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wincing at the blinding brightness of the little lights. "Well, let's see
what's caught us."
Her hands flicked over the panels. She took a glance at her exterior monitors,
and hastily pressed the red button that crashed the lifeboat's computer memory
and recognition codes.
"What the hell have we got out there?" asked the engineer anxiously, noting
the gesture as he made his way to her shoulder.
"Two cruisers and a fast courier," she informed him. "We appear to be slightly
outnumbered."
He snorted unhappily.
A disembodied voice blared from the comm, at too great a volume; she turned it
down quickly.
". . . not acknowledge surrender, we will destroy you."
"This is Lifeboat Shuttle A5A," she responded, modulating her voice carefully.
"Captain Cordelia Naismith, Betan Expeditionary Force, commanding.
We are an unarmed lifeboat."
The comm emitted a surprised "Peh!" and the voice added, "Another damned
woman! You people are slow learners."
There was an unintelligible murmur in the background, and the voice returned
to its original official tone. "You will be taken in tow. At the first sign of
resistance, you will be obliterated. Understood?"
"Acknowledged," Cordelia responded. "We surrender."
Parnell shook his head angrily. She killed the comm and raised an eyebrow.
"I think we should try and make a break," he said.
"No. These guys are professional paranoids. The sanest one I ever met didn't
like being in a room with a closed door-claimed you never knew what was on the
other side. If they say they'll shoot, you'd better believe 'em."
Parnell and the engineer exchanged a look. "Go ahead, "Nell," said the
engineer. "Tell her."
Parnell cleared his throat, and moistened dry lips. "We wanted to let you
know, Captain-that if you think, uh, blowing up the lifeboat might be the best
thing for all concerned, we're with you. Nobody else is looking forward to
being taken prisoner either."
Cordelia blinked at this offer. "That's-very courageous of you, Pilot
Officer, but totally unnecessary. Don't flatter yourself. We were handpicked
for our ignorance, not our knowledge. You all only have guesses about what was
aboard that convoy, and even I don't know any technical details. If we
cooperate on the surface, we've at least some chance of getting through this
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alive."
"It-wasn't spilling intelligence we were thinking about, ma'am. It's their
other habits."
A sticky silence fell. Cordelia sighed, spiraling in a vortex of grieving
doubt. "It's all right," she said at last. "Their reputation is way overblown.
Quite decent fellows, some of them." Especially one, her mind mocked. And even
assuming he's still alive, do you really think you could find him in all this
mess? Or finding him, save him from the gifts you yourself have brought from
hell's hardware store without betraying your duty? Or is this a secret suicide
pact? Do you even know yourself? Know thyself.
Pamell, watching her face, shook his head grimly. "You sure?"
"I've never killed anybody in my life. I'm not going to start with people on
my own side, for pity's sake."
Parnell acknowledged the justice of this with a little quizzical shrug, not
quite concealing an underlying relief.
"Anyway, I've got things to live for. This war can't last forever."
"Somebody back home?" he asked, and as her eyes turned to the probe readouts,
added wisely, "Or out there?"
"Uh, yeah. Out there somewhere."
He shook his head in sympathy. "That's a tough one." He studied her still
profile, and added encouragingly, "But you're right. The big boys will blast
those bastards out of the sky sooner or later."
She gave vent to a small, mechanical, "Ha," and massaged her face with her
fingertips, trying to rub out the tension. She had a sudden waking vision of a
great warship cracked open, spilling its living guts like some monstrous
seedpod. Frozen, sterile seeds, adrift on no wind, bloated from decompression
and turning forever. Could one recognize a face, after that? she wondered. She
turned her chair half away from Parnell, signifying an end to the
conversation.
A Barrayaran fast courier took them in tow within an hour.
It was the familiar smell that hit her first, the metal-and-machine-oil,
ozone-redolent, locker-room smell of a Barrayaran warship. The two tall
soldiers in black who escorted her, each keeping a hand firmly on her elbow,
maneuvered her through one last narrow oval doorway to what she guessed must
be the main prison area of the great flagship. She and her four men were
stripped ruthlessly, searched in minute and paranoid detail, medically
examined, holographed, retinaprinted, identified, and issued shapeless orange
pajamas. Her men were led away separately. In spite of her words to Parnell,
she was sickened by dread of them being peeled, layer by layer, for
information they did not hold. Gently now, reason argued; surely the
Barrayarans would save them for prisoner exchange.
The guards snapped to attention. Turning, she saw a high-ranking
Barrayaran officer enter the processing chamber. The bright yellow of the
collar tabs on his dark green dress uniform marked a rank she had not seen
before, and with a shock she identified it as the color for a vice-admiral.
Knowing what he was, she knew at once who he was, and studied him with grave
interest.
Vorrutyer, that was his name. Co-commander of the Barrayaran armada, along
with Crown Prince Serg Vorbarra. She supposed he was the one who did the real
work; she'd heard he was slated to be the Barrayarans' next Minister of War.
So that was what a rising star looked like.
In a way he was a little like Vorkosigan, a bit taller, about the same weight
but less of it in bone and muscle and more of it in fat. He had dark hair too,
curlier than Vorkosigan's and with less grey in it, was a similar age, and
rather more handsome. His eyes were quite different, a deep velvet brown
fringed by long black lashes, by far the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen
in a man's face. They triggered a small subliminal wailing deep in her mind,
crying, you thought you had faced fear earlier today, but you were mistaken;
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here is the real thing, fear without exhilaration or hope; which was strange,
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