The Vorkosigan Companion (57 page)

Promoted to lieutenant in Imperial Security, he travels under the cover identity of a courier officer, but actually is a galactic Special Operations agent who reports directly to Simon Illyan, who reports directly to Gregor. While attending the funeral of the Dowager Empress on Eta Ceta IV, in the Cetagandan Empire, Miles solves the murder of the ba Lura, foils a plot against the Cetagandan Emperor, and stops a war between Cetaganda and Barrayar. Miles also falls in love with the haut
Rian Degtiar, knowing there is no conceivable way they ever could be together. After risking his life to recover the missing Great Key of the Cetagandan Star Crèche regalia in time for the funeral of the Emperor's mother, and recovering copied Cetagandan gene banks from the eight satrap governors, Miles is awarded the Order of Merit by the Cetagandan Emperor.

Next, he is sent to Jackson's Whole to pick up a genetic scientist to work on some interesting new biological strains that Imperial Security has secured. Miles gets tangled up in rescuing a quaddie musician and a bioengineered super-soldier from the two   wealthiest Houses on the planet. He earns the wrath of Baron Ryoval when he destroys the genetic samples library in Ryoval's laboratory during his escape.

Miles next earns the enmity of the Cetagandan Empire by using the Dendarii to stage a daring rescue of 10,000 Marilacan prisoners from Dagoola IV, a prison camp. Miles goes in under cover as one of the prisoners. He combines psychology and a bit of religious persuasion to organize the prisoners for escape. He is almost killed before he can pull off the rescue, in the course of which he loses 207 prisoners, along with two shuttles, plus four dead and sixteen wounded Dendarii.

Miles was supposed to report to Tau Ceti after the mission, but the Cetagandans put a large price on his head, forcing him and the Dendarii to lay low on Earth to repair the fleet and get needed medical attention for his crew. Miles and Elli fall in love during this time, but she turns down his offer of marriage. She wants to be Admiral Quinn in space, not Lady Vorkosigan stuck on Barrayar. While coming to terms with this, Miles is kidnapped as part of a Komarran plot to replace him with a clone, Mark, who will destabilize the Barrayaran government and open an opportunity for Komarr to break free of the Imperium—or so the Komarran plotters hope. Escaping from his captors with Elli's help, Miles also gives Mark his freedom, and gets a new mission to rescue Barrayaran hostages from some mercenaries turned pirates.

Four years later, Miles learns that Mark posed as Admiral Naismith and commandeered the
Ariel
to go to Jackson's Whole and rescue clones there who are about to be killed to provide donor bodies to wealthy and amoral elderly clients. Miles follows Mark with the intention of rescuing his brother, if necessary. During the mission, Miles is killed by a needler grenade to the chest, but cryogenically preserved for later resuscitation. He ends up a patient at the Durona clan medical facility, with a replacement heart, lungs, and stomach, but missing his memory, and must undergo rehabilitation there, where he falls in love with his doctor, Rowan Durona. Captured by Baron Fell's men just before he was about to be rescued by Mark, Miles is sold to Baron Ryoval, but arrives at the compound after Mark had already killed Ryoval. He contacts Imperial Security, which comes to get him, and watches as Mark consummates a deal with Baron Fell to get the Duronas off Jackson's Whole, and make a million Betan dollars in the process. Miles escorts his brother back to Barrayar.

Miles recovers from his cryo-stasis. During his revival his spine was straightened and he gained a centimeter of height, but he has some bad news to go along with the good. He now suffers from seizures that he has not reported to either Imperial Security or Elli Quinn, his second-in-command among the Dendarii. Miles's pride crashes and embarrassment peaks with a crucial accident on a rescue mission when he has a seizure and accidentally cuts off the legs of the Barrayaran courier they were rescuing. Miles does not report all the details of the accident or his health woes to Imperial Security, not wanting to be removed from active duty. Miles gets orders to return immediately to Barrayar, where, instead of a mission, he gets a medical discharge and is forced to resign after Simon catches him in his lies and falsified reports. After he suffers through his depression, the incident with Simon Illyan's memory gains him an acting Imperial Auditor post from Gregor to find out what's really going on. Miles discovers that General Haroche, the acting chief of Imperial Security, is the culprit. The Emperor offers Miles the chief of Imperial Security position, but he declines, not wanting a desk job. Miles does accept the position of the eighth Imperial Auditor, with a request to be promoted to captain post-career. He regretfully decides to not join Elli in the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet, but asks her one last time to marry him. She declines, but accepts the position as Admiral of the Dendarii. Miles gets medical aid and is able to control the seizures so he can function normally.

