"Right. Less of a coup against the entire House, but I guess our philanthropist won't cough up for the whole fleet?"
"One year's inventory isn't exactly a pitiful haul. But yeah. I did actually ask what it would take to get them all at once, and honestly, the whole fleet couldn't do it. You'd be getting dangerously close to 'planetary invasion force' by the time you found a fleet that could."
"You won't catch me arguing. Invasions do tend to get messy in a way commando raids don't, though."
"You know I'm always tremendously thoughtful. I go for hours sometimes, thinking."
He picks up his teacup and gives Bel a mildly reproving look over the top of it.
"Aw, don't give me that. What would you do on these long trips away from home without me, Miles?"
"Enjoy the peace and quiet," he says, with a perfectly straight face that he maintains for all of half a second before cracking up helplessly.
"Peace and quiet. What a word for a commando raid. I suspect you'd just get some thinking done."
"Aww," it says. Then it snaps its fingers, drinks its tea with what looks like uncomfortable rapidity, and gets up. "I will be right back."
He gives it a dare-I-even-ask look over his own half-finished tea, but does not in fact ask.
Then it opens the door to the cabin, circles around so that it's between Mark and the weapons on the wall, and a device in its hand goes beep beep.
The internal alarm bells are screaming by the time the med scanner beeps, but, practically speaking, there is really not much he can do. He sits frozen, tea in hand.
"Hi there," says Thorne, dropping the med scanner and pulling a stunner off the wall but not aiming it at him yet. "What gives?"
Mark shrugs slightly.
"I'm your philanthropist," he says, London-accented.
"Nice cause. But if the money's real, why didn't you hire us instead of pretending to be Miles?"
"Because Miles makes you better. Would you like to see my statistics? Having Admiral Naismith along on a mission makes everyone smarter, faster, more competent. A factor which is not ordinarily under the control of mere employers - have you ever tried to contact the Admiral while he was off being thoroughly vanished? Can't be done. I, however," he shrugs again, "have a backup copy. So to speak. I do pull off a very good Miles, you must admit. What gave me away?"