Miles Errant - Lois McMaster Bujold [153]
A minute later, movement from the north: a pair of men tiptoeing along as quietly as a couple of gorillas of that size could move. One of them was the numbskull who'd managed to appear on a covert op still wearing his regulation Service boots. He too had exchanged his original weapon for a more demure stunner, though his companion still carried a lethal nerve disruptor. It looked as if it really could be shaping up for a round of stunner tag. Ah, the stunner, weapon of choice for all uncertain situations, the one weapon with which you really could shoot first and ask questions later.
"Holster your nerve disruptor, that's right, good boy!" Miles murmured, as the second man too switched weapons. "Heads up, Ivan; this could be the best show we'll see all year."
Ivan glanced up, his absorbed uncertain smile transmuting into something genuinely sardonic, more like the old Ivan. "Oh, shit, Miles. Destang will have your nuts for engineering this."
"At present, Destang doesn't even know I'm involved. H'sh. Here we go."
The Cetagandan point man had returned. He made a come-on motion, and was leapfrogged by a second Cetagandan. On the other end of the corridor, beyond their view due to the curve, the remaining three Barrayarans came jogging. That accounted for all the Barrayarans that had been in the tower; any outer-perimeter backup was now cut off from them by the cordon of local police. The Barrayarans had apparently given up on their mysteriously vanished quarry and were in pull-out mode, hoping to exit via Tower Seven as quickly as possible without having to explain themselves to a bunch of unsympathetic Earthmen. The Cetagandans, who had actually witnessed the supposed Admiral Naismith run this way, were still in hunting array, though their rear guard was presumably closing up with the pressure from the locals coming on strong behind.
No sign of the rear guard yet; no sign of Quinn being dragged along as a prisoner. Miles didn't know whether to hope for that or not. It would be very nice to know she was still alive, but fiendishly difficult to extract her from the Cetagandans' clutches before the constables closed in. Least-cost scenario called for letting her be stunned/arrested with the mob of them and reclaiming her from the police at their leisure—but suppose some Cetagandan goon decided in the heat of the final crunch that dead women couldn't talk? Miles jittered like a boiling kettle at the thought.
Perhaps he should have jacked up Ivan and Mark and attacked. The breakable leading the disabled and the unreliable in an assault on the unknown . . . no. But would he have done more, done less, for any other officer in his command? Was he so worried about his command logic being ambushed by his emotions that he was now erring in the opposite direction? That would be a betrayal of both Quinn and the Dendarii. . . .
The lead Cetagandan darted into the line of sight of the lead Barrayaran. They both fired instantly, and dropped each other in a heap.
"Stunner reflexes," muttered Miles. "S' wonderful."
"My God," said Ivan, entranced to the point of wholly forgetting his hermetic enclosure, "it's just like the proton annihilating the anti-proton. Poof!"
The remaining Barrayarans, strung out along the corridor, flattened to the wall. The Cetagandan dropped to the floor and crawled to his downed comrade. A Barrayaran popped out into the corridor and blitzed him, the Cetagandan's return shot going wide. Two of the four Barrayarans hurried to the unconscious bodies of their mystery opponents. One prepared to offer covering fire; the other began checking them out, weapons, pockets, clothing. He naturally turned up no IDs. The baffled Barrayaran was just pulling off a shoe to dissect— Miles felt he would continue on to the body itself momentarily—when a distorted amplified voice began booming