Forward Momentum -- Chapter 16 (a)

[bracketyjack]

Chapter Sixteen

On Eta Ceta they kept a low profile for their fortnight, but Ekaterin received her personal tour of the Celestial Garden from haut Pel before a most private and unexpectedly amusing evening with Their Celestial Majesties. Attended only by neuter Ba servitors, whom she found unnerving, the haut at play were something else again,

and the Celestial line in what she supposed she’d have to call teasing, of Miles for so shortly troubling the counsels of the great and of her for marrying him despite Barrayaran law about women, had been cleansed of embarrass­ment though neither of them were quite sure how. Rian’s fond gratitude to Miles surely had something to do with it, but Fletchir Giaja’s true opinion of his outlandish court jester remained an ironised mystery to them both. The Imperial Guards who saw them in and out with rigidly blank expressions and popping eyes did not help.

They also dined at Vanos Kariam’s house, Aunt Helen and Uncle Georg attending by table-edge frame to give Ekaterin reassuring reports of Nikki, and news of Arthur Pym and Denis Jankowski, now friends of Fel Epallo, to pass on. One other dinner was given for them, quietly managed by Ferrant Coram in a tucked-away pavilion in the Celestial Garden where senior ghem-pilgrims who had visited Vorkosigan Surleau formally repaid hospitality. Representatives of ghem-veterans’ organisations who had seen the Memorial broadcast lined up to thank Ekaterin personally and congrat­ulate her on her Order of Virtue, as their fellows had Sergeant Barnev (after whom enquiries were made). Pym and Jankowski were also made welcome and saw the Celestial Garden for themselves, an experience that left both round-eyed and deeply thoughtful for some days, as it did Ekaterin. Admiral Lhosh, Coram blandly told them when they arrived, was too busy to attend and had deputed Admiral Arvin to deal with the sentimental occasion, so Miles had an interesting time getting to know an officer who, as Dag intimated, admired his Da as much for strongly humanitarian command as for political strategies and space tactics.

Ivan had passed them en route to Barrayar on haut Pel’s business, sparing Miles pained remonstrance from that quarter. He did, however, have to endure an evening with Vorreedi, no less sardonic than a decade before about the propensity of Vor lordlings to interfere with diploma­tic and security business. The saturnine ambassador was the most hostile Barrayaran Miles had met since the treaty, not because he disapproved of it but because his disapproval of Miles from ten years before had not lessened one jot, and his amour propre had been badly dented by not being deemed to need to know before his abrupt after­noon summons to the Celestial Garden. Wearily, Miles pointed out that Giaja or Benin could have turned to Vorreedi at any point, had they so wished, and that the haut Paramel Volusor had also been excluded until all was a done deal. He received a snarl in reply, and reflected he had previously had to bypass Vorreedi for much the same reason he’d bypassed him this time, that the man wanted his old spy­master’s rights of interference without seeing the bigger picture. He’d been a superb second to Lord Vorob’yev, but had proven less skilled in the primary role. After a frame-call to his parents Miles also called Gregor to suggest he find out if cousin Fletchir or Benin had any idea of whom they would get on with better, and when possible recall Vorreedi.

Miles’s real business on Marilac was also kept discreet but his official welcome-as Gregor’s emissary rather than Admiral Naismith, hero of Dagoola IV-was a planet-wide blaze of publicity for them both in which Miles was forced to wear the Marilacan Cross of Glory awarded Nai­smith and play his Vorkosigan identity as if it were a fictional incognito as transparent as Count Vorbarra, observed in courtesy but believed by no-one. Even the honour-guard from the General Vorkraft in imperial dress greens did not seem to make any impression. The adulation of Miles astounded Pym and Jankowski, even after Eta Ceta; they knew their lord had had a mysterious galactic career and contact with the powerful, but had not quite appreciated that planetary deliverance was among his accomplish­ments. After the first shock it warmed rather than alarmed Ekaterin, but there was a persistent undercurrent of surprise at Miles’s shape that under the circumstances she didn’t understand.

