s [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

"Can you handle me, all by yourself?"
"You re drugged to the eyeballs."
Miles shrugged, and let his jaw hang slack and his eyes track randomly and not
quite in unison. He shambled beside her as her hand pinched his upper arm,
guiding him up the steps. She tried the door, an old-fashioned one hung on
hinges. "It s open." It swung wide squeaking, revealing blackness.
Elli reluctantly reholstered her stunner and unhooked a handlight from her
belt, flashing it into the darkness. An entry hall; rickety-looking stairs
ascended to the left, twin archways on either side led into empty, dirty front
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rooms. She sighed and stepped cautiously across the threshold. "Anybody here?"
she called softly. Silence. They entered the left-hand room, the beam of the
handlight darting from corner to corner.
"We re not early," she muttered, "not late, the address is right . . . where
are they?"
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He could not very well answer and stay in character. Elli released him,
switched the light to her left hand and re-drew her stunner. "You re too
tanked to wander far," she decided, as if talking to herself. "I m going to
take a look around."
One of Miles s eyelids shivered in acknowledgement. Until she finished
checking for remote bugs and scanner beams, he had better keep playing Lord
Vorkosigan in a convincingly kidnapped state. After a moment s hesitation, she
took to the stairs.
Taking the light with her, dammit.
He was still listening to the swift, faint creak of her footsteps overhead
when the hand closed over his mouth and the back of his neck was kissed by a
stunner on very light power, zero range.
He convulsed, kicking, trying to shout, trying to bite. His assailant hissed
in pain and clutched harder. There were two his hands were yanked up behind
his back, a gag stuffed into his mouth before his teeth could snap closed on
the hand that fed him. The gag was permeated with some sweet, penetrating
drug; his nostrils flared wildly, but his vocal cords went involuntarily
slack. He seemed out of touch with his body, as if it had moved leaving no
forwarding address. Then a pale light came up.
Two large men, one younger, one older, dressed in Earther clothing, shifted in
the shadows, faintly blurred. Scanner shields, dammit! And very, very good
ones, to beat the Dendarii equipment. Miles spotted the boxes belted to their
waists a tenth the size of the latest thing his people had. Such tiny power
packs they looked new. The
Barrayaran embassy was going to have to update its secured areas . . . He went
cross-eyed, for a mad moment, trying to read the maker s mark on them, until
he saw the third man.
Oh, the third. I ve lost it, Miles s panicked thoughts gyrated. Gone right
over the edge. The third man was himself.
The alter-Miles, neatly turned out in Barrayaran: dress greens, stepped
forward to stare long and strangely, hungrily,
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rothers%20In%20Arms.txt into his face as he was held up by the two younger
men. He began emptying the contents of Miles s pockets into his own.
Stunner . . . IDs . . . half a pack of clove breath mints . . . He frowned at
the breath mints as if momentarily puzzled, then pocketed them with a shrug.
He pointed to Miles s waist.
Miles s grandfather s dagger had been willed explicitly to him. The
300-year-old blade was still flexible as rubber, sharp as glass. Its jewelled
hilt concealed the Vorkosigan seal. They took it from beneath his jacket.
The alter-Miles shrugged the sheath-strap over his shoulder and refastened his
tunic. Finally, he unhooked the scanner-shield belt from his own waist and
slipped it swiftly around Miles.
The alter-Miles s eyes were hot with an exhilarated terror, as he paused to
sweep one last glance over Miles. Miles had seen the look once before, in his
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own face in the mirrored wall of a tube station.
No.
He d seen it on this one s face in the mirrored wall of a tube station.
He must have been standing feet away that night, behind Miles at an angle. In
the wrong uniform.
The green one, at a moment Miles was wearing his Dendarii greys.
Looks like they managed to get it right this time, though. . . . [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]