• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 874 0

Mark take a stimulant when, getting him dressed, she'd found him too muzzy-mouthed for her taste, and he did not quite like its effects. His head and eyes were almost too clear, but his body felt beaten. All the edges and surfaces of the tac room seemed to stand out with unnatural clarity. Sounds and voices in his ears seemed to have a painful serrated quality, sharp and blurred at once. Quinn was on the stuff too, he realized, watching her wince at a high electronic squeal from the comm equipment.

("All right, you're on,") said Quinn through the ear-bug as the vid plate in front of him began to sparkle. They all shut up at last.

The image of Baron Fell materialized, and frowned at him too. Georish Stauber, Baron Fell of House Fell, was unusual for the leader of a Jacksonian Great House in that he still wore his original body. An old man's body. The Baron was stout, pink of face, with a shiny liver-spotted scalp fringed by white hair trimmed short. The silk tunic he wore in his House's particular shade of green made him look like a hypothyroid elf. But there was nothing elfin about his cold and penetrating eyes. Miles was not intimidated by a Jacksonian Baron's power, Mark reminded himself. Miles was not intimidated by any power backed by less than three entire planets. His father the Butcher of Komarr could eat Jacksonian Great Houses for breakfast.

He, of course, was not Miles.

Screw that. I'm Miles for the next fifteen minutes, anyway.

"So, Admiral," rumbled the Baron. "We meet again after all."

"Quite." Mark managed not to let his voice crack.

"I see you are as presumptuous as ever. And as ill-informed."

"Quite."

("Start talking, dammit,") Quinn's voice hissed in his ear.

Mark swallowed. "Baron Fell, it was not a part of my original battle plan to involve Fell Station in this raid. I am as anxious to decamp with my forces as you are to have us leave. To that end, I request your help as a go-between. You . . . know that we've kidnapped Baron Bharaputra, I trust?"

"So I'm told." One of Fell's eyelids tic'd. "You've rather over-reached your available back-up, have you not?"

"Have I?" Mark shrugged. "House Fell is in a state of vendetta with House Bharaputra, are you not?"

"Not exactly. House Fell was on the verge of ending the vendetta with House Bharaputra. We've found it mutually unprofitable, of late. I'm now suspected of collusion in your raid." The Baron's frown deepened.

"Uh . . ." his thought was interrupted by Thorne whispering, ("Tell him Bharaputra's alive and well.")

"Baron Bharaputra is alive and well," said Mark, "and can remain so, for all I care. As a go-between, it seems to me you would be well-placed to demonstrate your good faith to House Bharaputra by helping to get him back. I only wish to trade him—intact—for one item, and then we'll be gone."

"You are optimistic," Fell said dryly.

Mark plowed on. "A simple, advantageous trade. The Baron for my clone."

("Brother,") Thorne, Quinn, and Bothari-Jesek all corrected in unison in his ear-bug.

"—brother," Mark continued, edged. He unset his teeth. "Unfortunately, my . . . brother, was shot in the mêlée downside. Fortunately, he was successfully frozen in one of our emergency cryo-chambers. Um, unfortunately, the cryo-chamber was accidently left behind in the scramble to get off. A live man for a dead one; I fail to see the difficulty."

The Baron barked a laugh, which he muffled in a cough. The three Dendarii faces across from Mark in the shadows were chill and stiff and not amused. "You've been having an interesting visit, Admiral. What do you want with a dead clone?"

("Brother,") Quinn said again. ("Miles insists, always.")

("Yes,") seconded Thorne. ("That's how I first knew you weren't Miles, back on the Ariel, when I called you a clone and you didn't jump down my throat.")

"Brother," Mark repeated wearily. "There was no head-wound, and the cryo-treatment was begun almost instantly. He has good hope of revival, as such things go."

("Only if we get him back,") Quinn growled.

"I have a brother," remarked Baron Fell. "He inspires no