extrapenguin

Wordcount: 2252
Synopsis: Miles introduced Laisa and Gregor. Now Gregor wants to repay him. With horses.
Enter Aleksei Kostolitz, Filippa Cherenkova, grave-robbing and Cetagandans.

Filippa Cherenkova, age twenty-four, was far from pleased to be woken up at five in the morning. Even if it was a comconsole call from someone in the Imperial Residence.

No-one would expect her to be fully dressed at this unearthly hour, so she just tossed a shawl over her night clothes before answering.

The caller was a very panicky-looking ImpSec Lieutenant Aleksei Kostolitz.

“Oh, good, Filippa, I need your help!”

“With what? The Emperor need more horses as bribes?”

Aleksei looked puzzled in that way one can only be achieved during an all-nighter. “Bribes? Erm, uh, a favor, more like...”

Filippa sighed. “Aleksei?”

“Yes?”

“Go to sleep. Call me in the morning.”

Six hours later, Filippa was in Aleksei's tiny apartment, sipping tea good enough to mark him as an aficionado. Aleksei was in mufti, with noticeable bags under his eyes, obviously fighting to stay awake.

“So, what do you need my help for?” Filippa asked.

“Apparently, Lord Auditor Vorkosigan expressed regret that his grandfather's herd of horses was so much diminished after the old man's death. And, since the Lord Auditor was the one who first introduced the Emperor to Empress Laisa...”

“...he wants to repay the favor.” Filippa stopped to think for a moment. “Wait, does the Emperor actually think we should buy or bring back from the dead all the horses sold after the old Count's death? Could the Vorkosigans actually afford their upkeep? – Horses are expensive”, she added at Aleksei's confused expression. “They're less expensive South of Vorbarr Sultana where they can graze year-roound, but vet bills and shoeing costs add up.”

“Well, the Emperor cited the number five at one point... ImpSec records all conversations in the Residence, so we could even get our hands on what was actually said.” Aleksei cheered up.

“All right, so first we look up the conversation. I suggest we do that n- after we're done with our tea.”

In the early evening, after their fifth time watching the recording of a steadily drunkening Lord Auditor talking at his nearly sober Emperor, they looked at their notes.

“Okay, who are Midnight and Cleena? From the context, I'll assume they are horses”, Aleksei asked.

“There was at least one stallion called Midnight bred by Piotr Vorkosigan – an Arabian. Remember Falcon? Midnight was Falcon's sire. He's deceased now, of course. Buried at the Vorhartung Graveyard of Excellence.”

Aleksei looked at her as if he was unsure whether she was trying to pull her leg.

“The Vorhartung Graveyard of Excellence”, Filippa began with a sigh, “is a graveyard where particularly excellent horses are buried. It was originally founded by Count Ivan Vorhartung as a burial place for his favorite horses. After the Vorhartungs went poof, it went into the possession of Count Vorbarra. After the War, Emperor Dorca founded the Barrayaran Horse Society on his death bed, and Mad Yuri gave the Society free rein on burying horses there.”

“Oh. So, we can just ask the Society for a genetic sample?” Aleksei asked.

“No, they have a strict policy against giving genetic material to anyone – y'see, we might be working for the Cetagandans in a nefarious plot to bring down the Empire. If we want anything, either we have to lean on a curator – and inform every horse person on Barrayar of our interest – or we have to engage in grave robbing. Oh, and they only started preserving genetic samples recently, so the curator might not be able to do anything.”

“So grave-robbing it is.” The expression on Aleksei's face was priceless.

Two days later and after dark, Filippa and Aleksei were walking in the graveyard. Aleksei had decided that no-one would dare to blabber about ImpSec doing anything, so he'd procured an ImpSec Lieutenant's uniform for Filippa as well. (It had been the smallest size in mass manufacture. It fit reasonably well, considering that she was a woman.)

They found Midnight's grave. Filippa laid down a tarp next to it. Thankfully, the graveyard's soil wasn't rich enough to support grass, and no-one would care about cut Barrayaran plants.

Some shoveling later, they got to the coffin. They uncovered it enough to open it.

Filippa opened the coffin lid. She heard Aleksei make a disturbed noise.

Midnight had been dead for half a decade. His corpse stank and looked deformed.

