Chapter 10 - Triumph

"After you." Sergeant Kimura stood by the opened door of the medlab, and gestured them inside. A trooper followed them, and stood stolidly by the door, weapon drawn.

"Yes, sir," said Taura, sounding subdued. She stepped through the door, enormous in a one-piece suit of pale grey, flicked a glance at the man sitting with his back to them at the console, then looked away.

The man turned. "Ah, sergeant. Still in one piece, I see."

"Yes sir, sorry sir."

"Sorry you're in one piece?" He came across the room, and took hold of Taura's wrist, feeling her pulse. He frowned, and reached up high to press a thermometer against her ear.

Taura shifted her feet. "Sorry I messed up the treatment, sir. I know you worked very hard on it."

The doctor rolled his eyes. "The only person damaged by you not taking your meds is you, sergeant. Anyway, come and sit down. I always get a crick in my neck trying to treat you." He turned to Tara and gave her a brief, thorough look up and down. "Anything major I can't see, young woman? Apart from the burn on your cheek and the bruises?"

Tara's hand went up to her face, remembered the blue flash, and the faint sizzle in the air. She'd forgotten that somehow, with everything else going on. "No, that's it." Nothing else apart from being dead, anyway.

"Fine." The doctor waved for a medic, who had come into the room behind them, towing a tray of instruments that floated behind her. "Norwood, you fix this young lady up, if you will." He pointed to the couch. "And the sergeant here will lie down and let me take some tests, and put her drip in, and not twitch around and bitch about how bored she is for once."

A faint smile twitched at Taura's lip. The first since they'd been found by the Dendarii, thought Tara. "I don't bitch, sir. We in the Dendarii never bitch. Against company policy."

The doctor snorted. "As far as I can tell, no-one here ever stops."

Tara let herself be led to one side, noticing out of the corner of her eye that the trooper at the door was following her with his stunner. I suppose it's kind of flattering to be considered more of a threat than Taura, if I want to look at it that way. Norwood pointed her to a chair, and once she had sat down, tilted her head to one side.

"You guys found me real fast," Taura said, from behind her. " I suppose I didn't hide my trail very well."

Kimura laughed, "Sarge, you couldn't have been more traceable with a flashing light strapped to your head." Norwood give a little amused snort of agreement, as she ran what seemed to be a small light over the burn on Tara's cheek. "You're eight feet tall with fangs," continued Kimura cheerfully, "and anyone who pisses you off winds up in hospital. Plus, when you got to Bathory there were so many crims with guns charging around in your wake, it's a miracle there hasn't been a traffic jam." He leaned back against the wall and grinned, "Except that the bad guys' ship seem to have been wrecked."

Tara opened her mouth to explain about the pirate ship, then thought better of it. "Hold still," said Norwood. The burn on her cheek grew warm.

Kimura looked at Taura and shook her head. "We were late to the party, ladies, even though the Admiral ran us at max speed all the way across six wormholes. The only reason we got to you first is we didn't stop to try and shoot up anyone else. Even when we spotted the Pelete."

"And then it went 'boom!'" anyway, said Norwood, grinning. "Made our day."

"No loss," agreed Taura, her lips rippling into a terrifying snarl. "Slavers. And gene traders."

"With a bit of pirating on the side," agreed Kimura. "Bad boys all round. If we could think of a way to mark that as a kill for the Dendarii, without getting into any complicated explanations with the Bathorian authorities, we could claim a very nice little bounty."

"I don't see why you can't claim it," Tara spoke, surprising herself. She'd planned to keep her mouth firmly shut. "Taura's your sergeant." Norwood gave her an amused look, and applied a gel to the burn.

Taura shook her head, "I deserted. So I'm not technically a Dendarii officer right now."

"Hmm," Kimura steepled her fingertips together. "The Admiral hasn't actually cashiered you, yet, Sergeant. You're still officially AWOL."

Tara brightened. "And being kidnapped by a bunch of pirates is a very good reason for her not to have made it back to base.."