After a week or so, when media interest ebbed, he took her with him to an isolated country venue where senior ministers and army chiefs had gathered, including the former Sergeant Oliver and Lieutenant Tris, veterans of Fallow Core and Dagoola, whose de facto command of the Resistance Army that with Barrayaran-supplied finance and arms expell­ed the Cetagandans had secured both early retirement with the crossed batons of Field Marshal’s rank. The necessary communi­cation in Gregor’s Voice was brief-the Barra­yaran Imperium remained absolute guarantor of Marilacan sovereign­ty, and the new alliance would soon offer a joint treaty in which Cetaganda would concede the remaining areas of mutual dispute and restore Marilac as a polity to what it had been before their attack fifteen years ago. It was all the Marilacans hoped for and their relief was evident, but Miles and Ekaterin spent a long day encouraging them to show as much gracious­ness to the Cetagandans as they could muster. It was in this that Miles had suggested she could most help, and she found she enjoyed the effects of her crisp comment­ary on the practical advantages of finess­ing Cetgandan sensibilities and appealing to the malleability of both haut and human memory. Miles followed with a privy warning that whatever might seem to be happening with Joint-Fleet command, Admiral Lhosh-hated on Marilac for his early successes against them and responsibility for the PoW regimes on Dagoola and elsewhere-was headed for early retirement. What exactly might come of it all Miles confessed to Ekaterin he wasn’t at all sure. Marilac’s scars were more recent than Barrayar’s, and there were people in the room who’d spent three hopeless years on Dagoola, not his busy month, but he’d made the effort as promised, and they certainly left the Marilacans who counted most having a thoughtful argument about what finessing of haut and ghem they might manage themselves. Miles also took away, which pleased him no end, a great scroll of thanks to the Dendarii Fleet, signed by all Marilacans present, to deliver to Admiral Quinn when he saw her, with a renewal of the open invitation for a fleet state visit.

Ekaterin’s reward for her diplomatic efforts was a day with Tris, Oliver, and a wildly enthusiastic Suegar, learning while Miles’s ears burned much that horrified and entranced her about what exactly Admiral Naismith had done to rescue 10,336 PoWs from Dagoola. She also secured from Suegar two copies of the ‘vid drama the Marilacans made about the event that Miles had thus far managed to keep not only from her but with Allegre’s help unreleased in the Imperium. Seeing it sharpened her understanding, for while it was (as Miles ruefully confirmed) accurate enough on the sequence of events, the actor who played Naismith, if on the short side, was vid-star handsome and athletic, so in watching it did not seem to Ekaterin about Miles unless she reminded herself whom the actor was playing. That, she realised, explained the surprise at Miles-in-the-flesh during their initial recep­tion; Marilacans had not quite cared to acknowledge that their epic rescue had been by a slightly hunched dwarf. Cordelia, she knew, had watched with palpitations some of the original camp surveillance tapes, and she did not think she’d try to access those herself. The second copy of the ‘vid she slipped to Pym, who took it with a dubious look and next day breathed startled thanks in her ear.

The landscapes and flora of Marilac were a delight to Ekaterin, a riot of improbable forms and colours explored over a genuine honeymoon fortnight that made her think with self-mockery of her high excitement at her first-ever trip off Barrayar, to the windless and claustrophobic domes of Komarr. It had been barely three years ago, in another life, she’d been exhausted with packing and Tien’s indifference to her nerves, and everything had been so strange and new, from shuttleport to station and the ship itself. She remembered struggling with safety drills while trying to help Nikki, her trepidation in approaching their steward to ask about getting Nikki his desperately desired meeting with the jump-pilot and visit to the bridge, her relief at the man’s cheerful cooperation. Now she was ImpSec certified as a spacesuit user, possessed custom-built equipment, and could wander as she wished onto the bridge of a battle­cruiser as it skipped away from Marilac down the further side of the long horseshoe-route they would have used to avoid Cetagandan space, from the Zoave Twilight to Tau Ceti and through the western Orion Arm, where they branched off for Terra. That was what happened to you when you hitched your wagon to Miles’s, and it filled her with love for his crazy expansiveness, the sheer force of growth he induced.

The handpicked crew of the General Vorkraft also seemed pleased with their assignment. She could see the attraction of new space and wormhole routes and the efficient training function-at each station or planet Miles was careful to allow as much shoreside leave as possible, and secured meetings between officers and local authorities. But crew and officers alike were also, she slowly realised, genuinely proud to be ferrying her as much as Miles, and regarded the whole trip as not only a treat but a professional compliment from Gregor and Aral, whose command of the ship thirty years before they had all, apparently, researched. In the days of normal-space travel between jump-points she and Miles were favoured with frequent invitations to gunroom and ward­room, as well as the captain’s table, and after quiet enquiries through Pym, to ratings’ and troopers’ messes as well, where they were greeted with marked deference that gradually relaxed to let through an intense curiosity about them as people and the new order they were understood, she realised, jointly to have midwived. Miles’s physical oddity they dealt with by turning him into a mascot of sorts; some seemed more surprised she had married him than at his achievements. Sometimes men were very strange, but so were women, and accepting invitations almost every evening Miles didn’t have to use his seizure stimulator made the travel-time buoyant. Still more congenially, the station hydroponics facilities she was able to visit were a source of constant fascination and efficient variations of technique any gardener would want to note.

