Chapter 10

Metzov, Miles and ImpSec do it their way

Once we were in Oser's cabin, Metzov sat on a couch across from me for four long hours, staring at the erotic artworks on the bulkheads when he wasn't staring at me. Finally he started muttering to himself about the fancy meal hover-trays he'd seen on G Deck and going down to Detention while he made do at the officer's mess. Next he muttered about working day in and day out for months while I lazed about in my cabin with the Emperor. Then he muttered about how lately I'd had plenty of time for Vors, but no time for hard-working plebe generals, no sir. Then he muttered it all over again, louder. By then he was breathing hard and sweating. Just like Tadzio. And finally he pointed the 'ruptor at me, saying he'd blow out my brains unless I opened my legs for him like I'd opened them for Greg.

"You think I'm not good enough for you anymore?" he asked as he straddled me, one hand around my neck, 'ruptor in his other hand, its bell cupping my left ear. "You'll think different when I'm Vormetzov, the Emperor of Vervain. Uhh! Weren't expecting that, were you? You still don't know about Barra-yar-ians. When we smash an' grab we don't . . . let . . . go . . ."

As he kept on forning me he laid out this crazy idea of coming out on top by playing the Barrys against the Cetas. "Like how they got the Army fighting with the Navy on Old Earth," he grunted. He pulled out then, but he wasn't done.

"On your belly, bitch," he ordered. "This is how I'll celebrate my conquest of Vervain, the way the Navy did when they conquered the Army!"

I really hate men who fornicate just to prove they're the top dog. On the other hand, I suppose it's a good thing the big idiot hadn't figured out yet that he'd been set up, or he'd a done a lot worse than make my butt sore.

Then Metzov adjusted his too-small uniform, let me get dressed and we waited some more. He was just starting his second round of muttering, about this High Court ordering the traitor Ensign Vorkosigan executed by strangulation, when the lock beeped and the mutant swaggered in like a conquering hero. Until he saw the 'ruptor Metzov aimed between his eyes.

But then the big lug let his lust for revenge get the better of his tactical judgment. He actually threw away the 'ruptor to strangle the mutant with two hands. One would have been enough. That was all the opening I needed.

Such a pleasure it was, giving Stanis 'darling' just enough time to realize exactly why I was going fry his brains with his own discarded 'ruptor before I let him have it. And the mutant — You know, I could have played the hostage game, or even have killed him right then, but he was my safe-conduct pass out of the Hub. And I judged he was so programmed in this Vor honor-your-word crap that he really would let me get a head start on the Ceta revenge-hunt squads. So I'm not quite sure why I kissed him instead of shooting him. It sure wasn't for sending the Ranger's ships into the Cetagandan meat grinder.

As I said, he was my safe-conduct from the Hub, and I knew he craved recognition. I could fake that. So I admitted that I'd underestimated him. Well, I also guess he'd woken me up to the fact that I was getting over-confident in my tap-dance with Death. Not that he'd planned it that way. And he replied that he'd never underestimated me. You could call that a compliment, of sorts.

Well, one thing I'm sure about: I timed my kiss to get his bio-sculpted girlfriend really jealous.

So it was back to the detention cell, but no company for amusement this time. Later these cold Barry Imperial Security bitches took me and my kit over to the Randall's Revenge. Seems the Hand had been too massive to dodge this Ceta imploder lance, and the Revenge was the closest thing the Rangers had left to a flagship that was still spaceworthy. Yes, I'd packed my Sultana's Dreams perfume, the one the mutant claimed to be allergic to, so just to bother him I poured . . . Wait, you heard that part already. And after that?

Don't want to talk about what came after that.

Yeah, okay. Sleep-shift after sleepless sleep-shift en route to Komarr, I went over and over every step of the mutant's scheme. Could he have improvised the whole thing on the fly? That's how he was playing it. Could I have really been so gullible? Maybe, except I couldn't buy Greg's story of just walking out the Komarran compound un-noticed, right past his own ImpSec bodyguard.

The mutant wasn't the only liar. Greg had lied, too. His airy promise of "safe passage out of the Hegen Hub, via Barrayar," proved misleading, to say the least. There isn't any "via Barrayar;" it's in a wormhole dead end with no other outlet, just like Aslund — something else I should have checked before choosing to make myself its Empress. Had Greg meant to say, "via Komarr?" The Komarr Nexus had four working wormholes and more blind ones. Oversight or calculation, Greg?

Gloomy Greg had also told me Vorkosigan's mutations had driven him insane. I knew the mutant was some kind of Barry ImpSec agent, but at the time I hadn't asked myself how he could be as crazy as Greg claimed, yet still be allowed the run of the galaxy with his own private Merc force?

And if Greg had been feeding me a line about the mutant's insanity, what else had he been lying about? The ease of marrying into Barry society, perhaps? What would Greg really have done with me once he was back among his loyal subjects? Had he ever been fully under my control?

Maybe not. Too bad. I wish my hold on him had been real.

Besides all the lies about his multiple identities, the mutant has falsely promised I'd get "A new start, far from here — very far from here. That, Simon Illyan will assure. Far away, but not unwatched." Another one of his little understatements. "Not unwatched" hardly covered it.

