It was three days before he cried, worried that he could not cry. Then, in bed alone at night, it came as a frightening uncontrollable storm lasting hours. Miles judged it a just catharsis, but it kept repeating on succeeding nights, and then he worried that it would not stop. His stomach hurt all the time now, but especially after meals, which he therefore scarcely touched. His sharp features sharpened further, molding to his bones.
The days were a grey fog. Faces, familiar and unfamiliar, badgered him for directions, to which his reply was an invariable, laconic, "Suit yourself." Elena would not talk to him at all. He was stirred to fear she was finding comfort in Baz's arms. He watched her covertly, anxious. But she seemed not to be finding comfort anywhere.
After a particularly formless and inconclusive Dendarii staff meeting Arde Mayhew took him aside. Miles had sat silent at the head of the table, seemingly studying his hands, while his officers' voices had croaked on meaningless as frogs.
"God knows," whispered Arde, "I don't know much about being a military officer." He took an angry breath. "But I do know you can't drag two hundred and more people out on a limb with you like this and then go catatonic."
"You're right," Miles snarled back, "you don't know much."
He stamped off, stiff-backed, but shaken inside with the justice of Mayhew's complaint. He slammed into his cabin just in time to throw up in secret for the fourth time that week, the second since Bothari's death, resolve sternly to take up the work at hand immediately and no more nonsense, and fall across his bed to lie immobile for the next six hours.
He was getting dressed. Men who'd done isolated duty all agreed, you had to keep the standards up or things went to hell. Miles had been awake three hours now, and had his trousers on. In the next hour he was either going to try for his socks, or shave, whichever seemed easier. He contemplated the pig-headed masochism of the Barrayaran habit of the daily shave versus, say, the civilized Betan custom of permanently stunning the hair follicles. Perhaps he'd go for the socks.
The cabin buzzer blatted. He ignored it. Then the intercom, Elena's voice: "Miles, let me in."
He lurched to a sitting position, nearly blacking himself out, and called hastily, "Come!" which released the voice-lock.
She picked her way in across strewn clothing, weapons, equipment, disconnected chargers, rations wrappers, and stared around, wrinkling her nose in dismay. "You know," she said at last, "if you're not going to pick this mess up yourself you ought to at least choose a new batman."
Miles stared around too. "It never occurred to me," he said humbly. "I used to imagine I was a very neat person. Everything just put itself away, or so I thought. You wouldn't mind?"
"Mind what?"
"If I got a new batman."
"Why should I care?"
Miles thought it over. "Maybe Arde. I've got to find something for him to do, sooner or later, now he can't jump anymore."
"Arde?" she repeated dubiously.
"He's not nearly as slovenly as he used to be."
"Mm." She picked up a hand-viewer that was lying upside-down on the floor, and looked for a place to set it. But there was only one level surface in the cabin that held no clutter or dust. "Miles, how long are you going to keep that coffin in here?"
"It might as well be stored here as anywhere. The morgue's cold. He didn't like the cold."
"People are beginning to think you're strange."
"Let 'em think what they like. I gave him my word once that I'd take him back to be buried on Barrayar, if—if anything happened to him out here."
She shrugged angrily. "Why bother keeping your word to a corpse? It'll never know the difference."
"I'm alive," Miles said quietly, "and I'd know."
She stalked around the cabin, lips tight. Face tight, whole body tight—"I've been running your unarmed combat classes for ten days now. You haven't come to a single session."
He wondered if he ought to tell her about throwing up the blood. No, she'd drag him off to the medtech for sure. He didn't want to see the medtech. His age, the secret weakness of his bones—too much would become apparent on a close medical examination.
She went on. "Baz is doing double shifts, reconditioning equipment, Tung and Thorne and Auson are running their tails off organizing the new recruits—but it's all starting to come apart. Everybody's spending all their time arguing with everybody else. Miles, if you spend another week holed up in here, the Dendarii Mercenaries are going to start looking just like this cabin."