Three months after his appointment as a full Imperial Auditor, Miles travels with Imperial Auditor Vorthys to investigate a Soletta Station accident at Komarr. He meets Ekaterin, Vorthys's married niece, when staying with her family, and falls in love with her. With Vorthys and help from Doctor Riva, Miles figures out the plot rebellious Komarrans had concocted to close Barrayar's wormhole, and moves to stop the Komarran engineers from setting off the device, knowing that it will probably destroy the jump-point station. Unfortunately, Ekaterin's husband is one of the casualties of the plot. Miles convinces the Komarrans to surrender and release their hostages. Despite her very recent widowhood, and his part in the husband's death, Miles begins making plans to make Ekaterin his as soon as he possibly can, before some other Vor lord can snatch her away.

Having returned from his successful mission on Komarr, Miles is now on a personal mission to woo and win Ekaterin Vorsoisson. Gregor also gives Miles the task of managing René Vorbretten's problem with succession—the count has discovered he is part Cetagandan, and not a direct descendant of the sixth count. Miles also has to handle the Vormiur uterine replicator case of his 122 daughters as well. But his work does not keep Miles from trying to win Ekaterin over by being friends. He plans to court her without telling her. In his first salvo, he gives her the job of designing a garden near Vorkosigan House. The entry of multiple suitors for her hand sends Miles into overdrive, however, and he is suddenly plotting as if she has become a military objective. He tries to put on an elegant dinner party, but it ends in disaster when the butter bugs are released into the house, and his intent to marry Ekaterin is accidentally exposed by Simon Illyan. Miles proposes to her in front of everyone, but she storms out of the house, enraged by his deception. He must then apologize and lay his true feelings bare to her. In the end, Miles helps René Vorbretten win his case, assists Lord Dono Vorrutyer to inherit his brother's title and District, and wins Ekaterin over, leading her to propose to him at the Council of Counts meeting with his delighted parents watching from the balcony behind her.

As Miles is anxiously awaiting his upcoming wedding, he is determined for everything to go well, but worried that his bride-to-be is getting cold feet. Then Ekaterin gets sick—very sick. When Miles finds out that Ekaterin's illness is caused by a murder attempt using poisoned pearls that appear to be from his ex-lover Elli Quinn, he is furious, not at Elli, since he knows she would never do something like this, but that an attempt was made on the love of his life. Even after the plot is foiled and the perpetrators are caught, Miles is still so anxious about the marriage that Aral ends up tranquilizing him so he will be calm enough to get through the ceremony. Everything goes fine, and Miles and his new wife are whisked off to Vorkosigan Surleau for their honeymoon.

Happily wed, Miles and Ekaterin celebrate their first anniversary by starting two children in replicators and then going on a galactic honeymoon. The children will be a boy named Aral Alexander and a girl named Helen Natalia. They are on their way home from that honeymoon when Miles gets a message to go to Graf Station and sort out the mess caused by the confiscation of a Komarran space fleet and its Barrayaran armed escort. But events soon transpire that lead to attempted and actual murder, and could cause another war between Cetaganda and Barrayar. Though it nearly kills him, Miles is able to straighten out everything and make it home in time for the births of his children. (All except FF, SH)

Vorkosigan, Piotr:

Aral's father, and a general in the Barrayaran military, Count Piotr Vorkosigan's life bridges the planet's history from the Time of Isolation to the modern era. At twenty-two, he became a general in the Barrayaran army that expelled the Cetagandan invaders after two decades of resistance. When it became apparent the Mad Emperor Yuri Vorbarra was unfit to rule, Piotr led a civil war that deposed and executed Yuri and placed Ezar Vorbarra on the throne. As Emperor Ezar ruthlessly turned Barrayar into a government of laws for all, Piotr was the backbone of the Conservative party in the Council of Counts, with his fingers in the pies of numberless political intrigues. As his son Aral became a political player for the Progressive party, Piotr swallowed his pride and his political leanings and followed. When Aral married a galactic woman, Piotr struggled, but tried to cope. When Cordelia became pregnant, Piotr was beside himself with joy, having almost given up hope that Aral would have sons. Although Piotr attempts to have Miles aborted after the soltoxin attack, and tries to kill him after he is born, he warms to Miles as the boy proves to be as smart and fearless as Piotr himself. But after he learns that Miles has washed out of the Imperial Academy, Piotr dies in his sleep. Miles burns a death-offering to him after graduating from Imperial Academy. (B, MM, SH, WA)