"Apart from the whole part where Sergeant Taura was travelling away from her base when this kidnap took place." Kimura pointed a finger. "I don't think the Admiral can be bribed into letting that one drop."

"No," Taura hung her head.

"We're all looking forward to hearing exactly how you crashed an entire ship from your prison cell, though." Kimura's grin took in the other three Dendarii in the room, "Sergeant Taura here gave the Admiral the short version when we were coming up from planetside - what was it... oh yeah, 'We broke out of our cell, and there was a hull breech. We ejected in a lifeboat pod.'"

Everyone in the room grinned, and looked expectant.

"Let's just say they didn't count on Tara," said Taura, her lips curving again, this time into something distinctively wolfish. "She fixed them."

Four sets of coolly assessing eyes swivelled to look at her. Tara blushed.

"And in an hour or so you get to explain all about that to Admiral Quinn." said Kimura, "I'm sure she'll be interested." Then her head came up, "Hey, we're stopping. What's happening?" She strode to some kind of communicator on the wall, and started an urgent conversation, then looked up, "Well, shit. We're being blockaded. Who knew the Bathorians could be that damn speedy?"

Quinn sat at the comconsole, hesitated a moment, and then flicked the button. She had a very brief, very expensive window of opportunity for a face to face talk with her ex-Admiral. A long shot of Miles appeared briefly on screen, and then he disappeared to one side. She gazed at the picture of an empty seat being beamed to her console, and thought briefly about the past. A little thing like being blockaded by a pissed-off local administration wouldn't have stopped Admiral Naismith. But Miles wasn't Naismith anymore, and never could be. She was the Admiral and he'd been swallowed up by the demands of Barrayar, where he was a very big Barrayar cheese, with an Imperial Auditor's pips to prove it. Though that hadn't stopped him chewing his nails, she noticed, or put a stop to his habit of pacing manically around the room when he was tense about something.

She heard a tactful cough on the other end of the broadcast. Some crewman, letting his Lord know that the connection had finally been made. Miles scrambled into the shot, dumping himself heavily into the chair.

"Quinn? What's the latest?"

"We've found her, sir."

"Great!" Miles beamed, and then he hesitated. "That is to say, I hope it's great. How is she?"

"She's surprisingly good. I'll have Doctor Depalma's report for you soon, but from a non-expert point of view, I can say that she's still extremely active. Vigorous, even. She's been out on her own less three weeks, and she's already smashed a smuggling ring; she's uncovered a corrupt official in the Bathorian space authority; and she's destroyed the Pelete, which is crewed by some of the nastiest people this side of Jackson's Whole. All before we even managed to catch up with her."

"Ah, said Miles, "well, good. I'm glad. Sounds like she's got some, er restlessness out of her system." He cocked his head, one eyebrow raised, "And is she ready to come back to Beta now? It's really becoming quite difficult to persuade the doctors here at the clinic to keep a place open on their schedules. They're used to patients clamouring at their doors, rather than running to the other side of the galaxy to get away from them. The Director seem to be taking it rather personally."

"Ah we have a bit of a problem there, sir. Well two, actually. For one thing, Taura is still determined not to go to Beta - she wants to go to that wacky place on Margulis Station that's built in a crater. And for another, the Bathorian authorities are determined that we shouldn't leave their local space. At least without delivering Taura - and her new friend - to them first. We have two battleships in front of us, and several warheads pointing our way from the surface. "

"Tricky," said Miles, mildly.

"Just a little," admitted Quinn, "but hopefully I'll think of something."

"I could send out a few feelers ... actually, no - I don't have any favours to call in on Bathory. No one in their right mind goes there. The Embassy may be able to help, though."

Quinn sighed. "As a last resort, sir. I don't really want anyone wondering why Barrayar is so keen to help a Dendarii ship."

Miles nodded, and he doodled on the pad in front of him. "So," he said casually, "Tell me more about Taura's new friend."

