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cried, and fired.
Miles recoiled back into the lift tube so fast he rebounded off the far wall.
He grabbed for the safety ladder at the side of the tube and began slapping up
the rungs faster than the anti-grav field could lift him. He wriggled his
facial muscles, shot with pins and needles from the nimbus of the disrupter
beam. The man s shoes, Miles realized, gleaming out from the bottom of his
trousers, had been Barrayaran regulation Service boots. "Quinn!" he yelped
into his wrist comm again.
The next level up opened onto a corridor without gunmen in it. The first three
doors Miles tried were locked. The fourth swished open onto a brightly lit
office, apparently deserted. On a quick jog around it Miles s eye was caught
by a slight movement in the shadows under a console. He bent down to face two
women in blue Tidal Authority tech coveralls cowering beneath. One squeaked
and covered her eyes; the second hugged her and glared defiantly at Miles.
Miles tried a friendly smile. "Ah . . . hello."
"Who are you people?" said the second woman in rising tones.
"Oh, I m not with them. They re, um . . . hired killers." A just description,
after all. "Don t worry, they re not after you.
Have you called the police yet?"
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She shook her head mutely.
"I suggest you do so immediately. Ah have you seen me before?"
She nodded.
"Which way did I go?"
She cringed back, clearly terrorized at being cornered by a psychotic. Miles
spread his hands in silent apology, and made for the door. "Call the police!"
he called back over his shoulder. The feint beep of comconsole keys being
pressed drifted down the corridor after him.
Mark was nowhere on this level. The lift tube grav field had now been turned
off by someone; the auto safety bar was extended across the opening and the
red glow of the warning light filled the corridor. Miles stuck his head
cautiously into the lift tube, to spy another head on the level below looking
up; he jerked his head back as a nerve disruptor crackled.
A balcony ran right around the outside of the tower. Miles slipped through the
door at the seaward end of the corridor and looked around, and up. Only one
more floor above. Its balcony was readily reachable by the toss of a grappler.
Miles grimaced, pulled out his spool, and made the toss; got a firm hook
around the railing above on the first try. A swallow, a brief heart-stopping
dangle over the tower, dyke, and growling sea forty meters below, and he was
clambering onto the next balcony.
He tiptoed to the glass doorway and checked down the corridor. Mark was
crouched, silhouetted by the red light, near the entrance to the lift tube,
stunner drawn. The unconscious, Miles trusted form of a man in tech coveralls
lay sprawled on the corridor floor.
"Mark?" Miles called softly, and jerked back. Mark snapped around and let off
a stunner burst in his direction. Miles put
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me, and I ll get you out of this alive.
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Where s Ivan?"
This reminder that Mark still held a trump card had the expected calming
effect. He did not fire again. "Get me out of this and I ll tell you where he
is," he countered.
Miles grinned into the darkness. "All right. I m coming in." He slipped round
the door and joined his image, pausing only to check for a pulse in the neck
of the sprawled man. He had one, happily.
"How are you going to get me out of this?" demanded Mark.
"Well, now, that s the tricky part," Miles admitted. He paused to listen
intently. Someone was on the ladder in the lift tube, trying to climb quietly;
not near their level yet. "The police are on their way, and when they arrive I
expect the
Barrayarans will decamp in a hurry. They won t want to be caught in an
embarrassing interplanetary incident which the ambassador would have to
explain to the local authorities. This night s operation is already way out of
control in that anybody saw em at all. Destang will have their blood on the
carpet in the morning."
"The police?" Mark s grip tightened on his stunner; competing fears struggled
for ascendancy in his face.
"Yes. We could try and play hide and seek in this tower till the police
finally get here whenever.
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