Elli takes the suggestion and reports back - Dendarii take to the suggestion that they go forth and jobhunt quite well, and are temping as security, ferrying objects between downside and orbit, and, in one case that she seems to find highly entertaining, showing up to be a real live jump pilot for small Earthling children to gawk at.

Meanwhile, Miles's duties as a military attaché - exist.

God help him, yes they do.

Four days after the money didn't show, Miles's duties require him to participate in an afternoon reception. Specifically, he is assigned to hang around the wife of the Lord Mayor of London and make pleasant conversation. Ivan, being Ivan, has managed to locate a beautiful young blonde woman to talk to instead; Miles wishes him well of it, with only a faint residual twinge of what would have been full-on raging jealousy two years ago. Ah, marriage, what a pleasant state.

He meets Lieutenant Tabor, the military attaché from the Cetagandan Embassy, and manages not to act shifty. The man actually cracks what could reasonably be called a joke, when they're talking about how long they each expect to be on this planet.

"I have taken up the art of bonsai for a hobby," Tabor deadpans. "The ancient Japanese are said to have worked on a single tree for as long as a hundred years. Or perhaps it only seemed like it."

Miles declines to laugh, in case that perfectly serious expression conceals a mood of actual seriousness. Their conversation limps to a halt. Miles goes back to his escorting. He stares into the fountain and wonders if someone would notice if he ate one of the goldfish, purely to relieve his boredom. The dowager he is escorting natters on about local fashion, a subject Miles finds quite impenetrable.

Oh thank fuck.

"Excuse me, ma'am," he says politely, and bolts at a barely-decorous pace to the nearest private corner to answer his beeping pocket.

"What's up, Elli?"

"Dammit," says Miles. "What the hell do they think they're - I guess I'll find out." He looks at the address. "I'll be there as soon as I can." However he can... He cuts the com, pockets the link, and beelines for Ivan.

"Meet me by the main doors in five minutes," he says quietly.

"Huh?"

"It's an emergency. I'll explain later," he says, and breezes away toward the lift tubes at maximum innocuous speed.

Up in his and Ivan's room, he digs his Dendarii kit out of its drawer and changes into it as fast as humanly possible. There is enough of a sartorial selection going on at the party, miscellaneous uniforms included, that the grey-and-whites shouldn't be interesting enough to imprint on anyone's memory. Unless a Cetagandan happens to get a good look at him, ghem-Lieutenant Tabor for example, in which case he is smoked. He'll just have to risk it.

He bolts back down the lift tube, takes ten seconds to straighten his uniform jacket and steady his breathing, and then ambles inconspicuously along a side corridor towards the front entrance.

"If your bones were bothering you, the infirmary -? Rrgh. Right. Fine." Ivan gives up, collects the girl he's been flirting with, and ushers her and Miles doorward.

"You don't have a bodyguard," Ivan observes to Miles when they've got out of doors into the sunshine.

"I don't know," he admits, and bolts across the street as an arriving groundcar briefly distracts the embassy's exterior guards. Down into the tubeway, a route with two connections, entirely too many seconds spent jittering between them, and he pops out again in a much older-looking section of town.

"Damnation," he growls under his breath as he gets a good look at the show - hovercars from police, fire, and ambulance, barricades to hold back the gathering crowd. Then he reviews what just came out of his mouth, silently retracts it, and produces a much more Naismith-like, "Aw shit."

Betan accent thusly established, he snakes through the crowd as rapidly as possible and vaults the barricade to address the constable carrying an amplifier comm, judging it an indication of more authority than the plasma rifles held by his comrades. "Excuse me, sir! Are you the officer in charge?"

The man's face melts from bewilderment to suspicion as soon as he takes in the grey-and-white uniform. Miles curses inwardly. "Are you one of those psychopaths?" the man asks, with a slight jerk of his head toward the center of all this commotion, to indicate which psychopaths he means.

Suppressing three different counterproductive retorts, Miles comes out with, "I'm Admiral Miles Naismith, commanding, Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet. What's going on?" One of the armed and armoured constables points her plasma rifle at him, and he gently pushes the muzzle of the rifle up away from him and adds, "Please, ma'am, we're all friends here." At a nod from the police commander, she, her rifle, and her suspicious glare all subside.

"Attempted robbery," the constable explains. "When the clerk tried to foil it, they attacked her."

"Robbery? Of what? I thought all transactions here worked by credit transfer. Nothing to rob."

"Stock," the constable explains succinctly. Miles takes another glance at the store under dispute. It appears to be a wineshop.

Aw shit indeed.

