hobbit birthday ficlets
Here are all the ficlets I wrote for the hobbit birthday party. Which was a lot of fun, even if I was slower writing than I'd have liked. You will see that I am bad at writing drabbles and occasionally went wildly over 100 words. Also, I now have two new AUs.
Roic was learning a lot about how m'lord decided where to go from spending time with Taura. He'd planned to ask her to come to one of his favourite haunts, a club in the increasingly fashionable part of the caravanserai. Then, just before opening his mouth, he thought about how people there would react to her, and stopped. He didn't want her feeling uncomfortable.
"What?" Taura asked, noticing anyway.
"I was thinking of somewhere we could go tonight," he said reluctantly. "But it's very ... Barrayaran."
She understood, of course. "I'm on Barrayar," she retorted. "Let's go. It'll be an adventure."
"I'm sure Ivan was never this much work," Alys said, rocking Princess Natasha and watching as her eyelids slowly drooped. "I wouldn't have forgotten this." She reached out a free hand to wipe Prince Leo's nose.
Simon, crawling past with the Crown Prince riding on his back, had little breath to spare for a reply. The Emperor and Empress had a team of six nannies and nurses for their children, not to mention servants, bodyguards and household staff, but Laisa had asked if Alys would mind looking in on the children while they worked the Winterfair Ball, and, still lacking her own grandchildren, Alys was happy to comply.
Natasha's eyes finally closed, and Alys laid her down in the cot and drew the curtain across. The Crown Prince tumbled off Simon's back and began to chase Leo around the nursery. Alys herded them away from where their baby sister was sleeping.
"I'm afraid I don't remember Ivan at this age," Simon said as Alys extended a hand to pull him to his feet, pausing before heading off to referee an incipient quarrel over who got to ride the rocking-horse, "but this much I do recall: Miles was much, much worse."
"He is cute, isn't he," Cordelia said, following Aral's gaze. The ImpSec guard was waiting patiently just out of earshot for his protectees to be ready to leave. He was, Cordelia suspected, exactly Aral's type: tall by Barrayaran standards, slim and intense, not to mention remarkably handsome in his undress uniform. She checked her own reflection yet again: weird Barrayaran gown straight and uncreased, flowers in her hair like they'd grown there, the subtle face paint--makeup, they called it here--to enhance her features on correctly. Just about ready now.
Aral was making a strange choking sound.
"What?" Cordelia said.
"You don't think--I wasn't looking at--I wouldn't--"
Recognising the sounds of a Barrayar-Beta cultural collision, Cordelia turned her attention to her husband. He was pointedly not-looking at the ImpSec guard now, and his lips were pressed tightly together. His eyes, though, were unhappy.
"You like soldiers. He's a cute soldier, right there--I'm sure you noticed him. I don't have any objections. I thought he was cute too."
Aral let out his breath slowly. "Cordelia..."
"You're not going to convince me that on Barrayar nobody appreciates the aesthetic qualities of other people once they're married," she said. "In fact, I know they do--Alys has been telling me stories."
"No," he said. "But it's not a typical subject of conversation." He was recovering his balance now, entering into her scientific survey of Barrayaran sexual attitudes. "We prefer to pretend that we don't notice. And especially not in this context."
"But that's silly. Especially when you like men, and I like men, so we can even compare notes." She sighed. "I know that on Barrayar you all pretend that the only real sex is heterosexual, and anything else has to be whispered and giggled at. But you don't have to hide who you are from me."
Aral looked again at the ImpSec guard, and Cordelia noticed the way his pupils expanded. She grinned. "Well," Aral said, like a man trying out a sentence in a foreign language for the first time, "he is ... cute."
"You know," Cordelia said thoughtfully, "when we get back from this party, I could get out my old Barrayaran combat fatigues again..."
Aral's eyes, flashing back to her, were now very black. "We don't," he whispered, "have to go to the party at all."
The great down-side of politics was that you couldn't just shoot your enemies. You had to win them over, or undermine them, or trick them into cooperating with you. Other than that, it was exactly like every combat op Aral had ever taken part in. There were preparations and a battle plan, which were useful for organising your thoughts but became useless once you got started. Allies, of varied reliability and usefulness. Strategy and tactics, weapons and defences. There were even lives at stake, sometimes. What he'd said to Cordelia was true. Politics on Barrayar really was just like war.