Gregor’s prediction that Miles would need plenipotentiary status elsewhere than Marilac was swiftly confirmed. At every stop from the Zoave Twilight onward they found high functionaries awaiting them with urgent invitations to drinks and dinner from whomever was atop local command, and she heard Lord Auditor Vorkosigan give in his Imperial Master’s Voice a variety of cautious assurances and minimal agree­ments-her own diplomatic training. The bottom-line was always simple enough, formalisation of friendly relations with the new Alliance as the largest unitary force in the Nexus and a promise that wider licensing of frame and nanoforge technologies would soon be forthcoming. In return Miles secured promises of full cooperation with any reasonable request and small concessions over this or that; in some lesser stations, with the usual conditions attached, he presented as Gregor’s gift frames provid­ing links to Barrayaran or Komarran frame-hubs, and so access to the growing Nexus-wide frame-net that was exponentially slamming every­one into realtime communication with everyone else. Ekaterin’s Imperial Star and Order of Virtue were discreetly scrutinised and her acquaint­ance subsequently cultivated by men and women of power in ways that educated her in human possibility, and produced from Miles when they were alone hilarious political commentaries and cutting analyses that expanded at ferocious speed her understanding of the starscape through which they travelled.

That leg of the trip culminated after nearly a month of jumping at Terra, connected to the frame-net in the first wave of gifts but until now unvisited since the treaty by any high-ranking Barrayaran or Ceta­gan­dan. Though a rich centre of galactic culture and art, disunified Terra was not militarily or politically important; faced with frames and nanoforges in the hands of the new Alliance, however, most of the planet’s larger polities had senior representatives waiting in London, where Miles and Ekaterin first landed to check in with the Barrayaran Embassy. Tediously diplomatic days followed, enlivened by receptions at Cetagandan and Marilacan Embassies, as well as a ball thrown for them by the Barrayar­an ambassador, a cousin of René Vorbretten. When all that mattered was done Miles took the opportunity to unleash a fractious debate by delivering a collective invitation from Gregor to send with he and Ekaterin when they left a single observer for some major joint-fleet exercises being planned. Then they were free to leave the Terrans arguing and be tourists for three months, while the General Vorkraft embarked on exercises with Cetagandan ships in local space followed by generous planetary leave for crew and officers.

Drifting north in a borrowed governmental airship brought Miles and Ekaterin to snow and the improbable pastime called skiing, at which Jankowski proved better than any of them; drifting far to the south again took them to lands where spring was gaining strength and early flowers poked everywhere from warming earth. For the first time Ekaterin spent some real money, and not only huge numbers of seeds but a formidable variety of young and mature plants all the way up to fruiting and blossoming trees made their way to the General Vorkraft, where hydroponics techs were assigned to their care. Some delightful wooden furniture and enough rugs, kilims, tapestries, chinoiserie, lamps, tiles, crockery, polished fossils, haber­dashery, music, old printed books, pottery, carvings, statuary, and paintings to fill several houses also made their way spaceward. On Barra­yar summer was peaking, but in Terra’s northern hemisphere autumn advanced in another riot of colour, and they watched the Midsummer festivals in Vorbarr Sultana amid a glory of dying vegetation on a portable, multi-tuned frame Miles had to access the General Vorkraft’s comcentre. With reassurances about Nikki and the foetal progress of Aral Alexander and Helen Natalia in their ears, a first desire to go home in their hearts, and the urge to buy exhausted, much to Pym’s and Jankowski’s relief, they made their way to a place called Belem, where Ky Tung and his wife Esmerelda met them with enormous smiles in their 50-metre hoversloop, sailed round the Isla de Marajó, and set off up the Amazon feeding them fresh fish and (as Tung happily boasted) the best moo shu pork they’d ever had.

