Diplomatic Immunity - Lois McMaster Bujold [108]
"It's inside my biotainer suit and inaccessible right now. I'm afraid I had to don the suit in a hurry. Be aware, this helmet link is an open access channel and unsecured, sir." Dammit, where did that sir drop in from? Habit, sheer old bad habit. "You can ask for a brief report from Captain Clogston over his military suit's tight-beam link, but keep it short. He's a very busy man right now, and I don't want him distracted."
Vorpatril swore—whether generally or at the Imperial Auditor was left nicely ambiguous—and clicked off.
Faintly echoing through the ship came the sound Miles had been waiting for—the distant clanks and hisses of airseal doors shutting down, sealing the ship into airtight sections. The quaddies had made it to Nav and Com, good! Except that Roic wasn't back yet. The armsman would have to get in touch with Venn and Greenlaw and get them to unseal and reseal his passage back up to—
"Vorkosigan." Venn's voice sounded again in his ear, strained. "Is that you?"
"Is what me?"
"Shutting off the compartments."
"Isn't it," Miles tried, and failed, to swallow his voice back down to a more reasonable pitch. "Aren't you in Nav and Com yet?"
"No, we circled back to the Number Two nacelle to pick up our equipment. We were just about to leave it."
Hope flared in Miles's hammering heart. "Roic," he called urgently. "Where are you?"
"Not in Nav and Com, m'lord," Roic's grim voice returned.
"But if we're here and he's there, who's doing this?" came Leutwyn's unhappy voice.
"Who do you think?" Greenlaw ripped back. Her breath huffed out in anguish. "Five people, and not one of us thought to see the door locked behind us when we left—dammit!"
A small, bleak grunt, like a man being hit with an arrow, or a realization, sounded in Miles's ear: Roic.
Miles said urgently, "Anyone who holds Nav and Com has access to all these ship-linked com channels, or will, shortly. We're going to have to switch off."
The quaddies had independent links to the station and Vorpatril through their suits; so did the medicos. Miles and Roic would be the ones plunged into communications limbo.
Then, abruptly, the sound in his helmet went dead. Ah. Looks like the ba has found the com controls. . . .
Miles leapt to the environmental control panel for the infirmary to the left of the door, opened it, and hit every manual override in it. With this outer door shut, they could retain air pressure, although circulation would be blocked. The medicos in their suits would be unaffected; Miles and Bel would be at risk. He eyed the bod pod locker on the wall without favor. The bio-sealed ward was already functioning on internal circulation, thank God, and could remain so—as long as the power stayed on. But how could they keep Bel cold if the herm had to retreat to a pod?
Miles hurried back into the ward. He approached Clogston, and yelled through his faceplate, "We just lost our ship-linked suit coms. Keep to your tight-beam military channels only."
"I heard," Clogston yelled back.
"How are you coming on that filter-cooler?"
"Cooler part's done. Still working on the filter. I wish I'd brought more hands, although there's scarcely room in here for more butts."
"I've almost got it, I think," called the tech, crouched over the bench. "Check that, will you, sir?" He waved in the direction of one of the analyzers, a collection of lights on its readout now blinking for attention.
Clogston dodged around him and bent to the machine in question. After a moment he murmured, "Oh, that's clever."
Miles, crowding his shoulder close enough to hear this, did not find it reassuring. "What's clever?"
Clogston pointed at his analyzer readout, which now displayed incomprehensible strings of letters and numbers in cheery colors. "I didn't see how the parasites could possibly survive in a matrix of that enzyme that ate your biotainer gloves. But they were microencapsulated."
"What?"
"Standard trick for delivering drugs