Young Miles (23 page)

A ghostly smiled tinged Bothari's lips. "Welcome to my lord's service—Armsman."

Auson and Thorne appeared at the other end of the docking bay. "Ah, there he is, with the whole Inner Circle," said Auson. They bore down upon Miles.

Thorne saluted. "I have the final totals now, sir."

"Um—yes, go ahead, Trainee Thorne." Miles pulled himself to attentiveness.

"On our side, two dead, five injured. Injuries not too serious but for one bad plasma burn—she'll be needing a pretty complete facial regeneration when we get to proper medical facilities—"

Miles's stomach contracted. "Names?"

"Dead, Deveraux and Kim. The head burn was Elli—uh, Trainee Quinn."

"Go on."

"The enemy's total personnel were 60 from the
Triumph,
Captain Tung's ship—twenty commandos, the rest technical support—and 86 Pelians of whom 40 were military personnel and the rest techs sent to restart the refinery. Twelve dead, 26 injured moderate-to-severe, and a dozen or so minor injuries.

"Equipment losses, two suits of space armor damaged beyond repair, five repairable. And the damages to the RG 132, I guess—" Thorne glanced up through the plexiports; Mayhew sighed mournfully.

"We captured, in addition to the refinery itself and the
Triumph,
two Pelian inner-system personnel carriers, ten station shuttles, eight two-man personal flitters, and those two empty ore tows hanging out beyond the crew's quarters. Uh—one Pelian armed courier appears to have—uh—gotten away." Thorne's litany trailed off; the lieutenant appeared to be watching Miles's face anxiously for his reaction to this last bit of news.

"I see." Miles wondered how much more he could absorb. He was growing numb. "Go on."

"On the bright side—"

There's a bright side? thought Miles.

"—we've found a little help for our personnel shortage problem. We freed 23 Felician prisoners—a few military types, but mostly refinery techs kept working at gunpoint until their Pelian replacements could arrive. A couple of them are a little messed up—"

"How so?" Miles began, then held up a hand. "Later. I'll—I'll be making a complete inspection."

"Yes, sir. The rest are able to help out. Major Daum's pretty happy."

"Has he been able to get in contact with his command yet?"

"No, sir."

Miles rubbed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, and squeezed his eyes shut, to contain the throbbing in his head.

A patrol of Thorne's weary commandos marched past, moving a batch of prisoners to a more secure location. Miles's eye was drawn to a squat Eurasian of about fifty in torn Oseran grey-and-whites. In spite of his battered and discolored face and painful limp, he maintained a hard-edged alertness. That one looks like he could walk through walls
without
space armor, Miles thought.

The Eurasian stopped abruptly. "Auson!" he cried. "I thought you were dead!" He towed his captors toward Miles's group; Miles gave the anxious guard a nod of permission.

Auson cleared his throat. "Hello, Tung."

"How did they take your ship without—" the prisoner began, and stopped, as he assimilated Thorne's armor, Auson's—in light of his immobilized arms, decorative—sidearm, their lack of guards. His expression of amazement changed to hot disgust. He struggled for words. "I might have known," he choked at last. "I might have known. Oser was right to keep you two clowns as far away from the real combat as possible. Only the comedy team of Auson and Thorne could have captured
themselves.
"

Auson's lips curled back in a snarl. Thorne flashed a thin, razor-edged smile. "Hold your tongue, Tung," it called, and added in an aside to Miles, "If you knew how many years I've been waiting to say that—"

Tung's face flushed a dark bronze-purple, and he shouted back, "Sit on it, Thorne! You're equipped for it—"

They both lunged forward simultaneously. Tung's guards clubbed him to his knees; Auson and Miles grabbed Thorne's arms. Miles was lifted off his feet, but between them they managed to check the Betan hermaphrodite.

Miles intervened. "May I point out, Captain Tung, that the—ah—comedy team has just captured you?"

"If half my commandos hadn't been trapped by that sprung bulkhead—" Tung began hotly.

Auson straightened, and smirked. Thorne stopped flexing on its feet. United at last, thought Miles, by the common enemy . . . Miles breathed a small "Ha!" as he spotted his opportunity to finally put the disbelieving and suspicious Auson in the palm of his hand.

"Who the hell is that little mutant?" Tung muttered to his guard.

