Chapter 16

The gleaming battle axe streaked toward Anny's head. She twisted aside, but not quickly enough. The deadly blade missed her head, but sliced through part of her shoulder, the monomolecular edge cutting the armor like it was paper. She felt a faint pain and her display flashed with red warning lights. Then her whole left arm went numb. But she didn't even pause to evaluate the damage. Her opponent was off balance with his blow and she had her chance. Pivoting on her right foot, she drove her left into the enemy's chest, slamming him to the ground. Following through, and spinning in a virtual pirouette, she landed atop the arm holding the battle axe, pinning it down. Her own weapon, the massive hammer with the spiked end, flashed down and smashed through the enemy's helmet with a spray of sparks and a sickening crunch.

She wrenched it free, trying not to see the ruin it had probably made of her opponent's head. Only then did she notice that the left arm of her armor—and quite probably her own left arm was lying on the ground a few paces from her fallen foe.

"Well done!"

"Nice move!

"Bravo!"

A chorus of voices came over her com channel and then the scene of combat faded away and she found herself standing on the deck of the training room aboard the attack transport Stalwart. Dozens of people in battle armor and a number in regular uniforms were watching her—battalion officers and senior NCOs for the most part. She did a quick look to confirm that her arm was back where it belonged.

Standing opposite her was Lieutenant Dahlberg of 1st Platoon, the man she had just 'killed'. His helmet visor swung open and he grinned at her and shook his head. "Nicely done, Anny," he said. "I really thought I had you there. Hell, I did have some of you!"

"Some but not all," she said grinning back at him."You fought very well, Lieutenant."

"At this rate you'll only have to die four more times to get the rest of her, Georg," said Ensign Vorgard. A lot of people laughed and even Dahlberg chuckled.

"And let that be a lesson to all of us," said Major Vorglanov, the battalion commander. "The neural interface of the armor can allow the wearer to ignore wounds that would normally be crippling. Dahlberg thought he'd won so he got careless. Payne took advantage of that to turn the tables on him. When you take down an opponent, make sure he's really down!"

"Yes sir," said Dahlberg and everyone else nodded. The armor really did allow extraordinary things to happen. The pain and shock effects from almost any wound could be negated and the suit's occupant could keep going as long as the suit was functional—or until he ran out of limbs. Only a head shot could guarantee a quick kill.

"All right, next pair," said Vorglanov. Two more of the men in armor faced off and Anny returned to the ranks of watchers.

A tiny light in the corner of her vision told her when the simulation began. To all appearances, two suits of battle armor began to circle each other, weapons at the ready. In reality, Anny knew that they were still just standing there, motionless. The Mark XI battle armor had had some new improvements made even since she'd used one during her apprentice cruise the previous year. The neural interface could now hook into a central simulation computer, turning each suit into a simulator pod like the ones she had used at the Academy—and like the ones Alby had been working so hard on back at Fort Vorolson. It was a huge bonus. Now the entire battalion—the entire regiment when the ships were close enough—could run totally realistic exercises together. The spectators who were not in armor could watch the proceedings with special video goggles. There wasn't even a real reason why any of them had to be in the exercise room. They could have just left the suits in their storage racks and done this from there. But somehow, people felt like they needed to actually move around a bit.

Speaking of which… She twisted slightly and managed to withdraw her right arm from its metal sleeve. She scratched her itching nose and sighed in relief. That was one thing you couldn't do in the old model armor! In fact, with the neural interface controlling movement of the suits, there was no reason why your arms or legs even needed to be inside the armor's appendages. But they were still built that way. She'd heard some rumors that the Mark XII armor was going to have the pilot curled in a ball inside a heavily armored cocoon and not even bother with the arms or legs anymore. She wasn't sure how she felt about that.

The dueling pair, as often happened, pounded each other to simulated junk before one of them was finally ruled out of action. The matches continued until everyone had had a chance. Anny watched Patric Mederov's bout with interest. Patric was a very big and strong man, but his real strength didn't matter at all while in armor. Unfortunately, he was a bit clumsy, too. Anny had been giving him some private pointers about using the personal weapons in close combat and it looked as though he was improving. One other new feature of the armor was that it could overlay a real-time image of the person's face, making it look like their visor was open even though it wasn't. It made things a lot more convenient when talking with people. Or in situations like this: she could watch Patric's face and get an idea of his mental state while he was fighting. Of course, the enlistedmen hated the new feature—they couldn't make faces at their sergeants anymore. Patric didn't win his match, but he did pretty well and he looked satisfied. Good.

