Miles motioned Gregor along the corridor, removing him as swiftly as possible from the region of potential messiness. "To the tactics room, and I'll fill you in. You have some decisions to make."

They entered a lift-tube, and rose. Miles breathed easier with every meter he increased the range between Gregor and Cavilo.

"My biggest worry," Miles said, "till we spoke face-to-face, was that Cavilo really had done what she thought she had, fogged your mind. I didn't see where she could be getting her ideas except from you. Wasn't sure what I could do in that case, except play along till I could hand you over to higher experts on Barrayar. If I survived. I didn't know how fast you'd see through her."

"Oh, at once," shrugged Gregor. "She had the same hungry smile Vordrozda used to get. And a dozen lesser cannibals, since. I can smell a power-hungry flatterer at a thousand meters, now."

"I yield to my master in strategy," Miles's armored hand made a genuflecting motion. "Do you know you rescued yourself? She'd have taken you all the way home, even if I hadn't come along."

"It was easy." Gregor frowned. "All that was required was that I have no personal honor at all." Gregor's eyes, Miles realized, were deathly, devoid of triumph.

"You can't cheat an honest man," said Miles uncertainly. "Or Woman. What would you have done, if she'd got you home?"

"Depends." Gregor stared into the middle distance. "If she'd managed to get you killed, I suppose I'd have had her executed." Gregor glanced back, as they stepped out of the tube. "This is better. Maybe . . . maybe there's some way to give her a fair chance."

Miles blinked. "I'd be very careful about giving Cavilo any kind of a chance at all, if I were you. Even with tongs. Does she deserve it? Do you realize what's going on, how many she's betrayed?"

"In part. And yet . . ."

"Yet, what?"

Gregor's tone was so low as to be nearly inaudible. "I wish she had been real."

". . . and that's the present tactical situation in the Hub and Vervain local space, as far as my information goes," Miles concluded his presentation to Gregor. They had the Ariel's briefing room all to themselves; Arde Mayhew stood guard in the corridor. Miles had begun his speed-precis as soon as Elena reported that the hostile boarders had been successfully secured. He'd paused only to peel out of his ill-fitting armor and back into his Dendarii greys. The armor had been hastily borrowed from the same female soldier who'd lent him kit before, and the plumbing perforce left unconnected.

Miles froze the holovid display in the center of the table. Would that he could freeze real time and events the same way, at the touch of a keypad, that he might halt their terrible rush. "You'll notice our biggest intelligence holes are in precise information about the Cetagandan forces. I'm hoping the Vervani will plug some of those gaps, if we can persuade them we're their allies, and the Rangers may yield more. One way or another.

"Now—sire—the decision lands on you. Fight or flight? I can detach the Ariel from the Dendarii right now, to run you home, with little loss to this hot and dirty wormhole fight. Firepower and armor, not speed, are going to be at a premium there. There's not much doubt which course my father and Illyan would vote for."

"No." Gregor stirred. "On the other hand, they aren't here."

"True. Alternately, going to the opposite extreme, do you wish to be commander-in-chief of this mess? In fact, as well as name?"

Gregor smiled softly. "What a temptation. But don't you think there's a certain . . . hubris, in undertaking field leadership without a prior apprenticing in field followership?"

Miles reddened slightly. "I—ahem!—face a similar dilemma. You've met the solution, his name's Ky Tung. We'll be conferring with him when we transfer back to the Triumph, later." Miles paused. "There are a couple of other things you might do for us. If you choose. Real things."

Gregor rubbed his chin, watching Miles as he might a play. "Trot them out. Lord Vorkosigan."

"Legitimatize the Dendarii. Present them to the Vervani as the Barrayaran pickup force. I can only bluff. Your breath is law. You can conclude a legally binding defensive treaty between Barrayar and Vervain—Aslund too, if we can bring them in. Your greatest value is—sorry—diplomatic, not military. Go to Vervain Station, and deal with these people. And I do mean deal."

"Safely behind the lines," Gregor noted dryly.

"Only if we win, on the other side of the jump. If we lose, the lines will come to you."

"I would I could be a soldier. Some lowly lieutenant, with only a handful of men to care for."

"There's no moral difference between one and ten thousand, I assure you. You're just as thoroughly damned however many you get killed."

"I want to be in on the fight. Probably the only chance I'll have in my life for real risk."

"What, the risk you run every day from lunatic assassins isn't enough thrill for you? You want more?"

"Active. Not passive. Real service."

"If—in your judgment—the best and most vital service you can give everyone else risking their lives here is as a minor field officer, I will of course support you to the best of my ability," said Miles bleakly.

"Ouch," murmured Gregor. "You can turn a phrase like a knife, you know?" He paused. "Treaties, eh?"

"If you would be so kind, sire."

"Oh, stop it," Gregor sighed. "I will play my assigned part. As always."

"Thank you." Miles thought of offering some apology, some solace, then thought better of it. "The other wild card is Randall's Rangers. Who are now, unless I miss my guess, in considerable disarray. Their second-in-command has vanished, their commander has deserted at the start of the action—how was it the Vervani let her make an exit, by the way?"

"She told them she was going out to confer with you—implied she'd somehow added you to her forces. She was going to jump her fast courier to the hot side immediately thereafter, supposedly."

"Hm. She may have inadvertently paved our way—is she denying involvement with the Cetagandans?"

"I don't think the Vervani have caught on yet about the Rangers opening the door to the Cetagandans. At the time we left Vervain Station they were still putting the Rangers' failures to defend the Cetagandan-side jump down to incompetence."

"Probably with considerable supporting evidence. I doubt the bulk of the Rangers knew about the betrayal, or it couldn't have stayed secret this long. And whatever inner cadre that was working with the Cetas, were left in the dark when Cavilo took off on her Imperial tangent. You realize, Gregor, you did this? Sabotaged the Cetagandan invasion single-handedly?"

"Oh," breathed Gregor, "it took both hands."

Miles decided not to touch that one. "Anyway—if we can—we need to lock the Rangers down. Get them under control, or at least out from behind everyone's backs."

"Very well."

"I suggest a round of good-guy-bad-guy. I'll be happy to take the part of bad guy."

Cavilo was brought in between two men with hand tractors. She still wore her space armor, now marred and scarred. Her helmet was gone. The armor's weapons packs had been removed, control systems disconnected, and joints locked, turning it into a hundred-kilo prison, tight as a sarcophagus. The two Dendarii soldiers set her upright near the end of the conference table and stepped back with a flourish. A statue with a live head, some Pygmalion-like metamorphosis interrupted and horribly incomplete.

"Thank you, gentlemen, dismissed," said Miles. "Commander Bothari-Jesek, please stay."

Cavilo rolled her short-cropped blonde head in futile resistance, the limit of physically possible motion. She glared furiously at Gregor as the soldiers exited. "You snake," she snarled. "You bastard."