Lois McMaster Bujold - 09 Brothers in arms
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2024-12-02
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file:///F|/rah/Lois%20McMaster%20Bujold/Lois%20McMaster%20Bujold%20--%2009%20Brothers%20In%20Arms.txt
Chapter One
His combat drop shuttle crouched still and silent in the repairs docking bay—malevolent, to
Miles’s jaundiced eye. Its
metal and fibreplas surface was scarred, pitted and burned. It had seemed such a proud, gleaming,
efficient vessel when it was
new. Perhaps it had undergone psychotic personality change from its traumas. It had been new such
a short few months ago. .
. .
Miles rubbed his face wearily, and blew out his breath. If there was any incipient psychosis
floating around here, it wasn’t
contained in the machinery. In the eye of the beholder indeed. He took his booted foot off the
bench he’d been draped over
and straightened up, at least to the degree his crooked spine permitted. Commander Quinn, alert to
his every move, fell in
behind him.
"There," Miles limped down the length of the fuselage and pointed to the shuttle’s portside lock,
"is the design defect I’m
chiefly concerned about."
He motioned the sales engineer from Kaymer Orbital Shipyards closer. "The ramp from this lock
extends and retracts
automatically, with a manual override—fine so far. But its recessed slot is inside the hatch,
which means that if for any reason
the ramp gets hung up, the door can’t be sealed. The consequences of which I trust you can
imagine." Miles didn’t have to
imagine them; they had burned in his memory for the last three months. Instant replay without an
off switch.
"Did you find this out the hard way at Dagoola IV, Admiral Naismith?" the engineer inquired in a
tone of genuine interest.
"Yeah. We lost . . . personnel. I was damn near one of them."
"I see," said the engineer respectfully. But his brows quirked.
How dare you be amused. . . . Fortunately for his health, the engineer did not smile. A thin man
of slightly above average
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height, he reached up the side of the shuttle to run his hands along the slot in question, pull
himself up chin-up fashion, peer
about and mutter notes into his recorder. Miles resisted an urge to jump up and down like a frog
and try to see what he was
looking at. Undignified. With his own eye-level even with the engineer’s chest, Miles would need
about a one-meter stepladder
even to reach the ramp slot on tiptoe. And he was too damn tired for calisthenics just now, nor
was he about to ask Elli Quinn
to give him a boost. He jerked his chin up in the old involuntary nervous tic, and waited in a
posture of parade rest appropriate
to his uniform, his hands clasped behind his back.
The engineer dropped back to the docking bay deck with a thump. "Yes, Admiral, I think Kaymer can
take care of this for
you all right. How many of these drop shuttles did you say you had?"
"Twelve," Fourteen minus two equalled twelve. Except in Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet mathematics,
where fourteen
minus two shuttles equalled two hundred and seven dead. Stop that, Miles told the calculating
jeerer in the back of his head
firmly. It does no one any good now.
"Twelve." The engineer made a note. "What else?" He eyed the battered shuttle.
"My own engineering department will be handling the minor repairs, now that it looks like well
actually be holding still in
one place for a while. I wanted to see to this ramp problem personally, but my second in command,
Commodore Jesek, is chief
engineer for my fleet, and he wants to talk to your Jump tech people about re-calibrating some of
our Necklin rods. I have a
Jump pilot with a head wound, but Jumpset implant micro-neurosurgery is not one of Kaymer’s
specialties, I understand. Nor
weapons systems?"
"No, indeed," the engineer agreed hastily. He touched a burn on the shuttle’s scarred surface,
perhaps fascinated by the
violence it silently witnessed, for he added, "Kaymer Orbital mainly services merchant vessels. A
mercenary fleet is something
a bit unusual in this part of the wormhole nexus. Why did you come to us?"
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"You were the lowest bidder."
"Oh—not Kaymer Corporation. Earth. I was wondering why you came to Earth? We’re rather off the
main trade routes,
except for the tourists and historians. Er . . . peaceful."
He wonders if we have a contract here, Miles realized. Here, on a planet of nine billion souls,
whose combined military
forces would make pocket change of the Dendarii’s five thousand—right. He thinks I’m out to make
trouble on old mother
Earth? Or that I’d break security and tell him even if I was. . . . "Peaceful, precisely," Miles
said smoothly. "The Dendarii are in
need of rest and refitting. A peaceful planet off the main nexus channels is just what the doctor
ordered." He cringed inwardly,
thinking of the doctor’s bill pending.