For all four Barrayarans-and Ekaterin was fascinated by the egalitarian respect with which Tung and his wife assessed her as well as Pym and Jankowski, and by his evident fondness for Miles-the winding upstream journey was an astounding experience. The great river-basin of Amazonia had, they knew, suffered badly in Terra’s self-poisoned collapse that drove the Alpha and Beta colonial expeditions, but sheer size had given it resilience and enough survived that in the centuries since ecorecovery began large areas had been reclaimed for rainforest and wildlife. Sailing among enormous river-liners and automated freight-barges in long convoys they passed Obidos and days later reached Manaus and confluence with the Rio Negro, to stop a few nights before continuing through nearly a month of leisurely days among smaller vessels to Iquitos, and eventually Achual Point. Evening moorings on the upper river produced encounters with members of the Tungs’ family and a chance selection of friends made in their seasonal journeys up and down its many branches and tributaries. Conversations were wonderfully varied, and she had fun collecting recipes from Esmerelda for Ma Kosti to try. There was also an emotional evening when Miles brought out the frame and they watched Gregor’s Birthday celebrations, drinking toasts at Prince Aral’s and Princess Kareen’s decanting from replicators; contacted privately later, Gregor and Laisa beamed in complete distraction and held up squalling infants for inspection. The emperor had used the occasion to announce that all imperial recruitment was open to women, answering a pressing need but fuelling immediate chatter about salic law that set Miles laughing so hard he got hiccoughs. With Tung, though, talk usually circled into reminiscent tidbits of military history that after a while Ekaterin identified as bait Miles was laying out. Pym and Jankowski, as much as she, were attentive listeners and questioners, but to Miles’s frustration Tung wasn’t biting and seemed to anticipate a proffered disturbance to life he would reject with amused thanks.

As the river’s navigable end at Pongo de Manseriche at last neared, more than four thousand kilometres from the sea where they started, Ekaterin was unsurprised when Miles, after his regular check-in with the advancing Alliance plans, put in a call to the Barrayaran Embassy in London, discovered with a grin that the Terran polities were still unable to agree on a single observer, and requested the ambassador let it be known he’d take two-if they were Commodore Ky Tung (ret’d) and his wife, citizens of the People’s Democracy of Greater South America. Then he went back to reminiscing with a relaxed ease that brought a calculating look to Tung’s eyes. The following afternoon calculation turned to bewildered surprise as a series of urgent calls from high-ranking diplomats and politicians, including the Tungs’ own PDGSA President, requested that he and Esmerelda represent them at upcoming military manoeuvres by the Alliance. Finally disconnecting the comset to silence it, both came with deeply suspicious looks to stand glowering at Miles, who had been taught to steer the hoversloop and was showing off to Pym and Jankowski.

“Alright, laddie, what are you up to?”

Miles smiled sweetly at his old mentor. “I can’t say, Ky. But I promise you it won’t take long, and that if you don’t come you’ll regret it.”

“This isn’t some Dendarii Reunion, is it? I like them all, but-”

“No. There will be a reunion of sorts-we’re picking up Elli, Elena and Baz, Arde, and I hope Bel at Beta, among others, but the Dendarii bit is incidental, and I couldn’t use politicians to lean on you like this for a purely private end.”

“Yes you could. But I don’t think you would.” Tung scratched his head. “I don’t miss space, you know, Miles. I’m happy here on the river.”

Miles shrugged. “Alright, two further temptations and I’ll leave it. The invitation isn’t only from me-it’s from my Da as well, who remembers you from the Hegen Hub and would like to see you again.” Tung the military historian considered Admiral Lord Vorkosigan’s Komarr Report the most succinct and best military memoir in existence, and he blinked at this datum. “And I can promise you a show of fleet-strategy you will appreciate.”

Tung’s eyes blurred for a moment as his forehead creased then cleared to wide-eyed understanding. “Ye gods! You and your new friends are going to knock somewhere off. Where?”

“Wait and see. Here or there.”

Tung actually gnashed his teeth and Ekaterin involuntarily loosed one of her gurgles of laughter, bringing an odd look to his eyes and a rueful smile to his face.

“How do you stand him all the time, Ekaterin?” He sat on a locker-bench, pulling Esmerelda down beside him and glaring at Miles. “I haven’t felt like this since he highjacked me and stole my ship back in 2790.” Ekaterin’s ears pricked for she had often wondered when exactly Miles had taken up highjacking things as a hobby and the nightly conversations had avoided the Tau Verde war. “I couldn’t stop him then either. Oh well. Esmerelda love, do you fancy a free space trip to meet some old mercenary friends of mine and see what must be an invasion?”

