The Vorkosigan Companion (32 page)

Mirror Dance
(1994)
Winner of the Hugo and Locus Awards for Best Novel

The first Vorkosigan novel to be told from two viewpoints, it begins two years later, with Mark Vorkosigan posing as Miles to take command of the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet. He leads the
Ariel
and a team of commandos to Jackson's Whole to free the clones raised by House Bharaputra for its brain-transplant operations. Although he gets them there, the operation falls apart against fiercer-than-expected resistance, leaving him, the Dendarii, and the clones trapped planetside. Meanwhile, Miles, coming back from an assignment with Elli, learns what happened, and heads to Jackson's Whole to save Mark and his mercenaries. When negotiations with Vasa Luigi, the baron of House Bharaputra, break down, Miles goes down to get his brother and men back himself. It is a fatal decision, as Miles is shot with a needle grenade and killed. He is put into a cryo-chamber for later resuscitation, but Mark and the medic get cut off from the rest of their squad, and Mark gives him directions through an underground tunnel system to escape, then heads back to help the others get out. He makes it back to the rescue shuttle, only to discover on the ship that they don't have Miles's cryo-chamber. They negotiate with Baron Fell for the return of the chamber, but the baron's men cannot locate it either. Mark discovers that before getting killed, the medic had shipped the chamber to an unknown address through an automated cargo dock, leaving Mark and the Dendarii with no way of finding him. Taken back to Barrayar, Mark is introduced to his parents, as well as life on Barrayar, including his role as the potential Vorkosigan heir, should Miles not be recovered. During this time, Aral suffers an arterial aneurism, which incapacitates him. Fully aware of his potential role in House Vorkosigan and on Barrayar, and wanting no part of it, Mark gets permission to review the ImpSec files for Miles's whereabouts, believing him to still be somewhere on Jackson's Whole. When he finds evidence of where his brother's remains were shipped, he gets Cordelia's approval to mount a rescue mission. Meanwhile, Miles begins his slow recovery in the hands of the Durona family, a cloned group of doctors created by House Ryoval, but which escaped to House Fell, and who now serve as the physicians for the upper echelons of the House. Miles's recovery is slow and painful, hampered by the fact that he has lost his memory, but is helped when he falls for one of his doctors, Rowan Durona. Mark, Elli, and Bel Thorne arrive on the planet to recover Miles, but the price is getting the Durona clan off Jackson's Whole, away from the barons completely. Before they can negotiate the Deal, security from House Ryoval break in and kidnap Mark. Miles and Rowan are taken by security from House Bharaputra. Mark is tortured by Baron Ryoval, who thinks he is Miles at first, and Mark's personality splits into five parts during his captivity. Miles and Rowan are held by Baron Luigi, who tries to figure out the best way to profit from the whole mess. With the help of a Durona clone girl who had been rescued by Mark, but who had chosen to return to captivity, Rowan escapes, and so does the clone girl Lilly, before Ryoval's men come for Miles, part of a Deal Baron Luigi had made with the other baron. After repeated torture sessions, Mark kills Baron Ryoval and escapes his hidden compound, which falls apart with the baron's death. Miles is taken there, escapes his guards, and calls for help. Fell, as half brother and next of kin, comes to collect Ryoval's body, and they are all contacted by Mark, who wants a meeting with Fell to make a Deal. He arranges for Fell to take over House Ryoval, the Duronas to leave Jackson's Whole for good, and a hefty profit, enough to set up the clones with an excellent education, and some money left over for himself as well. Mark and Miles head back to Barrayar and the Winterfair celebration, where Mark keeps a promise he made to Kareen Koudelka at the Emperor's Birthday before he left to save his brother—a dance with her, as Mark Pierre Vorkosigan.

Memory
(1996)

