Captain Vorpatril's alliance

Ivan shot awake into a deep thrumming noise that seemed to come from the very walls, reverberating directionlessly around the room. The cold light propped on the box fell over and rolled to the floor. Another cold light snapped into existence from Shiv and Udine’s side of the room; Ivan added one of his own and sat up, raising it high. Tej was awake and on her feet already, looking sleep‑shocked. Ivan clambered up after her.

“What the hell is that?” shouted Amiri, as the thunder continued unabated. It shifted, changed pitch, stopped for a moment, then started up again.

Ivan moved around, trying to get a bearing; he eventually decided up by process of elimination.

“Either Vorbarr Sultana is undergoing a surprise bombardment from space,” he shouted back, “or some engineers are shifting a hell of a lot of dirt in a hurry with a heavy‑duty grav‑lifter.”

Welcome as this sign was, it occurred to Ivan that being directly under a big grav‑lifter at work was not the healthiest possible location, especially if the operators were working blind. “Stay away from the middle of the room!” he shouted. Where there any stronger places, like doorways, to cluster under? No, not exactly. Would downstairs be safer? Maybe…He was about to suggest this when the noise stopped.

He couldn’t decide if the thunder or the silence was more unnerving. Everyone around the room was staring upward now, with a range of expressions ranging from hope to fear, with a few side jaunts‑Lady ghem Estif’s expression was bland in its haut mask; Shiv’s was blackly ironic. Tej…stuck tight to Ivan. That worked for him.

The uproar started and stopped again a dozen agonizing times in the next hour. It was getting louder…closer…the vibrations took on a strange, whiny, lighter timbre. Weird thumps followed from the ceiling‑roof‑however you wanted to think of it.

An ear‑splitting shriek; dust began to sift down from a circle slowly being drawn over the center of the room. Ivan darted forward and rescued the seal‑dagger box, then skittered back to Tej’s side, trying to calculate the weight of a two‑meter‑wide disc of very thick, very peculiarly reinforced plascrete, and its probable momentum after a three‑meter drop. Would it go right through the floor to the chamber below? Possibly…

But in the event, when the circle completed itself, the slab hung suspended and then, miraculously, fell up. Hooray for grav‑tractors!

Cold gray light filled the room, and a woosh of chilly air that made Ivan realize just how much of a damp reek of exhalation had been starting to accumulate down here, accounting for his growing headache if it hadn’t had a dozen other probable causes. Their tunnel door slab groaned, shifted, and abruptly blew out into the Mycobore vestibule, damp but now empty of water. The draft increased, whistling wildly for a moment, then dropped to a steady flow.

A soldier in groundside half‑armor dropped through the hole on a rappelling line; his dramatic entrance was spoiled when he landed askew on a pile of boxes, which fell over, and him along with it, though he found his feet at once. A number of Arquas around the chamber prudently held up their hands palm‑outward, clearly empty of weaponry. A second man dropped beside the first, as the point man began shouting in excitement into his wristcom, “We’re through, sir! We’ve found them!”

The third man in was the last individual Ivan would ever have expected to see dangling at the end of a rappelling harness: Byerly Vorrutyer, and looking vastly uncomfortable, too, with a few pieces of military gear slapped over his rumpled civilian suit. Ivan handed Tej the precious seal‑dagger box and advanced to catch him, and incidentally protect the crates he was in danger of kicking over in his awkward landing.

“I hate heights,” By gasped, as Ivan guided him down to his feet.

“Well, I hate depths,” Ivan returned.

“To each his own, I guess.”

“Evidently.”

Chapter Twenty‑Three

Tej tore her gaze from the gray circle of heaven, or at least Barrayaran sky, now visible through the roof of the lab and being crossed by banking military grav vehicles. She set down the box of those daggers Ivan Xav was so taken with and hurried to his side in time to interrupt the start of some What took you so long? exchange with Byerly.

“Have you seen Rish and Jet on your end?” she demanded.

Byerly jerked around to her. “No. They’re not safe with you? Star hoped they might be.”

Star is rescued? That’s one… Tej shook her head. “They were in the tunnels when the old bomb went off.” Tej pointed toward their entry. “We haven’t seen them since. We were trapped on this end by the rising water, and they‑we don’t know.”

“I’ve only seen Star,” said By. “She’s in a state, or she was‑she’s waiting now above with, er, everybody.” He freed himself from his harness and hurried to the aperture.