Soon after the Ranger's overcrowded fleet entered Komarr space, Barry ImpSec agents boarded the seven ships to go over them with the proverbial fine tooth comb. They pulled every comconsole record in sight. Then these permanent ImpSec liaisons in mufti moved in and their techs installed tons of surveillance devices, visible and hidden. I guess the head of ImpSec — the Captain Simon Illyan that the mutant had mentioned — did not give me the same level of trust that young Greg had. Maybe even less trust than the mutant.

Maybe Captain Illyan had gotten some distorted notions about me from the mutant's no doubt exaggerated reports of my little pranks. My ImpSec puppet masters certainly treated me like I was going to pull a fast one at any time. They never let me out from under their thumbs. And they rotated so often I never had a good chance of softening them up.

They kept me pretty busy, what with telling me when to dodge yet another Cetagandan ambush, jumping me from one wormhole nexus to the next in hopes of finding something useful for me to do, trying out various quaint Barry anti-psychosis chemotherapies on me — and making sure I never, ever used the names "Vorkosigan" and "Naismith" or "Dendarii" during the same week.

The methodical, mostly man-loving creeps carried out their hand-offs to new operatives with great care, passing on extensive briefings on whatever escape plan or character assassination program they thought I'd come up with. They didn't give me one single chance of Doing Unto for ten forning years. For the first eighteen months they didn't even let me handle cutlery in the officer's mess unless they'd dosed me with one of their anti-psychosis drugs. Is that any way to treat a commander? And they poured over every contract and vetoed anything at all that looked like it might get me within reach of a weapon, or directly supervising anyone who did use one, or anything calling for me to get out in the field. Well, phoo on them.

From listening in on the liaisons' comments at hand-offs, I eventually got the idea that the ever-vigilant, all-remembering Captain Illyan was handling my case as something between a duty to fulfill the formal pledge of the all-high Barrayaran Emperor, and as a hobby offering a few minute's rest from the crushing demands of managing his galactic web of secret agents and surveillance techs. In any case he insisted the liaisons report directly to him using a dedicated ImpSec com linkage.

Certainly new liaisons spoke of their assignment as a kind of punishment detail Captain Illyan held in reserve for ImpSec operatives who screwed up, or who got slack in the field. I'll bet he let rumors of assignments to my forces circulate, to terrify his agents into line. I imagined the ImpSec Chief telling then: "This is what happens when you fail me. You're gonna ride herd on Cavilo the Killer Commander. She'll murder you the instant you turn your back on her. Or worse, turn up in the same bunk with her."

From NewsNet reports I finally figured out that the mutant's Dendarii Free Mercs were some sort of undercover arm of ImpSec. Every so often I'd hear about them making trouble, mostly for the Cetas. They popped up at Dragoola IV to haul a bunch of Marilac POWs off the Ceta prison planet. Somewhat later they popped up in the Marilac system itself, and the Cetas pulled out within a year. They popped up in Sector Four to rescue these Barry diplomat hostages. They popped up somewhere else, and this Ceta Empire-sponsored Friendship Flotilla's commander became persona non grata with the locals. They popped up at Jackson's Whole, raided some human cloning complex there, and ImpSec dragged me half-way across the known galaxy to 'voluntarily' help them hunt for their missing Admiral. But I got there the day after they found him, or he found them, or something like that.

So you know what I think that Captain Illyan did? Any time he wanted to pull the Ceta's attention away from one of the little Admiral's stunts, he'd arrange a leak of my current location or cover identity, then shift me somewhere else or put me through another identity-change after the Cetas took the bait. That happened at least four times.

Of course the ImpSec liaisons claimed that Ceta intelligence was better at traffic analysis and ship-recognition than they'd expected, but I know a pattern when I see one.

It wasn't more than three months after the Rangers signed a wormhole light-duty guard contract near Shya IV that a Ceta revenge squadron popped out another nearby wormhole. ImpSec made me scuttle the contract and run away. Same thing happened the next time I thought I had some steady work. And after that, no one wanted the Rangers at all.

"Hire tan and black? Better watch your back!" Jumpships ferried that ditty from nexus to nexus faster than we could outrun it after the Vervain NewsNet floated these speculations, and later revealed the details, about my deal with ghem-General Garhanan, retired. Very retired. Worse case of retirement they'd seen, five needle-grenades in the back.

So anyway, after two years of no new contracts, ImpSec tried this identity-switch. Randall's Rangers officially disbanded, and three months later we were back in business in another nexus as Zoaves For Rent, lead by the mysterious, height-challenged blonde, "Commodore Peskopi."

It took Ceta Intelligence less than another two years to get the news on who "Commodore Peskopi" really was and unleash the Ghems against me. Their one surprise attack against the Zoaves For Rent cost me three ships. The ever loyal Captain Vigeroth deliberately intercepted an implosion lance to buy the Golden Leaper (formerly Randall's Revenge) a few precious seconds to make its escape Jump. A bit later a wave of rumors, apparently started by the Cetas, revealed my identity as Commodore Peskopi and the Zoaves For Rent as the former Randall's Rangers. In short order I was out of work. Again.

