Cryoburn - Lois McMaster Bujold [134]
Vorlynkin nodded reassurance at her. She shook her head in doubt, but Jin thought some of the strain eased around her eyes.
Jin glanced up to find Armsman Roic eyeing him closely. Jin shrugged uncomfortably and turned his head away.
"Madame Sato," came Roic's slow, deep voice, "can Jin and Mina come out in the corridor with me for a moment? I'd like to show them something."
Jin looked back, about to decline, but Mina was already hopping up and down in agreement, readily prevailing over their mother who seemed to want to say something to the consul anyway, so Jin ended up letting himself be shepherded out with his sister. Roic closed the door firmly behind them.
To Jin's surprise, Roic went down on one knee, which made him, well, not much shorter than Jin and still taller than Mina.
"I thought," said Roic, "that you might like to try firing my stunner." He drew the weapon that had hurt so shockingly out of the holster under his jacket, and Jin flinched.
"Ooh, ooh!" said Mina. "Wow, can we?"
Which made it impossible for Jin to say No. He nodded warily.
"You must never point a weapon at a person unless you intend to fire," Roic began a short tutorial. "No matter if you think it's uncharged, or the safety lock is on, or what. Make it an absolute habit, and it will never be a question." He pointed out the various features of the device, including a sensor in the grip that was keyed to his own palm, and which he turned off with a code. Then he let Jin take it, making sure it was pointed up the empty corridor.
The grip was still warm from Roic's hand, like a chair you'd sat down in too soon after someone else got out of it. The stunner was lighter than Jin expected, but solid enough. The power pack in the grip gave it the most of its heft. It didn't feel like a toy.
Jin stared down the sight the way Roic told him too, and squeezed the trigger. The buzz in his hand startled him, but there was no recoil, and he managed not to drop it.
Encouraged, Jin let Roic show him how the automatic laser sight worked, and fired again. This time, he didn't jump. And again. The charge hit the wall pretty nearly just where he'd intended, this time. Jin didn't exactly smile, but he felt his jaw ease.
Mina was by this time eager to try, Let me! Let me! so Jin reluctantly gave the device up to her. Roic went through his instructions once more, prudently kneeling behind Mina and keeping a hand hovering to help steady her-she had to hold the thing up in both fists-and the drill was repeated.
Roic stood up, reset the code, and holstered the weapon. "Better?" he asked Jin.
"Yah," said Jin, in some wonder. "It's like a tool. It's just a tool."
"That's right."
This time, when Roic smiled down at him, Jin smiled up. He let the armsman lead them back into the recovery room.
Miles leaned forward and spoke earnestly into the secure holovid recorder. "I just want you to know, Gregor, that if the planet melts down over all this, it wasn't my fault. The trip-wire was laid long before I stumbled across it."
He considered the opening remark of his report cover for a moment, then reached out and deleted it. The one good thing about the very asynchronous vid communication entailed by Nexus info-squirts, moving at light speed between jump points and ship-carried through them, was that if you didn't think before you spoke, you could at least think before you hit send. Not that he hadn't generated some of his best ideas as his brain raced to catch up with his moving mouth. Also, some of my worst. He wondered which kind his recent examples would ultimately prove to be.
He glanced around the consulate's tight-room, which he had all to himself, having run out the exhausted Johannes before embarking on this private and personal recording. Since Johannes was the closest thing to an ImpSec analyst the out-of-the-way consulate boasted, Miles had spent much of the past two days in training him in just what information, out of the uproar of the local planetary