It all happened so fast. One minute, Lady Alys was walking through the Residence gardens, the next, she was flat on her face in the shrubbery with a heavy weight across her back. Her ears were ringing from the explosion and she had smoke and dirt in her nose, but all she could think of was that her hair was going to be a mess, full of twigs and leaves. She tried to move, to smooth it back, but the weight on her back held her down, and a stern male voice said in her ear, "Stay flat!"
She'd barely been aware of the junior ImpSec officer hurrying in the opposite direction, before. Now he held her down, covering her. There was a long silence, and then she felt him move. A nerve disruptor crackled, a sound she heard in her nightmares each night, and she didn't need the ImpSec officer's weight to make her huddle deeper into the shrubbery. But he was the one shooting. Another crackle, then silence. Then she heard the tinny sound of a comlink, words inaudible, buzzing like a fly trapped in a glass. The ImpSec officer spoke. "Yes. Good. Thank God. No, I've got her. She's safe. Yes. All right, hold your positions."
Alys risked raising her head, and the ImpSec officer didn't shove her back this time. There was a crater in the lawn, just outside the window of Gregor's schoolroom, but the building was undamaged.
"What happened?" she managed. Her voice was shaking. She forced it to steady, turning to look at the officer. He wore commander's tabs, but his face was unfamiliar. There was blood running down his head and he was filthy. She looked down at herself and saw she was almost as bad. She began to brush at her dress, then decided it was pointless. "You're bleeding," she said.
"Just a scratch," he said vaguely, wiping ineffectually at the blood, smearing it with earth and dust through his hair and over his forehead. It did nothing for his looks. "A bomb. I believe--" he wiped his bloody hands on his trousers, "--it was another rogue faction within ImpSec." He looked at her, then scanned the area. "Stay here a minute."
She watched, half-sitting up in the shrubs, as he walked around the area, speaking into his comlink again. Disloyalty in ImpSec, again. Since Captain Negri had been killed, ImpSec had only been half-reliable, his successor unable to keep full control of the chaotic and secretive organisation. Most of the men were loyal, most of the time, but Alys knew why Aral and Cordelia insisted on having Vorkosigan armsmen guarding them and Gregor. She watched her officer. Evidently he, at least, was loyal. He bent over a body--was that the man he'd been shooting at?--and examined it, then paced around in all directions before returning to her. "All clear here. I'll escort you inside."
"Is everyone all right? Gregor?"
"Nobody was hurt. Except the culprit." He bent to help her up. "My men are with the household now," he said. "They're all trustworthy, at least." At Alys's perplexed look, he said, "I command the night guard on the Residence. I was just coming in for the handover."
Alys found she was still shaking badly, and the officer gave her his arm to lean on. He was courteous, too, she thought. Pulling herself together, she located a handkerchief, miraculously clean inside a pocket, and wiped at the blood still running from his head. More than a scratch, she thought. "To whom do I owe my rescue?"
He blinked at her a little dizzily, and she repeated, "What's your name?"
"Oh. Commander Illyan, at your service, milady."
"I'm very grateful to you." She mustered a smile, and he smiled back, looking like a puppy about to be taken out for a walk. He couldn't be much older than she was, she thought suddenly. She kept hold of his arm as he led her towards the nearest entrance.
The puppyish look faded as they were met at the door by half a dozen more ImpSec guards, and Commander Illyan gave a series of quick orders and listened to reports. Alys observed thoughtfully. He did know his stuff.
"I'll give you one of my men to escort you to the Regent's suite, milady," Commander Illyan said.
"No," Alys said. "Come yourself. I think Aral will want to talk to you." Aral badly needed competent ImpSec men, and Alys liked the look of this one. Besides, she wasn't sure she wanted to let him out of her sight yet. She smiled again, winningly, and saw his own smile creep back, a bare hint about his eyes and lips. He sent his men about their duties, then turned back to her.
"I was only doing my job, milady," he began in protest.
"And doing it well," she retorted. "Come with me, Commander. The Lord Regent needs men like you."
