Miles rose, ripped up a section of friction matting, skittered to the side of the infirmary's outer chamber, and held his breath.

A red glow in the bare deck plate beneath turned yellow, then white. The dot became a line, which grew, wavering in an irregular circle back to its beginning. A thump, as Roic's gloved paw, powered by his suit, punched up through the floor, tearing the weakened circle from its matrix.

Miles nipped over and stared down, and grinned at Roic's face staring up in worry through the faceplate of another repair suit. The hole was too small for that hulking figure to squeeze through, but not too small for the pressure suit he handed up through it.

“Good job,” Miles called down. “Hang on. I'll be right with you.”

“M'lord?”

Miles tore off the useless biotainer suit and crammed himself into the pressure suit in record time. Inevitably, the plumbing was female, and he left it unattached. One way or another, he didn't think he would be suited up for very long. He was flushed and sweating, one moment too hot, the next too cold, though whether from incipient infection or just plain overdriven nerves he scarcely knew.

The helmet supplied no place to hang his wrist com, but a bit of medical tape solved that problem in a moment. He lowered the helmet over his head and locked it into place, breathing deeply of air that no one controlled but him. Reluctantly, he set the suit's temperature to chilly.

Then he slid to the hole and dangled his legs through. “Catch me. Don't squeeze too hard—remember, you're powered.”

“Right, m'lord.”

“Lord Auditor Vorkosigan,” came Vorpatril's uneasy voice. “What are you doing?”

“Reconnoitering.”

Roic caught his hips, lowering him with exaggerated gentleness to the middle deck. Miles glanced up the corridor, past the larger hole in its floor, to the airseal doors at the far end of this sector. “Solian's security office is in this section. If there's any control board on this bloody ship that can monitor without being monitored in turn, it'll be in there.”

He tiptoed down the corridor, Roic lumbering in his wake. The deck creaked beneath the armsman's booted feet. Miles tapped out the now-familiar code to the office door; Roic barely squeezed through behind him. Miles slid into the late Lieutenant Solian's station chair and flexed his fingers, contemplating the console. He drew a breath and bent forward.

Yes, he could siphon off views from the vid monitors of every airlock on the ship—simultaneously, if desired. Yes, he could tap into the safety sensors on the airseal doors. They were designed to take in a good view of anyone near—as in, frantically pounding on—the doors. Nervously, he checked the one for this middle rear section. The vista, if the ba was even looking at it with so much else going on, did not extend as far as Solian's office door. Whew. Could he bring up a view of Nav and Com, perhaps, and spy secretly upon its current occupant?

Roic said apprehensively, “What are you thinking of doing, m'lord?”

“I'm thinking that a surprise attack that has to stop to bore through six or seven bulkheads to get to the target isn't going to be surprising enough. Though we may come to that. I'm running out of time.” He blinked, hard, then thought to hell with it and opened his faceplate to rub his eyes. The vid image unblurred in his vision, but still seemed to waver around the edges. Miles didn't think the problem was in the vid plate. His headache, which had started as a stabbing pain between his eyes, seemed to be spreading to his temples, which throbbed. He was shivering. He sighed and closed the faceplate again.

“That bio-shit—the admiral said you got t' same bio-shit the herm has. The crap that melted Gupta's friends.”

“When did you talk to Vorpatril?”

“Just before I talked to you.”

“Ah.”

Roic said lowly, “I should've been t' one to run those remote controls. Not you.”

“It had to be me. I was more familiar with the equipment.”

“Yes.” Roic's voice went lower. “You should've brought Jankowski, m'lord.”

“Just a guess—based on long experience, mind you . . .” Miles paused, frowning at the security display. All right, so Solian didn't have a monitor in every cabin, but he had to have private access to Nav and Com if he had anything . . . ”But I suspect there will be enough heroism before this day is done to go around. I don't think we're going to have to ration it, Roic.”

“ 'S not what I meant,” said Roic, in a dignified tone.

Miles grinned blackly. “I know. But think of how hard it would have been on Ma Jankowski. And all the not-so-little Jankowskis.”