Fic: It's a long way to Escobar (1/20)
"It's a long way to Escobar"
by jetta-e_rus aka Georgette
Slash, PG-13. Drama, action, a detective story.
The table of contents is here
Chapter One,
where Lt. Illyan looks over a picture-gallery and Aral Vorkosigan is promoted to the commodore again.
***
Illyan patiently paced along the empty Residence hall. A connoisseur of antiques would be delighted with the artistic paintings on the wall and the expensive knick-knackery on small decorative tables. But Lieutenant Simon Illyan wasn't a connoisseur. He had managed to examine the largest thing in this collection - a painting "Siege of the Star Bridge" - right up to all the tiny cracks in the canvas and every oar of the mooring galley.
A spring garden view in the windows, old paintings, the mead-colored parquetry, polished with aromatic wax, silence. An illusory sensation of peace. A bit of eternity congealed in the amber of the warm afternoon. Well, history would soon crush this moment in its infinite gearwheels, and time would go on...
A forced vacation, falling in the last week, had drained Illyan more than any overtime work. The Escobar campaign plans were progressing, the Crown Prince shone with pride like a newly minted coin, and you could practically taste the anxiety in the air. The Emperor kept having secret meetings with his ImpSec chief, one after another, which even the Emperor's secretary was not allowed to attend, although he was kept nearby so as to be available at any moment. Finally, he was ordered to present himself before his commander and lord.
One leaf of the double doors down the hall opened slightly. It wasn't an Emperor's armsman but Negri himself, gloomy and discreet as usual, who motioned to him: "Lieutenant. Come in".
Illyan stepped in, saluting without words. Judging by the length of Illyan's walk in the art gallery, today's conversation had taken at least a few hours, and these hours had been hard for everyone around the table.
At the height of the afternoon the Emperor's sitting room was filled with cool twilight. Dark green silk curtains were half-drawn, since lately Ezar was bothered by bright lights. A large comconsole, now turned off, gaped at the middle of the room like a glass black hole; deep, fathomless water of the kind where one can't swim out if one falls in.
Negri had positioned his straight chair at some distance from the console. His broad palm noiselessly patted a plain leather file-folder. The poor folder looked like a freshly flayed animal skin spread under a wolfish paw. Illyan had absolutely no desire to see its contents.
Ezar sat with his elbows wide apart, fingers intertwined and hands tenting above the black glass. He glanced briefly aside at Illyan as if he was a familiar and understandable furnishing. Right now the Emperor's attention was focused on another man.
Illyan hadn't previously seen the third person in the room with his own eyes, only on holovid records in his files. But a man didn't need eidetic memory to immediately remember this rough face with its heavy features. Now Illyan saw only the man's profile, because he sat half-turned to the doors. The admiral's (no, the captain's, judging by the rectangles at his collar) face was impassive, but his broad shoulders under his undress greens hardened in stubborn immobility.
However Illyan felt a certain unexplainable relief at the sight of this man. This man who was a living guarantee of success for the Escobaran... yes, campaign: Illyan didn't like to say "a crazy attempt" even in his mind, though he knew well the author of this "brilliant" idea. But Vorkosigan was more suited to command the entire Expedition force than a patrol ship; even an ImpSec man without any navy experience understood this.
"... It's really wasteful to hold you back in patrol until you get moldy", added Ezar suddenly from the middle of a sentence as if he had heard Illyan's thoughts. Nobody was mistaken whom this phrase has been addressed to, "And even there you have managed to grapple with Grishnov's fellow". The Emperor's voice sounded almost peevish, "I'm tired of shielding you".
The hero of Komarr didn't move, even having received this excoriating in the presence of the junior officer. This junior officer (having been brought up to date in this way) was still, too. His other reason to keep perfectly immobile was Negri's glare.
"You wear my uniform. And you will serve me wherever and however I consider necessary", Ezar snapped, "Right now it means a post in Ops with the fleet going to Escobar. And so as to keep you from any of the usual quarrels in which you always think yourself right, I will put you on a short leash. There is your leash", a little move of his chin pointed out Illyan.
Well, such a recommendation isn't particularly flattering.
Vorkosigan turned to the new character in this scene and measured him with a brief and almost astonished look.
Illyan did his best to make a stony face. Obviously in this performance he was supposed to play the role of a silent supernumerary. Nobody expected him to present his special skills and to apologize, at the same time, making excuses that he didn't have the chip's barcode on his forehead.