His wife’s lips twitched. “I can’t say it’s been an ambition of mine, but I know how you feel about Viceroy Vorkosigan, Ky. And if you don’t quite trust Miles, I think I trust Ekaterin and her laugh, though it makes no sense to me. Still.” She frowned. “Will we be expected to do all that absurd my lording and ladying you Barrayarans believe in?”

Miles grinned as he heard acceptance in that will. “Only if you meet an emperor. Or two.”

That drew him straight looks but with his desire secured Miles declined to explain further. Both Tungs were more resigned than excited as they made calls, moored and stored the boat, and watched the arrival of a large governmental aircar. But once they all lifted from the High Andean Shuttleport to the General Vorkraft both were absorbed by the warship’s ebullient atmosphere and found themselves showered with curious invitations to wardrooms and messes. The crew had secured and avidly, repeatedly watched the Marilacan holovid about Dagoola, so Tung’s role as battle-commander under Miles was known and he found himself plied with subtle or less subtle questions and listened to intently even when his answers deviated into earlier military history. Esmerelda meanwhile fell into a moo shu pork competition with one of the cooks who thought his family recipe unbeatable, and won hands down, or rather up, by mass demand for more of her cooking.

* * * * *

Their stop at Beta Colony was brief but busy and for Ekaterin, if not Miles, unexpectedly tense. Gregor had sent Beta a direct invitation to provide an observer for the exercises, wording it more tersely than was his diplomatic wont. There had also been pointed Barra­yaran refusals in negotiations for licensing Chandler’s technologies, so when Miles and Ekaterin were invited to drinks with the President to meet the observ­er, Commander Branson of the Astronomical Survey, the ground was primed. Never less than graciously Miles made it plain over the driest sherry that his Imperial Master was fed up with the continu­ing inability of His Vicereine to visit her ma because Dr Mehta (whom Cordelia assaulted with a fish-tank during her escape from enforced psychiatric treatment thirty-three years before) still had charges on file and on Beta diplomatic immunity did not cover anything involving violence.

“But Dr Mehta is a private citizen now,” wailed the President. “There’s nothing the government can do.”

“Then I regret to inform you, Mr President, there is nothing my Imperial Master can do to expedite your access to new technologies.”

“But it was all so long ago.”

“Exactly, Mr President. My grandmother is approaching her century, and has seen her daughter, off-planet, only three times in thirty-three years. Oh, and I should warn you that my Imperial Master will be filing suit on the Vicereine’s behalf against both your govern­ment and Dr Mehta, in your courts and the Citizens’ Rights Adjudication court of sector I, alleging, let me see, false imprisonment, illegal administration of drugs, failure to provide proper treatment, deliberate communication of falsehoods, conspiracy to persecute, malicious slander and libel, evident revenge, and unreasonable abrogation of constitutional rights to information, communication, free speech, and familial access.”

The President went white. “That’s absurd.”

“Is it, Mr President? Have you read the file? I’ve never seen yours, of course”-a lie, Ekaterin knew, as both Miles and ImpSec apparently hacked at will into Betan databases-“but there must be some interest­ing pages where Dr Mehta explains her unshakeable conviction that my mother was a Barrayaran deep penetration agent. Perhaps you can find there the credibility both commonsense and events deny Dr Mehta; my own belief is that the courts will find a more cogent clue in the angry embarrassment of your esteemed predecessor after his attempt electorally to use my mother’s heroic return from Escobar had, ah, backfired so unfortunately because he chose to ignore her traumata.”

The President went whiter still.

“In any case, Mr President, both my Imperial Master and His Celestial Cousin the Emperor the haut Fletchir Giaja are no longer prepared to accept this treatment of Vicereine Countess Vorkosigan. They cannot understand why the matter remains unresolved when it offers both Their Majesties such patent insult, and will enter no new trade agreement with Beta Colony until a satisfactory answer is found or the court cases resolved.”

“That’s blackmail!”

“No, Mr President, it’s a line drawn by two emperors. You must resolve your priorities in the matter, and we shall abide by the consequences.”

After they departed with an alarmed Commander Branson and regained the privacy of their suite on the General Vorkraft Miles went white himself and let rage show, not at Mehta’s old idiocy but the pretend-helpless Betan politicians who abrogated rights at need or desire as much as every other government-where were Cordelia’s rights as a Betan citizen?-but even in private were pathologically unwilling to concede plain truth.

“Why is Gregor pushing it now?”