Helplessly, he obeyed. Alys took his arm again, though she no longer needed the support. She didn't plan to let this one get away.
"Do you think you'll let us go one day?" Duv asked.
"Not in my lifetime. Nor my son's. His son's, perhaps." He gave a wry grin. "Or our proles will get over their fear of galactics enough to make common cause with you and push the Vor and the Emperor out. It's a fundamentally unstable situation, despite all we try to do to balance it."
It surprised Duv that he'd admit this, and as he formed the thought, Vorkosigan continued, "Of course, I couldn't say that to a Barrayaran. But you don't need telling."
"Why don't you try for reform, then?"
"It's too dangerous. But when the push comes--"
"When the push comes you'll fight back, like you did during the Revolt. That would have been a good time to decide to let us go, before everything got so bitter and entrenched."
"Hindsight's not much use to us now," said Vorkosigan a little stiffly. "Besides, you don't know what might have happened, if we'd betrayed weakness like that. The Cetas were pretty active then. They were sending military advisors for the Revolt." He snorted. "God knows you needed them."
That was true enough, though Duv hadn't known that the advisors were Cetagandans, then. "No empire held together by force has survived for long. You have to know that."
Vorkosigan drained his glass. "In the long run, everything falls apart. Empires, nations, people. That's no reason not to try." Besides," he grinned bewitchingly, "there has to be a first time for everything."
"What did you say to her?"
Alys gazed after the retreating back of the Dowager Countess Vorhartung. She hadn't seen Esme move that quickly in years. Cordelia was trying not to laugh, not very convincingly.
"I told her that instead of poking her nose into other people's sex lives she should go have one of her own."
"Cordelia!" Alys's attempt to sound outraged was almost as unsuccessful as Cordelia's attempt to control her laughter. "She's seventy-four."
"My mother's almost ninety and she has a lover," Cordelia retorted. "It is not her business what Gregor and Laisa are or aren't doing."
"Did you tell her that too?"
"Yes."
Since nobody was looking, Alys smiled. Deploying Cordelia on a selection of the more conservative old Vor women had been a brilliant strategy. They were falling over themselves to escape her and finding Laisa's polite and gentle manner a great relief by contrast. Gregor might, Alys had whispered a few times, have chosen a Betan woman instead; it wouldn't be the first time for the highest Vor. Soon there wouldn't be anyone left who'd dare say a word against Laisa.
Cordelia grinned back. "Who do you want me to talk to next?" she asked. "You haven't let me be properly Betan at people for years. I'd forgotten how much fun it is."
Despatching Cordelia in the direction of Madame Vortrifrani, Alys couldn't help but agree.
Duv stared down, determined to finish this, but the words on the papers blurred before his eyes. He'd already organised a funeral for his father once. Doing it again was too much.
A shadow fell across the papers.
"Do you want me to handle this for you, sir?"
He ought to refuse. It was no part of Vorpatril's job to do this. But what came out of his traitorous mouth was, "Would you? I can't seem to--"
"It's fine," Vorpatril said quickly, before he had to admit any weakness. He picked up the sheaf of papers. "All you'll have to do is show up, sir. If that's what--"
"Yes, I'll show up," Duv said, interrupting in his turn.
Vorpatril nodded. He stood by Duv's desk for a moment, then said, "I'd like to go too, if that's okay. We can go for a drink afterwards. Sergeant Ross will be fine without us for a while."
Duv looked up. Vorpatril was looking at him with a perfect stupid-Vor-lout expression on his face, but there was concern in his eyes.
"Thank you, Lieutenant," he said.
He didn't care what Miles thought. Duv had no doubt about it. Ivan Vorpatril wasn't an idiot.
Cordelia wasn't sure what alerted her as she entered her quarters aboard the Survey flagship. Some tiny flicker in the corner of her eye, perhaps, or some subtle change in the air in the room. She turned sharply, and the blow that should have taken her lethally and silently in the neck slid glancingly off her shoulderblade instead. She yelled and grappled with the intruder on the floor of her cabin, getting decidedly the worst of the encounter in the darkness. But her yell alerted the guard, and a second later the lights were on and three stunner-wielding guards were standing around them. She broke free of the assassin's grip and two of the guards jerked the woman to her feet. The third helped Cordelia up.