Ezar continued: "Lieutenant Illyan has, besides the usual merits of my ImpSec men," -- Illyan saw out of the corner of his eye that Negri nodded -- "one additional advantage: a memory bio-chip. And he has the unusual right to report to me directly. Aral, you wouldn’t be wrong to consider these Silver Eyes on his collar to be my own eyes. He'll be appointed to look after you for the sake of security. Including protecting you from your own ill-advised doings."
Vorkosigan should fly into a rage now, if Illyan ever knew anything about human behavior. But even if a dark light flashed if his eyes, it was concealed by drooping eyelids.
"My word is not enough for you, Sire?" he asked, almost as if for the form's sake.
Illyan noticed that his voice sounded more a bit toneless than it did in recordings. Maybe the man had just overstrained his voice in a two-hour debate with the sovereign of two planets. Illyan wouldn't be surprised. In his secret files, which Illyan had been ordered to read yesterday, the phrase "stubborn son-of-a-bitch" was as frequent as "strategical genius". And both definitions could have been poetic hyperbole as well as simple truth.
"Hm, the word of Vorkosigan?" The Emperor's remark was edged with... what? Irritation? Sarcasm? Or the gloating pleasure of a debater who catches his opponent's error of logic? Illyan had taken up his post of an Emperor's secretary a few years ago. Now he knew Ezar's face better and saw it more often than his own face in the mirror (and sometimes - closer, but that was nobody's business). He still made mistakes now and then in reading emotion in his master's features.
"No. Your mutual confrontation has gone too far for it to stop by your word of honor. This man," he nodded towards Illyan, frozen still, "will guarantee that you'll be busy with your service to me, not your revenge against your commanding officer".
His commanding officer?
"You have already confirmed his appointment." From Vorkosigan's lips this came as a simple statement, not a question or even a frustrated regret.
"Vorrutyer will be promoted to vice-admiral so as to match my son's rank and to share command with him," Ezar stated. No comments were expected, "And you will be promoted to the rank of commodore. This is your second chance to deserve an admiral's yellow tabs again. And my lieutenant will look after you and keep you from compromising yourself."
Illyan bit his tongue, resisting the temptation to foolishly ask, "What?" Vorrutyer's name should have been expected. But this fact also explained Aral Vorkosigan's strained despair. In the disgraced former admiral's place, Illyan would apply for a transfer to Kyril Island instead of the post in Ops. Perhaps Illyan, the prospective peacemaker, should do it himself, and right now?
"You will serve me wherever and however I consider necessary", he remembered. Illyan wondered if this last remark was also addressed to him, and in what measure.
Ezar slapped on the tabletop. "The discussion is closed. Dismissed, gentlemen. You'll get your directions the usual way. Illyan, please, accompany Commodore Vorkosigan to the East entrance and then come back".
Vorkosigan rose, and his straight chair creaked. He looked around, shooting a single glance at Negri's file-folder, faced his Emperor and saluted neatly. "Yes, Sire." Then he turned to Illyan, knitting his thick eyebrows questioningly. No doubt, the son of Count Vorkosigan could find his way out the Residence on his own, and he didn't like an unexpected escort.
"Sir?" Illyan opened the door wide in front of him. The man who should be called a commodore henceforth strode through without glancing back. Illyan shut the leaf of the door softly behind them.
The syncopated clomp of their boots echoed in the gallery. Vorkosigan strode forth, not looking around. Probably he had been this way dozens of times before his disfavor. He looked distracted, like Illyan himself. Questions crowded Illyan's brain, outnumbering the matching responses. The silence lasted right up to the doors.
Before the exit Illyan saluted his companion, for a split second hesitating over whether this salute should be an analyst's vague wave or the perfectly accurate movement specified exactly by the Service Regulations. Which would seem to be a mockery? No, Vorkosigan took the exact salute as a matter of course and returned it with an almost automatic gesture.
"Do you already have experience in looking after somebody, Lieutenant?" Aral Vorkosigan asked suddenly with a mirthless grin.
Are you asking if I'm an experienced spy?
"During the last year His Majesty has often commissioned me to observe", replied Illyan dryly, almost despite himself. Everybody expects the fellow with the mechanism in his brain to always have a blank face, not a confused one. It was difficult to let Vorkosigan know that they were fellow victims. Because neither of them could completely understand: why?
No. Vorkosigan certainly understands. But he doesn't intend to share his conclusions.
