It had not been a good week, Ivan decided after much deliberation. Then again, weeks spent in the company of Miles rarely were. Interesting, yes. Completely chaotic, yes. Sedate? Not likely. The only time that Miles was ever even remotely still was when he was unconscious and that was only in comparison to his natural state. Simon Illyan's assessment of him was all too true. And whenever Miles got into trouble lately, who was it that had to extract him from it? None other then his long-suffering cousin Ivan. Which was why he was covered in mud and feeling very sorry for himself. His one consolation was that Miles was also sharing his discomfit, though judging by the manic grin he wore, he was ignoring it for more pressing concerns. Namely the disruptor shots being fired over their ditch.
Ivan moaned softly. It wasn't fair! His mother had told him 'Take Miles out, he's being a little….difficult.' Ivan correctly interpreted this as meaning 'The little snot's getting underfoot again, so get him out of here before someone kills him,' and attempted to do so with alacrity. Unfortunately, Miles had not been so co-operative. He had insisted that ….whatever he was doing, was infinitely more important then him going out. Ivan, empowered by the might of right, or at the very least, the implicit support of his mother, had merely picked up the squirming Miles and carried him to the lightflyer. Miles, who had not been impressed by the recent turn of events, had attempted every tactic he knew to break free. Ivan was vaguely worried that he'd break something, the way he was carrying on. He contemplated a sedative, then decided against it, as Miles tended to be somewhat ingenious when someone had annoyed him royally, and sedating him was a good way of ensuring his annoyance.
Having finally managed to get Miles in the lightflyer, Ivan slammed the door shut and started the launch sequence. Miles glared at him, reproach in his grey eyes. Ivan smirked at him and finished the sequence. The lightflyer started to move, slowly at first, then faster, gaining speed and lift under its wings. The nose bobbled for momentarily, then stabilized in an upwards trajectory, a direction that the rest of the plane seemed to follow. Once it was off the ground, Ivan turned back around to Miles.
"And what was that for?" Miles asked, raising an eyebrow and folding his arms. "What have I done to you lately?" Ivan frowned as he mentally called up a list of recent misdemeanors toward him. It was quite an impressive list.
"Define lately," he replied, folding his arms. Miles rolled his eyes.
"It was a rhetorical question," he pointed out dryly. "The type where you don't expect an answer." Ivan repressed a sigh. He was well aware of what 'rhetorical' meant. This insistance of people assume he was moronic, while frequently useful, could get tiring after a while. It was especially annoying when Miles did it.
"Milady mother has decreed that you are an annoyance best removed from her presence before she hires assassins, so I was co-opted into this," he explained absently, keeping an eye on the screen as he flew the aircraft. While the autopilot was adequate, sometimes it wasn't as responsive as he would have liked. "Other then summon Aunt Cordelia from council, I had to drag you out. Hence the kidnapping." Ivan shrugged. "Surely it's not as bad as all that?" Miles scowled.
"I was in the middle of something," he replied somewhat petulantly. Ivan was unimpressed. Miles frequently had temper tantrums. They got boring after a year or two.
"You always interrupt me in the middle of something," Ivan pointed out reasonably. Miles' scowl deepened.
"Yeah, but it's different," he replied. Ivan failed to see the distinction, and said as much. Miles rolled his eyes and replied with "It just is." Ivan could tell a dead subject when he saw it. There was an awkward silence that seemed to stretch for an eternity.
"So, what do you think of Anna Vorrokson?" Ivan asked brightly in an effort to break the tension. Miles' eyebrows reached his hairline.
"Of whom?" he asked in bewilderment.
"Anna!" Ivan replied. "You know, the girl at Gregor's last ball. Her?" Miles frowned.
"Ivan, all of the Vor were there. I need more details."
"You know, the girl with the hair," Ivan gestured in a vague way to his head, "and the face and the body?" Miles looked dubious.
"Most girls I know fit that description," he pointed out dryly. "I have a suspicion that girls in general fit that description, to be honest." Ivan sighed. How else could he describe her? Shrugging, he glanced back at the panel. He hissed in a breath and frowned at the display.
There was another lightflyer flying too close for comfort. Miles, seeing his look of consternation, stood up and propped his head over Ivan's shoulder. Ivan started to pitch the plane to the left when he felt Miles' hand tighten painfully on his shoulder.
"Roll it," he said shortly, removing his hand from Ivan's shoulder. Ivan waited until he was reasonably sure that Miles was strapped in and then rolled the flyer sharply. He blinked rapidly as the blood rushed to his head and continued the spin, pitching to the right as he did so. When the flyer righted itself, he glanced at the display. Their tailer was still there, hovering just inside their sensors. If this were any other lightflyer, it would be outside the range of influence, but this one had been specially crafted for Lord Vorkosigan when Ivan was about twelve, a fact that Ivan was extremely grateful of at the moment.
"Why'd you tell me to do that for?" he protested to where he knew Miles would be sitting. "What did that achieve?"
"The pilot thinks we're Vor brats on a joyride," Miles replied. Even though Ivan couldn't see him, he could hear Miles' smirk in the tone of his voice. "And so we're going to maintain that illusion." Ivan thought that through.
