Miles, Mutants and Microbes - Lois McMaster Bujold [273]
Nav and Com had security vid monitors in all the outer airlocks, of course, and safety monitors on all the inner section doors that closed to seal the ship into airtight compartments. Blowing out a monitor would blind the ba, but also give warning that the supposed prisoners were on the move. Blowing out all of them, or all that could be reached, would be more confusing . . . but still left the problem of giving warning. How likely was the ba to carry out its harried, or perhaps insane, threat of ramming the station?
Dammit, this was so unprofessional . . . Miles halted, arrested by his own thought.
What were the standard operating procedures for a Cetagandan agent—anyone's agent, really—whose covert mission was going down the toilet? Destroy all the evidence: try to make it to a safe zone, embassy, or neutral territory. If that wasn't possible, destroy the evidence and then sit tight and endure arrest by the locals, whoever the locals might be, and wait for one's own side to either bail or bust one out, depending. For the really, really critical missions, destroy the evidence and commit suicide. This last was seldom ordered, because it was even more seldom carried out. But the Cetagandan ba were so conditioned to loyalty to their haut masters—and mistresses—Miles was forced to consider it a more realistic possibility in the present case.
But splashy hostage-taking among neutrals or neighbors, blaring the mission all over the news, most of all—most of all, the public use of the Star Crèche's most private arsenal . . . This wasn't the modus operandi of a trained agent. This was goddamned amateur work. And Miles's superiors used to accuse him of being a loose cannon—hah! Not any of his most direly inspired messes had ever been as forlorn as this one was shaping up to be—for both sides, alas. This gratifying deduction did not, unfortunately, make the ba's next action more predictable. Quite the reverse.
"M'lord?" Roic's voice rose unexpectedly from Miles's wrist com.
"Roic!" cried Miles joyfully. "Wait. What the hell are you doing on this link? You shouldn't be out of your suit."
"I might ask you the same question, m'lord," Roic returned rather tartly. "If I had time. But I had to get out of t' pressure suit anyway to get into this work suit. I think . . . yes. I can hang the com link in my helmet. There." A slight chink, as of a faceplate closing. "Can you still hear me?"
"Oh, yes. I take it you're still in Engineering?"
"For now. I found you a real nice little pressure suit, m'lord. And a lot of other tools. Question is how to get it to you."
"Stay away from all the airseal doors—they're monitored. Have you found any cutting tools, by chance?"
"I'm, uh . . . pretty sure that's what these are, yes."
"Then move as far to the stern as you can get, and cut straight up through the ceiling to the middle deck. Try to avoid damaging the air ducts and grav grid and control and fluid conduits, for now. Or anything else that would make the boards light up in Nav and Com. Then we can place you for the next cut."
"Right, m'lord. I was thinking something like that might do."
A few minutes ran by, with nothing but the sound of Roic's breathing, broken with a few under-voiced obscenities as, by trial and error, he discovered how to handle the unfamiliar equipment. A grunt, a hiss, a clank abruptly cut off.
The rough-and-ready procedure was going to play hell with the atmospheric integrity of the sections, but did that necessarily make things any worse, from the hostages' point of view? And a pressure suit, oh bliss! Miles wondered if any of the powered work suits had been sized extra-small. Almost as good as space armor, indeed.
"All right, m'lord," came the welcome voice from his wrist com. "I've made it to the middle deck. I'm moving back now . . . I'm not exactly sure how close I am under you."
"Can you reach up to tap on the ceiling? Gently. We don't want it to reverberate through the bulkheads all the way to Nav