Black Hearts, Part Twelve (PG)
Feb. 23rd, 2007 07:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalNotes: Miles, Gwen, Rufus, Cordelia
“Careful with that, lad!” Rufus called out to the tech manning the grav crane in the repair bay. It hovered over the White Knight, Brushtail's fighter, which was a long, narrow fuselage with four curving scimitar shaped wings at equidistant points around the hull. The tech touched a control on the crane and gently lowered the repaired forward sensor array into its mount in the Knight's nose.
Miles, watching off to one side, let out a sigh of relief as the heavy but delicate unit was safely seated in its housing. Giving Brushtail permission to repair his fighter served a two-fold purpose. It kept the understandably worried alien occupied, and it assured that when ImpMil arrived to examine its prize, that it would be intact and functional.
Not that Miles couldn't have used some distraction himself. Urgent inquiries had been sent out towards every imperial office along the physical route to Jackson's Whole, ordering them to watch out for Mavra Chan's ship, noting its revolutionary drive and the fact that it held Barraryan hostages. Carefully left out was the revelation of the numerous aliens it carried and its apparently extra-dimensional origins, facts Miles had left in for his personal report to Emperor Gregor. Given what he was already asking them to believe, aliens from beyond known space on top of the other items would be a bit much, he'd judged.
“Gwen, could you hook yourself in, please?” Rufus asked the girl, who had been sitting on a crate, watching the repair work and kicking her skirts in boredom. In deference to Barrayaran sensibilities (and under loud protest), Gwen had abandoned her form flattering jeans and top and been provided with a more demure dress consisting of a calf-length skirt, boots, and a matching blouse and bolero, all in a pleasant hunter green appropriate to the season back home in Vorbarr Sultana. The look favored her, Miles thought, but given the girl's temperament he had kept his opinion to himself. A tech who had complimented her had not been lucky, having found out just how hard the girl could stomp someone's foot with her new boot heels. Given the skewed male/female demographics in the Empire right now, Gwen getting at least one pass had been pretty inevitable. If she and her friends could not find a way home, she could probably look forward to one the Vicerine's patented briefings on the peculiarities of Barrrayar's gender political scene.
“Sure, Rufus.” Gwen hopped off her perch and stood beside her foxish friend as he drew out an interface cord from the sensor array and handed it to her. The girl drew back her hair, revealing the silver stud implanted in her skull, and inserted the jack into her cyber-glider interface wit ha practiced motion. Her eyes grew distant as the unit began transmitting information straight from its readouts to her brain. “Okay, I'm in,” she reported. With the girl keeping Rufus updated as each circuit was tested, instantly sensing how firm the connection was and whether it was reaching the proper readout in Rufus' ship, the work went quickly.
“Milord Auditor?” The station commander stepped itno the repair bay and restrained a salute to Miles' purely civilian rank. “We've received word from ImpMil's sensor station in the Fomahault system.” Fomahault, Miles remembered from his distant Academy days, was a dead system, with a fading red sun and a few scattered debris rings where planets never had the chance to form. It was of precious little interest to anyone, except for the fact that it could serve in a circuitous back route for one of Cetaganda's satrapies to reach Komaar. Assuming of course that his Imperial Majesty, the Haut Fletcher Giaja, chose to loosen the tight leash he had set around the throats of his Ghem military commanders in recent years. The sensor post, equipped with a small crew and a fast courier in its docking bay, kept a quiet, patient watch for anything unusual passing through the system that might mark Cetagandan aggression.
Something unusual had passed through, less than thirty-six hours ago, Miles read in the report the station commander handed to him. Traveling at impossible speeds, the single ship had passed in and out of the system in less than an hour. It had taken the sensor post's crew considerable longer to believe the data they were seeing and jump their fast courier to the nearest ImpMil base to transmit their report. Where it had promptly come to the attention of the local ImpSec commander, and from there directly to Miles.
“Aha! Jackson's Whole is their destination if they continue on that trajectory!” Miles declared.