"Are you hurt, Admiral?"
Taking a deep breath and straightening her uniform collar, Cordelia shook her head. "How the hell did she get in here?" she demanded. "Sound a general alarm."
"Yes, ma'am." The guard spoke into her wrist-comm. Cordelia turned to the intruder.
The woman who'd attacked her was short and stocky and dark, decidedly not beautiful, with an angry twist to her lips that looked habitual and deep-set, intelligent eyes.
"Who are you?" she said.
The woman glared at her and said nothing.
Cordelia's cabin comm chimed. She hurried over to it. "Admiral!" her flag captain said. "We've just picked up a stealthed ship on our sensors. Barrayaran. And data from one of the far-out survey drones in sector H has just reached us, showing the ship arriving. I think there must be another wormhole there, perhaps through to somewhere in Barrayaran space. Komarr, probably." A hint of astrocartographic excitement entered her voice, despite the serious situation. "That makes three, with the long Beta run and the hop to Escobar. This is going to be a real hub one day."
"It will, but I think we'd better make sure we hang on to it first. Make preparations to capture the ship, please, Kyo. I'll be right up." She turned back to the prisoner. "Barrayaran, are you? Why don't you tell me who you are? We'll have the rest of your ship soon enough."
In a voice that sounded like metal grating on stone, the woman said, "My name is Captain Arale Vorkosigan of his Imperial Majesty's Women's Auxiliary Medical Service," and reeled off a serial number. "I have nothing further to say."
"And why is a medtech in my quarters attempting to kill me?" Cordelia asked. "Are you quite sure you're a medtech?"
"I have nothing further to say," Captain Vorkosigan repeated.
"Hm," Cordelia said. "So, the Barrayaran Empire wants this planet, does it? I think you'll find it harder to crack than you imagined. Take her away, please."
Captain Vorkosigan looked back at her as she was escorted out by her guards, and Cordelia was startled by the expression of hopeless envy in her eyes.
***
Finally, two people wrote little fics for me, Open Secret, a lovely bit of Alys/Simon adorableness, and a ficlet about Cordelia and stealth ninja cats.
Crossposted at http://philomytha.dreamwidth.org/62205.html
Roic was learning a lot about how m'lord decided where to go from spending time with Taura. He'd planned to ask her to come to one of his favourite haunts, a club in the increasingly fashionable part of the caravanserai. Then, just before opening his mouth, he thought about how people there would react to her, and stopped. He didn't want her feeling uncomfortable.
"What?" Taura asked, noticing anyway.
"I was thinking of somewhere we could go tonight," he said reluctantly. "But it's very ... Barrayaran."
She understood, of course. "I'm on Barrayar," she retorted. "Let's go. It'll be an adventure."
"I'm sure Ivan was never this much work," Alys said, rocking Princess Natasha and watching as her eyelids slowly drooped. "I wouldn't have forgotten this." She reached out a free hand to wipe Prince Leo's nose.
Simon, crawling past with the Crown Prince riding on his back, had little breath to spare for a reply. The Emperor and Empress had a team of six nannies and nurses for their children, not to mention servants, bodyguards and household staff, but Laisa had asked if Alys would mind looking in on the children while they worked the Winterfair Ball, and, still lacking her own grandchildren, Alys was happy to comply.
Natasha's eyes finally closed, and Alys laid her down in the cot and drew the curtain across. The Crown Prince tumbled off Simon's back and began to chase Leo around the nursery. Alys herded them away from where their baby sister was sleeping.
"I'm afraid I don't remember Ivan at this age," Simon said as Alys extended a hand to pull him to his feet, pausing before heading off to referee an incipient quarrel over who got to ride the rocking-horse, "but this much I do recall: Miles was much, much worse."
"He is cute, isn't he," Cordelia said, following Aral's gaze. The ImpSec guard was waiting patiently just out of earshot for his protectees to be ready to leave. He was, Cordelia suspected, exactly Aral's type: tall by Barrayaran standards, slim and intense, not to mention remarkably handsome in his undress uniform. She checked her own reflection yet again: weird Barrayaran gown straight and uncreased, flowers in her hair like they'd grown there, the subtle face paint--makeup, they called it here--to enhance her features on correctly. Just about ready now.
