The Vorkosigan Companion (29 page)

An advanced planet that serves as a wormhole link from Komarr to the Hegen Hub. It is part of the Hegen Hub Alliance along with Aslund, Vervain, and Barrayar.

It is a planet on the fringes of wormhole nexus famous for its interstellar shipbuilding.

A nexus system bare of habitable planets but rich in wormholes with a collection of adjoining worlds. The Hub serves as a galactic trading post and transportation hub.

A technologically advanced and comfortable Earth-like planet adjoining the Hegen Hub, it was invaded by the Cetagandans, and only saved from conquest by the actions of the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet and the Barrayaran space fleet under the leadership of Aral Vorkosigan. It is part of the Hegen Hub Alliance along with Aslund, Barrayar, and Pol.

The original home of humans and the beginning point for all human interstellar expansion, Earth has become a sleepy galactic backwater due to the few usable wormholes in its sector of space. It still remains of some importance due to religious and cultural tourism, and all major galactic political entities maintain embassies on the planet. Its population of nine billion is still handicapped by a divisive number of competing governments, as opposed to a single planetary government structure that is commonly practiced elsewhere throughout the galaxy. The planet has managed to maintain a large number of its cultural pilgrimage sites despite global warming and a major rise in ocean levels, thanks to intricate engineering and a vast series of water-  controlling coastal dikes.

Located on the edge of Sector V, Quaddiespace has been in existence for more than two centuries. It was originally founded as a haven for quaddies—a class of humans genetically altered for zero-gravity environments by the addition of two more arms where their legs used to be, and claimed as slaves by the corporation that genetically engineered them. After anti-gravity technology in a large part rendered the quaddies redundant, the quaddies escaped to freedom by commandeering a D-620 super jump ship and heading out to the far edge of human colonization to found their own civilization.

They staked their claim on a double ring of asteroids and expanded through it to form a population group over a million strong. With a bottom-up government organized around the principle of work groups, and a work ethic that cannot be matched in the galaxy, the quaddies have done well for themselves. Graf Station, with a population of fifty thousand, is the oldest settlement, and the original asteroid and jump ship are preserved there as a museum. The population does include some legged humans, and areas with artificial gravity include Graf Station, Metropolitan, Sanctuary, Michenko, and Union Station. The quaddies conduct their interstellar trade through these outposts.

A three-hundred-year-old space station orbiting a planetless dark star, Kline Station serves six nearby jump points and the interstellar traffic that flows through them.

Athos is a predominantly agricultural planet settled and governed by a monastic order. All human residents of Athos are male. Reproduction is carefully controlled by the government, and is practiced through uterine replicators, using ovaries harvested from off-planet women and the sperm of the planet's males who have been selected as worthy parents. Fear of women is endemic in the society, and few men from Athos travel through the wormhole nexus other than for necessary spaceflights to restock the planet's egg banks and for galactic trade. Even access to information and literature from outside Athos is restricted on the planet, except for necessary scientific journals and other research material.

A colonized world destroyed in recent history due to a major tectonic disaster. The planet is frequently used by the illicit on Jackson's Whole and elsewhere as a convenience for forging new identities. Given that all Frost IV's official records were lost in the planetary disaster, it is very simple to assign an untraceable identity from Frost IV to someone seeking a new life, assuming that they are old enough to have lived through the disaster.

One of the Hegen Hub worlds, it is part of the Hegen Hub Alliance.

Mentioned in the Vorkosigan Saga, but no detail about it is provided.

Miles Vorkosigan passed through this planet's local space in his guise as Admiral Naismith while fleeing Cetagandan assassins shortly after the breakout from Dagoola IV.

A world settled by Muslims. The ruler is a hereditary head of state with both political and religious power. He is known as the Baba.

A nearby neighbor of Marilac, with a rich neighborhood of wormhole jump points that provide cross-routes throughout the nexus.

A distant planet famed as the source of mercenaries hired for interstellar conflicts.

This planet system was the site where Miles Vorkosigan began his mercenary career and his work as an interstellar troubleshooter. Here he found his destiny when he joined up with the Oseran Mercenaries, which he eventually converted into the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet. The Dendarii still serve as a secret arm of Barrayaran Imperial Security.

Editor's Note: Instead of the traditional method of listing the books and novellas in their first published order, we have chosen to arrange them in chronological order as events unfold in the Vorkosigan universe.

