"Yeah, imagine his face when my clone turned out to be six feet tall... fuck it." He throws up his hands. "Let's go find us a map of the sin-monger's flesh pit."

They obtain a map. And a commando team. And a rental lift-van, which they drive to a mountain side-trail overlooking Ryoval's main biologicals facility, a complex of several large buildings clustered tightly within a larger fenced-off area, patrolled by a sprinkling of visible guards.

The team's pilot, Sergeant Laureen Anderson, does an excellent job setting the lift-van down in a perfect imitation of a stalled-engine sprawl without actually damaging its vital components in any way. Miles has assigned her as getaway driver, to wait at this roadside outpost with Thorne and another trooper in case the raid team requires backup or a quick exit; he hopes neither Thorne nor Anderson has twigged to the gender distributions involved. It's not that he doesn't believe women and herms competent to pull off this raid; it's just that some corner of his Barrayaran soul wails at the thought of what would happen to them on a live capture. Not that the male troopers would be in for anything less exciting, if the rumours Miles has heard are true, but his internal prejudices are not amenable to the soundness of this logic.

So.

He runs over the pre-mission briefing one more time, to refresh everyone's memory. The plan is: get in, pick up the first employee they see who looks likely to know something about Bharaputra's creature, apply fast-penta, extract the intel, race the clock to get to the thing and dispatch it and retrieve the tissue sample and burn the body and get out again before the drugged employee's absence is noticed. Their planned route lights up on the map projection, and he gives them all some time to study it and compare it with the view down the mountain.

"Remember, the word is quietly," he cautions. "The plasma arcs stay packed until we find the creature - you're to stick with stunners until then. Before I get the sample, we are but harmless little lambs frolicking into the facility, and at the first sign of serious trouble we will surrender quietly and await ransom. After I get the sample and cremate the critter, it's back to combat rules, with the highest priority being getting that sample back to Captain Thorne intact. Laureen, please confirm your choice of emergency pickup spot on the map."

She points it out on the vid display.

"Everyone got that? Are we clear on all details? Anything to say last-minute?" He surveys his troops, then nods. "Right. Communications check."

They verify the function of all their wristcoms. Ensign Murka dons the weapons pack. Miles turns off the map display and tucks the cube in his pocket. A very expensive but utterly critical little convenience, that, obtained from the construction company that built and modified the complex. Miles, Murka, and the other two troopers who will be accompanying them into the facility all creep out of the van and head down the wooded slope.

At the outer wall of the complex, Murka and the troopers boost Miles over, then climb it themselves and hand him down the other side. Their journey through the inner court is interrupted by one close encounter with a guard, during which they huddle in a dark corner and imitate bags of trash, covering themselves in IR-reflective ponchos brought along for just this purpose. The guard and his scanner pass them by.

Now comes the magic moment: Miles scrambles up to stand on Murka's shoulders and cut through a narrow ventilation grille, then wriggles his way into the duct thus revealed. A bigger man wouldn't fit; a heavier man would be likely to fall through the ceiling on the trip. Miles slithers all the way to the corresponding interior grille, a tight but not impassable squeeze, and locates the controls for the loading bay doors once he has safely reached the floor. Then he disables the alarm and foxes the controls, raising the door high enough for his team to crawl through.

Once they're all inside, he lowers the door again, and they're off across the cavernous receiving bay. A stack of shipping containers provides cover behind which they hide from a passing janitor; then it's down into a tunnel, at the end of which Miles stands on Murka's shoulders a second time and hauls himself up into the ceiling, where a tangle of power cables awaits. As he examines them for the set that will open the next door, the weapons pack rises through the open panel to nestle in beside him, and the panel itself ghosts back into place.

That was not part of the plan. Miles squirms around silently until he can peer through the crack between one panel and the next. Murka is just done lowering his arm when a shout from the corridor freezes him in place. Armed guards pour in through the door which Miles was about to carefully unlock, surrounding Murka and the troopers.

Miles thinks some very bad words very loudly, but allows nothing more than a silent huff of breath to escape his lips.

"What are you doing here?" growls the leader of the pack.