"Two problems," he pointed out, counting on his fingers. "One, we have no idea what the pilot's doing, but chances are it's nothing we'll like, and two, we can't escape him by mucking around." There was a pregnant pause. Ivan swore. "No! We agreed that you'd never do that again!"
"Pass me the controls, Ivan," Miles replied calmly. Ivan shook his head.
"Not likely! Does it look like I have a death wish?" Ivan blurted. "No, don't answer that one." The flyer beeped insistently, the proximity light illuminating the dashboard. Ivan glanced at the display again. The unknown flyer had flown awfully close to them, which was rather disconcerting. He sighed and passed control to Miles. As he caught a glimpse of what Miles was programming into the plane, he groaned slightly and closed his eyes. This was not going to be pretty.
*
As the plane pulled out of a stalled barrel roll, Ivan opened his eyes enough to recognize the ground coming toward them very quickly. He swore again and snatched a glimpse at Miles. He looked to be having the time of his life, teeth bared and fingers moving frantically over the controls, eyes flicking over the instruments. He pulled the plane out of the descent a bare four thousand feet above ground and yawed the plane to the right. Their pursuer mimicked their movements exactly. Ivan appreciated the skill it took to mimic Miles. Generally it took a death wish, or an incredible sense of your own invincibility. He wasn't exactly sure which motivated Miles. Probably a mixture of the two.
He looked down at the display and made an incoherent noise of panic. Miles ignored it, absorbed in the flickering lights of the avionics equipment. The lights were strangely hypnotic, when you thought about it.
"Miles," Ivan hissed urgently. "There's a second one!" Miles' head whipped toward him, eyes wide and teeth bared in a grimace.
"Where?" he demanded, taking his eyes off the equipment momentarily. Unfortunately, Ivan wasn't able to tell him, as it clipped the left wing, removing a medium sized portion of it. The flyer started to spiral sharply to the left, falling rapidly as it did so. Miles tried to force the plane to turn to the right, but the controls responded sluggishly and the plane continued to fall.
"Tighten your straps, you idiot!" Ivan yelled, noticing for the first time that Miles' restraints were rather loose. Miles gave up on attempting to control the landing and tightened the straps.
"Brace for impact!" Miles yelled in return. Ivan was unimpressed by this, even while completely terrified. He knew very well that they were going to hit the ground; there was no need to tell him as much. He loosened his straps and turned around to Miles, mouth open to say something approximating this when the plane hit the ground.
*
"You idiot, Ivan," was the first thing Ivan heard as he regained consciousness. Ivan moaned, more in protest at the comment then about the concussion that he was sure he had. He opened his eyes and squinted at Miles' concerned face from the floor. "Why did you loosen your straps for?"
Ivan doubted that replying 'because I wanted to yell abuse at you' was the correct answer. Neither was 'they were tight before we crashed, they must have loosened on the impact.' He contemplated shrugging, but realized that would jostle his head too much. "I don't know," he replied finally. Miles sighed in frustration, running his hand through his hair and pushing it into disarray. This, in combination with his meager height, made him look like a demented pixie, and Ivan snickered at the mental image. Judging from Miles' expression, he sounded completely and utterly insane. Which from Miles was saying a lot. Ivan swallowed his laughter and looked at Miles soberly.
"You hurt? Who knocked us out of the sky?" he asked. Miles shrugged eloquently, a liquid gesture that only a sixteen year old boy could do.
"No, and don't know. And, before you ask, we're somewhere in the Dendarii mountains. Where, exactly, I can't say," Miles replied shortly. He turned away from Ivan and started fiddling with something, its details obscured from Ivan's vision by Miles' back.
"Hang on a second," Ivan protested, propping himself on his elbows. He closed his eyes against a wave of dizziness. Definitely a concussion. "We have a navigation system onboard." Miles made an incoherent noise. "We did have one….Miles, what have you done?"
"It was already broken!" Miles protested. "I just…made something else out of it." Ivan raised an eyebrow. "It's a transmitter, sending a signal at a certain frequency that only I use. Someone will pick it up, then all they have to do is track it. Easy."
Ivan groaned. Whenever Miles said something was 'easy' it generally meant that it was absolute chaos. In fact, he was struggling to remember a time when that wasn't the case. He came up empty handed.
"Anyway, we have to get out of here," Miles pointed out. "The pilots of the lightflyers will be down shortly and we can't stay here." Ivan knew that. It was just that he really couldn't be bothered to get up at the moment. Miles sighed, reached under Ivan's chair and pulled out the medical kit. He pulled out a hypospray and injected it into Ivan's neck. Ivan glared at him for that.
"Now, move!" Miles demanded, eyes blazing. Ivan winced. He was going to make either a great leader, a hellish one, or all of the above. He pushed himself to his feet in a series of stages, then staggered gracelessly after Miles. He stole a glance back at their lightflyer and winced at the damage. Lord Vorkosigan was not going to be happy when he heard that he and Miles had completely ruined his lightflyer. He gazed in mingled awe and horror at the crumpled nose, his brain chanting 'You were in that.' Shivering, he turned away and continued walking.