When they finished up the matches, Major Vorglanov addressed them. "Okay, we are going to do one more exercise before we wrap things up for the morning. If you've been studying the briefings on Novo Paveo—and I hope you have!—you know that the planet is mostly covered with shallow oceans. There are thousands of islands and a couple of small continents. It is quite probable that we will see action on those islands or in coastal regions. We need to be prepared for combat underwater as well as on land." He paused to let that sink in. Battle armor was quite capable of functioning underwater and at considerable depth. But it wasn't something that they practiced often—or ever as far as Anny knew.

"Underwater combat is a lot different than what we are used to," continued Vorglanov. "Our most common weapon, the plasma arc, won't work at all. If you try, all you'll succeed in doing is boiling the water in your immediate vicinity—quite possibly with damaging effects to yourself. Lasers and mass-drivers will function to a certain extent, but with drastically reduced ranges and effectiveness. Normal missiles will be nearly useless, but we'll have some modified ones available that will work pretty well—miniature torpedoes for all practical purposes. Those will be our primary long-range weapons. Hand-to-hand combat will be affected, too. The water will slow us down and make impact weapons a lot less useful. So, we shall have to adapt. We'll be running the whole battalion through some exercises in the coming weeks, but I wanted to let you folks try it out first." He ran his eyes over them and most everyone nodded. Yeah, it was always a good idea for the officers and NCOs to at least appear to know what they were doing. "For this session I just want you to get used to moving around underwater. All right, let's get to it."

The small simulator light flashed on again and Anny found herself immersed in dark, murky water. A faint glimmer of sunlight came from above, dimly illuminating her surroundings. She was standing on a rocky outcrop of some sort and a few plants waved in the current. She could dimly make other figures in armor around her. She rapidly moved through different sensor settings to try and improve the view. None of them were terribly good, but she found one that wasn't too bad and her vision extended out a hundred meters or so. Her non-visual readings were better, but still much degraded compared to the open air.

She tried moving around and it was weird. The water resisted her movements and she stumbled and fell almost immediately, but again, the water slowed her fall in an odd way. She'd never done much swimming and this seemed very unnatural. More unexpected results occurred when she started playing with her anti-grav unit. On land, negating part of the gravitational pull allowed her to leap long distances, but it seemed that even 250 kilos of metal and ceramics could have significant buoyancy when the gravity was negated. She shot toward the surface like a cork before she could reduce the nullification and settle back toward the bottom. Several exclamations over the com circuits indicated that she wasn't the only one to be taken by surprise.

The maneuvering thrusters she would use in zero-G still worked, but she found she had to learn how to fly her suit all over again. In space the trick was not to over-use the thrusters. Usually just a gentle nudge was all that was needed. But here, a gently nudge might move you a meter or two, before the water stopped you dead. You needed a constant thrust to keep moving. She got the hang of it after a while and was eventually able to pilot her suit like some miniature submarine, but her speed was very limited and she had to watch what she was doing carefully to maintain a steady course.

After an hour or so she felt confident that she could at least get from place to place underwater. Fighting… well, that was another story. But Vorglanov terminated the session and told them that was enough to absorb for one day. They'd get more practice later. "And I've been promised that we'll be getting some software upgrades that will help with maneuvering underwater," he added. "God knows when—or if—we'll get them."

Anny and the others walked their suits back down to the storage areas and parked them in their racks. Sven Estaban fell in beside her as she made her way back toward her quarters. "Wow, I'm not sure I liked that! Made me feel like a newbie in a suit again!"

"Yeah. Let's hope we can do our fighting on dry land when we get there," agreed Anny.

"If there is any dry land. You read the briefing on the tides they have there?"

