Chapter Eleven
Finding a way out from under
Ten long years under ImpSec's thumb. Ten year before Captain Illyan, the Barry ImpSec Chief who never forgot, finally slipped up. I was on the Beëlphazoar's bridge, practicing my cover identity as Emma Squill, ship's ops officer, when the youngest ImpSec liaison I'd ever had, Corporal Aral Sholokov, finally emerged from his cabin half an hour after receiving an eyes-only ultracoded message. His face was white.
"It's happened again," he'd whispered. "I'm being recalled, orders direct from Illyan himself." And you're blowing your cover, I'd silently added.
"You," Sholokov had continued, "will proceed to Vervain orbit and dock with our emergency courier ship, get me aboard, then wait for my relief. Don't contact anybody." He added plenty of details later, but that summed it up.
From time to time Angelfish had managed to tap the liaison's comconsole and flash me excerpts of interest on my ship ops monitor, somehow shielded from ImpSec's sensors. I guess Sholokov forgot to blank his comconsole display after deciphering Captain Illyan's ultracoded message. Probably his wits got scrambled by reading that the Emperor had vanished during a state visit to Komarr, and that every available ImpSec operative should rush there immediately.
Did Sholokov's "again" mean the so-called Komarr Kidnapping, when Greg claimed he'd walked out of the compound right under ImpSec's nose, had actually happened the way he'd claimed? Or, more likely, that the young ImpSec officer had never been briefed on the real story? He wasn't old enough to have been in ImpSec when I'd acquired the AWOL Greg. Or thought I'd acquired him.
ImpSec Headquarters Com's standard-encoded message canceling Illyan's orders arrived a day later, no doubt delayed by the wait for the next available Jumpship nexus-to-nexus relay. Angelfish slipped me one glimpse at its decoded subject heading. I guess the C and I crypto tech saw the tiny shake of my head from his station across the bridge, because the cancellation message vanished from the com system.
That sleep-shift I briefed Angelfish. I mean, I tried to; Doc Felltu's Ryoval-template upgrade of my C-implant was having an unwanted side effect.
I began by tongue-tapping on Angelfish's Rod of Aaron, "FAK IMPSC MSSG CHNG TO ASTRON SRVY SHP VRVN PER VGOROV THN REMOV SHL — " At this point the physical sensations involved with my communication method convulsed me with pleasure, interrupting my ability to compose in code for several minutes. No Two Hands required.
Then I locked lips with Angelfish and tried to continue, tongue-to-tongue, "REMOV SHLKV IN CURIR AIRLOK — " That attempt ended in another pleasure-convulsion. Angelfish entered me then to signal, "YES NU SHP THN KIL BARRYS," with equally predicable results. We need to work out a new system, I thought, once I'd settled down. This is too distracting.
I'd told Angelfish enough, despite my distractions. Twelve hours later, one of Sholokov's coded messages, apparently direct from Captain Illyan, authorized the purchase of a new ship upon the Gee-Dee's emergence in the Vervain system.
The new ship would be suitable for executing the wormhole exploration proposal outlined in the Vorgorov Memo, which see. This was step one of yet another identity-change, it stated. Further details would follow.
Actually, Captain Illyan had vetoed ImpSec liaison Viktor Vorgorov's memo by return message, likely because it would have put me out of direct contact with ImpSec for up to a year. It was before Sholokov's time, but the original memo had remained in the liaison's permanent files. It proposed using my unemployable forces to explore certain blind multi-wormhole Jumps out of the Komarr system.
Okay, here's the background: The First Escobaran Survey Astronomico Trans-Komarr Expedition had discovered the five wormhole Jump route to the lost Barrayar colony. The Second, launched immediately after retreating Ceta forces departed Komarr space, had never returned. The Third Expedition went looking for the Second and had the bad luck to re-emerge in Komarr space during the Barry's prep for the invasion of Escobar. From its crew ImpSec had extracted about a dozen multi-wormhole Jump routes to nowhere, and two other promising routes the Escobarans had barely explored before they ran out of supplies. There hadn't been any Fourth expedition. Vorgorov suggested that the Barrys, specifically ImpSec, launch its own secret expedition before the Escobarans found a loophole around the Barry's wormhole exploration embargo.
The Escobarans had this theory: Whatever undetectable cosmic event had shifted some wormhole-link into Barrayar's system was spreading at the speed of light. It had likely caused other wormholes within its growing radius to switch star loci later on, or at least to waver in their linkages for a while. A hypothetical nexus predicted by the Escobarans might — might — have lost one such wormhole link shortly after the Second Expedition's lone ship emerged from it. Then it may have acquired a new link to a different wormhole thirty or forty years later and thirty or forty light-years distant . . .