Quinn leaned back in her seat. "Tara - one letter different to Taura, which they both seem to think is cute." She made a face, and Miles grinned for a moment. "Second name, Maclay. I've no real idea who she is, despite sending a ret scan and a swab of her blood to the ImpSec office while we were still on the surface. So far all they've told me is that she appears to be a healthy human female, genetically unimproved, id not registered." She flicked a switch, and Tara's picture came up on screen. Miles gazed at her, interested.

"Which means," Quinn continued, "that she comes from some backward dirtball somewhere - such as Barrayar, for example - which has not yet fully embraced the galactic wide web. Apparently she was a fellow prisoner on the pirate ship. Which inconveniently is now in tiny pieces, sir, with no records remaining or crew available to us to interrogate."

"I expect Taura got annoyed," said Miles absently. "She's very opposed to the whole slavery concept, especially when applied to herself." He gazed critically at the picture of Tara, who had been snapped with a blanket wrapped round her and a gel bandage on one cheek, looking very pale and shocky. It was look he recognised. But then, a spaceship crash would do that to you - assuming it didn't just blow you into little pieces, that is. "She doesn't look anything out of the ordinary."

"Apparently, she's absolutely amazing." Quinn grinned, and leaned back in her seat. She was starting to enjoy this. "From what Sergeant Taura tells me, at least. According to her, Tara is a witch, and her spirit guide. Apparently she can make light, and she can also burn holes through reinforced security doors, all with the power of her mind. That's how they got out of their cell."

Miles' eyebrows were climbing up toward his hairline. "Elli..."

"And when I asked the young lady in question just how she could make light and burn through doors, she blushed and looked modest, and said she was only a very minor witch, but she had a few powers - and they seemed to have become more powerful since she died."

Miles' brows had drawn together. "Is she delusional, or is she playing some game we don't know the rules of yet?"

Quinn held up her hands. "No penta, so no guarantees, but from my experience I'd say she was entirely earnest. And Taura believes it too - they've bonded big time. Of course it seems they were both drugged with something very nasty from the Pelete's pharmacoepia at the time - Taura certainly was. I've ordered medical tests on both of them to try and find out what."

Miles stared at Tara's picture again. "How convenient that Taura should meet a spirit guide just when she was looking for one."

Quinn nodded. "And of course she thinks meeting this Tara woman is a sign that she's on the right path."

Miles rubbed his forehead. "I can see it would be rather hard to argue her out of that idea. Especially if this Maclay woman is reinforcing it every which way she can."

"And anyway, questioning others' religious beliefs is contrary to the Dendarii Fleet Equality and Diversity Policy," said Quinn, smiling blandly.

"Introduced by me in my idealistic stage. You needn't remind me, Ellie, damn you." Miles tapped his fingers on the console, "Well, you need to sort out this little local impasse with the Bathorians, and I need to find out more about this Miss Tara Maclay, and what's she running from. Where does she say she's from?"

"She's from Earth," said Quinn, "Old Earth, that is. Due to the whole 'being a ghost from another time' thing."

Miles raised an eyebrow. "Couldn't you do better than that, Quinn?"

Quinn shrugged. "She's chosen her story and she's sticking to it. And besides, every time I so much as raise my voice to her, the sergeant starts growling at me. It's very off-putting. And before you ask - no, I can't separate them, They're attached at the hip. But not girlfriends, apparently." Quinn shrugged, leaning back in her chair. "Despite the fact that blondie there was sitting on Taura's lap at this point, and I'd bet good money they're screwing like bunnies right now in their cabin."

Miles blinked, and shifted uncomfortably. "Ah, I see. Or rather I don't see. But fast penta is sounding more attractive by the second." He waved his hand irritably as Quinn's mouth opened. "I know, I know - we have no grounds, and besides Taura would kill someone." He wrote a few notes on the page in front of him. "Send me a recording. I'll find a lingual expert here. And light a fire under Imp Sec." He stared at Tara's picture again. "She has something to hide, and we're going to find out what it is."