"And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgment of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song"
--The Who, Won't Get Fooled Again

*

With the departure of the grim Vorkosigan armsmen, the surreal composition of Naismith's rescue party became even more obvious. The only proper Barrayaran in the lot was now Gregor's man Vandyke, who eyed his dubious companions with paranoid vigilance.

In Taura's arms the Emperor seemed the size of a child, breathing slowly, face nearly relaxed. Looking almost maternal in her own fierce way, the sergeant shifted her grip to better support his head. Naismith paced unconsciously back and forth, biting his lip, counting the seconds slipping away in his head.

Finally Gregor's eyes snapped open. They closed in a wince, and then opened more slowly. He stared at Taura's neck and uniformed cleavage in severe confusion.

"Hullo, Sire." Naismith said. While he sounded pleased, or at least pleased with himself, the strain in his voice was noticeable.

"You," Gregor's exquisitely cultured Barrayaran voice murmured as he finished his bemused examination of Taura, "are not my wife." Laisa's heart rose. Mindful of appearances, she suppressed the ridiculous grin that threatened to overtake her features.

Galeni was less sentimental, staring at the screen in frustrated impotence. "Naismith should get him out now." he said under his breath. "Idiot. He needs to stop treating this like a game."

Naismith jerked his head at Taura. The sergeant set the Emperor down and sat on the floor, reducing the conversation to a more human scale. Gregor' armsman Vandyke moved to subtly prop him up, sending a cold look Taura's way.

He doesn't look well, Laisa thought. She didn't say it, not with all eyes in the room upon him. A quiet fear rose in her again through the euphoria. He's not safe yet. The Emperor was the symbol of the Imperium's unity and could not afford to show any weakness.

Looking up at Gregor, Naismith bit his lip again. "How do you feel, Sire?"

"To be honest…very ill." Putting a hand on Vandyke's shoulder to steady himself, Gregor studied the room, his expression and bearing becoming markedly more formal as he noticed Fazliu. His brow furrowed at the sight of the armored medic. She, in turn, looked to Naismith for guidance.

"Could this be a side-effect…?" Naismith asked.

"Of the psoroxate? Shouldn't be." the medic said.

"Do you remember if anybody injected you or administered anything else to you?" the admiral asked urgently.

"It's all a bit unclear…" Gregor said. "They were using sonic weapons to disorient when they shot their way in." He hesitated, frowning. "I think I was stunned."

"Ah." Naismith's lip twitched. "You should have said,"

"What?"

"Yeah, that's perfectly normal. Let me get you some synergine." The glint in Naismith's eyes suggested he was perilously close to laughter. The admiral shook his head as he sorted through the medic's hastily confiscated kit. "You've never been stunned?"

"Curiously," the Emperor said distantly, receiving the ampule from the Admiral and injecting himself, "this sort of thing only tends to happens to me when you're around." His color began to return after a few short seconds. "Naismith, where is my wife?"

"I have no idea," the Admiral said. At Gregor's stare he added, "Really! I don't. She's not in here."

"You seem to have drafted every other woman in the building," the Emperor said, not entirely approving. "Miles, isn't this lady on the other side?"

"Uh, this is Voahirana. And Gita Fazliu. You know Taura."

"I know Dr. Fazliu as well," Gregor said. "You didn't answer my question."

"Piotr cut a deal with the mercenaries to get the hostages out," Naismith said, "which brings us down to less than a dozen Komarrans we need to deal with. Once we get you out of the building, we can smash them."

"Komarrans?"

"Obis, Moretti, and a few of their friends."

"Ah." Gregor winced. "Where is Piotr?"

"He's holed up in Father's quarters, nursing a head wound."

"May I go, sir?" the medic asked Naismith quietly.

"Yes," he said. She vanished down the hall. Naismith looked bleakly at Taura, suddenly strung with tension again. "Sire, if you're up for it, you need to keep moving. I'll be going back for Father, even if it's too late."

Gregor waved a hand in implied dismissal. As Taura squeezed out the door he considered Fazliu, brow wrinkled. "I still don't understand what you're…" His gaze slid down, and for a sudden vertiginous second Laisa felt he was staring right at her. "Naismith," he snapped.

The admiral ground to a halt at the door, his shoulders tensing under his dress greens. As he turned Laisa could sense the barely restrained fury behind his flat expression. "Sire," he said tonelessly, clearly in no mood for delay.