Filippa held out her hand. Aleksei gave her the sampling machine. She punched it around in multiple places, hoping it would come up with Midnight's genetic code, not a maggot's.

They had just closed the lid when they heard a group of people walking somewhere near.

Aleksei dumped the tarp's contents into the hole they'd digged. Filippa grabbed their equipment. They turned to find a light being shined into their eyes.

The light was switched off. Filippa barely made out three figures.

“Lieutenant!” one of them said. They collectively moved and gave a salute. Taking her cue from Aleksei, Filippa, too, returned the salute.

Now that her eyes were adapting to the darkness again, Filippa saw that the three were ImpSec Ensigns. She wondered what they were here for.

“Sirs, our apologies, we're running a classified operation for Sergyaran Affairs, so we can't stop to help you”, their leader said apologetically. Aleksei nodded, said something about Imperial affairs, then extracted himself from the conversation. Filippa tailed him as they walked away to their waiting lightflyer over the hills.

“So, are we going to engage in further grave-robbing to get the pony's DNA?” Aleksei asked.

“Not necessarily, apparently the Lord Auditor kept a lock of her mane somewhere. I suggest sending ImpSec who are not you to do the deed and nick a few strands from it.”

Thankfully for her sanity, Aleksei obeyed her suggestion, and eventually they had both genetic samples.

“Do we have any alternatives to House Bharaputra?” Filippa asked.

Aleksei shook his head. “Have you tracked down any Akhal-Teke?”

“There are very small numbers on Earth, Ylla and Tau Verde. For understandable reasons, no-one's interested in exporting. The only place with a significant amount of them is Argamakia. It's a Cetagandan satrapy”, she added at Aleksei's look of complete loss.

Aleksei finally acquired visas to Argamakia. The visa interviewer in the Cetagandan Embassy had told him to his face that he was a suicidal idiot. Apparently, the Argamakians weren't that fond of Cetagandans, thus all the roadside bombs and lynchings.

Some poor Ensign had been volunteered for the task of bringing the two sequences of horse DNA to House Bharaputra. Meanwhile, Aleksei was to masquerade as equine connoisseur Filippa's long-suffering lover.

Argamakia had one spaceport. It was in something of a state of disrepair, and was run by a platoon of twitchy-looking ghem. One of the ghem directed them to a desk. They'd been the only foreigners on the ship.

“Welcome to Argamakia. Ghem-General Dalen would appreciate it if you didn't get killed, so try to restrict your obvious suicidal urges”, the ghem-Lieutenant greeted them. He looked prematurely aged. “Please sign here”, he said, and pushed flimsies at Aleksei and Filippa.

They were legal documents stating that the signatory party knew the risks of Argamakia, that the Cetagandan Empire bore no responsibility for the acts of the Argamakians, et cetera. Aleksei signed.

The ghem-Lieutenant collected the signed papers. “Your Cetagandan escort is waiting for you at the official exit. Have a nice trip, and whatever you do, don't create any more paperwork for me.”

After a few moments of trying to find an exit amongst the one-storey buildings and barbed wire, they found a large-ish door that had an antsy, rather than twitchy, ghem standing next to it. They walked over.

“Excuse me, is this the official exit?” Aleksei asked.

“It's the only exit, idiot. I am ghem-Ensign Yan Kovin. I assume you are the foreigners I'm supposed to escort. Where are you going?” he asked. He was attempting to look and sound haughty, but wasn't quite concealing a nervous quaver in his voice.

“Horse shopping in the wilderness”, Filippa smirked.

Kovin looked like he'd just taken a large quantum leap towards nervous breakdown.

Three days of traveling in an armored groundcar later, Aleksei was fed up with the whole assignment. He wished the Emperor had come up with something easier to find, like stuffed toys. But no. Lord Auditor Vorkosigan must receive horses.

Aleksei drove. Filippa was doodling horses on a stack of flimsies. Kovin looked like he was going to freak out at any moment.

“Is that bunker a checkpoint?” Aleksei asked.

“We passed the last checkpoint fifty kilometers ago.” Kovin looked even closer to freaking out.

Something exploded beneath the vehicle. Aleksei heard the fuel tank make sparking noises and dove out of the car. He rolled and rolled and rolled.

Another explosion happened. That would be the fuel tank. Shrapnel flew over him.

He looked at the smoking ruins of the groundcar. It didn't look like it would explode any time soon.

