If only I could crawl through that vid plate and have myself beamed back to Barrayar at the speed of light . . .  Miles sighed.  All his life, his home had been something he couldn't wait to escape.  How had his polarity become so profoundly reversed?

Roic's remark stung: If only you'd quit while you were winning . . .  Well, this tangle on Kibou-daini wasn't all of his own making.

He wished Leiber would show the hell up.  Now would be a good time.  Miles was surprised he was taking so long.  He might have to send someone to collect the man after all.  Or if Lisa Sato woke up with temporary cryo-amnesia, or simply didn't know the answers.  No, she has to know whatever Leiber knows.  Because I'd bet Betan dollars to sand he's the one who told her in the first place.

Leiber's evident alarm niggled at Miles.  Why should he have been so afraid of us?  He didn't even know us.  Leiber was obviously responding to some local threat, perhaps the very one that Miles wanted to know all about.  But Miles was still having some trouble guessing what it might be.

Just as Sato was bait for Leiber, the pair of them would be bait for . . . who?  Why?  Miles had staked people out like goats to draw the tiger du jour in the past, but not, knowingly, when they had children in tow.  Or had you just never noticed their webs of relationships, before?  He couldn't remember.  But if he didn't have the personnel here to chase down Leiber, he surely didn't have the personnel to put a round-the-clock guard on the consulate and the people it sheltered.  Roic and Johannes between them weren't enough, even if they hadn't had other duties—handing the task to them without support would be downright abusive.  Raven wasn't the only one who didn't like being set up to fail.

Despite the distance it put between him and his family, Miles felt a little shiver of gratitude to Gregor for sending him so far afield on his sporadic Auditorial labors.  Because it put that same distance between his family and whoever his investigations managed to piss off.  Pissing off bad guys for the greater glory of Barrayar, that would be my job description, just about.  Speaking of being happy in one's work.

He bent to the comconsole and began composing an Auditorial requisition to the Barrayaran embassy on Escobar for a security team, to be dispatched immediately, with a heads-up to put an ImpSec forensic accountant and, perhaps, legal team on stand-by.  He knew nothing of his invisible enemy but that they played for keeps.  Five days for the squad to get here, at their best speed.  Had he known enough, five days ago, to ask for this?  I suppose not.

Miles called up the background data on NewEgypt Cryonics once more, and began to slog through it.  Lisa Sato could not regain her voice soon enough.

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen