The Vorkosigan Companion (31 page)

Cetaganda
(1996)

Lieutenant Lord Miles Vorkosigan and Lieutenant Lord Ivan Vorpatril have been assigned to attend the funeral of the late Cetagandan Empress Lisbet Degtiar, and to observe the Cetagandans in their native habitat. The trip gets off to a surprising start when a strange-looking person bursts into their ship upon landing. Thinking he's an assassin, Miles and Ivan try to subdue him, but he gets away, leaving a nerve disruptor and a short, unusual rod behind. Miles decides not to tell their commanding ImpSec officer about the incident right away, as he wants to figure out why it happened in the first place. They attend a welcoming party that same evening, where Miles meets Lord Yenaro, a Cetagandan lord and perfume maker who has supplied a large, walk-through sculpture for the Marilacan Embassy. Invited inside, Miles suffers an accident when a power field heats his leg braces, causing painful burns. Miles is now even more suspicious that something is going on, and his instincts are confirmed when, during a gift presentation and viewing of the Empress lying in state, a Cetagandan haut-lady named Rian Degtiar contacts him, demanding the return of the strange rod. Miles arranges to meet with her again, then takes his place back in the viewing procession just in time to see the same strange person who had invaded their ship, member of a Cetagandan servant neuter caste known as ba, lying dead behind the funeral dais, its throat slit. Continuing his investigation, Miles discovers the short rod is the Great Key of the Star Crèche, a security device that stores all of the information on the Cetagandan genetic lines kept for reproduction purposes and to maintain the lines of descent for the ghem and haut-lords. Invited to a party at Lord Yenaro's estate, Miles makes contact with Rian again, and returns the Great Key, which is revealed to be a fake. Miles demands to continue his investigation, feeling he was set up for this, with Barrayar to take the fall, provoking an interstellar war with Cetaganda. To make matters worse, he has less than nine days—the mourning period for the Empress, after which a new one will be chosen—to uncover the plot before it happens. Pressing Rian for more information, he learns the Empress had made eight copies of the haut gene bank, feeling that Cetaganda was growing stagnant, and hoping that dispersing the gene bank to the governors of eight satrapy planets would revitalize the Empire. Miles sees the move as insanity, creating eight smaller, aggressive empires out of one large one. He figures out that the ba was played, and was supposed to give Miles the fake key to jump-start the conflict. However, since Miles hadn't reported the incident, and with the ba dead, the person behind the plot, whom Miles christens Lord X, hasn't been able to put it into action yet, except behind the scenes. He goes back to the party to find Ivan there, upset at being seduced by two beautiful ghem-ladies, only to find he couldn't rise to the occasion because he had been slipped an anti-aphrodisiac, confirming Miles's suspicion that Lord Yenaro is involved in the plot. The next day, he is interrogated by Dag Benin, a Cetagandan security colonel, about his unauthorized viewing of the ba's body. That afternoon they attend a poetry reading in the Empress's honor, and at the following reception Rian meets with Miles again, telling him she suspects that one of the governors, Slyke Giaja, is the traitor plotting to create a Barrayar-Cetaganda war. Miles makes plans to board Giaja's ship and search for the real Great Key, and plans to meet Rian's handmaiden at a genetic-engineering exhibition to plan the infiltration. However, Lord Vorreedi, the head of ImpSec security on Cetaganda, accompanies them, so Miles has to ditch him first. They stumble across Lord Yenaro, who almost unknowingly attempts to assassinate them with asterzine, an explosive, malleable chemical that reacts violently with the proper catalyst. Caught, Yenaro tells them that Governor Ilsum Kety is behind the whole scheme. While elated at the news, Miles can't make his meeting with Rian's representative, as Vorreedi sticks with him until they leave. The next day, Vorreedi interrogates Miles first, then Colonel Benin questions Miles and Ivan about what happened since they first landed on Cetaganda. Miles tells a heavily edited version of events, leaving out the Great Key and his meetings with Rian. Invited to a garden party by another haut-lady, both Miles and Ivan attend, and Miles is taken to confer with the Star Crèche—all the haut-consorts of the governors plus Rian—to plan their next move. Off a casual suggestion from Ivan, Miles suggests recalling the copies of the gene pools from each governor's ship, with Rian claiming they are defective. While the haut-ladies put this plan into action, Miles and Ivan attend yet another ceremony, where Ivan is captured by one of Kety's people. The float-bubble with the lady and Ivan inside is captured, and Miles uses it to infiltrate Kety's ship and find the missing consort, whose float-chair was stolen, and the Great Key. Caught by Kety's security, Miles has the contents of the Key downloaded to a transfer station, where it would be picked up by thousands of people; then Pel locks the key inside the float bubble, effectively putting it out of Kety's grasp. As the governor tries to open the field, Colonel Benin, Ivan, and reinforcements arrive to save them and arrest Kety for treason. Miles has a private audience with the Cetagandan Emperor, Rian, and two of the other haut-consorts, to wrap up the matter, and the Emperor awards Miles the Order of Merit, the highest honor on Cetaganda, and has him walk to the cremation of the Empress's body at the Emperor's left hand. Miles is left with clashing thoughts; he did perform his duty to Barrayar, preventing a terrible war, and also assisted Cetaganda, but the award he received would be viewed with suspicion at home, particularly since the events surrounding it could never be brought to light. He ponders his motivations for putting himself into that much danger on the trip back to Barrayar—was it to be a hero, to prove himself to his superiors, or something else entirely?