And Illyan's understanding had to wait for its proper moment in the Emperor's office. He hurried up, though not enough to draw attention, in hopes of a quick enlightenment.
by jetta-e_rus aka Georgette
Slash, PG-13. Drama, action, a detective story.
The table of contents is here
Chapter One,
where Lt. Illyan looks over a picture-gallery and Aral Vorkosigan is promoted to the commodore again.
***
Illyan patiently paced along the empty Residence hall. A connoisseur of antiques would be delighted with the artistic paintings on the wall and the expensive knick-knackery on small decorative tables. But Lieutenant Simon Illyan wasn't a connoisseur. He had managed to examine the largest thing in this collection - a painting "Siege of the Star Bridge" - right up to all the tiny cracks in the canvas and every oar of the mooring galley.
A spring garden view in the windows, old paintings, the mead-colored parquetry, polished with aromatic wax, silence. An illusory sensation of peace. A bit of eternity congealed in the amber of the warm afternoon. Well, history would soon crush this moment in its infinite gearwheels, and time would go on...
A forced vacation, falling in the last week, had drained Illyan more than any overtime work. The Escobar campaign plans were progressing, the Crown Prince shone with pride like a newly minted coin, and you could practically taste the anxiety in the air. The Emperor kept having secret meetings with his ImpSec chief, one after another, which even the Emperor's secretary was not allowed to attend, although he was kept nearby so as to be available at any moment. Finally, he was ordered to present himself before his commander and lord.
One leaf of the double doors down the hall opened slightly. It wasn't an Emperor's armsman but Negri himself, gloomy and discreet as usual, who motioned to him: "Lieutenant. Come in".
Illyan stepped in, saluting without words. Judging by the length of Illyan's walk in the art gallery, today's conversation had taken at least a few hours, and these hours had been hard for everyone around the table.
At the height of the afternoon the Emperor's sitting room was filled with cool twilight. Dark green silk curtains were half-drawn, since lately Ezar was bothered by bright lights. A large comconsole, now turned off, gaped at the middle of the room like a glass black hole; deep, fathomless water of the kind where one can't swim out if one falls in.
Negri had positioned his straight chair at some distance from the console. His broad palm noiselessly patted a plain leather file-folder. The poor folder looked like a freshly flayed animal skin spread under a wolfish paw. Illyan had absolutely no desire to see its contents.
Ezar sat with his elbows wide apart, fingers intertwined and hands tenting above the black glass. He glanced briefly aside at Illyan as if he was a familiar and understandable furnishing. Right now the Emperor's attention was focused on another man.
Illyan hadn't previously seen the third person in the room with his own eyes, only on holovid records in his files. But a man didn't need eidetic memory to immediately remember this rough face with its heavy features. Now Illyan saw only the man's profile, because he sat half-turned to the doors. The admiral's (no, the captain's, judging by the rectangles at his collar) face was impassive, but his broad shoulders under his undress greens hardened in stubborn immobility.
However Illyan felt a certain unexplainable relief at the sight of this man. This man who was a living guarantee of success for the Escobaran... yes, campaign: Illyan didn't like to say "a crazy attempt" even in his mind, though he knew well the author of this "brilliant" idea. But Vorkosigan was more suited to command the entire Expedition force than a patrol ship; even an ImpSec man without any navy experience understood this.
"... It's really wasteful to hold you back in patrol until you get moldy", added Ezar suddenly from the middle of a sentence as if he had heard Illyan's thoughts. Nobody was mistaken whom this phrase has been addressed to, "And even there you have managed to grapple with Grishnov's fellow". The Emperor's voice sounded almost peevish, "I'm tired of shielding you".
The hero of Komarr didn't move, even having received this excoriating in the presence of the junior officer. This junior officer (having been brought up to date in this way) was still, too. His other reason to keep perfectly immobile was Negri's glare.
"You wear my uniform. And you will serve me wherever and however I consider necessary", Ezar snapped, "Right now it means a post in Ops with the fleet going to Escobar. And so as to keep you from any of the usual quarrels in which you always think yourself right, I will put you on a short leash. There is your leash", a little move of his chin pointed out Illyan.
Well, such a recommendation isn't particularly flattering.
Vorkosigan turned to the new character in this scene and measured him with a brief and almost astonished look.
Illyan did his best to make a stony face. Obviously in this performance he was supposed to play the role of a silent supernumerary. Nobody expected him to present his special skills and to apologize, at the same time, making excuses that he didn't have the chip's barcode on his forehead.