It hadn’t been Dagoola. The rescue operation had been a tactical triumph, a military miracle
almost. His own staff had
assured him of this over and over, so perhaps he could begin to believe it true.
The break-out on Dagoola IV had been the third largest prisoner-of-war escape in history,
Commodore Tung said.
Military history being Tung’s obsessive hobby, he ought to know. The Dendarii had snatched over
ten thousand captured
soldiers, an entire POW camp, from under the nose of the Cetagandan Empire, and made them into the
nucleus of a new
guerrilla army on a planet the Cetagandans had formerly counted on as an easy conquest. The costs
had been so small,
compared to the spectacular results—except for the individuals who’d paid for the triumph with
their lives, for whom the price
was something infinite, divided by zero.
It had been Dagoola’s aftermath that had cost the Dendarii too much, the infuriated Cetagandans’
vengeful pursuit. They
had followed with ships till the Dendarii had slipped through political jurisdictions that
Cetagandan military vessels could not
traverse; hunted on with secret assassination and sabotage teams thereafter. Miles trusted they
had outrun the assassination
teams at last.
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"Did you take all this fire at Dagoola IV?" the engineer went on, still intrigued by the shuttle.
"Dagoola was a covert operation," Miles said stiffly. "We don’t discuss it."
"It made a big splash in the news a few months back," the Earthman assured him.
My head hurts. . . . Miles pressed his palm to his forehead, crossed his arms and rested his chin
in his hand, twitching a
smile at the engineer. "Wonderful," he muttered. Commander Quinn winced.
"Is it true the Cetagandans have put a price on your life?" the engineer asked cheerfully.
Miles sighed. "Yes."
"Oh," said the engineer. "Ah. I’d thought that was just a story." He moved away just slightly, as
if embarrassed, or as if
the air of morbid violence clinging to the mercenary were a contagion that could somehow rub off
on him, if he got too close. He
just might be right. He cleared his throat. "Now, about the payment schedule for the design
modifications—what had you in
mind?"
"Cash on delivery," said Miles promptly, "acceptance to follow my engineering staff’s inspection
and approval of the
completed work. Those were the terms of your bid, I believe."
"Ah—yes. Hm." The Earthman tore his attention away from the machinery itself; Miles felt he could
see him switching
from technical to business mode. "Those are the terms we normally offer our established corporate
customers."
"The Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet is an established corporation. Registered out of Jackson’s
Whole."
"Mm, yes, but—how shall I put this—the most exotic risk our normal customers usually run is
bankruptcy, for which we
have assorted legal protections. Your mercenary fleet is, um . . ."
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He’s wondering how to collect payment from a corpse, Miles thought.
"—a lot riskier," the engineer finished candidly. He shrugged an apology.
An honest man, at least . . .
"We shall not raise our recorded bid. But I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask for payment up
front."
As long as we’re down to trading insults . . . "But that gives us no protection against shoddy
workmanship," said Miles.
"You can sue," remarked the engineer, "just like anybody else."
"I can blow your—" Miles’s fingers drummed against his trouser seam where no holster was tied.
Earth, old Earth, old
civilized Earth. Commander Quinn, at his shoulder, touched his elbow in a fleeting gesture of
restraint. He shot her a brief
reassuring smile—no, he was not about to let himself get carried away by the—exotic—possibilities
of Admiral Miles Naismith,
Commanding, Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet. He was merely tired, his smile said. A slight widening
of her brilliant brown
eyes replied, Bullshit, sir. But that was another argument, which they would not continue here,
out loud, in public.
"You can look," said the engineer neutrally, "for a better offer if you wish."
"We have looked," said Miles shortly. As you well know . . . "Right. Um . . . what about . . .
half up front and half on
delivery?"
The Earthman frowned, shook his head. "Kaymer does not pad its estimates, Admiral Naismith. And
our cost overruns
are among the lowest in the business. That’s a point of pride."
The term cost overrun made Miles’s teeth hurt, in light of Dagoola. How much did these people
really know about
Dagoola, anyway?
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时间：2024-12-02
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