"I know. I've been to the staff meetings. Just because I don't say anything doesn't mean I'm not listening."
"Then listen to them when they say they need your leadership."
"I swear to God, Elena, I don't know what for." He ran his hands through his hair, and jerked up his chin. "Baz fixes things, Arde runs them, Tung and Thorne and Auson and their people do the fighting, you keep them all sharp and in condition—I'm the one person who doesn't do anything real at all." He paused. "They say? What do you say?"
"What does it matter what I say?"
"You came . . ."
"They asked me to come. You haven't been letting anyone else in, remember? They've been pestering me for days. They act like a bunch of ancient Christians asking the Virgin Mary to intercede with God."
A ghost of his old grin flitted across his mouth. "No, only with Jesus. God is back on Barrayar."
She choked, then buried her face in her hands. "Damn you for making me laugh!" she said, muffled.
He rose to capture her hands and make her sit beside him. "Why shouldn't you laugh? You deserve laughter, and all good things."
She did not answer, but stared across the room at the oblong silver box resting in the corner, at the bright scars on the far wall. "You never doubted her accusations," she said at last. "Not even for the first instant."
"I saw a lot more of him than you ever did. He practically lived in my back pocket for seventeen years."
"Yes . . ." Her eyes fell to her hands, now twisting in her lap. "I suppose I never did see more than glimpses. He would come to the village at Vorkosigan Surleau and give Mistress Hysopi her money once a month—he'd hardly ever stay more than an hour. Looking three meters tall in that brown and silver livery of yours. I'd be so excited, I couldn't sleep for a day before or after. Summers were heaven, because when your mother asked me up the lake to the summer place to play with you, I'd see him all day long." Her hands tightened to fists, and her voice broke. "And it was all lies. Faking glory, while all the time underneath was this—cesspit."
He made his voice more gentle than he had ever known he could. "I don't think he was lying, Elena. I think he was trying to forge a new truth."
Her teeth were clenched and feral. "The truth is, I am a madman's rape-bred bastard, my mother is a murderess who hates the very shape of my shadow—I can't believe I've inherited no more from them than my nose and my eyes—"
There it was, the dark fear, most secret. He started in recognition, and dove after it like a knight pursuing a dragon underground. "No! You're not them. You are you, your own person—totally separate—innocent—"
"Coming from you, I think that's the most hypocritical thing I've ever heard."
"Huh?"
"What are you but the culmination of your generations? The flower of the Vor—"
"Me?" He stared in astonishment. "The culmination of degeneration, maybe. A stunted weed . . ." He paused; her face seemed a mirror of his own astonishment. "They do add up, it's true. My grandfather carried nine generations on his back. My father carried ten. I carry eleven—and I swear that last one weighs more than all the rest put together. It's a wonder I'm not squashed even shorter. I feel like I'm down to about half a meter right now. Soon I'll disappear altogether."
He was babbling, knew he was babbling. Some dam had broken in him. He gave himself over to the flood and boiled on down the sluice.
"Elena, I love you, I've always loved you—" She leaped like a startled deer; he gasped and flung his arms around her. "No, listen! I love you, I don't know what the Sergeant was but I loved him too, and whatever of him is in you I honor with all my heart, I don't know what is truth and I don't give a damn anymore, we'll make our own like he did, he did a bloody good job I think, I can't live without my Bothari, marry me!" He spent the last of his air shouting the last two words, and had to pause for a long inhalation.
"I can't marry you! The genetic risks—"
"I am not a mutant! Look, no gills—" he stuck his fingers into the corners of his mouth and spread it wide, "no antlers—" He planted his thumbs on either side of his head and wriggled his fingers.
"I wasn't thinking of your genetic risks. Mine. His. Your father must have known what he was—he'll never accept—"
"Look, anybody who can trace a blood relationship with Mad Emperor Yuri through two lines of descent has no room to criticize anybody else's genes."
