Diplomatic Immunity

No bio-plague can cross that gap , he thought with satisfaction, then instantly thought of what the Cetagandans might do with spores. I hope.

It occurred to him belatedly that if the Prince Xav 's surgeon sounded an all-clear from the biocontamination alert, docking once again was going to be a critically more delicate task. Well, if he clears the ship, we can import a pilot then . He glanced at the time on a wall digital. Barely an hour had passed since they'd found Bel. It seemed a century.

“You're a pilot, as well?” a surprised, muffled female voice sounded.

Miles swung around in the pilot's chair to find the three quaddies in their floaters hovering in the control room's doorway. All now wore quaddie-shaped biotainer suits in pale medical green. His eye rapidly sorted them out. Ve

“Only in an emergency,” he admitted. “Where did you get the suits?”

“My people sent them across from the station in a drone pod,” said Ve

Miles would have preferred to keep the civilians safely locked down in the freight nacelle, but there was clearly no help for that now.

“Which is still attached to the lock, yes,” Ve

“Thank you,” said Miles meekly.

He wanted desperately to rub his face and scrub his itching eyes, but couldn't. What was next? Had he done all he could to contain this thing? His eye fell on the decontaminator, slung over Roic's shoulder. It would probably be a good idea to take that back down to Engineering and sterilize their tracks.

“M'lord?' said Roic diffidently.

“Yes, Armsman?”

“I been thinking. The night guard saw the portmaster and the ba enter the ship, but nobody reported anybody leaving. We found Thorne. I was wondering how the ba got off the ship.”

“Thank you, Roic, yes. And how long ago. Good question to pursue next.”

“Whenever one of the Idris 's hatches opens, its lock vid recorders start up automatically. We should ought to be able to access t'lock records from here, I'd think, same as from Solian's security office.” Roic cast a somewhat desperate eye around the intimidating array of stations. “Somewhere.”

“We should indeed.” Miles abandoned the pilot's chair for the flight engineer's station. A little poking among the controls, and a short delay while one of Roic's library of override codes pacified the lockdowns, and Miles was able to bring up a duplicate file of the sort of airlock security records they'd found in Solian's office and spent so many bleary-eyed hours studying. He set the search to present the data in reverse order of time.

The most recent usage was first up on the vid plate, a nice shot of the automated drone pod docking at the outboard perso

Mere minutes before that was the Barrayaran military medical patrol arriving in a small shuttle from the Prince Xav , entering via one of the number four nacelle perso

A freight lock in one of the Necklin drive nacelles popped up next, and Miles caught his breath. A figure in a bulky extravehicular-repairs suit marked with serial numbers from the Idris 's engineering section lumbered heavily past the vid pickup, and departed into the vacuum with a brief puff of suit jets. The quaddies bobbing at Miles's shoulder murmured and pointed; Greenlaw muffled an exclamation, and Ve

The next record back in time was of themselves—the three quaddies, Miles, and Roic—entering the ship from the loading bay for their inspection, however many hours ago it had been. Miles tapped instantly back to the mystery figure in the engineering suit. What time . . . ?

Roic exclaimed, “Look, m'lord! He—it—was getting away not twenty minutes before we found t'portmaster! The ba must've still been aboard when we came on!” Even through his faceplate, his face took on a greenish tinge.

Had Bel's conundrum in the bod pod been a fiendishly engineered delaying tactic? Miles wondered if the knotted feeling in his stomach and tightness in his throat could be the first sign of a bioengineered plague. . . .

“Is that our suspect?” asked Leutwyn anxiously. “Where did he go?”

“What is the range on those heavy suits of yours, do you know, Lord Auditor?” asked Ve

“Those? Not sure. They're meant to allow men to work outside the ship for hours at a time, so I'd guess, if they were fully topped up with oxygen, propellant, and power . . . damned near the range of a small perso

“Station Security is on full emergency alert,” said Ve

“I've ordered the station onto a full biocontamination quarantine,” said Greenlaw. “All incoming ships and vehicles have been waved off or diverted to Union, and none now in dock are cleared to leave. If the fugitive did get back aboard already—it isn't leaving.” Judging by the sealer's congealed expression, she was by no means sure if this was a good thing. Miles sympathized. Fifty thousand potential hostages . . . ”If it's fled somewhere else . . . if our people can't locate this fugitive promptly, I'm going to have to extend the quarantine throughout Quaddiespace.”

What would be the most important task for the ba, now that the flag had been dropped? It had to realize that the tight secrecy it had relied on for protection thus far was irremediably ruptured. Did it realize how close on its heels its pursuers had come? Would it still wish to murder Gupta to assure the Jacksonian smuggler's silence? Or would it abandon that hunt, cut losses, and run if it could? Which direction was it trying to move, back in, or out?

Miles's eye fell on the vid image of the work suit, frozen above the plate. Did that suit have the kind of telemetry space armor did? More to the point—did it have the kind of remote control overrides some space armor did?

“Roic! When you were down in the engineering suit lockers hunting for that pressure suit, did you see an automated command-and-control station for these powered repair units?”

“I . . . there's a control room down there, yes, m'lord. I passed it. I don't know what all might be in it.”

“I have an idea. Follow me.”

He levered himself from the station chair and left Nav and Com at a sloppy jog, his biotainer suit sliding aggravatingly around him. Roic strode after; the curious quaddies followed in their floaters.