fermata

[isthisart]

Linya sees Dr. Cheung onto a ship other than the Ariel, which agrees to tote him to Komarr very, very slowly, knocking him out for each jump and having someone look after him when he comes around green in the gills. It's not going to be a fun trip for him, but it's better than trying to collaborate with a multi-week conversational turnaround time. It's pricey - the ship has nonperishable cargo with no deadline at its destination and already employs a medtech, but still - but she thinks it's worth it.

Her business on Earth concluded, she examines the list of tourist attractions she didn't get around to, determines that none of them are worth sticking around for, and gets on a much faster vessel and goes all the way home. The first thing she does when there is go looking for whichever of the Count or Countess is easiest to find.

Comments

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles head-shrugs.

[isthisart]

"So that's why you need to stay far, far away from Jackson's Whole..."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yes. And then there's Dagoola. How much do you already know...?"

[isthisart]

"News-blurb paragraph, more or less, enough to guess what you were talking about - there was a prison camp, it was completely emptied."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yeah. Did the news blurb go into the conditions there?"

[isthisart]

She shakes her head. "You mentioned it, but it didn't make the brief."

[thisvorlunatic]

"It should have. They were... not pleasant. My mission was to get myself captured in the guise of a Marilacan rebel, locate a particular officer - Guy Tremont, I think his name was - and have him prepared for pickup when my Dendarii broke us out a little while later. I got myself captured, and that's about when the plan went straight to hell. They were keeping the prisoners bundled all together in a single huge force-bubble, issued with exactly the minimum rations required by interplanetary law, which were delivered periodically in an enormous pile of identical ration bars. Exactly one to a customer, just like the cups and bedrolls and clothing articles they sent us in with. Our floor was bare dirt, our ceiling was the sky. When I found Tremont, he'd gone catatonic, and was still alive only because a friend of his made him eat and drink periodically."

[isthisart]

"Oh dear."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yeah. So. I decided to change the mission parameters. Our captors were watching us - but so were my Dendarii. I fell in with this guy Suegar, who'd gone a bit nuts - not unusual, in that hell-camp - and carried around this scrap of paper that he happened to have on him when he was captured, torn out of some book. Claimed it was scripture. It went, let me see... 'For those that shall be the heirs of salvation. Thus they went along toward the gate. Now you must note that the city stood upon a mighty hill, but the pilgrims went up that hill with ease, because they had these two men to lead them by the arms; so they had left their mortal garments behind them in the river, for though they went in with them, they came out without them. They therefore went up here with much agility and speed, through the foundation upon which the city was framed higher than the clouds. They therefore went up through the regions of the air...' God, it comes right back to me."

He shivers a little.

"I took this textual fragment as a starting point, and began to preach our new religion. A very practical religion. I Managed To Convince enough people to join the cause that by the next chow call, we had enough to capture the pile and redistribute it fairly, exactly-one-to-a-customer, as opposed to the whole population of the dome mobbing it in a desperate brawl the moment it appeared. I had us divvy it up into fourteen sub-piles, fourteen being the number of combat drop shuttles carried in total by the Dendarii fleet, not that I told anyone that. And I drilled us and drilled us and drilled us some more, and more and more of the camp came over to our side, and when my fleet arrived they ferried us up to the troop ships twenty-eight hundred at a time, two hundred to a shuttle, from our fourteen neat tidy chow call lines."

A slight smile, wry recollection.

"I remember one of my fellow prisoners who'd been helping me out, Beatrice... when I explained that I was part of a paid rescue and she'd better get us organized for our final chow call, she said 'Mercenaries?' - in just that disgusted tone - and I told her that no, under the circumstances, the appropriate exclamation was 'Mercenaries!', with a glad cry."

Then he shakes his head.

"And Lieutenant Murka was decapitated by a plasma blast while guarding us on the ground. And the enemy blew away two of our shuttles in the air, killing two hundred and six people. I went up on the last shuttle, and we took damage from enemy fire - the hatch jammed - Beatrice got it unjammed, but she fell out. Whoosh. Gone. I don't have the happiest job in the universe. But hey, I rescued ten thousand people from the pits of hell. That's got to count for something."

[isthisart]

"It does," murmurs Linya, and he gets a forehead-kiss, since a thorough hug is still out of the question.

[thisvorlunatic]

He musters another smile for her.

[isthisart]

"And then you dragged all the way to Earth with assassins after you?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yep. Dropped off our rescuees on Marilac first, of course."

[isthisart]

"Of course."