Young Miles - Lois McMaster Bujold [248]
"Oh, Sergeant," Miles caroled, tapping a control box, "would you take a look at this, please?"
"I'll be along in a minute." Chodak waved on his companion, a man in the uniform of an Aslunder ranker.
When their heads were together and their backs to the corridor, Chodak hissed, "Are you insane? What are you doing here?" It was a mark of his agitation that he omitted his habitual "sir."
"It's a long story. For now, I need your help."
"But how did you get in here? Admiral Oser has guards all over the transfer station, on the lookout for you. You couldn't smuggle in a sand flea."
Miles smirked convincingly. "I have my methods." And his next plan had been to scheme his way across to that very transfer station . . . Truly, God protected fools and madmen. "For now, I need to make contact with Commander Elena Bothari-Jesek. Urgently. Or, failing her, Engineering Commodore Jesek. Is she here?"
"She should be. The Triumph's in dock. Commodore Jesek is out with the repairs tender, I know."
"Well, if not Elena, Tung. Or Arde Mayhew. Or Lieutenant Elli Quinn. But I prefer Elena. Tell her—but no one else—that I have our old friend Greg with me. Tell her to meet me in an hour in the contract-laborers quarters, Greg Bleakman's cubicle. Can do?"
"Can do, sir." Chodak hurried off, looking worried. Miles patched up his poor battered wall, replaced the panel, picked up his tool box, and marched casually away, trying not to feel as if he had a flashing red light atop his head. He kept his goggles on and his face down, and chose the least populated corridors he could find. His stomach growled. Elena will feed you, he told it firmly. Later. A rising population of blue and green smocks told Miles he was nearing the contract laborer's quarters.
There was a directory. He hesitated, then punched up "Bleakman, G." Module B, Cubicle 8. He found the module, checked his chrono—Gregor should be off-shift by now—and knocked. The door sighed open and Miles slipped within. Gregor was there, sitting up sleepily on his bunk. It was a one-man cubicle, offering privacy, though barely room to turn around. Privacy was a greater psychological luxury than space. Even slave-techs must be kept minimally happy, they had too much power for potential sabotage to risk driving them over the edge.
"We're saved," Miles announced. "I've just made contact with Elena." He sat down heavily on the end of the bunk, weak with the sudden release of tension in this safe pocket.
"Elena's here?" Gregor scrubbed a hand through his hair. "I thought you wanted your Captain Ungari."
"Elena's the first step to Ungari. Or, failing Ungari, to smuggling us out of here. If Ungari hadn't been so damn insistent on the left hand not knowing what the right was doing, it would be a lot easier. But this will do." He studied Gregor in worry. "Have you been all right?"
"A few hours putting up light fixtures isn't going to break my health, I assure you," said Gregor dryly.
"Is that what they had you doing? Not what I'd pictured, somehow . . ."
Gregor seemed all right, anyway. Indeed, the Emperor was acting almost cheerful about his stint as a slave laborer, as Gregor's morose standards of cheer went. Maybe we ought to send him to the salt mines for two weeks every year, to keep him happy and content with his regular job. Miles relaxed a little.
"It's hard to imagine Elena Bothari as a mercenary," Gregor added reflectively.
"Don't underestimate her." Miles concealed a moment of raw doubt. Almost four years. He knew how much he had changed in four years. What of Elena? Her years could have been hardly less hectic. Times change. People change with them. . . . No. As well doubt himself as Elena.
The half-hour wait for his chrono to creep to the appointed moment was a bad interval, enough to loosen Miles's driving tension and wash him in weariness but not enough to