Young Miles - Lois McMaster Bujold [304]
"There won't be any surviving remnant of the Rangers when this is done!"
"There is that chance," Miles conceded. "You were going to throw them all away. Note, please, I'm not offering a choice between this and some better deal. It's this or the Cetagandans. Whose approval of treason is strictly limited to those who deal in their favor."
Cavilo looked like she wanted to spit, but said, "Very well. I yield. You have your deal."
"Thank you."
"But you . . ." her eyes were chips of blue ice, her voice low and venomous, "you will learn, little man. You're riding high today, but time will bring you down. I'd say, just wait twenty years, but I doubt you're going to live that long. Time will teach you how much nothing your loyalties will buy you. The day they finally grind you up and spit you out, I'm just sorry I won't be there to watch, 'cause you're gonna be hamburger."
Miles called the soldiers back in. "Take her away." It was almost a plea. As the door closed behind the prisoner and her porters, he turned to find Elena's eyes upon him.
"God, that woman makes me cold." He shivered.
"Ah?" Gregor remarked, elbows still planted. "Yet in a weird way, you seem to get along with each other. You think alike."
"Gregor!" Miles protested. "Elena?" he called for a counter-vote.
"You're both very twisty," said Elena doubtfully. "And, er, short." At Miles's tight-lipped look of outrage she explained, "It's more a matter of pattern than content. If you were power-crazy, instead of, of . . ."
"Some other kind of crazy, yes, go on."
"—you could plot like that. You seemed to kind of enjoy figuring her out."
"Thank-you-I-think." He hunched his shoulders. Was it true? Could that be himself in twenty years? Sick with cynicism and unvented rage, a shelled self thrilled only by mastery, power games, control, armor-plate with a wounded beast inside?
"Let's get back to the Triumph," he said shortly. "We've all got work to do."
* * *
Miles paced impatiently across the short breadth of Admiral Oser's cabin aboard the Triumph. Gregor leaned hip-slung on the edge of the comconsole desk, watching him oscillate.
". . . naturally the Vervani will be suspicious, but with the Cetagandans breathing down their necks they'll have a real will to believe. And deal. You'll want to make it as attractive as possible, to close things up quickly, but of course don't give away any more than you have to—"
Gregor said dryly, "Perhaps you'd like to come along and operate my holoprompter?"
Miles stopped, cleared his throat. "Sorry. I know you know more about treaties than I do. I . . . babble when I'm nervous, sometimes."
"Yes, I know."
Miles managed to keep his mouth shut, though not his feet still, until the cabin buzzer blatted.
"Prisoners as ordered, sir," came Sergeant Chodak's voice over the intercom.
"Thank you, enter." Miles leaned across the desk and hit the door control.
Chodak and a squad marched Captain Ungari and Sergeant Overholt into the cabin. The prisoners were indeed just as Miles had ordered; washed, shaved, combed, and provided with fresh-pressed Dendarii greys with equivalent rank insignia. They also looked palpably surly and hostile about it.
"Thank you, Sergeant, you and your squad are dismissed."
"Dismissed?" Chodak's eyebrows questioned the wisdom of this. "Sure you don't want us to at least stand-to in the corridor, sir? Remember the last time."
"It won't be necessary this time."
Ungari's glare denied that airy assertion. Chodak withdrew doubtfully, keeping his stunner-aim steady on the pair until the doors closed across his view.
Ungari inhaled deeply. "Vorkosigan! You mutinous little mutant, I'm going to have you court-martialed, skinned, stuffed, and mounted for this—"
They had not yet noticed quiet Gregor, still leaning on the comconsole and also wearing courtesy Dendarii greys, though without insignia, there being no Dendarii equivalent for emperor.
"Uh, sir—" Miles motioned the dark-faced captain's eye toward Gregor.
"Those are such widely shared sentiments, Captain Ungari, that