“Oh, opportunity, mostly, thanks to Jack Chandler and Fletchir. The Betans are such self-satisfied technocrats that being off this cutting edge is the most effective threat we’ve ever had over them. And stalling new Cetagandan as well as Barrayaran trade will hurt Beta far more badly than either of us.”

“And Fletchir agreed?”

“Immediately, Gregor said. He was aware of most details-they hack the Betans as easily as we do-and likes my Ma, I think, as well as being willing on principle to tweak the Betans’ tail. So fingers crossed.”

Miles had no doubt pragmatics would prevail-if the matter went public mercantile pressure on Mehta and government alike would be astounding and the ammunition that could be deployed on his Ma’s behalf almost unlimited-but their conversation was interrupted by the General Vorkraft’s commander, Captain Monides, informing them that the small mercenary cruiser and Imperial corvette his lordship had said to expect had both signalled arrival in Betan orbit and requested per­mission to send parties aboard. The Dendarii group arrived first, led by Elli Quinn who reacted to Miles and the unexpected presence of Ky Tung with whoops of pleasure. Ekaterin knew Elena and Baz Bothari-Jesek and Arde Mayhew from her wedding, but it was the first time she had met Elli and they shook hands with intent mutual assessment. Miles had meanwhile been distracted by arrivals unknown to her as they emerged from the airlock-a pretty woman a little older than her who must be Rowan Durona, and a stocky, grey-haired figure with an oddly epicene face, the Betan hermaphrodite Bel Thorne. It was accompanied by an ivory-skinned woman with short dark hair in a float-chair who seemed-Ekaterin blinked-to have four arms rather than no legs.

“Nicol? Is that really you?” Miles’s voice was more than pleased and surprised. “How in space did you get here?”

For a moment Ekaterin wondered if this were yet another of Miles’s ex-girlfriends whom he had for some reason omitted to mention, and her mind began to boggle wondering if four-armed Nicol had overlapped with giant befanged Taura, but from a rising babble of explanations she soon gathered Nicol was a quaddie, of whom there was a nation somewhere, had once been rescued by Miles from Jackson’s Whole-aha!-and was now Bel’s partner at somewhere called Graf Station in quaddie-space; she had been invited to come with Bel by Mark when they managed to contact him through the Dendarii. Nicol’s profession of music explained the arrival of strange-shaped cases in her wake, closely followed by the Barrayaran party-Mark oddly clutching a bag and a nervous Kareen, with a very wide-eyed Harra and Lem Csurik followed by Taura and Armsman Roic in full livery. Taura looked cheerful and well, as delighted as Miles to see Nicol and her closer friends, but to Ekaterin’s eyes, and she thought those of Elli Quinn and Arde Mayhew, there was a new deliberation in the huge frame, as if Taura’s density had increased when her metabolism was slowed. Roic was absorbed in the introduction she was making to her old comrades, including Nicol, and Miles was with Mark and Kareen, so Ekaterin went to rescue Harra and Lem, doing their best not to stare at Bel and Nicol.

“How are you both?”

“Well enough, thank you, my Lady.” Lem was clearly conscious of the presence as bemused observers of the General Vorkraft’s captain and officers. “A bit confused is all.”

“Has anyone explained anything to you?”

“Oh yes, my Lady.” Harra was smiling. “Lord Mark explained he had strict instructions from Lord Vorkosigan to bring us by hook or by crook, for the same thing all the Districts had to choose observers for. And Sergeant Taura explained she hopes to become postwoman in the high vales and will be marrying Armsman Roic. We’re looking forward to both those things very much. Oh, and Miss Kareen said Lord Vorkosigan promised it won’t take very long and we’ll be back well before our babe needs to be … released.”

Ekaterin’s congratulations and the exchange of personal news as well as introductions to the various strange people calmed Lem and Harra, and Miles, she saw, had remembered to pass the Marilacan scroll to a surprised Elli Quinn, but all conversation was interrupted by a rising, very loud rrraaoo that seemed to come from Lord Mark’s bag. After a moment Miles smiled thinly at his brother, who was shuffling his feet.

“Mark, I was going to thank you for inviting Nicol, and I do, but you seem to have brought another guest. Would you by some strange chance happen to have ImpSec with you?”

“I swear, Miles, we don’t know how he got on board. He just turned up about an hour after we’d broken Barrayar orbit. On the bridge.”