"Your father is loyal to his class, Miles, like your grandfather, like Lady Vorpatril—they could never accept me as Lady Vorkosigan."
"Then I'll present them with an alternative. I'll tell them I'm going to marry Bel Thorne. They'll come around so fast they'll trip over themselves."
She sat back helplessly and buried her face in his pillow, shoulders shaking. He had a moment of terror that he'd broken her down into tears. Not break down, build up, and up, and up . . . But, "Damn you for making me laugh!" she repeated. "Damn you . . ."
He galloped on, encouraged. "And I wouldn't be so sure about my father's class loyalties. He married a foreign plebe, after all." He dropped into seriousness. "And you cannot doubt my mother. She always longed for a daughter, secretly—never paraded it, so as not to hurt the old man, of course—let her be your mother in truth."
"Oh," she said, as if he had stabbed her. "Oh . . ."
"You'll see, when we get back to Barrayar—"
"I pray to God," she interrupted him, voice intense, "I may never set foot on Barrayar again."
"Oh," he said in turn. After a long pause he said, "We could live somewhere else. Beta Colony. It would have to be pretty quietly, once the exchange rate got done with my income—I could get a job, doing—doing—doing something."
"And on the day the Emperor calls you to take your place on the Council of Counts, to speak for your district and all the poor sods in it, where will you go then?"
He swallowed, struck silent. "Ivan Vorpatril is my heir," he offered at last. "Let him take the Countship."
"Ivan Vorpatril is a jerk."
"Oh, he's not such a bad sort."
"He used to corner me, when my father wasn't around, and try to feel me up."
"What! You never said—"
"I didn't want to start a big flap." She frowned into the past. "I almost wish I could go back in time, just to boot him in the balls."
He glanced sideways at her, considerably startled. "Yes," he said slowly, "you've changed."
"I don't know what I am anymore. Miles, you must believe me—I love you as I love breath—"
His heart rocketed.
"But I can't be your annex."
And crashed. "I don't understand."
"I don't know how to put it plainer. You'd swallow me up the way an ocean swallows a bucket of water. I'd disappear in you. I love you, but I'm terrified of you, and of your future."
His bafflement sought simplicity. "Baz. It's Baz, isn't it?"
"If Baz had never existed, my answer would be the same. But as it happens—I have given him my word."
"You—" the breath went out of him in a "ha,"—"Break it," he ordered.
She merely looked at him, silently. In a moment he reddened, and dropped his eyes in shame.
"You own honor by the ocean," she whispered. "I have only a little bucketful. Unfair to jostle it—my lord."
He fell back across his bed, defeated.
She rose. "Are you coming to the staff meeting?"
"Why bother? It's hopeless."
She stared down at him, lips thinned, and glanced across to the box in the corner. "Isn't it time you learned to walk on your own feet—cripple?"
She ducked out the door just in time to avoid the pillow he threw at her, her lips curving just slightly at this spasmodic display of energy.
"You know me too bloody well," he whispered. "Ought to keep you just for security reasons."
He staggered to his feet and went to shave.
He made it to the staff conference, barely, and sagged into his usual seat at the head of the table. It was a full meeting, held therefore in the roomy refinery conference chamber. General Halify and an aide sat in. Tung and Thorne and Auson, Arde and Baz, and the five men and women picked to officer the new recruits ringed the table. The Cetagandan ghem-captain sat opposite the Kshatryan lieutenant, their growing animosity threatening to equal the three-way rivalry among Tung, Auson, and Thorne. The two united only long enough to snarl at the Felicians, the professional assassin from Jackson's Whole, or the retired Tau Cetan major of commandos, who in turn sniped at the ex-Oserans, making the circle complete.