Ethan of Athos
(1986)

Doctor Ethan Urquhart, Chief of Reproductive Medicine, lives and works on the planet Athos, an out-of-the-way world where women are prohibited from living. They reproduce male children by uterine replicator, and face a drastic problem: their stock of ovarian cultures, brought to Athos by its founders more than two centuries earlier, has reached the end of its life span, and the planet needs new material to continue. When a replacement order from Jackson's Whole arrives, Ethan discovers it is filled with nonviable ovaries. At the Population Council meeting afterward, it is decided that a representative from Athos will go off-planet to procure viable stock for the planet. The council also decides that Ethan is the right man for the job. Unceremoniously sent to Kline Station, Ethan encounters the opposite sex for the first time in his life. Elli Quinn, a commander in the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet, takes a particular interest in him, saving him from a nasty beating at the hands of several station techs. She escorts him back to his room, where he is immediately kidnapped and harshly interrogated by a Colonel Millisor. Ethan tells everything he knows—which isn't much—and is taken out to be killed by one of Millisor's men. Just before he is about to die, Ethan is saved by Elli, who kills the assassin in the process. Wanting some answers, Ethan helps her dispose of the body, a difficult task, given the space station's efficiency in tracking its resources. Afterward, she and Ethan exchange information, and he learns that the shipment destined for Athos came from House Bharaputra, but that Colonel Millisor and his team have been chasing it for months, killing anyone who gets in their way or is associated with it. After accidentally running into Colonel Millisor again, Ethan escapes by virtue of being disguised as a maintenance engineer. He is then approached by Terrence Cee, the man that Colonel Millisor is really after, and who began this entire mess. Terrence is a telepath, specially bred on Cetaganda for use as a military weapon. Along with another female telepath, Janine, he tried to escape with her and four telepathic children, but everyone else was killed during the flight from Cetaganda, leaving Terrence alone and on the run. He inserted an ovarian culture made from Janine's remains into the shipment, in hopes of somehow bringing her back to life. However, the shipment is still missing, and Terrence doesn't know where it is. Showing up at Terrence's doorstep, Elli tries to get him to join the Dendarii Free Mercenaries. Terrence, however, won't do anything until he is able to probe both Ethan's and Elli's minds, to ascertain that they are who they say they are. After proving their identities, the three try to deduce the possibilities of who might have the missing shipment, but there are simply too many suspects to narrow their search. Quinn then gets a message that a relative of hers, Teki, whom they used earlier to expose one of Millisor's surveillance teams, has gone missing, and they figure he was taken by Millisor for interrogation. Elli calls Biocontrol on Millisor's suite, pretending that the colonel is carrying a nasty STD. They find Teki, and in the ensuing chaos afterward, learn that the head of Biocontrol was the one who intercepted the tissue cultures meant for Athos, in a vain attempt to force her son to come back from the planet. Millisor and his second-in-command are taken to Quarantine, but both escape with the aid of his third man on the station, and capture Ethan, Elli, and Terrence, intending to kill the first two to keep the telepathy project a secret, then take Terrence back to Cetaganda. There seems to be no way out, until Ethan remembers an electronic message device given to him by an unnamed man in a pink suit to deliver to Millisor. Realizing it's a boobytrap, Elli uses it to create a diversion, then shuts off the gravity in the spacedock to try and stop Millisor from killing all of them. Millisor and his henchmen are killed by two men from House Bharaputra, who then capture Elli and try to get back the money they paid her to assassinate Millisor. However, she negotiates a deal with them that costs her only a dislocated elbow. Ethan is about to resume his quest for ovarian cultures, but first convinces Elli to donate one of hers to the Athosian cause. As Ethan is about to leave, Terrence and he locate the lost shipment of original ovarian cultures, and he brings both it and Terrence back to Athos, securing his planet's future, and perhaps a new life for himself as well.