Aral was making a strange choking sound.
"What?" Cordelia said.
"You don't think--I wasn't looking at--I wouldn't--"
Recognising the sounds of a Barrayar-Beta cultural collision, Cordelia turned her attention to her husband. He was pointedly not-looking at the ImpSec guard now, and his lips were pressed tightly together. His eyes, though, were unhappy.
"You like soldiers. He's a cute soldier, right there--I'm sure you noticed him. I don't have any objections. I thought he was cute too."
Aral let out his breath slowly. "Cordelia..."
"You're not going to convince me that on Barrayar nobody appreciates the aesthetic qualities of other people once they're married," she said. "In fact, I know they do--Alys has been telling me stories."
"No," he said. "But it's not a typical subject of conversation." He was recovering his balance now, entering into her scientific survey of Barrayaran sexual attitudes. "We prefer to pretend that we don't notice. And especially not in this context."
"But that's silly. Especially when you like men, and I like men, so we can even compare notes." She sighed. "I know that on Barrayar you all pretend that the only real sex is heterosexual, and anything else has to be whispered and giggled at. But you don't have to hide who you are from me."
Aral looked again at the ImpSec guard, and Cordelia noticed the way his pupils expanded. She grinned. "Well," Aral said, like a man trying out a sentence in a foreign language for the first time, "he is ... cute."
"You know," Cordelia said thoughtfully, "when we get back from this party, I could get out my old Barrayaran combat fatigues again..."
Aral's eyes, flashing back to her, were now very black. "We don't," he whispered, "have to go to the party at all."
The great down-side of politics was that you couldn't just shoot your enemies. You had to win them over, or undermine them, or trick them into cooperating with you. Other than that, it was exactly like every combat op Aral had ever taken part in. There were preparations and a battle plan, which were useful for organising your thoughts but became useless once you got started. Allies, of varied reliability and usefulness. Strategy and tactics, weapons and defences. There were even lives at stake, sometimes. What he'd said to Cordelia was true. Politics on Barrayar really was just like war.
It all happened so fast. One minute, Lady Alys was walking through the Residence gardens, the next, she was flat on her face in the shrubbery with a heavy weight across her back. Her ears were ringing from the explosion and she had smoke and dirt in her nose, but all she could think of was that her hair was going to be a mess, full of twigs and leaves. She tried to move, to smooth it back, but the weight on her back held her down, and a stern male voice said in her ear, "Stay flat!"
She'd barely been aware of the junior ImpSec officer hurrying in the opposite direction, before. Now he held her down, covering her. There was a long silence, and then she felt him move. A nerve disruptor crackled, a sound she heard in her nightmares each night, and she didn't need the ImpSec officer's weight to make her huddle deeper into the shrubbery. But he was the one shooting. Another crackle, then silence. Then she heard the tinny sound of a comlink, words inaudible, buzzing like a fly trapped in a glass. The ImpSec officer spoke. "Yes. Good. Thank God. No, I've got her. She's safe. Yes. All right, hold your positions."
Alys risked raising her head, and the ImpSec officer didn't shove her back this time. There was a crater in the lawn, just outside the window of Gregor's schoolroom, but the building was undamaged.
"What happened?" she managed. Her voice was shaking. She forced it to steady, turning to look at the officer. He wore commander's tabs, but his face was unfamiliar. There was blood running down his head and he was filthy. She looked down at herself and saw she was almost as bad. She began to brush at her dress, then decided it was pointless. "You're bleeding," she said.
"Just a scratch," he said vaguely, wiping ineffectually at the blood, smearing it with earth and dust through his hair and over his forehead. It did nothing for his looks. "A bomb. I believe--" he wiped his bloody hands on his trousers, "--it was another rogue faction within ImpSec." He looked at her, then scanned the area. "Stay here a minute."
