dissonance

[isthisart]

Dr. Cheung's at a funeral all day, so Linya decides to go up to London and see if Miles is out of his Mood.

Security has decided to be deeply unhelpful today. She is currently showing them various forms of ID and repeating in a slow, patient voice that she has been here before, there is not more than one of her, and she promises she is not there to assassinate her husband or whatever fool thing has them skittish today. Perhaps she shouldn't drop in while the captain's missing; it seems to make them worse. But she got in before while he was missing...

Comments

[middlingalong]

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

[thisvorlunatic]

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

[middlingalong]

"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."

[thisvorlunatic]

"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.

[middlingalong]

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."

[thisvorlunatic]

"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."

[middlingalong]

"And what kind of emergency are you planning to have, coz?"

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles pauses again, contemplating his Dendarii combat boots.

"Did you ever suspect?" he asks. "When my clone was running around being me."

[middlingalong]

"Well. In retrospect, he seemed to like me a suspicious amount."

[thisvorlunatic]

...Miles grins.

But then he shakes his head, smile fading. "He's... he talked to me, you know. While I was kidnapped. Most bizarre interrogation I've ever had. He's - unsettling, possibly crazy. Probably crazy. Almost certainly crazy. But... I'm going to go home and see Mother again, and she's going to ask," he switches to a Betan accent in imitation, "'What have you done with your baby brother, Miles?'" He shakes his head and resumes his own voice. "And I want to give her a better answer than 'stood by and let him be assassinated by a booted paranoid'."

[middlingalong]

"I'm... very moved, but still seem to be the one holding the commlink while you run off and have an emergency."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Holding the totally innocuous and non-incriminating comlink I'm probably not even going to use," Miles reminds him. "I will do my very best to have my emergency without involving you in any way."

[middlingalong]

Ivan sighs and puts the item in his pocket.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Thank you, Ivan. Right, I'm off."

He catches up with Elena, and together they just barely make the next Dendarii shuttle lifting off from the London shuttleport. They sprint up the ramp in company with a soldier Miles recognizes - one of the cryo-casualties the fleet froze and transported to Earth for revival. Miles chats with him as they strap in, discussing London's famed Unicorn Park (run by GalacTech Bioengineering, the same company that produced Linya's live fur) and the ambush at Mahata Solaris that got Sergeant Siembieda temporarily killed. Miles recalls that memory loss is a common side effect of major traumas in general and cryo-revivals in particular, and gently retells the story, omitting the more gruesome details that imprinted themselves on his memory.

As the shuttle lifts, Miles cranes to watch London dwindle away below. There the river, there the coastline, defined by the massive seawall that maintains the city's undrowned state. Somewhere in that warren, if he hasn't already bolted, Ser Galen is dragging Mark on a psychological choke-chain, to an unknown destination for an unknown purpose... Miles hopes dearly that his Dendarii can find them before Destang's cleanup crew.

And what the hell's he going to do then?

Buy Mark outright, maybe, pretending to Galen that he desires a replacement body with slightly fewer problems than his own, and thereby allow Galen to slip past Barrayar's reach while Mark comes home with Miles. Except that Miles is not sure he wants Galen to slip past Barrayar's reach, particularly not after completing such a vicious bargain. Hell.

Back aboard the Triumph, he puts out several fleet-wide notices. All personnel planetside to go on a six-hour recall alert; all individual work contracts conflicting with this directive to be cancelled. All ships to start 24-hour preflight checks.

Then he heads to Intelligence to check up on the search.

[whyexit]

Thorne's on duty. "Admiral," it says when Miles appears.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Hi, Bel." Miles grabs a seat. "Give me everything the surveillance team picked up from Galen's house after we rescued the Barrayaran military attaché."

[whyexit]

Thorne obligingly fast-forwards through some silence and -

"So what's the business with the divorce proceedings, or did it never happen and I never heard it, sir?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Officially, it never happened and you never heard it. Less officially..." He trails off into a slightly shifty shrug.

[whyexit]

Thorne snorts. It fast-forwards through that which never happened and it never heard. It picks up with bad-quality audio of the Komarran guards waking from stun, receiving a comconsole call from Galen, supplying him with a slightly edited take on how the dramatic rescue occurred, and being told that they are fools and should not try to contact him again.

[thisvorlunatic]

"I assume we traced the source of that call, and it dead-ended somehow or other?"

[whyexit]

"Tube station public comconsole," says Thorne. "Search radius was a hundred klicks by the time we had someone down there. And he hasn't touched the house since, though the guards were still there when the Barrayaran embassy fellows took over minding it. Have the Barrayarans paid us yet?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Oh yes," says Miles. "Handsomely. No problem there. But although we're no longer working for them, finding Galen - I want us to continue working. I have a personal stake, now." He frowns pensively.

[whyexit]

"A personal stake. Sir, aren't you playing this a bit close to your chest?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yes," he sighs. "It's unfortunately a rather complicated subject... all right. Consider a covert substitution plot, aimed at unspecified political goals, for which one or more clones are run off and carefully altered to match the damaged original. Ser Galen has one such clone in his possession, and is currently on the run after an unsuccessful attempt to make the switch. For the purposes of anyone who comes by enough information to ask the question, I am another and it's not to be discussed any further than that. I consider that clone," he makes a vaguely planetward gesture, "my brother, and I want to save him from both the man who currently has control of him and the Barrayaran assassination teams who are after them both."

[whyexit]

Thorne frowns seriously. "Yes, sir." Pause. "If it comes up, how do we tell you apart?"