Miles Errant - Lois McMaster Bujold [195]
"No wonder he hated Galen," said Quinn softly.
Elena's glance was rather sharper. "There's nothing you could have done. You didn't even know Mark existed, back then."
"We should have known."
"Right. So to what extent is this retroactive guilt distorting your thinking right now, Admiral?"
"Some, I suspect," he admitted. "That's why I called you all here. I feel the need of a cross-check, on this." He paused and forced himself to sit again. "That's not the only reason, however. Before this mess with the Ariel leaped out of the wormhole, I had started out to give you a real, bona fide mission assignment."
"Ah, ha," said Baz with satisfaction. "At last."
"The new contract." Despite his distractions, he smiled. "Before Mark showed up, I had it figured for a mission where nothing could possibly go wrong. An all-expenses-paid vacation."
"What, a no-combat-special?" quipped Elena. "I thought you always looked down on old Admiral Oser for those."
"I've changed." He felt, as ever, a brief flash of regret for the late Admiral Oser. "His command philosophy looks better all the time. I'm growing old, I guess."
"Or up," suggested Elena. They exchanged a dry look.
"In any case," Miles continued, "Barrayaran high command wishes to supply a certain independent deep-space transfer station with a better grade of weaponry than they presently own. Vega Station is, not coincidentally, just off one of the Cetagandan Empire's back doors. However, said vacuum-republic is in an awkward junction in the wormhole nexus. Quinn, the map, please."
Quinn keyed up a three-dimensional holovid schematic of Vega Station and its neighbors. The jump routes were represented by sparkling jagged lines between hazy spheres of local space systems.
"Of the three jump points Vega Station commands, one leads into the Cetagandan sphere of influence via its satrapy Ola Three, one is blocked by a sometimes-Cetagandan-ally, sometimes-enemy Toranira, and the other is held by Zoave Twilight, politically neutral with respect to Cetaganda, but wary of its big neighbor." As he spoke of it, Quinn highlighted each system. "Vega Station is outright blockaded through Ola Three and Toranira against the import of any kind of major space-based offensive or defensive weapons systems. Zoave Twilight, under pressure from Cetaganda, is reluctantly cooperating with the arms embargo."
"So where do we come in?" asked Baz.
"Literally, through Toranira. We're smuggling pack-horses."
"What?" said Baz, though Elena caught the reference and suddenly smirked.
"You've never heard that story? From Barrayaran history? It goes, Count Selig Vorkosigan was at war with Lord Vorwyn of Hazelbright, during the First Bloody Century. The town of Vorkosigan Vashnoi was besieged. Twice a week Lord Vorwyn's patrols would stop this crazy, motley fellow with a train of pack horses and search his packs for contraband, food or supplies. But his packs were always filled with rubbish. They poked and prodded and emptied them—he'd always gather it carefully back up—shook him down and searched him, and finally had to let him go. After the war, one of Vorwyn's border guards met Count Selig's liegeman, no longer motley, by chance in a tavern. 'What were you smuggling?' he asked in frustration. 'We know you were smuggling something, what was it?'
"And Count Selig's liegeman replied, 'Horses.'
"We're smuggling spaceships. To wit, the Triumph, the D-16, and the Ariel, all fleet-owned. We enter Vega Station local space through Toranira, on a through-flight plan, bound for Illyrica. Which we really will be. We exit through Zoave, still with every trooper, but minus three aging ships. We then continue on to Illyrica, and pick up our three brand-new warships, which are being completed even