Miles stepped forward. "In fact, you have done so well, Trainee Thorne, that I have no hesitation in confirming you in your brevet command. Congratulations, Captain Thorne."

Thorne swelled. Auson wilted, all the old shame and rage crowding in his eyes. Miles turned to him.

"You have also served, Trainee Auson," Miles said, thinking, overlooking that understandable small mutiny in the tactics room. . . . "Even while on the sick list. And for those who also serve, there is also a reward." He gestured grandly out the plexiport where a free-fall crew with cutting torches was just beginning to untangle the
Triumph
from its entrapment. "There is your new command. Sorry about the dents." He dropped his voice. "And perhaps next time you will not be so full of assumptions?"

Auson turned about, waves of bewilderment, astonishment, and delight breaking in his face. Bothari pursed his lips in appreciation of Miles's feudal ploy. Auson in command of his own ship must eventually wake to the fact that it
was
his own ship; Auson subordinate to Thorne must always be a potential focus for disaffection. But Auson in command of a ship held from Miles's hands became, ipso facto, Miles's man. Never mind that Tung's ship in either of their hands was technically grand theft of the most grandiose . . .

Tung took just slightly longer than Auson to understand the drift of the conversation. He began to swear; Miles did not recognize the language, but it was unmistakably invective. Miles had never seen a man actually foam at the lips before.

"See that this prisoner gets a tranquillizer," Miles ordered kindly as Tung was dragged away. An aggressive commander, Miles thought covetously. Thirty years experience—I wonder if I can do anything with him . . . ?

Miles looked around and added, "See the medtech and get those things taken off your arms, Captain Auson."

"Yes, sir!" Auson substituted a sharp nod for a curtailed attempt at a salute, and marched off, head held high. Thorne followed, to oversee further intelligence gathering from prisoners and the freed Felicians.

An engineering tech in want of supervision descended upon them instantly, to carry off Jesek. She grinned proudly at Miles. "Would you say we've earned our combat bonus today, sir?"

Combat bonus? Miles wondered blankly. He gazed around the station. Thinly spread but energetic activities of consolidation met his eye wherever he turned. "I should think so, Trainee Mynova."

"Sir." She paused shyly. "Some of us were wondering—just what is our pay schedule going to be? Biweekly or monthly?"

Pay schedule. Of course. His charade must continue—how long? He glanced out at the RG 132. Bent. Bent, and full of undelivered cargo, unpaid for. He'd have to keep going somehow, until they at least made contact with Felician forces. "Monthly," he said firmly.

"Oh," she said, sounding faintly disappointed. "I'll pass the word along, sir."

"What if we're still here in a month, my lord?" asked Bothari as she left with Jesek. "It could get ugly—mercenaries expect to be paid."

Miles rubbed his hands through his hair, and quavered with desperate assertiveness, "I'll figure something out!"

"Can we get anything to eat around here?" asked Mayhew plaintively. He looked drained.

Thorne popped back up at Miles's elbow. "About the counterattack, sir—"

Miles spun on his heel. "Where?" he demanded, looking around wildly.

Thorne looked slightly taken aback. "Oh, not yet, sir."

Miles slumped, relieved. "Please don't do that to me, Captain Thorne. Counterattack?"

"I'm thinking, sir, there's bound to be one. On account of the escaped courier, if nothing else. Shouldn't we start planning for it?"

"Oh, absolutely. Planning. Yes. You, ah—have an idea to present, do you?" Miles prodded hopefully.

"Several, sir." Thorne began to detail them, with verve; Miles realized he was absorbing about one sentence in three.

"Very good, Captain," Miles interrupted. "We'll, uh, have a senior officer's meeting after—after inspection, and you can present them to everybody."

Thorne nodded contentedly, and dashed off, saying something about setting up a telecom listening post.

Miles's head spun. The jumbled geometries of the refinery, its ups and downs chosen, apparently, at random, did nothing to decrease his sense of disorientation. And it was all his, every rusty bolt, dubious weld, and stopped-up toilet in it . . .

Elena was observing him anxiously. "What's the matter, Miles? You don't look happy. We won!"

A true Vor, Miles told himself severely, does not bury his face in his liegewoman's breasts and cry—even if he is at a convenient height for it.

