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torturing them, or attempting to market them like high-information-density slabs of meat. This was one mission where, although the Dendarii Fleet's official sponsor was the insurance company covering the Zoave Twilight ship, it wouldn't hurt to reveal that their cobacker was the Barrayaran Empire. Good publicity, for the protection of the next courier to run into similar bad luck.

    Assuming it was luck. Miles itched to go oversee the interrogation of the prisoners; Illyan's second sharpest concern after the retrieval of Vorberg alive was to determine if the courier had been kidnapped by accident or on purpose. If on purpose . . . somebody had some internal investigating to do. In all, Miles was extremely glad that sort of messy job did not fall into his area of expertise.

    The surgeon, still dressed in her sterile garb, entered at last. She put her hands on her hips, stared at Miles, and sighed. She looked tired.

    "How's the Barrayaran?" Miles ventured. "Will, um . . . he recover?"

    "He's not too bad. The cuts were very clean, and luckily just below the knee joints, which saved a world of complications. He'll be about three centimeters shorter after this."

    Miles winced.

    "But he'll be on his feet by the time he gets home," she added, "assuming that takes about six weeks."

    "Ah. Good." But suppose the random blare of the plasma arc had taken Vorberg through the knees. Or about a meter higher, cutting him in half. There were limits to the miracles even his Dendarii surgical expert could perform. It would not have been a career high point, after Miles had airily assured his ImpSec chief that he could rescue Vorberg with scarcely a ripple in his routine, to return him packed in a body bag. Two body bags. Miles felt faint with a weird mixture of relief and horror. Oh, God, I'm going to hate explaining this to Illyan.

    The surgeon studied Miles's scans, muttering medical incantations. "We're still on baseline, here. No obvious abnormalities show up. The only way I can get any leverage into this is to have you monitored while you undergo an attack."

    "Hell, I thought we did every kind of stress and electroshock and stimulus known to science, to try to trigger something in the lab. I thought the pills you gave me had brought it under control."

    "The standard anticonvulsant? Were you taking it properly?" She eyed him suspiciously.

    " Yes ." He bit back more profane protestations. "Have you thought of something else to try?"

    "No, which is why I gave you that monitor to wear around." Her glance around the examining room did not disclose the device. "Where is it?"

    "In my cabin."

    Her lips thinned in exasperation. "Let me guess. You weren't wearing it at the time."

    "It didn't fit under my combat armor."

    Her teeth clenched. "Couldn't you have at least thought to—to disable your weapons?"

    "I could hardly be of use to my squad in an emergency, disarmed. I might as well have stayed aboard the Peregrine ."

    "You were the emergency. And you certainly should have stayed aboard the Peregrine ."

    Or back on Barrayar. But securing Vorberg's person had been the most critical part of the operation, and Miles was the only Dendarii officer ImpSec entrusted with the Barrayaran Imperial recognition codes. "I—" He bit his tongue on futile defenses, and started over. "You are quite correct. It won't happen again, until . . . we get this straightened out. What do we do next?"

    She opened her hands. "I've run every test I know. Obviously, the anticonvulsant isn't the answer. This is some kind of idiosyncratic cryonic damage on a cellular or subcellular level. You need to get your head to the highest-powered cryo-neurology specialist you can find."

    He sighed, and shrugged into his black tee shirt and gray uniform jacket. "Are we done for now? I urgently need to supervise prisoner interrogation."

    "I suppose." She grimaced. "But do us all a favor. Don't go armed."

    "Yes, ma'am," he said humbly, and