Kovin was clambering to his feet a few meters behind Aleksei. Filippa had been on the other side of the vehicle.

Aleksei felt a nerve disruptor poke into his neck. He raised his hands. Kovin looked like he was going to cry. He lifted his hands as well.

The Argamakians looked remarkably uniform. All were deathly pale with light-colored hair and similar facial features. Of the six terrorists that Aleksei could see, half were women.

Footsteps. Aleksei slowly turned his head to see Filippa being walked towards them by another two Argamakians.

“Who are you?” a woman said from above. Aleksei turned.

The woman looked identical to the others, but she was riding a horse. The horse was a very shiny palomino, the color of a newly-minted gold coin.

“I am Aleksei Kostolitz, citizen of Barrayar. These are Filippa Cherenkova, also of Barrayar, and ghem-Ensign Yan Kovin.”

The Argamakians looked at Kovin disapprovingly.

The leader was just about to say something when Filippa said, “A mare. How much does she cost?”

“You're a horse person.” It wasn't a question.

“That's why I'm here.” Filippa smirked as she answered.

The leader tilted her head. “How many?”

“Three mares and a stallion.”

The leader addressed her underlings, and Filippa and two guards followed her as she rode off. Aleksei and Kovin were eventually prodded towards the treeline with nerve disruptors.

“What do you think they're doing to her?”

“I don't know! I'm just as new to getting kidnapped as you are!”

Their captors brought them some sort of stew. Its taste was reminiscent of home. Aleksei slept badly.

Filippa returned at the crack of dawn, leading three horses. One of her three escorts was leading a fourth one. The leader had her idiosyncratic horse.

One of the horses Filippa were leading was a brilliant mahogany bay shining in shades of red. Another was a shiny golden buckskin. The third was a beautiful cremello, at risk of outshining the rising sun. The horse being lead separately was pitch black with a stunning blue sheen.

“Aleksei! Grab Jazyr!” she shouted, nodding her head at the black horse.

After the stallion's lead rope had exchanged hands, the Argamakians vanished into the forest.

Kovin wasn't thrilled at having to walk to civilization. To tell the truth, neither was Aleksei. Then again, Aleksei had a very spirited stallion on his hands, so the going was less excruciatingly mind-numbing. At least none of the mares was in season.

When they got to civilization (complete with horse trailers), it was a relatively short drive to the spaceport. The prematurely aged ghem-Lieutenant cried when they told him of the ground-car's fate.

“Have you any idea how hard it is to replace those?!”

In his despair, he rubber-stamped the horses' export documents without looking at them.

On the ship home, Aleksei asked Filippa why she'd bought the stallion.

“Well, Lord Vorkosigan will want a stallion to breed foals with, so I sensed a market opportunity...” she replied. “Besides, he was pretty.”

“You're evil.”

“Thank you.”

Sometimes, Ekaterin wanted to bash the Emperor's head in. It wasn't very often, mind you, mostly when he sent Miles away on a long mission.

Or now. Ekaterin had no idea what to do with five horses. Miles, however, did. Thankfully.

“Oh, don't worry, Ekaterin, Cleena II – the bay foal – will be excellent for the kids once they grow up! Her twin sister taught be how to ride. And Midnight II – the black foal – will grow up into a very pretty and valuable show horse, just like his brother!” he said.

“But what about the other three?” Ekaterin wailed.

“Oh, we'll breed Akhal-Tekes with imported sperm! They're really rare, so everyone will want one! – Dauriya's the buckskin, Alaya's the cremello and Sayat's the bay”, he explained. It might have been useful if Ekaterin had had the faintest clue about horse colors. The way they were defined, the one called ‘black’ probably referred to the gold-colored horse.

Filippa Cherenkova was very happy. She owned two high-quality, sought-after stallions (an Escobaran breeder had just contacted her over purchasing some of Jazyr's sperm) and was drinking what had to be the best tea on the planet.

“So, why are Akhal-Tekes so shiny?” Aleksei asked her from the other end of his couch.

“Well, regular hairs have an opaque core. With Akhal-Teke, the core is small or even completely absent. Thus the whole hair consists of the transparent part, and functions like a fiber-optic cable.”

“I see your parents saw fit to provide you with an education.” Aleksei smiled. “More tea?”

“Yes, please.”