Gregor stepped closer to Fazliu, removing her necklace. The image swung around, integrating views from both the necklace and her earrings to create a fuller, more three-dimensional image. Fazliu herself was now visible, staring at the necklace as if unsure whether or not to protest its removal. It was strange to actually see her again.

"You are aware this is an actively recording holovid pickup?" Gregor asked. He betrayed no obvious emotion, but Laisa could tell that her husband was seriously displeased.

"Actually, no." Naismith said after a brief pause. "Really?"

Both men looked at Fazliu. She swallowed. "I didn't want him to drop it in the fountain like my comlink," she said. Watching her, Laisa suspected she was not telling the whole truth.

Gregor's eyebrows rose slightly. He glanced at the admiral.

"I did explain to her the importance of removing all transmission sources," he said. "Apparently not well enough!"

"It's just recording. It's not going anywhere," Fazliu said faintly as Gregor's stare settled back on her. "He had the studio computer banks shut down and the timeslot's long over anyway."

"Yeah, but they're on again. They had to be, for the… broadcast." Naismith's eyes widened. "Uh."

The Imperial gaze settled on him. "What, Miles?" Gregor said, with what Laisa thought was extraordinary patience under the circumstances.

Naismith's mouth moved as he thought things through. "There's a theoretical possibility, if I understand what Piotr was doing, that we might be live," he said with extreme reluctance.

Fazliu blanched at the thought. "I don't really think…"

Gregor's thumb found a control on the necklace, and he switched it off. The vid quality degraded horribly, and Fazliu vanished again. "This is really unacceptable, Naismith," the Emperor said. His displeasure was no longer understated.

Naismith rubbed the side of his nose with his fingers. He kept his voice level with effort, but he was obviously reaching the ragged edges of his patience. "Sire, can we have this conversation later? I need to be somewhere else right now."

Gregor was unamused. "Not before you explain—"

"Gita here can fill you in," Naismith cut in, mercilessly throwing his companion to the wolves. "She had a question for you. About lightbulbs." Whirling, he stormed out of the room before Gregor could say another word.

As the Emperor stared at the doorway in deep annoyance, Fazliu's olive-skinned hand reached for her earrings to remove them. The holovid began to decohere as she turned one off and flipped the other over, reaching for its switch.

The display suddenly cut out, and almost immediately thereafter the sounds of the abandoned office bay Gregor was in also vanished. All that remained was Naismith's fast, stressed breathing and the sound of his footsteps as he raced down a corridor.

Laisa heard the admiral growl something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like "yanking my chain…" His footsteps slowed. A muttered "aw, shit," and some unidentifiable rustling sounds followed

"What?" Taura queried.

"Nothing." Naismith's voice seemed quieter. There was a loud plink as something (a recording device?) bounced off a wall. The sound of the admiral's voice receded further, coming as if from a vast distance. There was a sick certainty in it, a knowledge that he would be too late. "We need to move faster…"

A very faint echo of massive footfalls could be heard and then silence. Laisa took a deep breath, and shared a glance with Galeni.

"Well," Duv said.

Without the Consulate broadcast in the background, the room seemed far too quiet. Aside from a few repaired consoles receiving fragmentary information from the orbital tightbeam, most of the screens and vid-plates in the room were blank. The intimate first-hand look at the rescue operation had provided Laisa with an illusion that she knew what was going on. Anything could be happening in there now, and there was nothing she could do about it.

The silence ate at her. Without information coming in, of course no orders could go out. She should have the world at her fingertips here, but instead she was flying blind.

Duv stared moodily at the display, similar thoughts perhaps going through his head.

"When Gregor gets out, will he be coming here?" she asked.

"He has a choice of safehouses," Duv said. "It's hard to say."

Laisa tapped her fingers on the blank display table, in lieu of fidgeting.

"Do you think they'll really kill Count Vorkosigan?" she asked.

Duv sighed. "Almost certainly. He may even consider it preferable to facing the political fallout." His eyes hooded. "Speaking from a security perspective, it might be."

She didn't know quite what to say to that.

It wasn't really a surprise when the display started working again. They'd been enslaved to its whims all night. She gave Duv a what-now look as an image resolved. It was the courtroom again. Had the Komarrans finally realized their show had no audience?

But no. Laisa recognized the calm male voice speaking over the broadcast in Barrayaran Russian. "That's Lord Vorkosigan," Duv said unnecessarily. "Giving orders to the hostage teams, I expect."

