Captain Vorpatril's alliance

In the courtyard, visible through the open iron gates, a lone cobblestone erupted out of its matrix and bounced, clacking. In a moment, a few more followed, looking and sounding like popcorn just starting to pop. Big, granite chunks of popcorn. A soldier crossing the courtyard yelped and dodged this unexpected, knee‑capping bombardment.

A loud crack; a visible fissure propagated up the unclimbable front steps, zigzagging. With a horrible, grinding shriek, the bronze doors topping the high front steps twisted slightly apart.

“What the hell…?” said Allegre, starting forward.

Otto grabbed his arm and held him back. “Wait, sir…!”

“Oh, it’s straightening up,” said Tej. “Or…not…”

“No…” said Otto, his engineer’s eye sweeping the crenellated roofline. “The other side is sinking. Too.”

From both side doors, an efflux of men in green uniforms began, at a rate, Ivan guessed, of about a cubic meter a second.

“They’re leaving their posts?” said Allegre, caught somewhere between approval and anguish.

Simon, his teeth pressed into his lower lip, released the stress to say, “At a guess, those would be the fellows who grew up in earthquake country, Guy.” And after another minute, under his breath, as the evacuation continued more sporadically, “The ones still inside, you’ll want to commend. The ones outside, those are the ones I’d promote…”

Allegre moved away, speaking harshly into his pickup, pausing to listen to his earbug. Colonel Otto, after one more wild‑eyed stare, ran for his bank of comconsoles.

Simon’s lips parted and his eyes grew big as the building continued, very slowly, to sink. It went as a unit, nothing collapsing; old Dono‑the‑Architect had been deranged, not incompetent. But inexorably, in the course of the next ten minutes, in a silence only broken by under‑voiced swearing nearby and a few cries from beyond the spike‑topped walls, its first story was entirely swallowed by the earth. The bronze doors hit ground level and kept going. The frieze of pressed gargoyles above them sank from view as if being dragged down to their old hell. The descent finally slowed at a point where occupants on the third floor could have stepped out of their windows to the ground, if there had been any windows. A few men rappelled off the roof, instead.

“Well,” said Gregor, in a choked voice. “There’s…a surprise.”

A startling cackle broke from Simon’s lips. He clapped a hand over his mouth, and managed in a more measured voice, “My God, I hope no one has been injured.” Except then he cackled again, louder. Lady Alys gripped his arm in worry.

Gregor’s fretful armsmen finally managed to drag him away from this riveting show and back to his groundcar. Surrounded by its black‑and‑silver‑clad outriders, it rose on its fans and slowly pulled away. Ivan thought he saw a familiar face pressed to the canopy, looking backward in still‑stunned fascination, as it rounded the corner on the route back to the Residence.

“We aren’t doing anything useful here, Simon‑love,” said Lady Alys, after a few more silent, staring minutes. “Perhaps we should go home. Ivan‑now you’re rescued‑Tej, will you come with us? We want to hear more about your, your ordeal. And I’m sure anyone who wants us will be able to find us there.” She cast one more astounded glance back over her shoulder at the…the upper half of ImpSec Headquarters. Emergency teams of every description were thick on the ground now, arguing with each other about access.

Said Simon, faintly, “I’m sure they will,” and allowed himself to be drawn off.

Chapter Twenty‑Four

Tej had the impression, that afternoon, that ImpSec would have preferred to drop a giant, concealing tarp over their whole two‑block area of Vorbarr Sultana, but it was much too late. Between the dramatic‑not to mention noisy, muddy, and public‑engineering rescue, the rumors of almost‑stolen treasure, crime lords, off‑world invasion, secret bombings, ugly kidnappings of beautiful women, smugglers, and much, much more, all playing out in the Eye of the Imperium that was the Old Town capital‑and all of it overtopped by the swallowing of one of the most notorious structures on the planet by the planet‑about the only thing the Barrayaran government managed to keep a lid on was the details of the Mycoborer itself.

“The Arquas had better hope Gregor’s damage‑control people succeed, on that one,” Ivan Xav advised Tej. “All the rest could just get them jailed. Barrayar is still traumatized from some of the Cetagandan weaponized biologicals and chemical warfare experiments during the Occupation. The news that you all have managed to release a mutant alien fungus into our biosphere could get you torn limb from limb. The Dismemberment of Mad Emperor Yuri would be nothing to it. The angry mobs would fill the city. They’d tear the pieces to pieces. And the military couldn’t stop them because most of the military would be joining them.”