"Oh, shit!" yelps Murka. "Please, mister, don't tell my CO you found us in here. He'd bust me back to private!"

"Huh?" The guard sergeant responds to his confusion by prodding Murka with a nerve disruptor. "Hands up! Explain yourself!"

"We - we came into Fell Station on a mercenary ship," Murka says nervously, "but the captain wouldn't grant us downside passes. I mean, come on!" Indignation overpowers fear. "All the way to Jackson's Whole, and we're not even allowed on the planet? I wanted to see Ryoval's!"

Meanwhile, the guards commence searching Murka and the two troopers, coming up with nothing but stunners and Murka's share of the security penetration widgetry.

"So I made a bet, see, that even if we couldn't afford the front door I could get us in the back."

"They're not armed like an assassination team," one of the guards observes.

"We aren't!" protests Murka, in deep offense.

"AWOL, are you?" inquires the guard sergeant.

"Only if we stay out past midnight... look," says Murka, adopting a pleading air. "My CO's a real bastard. Is there any way I could convince you not to let him know about this?" His hand hovers by his wallet pocket, suggesting one possible avenue of persuasion.

"Maybe," allows the smirking guard sergeant.

A base for negotiation having been established, Murka adds, "Any chance you could let us see inside first? Not the girls even, just the place? So I could say I'd seen it."

The sergeant frowns. "This isn't a whorehouse, soldier boy!"

"What?" gapes Murka, with a realistic expression of confused dismay.

"This is the biologicals facility."

"Oh," says Murka.

"You fucking idiot," mutters one of the troopers, giving Murka a sour look. Miles resolves on the spot that all three of them are getting bonus pay if they pull this off. Murka can have a promotion.

"But the man in town," says Murka, not quite ready to let go of hope. "He said - "

"What man?" interrupts the guard sergeant.

"The, uh. One who took m'money," mumbles Murka, deflating.

The guard sergeant gestures with his nerve disruptor. "Get moving, boys. Back that way. This is your lucky day."

"You mean we get to see inside?" Murka asks, brightening.

"No. I mean we aren't going to break your legs before we throw you out on your ass." He motions his men to search the troopers again, this time checking their identification and relieving them of any loose currency, while subjects Murka to the same indignity. Murka is appropriately indignant, but declines to argue with the sergeant's deadly authority. "There's a whorehouse back in town," the guard sergeant adds as he replaces Murka's wallet in the pocket from which it came. "They'll take your credit cards." And the guards prod Murka and the troopers back down the tunnel toward the loading bay.

Amazing.

Miles waits until he can hear absolutely nothing from any of them before he activates his wristcom. "Bel?"

"Will do. Keep an eye out for Murka and the boys. Naismith out."

And now to see if he can't at least salvage some useful intel from this screwup. He locates the appropriate cables, cajoles the door open, prays for the safety of his bones, and drops out of the ceiling to scurry through it. On the other side, he gets back into the duct system the minute he finds a reachable grille. Then he gets out his map cube and recalculates his route, now that he doesn't need to haul along his larger companions. He can just stick to the nice safe ductwork.

Three turns into this new route, he observes a junction where no junction is reported on his map. Buggery. Has the complex been altered, or was that construction company not as forthcoming as they claimed to be? Either way, he'd better keep careful track of his route. The planet continues to turn, and he still has to get out with his intel and then, ideally, turn around and lead another commando raid back in.

Time passes. Miles crawls on. He's just starting to think about turning back when he finally spots an unattended employee, sitting amid a vast array of holovid and comm equipment in a room which the dubious map labels Small Repairs. It's no repair shop, but the man at the desk is sitting with his back to Miles, engrossed in his vid displays. No better opportunity is going to present itself.

Miles checks his dart-gun, aims carefully through the ventilation grille, and fires. The man's hand jerks to the back of his neck, reflexively seeking some biting insect, before the combination of fast-penta and a paralytic kicks in and produces a nerveless slump. Miles allows himself a triumphant smile before he emerges from the grille and drops oh-so-carefully to the floor.

His victim is well-dressed according to civilian fashion - no red-and-black guard uniform here - and smiling vaguely, a common side effect of fast-penta. He's also having some trouble keeping his seat. Miles catches him in the process of falling over and rights him carefully.

