weeks, until it dies down."
Cordelia whistled. &www sexcolleges com quot;Clever-why didn't we think of that? How do you get the
pilot out?"
"Maybe that's why you didn't think of it. We don't."
"God-what a death." Her vision of it was clear and instant.
"They were volunteers."
She shook her head numbly. "Only a Barrayaran." She probed for some less
horrifying subject. "Did you take many prisoners?"
"Not very. Maybe a thousand in all. We left over eleven thousand www sexcolleges com ground
troops behind on www sexcolleges com Escobar. It makes you rather valuable, if we have to try
to trade you www sexcolleges com more than ten for one."
The prisoners' shuttle was
a windowless craft, and she shared it with only
two others, one of her own www sexcolleges com engineer's www sexcolleges com assistants, and the dark-haired
Escobaran girl who had been in her cell. Her tech www sexcolleges com was www sexcolleges com eager www sexcolleges com to exchange
stories, although he didn't have much to trade. He had spent the whole time
www sexcolleges com locked in one cell with www sexcolleges com his www sexcolleges com other three shipmates, who had
been taken
downside yesterday.
The beautiful Escobaran, a young ensign who had been captured when www sexcolleges com her
ship was disabled in www sexcolleges com the fighting for the wormhole jump to Beta Colony over
two months ago, had even less www sexcolleges com to www sexcolleges com tell.
"I must have lost track of time, somewhere," she said uneasily. &www sexcolleges com quot;Not hard
to do in that cell, seeing no one. Except that I
woke up in their sickbay,
yesterday, and couldn't remember how I'd come there."
And if that surgeon's as good as he looked, you never will, thought
Cordelia. &www sexcolleges com quot;Do you remember Admiral Vorrutyer?"
"Who?"
"Never mind."
The shuttle landed at last, and the hatch was opened. A shaft of sunlight
and a breath of summer-scented air fell through it, sweet www sexcolleges com green air that
made them suddenly realize they had been breathing reek for days.
"Wow, where is this place?" said the technician, awed, as he stepped
through the hatch, prodded by the guards. "It's beautiful."
Cordelia followed him, and laughed www sexcolleges com out loud, although not happily, in
instant recognition.
The prison camp was a triple row of Barrayaran field
shelters, ugly grey
www sexcolleges com half-cylinders surrounded by a www sexcolleges com force screen, set at the bottom of a
kilometers-wide amphitheater of dry woodland and waterfall, beneath www sexcolleges com a
turquoise sky. It was a hazy, warm, quiet afternoon that made Cordelia feel
she had never left.
Yes, there was even the entrance to the www sexcolleges com underground depot, not camouflaged
anymore, but widened, with a great paved