"Uh, he also says the Emperor's safely clear of the building, sir," a more multilingual lieutenant said.

"Thank you, Park."he replied.

Without clear audio, it was hard to follow what was going on in the courtroom. Count Vorkosigan was still slumped in his seat, head down, drool trailing from a slack jaw. Albescu was striding back in forth in front of him, trying to drag more information out.

The guards were paying more attention to the prisoner than their surroundings, but they noticed when the large side doors opened. So did Lord Vorkosigan, whose instructions stammered to a halt mid-word.

Cordelia Vorkosigan was dressed in a long, autumn-colored ensemble with silver embroidery, Vorish morning wear fit for her rank and station. Her graying roan hair hung from her shoulders in tangled disarray. She strode into the room commandingly, trailed reluctantly by her son's armsman Roic.

"Oh, no…" Duv said.

One of the Komarran guards lifted his nerve disruptor and fired. The blue bolt hit the armsman in the chest, limning him briefly as it washed over his body. He collapsed to the floor and lay still.

The Countess turned to gaze icily at the man who had shot her armsman, daring him silently to shoot again. The guards hesitated, looking nervously at Moretti.

"Good grief," Obis said. "It's Lady Macbeth herself."

"Mr. Leary," Ser Moretti said wearily, "please detain this woman and remove her from the court."

"You will unhand my husband, now," Cordelia said in an even tone, approaching the dais. One hand was clenched at her side.

"…yes, we broke the dome. It was the correct tactical call and I fully stand by Resnick. I don't see why you're so upset, you just broke Solstice." Vorkosigan mumbled. Hearing the Countess's words, he looked down at his bound hands in bafflement. His wife sidestepped the bailiff's first grab and sailed past Albescu, eyes narrowed in concentration.

Moretti frowned. "On second thought, stun her and keep her here. It might help forestall further unwanted interruptions."

What is she playing at? Laisa thought, before realizing that Cordelia was holding something in her clenched fist.

"Very good, ser," Leary said, drawing a stunner. Albescu seized the Countess by her arm, stepping on the hem of her long skirt to impede her escape. Watching this, Count Vorkosigan's face displayed a deep alarm only slightly blunted by the fast-penta.

Laisa barely heard the whining autoneedler fire that shredded four of the Komarran guards, but the glaring blue explosion of the tiny stun grenade Cordelia hurled at Moretti's table made her jump. The justices collapsed, the bailiff whirled and fired at the door with his stunner, and Albescu fumbled at his side for his nerve disruptor. As he drew it and turned towards the Count, Cordelia reached up with dreamlike focus. She grasped his chin, swung it away from her, and then snapped his neck in one swift motion.

"Yes," Galeni whispered. "Go...yes!"

The Vorkosigan armsmen surged into the room, using the room's high pillars for cover. As they exchanged fire with the remaining Komarrans, the Countess ducked under Albescu's limp body and used it to shield both herself and the Count. A needler burst cut down one of the armsmen as nerve disruptor blasts criss-crossed the room too fast for Laisa's eyes to follow.

Francesca Khatabi stood frozen next to Count Vorkosigan, too shell-shocked to react. As the last Komarran guard collapsed, Pym switched to his stunner and shot both her and Leary. He scanned the room and then nodded. "Clear."

Standing, Cordelia made her own inspection. She nodded back to Pym in hollow satisfaction. "See to Jankowski and Roic," she ordered crisply.

Pym touched his forehead. "Milady." He withdrew to give them space, kneeling worriedly over his brother armsmen.

The Countess stared at her hands a moment, her expression pensive. She took a deep breath, marshaled her features, and cautiously approached her husband. "What a mess," she muttered, anxiously scanning him for injury. Finding none, she shook her head in relief. "What are we going to do with you, Aral?"

"You could rip my clothes off and we could have sex," the Count said earnestly.

His wife gave him a little Betan smile. "Later, I think." Muffled male Barrayaran titters were audible from somewhere behind Laisa.

The Count blinked owlishly at Cordelia. "I love you," he said. "Will you take off your blouse?"

"I know. Shh." She hesitated, and then slid into his lap. Wiping the slobber away from his mouth with her sleeve, she lifted his chin and kissed him into silence.

This went on significantly longer than Laisa thought was decorous, much to the amusement of the officers and men in the control center. Since their amusement was edged with hysterical relief, Laisa was inclined to let it pass. Pym and his remaining comrade moved around the room, checking their fallen enemies' vital signs and disarming them.