Ezar continued: "Lieutenant Illyan has, besides the usual merits of my ImpSec men," -- Illyan saw out of the corner of his eye that Negri nodded -- "one additional advantage: a memory bio-chip. And he has the unusual right to report to me directly. Aral, you wouldn’t be wrong to consider these Silver Eyes on his collar to be my own eyes. He'll be appointed to look after you for the sake of security. Including protecting you from your own ill-advised doings."
Vorkosigan should fly into a rage now, if Illyan ever knew anything about human behavior. But even if a dark light flashed if his eyes, it was concealed by drooping eyelids.
"My word is not enough for you, Sire?" he asked, almost as if for the form's sake.
Illyan noticed that his voice sounded more a bit toneless than it did in recordings. Maybe the man had just overstrained his voice in a two-hour debate with the sovereign of two planets. Illyan wouldn't be surprised. In his secret files, which Illyan had been ordered to read yesterday, the phrase "stubborn son-of-a-bitch" was as frequent as "strategical genius". And both definitions could have been poetic hyperbole as well as simple truth.
"Hm, the word of Vorkosigan?" The Emperor's remark was edged with... what? Irritation? Sarcasm? Or the gloating pleasure of a debater who catches his opponent's error of logic? Illyan had taken up his post of an Emperor's secretary a few years ago. Now he knew Ezar's face better and saw it more often than his own face in the mirror (and sometimes - closer, but that was nobody's business). He still made mistakes now and then in reading emotion in his master's features.
"No. Your mutual confrontation has gone too far for it to stop by your word of honor. This man," he nodded towards Illyan, frozen still, "will guarantee that you'll be busy with your service to me, not your revenge against your commanding officer".
His commanding officer?
"You have already confirmed his appointment." From Vorkosigan's lips this came as a simple statement, not a question or even a frustrated regret.
"Vorrutyer will be promoted to vice-admiral so as to match my son's rank and to share command with him," Ezar stated. No comments were expected, "And you will be promoted to the rank of commodore. This is your second chance to deserve an admiral's yellow tabs again. And my lieutenant will look after you and keep you from compromising yourself."
Illyan bit his tongue, resisting the temptation to foolishly ask, "What?" Vorrutyer's name should have been expected. But this fact also explained Aral Vorkosigan's strained despair. In the disgraced former admiral's place, Illyan would apply for a transfer to Kyril Island instead of the post in Ops. Perhaps Illyan, the prospective peacemaker, should do it himself, and right now?
"You will serve me wherever and however I consider necessary", he remembered. Illyan wondered if this last remark was also addressed to him, and in what measure.
Ezar slapped on the tabletop. "The discussion is closed. Dismissed, gentlemen. You'll get your directions the usual way. Illyan, please, accompany Commodore Vorkosigan to the East entrance and then come back".
Vorkosigan rose, and his straight chair creaked. He looked around, shooting a single glance at Negri's file-folder, faced his Emperor and saluted neatly. "Yes, Sire." Then he turned to Illyan, knitting his thick eyebrows questioningly. No doubt, the son of Count Vorkosigan could find his way out the Residence on his own, and he didn't like an unexpected escort.
"Sir?" Illyan opened the door wide in front of him. The man who should be called a commodore henceforth strode through without glancing back. Illyan shut the leaf of the door softly behind them.
The syncopated clomp of their boots echoed in the gallery. Vorkosigan strode forth, not looking around. Probably he had been this way dozens of times before his disfavor. He looked distracted, like Illyan himself. Questions crowded Illyan's brain, outnumbering the matching responses. The silence lasted right up to the doors.
Before the exit Illyan saluted his companion, for a split second hesitating over whether this salute should be an analyst's vague wave or the perfectly accurate movement specified exactly by the Service Regulations. Which would seem to be a mockery? No, Vorkosigan took the exact salute as a matter of course and returned it with an almost automatic gesture.
"Do you already have experience in looking after somebody, Lieutenant?" Aral Vorkosigan asked suddenly with a mirthless grin.
Are you asking if I'm an experienced spy?
"During the last year His Majesty has often commissioned me to observe", replied Illyan dryly, almost despite himself. Everybody expects the fellow with the mechanism in his brain to always have a blank face, not a confused one. It was difficult to let Vorkosigan know that they were fellow victims. Because neither of them could completely understand: why?
No. Vorkosigan certainly understands. But he doesn't intend to share his conclusions.
And Illyan's understanding had to wait for its proper moment in the Emperor's office. He hurried up, though not enough to draw attention, in hopes of a quick enlightenment.