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[A man appears on the network of indeterminate age, extremely short-- under five feet tall, easily-- with a slight hunch to his posture and Germanic features. His eyes are sharply alive, bright with challenge. There's no hesitation as he speaks, in a gravelly kind of accent that sounds almost Russian, the words flowing quickly as he makes them up on the spot.

Right now, he desperately needs intel of all kinds, and eventually a spotter to watch him while he uses his seizure inducer. That fact he's assiduously ignoring. He'd checked his neurotransmitter levels this morning, and he has at least three days, even with all the stress of arrival. No, four days, probably. Five. Really, he can go a lot longer without one than the ImpSec medical staff had given him credit for. --Focus, Vorkosigan.]

So. I see you all have quite a neat set up here. Let's not waste time. Who can bring me up to speed, ex tempore? Surely we have more intelligence than "don't say its name" on our bogey man. Since confirmed facts are likely to be scarce, personal accounts would be acceptable.

I'm also taking proposals for getting miserably drunk at the bar, as is traditional in times of drawn out peril. I need someone to drag me home, y'see; alcohol has quite a soporific effect on my constitution. [And Ivan is unfortunately not here to do the dragging. Miles ignores the resulting pang that inspires in him.

Then he hesitates imperceptibly, the memory of his previous catastrophic failure to report his seizures clanging loudly through his brain. No. He can't ignore this, much as he'd like to. The only thing that scares Miles more than never going home is turning into a vegetable, mindless and drooling. He can at least do the preliminary investigation about options.]

Information about local medical facilities would be appreciated as well. They're not all-- er, at this level of technology, are they? [He looks dubious about anyone surviving on that level of medical care, but immediately recovers with a wide, convincing smile.] I'd just like to know preemptively for when I wake up with a skull splitting headache.

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[It's real nobility alright, in everything but technicality. But of all his titles and names, Lord Auditor is the one Miles has earned strictly on his own merit, with no hint of inheritance or nepotism at all. It's a complicated thing that means not a lick to anyone not Barrayaran, and he isn't about to try to beat someone else over the head with the concept unless they express interest. Suffice to say, he's extraordinarily proud of it, and every other one of his names and titles. A heavy weight, but one he'd never put down.

No, Miles keeps so much of this non-public simply because he likes to pick and choose which part of his convoluted, multi-faceted identity to embody at any given moment.]

Ah! Braun mentioned you. I take it you're comrades. Yes, I can see how you'd instill the fear of short people into him. [Miles grins in approval.]

[ The sudden intense aggravation that crosses her features at the mention of 'Braun' is impossible to miss. It's a familiar sort of frustration, the kind that she's felt more than her fair share of, but she forces it back down with a quiet exhalation of breath. ]

We are. [ It is, admittedly, still somewhat satisfying that Reiner increasingly rarely forgot his sense of self-preservation to comment on her height. It doesn't make up for the fact that she hates it when people talk about her, and doesn't like not knowing exactly what he might have been saying about her.

She crosses her arms, glancing off to the side briefly. ]

Sometimes, I feel like I should instill the fear of talking about me, too.

[The aggravation is unexpected, somewhat intriguing and somewhat concerning. Miles had momentarily seen an unspeakably convenient little strike force composing itself before his eyes. They knew each other, they were both military trained and seemed competent, and if they were a bit young to lead into combat for his taste, well, certainly combat hadn't waited for them. He wouldn't insult them by questioning their fitness when they seemed competent so far. Plus they might have other compatriots here with them that could be towed along.

But most importantly, he was flat out desperate. He was severely limited for resources to pull on here, damn it. If they didn't get along... He conceals his (not ill meant) machinations behind honest curiosity.]

It was nothing much, [he amends hastily.] Just that he wouldn't judge me by appearance, which I appreciate, because he'd learned his lesson on 'Annie'. You don't get along? [He hopes his casual interest is believable, but generally he's good at seeming disaffected, he trusts.]

We don't have to.

[ It's giving away a lot to say that instead of just telling him that they didn't.

Or it would be if she wasn't convinced that Reiner had already made it entirely obvious how close their association was. Maybe she was just too used to acting on her own, but it still grated to have such information freely given. She just had to make herself remember the goal here.

They had to fit in. A small, tightly knit military unit from the same background was fitting in just as much as a loose knit group would, and it was just as much Reiner's nature to hold out their story where anyone could see as it was her own to try to hide it. And, in this situation, a measure honesty was probably the easiest to fall back on.

It wasn't wrong to associate with her comrades freely anymore, and it was a hard lesson to unlearn. She's too curious about this Lord Auditor now to not give him at least something in that regard, so she flatly turns it around on him as a question. ]

Does it mean something else where you come from? 'Comrades?'

