Cordelia's Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold [241]
Droushnakovi gazed around the room unhappily.
"What's wrong, Drou?" whispered Cordelia.
"Too easy," the girl muttered.
"We're not done yet. Say 'easy' an hour from now." She licked her lips, shaken by secret subliminal agreement with Droushnakovi's evaluation. No help for it. Grab and go. Speed, not secrecy, was their hope now.
She set the tray down on the table, reached for the replicator's carrying handle, and stopped. Something, something wrong . . . she stared more closely at the readouts. The oxygenation monitor wasn't even functioning. Though its indicator light glowed green, the nutrient fluid level read 00.00. Empty.
Cordelia's mouth opened in a silent wail. Her stomach churned. She leaned closer, eyes devouring all the illogical hash of false readouts. Her hagridden nightmare, made suddenly and horribly real—had they dumped it on the floor, into a drain, down a toilet? Had Miles died quickly, mercifully smashed, or had they let the tiny infant, bereft of life-support, twitch to death in agony while they watched? Perhaps they hadn't even bothered to watch. . . .
The serial number. Look at the serial number. A hopeless hope, but . . . she forced her blurring eyes to focus, her racing mind to try and remember. She had fingered that number, pensively, back in Vaagen and Henri's lab, meditating upon this piece of technology and the distant world that had created it—and this number didn't match. Not the same replicator, not Miles's! One of the sixteen others, used to bait this trap.
Her heart sank. How many other traps were laid? She pictured herself running frantically from replicator to replicator, like a distraught child in some cruel game of keep-away, searching. . . . I shall go mad.
No. Wherever the real replicator was, it was near to Vordarian's person. Of that, she was sure. She knelt beside the table, putting her head down a moment to fight the blood-drained black balloons that clouded her vision and threatened to empty her mind of consciousness. She lifted the cloth. There. A pressure-sensor. Was this Vordarian's own clever idea? Slick and vicious. Drou bent to follow her gesture.
"A trap," whispered Cordelia. "Lift the replicator, and the alarms go off."
"If we disarm it—"
"No. Don't bother. It's false bait. Not the right replicator. It's an empty, with the controls buggered to make it look like it's running." Cordelia tried to think clearly through the pounding in her skull. "We'll have to retrace our steps. Back down, and up. I hadn't expected to encounter Vordarian here. But I guarantee he'll know where Miles is. A little old-fashioned interrogation. We'll be working against time. When the alarm goes up—"
Footsteps thudded in the corridor, and shouts. The chirping buzz of stunner fire. Swearing, Bothari flung himself backward through the door. "That's done it. They've spotted us."
When the alarm goes up, it's all over, Cordelia's thought completed itself, in a vertigo of loss. No window, one door, and they'd just lost control of their only exit. Vordarian's trap had worked after all. May Vidal Vordarian rot in hell. . . .
Droushnakovi clutched her stunner. "We won't surrender you, Milady. We'll fight to the end."
"Rubbish," snapped Cordelia. "There's nothing our deaths would buy here but the deaths of a few more of Vordarian's goons. Meaningless."
"You mean we should just quit?"
"Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible. We're not giving up. We're waiting for a better opportunity to win. Which we can't take if we're stunned or nerve-fried." Of course, if that had been the real replicator on the table . . . she was insane enough by now to sacrifice these people's lives for her son's, Cordelia reflected ruefully, but not yet mad enough to trade them for nothing. She hadn't grown that Barrayaran yet.
"You give yourself to Vordarian as a