She watched, half-sitting up in the shrubs, as he walked around the area, speaking into his comlink again. Disloyalty in ImpSec, again. Since Captain Negri had been killed, ImpSec had only been half-reliable, his successor unable to keep full control of the chaotic and secretive organisation. Most of the men were loyal, most of the time, but Alys knew why Aral and Cordelia insisted on having Vorkosigan armsmen guarding them and Gregor. She watched her officer. Evidently he, at least, was loyal. He bent over a body--was that the man he'd been shooting at?--and examined it, then paced around in all directions before returning to her. "All clear here. I'll escort you inside."
"Is everyone all right? Gregor?"
"Nobody was hurt. Except the culprit." He bent to help her up. "My men are with the household now," he said. "They're all trustworthy, at least." At Alys's perplexed look, he said, "I command the night guard on the Residence. I was just coming in for the handover."
Alys found she was still shaking badly, and the officer gave her his arm to lean on. He was courteous, too, she thought. Pulling herself together, she located a handkerchief, miraculously clean inside a pocket, and wiped at the blood still running from his head. More than a scratch, she thought. "To whom do I owe my rescue?"
He blinked at her a little dizzily, and she repeated, "What's your name?"
"Oh. Commander Illyan, at your service, milady."
"I'm very grateful to you." She mustered a smile, and he smiled back, looking like a puppy about to be taken out for a walk. He couldn't be much older than she was, she thought suddenly. She kept hold of his arm as he led her towards the nearest entrance.
The puppyish look faded as they were met at the door by half a dozen more ImpSec guards, and Commander Illyan gave a series of quick orders and listened to reports. Alys observed thoughtfully. He did know his stuff.
"I'll give you one of my men to escort you to the Regent's suite, milady," Commander Illyan said.
"No," Alys said. "Come yourself. I think Aral will want to talk to you." Aral badly needed competent ImpSec men, and Alys liked the look of this one. Besides, she wasn't sure she wanted to let him out of her sight yet. She smiled again, winningly, and saw his own smile creep back, a bare hint about his eyes and lips. He sent his men about their duties, then turned back to her.
"I was only doing my job, milady," he began in protest.
"And doing it well," she retorted. "Come with me, Commander. The Lord Regent needs men like you."
Helplessly, he obeyed. Alys took his arm again, though she no longer needed the support. She didn't plan to let this one get away.
"Do you think you'll let us go one day?" Duv asked.
"Not in my lifetime. Nor my son's. His son's, perhaps." He gave a wry grin. "Or our proles will get over their fear of galactics enough to make common cause with you and push the Vor and the Emperor out. It's a fundamentally unstable situation, despite all we try to do to balance it."
It surprised Duv that he'd admit this, and as he formed the thought, Vorkosigan continued, "Of course, I couldn't say that to a Barrayaran. But you don't need telling."
"Why don't you try for reform, then?"
"It's too dangerous. But when the push comes--"
"When the push comes you'll fight back, like you did during the Revolt. That would have been a good time to decide to let us go, before everything got so bitter and entrenched."
"Hindsight's not much use to us now," said Vorkosigan a little stiffly. "Besides, you don't know what might have happened, if we'd betrayed weakness like that. The Cetas were pretty active then. They were sending military advisors for the Revolt." He snorted. "God knows you needed them."
That was true enough, though Duv hadn't known that the advisors were Cetagandans, then. "No empire held together by force has survived for long. You have to know that."
Vorkosigan drained his glass. "In the long run, everything falls apart. Empires, nations, people. That's no reason not to try." Besides," he grinned bewitchingly, "there has to be a first time for everything."
"What did you say to her?"
Alys gazed after the retreating back of the Dowager Countess Vorhartung. She hadn't seen Esme move that quickly in years. Cordelia was trying not to laugh, not very convincingly.
"I told her that instead of poking her nose into other people's sex lives she should go have one of her own."
"Cordelia!" Alys's attempt to sound outraged was almost as unsuccessful as Cordelia's attempt to control her laughter. "She's seventy-four."
"My mother's almost ninety and she has a lover," Cordelia retorted. "It is not her business what Gregor and Laisa are or aren't doing."
"Did you tell her that too?"
"Yes."
Since nobody was looking, Alys smiled. Deploying Cordelia on a selection of the more conservative old Vor women had been a brilliant strategy. They were falling over themselves to escape her and finding Laisa's polite and gentle manner a great relief by contrast. Gregor might, Alys had whispered a few times, have chosen a Betan woman instead; it wouldn't be the first time for the highest Vor. Soon there wouldn't be anyone left who'd dare say a word against Laisa.