Edited 2014-01-29 06:46 (UTC)

[Unperturbed to have the question lobbied back at him, Miles answers,] Not always. It depends, doesn't it? It does go much better if you all like each other. And unit cohesion is-- [a half shrug] something I'm good at. Or was.

[The past tense doesn't come easily to him, and it comes out as a grating afterthought. But okay, this isn't irreparable; maybe they're just more professional than personal in association. Miles isn't sure what to make of it yet.

Still, he continues, inward looking and more to himself,] If they could die for me, or even just next to me, I prefer to know their names, their dreams, if they had kids. [Miles is a romantic at heart, and it's not hard to tell why this had led to such loyal troops even from mercenaries; he took a very personal command style, often remembering hundreds of names and histories by their faces.]

[ Romantic notions like that rub Annie the wrong way almost as a reflex. Murderers didn't have the luxury of feeling that way in her opinion, but she's aware of one thing. ]

He'll like you.

[ This isn't an approval necessarily. It's spoken like just another quiet observation, no personal attachment required.

Annie isn't here just because she's curious about this Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, after all, though it's a major motivator. If there is any doubt that she was taking his measure before, it shouldn't be the case now. She shifts her weight back on her heels as she observes their surroundings, briefly tracking the movement of a figure that's out of earshot before determining she can dismiss it for now. ]

The words you say sound like the right ones. I wonder, though...

[The problem from Miles's perspective is that murderers are so often interchangeably called heroes, depending on which side you look at it from.

He notices that she doesn't say that she likes him. A tough nut to crack, this one. Miles is hardly put off. He unconsciously straightens at her obvious scrutiny, some of his crisp bearing revealing that his military history was no lie. For as much as he's been commander, he's been subordinate, too, looking for a positive assessment from his superiors and often failing to find it.

It lends some unnecessary force to his response.] You wonder if they hold up in the heat of battle? [he finishes for her, and presumes he's right without waiting, going on.] Sometimes they don't. Sometimes all of our pretty idealism is nothing when a man's brain splatters on the wall-- literally, or worse, metaphorically.

But the times when it is enough... [He trails off, gains a wry, self-mocking smile.] It's not for the moral high ground that we have ideals, Annie. It's so you can live with your decisions afterward, have some justification to chase away the ghosts with, as much as you ever can.

[ It hadn't been exactly what Annie had been going for, but it's interesting enough. She's fascinated by the idea presented there, though only in an abstract way. It's not an approach that she had ever had explained to her explicitly before, if only because she was supposed to have the entire world hate her before she was allowed to be finished with her mission.

Human soldiers were often allowed the luxury of only believing they had to fight monsters, and all that haunted them were the comrades they had lost in battle. This man, however, is so clearly not that way. ]

Grasping at anything that lets us keep moving forward, that's just how humanity works, isn't it?

[ She can't help but sound cold. It feels impossible to imagine anything could really help, not for long. ]

But I don't know if anyone deserves it. No one has the right to chase off the ghosts they create themselves.

[Maybe it's just that he'd had the thought earlier, but in that instant she reminds him of Bothari so strongly that the hair on the back of his neck stands on end. Bothari had never expressed such sentiments to him explicitly, but they're impossible not to read into his actions through the benefit of years of posthumous contemplation. Why else would the sergeant have let the woman he surely thought of as a ghost kill him unhindered? He'd seemed to see Miles not at all, in that moment-- only the past. Only his sins, and the resolution that would come with his death at her hands.

All of the confused pain Miles has felt over Bothari's death for the past decade spurs him to greater feeling than the conversation truly warrants.] Is that all the service ghosts can perform-- a specter to make you regret? Nothing more? What's the point of ghosts, then, if not to spur you onto better ways, and the prevention of more ghosts? It doesn't matter what we deserve, [he insists strongly.]

Those that are dead deserve more. We have to be better in their name. Don't you see?

[Miles abruptly cuts off, eyes darting away. That tiny infant, Raina, who'd been murdered by her grandmother simply for being born with a cleft palate... Miles had failed her. She was from his district; it was his responsibility as Lord Vorkosigan to make a better Barrayar for her to live in. It was too late for her, but he'd vowed at her bare, plain graveside not to forget the lesson she'd taught him. She is one of so many examples Miles could pull from for this and similar lessons. The dead seem to pile up behind him.

He mutters,] Don't mind me. I'm morbid from arrival, and it's not been a full day. [That doesn't bode well.]

You're a strange man.

[ It might not be easy to tell that this is, in fact, a favorable assessment. She shifts her weight, and tilt her head briefly to the side in wordless indication before stepping away without bothering to elaborate. If he wants to continue the conversation, he'd have to follow.