"Labyrinth" (1989)

Miles goes to Jackson's Whole to pick up a defecting genetic scientist for Barrayar, under cover of buying munitions on the criminal planet. The mission gets off to a rocky start when Bel Thorne insults one of the ruling barons at a party while defending the honor of a quaddie musician. Then the quaddie finds them later, wanting to hire them to smuggle her off-planet. Also, the scientist they're liberating needs several valuable genetic samples that happen to be injected into another of his bioengineered creations, which is held by House Ryoval. He wants Miles to kill the creature and bring back the samples. Miles and his team try to break into the laboratory to retrieve it, but his men are caught and escorted out, leaving Miles behind. He finds a guard and interrogates him under fast-penta, but the man turns out to be the head of security. Captured, Miles is thrown into a basement room where they're keeping the creature. She turns out to be an intelligent, eight-foot-tall, bioengineered super-soldier, whom Miles befriends in an unusual way, even giving her a real name, Taura. During an attempt to escape, Miles stumbles across Ryoval's genetic library, which he destroys. He almost finds his way out, but the guards come for them, planning on trading Miles to Baron Fell in exchange for the quaddie. Out of options, Miles attacks the guards with Taura, Nicol, and Bel, succeeding in escaping in a float-truck. They are about to be forced down by the chasing security forces, but Dendarii reinforcements arrive in a combat shuttle, driving the House Ryoval forces off and evacuating Miles and his group. Taura joins the Dendarii, and Miles and his team, with the scientist safe under their protection, escape from Jackson's Whole by the skin of their teeth, leaving a furious Baron Ryoval behind.

"The Borders of Infinity" (1989)

The expected invasion of the planet Marilac by the Cetagandan Empire has happened, and Miles Vorkosigan finds himself in a force-field prison camp filled with ten thousand Marilacan soldiers. Beaten and stripped naked within five minutes of his arrival, he nevertheless sets about his mission—to find Colonel Guy Tremont and rescue him to form the nucleus of a new Marilacan guerrilla army. His only ally at first is a man named Suegar, who refers to Miles as "The One" that will save them all, and who just might be mad—or might not be. But Tremont is catatonic and dying, and Miles realizes his mission is now not to save just one man, but to save ten thousand. He slowly gains control of the camp, first by uniting the disparate factions inside, then by transforming the riots for the ration dispersal into an orderly food distribution. His organization of the camp serves a vital secondary purpose as well—to prepare the prisoners for the rescue they don't even know is coming. When the force shield drops due to the Dendarii's attack, Miles now faces the logistical problem of organizing and loading ten thousand people—and finding room for all of them on his ships—before Cetagandan reinforcements arrive. Using the food distribution plan as the blueprint for loading the prisoners, he manages it, although they lose two shuttles, one empty, one full, to a Cetagandan fighter in orbit. Also, Beatrice, one of the leaders Miles had relied on to maintain order in the camp, is lost due to a ramp malfunction on the last shuttle to lift off, which haunts Miles, as he risked his own life to save her, and failed.

Brothers in Arms
(1989)

