Chapter Text

"There was one mission for Illyan..."

Chapter # 1
A Vorkosigan FanFic
By Roger Stenning

("A Civil Campaign", by Lois McMaster Bujold, Hardcover edition ISBN 0-671-57827-8, pp 295)

Miles burrowed back into the sofa, and scratched his cheek. "There was one mission for Illyan... I don't want to talk about it. It was close, unpleasant work, but we brought it off." His eyes fixed broodingly on the carpet...

Several years earlier...

Simon Illyan, Chief of Barrayaran Imperial Security, leaned back in his chair, re-read the flimsy in his hand and, putting it down, sighed heavily. There really was just no getting away from it: The more usual facilities of Galactic Affairs just weren't up to this particular problem, and despite the former Regents' request regarding mission priorities and taskings, there was, unfortunately, only one operative that he could dump this problem on.

Just as well the man was on Barrayar for a spot of leave, instead of out on the deep range somewhere, getting into trouble again. Time to summon the cause of more than one incipient peptic ulcer for a briefing, then.

He sat up straight in his chair, took a deep breath, and tapped the intercom key. "Christoph, send for Lieutenant Lord Vorkosigan, please."

"So there you have it, Lieutenant. We do nothing, and this entire can of worms comes out, and a decade of Imperial Diplomacy will be down the disposer. You can see where this is going, of course."

Miles was almost agog with horror. "Sir, you want me to find this man, stick a weapon to his head, and squeeze the trigger. No explanations, no arrest, no chance at plugging this through other means, just find him and kill him? Just like that?"

"Yes."

"Why me, Sir?"

"Because you can do it, and my other assets cannot - they cannot gain the required means to do the job in the time available. You already have the tools, and the means."

Illyan counted off on his fingers as he talked, "Let's be very clear: It is in the vital needs of the Empire that this man be silenced by whatever means are quietly available to us. He has already told us, in not so polite wording, that unless we give him those two billion Marks – money that we cannot possibly give him, and he knows it, too - that he intends to tell the Cetagandans what he knows, along with the Escobarans, Earthers, and God knows who else. You also have one vital asset: Deniability. Admiral Naismith is most demonstrably not a Barrayaran, and nor does he work for us, either. Granted it'll leave a trail of circumstantial evidence pointing to us, but none of our forces will have been involved. It's a lose/lose situation, really."

Illyan let his hand drop, pushed himself back from his desk, and rose from his chair, walking to the corner of the office by the single small quadruple-glazed, polarised, force-screened, and buzzer-protected window looking into the light well of the ImpSec HQ. Leaning against the window frame for a brief moment, he turned his attention to the dispensing slot next to it, and keyed for a cup of coffee.

Leaning against the wall and crossing his arms while the coffee brewed and dispensed, he regarded Miles for a moment, then continued, "Frankly, Miles, if there were another way, I'd employ it. There isn't, so I'm left with you. I'm aware that this is the first time I've asked you to deliberately kill a man, but this is Imperial Service, and it is a legal order. I'm not sorry it has to be done. Frankly, I'd pull the bloody trigger myself if the opportunity arose: The man's a smarmy little greedy traitorous slug, and what he says he intends to do will almost certainly result in, at best, the severance of diplomatic ties with half the known governments in the local hubs, and at worst, another war with the Cetis. In short, he has to be silenced, one way or the other. The other way is regrettably the only way I can see this coming off for Barrayar. For what it's worth, I am sorry it's you that has to do it."

He collected the steaming cup of coffee from the slot and, pushing himself away from the wall, returned his seat at the desk, opening a drawer beneath the comconsole. He withdrew a grey vellum parchment wrapped in a black ribbon. The Emperor - Gregor - had signed off on it, Miles saw, as it was sealed with a black wax stamp, bearing the Vorbarra Crest.

"This is the warrant. Obviously, you cannot take it with you. How you complete the mission is entirely your own decision, but this has been authorised, as you can see, by the highest level," he waved the parchment once, and placed it on his desk, setting it straight and level with the tips of his index fingers. "You should read it before you leave this room, as it’s highly unlikely that you’ll ever see it again - it'll be attached to your permanent file hardcopy before you leave the building."

