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By Root 1755 0

Not like this, it had never come on like this before—. He redoubled into a ball, gasping, lost his grasp on his grip-strap, floated free. Dear God, it was finally happening—the ultimate humiliation—he was going to throw up in a space suit. In moments, everyone would know of his hilarious weakness. Absurd, for a would-be Imperial officer to get space-sick. Absurd, absurd, he had always been absurd. He had barely the presence of mind to hit his ventilator controls to full power with a jerk of his chin, and kill his broadcast—no need to treat his mercenaries to the unedifying sound of their commander retching.

"Admiral Naismith?" came an inquiry from the tactics room. "Your medical readouts look odd—telemetry check requested."

The universe seemed to narrow to his belly. A wrenching rush, gagging and coughing, another, another. The ventilator could not keep up. He'd eaten nothing this day, where was it all coming from?

A mercenary pulled him out of the air, tried to help him straighten his clenched limbs. "Admiral Naismith? Are you all right?"

He opened Miles's faceplate, to Miles's gasp of "No! Not in here—"

"Son-of-a-bitch!" The man jumped back, and raised his voice to a piercing cry. "Medtech!"

You're overreacting, Miles tried to say; I'll clean it up myself. . . . Dark clots, scarlet droplets, shimmering crimson globules, floated past his confused eyes, his secret spilled. It appeared to be pure blood. "No," he whimpered, or tried to. "Not now . . ."

Hands grasped him, passed him back to the shuttle hatch he had entered moments before. Gravity pressed him to the corridor deck—who the devil had upped it to three-gee?—hands pulled his helmet off, plucked at his carefully donned carapace. He felt like a lobster supper. His belly wrung itself out again.

Elena's face, nearly as white as his now, circled above him. She knelt, tore off her servo glove and gripped his hand, flesh to flesh at last. "Miles!"

Truth is what you make it . . . "Commander Bothari!" he croaked, as loud as he could. A ring of frightened faces huddled around him. His Dendarii. His people. For them, then. All for them. All. "Take over."

"I can't!" Her face was pale with shock, terrified. God, Miles thought, I must look just like Bothari, spilling his guts. It's not that bad, he tried to tell her. Silver-black whorls sparkled in his vision, blotting out her face. No! Not yet—

"Liege-lady. You can. You must. I'll be with you." He writhed, gripped by some sadistic giant. "You are true Vor, not I. . . . Must have been changelings, back there in those replicators." He gave her a death's-head grin. "Forward momentum—"

She rose then, determination crowding out the hot terror in her face, the ice that had run like water transmuted to marble.

"Right, my lord," she whispered. And more loudly, "Right! Get back there, let the medtechs do their job—" She drove away his admirers. He was flipped efficiently onto a float pallet.

He watched his booted feet, dark and distant hillocks, waver before him as he was borne aloft. Feet first, it would have to be feet first. He barely felt the prick of the first IV in his arm. He heard Elena's voice, raised tremblingly behind him.

"All right you clowns! No more games. We're going to win this one for Admiral Naismith!"

Heroes. They sprang up around him like weeds. A carrier, he was seemingly unable to catch the disease he spread.

"Damn it," he moaned. "Damn it, damn it, damn it . . ." He repeated this litany like a mantra, until the medtech's second sedative injection parted him from his pain, frustration, and consciousness.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

He wandered in and out of reality, like being lost in the Imperial Residence when he was a boy, trying various doors, some leading to treasures, others to broom closets, but none to familiarity. Once he awoke to Tung, sitting beside him, and worried about it; shouldn't the mercenary be in the tactics room?

Tung eyed him with affectionate concern. "You know, son, if you're going to last in this business, you have to learn to pace yourself. We almost lost you there."

It