Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold Page A

surreptitiously pinching his earlobe with his fingernail. The afternoon’s schedule promised to be more entertaining, a private planning session with Desplains’s own inspection team, a cadre of keen and occasionally evil officers known to the inspected as the Vor Horsemen of the Apocalypse, though only two of the group had surnames burdened with that prefix.
    This left Ivan his lunch hour to pursue his own affairs. He grabbed a rat bar again , poured a cup of tarry coffee, popped two painkillers in an attempt to clear the sleep-deprivation cotton batting from his head, unwillingly contemplated his secured comconsole, and instead of starting a tedious and possibly frustrating search, called the building next door. Admiral Desplains’s name cleared his route at once.
    ImpSec Galactic Affairs shared its downside offices with ImpSec Komarr, although how much the two sets of spook-handlers talked to each other was anyone’s guess. Once past the lobby security, the hushed, windowless corridors reminded Ivan all too much of ImpSec’s parent headquarters back in Vorbarr Sultana: utilitarian, secretive, and faintly depressing. They must’ve imported the same interior designer, just before he hanged himself.
    The top Galactic Affairs analyst for Jackson’s Whole here was one Captain Morozov; Ivan had been interviewed by him twice before, over his cousin Mark’s affairs. The personal touch always sped things up, in Ivan’s experience. Morozov also met, adequately, Ivan’s current who-do-you-trust calibrations. Ivan found him presiding over a similar cubicle and comconsole as a few years back, even more packed with books, cartons of flimsies, and odder memorabilia. Morozov was a pale scholar-soldier with a square, bony face, and an unusually cheerful outlook on life and his work—ImpSec regulars could be morbid.
    Morozov greeted Ivan with either a wave or an ImpSec-style salute, it was hard to tell which, and drew up the spare swivel chair with an extended foot. “Captain Vorpatril. We meet again. What can Galactic Affairs do for Admiral Desplains today?”
    Ivan settled himself, finding a place for his feet amongst the cartons. “I”—he conscientiously did not say we —“have a query on an unusual person with a suspected Jacksonian connection.” Carefully, if vividly, Ivan described Rish, withholding her name for now—it could be just another alias, after all. There seemed no point in describing Tej. There might be whole planets full of cinnamon-skinned beauties out there somewhere, for all Ivan knew. Rish, he suspected, was unique. Keep it simple .
    Morozov listened intently, his eyebrows climbing, fingertips pressed together in a gesture copied, Ivan was fairly sure, from his infamous former boss. As Ivan wound up he vented a Huh! Before Ivan could inquire just what kind of Huh! it was, Morozov spun to his comconsole and zipped through its file listings too fast for Ivan to follow. He sat back with a triumphant little Tah-dah! gesture as a still vid formed over the plate.
    Ivan leaned forward, staring. “Good grief! There’s a whole set!” With a conscious effort, he closed his mouth.
    The vid showed a group portrait, posed and formal. Rish, it was clearly Rish, knelt on one knee, second from the left. She was wearing very little; a gold thong and a winding pattern of gold foil that appeared to be glued on, barely covering other strategic points and twining up to her neck as if to present her face as an exotic blossom. Surrounding her were four other women and a man. They had slightly varying heights and builds, but all looked equally lithe and shimmering. One woman was white and silver, one yellow and metallic gold, one green and gold, one red and garnet, and the man was jet black and silver. Six faces differently but equally exquisite, smiling faintly, serene.
    “Who are they?”
    Morozov smiled like a particularly satisfied stage magician. Ivan had to admit, that was one hell of a rabbit.
    “Their names are