Sholokov's acknowledgement of Illyan's order to rush to Komarr never got past the ship's com cabin; by then his communications with ImpSec — with anybody at all — were fully under Angelfish's control. I supposed Angelfish could keep ImpSec Headquarters fooled only until his doctored messages started arriving through the wrong series of nexus-to-nexus message Jumpships. Meaning shortly after we reached Vervain.
On the other hand, something strange was going on at ImpSec, so maybe Captain Illyan wouldn't notice? Angelfish flashed me another high-priority message from Illyan, before he made it go away, demanding my "voluntary" help in a secret search for Admiral Naismith, who'd mysteriously vanished while on Jackson's Whole. I'd gotten an identical message two years earlier.
That crisis had ended the day before we finished our multiple Jumps across half the known galaxy to Jackson's Whole orbit. I was left with no job my ImpSec liaison would approve except a convoy-escort contract, and so Jump-fatigued that the Nemesis and Viking's Gift barely managed the rendezvous with the other Escobar-bound ships. No one knew what had happened to the Yo-Yo. Sometimes ships take a wormhole Jump to Hell. On the other hand, I'd acquired Doc Felltu while orbiting Jackson's Whole.
This time Headquarters Com recalled Illyan's out-of-date order a few items later in the same message bundle. Angelfish made sure the order and recall didn't reach Sholokov, of course. After that, no messages from Captain Illyan, even the most routine, arrived at all.
As the Beëlphazoar approached Vervain space, Sholokov started tightbeam negotiations with a certain disreputable shipyard's owner, a Mr. Nixon, operating in that system's asteroid belt. Yeah, the same shipyard that had handled the Golden Leaper's identity-change to the Nemesis. After several back-and-forths with the 'yard, he offered me a choice of two available ships, making quite clear which one he wanted me to choose: A bankrupt private consortium's long-abandoned blind wormhole survey vessel, suitable for extended missions far from civilized space.
I agreed, while acting real reluctant. It took all my willpower to keep from drooling. A survey vessel able to operate out of ImpSec's reaches for almost a year? Hot damn.
Sholokov also alerted the local ImpSec two-person courier Jumpship to prepare for departure for a secret destination, without filing any flight plan. I guess Barrayar still had enough pull with the Vervaini for ImpSec to get away with that one.
I wheedled Sholokov into agreeing that the new identity-change called for more than a hair dye job; he approved putting Doc Felltu's biosculpting skills to use on me immediately following the ship changeover.
Sholokov finished arranging a payment-on-completion contract for the survey vessel's retrofitting and re-commissioning just hours before he was to board the tiny ImpSec courier. His final orders to me were to stay aboard the Beëlphazoar and maintain com silence until his relief arrived to oversee the changeover.
The young officer gravely shook my hand, turned and floated through the airlock into the transfer flextube, followed by a trooper he'd requisitioned to carry his non-classified luggage. There came a faint fupp and Sholokov spasmed and went limp. Yeah, Doing Unto Sholokov.
It was the first I'd seen a death I'd ordered, if not carried out myself, in ten long years. I was so busy savoring the moment that I was barely able to track the trooper continuing past the corpse into the courier ship's open airlock.
I just managed to catch the echo of a single gasp followed by two more fupps. Hey, I had to waste the courier's Jump pilot. She was ImpSec's Jump pilot; no knowing what she might have tried to pull.
Angelfish appeared by my side then, asking if I was all right. I managed a few words about everything being just wonderful. He nodded towards the back of the ship and drew three fingers across his throat. ImpSec must have had a third sleeper in the crew.
A bit later the trooper — "Yarrow," another member of the C and I deep-penetration team — showed me the hand-made weapon that had done in Sholokov. A compressed-gas job, it shot up to twelve tiny plastic pellets coated with a very potent, very short-lived neurotoxin. Something originally from House Fell that Doc Felltu had cooked up almost under Sholokov's nose, and without asking Angelfish any awkward questions either. The pellet had to touch skin within a half-second of being fired. The device didn't even look much a gun, and had an effective range of just eight meters.
After Angelfish drained the courier ship's comconsole of whatever he safely could on short notice, we sealed it up and created a convincing imitation of its casting off. Then the Beëlphazoar proceeded to the shipyard to oversee the "new" ship's renovation and re-commissioning.
As Sholokov's supposed second I told Dockmaster Nixon that the ImpSec liaison was indisposed, so I was supervising in his place. Angelfish had crafted a sickbay comconsole message to prove it. I offered a hefty bonus for early fulfillment.
The "new" ship's refitting proceeded with satisfying dispatch. The ship acquired a name, Deep Ranger, Captain and Owner-of-Record one Steffie DuBois. Under the shipyard owner's willing expertise, aided by Sholokov's data files, the Ranger also acquired authentic-seeming registration documents and a previous history. These included an alias-shrouded consortium financing another Komarran Wormhole expedition — as a front for a supposed ImpSec project with an encoded no-questions-asked security classification Angelfish had pried out of the courier ship comconsole's data-dump.