"Dreamweaver's Dilemma"
First published in
Dreamweaver's Dilemma
, 1996

Approximately six hundred years before Miles Vorkosigan's birth, Anias Ruey, a "feelie-dream" composer, uses a device called a dream synthesizer to create artificial dreams that people can experience as if they were actually dreaming themselves, a sort of virtual reality. She is late providing a sequel to her most successful feelie-dream, a romance called
Triad
, mostly because the idea bores her, and takes a new commission from a mysterious man named Rudolph Kinsey, who makes her uneasy, but the price he offers is too good to pass up. To recharge herself, she travels to the secluded home of her friend Chalmys DuBauer, a spaceship pilot who spent more than a century traveling between Earth and its first off-planet habitat, Beta Colony, and who was rendered obsolete by the technological developments made during that time. She completes the commission, a dark and violent scenario, and gives it to Rudolph in exchange for a bonded check. Before he leaves, he requests a brief feelie-dream for his aunt. When Anias goes to set up her dream synthesizer, she finds it has been sabotaged, and would have killed her if she had used it. Suspecting that Kinsey had tried to kill her, she lures him to DuBauer's Ohio home, which is surrounded by a forest full of lethal creatures. After taking him out to the woods and threatening to leave him there, DuBauer learns that Kinsey's real name is Carlos Diaz, and that he was hired as a middleman by a man he knows as Doctor Bianca to get the feelie-dream made. Anias realizes that, if used on a sleeping person without their knowledge, the disturbing vision could drive them to suicide. With the help of Lieutenant Mendez, who had been investigating the synthesizer accident, she confronts Doctor Bianca and recovers the master cassette for the feelie-dream, returning the payment in the process, and thwarting a would-be murderer.

Falling Free
(1988)
Winner of the 1988 Nebula Award for Best Novel

Leo Graf, an efficient, by-the-book engineer for GalacTech, a   galaxy-wide corporation, is sent to the mysterious Cay Project Habitat on a space station orbiting the planet Rodeo. Upon arrival, he learns he will be training a group of genetically engineered humans who have a second pair of arms instead of legs, for increased agility in freefall, as well as other modifications to adapt them to living permanently in space. GalacTech's plan is to train them and hire them out as deep-space labor to other companies. The project is run by Bruce Van Atta, a former subordinate of Leo's who moved into management, who is also the epitome of the soulless, profit-minded, middle-management corporate executive. After getting used to his trainees' appearance, Leo begins teaching space engineering, and over the next few months finds the "quaddies," as they are nicknamed, intelligent, quick to learn, and very capable. However, that intelligence is also creating problems. Treated as property by the corporation, the quaddies have begun forming attachments to each other, especially during the breeding process. This leads to a near-disaster when Tony and Claire, who have a baby, are told that they won't be allowed to stay together, and try to escape the station and flee the system. Van Atta alerts planetside security, and an overzealous security guard shoots Tony, foiling their escape. After the incident, Leo learns that if the Cay Project fails, the quaddies would be sterilized and left on Rodeo, suffering under the planet's gravity every day, until they died. Not long after the incident, his worst fears come true. When Beta Colony announces the development of a prototype artificial gravity system, the quaddies become expendable, and Van Atta is ordered to scuttle the project, dump them all on Rodeo, and get out as soon as possible. Knowing he cannot abandon the quaddies to the fate the corporation is planning for them, Leo comes up with a desperate plan—he'll enlist them to hijack the entire space station, disassemble it, and move it through the nearby wormhole to deep space, where the quaddies can live free. He enlists several quaddies as ringleaders and rigs a simulated accident to evacuate the human personnel off the station. However, there are several obstacles hindering their escape. Tony is stuck in the hospital on Rodeo, and must be rescued. An accident breaks a critical component of the jump mechanism, forcing a jury-rigged replacement in space. Not to mention the thousand-and-one other things that need to be done to make the station as self-sufficient as possible. And all the while, Leo knows Van Atta will be coming after them to take back what was his, even if only to see it destroyed. Working frantically, Leo and his cobbled-together crew manage the nearly impossible, and get the space station through the wormhole, and into space controlled by a friendly government—and find freedom for the quaddies, for the first time in their young lives.

