Young Miles - Lois McMaster Bujold [98]
Thorne, Baz, and Arde all appeared at his elbow, looking immensely pleased with themselves.
"Baz—" Miles opened his hand in helpless supplication. "What is this?"
Jesek stood to attention. "Dendarii recruits, my lord!"
"Did I ask you to collect recruits?" He had never been that drunk, surely. . . .
"You said we didn't have enough personnel to man our equipment. So I applied a little forward momentum to the problem, and—there you are."
"Where the devil did you get them all?"
"Felice. There must be two thousand galactics trapped there by the blockade. Merchant ship personnel, passengers, businesspeople, techs, a little of everything. Even soldiers. They're not all soldiers, of course. Not yet."
"Ah." Miles cleared his throat. "Hand-picked, are they?"
"Well . . ." Baz scuffed his boot on the deck, and studied it, as if looking for signs of wear. "I gave them some weapons to field-strip and reassemble. If they didn't try to shove the plasma arc power cartridge in the nerve disrupter grip slot, I hired 'em."
Miles wandered up and down the rows, bemused. "I see. Very ingenious. I doubt I could have done better myself." He nodded toward the Kshatryans. "Where were they going?"
"That's an interesting story," put in Mayhew. "They weren't exactly trapped by the blockade. Seems some local Felician magnate of the, uh, sub-economy, had hired them for bodyguards a few years ago. About six months back they botched the job, rendering themselves unemployed. They'll do about anything for a ride out of here. I found them myself," he added proudly.
"I see. Ah, Baz—Cetagandans?" Bothari had not taken his eyes from their gaudy fierce faces since they had exited the flex tube.
The engineer turned his hands palm-outwards. "They're trained."
"Do they realize that some Dendarii are Barrayaran?"
"They know I am, and with a name like Dendarii, any Cetagandan would have to make the connection. That mountain range made an impression on them during the Great War. But they want a ride out of here too. That was part of the contract, you see, to keep the price down—almost everybody wants to be discharged outside Felician local space."
"I sympathize," muttered Miles. The Felician fast courier floated outside the docking station. He itched for a closer look. "Well—see Captain Tung, and arrange quarters for them all. And, uh, training schedules . . ." Yes, keep them busy, while he—slipped away?
"Captain Tung?" said Thorne.
"Yes, he's a Dendarii now. I've been doing some recruiting too. Should be just like a family reunion for you—ah, Bel," he fixed the Betan with a stern eye, "you are now comrades in arms. As a Dendarii, I expect you to remember it."
"Tung." Thorne sounded more amazed than jealous. "Oser will be foaming."
* * *
Miles spent the evening running his new recruits' dossiers into the Triumph's computers, by hand, by himself, and by choice, the better to familiarize himself with his liegemen's human grab-bag. They were in fact well chosen; most had previous military experience, and the rest invariably possessed some arcane and valuable technical specialty.
Some were arcane indeed. He stopped his monitor to study the face of the extraordinarily beautiful woman who had stared at him in the docking bay. What the devil had Baz been about to hire a banking comm link security specialist as a soldier of fortune? To be sure, she might want off-planet badly enough—ah. Never mind. Her resume explained the mystery; she had once held the rank of ensign in the Escobaran military space forces. She'd had an honorable medical discharge after the war with Barrayar nineteen years ago. Medical discharges must have been a fad then, Miles mused, thinking of Bothari's. His amusement drained away, and he felt the hairs on his arms stir.
Great dark eyes, clean square line of jaw—her last name was Visconti, typically Escobaran. Her first name was Elena.
"No," whispered Miles to himself firmly. "Not possible." He weakened. "Anyway, not likely . . ."
He read the resume again