The alleged agenda for this circus was the preparation of the final Dendarii battle-plan for breaking the Oseran blockade, hence General Halify's keen interest. His keenness had been rather blunted this last week by a growing dismay. The doubt in Halify's eyes was an itch to Miles's spirit; he tried to avoid meeting them. Bargain rates, General, Miles thought sulkily to him. You get what you pay for.
The first half hour was spent knocking down, again, three unworkable pet plans that had been advanced by their owners at previous meetings. Bad odds, requirements of personnel and material beyond their resources, impossibilities of timing, were pointed out with relish by one half of Miles's group to the other, with opinions of the advancers' mentalities thrown in gratis. This rapidly degenerated into a classic slanging match. Tung, who normally suppressed such, was one of the principals this time, so it threatened to escalate indefinitely.
"Look, damn it," shouted the Kshatryan lieutenant, banging his fist on the table for emphasis, "we can't take the wormhole direct and we all know it. Let's concentrate on something we can do. Merchant shipping—we could attack that, a counter-blockade—"
"Attack neutral galactic shipping?" yelped Auson. "Do you want to get us all hung?"
"Hanged," corrected Thorne, earning an ungrateful glare.
"No, see," Auson bulled on, "the Pelians have little bases all over this system we could have a go at. Like guerilla warfare, attacking and fading into the sands—"
"What sands?" snapped Tung. "There's nothing to hide your ass behind out there—the Pelians have our home address. It's a miracle they haven't given up all hope of capturing this refinery and flung a half-c meteor shower through here already. Any plan that doesn't work quickly won't work at all—"
"What about a lightning raid on the Pelian capital?" suggested the Cetagandan captain. "A suicide squadron to drop a nuclear in there—"
"You volunteering?" sneered the Kshatryan. "That might almost be worthwhile."
"The Pelians have a trans-shipping station in orbit around the sixth planet," said the Tau Cetan. "A raid on that would—"
"—take that electron orbital randomizer and—"
"—you're an idiot—"
"—ambush stray ships—"
Miles's intestines writhed like mating snakes. He rubbed his hands wearily over his face, and spoke for the first time; the unexpectedness of it caught their attention momentarily.
"I've known people who play chess like this. They can't think their way to a checkmate, so they spend their time trying to clear the board of the little pieces. This eventually reduces the game to a simplicity they can grasp, and they're happy. The perfect war is a fool's mate."
He subsided, elbows on the table, face in his hands. After a short silence, expectation falling into disappointment, the Kshatryan renewed the attack on the Cetagandan, and they were off again. Their voices blurred over Miles. General Halify began to push back from the table.
No one noticed Miles's jaw drop, behind his hands, or his eyes widen, then narrow to glints. "Son-of-a-bitch," he whispered. "It's not hopeless."
He sat up. "Has it occurred to anyone yet that we're tackling this problem from the wrong end?"
His words were lost in the din. Only Elena, sitting in a corner across the chamber, saw his face. Her own face turned like a sunflower toward him. Her lips moved silently: Miles?
Not a shameful escape in the dark, but a monument. That's what he would make of this war. Yes . . .
He pulled his grandfather's dagger from its sheath and spun it in the air. It came down and stuck point-first in the center of the table with a ringing vibration. He climbed up on the table and marched to retrieve it.
The silence was sudden and complete, but for a mutter from Auson, in front of whom the dagger had landed, "I didn't think that plastic would scratch . . ."
Miles yanked the dagger out, resheathed it, and strode up and down the tabletop. His leg brace had developed an annoying click recently, which he'd meant to have Baz fix; now it was loud in the silence. Locking attention, like a whisper. Good. A click, a club on the head, whatever worked was fine by him. It was time to get their attention.
"It appears to have escaped you gentlemen, ladies, and others, that the Dendarii's appointed task is not to physically destroy the Oserans, but merely to eliminate them as a fighting force in local space. We need not blunt ourselves attacking their strengths."
Their upturned faces followed him like iron filings drawn to a magnet. General Halify sank back in his seat. Baz's face, and Arde's, grew jubilant with hope.