Shards of Honor
(1986)

On what should have been a routine surveying mission, Commander Cordelia Naismith of the Betan Astronomical Survey Department returns to her base camp to find it in ruins, with evidence of a hostile force having driven off the rest of her team. She contacts her lieutenant, who has escaped to their ship in orbit, and learns the camp was attacked by Barrayarans, a militaristic culture currently plotting to launch a war through the newly discovered wormhole. After ordering the lieutenant to break orbit to avoid capture and to let Beta Colony know what has happened, Cordelia, along with her survey partner Ensign Dubauer, are taken by surprise by a Barrayaran soldier, later identified as Sergeant Bothari, who shoots Dubauer with a nerve disruptor and knocks Cordelia unconscious. She awakens to find herself a prisoner of Aral Vorkosigan, known as "The Butcher of Komarr" for supposed previous wartime atrocities. Bargaining for Dubauer's life—although injured by the disruptor blast, he is still alive, but severely impaired—she agrees to go with Aral as his prisoner to a cache of equipment and weapons. Along the way, Cordelia realizes Aral had been left for dead here in a mutiny by his men. They set out for the cache, fending off assorted wildlife and getting to know each other along the way. Cordelia realizes that Aral is not a coldhearted killer, but a man with deep principles and honor who does what he feels he must for his homeland. After reaching the cache, Aral regains control of the men loyal to him, including Bothari, and ends the mutiny, although two ringleaders escape capture on the planet. He takes Cordelia back to his ship, where he proposes a most surprising idea—marriage. Cordelia asks to think about it, but before she can give an answer, learns some of her ship's crew have boarded the Barrayaran ship to rescue her, bringing some of the mutineers back with them. Before she can do anything, the mutineers commandeer the engineering room, demanding the surrender of the bridge officers, or they will turn life-support off. Cordelia sneaks down and stuns the ringleaders with the help of a former turncoat who switches sides again. She then frees her crew and they steal a shuttle to escape. Several months later, Cordelia is in charge of creating a diversion to let Betan cargo ships travel to Escobar through the Barrayaran blockade, using a holographic image of a capital ship as her bait. It works, but she and her crew are captured, and she comes very close to being tortured and raped by Admiral Ges Vorrutyer, who first orders Sergeant Bothari to do it. He refuses, claiming she is Vorkosigan's prisoner. Vorrutyer is about to force himself on her when Bothari kills the admiral. Discovered by Aral, Cordelia and the psychologically disintegrating Bothari are hidden in his quarters while Aral and his personal security officer, Simon Illyan, deal with the aftermath of the murder. Prince Serg Vorbarra comes aboard to let Aral know he's going to lead the Barrayaran fleet against the Escobarans. Aral protests, but he knows better, or worse—the Escobarans will counterattack at the right time, and although he hates the sacrifice of so many Barrayaran soldiers, he has no say in the matter. When the Escobarans do counter  attack, they use a new weapon brought by Cordelia's convoy called a plasma field mirror, which turns an attacking ship's blast back upon itself. The resulting carnage destroys the ship that Prince Serg was on, along with much of the attacking fleet. Cordelia is told that Aral had extracted the information about the weapon from her while she was under sedation, but apparently didn't let the rest of the command staff, or Prince Serg, know about it. She later realizes that Aral actually had prior intelligence on the plasma mirrors, but was ordered not to reveal his knowledge so the Emperor of Barrayar could be rid of Prince Serg, a venal, deviant sadist—and his own son. Cordelia is transferred to a prisoner-of-war camp to be held for a future exchange, where the rest of the prisoners think she killed Admiral Vorrutyer, making her a hero, the last thing she wanted. Back on Beta Colony, she is feted as such, and the stress of keeping secret what she knows and living up to the propaganda her own government has created about her brings Cordelia to the breaking point. When military representatives believe that she has been programmed to be a spy for Barrayar, she escapes and travels there, where she takes Aral up on his proposal of marriage. Afterward, they take care of unfinished business, including seventeen uterine replicators that were bestowed upon the withdrawing forces by Escobar, containing fetuses formerly engendered upon female Escobaran prisoners by Barrayarans. Sergeant Bothari's daughter, Elena, the product of a rape he was ordered to do by Vorrutyer, is born from one, and he vows to raise her as best as he can. Aral and Cordelia are summoned to an audience with the dying Emperor Ezar, where Aral is made Regent of Barrayar, to assist in keeping the planet safe for when Ezar's grandson and heir, Gregor, currently five years old, takes the throne. In an epilogue, an Escobaran Personnel Retrieval Team moves through the former battlefield in space, recovering bodies and cleaning up the leftover debris, and a mother says good-bye to her daughter for the last time.