It's not maliciously meant, staying still was just uncomfortable in unfamiliar territory. ]

They do it on purpose. Bring you out disoriented. I'll walk with you, if you want. You had an objective.

[ Going out to drink had been his initially stated goal, after all. She gives no indication that her sudden departure from the topic is at all jarring. ]

[He's startled out of his moping into a snort.] Galactic consensus would agree with you, [he drawls. She's about the fiftieth person to tell him he's strange, or something like that.

Her moving makes him automatically follow, at a fast enough clip that he has to adjust his pace and slow down. Miles does everything at full speed, and he heads out of the park the same way, unconsciously taking the lead without a second thought.

Briskly,] I do have an objective. Several of them. How do you feel about investigating the whereabouts of the baby turtles? It's the obvious place for it to strike next. We need to devise a monitoring method. [Eh, he'll get his drink later. He has some muscle with him and it's the perfect time to enact step one of his tentatively forming plan.]

It's that enemy's basic victory condition. Makes sense.

[ She finds herself agreeing without hesitation as she nods her head, already having adapted her pace to his. This man feels like a force of nature to her, almost. A storm just before it rains, maybe, when the air feels charged and heavy. But that's a strange thought and she has much more physical concerns in the real world as she keeps an eye on their surroundings. Already, he takes advantage of what little momentum she'd given him, and she's not opposed to it. This is something that makes sense.

She wonders if she should be offended by his presumption that she would be willing to be on his side, but he was either mad enough or desperate enough to do so that it seems worth following along with. (Though, perhaps, madness is not a good reason for someone to be interesting to her.) She hasn't had a sense of direction since she fell from the Wall Sina, much less since she's found herself in this strange world in which the humans were the minority.

Or maybe it's just that it's nice not to feel lost once in a while. ]

[Miles brightens at the explicit approval-- or he's taking it as approval, at least. Annie is spot on in terms of Miles taking advantage of what little he's given. Give him an inch, and he won't just go a mile, he'll go ten miles. That's the principle on which he's lived his whole life: you have to win with the hand you're dealt, because cheating means you weren't good enough. Miles is determined to be good enough.

He would also point out that mad and desperate are not mutually exclusive.]

That's what I was thinking. I have a few ideas for what to do from there, but I need more solid information first. Everyone's close-mouthed. It makes sense, but it's damnably hard to work with.

[ Annie isn't built particularly well for actually communicating her feelings on any given subject, so just going along with him is as good an approval as he'll get. She shrugs up her shoulders briefly. ]

I met a guy that wasn't about a few things. I haven't seen him around since.

[ She's entirely aware that this little man could be a plant or a trap. He could be working for any number of interests, and many of them could be immensely dangerous to her and her comrades. Annie is no leader and absolutely not a natural team player, but this is something she's good with. This kind of uncertainty and of exposing herself to test the waters isn't unfamiliar to her. Thankfully, she doesn't have to trust someone to find them interesting, and she damn well doesn't in order to work with them and find out just what use he might be for their little unit.

Of the three remaining titan shifters from their hometown, she has the unique status of being both the most expendable and the most dangerous. Most of the time, she makes it work for her. ]

[He's used to outward approval being rare, which is why he preens under it so much, though it's well hidden. For his part, Miles assumes that anyone with any sense wouldn't trust him yet. He operates on an extremely paranoid, thorough mindset, full of leaps of intuition and the assumption that no one is telling him everything. He's from a highly political world, a medieval era plunged into a technocratic galaxy, where loyalties are bewilderingly complex. If anything, this sort of veiled lack-of-trust is normal to him. He hasn't done anything to earn her faith yet and he knows it. That will, hopefully, come later.

He hums in thought at her comment, still trotting along at an easy lope as they reach the edge of the park and return to the city proper.]

Made to disappear or just normal disappearance, do you wonder? How informative was he?

Who knows? Both could be likely.

[ 'Made to' as a possibility is a guess, but a lot of people vanished. Some of them were probably perfectly mundane circumstances, even some just lying low for whatever reason. Her voice doesn't carry well when she speaks, not right at this moment, but it's done without seeming overtly furtive as if it were a well-practiced habit.]

He spoke of the Emperor. True or not, I don't know, but saying how the man that failed to protect the last one became the current one, well... who knows?

That's always true of Emperors, [Miles says immediately. He has not a little stake in the subject, given that by one (extremely poorly reasoned) line of succession, he's second in line to the throne for Barrayar. It's not a job title he's ever wanted, but that doesn't dim his intense loyalty to the current Emperor, Gregor.]

Not that it isn't ever a contrived plot. Hardly. As I understand it, the previous Emperor was close with the current one, wasn't she? That could make it more likely it was an assassination-- except Evandau seemed genuinely enraged when he executed the murderer. I know that look. No, I think he's on the level about that. Damn, but I wouldn't want his job right now.