"Hello there. Let's get you sat up straight, yes, here we go, can't talk with your face in the carpet... now, do you know anything about a genetic construct, some sort of eight-foot-tall fanged monstrosity, recently bought from House Bharaputra?"

"Yes," says the man, still smiling.

Ah, right, fast-penta literalism strikes again. "Where is the creature?" he asks.

"Downstairs."

"Where exactly downstairs?" inquires Miles with maximum patience. Yelling at fast-penta interrogatees is invariably counterproductive.

"In the sub-basement," the man elaborates serenely. "The crawlspace around the foundations. We were hoping it would catch some of the rats." A fast-penta giggle escapes him. "Do cats eat rats? Do rats eat cats?"

Miles ignores the babbling and consults his map-cube. The sub-basement looks like an excellent place to break out of, if one happens to have a commando team along - the prospect of finding the creature in that maze of support columns and pipe bundles is vastly less appealing, but maybe they can bait it with a rat or two. He searches his dart-gun's case for a cartridge that will render his helpful subject unconscious and thereby unable to squeal about the interrogation until morning, when Miles's team will with any luck have been and gone.

A random movement of the man's arm pulls his sleeve back far enough to reveal his wristcom, an unusually complex model very like Miles's own. Miles regards it uneasily. "Ah - who are you?" he asks.

"Moglia, Chief of Security, Ryoval Biologicals. At your service, sir," the man burbles.

Fuck.

Miles hunts faster through the dart cartridges, his mind racing. Now that the possiblity is raised, it's screamingly obvious that this room with its profusion of vid stations is a security ops center, and it's highly likely that he has managed to trip some subtle alarm by accessing it in the fashion he did, whether or not Moglia had time to hit a silent screamer on his wristcom before the fast-penta got him.

He has his fingers on the right cartridge and is just drawing it out when the door bursts open to admit a flood of guards. He throws up his hands, keying his wristcom's panic button and flinging it off in the same motion; it yelps its panic signal to the Ariel via tightbeam and then hisses and melts in midair, destroying any chance that these goons might use it to track down the rest of Miles's squad.

The security chief giggles and wobbles in his chair as the same guard sergeant who ejected Ensign Murka charges in to capture and search Miles. The search is conducted at speed and in an excessively uncomfortable fashion, and at the end of it Miles is barefoot, bruised, and equipped with no more than his shirt and trousers. At least they gave him back the twenty-four hour ration bar in his trouser pocket, probably because it doesn't look appetizing enough to steal.

It takes them a good hour or so to get the security chief revived from his drugged daze, at which point he grills the guard-sergeant about the earlier encounter with Murka and the boys, an exchange Miles would find very gratifying if he didn't hurt so much. A squad is belatedly sent out to try to track the Dendarii; Miles wishes them all confusion on their journey. Then, his face twisted by a combination of nausea and apprehension, Moglia calls his boss.

"What is it?" asks a rumpled and irritated Baron Ryoval.

"Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I thought you'd want to know about the intruder I just caught. Odd-looking man, sort of a tall dwarf, wearing a uniform I don't recognize, carrying a bunch of high-end equipment that I don't think adds up to 'thief'." Moglia gestures for Miles and his pile of devices to be brought within range of the vid pickup. "He was asking a lot of question about Bharaputra's monster."

Baron Ryoval spends a moment looking stunned, and then laughs heartily. "Oh, I should have guessed! Stealing when you should be buying, Admiral? Ha! Very good, Moglia!"

Moglia brightens very slightly at this indication that the shit he's in may not be as deep as expected. "You know him, my lord?"

"Indeed. He calls himself Miles Naismith. A mercenary admiral, of the self-promoted variety, I don't doubt. Excellent work, Moglia. Hold him, and I'll be there in the morning to deal with him personally."

"Hold him how, sir?"

Baron Ryoval gives a little shrug. "Amuse yourselves. Freely." Then he ends the call.

Chief Moglia's first idea for how to amuse himself involves having a couple of guards hold Miles while Chief Moglia hits him. But after a single blow to Miles's stomach, he seems to reconsider; his satisfaction is obviously limited by the drug aftermaths still expressing themselves in his body. With the pleasure of direct violence denied him, a speculative gleam lights his eye.