"In any case," Miles continues smoothly, "I am also troubled by this stand-off with deadly weapons over a case of shoplifting. Where are your stunners? Isn't this an overreaction?"

"They hold the woman hostage," says the constable.

Miles shrugs. "Stun them all, God will recognize his own."

This earns him a funny look. What, doesn't the man read his own history?

"They claim to have arranged some sort of dead-man switch, that this whole block will go up in flames." The constable focuses anew on Miles as a potential source of clear information. "Is this possible?"

Miles can think of two different ways to do that off the top of his head, neither possible to achieve with only the contents of a liquor store.

"Have you got IDs on any of these guys yet?" he asks. The constable shakes his head. "How are you communicating with them?"

"Through the comconsole. At least, we were; they appear to have destroyed it a few minutes ago."

Miles contemplates the quiescent storefront and says as bravely as possible, "We will, of course, pay damages." A glimpse out of the corner of his eye of a hovercar with a news logo prompts him to add firmly, "I think it's past time to break this up."

"What are you going to do?" the constable asks, following him a step or two toward the wineshop and then prudently hanging back.

"Arrest them," Miles tosses over his shoulder. "On Dendarii charges. They're strictly forbidden to take ordnance off-ship, even before you get into their unbecoming conduct."

"All by yourself?" the constable exclaims. "They'll shoot you!"

"Ha," says Miles. "If my own troops were going to shoot me, they've had plenty of better opportunities."

The constable stares after him doubtfully as Miles strides up to the autodoors. They fail to open at his approach; he regards the glass for a moment, then raises a hand and knocks politely. A dim shadow moves within. The doors slide open wide enough to admit him, just. He turns sideways to edge into the gap.

Inside, the stench of ethanol is thick on the air; Miles feels he could almost get drunk on it. The carpet is soaked, and squishes when trod on.

"Isss Adm'ral Naismith!" says the man who opened the door, closing it again and re-jamming the mechanism. He is wearing only underwear. Miles gives him a long look and then turns to survey the rest of the room.

Another soldier, this one wearing a more complete uniform, is sitting propped up against a pillar. Miles peers into his face. Blank eyes stare back through him. He leaves that one alone and continues.

"Who t'hell cares?" comes a voice from behind the lone undamaged display rack. A soldier stumbles out around it, spots Miles, and halts in confusion.

"Ah," sighs Miles. "Private Danio. Fancy meeting you here." And all becomes clear...

Private Danio comes to attention, of a sort. An antique pistol wavers in his drooping hand. Miles indicates it with a gesture. "Is that the deadly weapon you've been menacing the town with? The way those constables were talking, I expected half our fucking arsenal."

"No, sir!" protests Danio. "That would be against regs." He strokes the ancient gun. "Jus' my personal property, see. Because you never know. The crazies are everywhere."

Yes indeed they are, Miles thinks uncharitably. He shakes his head. "Any other weapons around?"

"Yalen's got a knife."

So, that's one potential headache gone. Leaving many more to take its place. "Did you know," inquires Miles, "that carrying any weapon is a criminal offense in this jurisdiction?"

"Wimps," mutters Danio.

"And yet," says Miles, "I'm still going to have to collect them and take them back topside where they will bother the wimps no more." He leans over and squints. There is indeed a large knife, steel, clutched in the paw of a man lying on the floor. Considering his options, Miles chooses to delegate. "Private Danio, bring me that knife."

Danio extracts the knife from the horizontal one's grip and hands it, along with his pistol, to Miles. Miles secures them about his person.

"Now, Danio - quickly, because they're not getting any happier out there - explain."

"Well, sir, we were having a party. We'd rented a room. We came here to top up on, you know, supplies. But the bitch wouldn't take our credit! Good Dendarii credit!"

"The...?" Miles looks around, squishing across the carpet and circumnavigating the disarmed Yalen. The store clerk is on the floor behind the display rack, tied and gagged with the missing portion of the demi-naked doorman's uniform. Miles starts toward her, but the naked-ish one catches his eye and motions a negative.

"I wouldn't. She makes a lot of noise."

Miles desists temporarily, studying the woman's situation, her frantic but currently ineffective struggles. Certainly if she got loose and rampaged around in a panic, nothing would be gained - he can imagine her, with unpleasant vividness, bolting out the front door directly into the plasma fire of the nervous constables. No. She can stay for now. The name tag on the repurposed uniform catches his eye; he looks up at the unclothed soldier.

"Xaveria," he says. "I remember you now. You did well at Dagoola." Xaveria straightens slightly, braced by this unlooked-for praise. Miles refrains from sighing. If it weren't for Xaveria's combat record, he would be sorely tempted to package them up neatly for local law enforcement and walk away. But such service deserves a better reward than abandonment. "Tell me," he says, "what happened after she refused your credit cards?"

