Young Miles - Lois McMaster Bujold [257]
"How?" said Elena. "You gave us the Dendarii in charge. Baz was a deserter once. Never again."
All my fault, right, thought Miles. Great.
Elena turned to Gregor, who had acquired a strange guarded expression on his face while listening to her charges of abandonment. "You still haven't said what you're doing here in the first place, besides putting your feet in things. Was this supposed to be some sort of secret diplomatic mission?"
"You explain it," said Miles to Gregor, trying not to grit his teeth. Tell her about the balcony, eh?
Gregor shrugged, eyes sliding aside from Elena's level look. "Like Baz, I deserted. Like Baz, I found it was not the improvement I'd hoped for."
"You can see why it's urgent to get Gregor back home as quickly as possible," Miles put in. "They think he's missing. Maybe kidnapped." Miles gave Elena a quick edited version of their chance meeting in Consortium Detention.
"God." Elena's lips pursed. "I see why it's urgent to you to get him off your hands, anyway. If anything happened to him in your company, fifteen factions would cry 'Treason plot!'"
"That thought has occurred to me, yes," growled Miles.
"Your father's Centrist coalition government would be the first thing to fall," Elena continued. "The military right would get behind Count Vorinnis, I suppose, and square off with the anti-centralization liberals. The French speakers would want Vorville, the Russian Vortugalov—or has he died yet?"
"The far-right blow-up-the-wormhole isolationist loonie faction would field Count Vortrifrani against the anti-Vor pro-galactic faction who want a written constitution," put in Miles glumly. "And I do mean field."
"Count Vortrifrani scares me," Elena shivered. "I've heard him speak."
"It's the suave way he mops the foam from his lips," said Miles. "The Greek minorists would seize the moment to attempt secession—"
"Stop it!" Gregor, who had propped his forehead on his hands, said from behind the barrier of his arms.
"I thought that was your job," said Elena tartly. At his bleak look, raising his head, she softened, her mouth twisting up. "Too bad I can't offer you a job with the fleet. We can always use formally trained officers, to train the rest if nothing else."
"A mercenary?" said Gregor. "There's a thought. . . ."
"Oh, sure. A lot of our people are former regular military folk. Some are even legitimately discharged."
Fantasy lit Gregor's eye with brief amusement. He sighted down his grey-and-white jacket sleeve. "If only you were in charge here, aye, Miles?"
"No!" Miles cried in a suffused voice.
The light died. "It was a joke."
"Not funny." Miles breathed carefully, praying it would not occur to Gregor to make that an order. . . . "Anyway, we're now trying to make it to the Barrayaran Consul on Vervain Station. It's still there, I hope. I haven't heard news for days—what's going on with the Vervani?"
"As far as I know, it's business as usual, except for the heightened paranoia," said Elena. "Vervain's putting its resources into ships, not stations—"
"Makes sense, when you've got more than one wormhole to guard," Miles conceded.
"But it makes Aslund perceive the Vervani as potential aggressors. There's an Aslunder faction that's actually urging a first strike before the new Vervani fleet comes on-line. Fortunately, the defensive strategists have prevailed so far. Oser has set the price for a strike by us prohibitively high. He's not stupid. He knows the Aslunders couldn't back us up. Vervain hired a mercenary fleet as a stopgap too—in fact, that's what gave the Aslunders the idea to hire us. They're called Randall's Rangers, though I understand Randall is no more."
"We shall avoid them," Miles asserted fervently.
"I hear their new second officer is a Barrayaran. You might be able to swing some help, there."
Gregor's brows rose in speculation. "One of Illyan's plants? Sounds like his work."
Was that where Ungari had gone? "Approach with caution, anyway," Miles allowed.
"About time," Gregor commented under his breath.
"The Rangers'