“We knew they were going that direction anyway!” Gwen pointed out, unplugging herself from Rufus' fighter. “Why have we been standing around here then?”
“We suspected, but we didn't know,” Miles said. “Given the resources we may have to commit to a rescue operation, just sending a fleet out on a guess, and then being wrong, would doom both your family and mine.” He began to pace back and forth in front of the White Knight. “Now we've got the edge. With Rufus' fighter nearly repaired, I can use it to move quickly to the Whole and contact the Barrayaran embassy there as well as our ImpSec assets in the system.”
“I'm all for dashing to the rescue, but I'd feel much more comfortable if we had a fleet of ships behind us when we single-handedly invade this pirate's den,” Rufus said, a little contradictorily.
“As would I,” Miles agreed. “However, the most important priority is to disrupt Chan's plans, before she can make contact with anyone on Jackson's Whole to arrange to the sale of her assets. She's going to want to auction her drive to the highest bidder, and getting together bidders with the kind of bankroll she's aiming for takes time to arrange. Which leaves her sitting tight, right where we can find her.”
“I'll come with you,” Gwen spoke up. “You could certainly use a cyber-glider if you're going to run around this place.
“The offer is appreciated Gwen, but I need to fly the Knight, and Miles would have to come along to meet with his people,” Rufus pointed out. “And unfortunately there are only two seats on the ship.”
Gwen opened her mouth to argue further, when Miles' personal chimed loudly. He waved her to silence as he drew it of his pocket and held it to his ear, noting the Vicerine's personal com code on the display. “What do you want, Mother? Not that I don't like talking to you, but we're in the middle of a brain storming session right now.”
I'm sorry, Miles, but I'm going to have to ask you to come back down to Sergyar as soon as you can, Cordelia said, her voice sounding so uncharacteristically worried and strained that all of Miles' nerves shot to attention at once. Your father collapsed while in a meeting just an hour ago. He seems to have suffered a very serious stroke and has fallen into a coma.
TBC
“Careful with that, lad!” Rufus called out to the tech manning the grav crane in the repair bay. It hovered over the White Knight, Brushtail's fighter, which was a long, narrow fuselage with four curving scimitar shaped wings at equidistant points around the hull. The tech touched a control on the crane and gently lowered the repaired forward sensor array into its mount in the Knight's nose.
Miles, watching off to one side, let out a sigh of relief as the heavy but delicate unit was safely seated in its housing. Giving Brushtail permission to repair his fighter served a two-fold purpose. It kept the understandably worried alien occupied, and it assured that when ImpMil arrived to examine its prize, that it would be intact and functional.
Not that Miles couldn't have used some distraction himself. Urgent inquiries had been sent out towards every imperial office along the physical route to Jackson's Whole, ordering them to watch out for Mavra Chan's ship, noting its revolutionary drive and the fact that it held Barraryan hostages. Carefully left out was the revelation of the numerous aliens it carried and its apparently extra-dimensional origins, facts Miles had left in for his personal report to Emperor Gregor. Given what he was already asking them to believe, aliens from beyond known space on top of the other items would be a bit much, he'd judged.
“Gwen, could you hook yourself in, please?” Rufus asked the girl, who had been sitting on a crate, watching the repair work and kicking her skirts in boredom. In deference to Barrayaran sensibilities (and under loud protest), Gwen had abandoned her form flattering jeans and top and been provided with a more demure dress consisting of a calf-length skirt, boots, and a matching blouse and bolero, all in a pleasant hunter green appropriate to the season back home in Vorbarr Sultana. The look favored her, Miles thought, but given the girl's temperament he had kept his opinion to himself. A tech who had complimented her had not been lucky, having found out just how hard the girl could stomp someone's foot with her new boot heels. Given the skewed male/female demographics in the Empire right now, Gwen getting at least one pass had been pretty inevitable. If she and her friends could not find a way home, she could probably look forward to one the Vicerine's patented briefings on the peculiarities of Barrrayar's gender political scene.