"What? Oh, yeah. Should make things interesting." Novo Paveo had a very large moon, almost a companion planet. The pair had not become tidally locked yet, although that would happen in another million years or so, but at the moment, the moon caused enormous tides in Novo Paveo's oceans. Some of the smaller islands appeared and disappeared on a regular basis, and the coastlines on the larger land masses could advance or retreat many kilometers as the seas rushed in or fell back. Barrayar's two moons were too small to produce significant tides so this was something new.

She and Estaban went their separate ways. She went to her quarters to strip out of the undersuit she wore with her armor and take a shower. Then it was down to the mess hall for lunch. She bumped into Patric there and immediately noticed that the big farm boy was upset about something. He was almost always in good spirits so the change was striking. She didn't think the problem was the morning combat exercise…

"How are you doing, Patric?"

"Fine."

"Uh… good. What did you think of that exercise this morning?"

"S'okay."

"Working underwater is going to be quite a challenge, don't you think?"

"Yeah."

Patric was usually quiet, but this was especially monosyllabic even for him. Anny watched him for a while as they ate. Or as she ate—he was just pushing his food around on the plate—and that was really unusual. Finally she leaned forward and whispered: "Patric, what's the matter?"

"Nothing."

"Don't give me that bull! Something's wrong! You didn't get some bad news about your father's health, did you?" A fast courier had just caught up with the fleet that day and delivered the mail.

"What? No, no, nothing like that." Patric was clearly surprised by the suggestion.

"Then what is it?"

"Nothing… oh hell, it's Lyra."

Aha! Lyra Gunderson, one of the medtechs. She and Patric had been carrying on rather obviously before and during the time on Lengkeek.

Before, during… but not after? Come to think of it she hadn't even seen them passing in the same compartment since Lengkeek. "What's wrong with Lyra?"

"That's what I want to know!" exclaimed Patric, his frustration obvious. "I thought…. I thought we had something going. And now she acts like she doesn't even know me!"

"Did something happen on Lengkeek?"

"No! Well, something did happen, but it sure seemed like it was a good something! Everything seemed fine until we got back here!"

"We're back on duty now, Patric. You can't expect her to act like we're still on shore leave."

"I know that! But she can at least answer when a guy says hello in the mess hall!"

Anny frowned. "Patric, the girls are all under a microscope just like I was back at the Academy. They can't even appear to be carrying on. And I know what happened during the shore leave, but I also know that some of the higher-ups weren't too happy about it. Something may have come down that we don't know about."

"It's not like the women medtechs are anything new—like you are—they've been around for a while!"

"But they've never been deployed off-planet like this before. That's new and maybe adapting to it isn't routine. Give things a chance to settle down."

Patric looked slightly mollified. "Yeah, I guess…"

"And I'll ask Chris if she knows anything. She's been kind of quiet lately, too."

"Okay, I'd appreciate that. Thanks, Anny."

"You really like Lyra, huh?"

"Yeah… Oh, hell, look at the time! Gotta run!"

"Yeah, me, too. See you later." She got up and headed for her platoon's barracks compartment. There was an inspection scheduled today and Captain Vorstang said it was going to be an especially thorough one. The men had managed to smuggle an incredible amount of… stuff aboard from Lengkeek and even now, three weeks later, men were turning up drunk or stoned on duty. Word had come down that it had to stop. Anny wasn't sure how much good the inspection would do. In spite of all that they could do to keep them busy, the men were getting bored and when men got bored…

She met Sergeant Kay in the Ready Room. The real inspection wasn't for another hour, but most platoon commanders and sergeants did a pre-inspection inspection to keep embarrassing discoveries to a minimum. Some officers left that to the top sergeants, but Anny always tried to be there. "Okay?" she asked Kay.

"Yes, sir. Anytime you're ready."

"Good, let's go." They walked down to the barracks compartment. Someone shouted attention, but she put everyone at ease. Then she and Kay walked up and down the rows of bunks and checked the rows of lockers. They didn't find any contraband and she hadn't expected to. The barracks were so compact there just wasn't room to hide much of anything. No, she strongly suspected that the real hiding places were aboard the assault shuttles or in the hanger bays. The troopers couldn't have accomplished their smuggling without help from the shuttle crews—and there were a whole lot more hiding places on the shuttles. Unfortunately, the shuttles belonged to the Navy and she had no authority to inspect them. Oh well, they'd use up the stuff eventually—except they were scheduled for another shore leave in less than two weeks.