[Miles is reasoning out loud as he walks, an automatic function for him. He's already thought of this before, and he's aware that he's revealing to Annie that he's not nearly as clueless as he was putting across. He wouldn't want her to think he was uninformed; just the opposite. He'd spent the entire morning trawling the network. He hadn't read everything, obviously, but he'd paid particular attention to the politics of those in power, as was his habit.]

[ Annie lifts her head slightly before inclining it, acknowledging that he might have some kind of point there. A Lord Auditor probably had a greater depth of what went on in the heads of the nobles. ]

He still said it.

[ Annie is far removed from the ways of emperors and kings, but her understanding of reality was that it didn't matter what the truth was. Even if this Emperor was a man who fell into the position because of his close association with the person he failed rather than one he conspired against, her point still stood.

It was always a matter of controlling the flow of information. Dissent had to be handled immediately. ]

What did he say exactly?

[This is information Miles wants. He has a different perspective than Annie on the matter of Evandau's potential failure, however. He's all too aware of what it feels like to fail your liege lord that way, and it makes him reluctant to judge too critically. It'd be the worst kind of promotion to succeed his liege, one Miles would take bleakly, resulting civil war aside. Even in the event of his inevitable succession of his father and becoming Count Vorkosigan, he can't see himself taking any pride in it until long after the fact, in the face of so much grief.

He can't help but feel a bit of sympathy for the man, the Alderwood Emperor. Not that it will cloud his judgement; if anything, he thinks it will make it clearer, from that bit of understanding. He's in a keen historical position to appreciate the mindset of a soldier turned Emperor. Barrayar has a long, long history of them.]

Exactly isn't something I can give you. It was about a month ago, but...

Called the scenario an incompetent clusterfuck. Disorganized, ineffective.

[ All of those were things Annie had been more or less comfortable enough saying herself, really. ]

Took the 'M' threat seriously. Criticized the current Emperor, and said the previous one shared information rarely and not at all before some certain point. [ Then with something like passing curiosity: ] Did you look that up, too?

[Caught up in analyzing this new corroborative information, Miles grunts in agreement, explaining himself without thinking about it.] A bit. Not everything. I got through as much as I could this morning. Then I... had an overload. I'm over it now.

[Sure. He just had to lie down on his floor and stare at the ceiling, unmoving, for a couple hours. He's totally fine and not having an existentialist crisis at all. Or another identity crisis. Or feeling bereft of all of his ties of loyalty--

He's completely fine, which you can tell by how he doesn't meet her eyes and keeps walking determinedly. God forbid anyone try to question him on his mental state.]

Ah.

[ Annie isn't a fan of eye contact anyway. Given how she'd been during her arrival, whatever reactions this man had to his situation were more functional than hers. She still doesn't remember most of that first day beyond a few sharp, bright points-- Armin's lies and Reiner's attempt at comfort, and nothing else.

In the past month, she's found that she still has days like that where nothing quite sticks. ]

It's a lot.

[ Of information? To deal with? Whether it's a statement of fact or of empathy, she won't clarify. ]

[It's a stopgap measure toward functionality. It's a ruse. Miles is going to come to a crashing, burning stop at some point, and he's fiercely not thinking about it. Just because that's what's happened to him every time in the past (post-mission drop, as Ivan had put it) doesn't mean accounting for it now will help him any. He can put it off as long as he has to.

He lets out a sharp breath.] Yeah. Too many shocks to the system this year, [he says cryptically. Lingering amnesia from his cryo-revival, persistent seizures, lying to Illyan, his discharge from ImpSec, then the whole mess with Simon's chip and Havroche... Even being appointed Imperial Auditor had been a shock. And now he's here.]

But the information, too. I could only pin a couple locations for the turtles from network conversations. We'll have to start there.

You can't have enough people yet to put eyes on all of them anyway.

[ Annie says this crisply, not critically, but just as if it were a simple assessment. In reality, though, she wonders if he has more resources. He's already spoken favorably with Reiner, and there's no telling who else out there might be interested in seeing what direction this man was moving in.

It's an artless effort on her part, but duplicity wasn't her style with some extreme exceptions. ]

Scoping out a few would be all you need for now, right?

Edited (how do I words) 2014-02-07 01:48 (UTC)

Sadly correct, [Miles sighs.] You're my most promising prospective accomplice yet, but you'd be wasted playing guard duty to a turtle. No, I have another plan, don't worry.

[Though he matches her bluntness, he doesn't reveal what said plan is yet. That's just good policy, keeping people on a need to know basis. Also, Miles likes being secretive. It's in his blood at this point.]

Scoping will do for now. Here, this way. [He makes a left turn further into Earth sector.]

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