Vorkosigan, Selig:

One of Miles's ancestors, he broke a siege of Vorkosigan Surleau using a handful of retainers and subterfuge. The dagger that Miles carries, formerly Piotr's, is supposed to date back to his time. (VG)

Vorkosigan Sousleau:

Prime Minister Vortala tells Aral that he heard the village near his summer home was going to be renamed this in honor of his habit of capsizing his sailboat. (SH)

Vorkosigan Surleau:

The Vorkosigan summer residence on the Long Lake, near the Dendarii Gorge. It was once a guards' barracks. After the   Cetaganda War resulted in Vorkosigan Vashnoi being turned into an irradiated nuclear bomb crater, it became the main Vorkosigan residence in the District until the official home in Hassadar was completed. The old guard house has been refurbished and modernized since its original days. It sits near the ruins of the great castle, a low, stone residence artistically landscaped and bright with flowers. Defensive arrow slits have been remodeled into large glass windows that give a view of the lake, and there is a modern comm-link antenna on the roof. A modern guards' barracks is farther down the hill, hidden among the trees.

Aral lives at Vorkosigan Surleau after his resignation from the military, and Cordelia goes to finds him there after she arrives on Barrayar. Miles loved growing up there, enjoying riding horseback and swimming in the lake. He retreats there whenever the stresses of Vorbarr Sultana get to be too much for him. (All except FF)

Vorkosigan Vashnoi:

The old district capital of Vorkosigan's District. It was bombed with atomic weapons by the Cetagandans during the war, killing thousands. Its irradiated ruins make up much of the Vorkosigan family's holdings. (All)

Vorkosigan's Leper Colony:

The term given to Aral Vorkosigan's command during the time when he's out of favor. His fleet superiors sent him all of the screw-ups, incorrigibles, and near-discharges, which Vorkosigan manages to turn into a proper military force. (SH)

Vorlakail:

No first name given. A deceased Barrayaran count, he is one of the everyday matters that Aral deals with as Regent. There is suspicion that the count was dead before his palace was burned to the ground in Darkoi, prompting an investigation. (B)

Vorlakial:

No first name given. An officer in the Barrayaran military, he is one of the men Aral believes is a better military strategist than himself. (SH)

Vormoncrief, Alexi:

A lieutenant in the Barrayaran military, he works in the operations department of Imperial Security, He is distantly related to the Vorvaynes through his grandmother and is also a nephew of Count Boriz Vormoncrief. He tries to court Ekaterin, sending a Baba to her family to open negotiations, which fails. He intimidates and interrogates Nikolai, and assaults Ekaterin, earning himself a broken nose for his efforts, and a reprimand from Simon Illyan. Finally, after he attempts to have Ekaterin's relatives take Nikolai away from her, Gregor posts him to Camp Lazkowski on Kyril Island for the duration of his military career. (CC)

Vormoncrief, Boriz:

A Barrayaran count, he is the current head of the weakened Conservative Party. He is also part of the Vorbretten issue, having filed the claim on behalf of his son-in-law, Sigur Vorbretten. (CC)

Vormuir, Helga:

A Barrayaran countess and the wife of Tomas Vormuir, he of the 122 replicated daughters. Because of the uterine replicator business, she refuses him when he comes to call for a conjugal visit, dumping a bucket of water on his head and threatening to warm him up with a plasma arc. Later, thanks to an aphrodisiac supplied to her by Count Dono, her husband misses the vote on Count Dono and René Vorbretten. (CC)

Vormuir, Tomas:

A Barrayaran count. His house colors are carmine and green. In an effort to stem the loss of citizens from his district, he obtained thirty uterine replicators and has fathered 122 daughters without his wife's consent, using eggs from the local fertility clinic without the donors' permissions. Assigned to investigate as Imperial Auditor, Miles can't find a way to punish Vormuir, until Ekaterin suggests that, as they are legally the count's bastard children, by law the Emperor can order Vormiur to give a dowry with each daughter's hand in marriage, which Gregor puts into effect immediately. The count misses the vote on Lord Dono due to the aphrodisiac slipped to him by his wife. (CC)