Miles Errant - Lois McMaster Bujold [369]
Three meters from the top, his head came level with a small audio pick-up, flush to the wall, and a shielded motion sensor.
I imagine it wants a code word. In Ryoval's voice, Lord Mark remarked blandly, observing. Can't oblige.
It doesn't have to be what you guess, Killer said. It could be anything. Plasma arcs. Poison gas.
No. Ryoval saw me, but I saw Ryoval. It will be simple. And elegant. And you will do it to yourself. Watch.
He gripped his handhold, and extended the laser drill up past the motion sensor for the next burn.
The lift tube's grav field switched off.
Even half-expecting it, he was nearly ripped from his perch by his own weight. Howl could not contain it all. Mark screamed silently, flooded in pain. But he clung, and did not let them fall.
The last three meters of ascent could have been called a nightmare, but he had new standards for nightmares now. It was merely tedious.
There was a tanglefield trap at the top entrance, but it faced outward. The laser drill disarmed its controls. He managed a crippled, shuffling, crabwise walk into a private underground garage. It contained the Baron's lightflyer. The canopy opened at the touch of Ryoval's ring.
He slid into the lightflyer, adjusted the seat and controls as best he could around his distorted and aching contours, powered it up, eased it forward. That button on the control panel—there? The garage door slid aside. Once through, he shot up, and up, and up, through the dark, the acceleration pummeling him. Nobody even fired on him. There were no lights below. A rocky winter waste. The whole little installation must be underground.
He checked the flyer's map display, and picked his direction—East. Toward the light. That seemed right.
He kept accelerating.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The lightflyer banked. Miles craned his neck, catching a glimpse of what was below. Or what wasn't below. Dawn was creeping over a wintry desert. There appeared to be nothing of interest for kilometers around.
" 'S funny," said the guard who was piloting the lightflyer. "Door's open." He touched his comm, and transmitted some sort of code-burst. The other guard shifted uneasily, watching his comrade. Miles twisted around, trying to watch them both.
They descended. Rocks rose around them, then a concrete shaft. Ah. Concealed entrance. They came to the bottom, and moved forward into an underground garage.
"Huh," said the other guard. "Where's all the vehicles?"
The flyer came to rest, and the bigger guard dragged Miles out of the backseat, and unfastened his ankles, and stood him upright. He almost fell down again. The scars on his chest ached with the strain from his hands bound behind his back. He got his feet under himself and stared around much as the guards were doing. Just a utilitarian garage, badly-lit, echoing and cavernous. And empty.
The guards marched him toward an entrance. They coded through some automatic doors, and walked to an electronic security chamber. It was up and running, humming blankly. "Vaj?" one guard called. "We're here. Scan us."
No answer. One of the guards went forward, looked around. Tapped a code into a wall pad. "Bring him through anyway."
The security chamber passed him. He was still wearing the gray knits the Duronas had given him; no interesting devices woven into the fabric, it seemed, alas.
The senior guard tried an intercom. Several times. "Nobody answers."
"What should we do?" asked his comrade.
The senior man frowned. "Strip him and take him to the boss, I guess. Those were the orders."
They pulled his ship-knits off him; he was far too out-massed to fight them, but he regretted the loss deeply. It was too damned cold. Even the ox-like guards stared a moment at his raked and scored chest. They re-fastened his hands behind him and marched him through the facility, their eyes shifting warily at every intersection.
It was very quiet. Lights burned, but no people appeared anywhere. A strange structure, not very large, plain and—he sniffed—decidedly medical in odor. Research,