A hulking shadow appeared in the doorway. Both armsmen spun, weapons ready, as Sergeant Taura hurtled through, wielding an autoneedler. She relaxed at the sight of Pym, but her eyes widened in dismay as she spotted Armsman Roic lying sprawled on the floor.

Naismith dropped from his perch on her back without any self-consciousness whatsoever. If Imperial flag officers didn't normally ride eight-foot women into battle, his attitude conveyed, maybe they should start. His gaze went first to the throne and more or less froze there.

"Jankowski's dead, m'lord," the senior armsman said, "unless the medics get here fast. Roic – it's hard to say."

The admiral nodded, still staring at his parents. "All…" He swallowed. "All honor to them, then. Excellent work, Pym."

Pym didn't smile. "Compliments should go to your lady mother."

"…I see."

The expression on Naismith's face was hard to read, but by the tentativeness of his steps towards the throne he was seriously spooked. When he reached Albescu's corpse he crouched down, examining it and the nerve disruptor still lying nearby. His eyebrows rose slowly.

With a soft sigh the Countess disentangled herself gently from her husband. She looked at her son. Naismith looked warily back at her.

"Um. Mother. Could you…?" Naismith made small ushering movements with one hand as the other reached into a uniform pocket and emerged with a small hypospray. A very faint blush colored his cheekbones.

"You're late, Miles," the former Captain Naismith said dangerously. Their accents, Laisa realized, were exactly the same.

"I know," he said. Leaning around her, he carefully pressed the hypospray to his father's throat and stepped back. As the effect of the drug ebbed, Count Vorkosigan's expression became inward-looking. Clearly exhausted, he reached for his wife's offered hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back.

"You did get Gregor out?" the Count asked. His voice sounded raw from overuse.

"Of course," his son said. They scrupulously avoided eye contact with one another.

"Are we live?"

"Not last I checked."

"How much of… that… went out?" the Count asked quietly.

"Not all." Naismith's lips pursed. "It could have been a lot worse," he finished lamely.

"Heh," Vorkosigan said. He looked down at his bindings. "Miles, do you think you could get these off me?"

The admiral examined where the manacles had been auto-bolted into the throne. "Professional grade. Plasma cutter would be unwise…" he muttered to himself. "Do they unlock with a key or combination?"

"Key."

"Hmm." Naismith put one hand on his hip and frowned. "I can get them open, but honestly it'll be much faster to just search everyone's pockets. Do you remember which…?"

"Afraid not." The Count sounded very tired.

Naismith nodded silently and joined the battered Vorkosigan armsmen. With a clatter of boots, Imperial reinforcements finally arrived and he began directing traffic around the room. Laisa was surprised to see Eliopoulos was there personally. A medical team with a portable cryochamber crouched around one of the armsmen, bleeding him out right there on the hardwood floor in preparation for cryo-freeze. The other fallen armsman was hoisted onto a float-pallet by Sergeant Taura and taken away.

"Ser Moretti's dead, m'lord." Pym said from behind the table.

"Nerve disrupter?" Admiral Naismith asked.

"Hit in the chest with a stun grenade. Likely blew his heart. Do you want him frozen?"

Naismith raised his eyebrows at his father.

"It'd be death in any case, unquestionably," the Count said. "Let him lie."

Naismith nodded grimly, sorting through Obis's wallet with practiced ease. "A bit cruel and unusual to bring him back just to watch us kill his son…ah." He pulled an unmarked codekey out of the wallet and strolled back to the Count's side, unlocking the manacles with a flourish. Admiral Vorkosigan rubbed his wrists with his hands, looking past his son at the carnage and the corpse of the man his wife had killed.

"Freeze Albescu, though," the Count said, getting to his feet. "I suspect we'll be shipping him back to Earth." He stared down at the man a moment longer before breathing out a sigh. "I did warn him."

"Poor lamb," the Countess added softly, following his gaze. Vorkosigan gave her a faint and ironic smile.

"Sir?" Naismith asked.

"Later, Miles," Vorkosigan said, drawing his wife into a close embrace. Their foreheads bumped. "Go deal with all this." It was hard to tell on the vid, but Laisa thought Countess Vorkosigan was close to tears. Her husband was exhausted and clearly near the end of his mental strength.

"Oh, for God's sake," Naismith said as they kissed again. He rolled his eyes and went back to helping Pym and the forensic team.

