How far behind could the Cetagandans be, by now? Too close for the ba's comfort, obviously; it was a wonder, when Guppy had popped up on the hostel railing, that the ba hadn't just died of heart failure without any need for the rivet gun. But the ba's trail, marked by Guppy with blazing flares, led straight through from the scene of the crime to the heart of a sometimes-enemy empire—Barrayar. What were the Cetagandans making of it all?
Well, we have a clue now, don't we?
“Right,” breathed Miles, then, more crisply, “Right. You're recording all this, I trust. So my first order in the Emperor's Voice, Admiral, is to countermand your rendezvous orders from Sector Five. That was what you were about to ask for, yes?”
“Thank you, my Lord Auditor, yes,” said Vorpatril gratefully. “Normally, that would be a call I would rather die than disregard, but . . . given our present situation, they are going to have to wait a little.” Vorpatril wasn't self-dramatizing; this was delivered as a plain statement of fact. “Not too long, I hope.”
“They are going to have to wait a lot. This is my next order in the Emperor's Voice. Clear copy everything—everything —you have on record here from the past twenty-four hours and squirt it back on an open channel, at the highest priority, to the Imperial Residence, to the Barrayaran high command on Barrayar, to ImpSec HQ, and to ImpSec Galactic Affairs on Komarr. And,” he took a breath, and raised his voice to override Vorpatril's outraged cry of Clear copy! At a time like this? “marked from Lord Auditor Miles Vorkosigan of Barrayar to the most urgent, personal attention of ghem-General Dag Benin, Chief of Imperial Security, the Celestial Garden, Eta Ceta, personal, urgent, most urgent, by Rian's hair this one's real, Dag. Exactly those words.”
“What? ” screamed Vorpatril, then hastily lowered his tone to an anguished repeat, “What? A rendezvous at Marilac can only mean imminent war with the Cetagandans! We can't hand them that kind of intelligence on our position and movements—gift-wrapped!”
“Obtain the complete, unedited Graf Station Security recording of the interrogation of Russo Gupta and send it along too, as soon as you possibly can. Sooner.”
New terror shook Miles, a vision like a fever dream: the grand fa?ade of Vorkosigan House, in the Barrayaran capital of Vorbarr Sultana, with plasma fire raining down upon it, its ancient stone melting like butter; two fluid-filled canisters exploding in steam. Or a fog of plague, leaving all the House's protectors dead in heaps in the halls, or fled to die in the streets; two almost ripe replicators running down unattended, stopping, slowly chilling, their tiny occupants dying for lack of oxygen, drowning in their own amniotic fluid. His past and his future, all destroyed together . . . Nikki, too—would he be swept up with the other children in some frantic rescue, or left uncounted, unmissed, fatally alone? Miles had fancied himself growing into a good stepfather to Nikki—that was called into deep question now, eh? Ekaterin, I'm sorry . . .
It would be hours—days—before the new tight-beam could get back to Barrayar and Cetaganda. Insanely upset people could make fatal mistakes in mere minutes. Seconds . . . ”And if you are a praying man, Vorpatril, pray that no one will do anything stupid before it gets there. And that we will be believed.”
“Lady Vorkosigan,” Vorpatril whispered urgently. “Could he be hallucinating from the disease?”
“No, no,” she soothed. “He's just thinking too fast, and leaving out all the intervening steps. He does that. It can be very frustrating. Miles, love, um . . . for the rest of us, would you mind unpacking that a little more?”
He took a breath—and two or three more—to stop his trembling. “The ba. It's not an agent on a mission. It's a criminal. A renegade. Perhaps insane. I believe it hijacked the annual haut child-ship to Rho Ceta, sent the vessel into the nearest sun with all aboard—probably murdered already—and made off with its cargo. Which trans-shipped through Komarr, and which left the Barrayaran Empire on a trade ship belonging to Empress Laisa personally —and just how incriminating that particular detail is going to look to certain minds inside the Star Cr?che, I shrink to imagine. The Cetagandans think we stole their babies, or colluded in the theft, and, dear God, murdered a planetary consort , and so they are about to make war on us bymistake !”
“Oh,” said Vorpatril blankly.
“The ba's whole safety lay in perfect secrecy, because once the Cetagandans got on the right trail they would never rest till they tracked this crime down. But the perfect plan cracked when Gupta didn't die on schedule. Gupta's frantic antics drew Solian in, drew you in, drew me in . . .” His voice slowed. “Except, what in the world does the ba want those haut infants for ?”
Ekaterin offered hesitantly, “Could it be stealing them for someone else?”
“Yes, but the ba aren't supposed to be subornable.”
“Well, if not for pay or some bribe, maybe blackmail or threat? Maybe threat to some haut to whom the ba is loyal?”
“Or maybe some faction in the Star Cr?che,” Miles supplied. “Except . . . the ghem-lords do factions. The haut lords do factions. The Star Cr?che has always moved as one—even when it was committing arguable treason, a decade ago, the haut ladies took no separate decisions.”
“The Star Cr?che committed treason?” echoed Vorpatril in astonishment. “This certainly didn't get out! Are you sure? I never heard of any mass executions that high in the Empire back then, and I should have.” He paused, and added in a baffled tone, “How could a bunch of haut-lady baby-makers commit treason, anyway?”
“It didn't quite come off. For various reasons.” Miles cleared his throat.
“Lord Auditor Vorkosigan. This is your com link, yes? Are you there?” a new voice, and a very welcome one, broke in.
“Sealer Greenlaw!” Miles cried happily. “Have you made it to safety? All of you?”
“We are back aboard Graf Station,” replied the Sealer. “It seems premature to call it safety. And you?”
“Still trapped aboard the Idris . Although not totally without resources. Or ideas.”
“I urgently need to speak to you. You can override that hothead Vorpatril.”
“Ah, my com link is sustaining an open audio link with Admiral Vorpatril now, ma'am. You can speak to both of us at once, if you like,” Miles put in hastily, before she could express herself even more freely.
She hesitated only fractionally. “Good. We absolutely need Vorpatril to hold, repeat, hold any strike force of his. Corbeau confirms the ba does have some sort of a remote control or deadman switch on his person, apparently linked back to the biohazard it has hidden aboard Graf Station. The ba is not bluffing.”
Miles glanced up in surprise at his silent vid of Nav and Com. Corbeau was seated now in the pilot's station chair, the control headset lowered over his skull, his expressionless face even more absent. “Corbeau confirms! How? He was stark naked—the ba is watching him every second! Subcutaneous com link?”
“There was no time to find and insert one. He undertook to blink the ship's running lights in a prearranged code.”
“Whose idea was that?”
“His.”
Quick colonial boy. The pilot was on their side. Oh, but that was good to know. . . . Miles's shivering was turning to shudders.
“Every adult quaddie on Graf Station not on emergency duty is out looking for the bio-bomb now,” Greenlaw continued, “but we have no idea what it looks like, or how big it is, or if it is disguised as something else. Or if there is more than one. We are trying to evacuate as many children as possible into what ships and shuttles we have on hand, and seal them off, but we can't even be sure of them , really. If you people do anything to set this mad creature off—if you launch an unauthorized strike force before this vicious threat is found and safely neutralized—I swear I will give our militia the order to shoot them out of space myself. Do you copy, Admiral? Confirm.”