"I direct your attention to the weak link in the chain that binds us—the connection between the Oserans and their employers the Pelians. There is where we must apply our leverage. My children," he stood gazing out past the refinery into the depths of space, a seer taken by a vision, "we're going to hit them in the payroll."
The underwear came first, soft, smooth-fitting, absorbent. Then the connections for the plumbing. Then the boots, the piezo-electric pads carefully aligned with points of maximum impact on toes, heels, the ball of the foot. Baz had done a beautiful job adjusting the fit of the space armor. The greaves went on like skin to Miles's uneven legs. Better than skin, an exoskeleton, his brittle bones at last rendered technologically equal to anyone's.
Miles wished Baz were by him at this moment, to take pride in his handiwork, although Arde was doing his best to help Miles ooze into the apparatus. Even more passionately Miles wished himself in Baz's place.
Felician intelligence reported all still quiet on the Pelian home front. Baz and his hand-picked party of techs, starring Elena Visconti, must have penetrated the planetside frontier successfully and be moving into place for their blow. The killing blow of Miles's strategy. The keystone of his arching ambitions. His heart had nearly broken, sending them off alone, but reason ruled. A commando raid, if it could be so called, delicate, technical, invisible, would not benefit from so conspicuous and low-tech a piece of baggage as himself. He was better employed here, with the rest of the grunts.
He glanced up the length of his flagship's armory. The atmosphere seemed a combination of locker room, docking bay, and surgery—he tried not to think about surgeries. His stomach twinged, a probe of pain. Not now, he told it. Later. Be good, and I promise I'll take you to the medtech, later.
The rest of his attack group were arming and armoring themselves as he was. Techs checked out systems to a quiet undercurrent of colored lights and small audio signals as they probed here, there; the quiet undercurrent of voices was serious, attentive, concentrated, almost meditative, like an ancient church before the services began. It was well. He caught Elena's eye, two soldiers down the row from himself, and smiled reassuringly, as if he and not she were the veteran. She did not smile back.
He probed his strategy as the techs did their systems. The Oseran payroll was divided into two parts. The first was an electronic transfer payment of Pelian funds into an Oseran account in the Pelian capital, out of which the Oseran fleet purchased local supplies. Miles's special plan was for that. The second half was in assorted galactic currencies, primarily Betan dollars. This was the cash profit, to be divided among Oser's captain-owners to carry out of Tau Verde local space to their various destinations when their contracts at last expired. It was delivered monthly to Oser's flagship on its blockade station. Miles corrected his thought with a small grin—had been delivered monthly.
They had taken the first cash payroll in midspace with devastating ease. Half of Miles's troops were Oserans, after all; several had even done the duty before. Presenting themselves to the Pelian courier as the Oseran pickup had required only the slightest of adjustments in codes and procedures. They were done and far out of range before the real Oserans arrived. The transcript of the subsequent dispatches between the Pelian courier and the Oseran pickup ship was a treasure for Miles. He kept it stored atop Bothari's coffin in his cabin, beside his grandfather's dagger. More to come, Sergeant, he thought. I swear it.
The second operation, two weeks later, had been crude by comparison, a slugging match between the new, more heavily armed Pelian courier and Miles's three warships. Miles had prudently stepped aside and let Tung direct it, confining his comments to an occasional approving "Ah." They gave up maneuvering to board upon the approach of four Oseran ships. The Oserans were taking no chances with this delivery.
The Dendarii had blasted the Pelian and its precious cargo into its component atoms, and fled. The Pelians had fought bravely. Miles burned them a death-offering that night in his cabin, very privately.
Arde connected Miles's left shoulder joint, and began to run through the checklist of rotational movements of all the joints from shoulder to fingertips. His ring finger was running about 20% weak. Arde opened the pressure plate under his left wrist and pinned the tiny power-up control.