While she was looking at the contents of one of the lockers she heard a faint clicking noise behind her and something nudged her leg just behind her knee. She turned and looked down into a pair of wide green eyes. "Well hello, Lulubelle,' she said. "How are you today?"

The little creature—which they'd learned was called a vella on Lengkeek—made a small meeping noise reminiscent of a terrestrial cat. Private Stubinski steadfastly denied smuggling Lulubelle aboard, but somehow she'd been there after the first wormhole jump and it was far too late to do anything about it. The ship's surgeon had run some tests and declared the vella free of any dangerous parasites or pathogens and since it was almost odor free and had even learned to use the litter boxes used by the ship's cats, Captain Vorstang had bowed to the inevitable and Lulubelle was now the company mascot. The surgeon had privately told Anny that with the sort of diet she was getting aboard ship he doubted the creature would live long, but for the moment she seemed healthy enough.

Lulubelle meeped once more and then trotted away, her tiny hooves clicking on the deck. If we can't keep the men from smuggling aboard a goat, how can we keep them from smuggling even smaller things?

"Almost time, sir," said Kay, indicating the hour.

"Right. Okay, fall them in for inspection, Sergeant."

[Scene Break]

Ivan was sorting through the mound of incoming messages for the Ambassador and mused how very like his previous job this was. Sorting snakes for ambassadors was little different from sorting snakes for generals and admirals. The snakes themselves were a bit different, but he could still classify them the same way. Garden variety… garden variety… dead… Whoops, there's a venomous one, agitated at that! Garden variety… quiescent…

A fast courier had brought a huge number of messages for the diplomatic contingent—along with even larger numbers for everyone else. Going through them was drudgery, but it was familiar drudgery and at least it only happened every few weeks. With any luck he could have this sorted through in time for lunch with Tej.

His door buzzer buzzed and he frowned. He could make lunch with Tej if he wasn't interrupted…

"Enter," he sighed. The door slid aside and he immediately came to alert. There was his boss, Ambassador Vorpinski, and with him was Colonel Fetherbay, commander of the 61st Infantry. Both men's faces looked… grim. Ivan got to his feet.

"Good morning, sir, Colonel. What… what can I do for you?"

"Morning, Ivan," replied Vorpinski. "Still sorting the mail?"He gestured toward Ivan's comconsole.

"Yes sir."

"I imagine there's quite a pile as usual, so you probably haven't seen this yet." He handed him a small comp pad. Ivan scanned down it and stopped.

"Damn. What a shame."

"Yes," agreed Vorpinski. "Colonel Fetherbay has a rather sad duty to perform and considering your personal connections, I was wondering if you'd be willing to help him out?"

Ivan swallowed. He could think of a hundred other unpleasant things he'd much rather do, but there was no way he could refuse this. "Of course, sir," he said.

[Scene Break]

Alby was working for Captain Hopkins, the regimental intelligence officer, this week. The Colonel had been rotating Alby around to the various staff positions since they'd left Barrayar to see where he best fit in. He found that he liked the intelligence work. Operations had more prestige, as did Planning, but intelligence appealed to his naturally analytical mind. Hopkins had already complimented him a couple of times about his ability to cut through the inevitable BS in the reports and grab the few nuggets of actual information in them. It was really kind of fun.

But right now there was a mound of BS he had to wade through. A fast courier had rendezvoused with the fleet and delivered a few terabytes of new intelligence reports from Barrayar. Only a fraction of that was considered suitable for the eyes of mere regimental officers, but it still made quite a pile. He'd probably be at this for the next couple of days…

"Hey, Alby!" He looked up as Hopkins poked his head into his cubicle.

"Sir?"

"Report to the Colonel."

His eyebrows shot up. "Why? What'd I do now?"

"No idea. Just go."

Puzzled, Alby got to his feet and went down the corridor to Fetherbay's office. He didn't have any recent crimes on his conscience, so he hoped that this would be something trivial. The Colonel's aide waved him right through.

Alby rocked to a halt. Fetherbay was on his feet and with him was Ivan Vorpatril. Both men looked grim…

"My father is dead, isn't he?" said Alby's mouth. The words had gone directly from his back-brain to his vocal cords without any intermediate processing, but he knew it was true. The expressions on Fetherbay's and Vorpatril's faces confirmed it before they could even nod.