"You crawled in here looking for Bharaputra's toy soldier..."

"I think we should let him," the guard sergeant chimes in.

"Yes," breathes Moglia, with the smile of a man contemplating some vicious heaven.

They have their guards haul Miles through a maze of corridors and lift tubes he is too beaten and dejected to memorize. The lowest exit point on the last lift tube deposits them in a dusty basement, where Miles is dragged to some kind of serviceway, a locked trapdoor in the basement floor which swings up to reveal a ladder. His captors glare. Miles contemplates his options, and starts down the ladder. The guard sergeant yells after him, "Seven! Hey, Seven! Come and get your dinner!", then shuts the hatch hastily, almost trapping Miles's fingers.

Miles hangs there in the pitch dark, his fingers chilling on the damp, cold metal rungs, and desperately reviews his memory of that vid call. Ryoval did strongly imply that he wanted Miles to be alive at the end of the night, didn't he?

A dim shadow explodes out from behind a pillar several meters away, crosses the intervening distance in a fraction of a second, and resolves into a gaunt but still recognizably human figure. He crouches to get his face closer to Miles's level, splaying his fingers on the damp rock - his fingernails are long and strong and stained with dark smears that continue up his hands and arms, perhaps acquired from a diet of rats. He is clad in thin papery garments, a pair of loose trousers and a belted short-sleeved hospital-gownish robe. His breath smells distinctly carnivorous.

"Food," he says hoarsely.

'Seven' separates bar from wrapper, wolfs down the former, and drops the latter on the floor. Then he cocks his head at Miles.

"Water," he says next. It's hard to hear a recognizable tone in that dessicated croak.

Seven looks from Miles to the ceiling, turns his eyes this way and that, and says, "Over there. Ceiling's lower. You can get close."

Then he picks Miles up one-handed by the back of his shirt, tucks him under that arm, and bounds off up the rising slope on his other three limbs.

The yellowish light makes it hard to tell colours, but Miles does recognize the jointing on two of the pipes; the bigger, darker one is probably the grey of sewage, while the smaller, paler one must by process of elimination be white for water.

"There," he says, pointing. "I could have a go at the joint, if - uh - you could give me a boost...?" The beast-man seems coherent enough to understand the concepts involved, but God only knows the state of his education. Miles adds some explanatory gestures.

One powerful hand grabs Miles by the back of his shirt again and deposits him on the floor; then Seven puts his face in the stream, gulping down water as fast as semihumanly possible. He runs his fingers through his hair, rinses away the smears and encrustations of what is most probably rat blood, scrubs at his face and his hands and his arms until everything he can see is more or less clean. Then he has another long drink, splashing water everywhere.

Then he turns back to Miles.

"Can you find heat?" he rumbles. No longer quite so hoarse and dry, his voice turns out to be a deep husky near-growl, unpracticed with words but still clear enough to convey meaning.

What sort of a wizard must he seem, to this unloved creature?

"Heat," says Miles, "heat... yeah, some of these pipes are for hot air. Better get close to the ceiling first, or it'll all just go to waste. I don't see the right kind here..." He squints into the darkness. "Let's try over there - ?" Before Seven can pick him up again, Miles starts off on his own steam, dodging around the intermittent pillars in search of a heating pipe low enough to be worth breaking open.

Miles contemplates this spectacle.

Miles pictures his original mission plan written on a plastic flimsy, and pictures himself taking that flimsy and crumpling it into a ball and stuffing it down a waste chute.

This creature, this Seven, is far from the doomed genetic mistake that Dr. Canaba described. He walks, he talks, he washes, he weeps; Miles can think of no viable definition of human from which this - man? boy? how old is he? - should be excluded. He is surprised by the strength of his own protective feelings.

When Seven unclasps the heat pipe and rubs at his eyes, Miles moves closer, seeking some of that warmth for himself. And answers. God, for some answers.

"They - um - call you Seven?" The old joke about who Six is afraid of flashes through his mind. He suppresses it as wildly inappropriate.