His strategy . . . By the third attempted hijacking, it was clear the enemy was learning from experience. Oser sent a convoy practically to the planet's atmosphere for the pickup. Miles's ships, hovering out of range, had been unable to even get near. Miles was forced to use his ace-in-the-hole.
Tung had raised his eyebrows when Miles asked him to send a simple paper message to his former communications officer. "Please cooperate with all Dendarii requests," it read, signed, meaninglessly to the Eurasian, with the Vorkosigan seal concealed in the hilt of Miles's grandfather's dagger. The communications officer had been a fountain of intelligence ever since. Bad, to so endanger one of Captain Illyan's operatives, worse to risk their best eye in the Oseran fleet. If the Oserans ever figured out who had microwaved the money, the man's life was surely forfeit. To date, though, the Oserans held only four packing cases of ashes and a mystery.
Miles felt a slight change in gravity and vibration; they must be moving into attack formation. Time to get his helmet on, and make contact with Tung and Auson in the tactics room. Elena's tech fitted her helmet. She opened her faceplate, spoke to the tech; they collaborated on some minor adjustment.
If Baz was keeping his schedule, this was surely Miles's last chance with her. With the engineer out of the way, there was no one to usurp his hero's role. The next rescue would be his. He pictured himself, blasting menacing Pelians right and left, pulling her out of some tactical hole—the details were vague. She would have to believe he loved her then. His tongue would magically untangle, he'd finally find the right words after so many wrong ones, her snowy skin would warm in the heat of his ardor and bloom again. . . .
Her face, framed by her helmet, was cold, austere in profile, the same blank winter landscape she had exhibited to the world since Bothari's death. Her lack of reaction worried Miles. True, she had had her Dendarii duties to distract her, keep her moving—not like the self-indulgent luxury of his own withdrawal. At least with Elena Visconti gone, she was spared those awkward meetings in the corridors and conference rooms, both women pretending fiercely to cold professionalism.
Elena stretched in her armor, and gazed pensively into the black hole of her plasma arc muzzle built into the right arm of her suit. She slipped on her glove, covering the blue veins like pale rivers of ice in her wrist. Her eyes made Miles think of razors.
He stepped to her shoulder, and waved away her tech. The words he spoke weren't any of the dozens he had rehearsed for the occasion. He lowered his voice to whisper.
"I know all about suicide. Don't think you can fool me."
She started, and flushed. Frowned at him in fierce scorn. Snapped her faceplate shut.
Forgive, whispered his anguished thought to her. It is necessary.
Arde lowered Miles's helmet over his head, connected his control leads, checked the connections. A lacework of fire netted, knotted, and tangled in Miles's gut. Damn, but it was getting hard to ignore.
He checked his comm link with the tactics room. "Commodore Tung? Naismith here. Roll the vids." The inside of his faceplate blurred with color, duplicate readouts of the tactics room telemetry for the field commander. Only communications, no servo links this time. The captured Pelian armor had none, and the old Oseran armor was all safely on manual override. Just in case somebody else out there was learning from experience.
"Last chance to change your mind," Tung said over the comm link, continuing the old argument. "Sure you wouldn't rather attack the Oserans after the transfer, farther from the Pelian bases? Our intelligence on them is so much more detailed. . . ."
"No! We have to capture or destroy the payroll before the delivery. Taking it after is strategically useless."
"Not entirely. We could sure use the money."
And how, Miles reflected glumly. It would soon take scientific notation to register his debt to the Dendarii. A mercenary fleet could hardly burn money faster if the ships ran on steam power and the funds were shoveled directly into their furnaces. Never had one so little owed so much to so many, and it grew worse by the hour. His stomach oozed around his abdominal cavity like a tortured amoeba, throwing out pseudopods of pain and the vacuole of an acid belch. You are a psychosomatic illusion, Miles assured it.
