Still . . . it would be interesting practice. He might have the job of reading field reports someday, God forbid. It would be educational to test how much fudging was possible. For his curiosity's sake, he recorded the full report, made a copy, and began playing around with the copy. What minimum alterations and deletions were required to erase a field agent's embarrassment?

It only took about twenty minutes.

He stared at the finished product. It was downright artistic. He felt a little sick to his stomach. This could get me cashiered.

Only if I got caught. His whole life felt as if it had been based on that principle; he'd outrun assassins, medics, the regulations of the Service, the constraints of his Vor rank . . . he'd outrun death itself, demonstrably. I can even move faster than you, Illyan.

He considered the present disposition of Illyan's independent observers in the Dendarii fleet. One was detached back with the fleet's main body; the second posed as a comm officer on the Ariel. Neither had been aboard the Peregrine or out with the squads; neither could contradict him.

I think I'd better think about this for a while. He classified the doctored version top secret and filed it beside the original. He stretched to ease the ache in his back. Desk work did that to one.

His cabin door chimed. "Yes?"

"Baz and Elena," a woman's voice floated through the intercom.

Miles cleared his comconsole, slipped his uniform jacket back on, and released the door lock. "Enter." He turned in his station chair, smiling a little, to watch them come in.

Baz was Dendarii Commodore Baz Jesek, chief engineer of the Fleet and Miles's nominal second-in-command. Elena was Captain Elena Bothari-Jesek, Baz's wife, and current commander of the Peregrine. Both were among the few fellow Barrayarans the Dendarii employed, and both were fully apprised of Miles's dual identity as Admiral Naismith, slightly renegade Betan mercenary, and Lieutenant Lord Miles Vorkosigan, dutiful Barrayaran ImpSec covert ops agent, for both predated the creation of the Dendarii Fleet itself. The lanky, balding Baz had been in on the beginning of it, a deserter on the run whom Miles had picked up and (in his private opinion) re-created. Elena . . . was another matter altogether.

She'd been Miles's Barrayaran bodyguard's daughter, raised in Count Vorkosigan's household, and practically Miles's foster sister. Barred from Barrayaran military service by her gender, she had longed for the status of a soldier on her army-mad homeworld. Miles had found a way to get it for her. She looked all soldier now, slim and as tall as her husband in her crisp Dendarii undress grays. Her dark hair, clipped in wisps around her ears, framed pale hawk features and alert dark eyes.