Angelfish also used a suitably modified ImpSec request form to make Vervain's ImpSec ops insert the documents into various ship registry databases, again no questions asked.
As the deadline neared for Sholokov to report in at a Jump station somewhere else, I announced that news had come of a Cetagandan military convoy heading for the Vervain system at flank speed, with an ETA of just under a week. Old-timers who thought ImpSec still ran the show — and I hadn't indicated otherwise, yet — assumed the news came from it; newer recruits assumed my C and I analyst had performed another miracle.
I'd made up the whole thing, of course, to justify a round-the-clock joint effort by the Gee-Dees and the dockyard workers to transfer personal belongings, vital equipment and the more up-to-date armaments from the Beëlphazoar to the Deep Ranger, ASAP.
Most everyone was dead tired when I lead the deep-penetration team into the drydock's admin deck wardroom to present Nixon and his top three officers with the early completion bonus. Making a bit of a thank-you ceremony, I'd told him over the comconsole vid.
The four of them looked a bit puzzled by my party of low-echelon ship officers and enlisted men spreading out among them, but their eyes lit up and focused on the golden diskette I pulled from a blouse pocket as I launched into my speech. That's when Angelfish, Yarrow, Raindrop and Yeevoil hit them with fast-penta hyposprays.
The dockmaster's Exec went into fatal anaphylactic shock; the rest struggled for twenty or thirty seconds, then sagged into cheerful idiocy, except for the occasional flicker of horror in their eyes. That also faded, and my team set about extracting from them the passwords, procedures and overrides for draining every Betan dollar, every form on monetary value at all, from the dockyard's various accounts.
The haul included a canister of unmarked Escobaran specie that the team discovered only after they asked Nixon if the dead Exec had engaged in any unusual behavior, such as solo spacewalks using only certain airlocks. She had, all right. The Exec very likely had some connection or other with House Hargraves or House Dyne of Jackson's Whole, Nixon cheerfully conceded when asked. That probably explained the specie.
My team also drained the Dockmaster of everything he knew about his staff's ability in self-defense, which wasn't much. I waited until Angelfish confirmed that the team had successfully transferred every monetary account to my diskette before I indulged in Doing Unto Nixon and his two remaining administrators. What fun.
The mopping up of the exhausted dock crew tricking into their dorm modules I left to the deep-penetration team. But I supervised the team's placement of remote-triggered thermite grenades throughout the dock's pressurized modules, and I pressed the button as the system's sun occulted Vervain. The stripped Beëlphazoar, boosting on automatics, headed out on a collision course with the nearest gas giant.
Before heading for the Hegen Hub, I had the Deep Ranger retrieve and magnetically grapple the courier Jumpship. Then I had Angelfish and Yeevoil disarm the courier ship's anti-tampering and anti-hijack systems and drain every last datum from its comconsole, which they finished just before Deep Ranger Jumped to the Hegen Hub. ImpSec's no-flight-plan understanding with Vervain's Wormhole Traffic controllers allowed me to pass without official notice or awkward inquiries.
In Pol space, somehow Angelfish convinced the local ImpSec ops team to induce a temporary Deep Ranger-sized blind spot in the Jump station's Wormhole Traffic computers. Then came the Jump into Komarr space.
Komarr was the tough one. ImpSec constantly monitored Komarr space for potentially hostile Jumpship activity, and the system's Wormhole Traffic controller might be less ready than Vervain's to automatically honor an embedded you-never-saw-this clearance from a ship headed for a blind wormhole. I gave my Jump-lagged crew little time for recovery upon emergence, ordering the Ranger to boost for the uncharted wormhole at flank speed.
Komarr Station's Wormhole Traffic controller tried to give me an argument, something about a ship due from Barrayar having priority. Deep Rangers' com countered with a request to re-check its registry, which should have triggered another embedded, ask-no-questions mission clearance Angelfish had found, this one authorized by Captain Illyan himself. I figured that was safe enough, since by then this Acting ImpSec Chief Haroche was issuing orders over standard ImpSec com channels and ignoring the dedicated com connection used by my puppet masters. Likely Captain Illyan was no longer in a position to be questioned about any unquestionable security classifications.
But Kormarr control replied to the request with a curse-laden description of the dangers of a collision with the carefully unnamed Barrayaran vessel.
Angelfish invoked a second mission endorsement mouthed by Sholokov's electronic ghost as the Jump pilots frantically recalculated 5-space vectors and other factors I don't pretend to understand that were changing second by second as the Ranger neared her goal.
The messages flew back and forth until the last minute, when a huge mass bulged from a neighboring wormhole's throat a mere 50,000 kilometers distant — the Prince Serg, the tactical comp deduced later — and the harried controller (with a final, frantic, "What d'you mean, 'This never happened?'" aside to some unknown party) let me pass.
Brain-strained-through-the-'brane time.
(C) 2007, Luminator Thelms