Miles's first tour of his new domain was rapid and exhausting. The
Triumph
was about the only encouraging part of it. Bothari lingered to go over the arrangements for keeping the horde of new prisoners secure with the overworked patrol assigned to that detail. Never had Miles seen a man wish more passionately to be twins; he half-expected Bothari to go into mitosis on the spot. The Sergeant grudgingly left Elena to be Miles's substitute bodyguard. Once out of sight, Miles instead put Elena to work as a real executive officer, taking notes. He did not trust even his own quick memory with the mass of new detail.

A combined sickbay had been set up in the refinery's infirmary, as the largest facility. The air was dry and cold and stale, like all recycled air, sweet with scented antiseptics overlaying a faint tang compounded of sweat, excrement, burnt meat, and fear. All medical personnel were drafted from the new prisoners, to treat their own wounded, requiring yet a couple more of Miles's thinly spread troops as guards. They in turn were sucked in by the needs of the moment as assistant corpsmen. Miles watched Tung's efficient surgeon and staff at work, and let this pass, limiting himself to a quiet reminder to the guards of their primary duty. So long as Tung's medicos stayed busy it was probably safe.

Miles was unnerved by the catatonic Colonel Benar, and the two other Felician military officers who lay listlessly, barely responding to their rescue. Such little wounds, he thought, observing the slight chafing at wrists and ankles, and tiny discolorations under their skins marking hypospray injection points. By such little wounds we kill men . . . The murdered pilot officer's ghost, perched on his shoulder like a pet crow, stirred and ruffled itself in silent witness.

Auson's medtech borrowed Tung's surgeon for the delicate placement of plastiskin that was to serve Elli Quinn for a face until she could be sent—how? when?—to some medical facility with proper regenerative biotech.

"You don't have to watch this," Miles murmured to Elena, as he stood discreetly by to observe the procedure.

Elena shook her head. "I want to."

"Why?"

"Why do you?"

"I've never seen it. Anyway, it was my bill she paid. It's my duty, as her commander."

"Well, then, it's mine, too. I worked with her all week."

The medtech unwrapped the temporary dressings. Skin, nose, ears, lips gone. Subcutaneous fat boiled away. Eyes glazed white and burst, scalp burned off—she tried to speak, a clotted mumble. Miles reminded himself that her pain nerves had been blocked. He turned his back abruptly, hand sneaking to his lips, and swallowed hard.

"I guess we don't have to stay. We're not really contributing anything." He glanced up at Elena's profile, which was pale but steady. "How long are you going to watch?" he whispered. And silently, to himself, for God's sake, it might have been you, Elena . . .

"Until they're done," she murmured back. "Until I don't feel her pain anymore when I look. Until I'm hardened—like
a
real soldier—like my father. If I can block it from a friend, certainly I ought to be able to block it from the enemy—"

Miles shook his head in instinctive negation. "Look, can we continue this in the corridor?"

She frowned, but then took in his face, pursed her lips, and followed him without further argument. In the corridor he leaned against the wall, swallowing saliva and breathing deeply.

"Should I fetch a basin?"

"No. I'll be all right in a minute." I hope. . . . The minute passed without his disgracing himself. "Women shouldn't be in combat," he managed finally.

"Why not?" said Elena. "Why is that," she jerked her head toward the infirmary, "any more horrible for a woman than a man?"

"I don't know," Miles groped. "Your father once said that if a woman puts on a uniform she's asking for it, and you should never hesitate to fire—odd streak of egalitarianism, coming from him. But all my instincts are to throw my cloak across her puddle or something, not blow her head off. It throws me off."

"The honor goes with the risk," argued Elena. "Deny the risk and you deny the honor. I always thought you were the one Barrayaran male I knew who'd allow that a woman might have an honor that wasn't parked between her legs."

Miles floundered. "A soldier's honor is to do his patriotic duty, sure—"

"Or hers!"

"Or hers, all right—but all this isn't serving the Emperor! We're here for Tav Calhoun's ten-percent profit margin. Or anyway, we were . . ."

He gathered himself, to continue his tour, then paused. "What you said in there—about hardening yourself—"

She raised her chin. "Yes?"

"My mother was a real soldier, too. And I don't think she ever failed to feel another's pain. Not even her enemy's."

They were both silent for long after that.