Captain Vorpatril's alliance

Byerly, looking spooked, stared out over the sea of crates, then went aside and spoke into his audio pickup.

Tej went back to hover over the engineering tech, hovering over his control panel, so was the first to hear him say, “ Good girl, Rover!” He looked up with a grin that made him suddenly look his real age‑well, no, he probably wasn’t fourteen‑despite his military garb. “Found ’em. They’re following Rover home now.”

She and Byerly both leaned through the door, watching anxiously, as a bright light appeared in the throat of the tunnel. Scrambling after it, two exhausted, muddy, chilled figures…

Byerly reached out and dragged Rish over the threshold, and was suddenly plastered all over with lithe blue woman, a somewhat darker shade than usual. “You rescued us!” Rish cried, a view that unfairly left out the rest of the army that seemed to be involved, but which Byerly did not bother to correct. Jet stumbled into a welcoming committee of Arquas, and it was several minutes before the critique began.

“We were just working on the dirt pile,” Rish told them all, “when we saw lights coming down the tunnel that weren’t ours. We retreated all the way back to the storm sewer, then ducked up the biggest blind alley. There was a ruckus down on the other end, shouts and stunner fire, and we drew back‑just in time, I think‑we were both near‑deaf for an hour, after the blast. When we looked, the entry end was collapsed, and the other was already filling with water. We retreated…and kept retreating…and the water kept rising. Then our cold lights gave out‑”

Ivan Xav, listening, shuddered in vicarious horror, then went over and gave her a quite spontaneous and perhaps not altogether appreciated hug.

“Uh, thanks, Ivan Xav,” Rish said, extracting herself and giving him a bemused stare; she went on with her narrative. “We were down to this little air pocket, when this weird noise and vibration started. It went on forever, starting and stopping. Then it was like someone pulled the plug on the drain. The water went down…we followed it. We were trying to decide whether to attempt to wade the tunnel when the lovely robot probe found us.” She smiled at the engineering tech, who smiled back a bit uncertainly. Beautiful blue‑and‑gold ladies with pointed ears were not in his prior experience, Tej guessed, nor very many other ladies of any hue. Byerly, who certainly did not share this deficiency, took Rish’s cold hand and rubbed it.

In any case, when the medical evacuation floater arrived‑a small one, to fit through the roof hole‑Rish and Jet were sent up in the first load. Imola, Inc. were sent up next, each individually with an armed guard with him. The Baronne and Grandmama followed, then Dada and Imiri, then Pidge and Em. Pearl went next, Byerly joining her to keep an eye on his subjects; Tej waited to go with Ivan Xav.

They watched Pearl and By’s floater rise. “You know,” he said, in an oddly faraway voice, “the other thing I wanted to do was take you dancing. We’d never got to it. Thought about that, last night. All the things we’d never got to do, yet.”

Years of things. She began to suspect they would never run out. “I would like that.” Their hands found each other. “I’d like that a lot.”

“It’s a deal, then.” His grip tightened.

When the floater came back, he helped her into it with all the panache of a Vor lord of old handing his fine Time‑of‑Isolation lady into his carriage. Lady Vorpatril. I could get used to that…

The med‑evac floater was little more than a glorified stretcher, designed to hold one patient lying down but, in a pinch, two sitting up, plus its operator in the control saddle. Ivan, sitting cross‑legged opposite Tej, stared through the canopy as they angled out the lab roof and ascended through the new access well, which was shaped like a narrow cone, widening at the top. More engineers on floaters were spraying some kind of fixative on the walls to stabilize the dirt, as they rose past.

Circus was an understatement, Ivan realized with a sinking heart as they cleared the lip of the well and briefly gathered more height. The new hole was dug down through what had been the lower end of the little park; the opposite side was now occupied by a conical mountain of what seemed, inexplicably, twice as much dirt, spilling over the park boundaries, the sidewalks, and, on two sides, into the streets beyond, which were blocked with barricades; municipal guards were rerouting traffic, fortunately still sparse on this early weekend morning. The pavement shone with a wet gleam, but it had finally stopped raining.