“Sure, Rufus.” Gwen hopped off her perch and stood beside her foxish friend as he drew out an interface cord from the sensor array and handed it to her. The girl drew back her hair, revealing the silver stud implanted in her skull, and inserted the jack into her cyber-glider interface wit ha practiced motion. Her eyes grew distant as the unit began transmitting information straight from its readouts to her brain. “Okay, I'm in,” she reported. With the girl keeping Rufus updated as each circuit was tested, instantly sensing how firm the connection was and whether it was reaching the proper readout in Rufus' ship, the work went quickly.
“Milord Auditor?” The station commander stepped itno the repair bay and restrained a salute to Miles' purely civilian rank. “We've received word from ImpMil's sensor station in the Fomahault system.” Fomahault, Miles remembered from his distant Academy days, was a dead system, with a fading red sun and a few scattered debris rings where planets never had the chance to form. It was of precious little interest to anyone, except for the fact that it could serve in a circuitous back route for one of Cetaganda's satrapies to reach Komaar. Assuming of course that his Imperial Majesty, the Haut Fletcher Giaja, chose to loosen the tight leash he had set around the throats of his Ghem military commanders in recent years. The sensor post, equipped with a small crew and a fast courier in its docking bay, kept a quiet, patient watch for anything unusual passing through the system that might mark Cetagandan aggression.
Something unusual had passed through, less than thirty-six hours ago, Miles read in the report the station commander handed to him. Traveling at impossible speeds, the single ship had passed in and out of the system in less than an hour. It had taken the sensor post's crew considerable longer to believe the data they were seeing and jump their fast courier to the nearest ImpMil base to transmit their report. Where it had promptly come to the attention of the local ImpSec commander, and from there directly to Miles.
“Aha! Jackson's Whole is their destination if they continue on that trajectory!” Miles declared.
“We knew they were going that direction anyway!” Gwen pointed out, unplugging herself from Rufus' fighter. “Why have we been standing around here then?”
“We suspected, but we didn't know,” Miles said. “Given the resources we may have to commit to a rescue operation, just sending a fleet out on a guess, and then being wrong, would doom both your family and mine.” He began to pace back and forth in front of the White Knight. “Now we've got the edge. With Rufus' fighter nearly repaired, I can use it to move quickly to the Whole and contact the Barrayaran embassy there as well as our ImpSec assets in the system.”
“I'm all for dashing to the rescue, but I'd feel much more comfortable if we had a fleet of ships behind us when we single-handedly invade this pirate's den,” Rufus said, a little contradictorily.
“As would I,” Miles agreed. “However, the most important priority is to disrupt Chan's plans, before she can make contact with anyone on Jackson's Whole to arrange to the sale of her assets. She's going to want to auction her drive to the highest bidder, and getting together bidders with the kind of bankroll she's aiming for takes time to arrange. Which leaves her sitting tight, right where we can find her.”
“I'll come with you,” Gwen spoke up. “You could certainly use a cyber-glider if you're going to run around this place.
“The offer is appreciated Gwen, but I need to fly the Knight, and Miles would have to come along to meet with his people,” Rufus pointed out. “And unfortunately there are only two seats on the ship.”
Gwen opened her mouth to argue further, when Miles' personal chimed loudly. He waved her to silence as he drew it of his pocket and held it to his ear, noting the Vicerine's personal com code on the display. “What do you want, Mother? Not that I don't like talking to you, but we're in the middle of a brain storming session right now.”
I'm sorry, Miles, but I'm going to have to ask you to come back down to Sergyar as soon as you can, Cordelia said, her voice sounding so uncharacteristically worried and strained that all of Miles' nerves shot to attention at once. Your father collapsed while in a meeting just an hour ago. He seems to have suffered a very serious stroke and has fallen into a coma.
TBC
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Date: 2007-02-24 01:32 am (UTC)tech - if you haven't looked at the post, you need to - missing > where it gives up.