“That, alas, is all too plausible given his track-record.” Miles turned. “Captain Monides, I’m afraid I shall have to trouble you to accommodate a most persistent and ingenious cat as well as all these good beings. His name is ImpSec and as it happens he has an all-areas pass from General Allegre, so security isn’t a problem unless your cook is preparing fish. But some, ah, equipment for his use would be a boon.”

Turning back, he took the bag from Mark, set it down, and crouched to open the top. A familiar grey-and-tabby head shot out with a pleased mmrrt and looked around with an interested expression before ImpSec hopped out, gave Miles’s hand a vigorous lick, and uttered an enquiring quack. Had fish been mentioned? From the side of the room Pym stared with what Ekaterin thought was mostly admiration undermined by memories of ImpSec’s various nighttime encounters with tangle­fields and wall-alarms at Vorkosigan House. Watching officers and the crew­men detailed to lug bags were failing to conceal grins, though Captain Monides succeeded nicely.

“Certainly, my Lord Auditor. Doubtless the service regulations about pets are in any case sadly outmoded.”

Miles looked him up and down, his hand rubbing ImpSec’s head. “They won’t appear in the new joint-fleet regs, I fancy, Captain. Most Cetagan­dan ships seem to carry cats. Or dogs. Or wolves. And in one case Admiral Arvin mentioned a gene-tailored tiger. In any case ImpSec is not a pet, he’s a pest and an accredited member of the organisation for which he is named. Besides, Gregor likes him.”

Monides let a grin show and Miles straightened, slinging a purring ImpSec round his shoulders. “If that’s everyone and everything  I must also trouble you, Captain, to break orbit and set course for the Escobar jump-point. Before you jump, though, you must contact Barrayar control by frame and obtain some special security codes they have for you.”

“At once, my Lord. Excuse me, then.”

Monides wheeled and was gone, and the last hurrah was finally underway. From the company’s first assembly for drinks and food the journey became quite the oddest Ekaterin had yet experienced, partly in strange pairings of experience and conversation constantly produced, as by the mirror-dances at her graduation, but also through slowly climbing tension and Miles’s adamant refusal to say where they were going after Escobar. No-one seemed to think Ekaterin would know, so she had no difficulty keeping her counsel. The Betan observer, Commander Branson, was drawn into their ranks by shared ignorance and Miles, who made clear his respect for the Survey and the confinement of Barrayar’s irritation to governmental weaseling. The man was plainly fascinated, as well he might be, by Bel’s presence, and by Nicol and Taura, especially after Nicol’s demonstration of her quaddie variety of hammered dulcimer-a musical revelation that left Ekaterin melted with pleasure. Lem and Harra were for the most part quiet, fascinated listeners, seeming content to be so, and her own conversations, after a long, reassuring talk with Taura about her treat­ments and inner state, were largely with Kareen, Rowan Durona, whom Ekaterin liked very much, and Elli Quinn, a more complex personality to assess. Elli was distracted by Tung, clearly as beloved by her as by Miles, and the presence at all jump-points after they left Betan space of Barrayaran patrol-vessels. The last but one jump before Escobar led to a short normal-space traverse of a small binary system, and before they made it Miles arranged everyone in the senior officers’ ward­room, where repeater-screens of the bridge telemetry had been installed.

“The show doesn’t quite start yet, but once we’re through this jump the curtain should begin to rise.”

Miles’s voice was calm but his hands busily stroked ImpSec, recently retrieved for the fourth time from one of the anti-grav shafts whose operation he greatly enjoyed but did not yet entirely understand. A few moments later the jump klaxon sounded and Ekaterin felt the brief disorientation of transit as telemetry whited out. Then screens renewed themselves and she blinked as Tung swore inventively at displays showing scores of warships, large and small, and dozens of troopships strung across the system in loose defensive formation. Among them were a dozen of the largest Vorsmythe and Toscane freighters, and three liners. The further jump-point was guarded by a huge ship and a group of smaller ones, and to one side a small cluster of merchant vessels lay with dimmed lights beside another Toscane freighter.

“Is that the Crown Prince Serg on the jump-point, Miles?” Tung was peering. “It looks like her.”

“No, the Princess-and-Countess Olivia. Same class. There’s five more in the pack, including the Serg.”

“Are there four more princes?” Mark scratched his head.

“The Prince Xav, the Princess Isabella, who was Xav’s wife, and for his other children the Princess Isolde and Prince Georg. Isolde was Ivan’s paternal grandmother. She and Georg died in the Occupation.”