A diminutive figure in a bloodied gray suit pushed through the crowd and into the room. He was trailed by a nervous-looking Gita Fazliu, who was arguing with him. Naismith alertly intercepted the two of them and began a low conversation with his brother. Laisa couldn't quite make out what they were saying through the ambient noise, but Lord Vorkosigan looked increasingly grim. He made a gesture of dismissal at his brother with his working hand and moved to speak with Taura and the medical team.

Finding himself at loose ends, Naismith stared around the room before drifting towards Fazliu. "All's well that doesn't end worse," he said with hollow cheer. "You should probably leave before someone throws you out for not having a press pass."

"The Emperor ordered me to make sure the Lord Auditor gets his head fixed," Fazliu said vaguely, looking around the room with great curiosity. She was still missing her jewelry.

"That was a broad hint, by the way." A slight smile crossed Naismith's face. "I'll find someone to escort you out."

Her eyes widened innocently. "But Admiral," she said, "you still owe me half an interview."

Naismith's mouth opened, and he stared narrowly at her as if he'd never seen her before. "Just so." Turning, he called across the room. "Piotr!"

"Yes…?" His brother glanced around an intervening square-shouldered officer.

"Am I under arrest or not?"

Lord Vorkosigan gave his brother a look that was somewhere between annoyed and amused. "Not right now. Don't leave the city." Removing his seal from its chain, he hobbled over to a comconsole mounted in an alcove.

"Fair enough." Naismith turned back to Fazliu. "Sure. Now?"

She blinked at him, off-balance.

"There's an interesting alley down in the Foreign Quarter where the good bars are, and it's barely lunchtime," he explained. "If we can't cadge free drinks and a meal somewhere after all this I'd be very surprised."

Her eyes crinkled. "Admiral, I was not… I was not asking you out." The Countess looked up, drawing her husband's attention to the interplay.

"Pity," he said and smiled again.

She stared at him. He stared at her.

"Aren't you on duty?" Fazliu asked.

"Depressingly enough, this is coming out of my ground leave," Naismith sighed. "But honestly, I'd be pleased to continue your interview… off the record." Strolling out of the room with a last cryptic smile, he silently dared her to follow.

"Right," Lord Vorkosigan's voice was barely audible. "That's enough of that." The vid dissolved in an orderly fashion to an image of him standing before the room's concealed comconsole. A forensic tech ducked out of view with Gregor's great seal in a bag.

"People of the Imperium, your attention please," he began. "I am Imperial Auditor Piotr Vorkosigan, the Emperor's Voice. As you may have noticed, foreign military action against the person of His Imperial Majesty has led to unprecedented technical difficulties planetwide. In order to ensure continued operation of sabotaged critical infrastructure, we will begin restoring the network from our central nodes in three hours." He smiled faintly. "Please back up all your files."

"If you are in a deoxygenated area of Solstice, remain indoors until Dome emergency personnel can safely evacuate you. We are asking all other Imperial subjects to conserve power, water, and oxygen use until the sabotage is fully repaired."

"The Emperor has indicated that he will be making a public statement this evening." The Auditor inclined his head. "That is all."

He blinked out of existence. The holodisplay flickered and returned to the list of names it had been showing before it was hijacked. Across the room, scrambled displays and frozen comconsoles began to reactivate. Screens lit up as communications lines were restored. Within a minute, the room had transformed itself into a bustling hive of activity. Names were flashing green on the display as fast as they could be confirmed safe.

Laisa followed Galeni as he stepped to a side console, plugging in commands that were meaningless to her. "Why don't you go let my father out, Duv?" she said pointedly. "If the planet's not on fire, I mean."

Galeni scanned through views of the streets of a half-dozen domes. "All's quiet," he said, seeming amazed. "For now."

"Sir, we're receiving a priority scrambled message on our internal Solstice network", Captain Thibault said. "Do you want to take the call?"

"Yes, I think," Galeni said. "This console." Some of the remaining tension bled out of his features as a familiar man appeared on the screen.

"ImpSec Komarr, this is Vorbarra," the Emperor said briskly. "I'm at First Dome and Trade, but the aircar stored here is non-operational. Can I get a pickup?"

"Vorbarra, this is ImpSec Komarr," Laisa said over Galeni's shoulder. Gregor smiled at her, his eyes lighting up. "Stay where you are. We'll be bringing you home."