Cordelia grinned back. "Who do you want me to talk to next?" she asked. "You haven't let me be properly Betan at people for years. I'd forgotten how much fun it is."
Despatching Cordelia in the direction of Madame Vortrifrani, Alys couldn't help but agree.
Duv stared down, determined to finish this, but the words on the papers blurred before his eyes. He'd already organised a funeral for his father once. Doing it again was too much.
A shadow fell across the papers.
"Do you want me to handle this for you, sir?"
He ought to refuse. It was no part of Vorpatril's job to do this. But what came out of his traitorous mouth was, "Would you? I can't seem to--"
"It's fine," Vorpatril said quickly, before he had to admit any weakness. He picked up the sheaf of papers. "All you'll have to do is show up, sir. If that's what--"
"Yes, I'll show up," Duv said, interrupting in his turn.
Vorpatril nodded. He stood by Duv's desk for a moment, then said, "I'd like to go too, if that's okay. We can go for a drink afterwards. Sergeant Ross will be fine without us for a while."
Duv looked up. Vorpatril was looking at him with a perfect stupid-Vor-lout expression on his face, but there was concern in his eyes.
"Thank you, Lieutenant," he said.
He didn't care what Miles thought. Duv had no doubt about it. Ivan Vorpatril wasn't an idiot.
Cordelia wasn't sure what alerted her as she entered her quarters aboard the Survey flagship. Some tiny flicker in the corner of her eye, perhaps, or some subtle change in the air in the room. She turned sharply, and the blow that should have taken her lethally and silently in the neck slid glancingly off her shoulderblade instead. She yelled and grappled with the intruder on the floor of her cabin, getting decidedly the worst of the encounter in the darkness. But her yell alerted the guard, and a second later the lights were on and three stunner-wielding guards were standing around them. She broke free of the assassin's grip and two of the guards jerked the woman to her feet. The third helped Cordelia up.
"Are you hurt, Admiral?"
Taking a deep breath and straightening her uniform collar, Cordelia shook her head. "How the hell did she get in here?" she demanded. "Sound a general alarm."
"Yes, ma'am." The guard spoke into her wrist-comm. Cordelia turned to the intruder.
The woman who'd attacked her was short and stocky and dark, decidedly not beautiful, with an angry twist to her lips that looked habitual and deep-set, intelligent eyes.
"Who are you?" she said.
The woman glared at her and said nothing.
Cordelia's cabin comm chimed. She hurried over to it. "Admiral!" her flag captain said. "We've just picked up a stealthed ship on our sensors. Barrayaran. And data from one of the far-out survey drones in sector H has just reached us, showing the ship arriving. I think there must be another wormhole there, perhaps through to somewhere in Barrayaran space. Komarr, probably." A hint of astrocartographic excitement entered her voice, despite the serious situation. "That makes three, with the long Beta run and the hop to Escobar. This is going to be a real hub one day."
"It will, but I think we'd better make sure we hang on to it first. Make preparations to capture the ship, please, Kyo. I'll be right up." She turned back to the prisoner. "Barrayaran, are you? Why don't you tell me who you are? We'll have the rest of your ship soon enough."
In a voice that sounded like metal grating on stone, the woman said, "My name is Captain Arale Vorkosigan of his Imperial Majesty's Women's Auxiliary Medical Service," and reeled off a serial number. "I have nothing further to say."
"And why is a medtech in my quarters attempting to kill me?" Cordelia asked. "Are you quite sure you're a medtech?"
"I have nothing further to say," Captain Vorkosigan repeated.
"Hm," Cordelia said. "So, the Barrayaran Empire wants this planet, does it? I think you'll find it harder to crack than you imagined. Take her away, please."
Captain Vorkosigan looked back at her as she was escorted out by her guards, and Cordelia was startled by the expression of hopeless envy in her eyes.
***
Finally, two people wrote little fics for me, Open Secret, a lovely bit of Alys/Simon adorableness, and a ficlet about Cordelia and stealth ninja cats.
Crossposted at http://philomytha.dreamwidth.org/62205.html