The assault group formed up and marched to the waiting shuttles. Miles moved among them, trying to touch each person, call them by name, give them some personal word; they seemed to like that. He ordered their ranks in his mind, and wondered how many gaps there would be when this day's work was done. Forgive . . . He had run out of clever solutions. This one was to be done the old hard way, head-on.
They moved through the shuttle hatch corridors into the waiting shuttle. This must surely be the worst part, waiting helplessly for Tung to deliver them like cartons of eggs, as fragile, as messy when broken. He took a deep breath, and prepared to cope with the usual effects of zero-gee.
He was totally unprepared for the cramp that doubled him over, snatched his breath away, drained his face to a paper-whiteness. Not like this, it had never come on like this before—. He redoubled into a ball, gasping, lost his grasp on his grip-strap, floated free. Dear God, it was finally happening—the ultimate humiliation—he was going to throw up in a space suit. In moments, everyone would know of his hilarious weakness. Absurd, for a would-be Imperial officer to get space-sick. Absurd, absurd, he had always been absurd. He had barely the presence of mind to hit his ventilator controls to full power with a jerk of his chin, and kill his broadcast—no need to treat his mercenaries to the unedifying sound of their commander retching.
"Admiral Naismith?" came an inquiry from the tactics room. "Your medical readouts look odd—telemetry check requested."
The universe seemed to narrow to his belly. A wrenching rush, gagging and coughing, another, another. The ventilator could not keep up. He'd eaten nothing this day, where was it all coming from?
A mercenary pulled him out of the air, tried to help him straighten his clenched limbs. "Admiral Naismith? Are you all right?"
He opened Miles's faceplate, to Miles's gasp of "No! Not in here—"
"Son-of-a-bitch!" The man jumped back, and raised his voice to a piercing cry. "Medtech!"
You're overreacting, Miles tried to say; I'll clean it up myself. . . . Dark clots, scarlet droplets, shimmering crimson globules, floated past his confused eyes, his secret spilled. It appeared to be pure blood. "No," he whimpered, or tried to. "Not now . . ."
Hands grasped him, passed him back to the shuttle hatch he had entered moments before. Gravity pressed him to the corridor deck—who the devil had upped it to three-gee?—hands pulled his helmet off, plucked at his carefully donned carapace. He felt like a lobster supper. His belly wrung itself out again.
Elena's face, nearly as white as his now, circled above him. She knelt, tore off her servo glove and gripped his hand, flesh to flesh at last. "Miles!"
Truth is what you make it . . . "Commander Bothari!" he croaked, as loud as he could. A ring of frightened faces huddled around him. His Dendarii. His people. For them, then. All for them. All. "Take over."
"I can't!" Her face was pale with shock, terrified. God, Miles thought, I must look just like Bothari, spilling his guts. It's not that bad, he tried to tell her. Silver-black whorls sparkled in his vision, blotting out her face. No! Not yet—
"Liege-lady. You can. You must. I'll be with you." He writhed, gripped by some sadistic giant. "You are true Vor, not I. . . . Must have been changelings, back there in those replicators." He gave her a death's-head grin. "Forward momentum—"
She rose then, determination crowding out the hot terror in her face, the ice that had run like water transmuted to marble.
"Right, my lord," she whispered. And more loudly, "Right! Get back there, let the medtechs do their job—" She drove away his admirers. He was flipped efficiently onto a float pallet.
He watched his booted feet, dark and distant hillocks, waver before him as he was borne aloft. Feet first, it would have to be feet first. He barely felt the prick of the first IV in his arm. He heard Elena's voice, raised tremblingly behind him.
"All right you clowns! No more games. We're going to win this one for Admiral Naismith!"
Heroes. They sprang up around him like weeds. A carrier, he was seemingly unable to catch the disease he spread.
"Damn it," he moaned. "Damn it, damn it, damn it . . ." He repeated this litany like a mantra, until the medtech's second sedative injection parted him from his pain, frustration, and consciousness.