So ImpSec tried another identity-change, making me dye my hair dark brown and assume the cover identity of "Dagmar Schultz," a "minor advisor" to the figurehead commander of the "Space Vikings." That makeover included gluing plastic horns to the troops' new conical space helmets. That decoration, one of my newly-hired Counterintelligence and Infiltration analysts soon discovered, was found only on the headgear of Vikings in holovid dramas or feelie dreams.

That proved to be the final straw for Commodore Beloit, commander of the only Illyrican destroyer left in my four-ship fleet. "I never joined the Rangers to see my crew turned into clowns!" he'd yelled at the Barrayaran "advisors" during the new identity briefing, adding, "I refuse to continue with this charade," as he stomped out the hatch.

"As you wish," was all the ranking ImpSec advisor, Vormoncrief, had said to Beloit's departing back.

When the transformed "Space Viking" fleet mustered after separately departing this semi-legal drydock complex in Vervain's asteroid belt, Beloit's destroyer Space-Scourge failed to join the newly named Nemesis, Yo-Yo and Viking's Gift. Nor could I find Beloit, the destroyer or her crew in my reconstructed ship registry or personnel records.

So at the Space Viking's first Captain's Conference in the Nemesis's wardroom, I demanded of Vormoncrief, "Tell me what happened to Beloit." Not that I cared about him, but he owned one sweet destroyer I could use.

"Beloit who?" Vormoncrief had asked in false puzzlement. Oh. He wanted me to worry that I might be next? Cheeky. Oh, well, that's how it goes. I sure wasn't to blame for Beloit's blunder.

The one bright spot was, ImpSec never learned that one of the Rangers' finest six-agent deep-penetration teams had secretly departed the Kurin's Hand on an enemy infiltration mission about the same time I'd been forced to send out the orders putting the Vervain liaisons in charge of my fleet.

But then, I didn't know that, either. As far as both myself and ImpSec knew, all my C & I operatives had been squashed to bits, along with the Rangers' personnel records, back when the Kurin's Hand proved too slow to dodge that Ceta implosion lance.

It was strange that I didn't recall authorizing that mission. But if I had remembered, ImpSec would have gotten it out of me, eventually.

I didn't learn that five of the six C & I ops were still alive until two years after my top cryptanalysis expert, "Angelfish," enlisted — I should say, re-enlisted — in Randall's Rangers. That was shortly before the Rangers became Zoaves For Rent.

Angelfish worked his way up through the ranks to the position of chief com officer, on merit alone. Fortunately he caught my notice long after the ImpSec puppet masters gave up trying to bow-beat me for more data on Rangers personnel.

Because I thought he was dead, it took me weeks to see behind Angelfish's deep-cover identity. It took me another three months to get him to understand that he should join me in my bunk, despite the Rangers' anti-fraternization policy; and exactly twenty-four seconds after I took his Rod of Aaron in my mouth for him to realize my tongue was tapping it in basic dot-dash code, "THS STRCTLY BUSNSS DO U AGRE." While counting the seconds in my head, of course.

A few minutes later he took my left breast in his mouth and tongue-tapped the nipple, "AGRED WIL SGNL DEEP-PEN TEAM" — my first indication that the rest of his team still existed — "MAY TAKE TIME." I guess the ImpSec operatives monitoring my quarters, if any, mistook both of our intent expressions for signs of pleasure.

Over another year the other four surviving members of the deep-penetration team joined my forces under assumed names. Or so Angelfish told me in tongue-taps. I didn't want to risk face-to-face meetings with them while ImpSec was watching.

Ten years, four identity-changes, six Ceta ambushes, Beloit's disgust with ImpSec's identity-change and this really disastrous contract ImpSec forced on me had whittled my command down to just one undercrewed ship: Randall's Revenge, AKA Golden Leaper, AKA the Nemesis, AKA Beëlphazoar, the lone ship of "Gorey's Demons," or "the Gee-Dees," as ImpSec's latest advisor had made them call themselves. Even Angelfish stumbled over the ship's name half the time.

ImpSec's presence had also shrunk, to one liaison officer who pretended to be no such thing, and two sleepers — that I knew of, anyway — one in maintenance, one a supposed drop shuttle pilot. More than half the crew was outside recruits, such as my Med officer, the young, yet avuncular "Doc" Felltu, who had signed aboard at Jackson's Whole after our mad dash there, two years before.

Felltu had brought along two float-pallets of secret House Ryoval bio-sculpting equipment and a head-full of equally secret medical procedures as a gift, or possibly just to bribe his way aboard. You never know with Jacksonians.

From various comments he let drop, I eventually figured out that Felltu hadn't had much choice about enlisting following the sudden death of his previous employer, Baron Ryoval. Escaping to orbit, he implied, was the only thing that had saved him from being ruthlessly inducted into House Fell servitude along with the rest of House Ryoval's staff, which he had wished to avoid at all costs.

Give me a break. I really need one this time.

(C) 2007, Luminator Thelms