isthisart | dissonance

"Are you kidding me, sir?" says Miles. "Never send interim reports. Only final ones. Interim reports tend to elicit orders, which you much then either obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading which you could be using to solve the problem."

"An interesting command philosophy," says Galeni dryly. "I must bear it in mind. Do you share it, Commander Quinn?"

"Oh, yes," chirps Quinn.

"The Dendarii Mercenaries must be a fascinating outfit to work for," murmurs Galeni.

"I certainly think so."

Regardless, they must still return to the embassy - Miles to change back out of his Naismith gear, Galeni to commence an official investigation into the Earth-Tau Ceti military courier, now that Galeni himself is pretty thoroughly ruled out as a suspect in the case of the missing eighteen million marks. The fact that the courier just happened to show up with orders for Lieutenant Vorkosigan to return to Barrayar right when that was exactly what Mark needed to be doing is also a clue. Miles, when prompted, recalls blurrily from his fast-penta interrogation that Galen might have mentioned something about the courier being compromised.

And then... well, then there is the matter of what to do with Galen and Mark.

As Miles sees it, there are three possibilities if Ser Galen is caught. One, turn him over to the local authorities for crimes committed on Earth, plus or minus Mark. Miles is unenthusiastic about this one; it seems too likely to end in the dissolution of Naismith's cover, which would be a loss for both Barrayar and Miles.

Two, secretly kidnap Galen (again plus or minus Mark) and ship him back to Barrayar in violation of Earth's non-extradition status to be tried there for whatever charges apply. Mark would probably come through that just fine, assuming he survived the trip; Galen would almost inevitably be executed, which Miles judges would screw Duv Galeni's emotional stability straight to hell.

And three - skip the trial and go straight to secret assassination. Likely to be a favourite with the higher-ups, if anyone is so foolish as to send an interim report and thereby allow them a vote. Miles, for Mark's sake, is against it; for Galeni's sake, as per point two, he is doubly so. Arranging his father's capture for trial would be bad enough, patricide by proxy given the near-certainty of the outcome; how much worse to actually order him killed?

But the silent fourth option of just letting them go has minimal, indeed negative, appeal. Ser Galen hardly seems the type to give up at this point, and Miles has no desire to go through his life being medically scanned for old bone breaks once a week just to make sure he still isn't his clone-brother.

Alas, time travel is not a viable answer - to go back and arrange for Ser Galen's original supposed death to have been an actual one. That would solve all their problems quite nicely, and Mark, never having been born, would have debatable grounds for complaint.

Lacking the means to apply such an elegant fix, Miles instead convinces Galeni to focus all Barrayaran internal resources on the Barrayaran internal problem of the courier, and hire the Dendarii to locate, track, and monitor Ser Galen. Not pick him up, just watch him. This at least ensures that while they are figuring out what they want to do with Mark and Galen, Galen will not have a chance to prematurely remove the choice from their hands by escaping.

He delivers this new gig to Elli with a reasonably full explanation, observes that it is night-time by this point, and goes the hell to bed.

Ivan, having not been held in stressful captivity for several days, is up later than Miles is, and therefore is the one to notify Miles the following morning - for values of "morning" that include "shortly after midnight" that -

"Wake up, coz, Elena's here."

Edited 2014-09-07 22:35 (UTC)

"Blrfl?" says Miles.

"Elena just blew in from Tau Ceti. I didn't even know you'd sent her. Get up, get dressed."

"Hell," says Miles. He crawls out of bed. "Yes. Clothes. Clothes... did she say anything?"

"I didn't talk to her much. She brought Commodore Destang with her, though."

"What?"

Miles tries to get out of bed faster, and ends up getting tangled in his blanket and falling on the floor, luckily not hard enough to break anything.

"I don't think he'll be impressed by the beard," Ivan adds, "more's the pity." He helps Miles up.

"Fuck it, it's not like Mark couldn't fake the face fuzz if he tried, and it's ugly as sin."

He bolts into the shortest, coldest shower he has ever taken, depilates, and throws on a set of clean undress greens. Then he demands coffee. His first glance into a mirror tells him that he has no hope of cleaning himself up to any decent standard; his face looks, well, like he has spent the last four days sleeping badly and occasionally getting hit.

Ivan supplies the coffee, at least.

It's certainly better than Ivan not supplying coffee and Miles having to seek it out himself, or worse, go without.

Right. First order of business: find Commodore Destang and find out what he's doing. If necessary, prevent him from shooting Galeni.

It does not prove necessary to prevent him from shooting Galeni, at least not immediately. Miles finds Destang in Galeni's office, sitting at Galeni's comconsole, with Galeni standing nearby looking haunted. Elena is there too. Miles makes anxious inquiries, and learns that while the courier has not yet been arrested, evidence indicates he's been on the Komarrans' leash for at least three years. Also, Illyan has apparently been asking after him with increasing frequency. Bugger.

Miles applies himself fully to the task of talking up Galeni, making sure to mention that he refused to give in to the Komarrans even at the cost of his own life, making sure not to mention that at the time it sure looked like it was also going to cost Miles and Linya's. Galeni doesn't deserve to go down for that.

Then he asks after his money. Destang gets a bit sardonic about the number of times Miles's missive brought up said money, but he produces a credit chit, so Miles can forgive him.

His attitude towards the cleanup operation is... less forgivable.