“More to the point, Miles, why are they here and where are they going?” Elli Quinn was as intent on the screens as Tung and Commander Branson. “Exercise be damned. That’s an invasion fleet or I’m still a trainee. And what are those merchants?”

“Folk outbound from Escobar who are being detained until what they have seen doesn’t matter.”

“Then where’s their guard?” Both Tung and Elli were frowning.

“They need none. That freighter and the others like it are packed with generators, and do you see the little drone satellites behind each merchant? Those contain frames, through which a stasis field that could stop a small moon is being relayed.”

Tung swore again, this time with what sounded like delight. “Remote application of stasis? And tractor-beams, in that case. Oh I think you were right, Miles. I am going to enjoy this.” He frowned. “Though not if the target’s Escobar-they don’t des-”

“No, no, not Escobar. We needed to pass through it but didn’t want to spook them with a rendezvous in their space. And we’re doing things to reassure them, as you’ll see in a moment.”

The assurance brought more frowns but of concentration rather than alarm. In Mark’s and Taura’s eyes, as well as Elli Quinn’s, Ekaterin saw growing surmise, but Escobar connected through Jackson’s Whole and Kline Station to a dozen polities as well as Cetagandan space. Turning back to the screens she saw they were already past the merchants and approaching the further jump-point.

“The liners are carrying a fair number of Counts with observers from all districts, a perfectly appalling number of diplomats, and, um, bits of a government-in-waiting. There are also, Commander Branson, observers equivalent to yourself and Commodore Tung from Hegen Hub Alliance nations and others. Oh, and while I doubt you’re still a trainee, Elli, it’s only half an invasion fleet. The other half, similar in all respects, comes courtesy of His Imperial Majesty the Emperor the haut Fletchir Giaja and will be meeting us … there.”

Tung’s and Elli’s voices overlapped. “Another half the same size?”

“Pretty much,” Miles nodded.

“Gods. What needs that kind of strike power?” Tung shook his head as if to clear it or deny a possibility.

“Oh it isn’t that. We have this desire to do it all bloodlessly, you see, and it turns out a lot of energy is needed and a lot of techs. The big boys are along for their power-plants and to discourage interference. With all the VIPs involved no chances are being taken. Ah, now then …”

The Princess-and-Countess Olivia had moved aside to let them close the jump-point and the klaxon sounded. Once more telemetry vanished with the disorientation of jump, reappeared as focus returned, and they were in Escobaran space. Both a Barrayaran and an Escobaran cruiser exchanged security codes with the General Vorkraft and moved aside to let them boost towards a cluster of Barrayaran vessels in high planetary orbit. The smaller ships looked similar in make-up to the Princess-and-Countess Olivia’s support group, with the addition of three General-class battlecruisers; the great central ship was clearly of the Princess Kareen class, but instead of the normal dull metallic colour shone brightly in imperial green with lines of decoration resembling piping and braid at the angles of nacelles and round the projecting curves of weapons-spheres. The vessel’s upper profile was altered by an additional curve Ekaterin knew from Miles allowed greatly enlarged reception and dining rooms, and as they neared the ship, changing the angle, she could see on the extended surface of the curve an enormous, full-length portrait of a politely smiling and exceptionally well-dressed Vor woman.

“What and who is that?” Tung spoke for many, though Taura, Roic, Pym, Jankowski, Mark, and Kareen, as well as Elena, Baz, and Harra, were grinning with surprise, and in Kareen’s case giggling.

“That is His Imperial Majesty’s Battle-yacht the Lady Alys Vorpatril, which should tell you who as well, Ky. She’s my aunt.”

Elli stared at him. “The formidable hostess one?”

“Just so. One could not name anything more appropriate after her. The colours and portrait were actually Simon Illyan’s idea-he being her partner these days. They look good, don’t they?” All of the Dendarii who knew Illyan had been Admiral Naismith’s secret employer were grinning, including Elli, though calculation had not left her eyes.  “Now, Gregor and Laisa are paying a state visit downside today, with my Ma in tow, and will among other things, Ky-you might also note this, Commander Branson-offer a rather advantageous deal on frames and nanoforges by way of further reparations and final apology for that criminal and idiotic attack thirty years ago. It helps close the circle, which is partly what all this is about. But they’ll be back aboard late tonight, and we have a collective invitation for breakfast tomorrow, after which the real fun will start, so we’ll be there a while. And do you know, Nicol, I think you should bring your dulcimer. It’s going to be a grand party.”

* * * * *