After the prisoner rescue on Dagoola IV, Miles and the Dendarii head to Earth to rest and repair the fleet, having been chased halfway across the galaxy by the vengeful Cetagandans. Also, they need to get paid by the Barrayaran government for their efforts—and badly, as the Dendarii are literally broke. Still juggling his Admiral Naismith persona alongside Lieutenant Vorkosigan, Miles goes to meet his superior officer, a Komarran named Duv Galeni, at the Barrayaran Embassy. Miles's cousin Ivan is assigned to orient him at the embassy, and soon Miles is doing mind-numbing data analysis and providing escort duty for social events. However, his first task, an afternoon reception, is interrupted by Miles getting an urgent message to save three Dendarii troopers who have busted up a wine shop and are threatening to blow it up, creating a standoff with the local police. Miles heads over and saves his men and the clerk, but not before the shop goes up in flames, earning him a spot on the local news for his bravery in carrying the clerk out through the fire. Taken back to the Dendarii, Miles learns that since the expected payment hasn't arrived from Barrayar yet, the fleet is in real financial trouble, forcing them to take out a short-term loan, using one of their ships as collateral, to cover expenses. Adding to Miles's complications, he gets romantically involved with Elli Quinn, who's had a long-term crush on him. After a dressing-down from Captain Galeni for the wine shop incident, Miles attends another embassy function, where he stumbles on the same reporter that interviewed him earlier, and comes up with the story that Admiral Naismith is his cloned brother. Granted leave to attend to the Dendarii, Miles is nearly killed on the way by hired assassins. After a mutually satisfying liaison with Elli—despite the fact that she turns down his marriage proposal—and coming up with the idea to hire out the Dendarii for any job that needs doing, dangerous or not, Miles returns to the embassy to find that Duv Galeni has disappeared, strengthening his theory that the captain has stolen the Dendarii payment and vanished. While searching Galeni's private personnel file, Miles learns that his father and mother were involved in Komarr's government when Barrayar took over, during Miles's father's time in the military, when he acquired the sobriquet "The Butcher of Komarr." Galeni's aunt was killed in the Solstice Massacre, and his father, who had joined the resistance, was blown up by a homemade bomb. Against Simon Illyan's wishes, Aral had let Duv join ImpSec, which was how he came to be at the embassy on Earth. Meanwhile, Elli has scared up some work—a mysterious party wants the Dendarii to kidnap Lieutenant Vorkosigan from the embassy. Going to a preliminary meeting, Miles is stunned and replaced with an exact duplicate of himself—his wild story to the press has come nightmarishly true. Held prisoner along with Duv, Miles discovers that Duv's father, Ser Galen, is very much alive, and has hatched a plot to insert Miles's double back into Barrayar to kill Aral and sow political chaos. The clone believes he is going to take the throne, but Miles, who views him as his flesh-and-blood brother, dubbing him Mark, tries to convince him that it will never happen, and that he should be his own man, not Galeni's puppet. Just before he can convince Mark, Galen bursts in and separates them. Miles tries to overpower the guards, but is stunned, and has a terrible dream combining the events of the Dagoola prison break with what's currently happening. About to be stunned and killed by Galen's guards, Miles and Galeni are rescued by Elli, who has been staking out the building they've been held in, searching for Galeni. They all go back to the Barrayaran Embassy, where they find that Mark has been arrested on suspicion of putting out the hit on Admiral Naismith. Going to the police, they find that Galen has beaten them there and sprung Mark first. Back at the embassy, Galeni investigates the suspected corrupt courier officer who had not been passing along the messages to and from Barrayar as he was supposed to, and finds he has been subverted. The officer in charge of the investigation, Commodore Destang, has brought a clean-up squad to eliminate Mark and the Komarran rebel cell if possible, and also gets Miles the payment the Dendarii have been sorely missing. Through a loophole in procedure, Galeni gives Miles tacit permission to use the Dendarii to find Mark and Galen. Heading back to his fleet, Miles sets his intelligence department on it, planning to buy Mark from Galen. While he's setting up his plan, Galen contacts him first—he's kidnapped Ivan, who was escorting a society matron to a flower show, and demands a meeting at the Thames Tidal Barrier. Miles takes Galeni and Elli and goes to meet Galen and Mark, where he makes his pitch: Mark and Ivan in exchange for half a million Imperial marks and Galen's promise to retire from the rebellion. Galen double-crosses them and orders Mark to kill Miles and Galeni. Mark hesitates, and when Galen grabs for his nerve disruptor, Mark shoots him instead. Before they can escape, however, they have to elude not only the Barrayaran hit squad, but a team of Cetagandans that are also after Admiral Naismith, and the local police, who have been called to investigate the disturbance in the area. In the end, Miles, Mark, Ivan, Elli, and Galeni all make it out in one piece. Miles upholds the bargain he made to Mark, giving him the half-million marks in exchange for Mark helping him to free Ivan, and sets Mark free as well. Miles gets one last surprise as the Dendarii receive orders to stop a hostage situation involving Barrayarans—Ky Tung is retiring from the mercenary trade and getting married, leaving the Dendarii with a loss of one of their best commanding officers.