All right, fine, he wants to nail Ser Galen to the floor with a large and permanent spike. Miles can understand this impulse, especially from someone who served during the Komarr Revolt and saw the nastiest parts firsthand. At least Galeni won't have to personally be involved in the assassination-or-illegal-extradition of his own father. But Mark? What the hell has Mark done to anybody, besides impersonate Miles a little, for which Miles is definitely willing to forgive him, and stun Linya, for which she seems inclined likewise?

Miles does not actually offer this argument. It seems likely to fail. He takes a slightly different tack.

"On what grounds would you kidnap my," don't say brother, he won't be receptive to brother, "clone, sir? He's never committed a crime on Barrayar. He's never even been to Barrayar."

Ivan does not actually say "shut up, Miles, you don't argue with a commodore", but he stares it pretty clearly.

Hell, Miles argues with commodores all the damn time. Of course, he's usually an admiral when he does it.

"The fate of my clone... concerns me closely," he goes on tentatively.

"I can imagine," says Destang. "I hope we can eliminate the danger of further confusion between you soon."

That doesn't sound good. That sounds... assassinatory.

"There's no serious danger of confusion, sir," he says. "A simple medical scan will show his bones healthy and unbroken, mine fragile and riddled with old damage. What, then, is our interest? On what charge do we seek him?"

"Well, treason, of course. Conspiracy against the Imperium."

All right, fine, Mark did technically conspire against the Imperium a little bit. Miles zeroes in on the more arguable thing. "Treason? Only Imperial subjects can commit treason. And my clone was manufactured on Jackson's Whole, which rules out conquest and place of birth - to stick him with a charge of treason, you'd have to allow that he's an Imperial subject by blood. Making him thereby also Vor, and deserving of the right to a trial by the Council of Counts in full session."

Destang looks mildly startled. "Would he think to attempt such a defense?"

"It seems obvious enough to me." And therefore he's fairly sure Mark would think of it. Call the boy what you like, 'thorough' had better make the list.

"Thank you, Lieutenant," says Destang. He is making a very assassinatory face. Crap, crap, crap. Now Miles has to ask.

"Do... you see assassination as an option, sir?"

"An increasingly compelling one."

Crap. Miles takes a breath. "There could be a legal problem here, sir. Either he's not an Imperial subject, and we have no claim on him in the first place, or he is, and we owe him the full protection of Imperial law. In either case, his murder would be a criminal order. Sir."

"I had not planned to give you the order," says Destang.

That is not the direction Miles was going with this, not at all. But he doesn't see it ending well if he keeps pushing in the direction he intended. Maybe he could get Destang to back down; maybe he could get himself in deep trouble to no good result for Mark. Maybe he could push it all the way to a court-martial, likely to be messy at minimum and downright explosive at worst. And Destang would have every reason to confine Miles to quarters if he pushed any harder, which would deprive Miles of the opportunity to do... anything else.

Fuck.

"Thank you, sir," he says as mildly as possible.

"See my aide for your credit chit on your way out," says Destang, as clear a dismissal as Miles has ever heard. But what of the Dendarii? How can he possibly have failed to order Miles to take the Dendarii off the case, given that he brought his own team all the way from Tau Ceti to take care of things - unless he never learned they were on it?

Miles's heart leaps.

"Yes, Lieutenant, run along," says Galeni, mild, attracting no notice from the commodore whatever. "I never finished writing my report. I'll give you one Mark, against the commodore's eighteen million, if you take the Dendarii off with you now."

Yes.

So Galeni's report - never write interim reports, Captain, never ever, even if you don't send them your commanding officer might show up and read them anyway - contains no reference to the Dendarii being commissioned to search for Galen. Miles is in the clear to do... whatever the hell he's going to do.

"That's a bargain, Captain," he says, betraying no hint of how his heart sings. "You'd be amazed how far I can get with one Mark."

And he's off, back to his and Ivan's room to change into his Dendarii greys, before anything further can go wrong.

Ivan goes with him rather than supervise Destang giving Galeni a hard time for what promises to be hours. "I bet Destang keeps Galeni on his feet all night seeing if he'll crack," he mutters.

"Damn Destang," growls Miles. "Galeni deserves a medal, not a hostile interrogation. He's had enough of that this week already. And if I hadn't—! But dammit, he sure looked like he might have fucked off with my money."

"And that will be an immense comfort to me while Destang audits the entire embassy and shakes me down for obscure misdeeds, too..."

Miles pauses between shirts and eyes Ivan speculatively. "Yes, you are going to be pretty well in the thick of it, aren't you?"

"Lathered, rinsed, wrung out, and stuck on a flagpole to dry off on the wind. No use even going to sleep, they'll have me up about something soon enough."

"Hmm," he says. "So - let's say I hand you my end of Elli's secure comlink on my way out, meaning for you to turn it in. And let's say you stick it in your pocket and forget about it, it being rather useless for its intended purpose while both Elli and I are in orbit."

Miles gives his Barrayaran uniform trousers a vigorous shake, dispensing the comlink onto his bed, where he picks it up and chucks it at Ivan before starting to pull on his Dendarii greys.

Ivan catches it by reflex, then looks at it suspiciously. "You know the last time I pulled sleight-of-hand to help you is in my record now? Suppose you put this someplace less incriminating. Perhaps I could actually turn it in, what a concept."

"Up to you," says Miles. "Technically you're not doing anything wrong, arguably not even if I use it, which I'm not sure I'm going to. I just want something in reserve, in case I need a secure line into the embassy in an emergency."

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