Miles was used to travelling light; he did it regularly, as there was just about enough room in an Imperial Fast Courier to swing a small mouse. It gave him, however, room to study the files he’d been given on the mission, and more to the point, time to brood. By the time he reached the Dendarii fleet, his mood had descended from merely dismal to downright lethally irritable.

The problem confronted by ImpSec was classic: A high-level civil servant had become somewhat disaffected by a lack of promotion (dead mens shoes, better candidates, and so on, causing the blockage), and had stewed on it for a number of years before an exceedingly sensitive document mistakenly passed across his desk.

Given that the man had just received his fourth knockback in as many years, it was exceedingly poor timing all round, especially considering that it touched on an ongoing false flag operation that had moles inside many planetary governments, all of them feeding information to ImpSec, thinking that they were, instead, feeding that information to other powers, such as the Cetagandans, Escobarans, and so on. As long-term operations went, this one should never have been mentioned outside ImpSec, and the officer responsible for the accidental intra-departmental leak had already been moved to a much less sensitive post. Never the less, the damage had been done: Within 24 hours, the passed-over official had vanished.

How he’d managed to get past emigration control and get off-planet without help was something of a mystery, and was being thoroughly investigated, but a mere seven days on, they’d caught sight, purely by chance, of the man heading towards the Hegen Hub, probably intending to get to either Cetagandan space or Jackson’s Whole. The latter was the better bet, and that gave ImpSec it’s window of opportunity, via Miles and the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet. The traitor was no-ones’ fool. He’d hired bodyguards. Like the Dendarii, mercenaries; rather good ones, too, though not, reputation-wise, quite as good as Miles’ troops.

Miles saw three possible methods of assassination:

Sniper – not practical in this situation, too much chance of a not-so-surgical strike if it went wrong.

Second, a small strike team, say twenty troops in two drop shuttles if the right circumstances came up. Not bloody likely, and not too easy to pull off with a zero body count on the Dendarii side of things.

The last possibility, and most messy if it went wrong, was a covert strike team, to perform a very close-quarters and maximum shock value infiltration and - for want of a more dispassionate description - hit on the target. Done right, it could be successfully executed - pun not intended. It was the planning that was going to be the biggest nightmare of all, but then Illyan didn't assign him difficult jobs for the fun of it: it was because Miles achieved spectacular results as if conjuring them from almost thin air.

Once in a small while, Miles caught himself wishing that his mercenaries weren’t quite as good as they turned out to be. This was most definitely one of those times. It could be done alright, and Illyan was right: Miles was the ideal tool in the box to do the dirty deed. This thought blackened his mood even further.

Captain Elli Quinn caught his mood at once, of course, and the moment they were privately ensconced in his office aboard the flagship Ariel, asked the obvious question.

"Simon given us another sod of a job?"

"Worse."

"How worse?"

"Abysmal". Miles dropped a code case on the desk top, and dropped into his chair with a grunt.

"Oh, crap", she commented dryly, sitting down somewhat more gracefully on the opposing seat, "One-word answers. What’ve we got to do now?"

"Wetwork." He pressed his thumb on the panel of the code case, which opened with a slick mechanical click.

She sat bolt upright. "What?" She was horrified. In all the time she’s known him, he’d never intentionally set out to kill someone specific – it just wasn’t his way of working at all.

"We have to find a man, and kill him."

"I know what the phrase means, Miles," she retorted. "Illyan gave this to you? Himself?"

"Yes. And I hate to say it, but he may well be right." He leaned back in his chair and sighed, thoroughly exhausted, as he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. "Elli, I’ve been almost a full week in that damn courier, going over all the files, and there is no other way that I can see of doing this damn job. Believe me, I’ve tried until my eyes have been ready to fall out of my head, and my brains squidge out of my ears."

Despite herself, she found the corners of her mouth turning upwards as she winced. "Ugh. Not a pretty picture".

"Indeed not", he snorted.

"Can I have a look?"

"Misery loves company, so knock yourself out." He slid the code-case containing the sanitised but still sensitive data chips across the desk top to her.

"Before you do, bring the fleet to 30 minutes readiness to move. I have to try and figure out where the blasted target’s going to be now – my data’s almost three weeks out of date, dammit."

"I gave the order as you docked: Figured we may have to move in a hurry."

"Eventually, yeah. Oh, and get Lieutenant Commander Chodak and Sergeant Major Bryce up here. I want their advice on the strike team or teams and operational concepts as well."