Hereld raised her brows at the list of names even as her hands moved over the comconsole interface to comply. Inner Circle all. "Serious shit, sir?"

He managed an edged smile, and tried to lighten his voice. "Seriously annoying only, Lieutenant."

Not quite. What had his idiot baby brother Mark in mind to do with that commando squad he'd requisitioned? A dozen fully-equipped Dendarii troopers were not trivial firepower. Yet, compared to the military resources of, say, House Bharaputra . . . enough force to get into a hell of a lot of trouble, but not enough force to shoot their way back out. The thought of his people—Taura, God!—blindly following the ignorant Mark into some tactical insanity, trustingly thinking it was him, drove him wild inside. Klaxons howled and red lights flashed in his head. Bel, why aren't you answering?

*    *    *

Miles found himself pacing in the Triumph's main briefing room, too, around and around the big main tac display table, until Quinn raised her chin from her hands to growl, "Will you please sit down?" Quinn was not as anxious as he; she was not biting her fingernails yet. The ends remained neat, uneclipsed half-moons. He found that faintly reassuring. He swung into a station chair. One of his booted feet began tapping on the friction matting. Quinn eyed it, frowned, opened her mouth, closed it, and shook her head. He stilled the foot and bared his teeth at her in a quick false grin. Happily, before his nervous energy could materialize into some even more irritating compulsive twitch, Baz Jesek arrived.

"Elena is podding over from the Peregrine right now," Baz reported, seating himself in his usual station chair, and by habit calling up the fleet engineering ops interface from the comconsole. "She should be along in just a few minutes."

"Good, thanks." Miles nodded.

The engineer had been a tall, thin, dark-haired, tensely unhappy man in his late twenties when Miles had first met him, almost a decade ago, at the birth of the Dendarii Mercenaries. The outfit had then consisted only of Miles, his Barrayaran bodyguard, his bodyguard's daughter, one obsolete freighter slated for scrap and its suicidally depressed jump pilot, and an ill-conceived get-rich-quick arms-smuggling scheme. Miles had sworn Baz in as a liegeman to Lord Vorkosigan before Admiral Naismith had even been invented. Now in his late thirties, Baz remained just as thin, with slightly less dark hair, and just as quiet, but possessed of a serene self-confidence. He reminded Miles of a heron, stalking in some reedy lake margin, all long stillnesses and economical motions.

As promised, Elena Bothari-Jesek entered the chamber shortly thereafter and seated herself beside her engineer-husband. Both being on duty, they limited the demonstration of their reunion to the exchange of a smile and a quick hand-touch under the table. She spared a smile for Miles, too. Secondly.