"Er. Insults... were exchanged, sir. Tempers got out of hand. Bottles were thrown. The police were called. She was punched out."

Xaveria's wary glance at Danio provies context for why he might have subtracted all the actors from this account of the action. "And?" prompts Miles.

"Well, the police got here. And we told them we'd blow the place up if they tried to come in."

Miles looks around. "Do you have the means to carry out that threat, Private Xaveria?"

"Of course not, sir. Pure bluff. I was trying to—" Xaveria coughs, looking momentarily as though he would like to retreat back into the passive voice. "Well, I was trying to think what you would do, sir."

That is not the kind of example Miles wants to set among his troops. He shakes his head. "What was the problem with your credit cards?"

Xaveria produces an example; Miles studies it. It looks just fine to him. He goes to try it on the comconsole at checkout, only to find the comconsole in extremely poor condition, making sad little spitting noises and sporting a large bullet hole directly in the centre of the holovid plate. "It was the machine that threw it back, sir," offers Xaveria.

"It shouldn't have done that..." unless, Miles finishes silently, there was something wrong with the central fleet account. Bugger and damn. "I'll look into it. In the meantime, the tactical problem that concerns me is getting you out of here without anyone else geting hurt."

"We could blast our way out the back!" says Danio brightly. Miles looks at him, momentarily at a loss for words.

"No," he says after a pause. "We are going to walk out the front door and surrender."

"But sir, the Dendarii never surrender."

"Private Xaveria, this is not a firebase. It is a wineshop. Moreover, it is not even our wineshop." Although given the extent of the damages, Miles expects to be paying for it anyway. "Think of the London police not as your enemies, but as your dearest friends. Because, you see, I cannot start with you until they have finished."

"Right, sir," says Xaveria, thoroughly subdued. Miles sets to work arranging the four of them in an optimal surrender configuration: Yalen and Danio can jointly carry the drugged-out man sitting against the pillar, whom Miles puts a little further out of commission via the application of a light stunner blast to the back of his head, lest he wake up suddenly and do something unproductive. With the three of them thereby occupied, underpants-clad Xaveria can lead this small and inebriated procession out on a nice, quiet walk to their nice, quiet arrest. Miles brings up the rear, in case of deserters.

The maneuver succeeds. The four Dendarii privates are received, frisked - Danio does not resist, a pleasant surprise - and locked in tangle-fields, all neat and tidy.

And just as the constable is approaching Miles to say something - there is a soft thump-whoosh from the direction of the whineshop. Miles glimpses blue flames out of the corner of his eye.

He doesn't even think; he bolts back inside, gulping air on the way and holding it as he clears the darkened threshold. In, around the display rack, pick up the bound woman, pray to whatever gods might be listening that his bones will survive her weight, lunge for the door with all speed while flames whirl dizzily across the fuel-soaked carpet. Just as he makes their escape, the room behind them catches fully at last, from dim cavern to roaring inferno. Miles drops to the ground - his burden falls with him - he rolls her across the ground, trying to smother the flames before they can do any damage, and ignores the spectacular lightshow coming from his own fireproofed uniform.

A quick-thinking fireman sprays them both down with flame-damping foam. Miles inhales at last, then regrets this impulse immediately as the foam enters his mouth and brings with it an unpleasant chemical taste.

"The bomb?" asks the police commander. Miles shakes his head, panting and spitting.

"No, the brandy," he corrects. "Must've been a short circuit in the comconsole. Wouldn't've taken," gasp, pant, "more'n a spark to set off all that spilled booze."

The rest of the waiting firemen surge forward. One drags Miles away from the blazing wineshop and up onto his feet; another two take his rescuee away towards an ambulance. There is quite a lot of noise, which Miles's dazed brain is unable to continue sorting into its component parts; words, screams, the crackle of flame, all meld together into an incomprehensible whole. Someone is pointing a microwave cannon at him, at uncomfortably close range; he blinks. No, it's a holovid camera. That makes much more sense.

He reflects that he would have preferred the microwave cannon.

What the hell's he supposed to say to that?

Miles inhales.

"Of course, Commander Quinn," he says, straightening. "Just a moment, please. Constable?" Where's he gotten to—ah, yes. Miles waves over the police commander, and carefully and solemnly hands him Danio's pistol and Yalen's knife. "I retrieved these from my men. That seems to be all the ordnance they were carrying. Neither item is Dendarii issue, a fact which relieves me considerably."

The constable doesn't look especially relieved. Miles does not blame him.