"Yes, Lieutenant," said Fetherbay. "I'm deeply sorry."

"Is my mother okay?"

"She's… well," said Vorpatril. He held out a comp pad. "Here is the official notification and several personal messages. Let me offer my own condolences, Lieutenant. Your father was a fine officer. This is a loss to the whole Empire."

Alby's chest felt like it was in a vice. His whole body was tingling like he'd just taken a dose of Dynatrim. He reached out a shaking hand and took the compad. "Thank you, sir."

"Lieutenant, take the rest of the day off," said Fetherbay. "I have authorization to detach you. You can go back to Barrayar on the fast courier if that's what you want."

Alby twitched. Go back to Barrayar? Go home? A hundred thoughts had been swirling through his head, but that hadn't been one of them. "I…I…"

"The courier isn't leaving until tomorrow. You've got some time to think about it."

"All… all right. Thank you, sir." He turned and left the office. He headed back toward his own cubicle, but somehow Hopkins had been informed of the situation in the few moments he'd been away and he just offered his condolences and sent Alby to his quarters.

Rad wasn't there, thankfully, so he slumped down on his bunk and read through the messages on the compad. There were three official notifications of his father's death. One from Count Vorgannon's residence, one from the Veteran's Affairs Office, and one from his father's lawyer. There were two letters from his sister; a brief one with the news itself and another follow-up assuring him that she was with their mother and she would look after things. The funeral would be in a week from the time she wrote the letter, so it was long past by now. She wanted to know if he would be returning home.

Will I?

He could. Fetherbay said that he could. But would he? What was the point? The funeral was already over and whatever emotional mess his mother might be going through would mostly be over by the time he could get back, too. And what could he do anyway? The image of him trying to give her any comfort seemed ludicrous. They'd never been close. His sister could do a much better job. Or was he just making excuses for not going? He had a growing sense of guilt over the fact that he didn't feel worse about this. He supposed he ought to cry or something, but no tears came. He'd never felt much love toward either of his parents. They'd been so distant. And when he found out the real circumstances behind his birth, he'd been angry with them for a long time. He'd nearly just walked away from them at one point only a few years ago. Things had improved since then, but still…

There was another message from the lawyer also inquiring when and if he'd be coming home. There was the matter of his father's will and the estate. While the details could not be revealed until the formal reading, the essence of it was that pretty much everything was being left to Alby, with codicils concerning the support of his mother and other sums being left to his sister and her children. The sums involved were… substantial.

Money had never meant a great deal to Alby, but it seemed that he was now ridiculously wealthy. I could have rented the whole damn hotel on Lengkeek…

Clearly he had a set of new responsibilities. But go home? Did he really want to do that? Should he go even if he didn't want to?

He put the 'pad aside and left his quarters. Exploring the flagship, he'd found a small observation blister in an out of the way location. He wasn't sure what its real purpose was, but he sometimes went there for some solitude and he went there now. He closed the hatch behind him and sat down on an old cushion he'd purloined and stared at the stars.

His father was dead. His grandfather was dead. He was the eldest male member of this branch of the Vorsworth clan. There were other Vorsworths, but they were all very distant relations. That huge house and the land around it belonged to him now. The servants worked for him now. He suddenly felt very alone. Adrift, like those stars out there.

He tried to imagine what his mother was feeling right now, but the only image that came to mind was her at her favorite dressmaker fussing over mourning garb. Not fair, not fair, she did love him, he knew that.

So what are you going to do, kiddo? Go or stay?

He tried to think about what he'd do if he did go home. Hold his mother's hand? For how long? He could get an extended leave, but unless he actually resigned his commission, eventually he'd have to return to duty. But where? The 61st would be halfway across the Nexus. Could he get back or would they assign him to another unit? Too many unknowns.

He had a duty to his family but… I've got a family here now, too.

Anny and Jer and Patric, they were family. And they were heading into danger. There was nothing he could do to help his family on Barrayar. But his family here… he could still help them.

He slowly nodded his head.

He still had a job to do and he would do it.

He had a batch of messages to write, but he was staying right here.