Miles Vorkosigan's life grows even more complicated, beginning with his accidental maiming of the ImpSec courier he and the Dendarii had been sent to rescue, due to the unusual seizures he has been suffering from since his resuscitation from cryo-stasis. Convinced this isn't a permanent problem, Miles leaves the cause of the accident out of his report to Simon Illyan, but gets into a heated argument with Elli Quinn over it, as he hadn't told her about his problem before the mission either. He promotes her to commodore, but their argument leaves them both tense and rattled. Another surprise is the requested resignation of Baz Jesek and Elena Bothari-Jesek, who want to settle down and start a family. They ask to be released from their armsman's oath, which Miles grants. Recalled to Barrayar, Miles spends the weeklong trip with Sergeant Taura, and realizes that she is growing old fast, owing to her accelerated metabolism, and may die in the next couple of years. He is greeted with disastrous news on Barrayar, after cooling his heels at Vorkosigan House and getting the place in order while his parents are away during Aral's appointment as the viceroy of Sergyar. Simon Illyan knows all about Miles's medical condition, and even worse, knows he falsified his mission report to ImpSec. He requests Miles's resignation immediately, leaving him adrift without the Dendarii or his military career to anchor him. After literally being washed out of his depression by Ivan and Duv Galeni, Miles spends the next few weeks soul-  searching, including going up to the Dendarii Mountains to visit the village where he had solved Raina Csurik's murder a decade ago. He finds some peace there, and begins to rebuild his life. His attempt to help Duv win the heart of a Komarran heiress, Laisa Toscane, goes disastrously awry when she catches the eye of the Emperor instead, leaving Duv, who was moving too slowly for his own good, brokenhearted. Despite Duv's animosity toward Miles, he comes to him with the next pressing matter—Simon Illyan has been having memory problems, reliving events that happened months or even years ago. With Illyan placed incommunicado in the clinic at ImpSec headquarters, Miles is stonewalled by Simon's replacement, General Lucas Haroche, leading him to request Gregor's intercession. The Emperor makes Miles an Imperial Auditor, one of the Emperor's own high investigators, with broad, undefined powers. The circumstances around Simon's health failure grow more troublesome, as the doctors discover that the eidetic memory chip implanted in his brain is failing. They remove it in a successful operation that leaves Simon more or less intact, but somewhat less than the man he used to be. During his recovery, first at Vorkosigan House, then at Vorkosigan Surleau, Miles comes to know a different side of the ultra-competent former chief of ImpSec. He also finally gets a diagnosis of his seizures, which have been caused by overproduction of neurotransmitters, which build up in his brain until their release in stressful situations, causing the seizure in a biochemical form of epilepsy. It can be treated, but not cured, with a brain implant. Somewhat leery of the idea, Miles puts it off until his investigation is finished. Returning to Vorbarr Sultana, he brings his new powers into play as he plunges headlong into determining what exactly happened to Simon. The doctors reveal that the damage to the memory chip was intentionally done, and unfortunately, the evidence points to Duv Galeni. Convinced the Komarran is innocent, Miles keeps digging, resulting in an offer by Haroche to reinstate him in the military as a captain, and go on being the liaison with the Dendarii as if nothing had ever happened. Miles sees this offer for the bribe that it is, and realizes Haroche was behind the sabotage of Simon's chip, and the destruction of his career. He figures out a way to not only find the evidence of the plot, but also to catch Haroche red-handed in the act of destroying evidence that would convict him. Haroche is arrested, Galeni is cleared of all charges, and Miles's position as Imperial Auditor is made permanent, with the approval of the other current auditors. Miles is given retirement from the military with the rank of captain by Gregor as a favor to him. Galeni recovers from the ordeal of almost having his career ruined, and picks up with Delia Koudelka, to the chagrin of Ivan, who asked her to marry him too late. The Emperor also announces his official betrothal to Laisa Toscane, and Barrayaran society shifts into high gear for the upcoming wedding, led by Alys Vorpatril, who has also started a romance with Simon, which amuses Miles and horrifies Ivan. Miles has the operation to implant the device to control his seizures, and makes peace with who he is at last. After one final, futile attempt to win Elli's hand in marriage, he promotes her to admiral of the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet, to continue in his place, as he heads back to Barrayar to assume his new position as Imperial Auditor.

Komarr
(1998)

Miles's first off-planet assignment as Imperial Auditor is to assist another Auditor, Georg Vorthys, with his investigation of what first appears to be the accidental collision of an ore freighter with the soletta mirror array that orbits Komarr, providing vital solar energy to the planet's millennium-long terraforming project. Miles meets Vorthys's niece, Ekaterin Nile Vorvayne Vorsoisson, currently trapped in an unhappy marriage to Etienne (Tien) Vorsoisson, an administrator at the Serifosa Dome. Their initial appraisal of the situation indicates a worse-than-feared scenario—if the array isn't repaired, within the next twenty-four months the terraforming progress made on Komarr will stop, as there will not be enough heat in the atmosphere to keep the environment going. This would seem to indicate that sabotage may have been the goal, but by whom? While Auditor Vorthys dives into the technical engineering aspects of the accident, Miles gets to know Ekaterin and her son, Nikolai. He inadvertently discovers that the boy has Vorzohn's Dystrophy, a hereditary, degenerative disease. Tien, fearing backlash among the sensitive Barrayarans, has kept his knowledge of this a tight secret, even preventing his son from getting the treatment that could cure him until Tien can receive it first. When Ekaterin learns of a mysterious disappearance of an engineering tech in Waste Heat Management, she dismisses it at first. However, when the body of another technician in the same department turns up in the wreckage of the accident, it is not a simple coincidence. Eavesdropping on a conversation between her husband and another administrator, Soudha, Ekaterin believes Tien has been taking bribes, which he then lost by buying shares in a failed Komarran jump-ship expedition, which has left the family deep in debt. This, along with Tien's many other failings, including his inability to understand her sense of honor or how life with him has crippled her, causes Ekaterin to make up her mind to leave him. When she tells him her decision, Tien collects Miles from the Administration Building, where he has been reviewing records, and takes him out to the Waste Heat experiment station, a large building in the middle of nowhere, supposedly constructed to conduct experiments with the terraforming process, but which Tien now tells Miles has been used by Soudha for graft, creating phantom employees to draw payroll, ordering fictitious equipment, and pocketing the difference. Investigating the supposedly empty building, they are surprised to find activity there, as Soudha and other employees of the Waste Heat division are busy loading something large into lift trucks. Soudha stuns both men and chains them to a railing outside, in the non-breathable atmosphere. Although the conspirators have sent for help to free the men, Tien's breath mask was not full when they left, and he panics and dies of asphyxiation while Miles can do nothing but watch. Miles is rescued by Ekaterin, who must now deal with her husband's death, get Nikolai the treatment he needs before Tien's health benefits run out, leave Komarr to go back to Barrayar, and figure out what to do with the life that has suddenly been given back to her at the expense of her husband's. While assisting with treating Nikolai, Miles realizes he is falling in love with Ekaterin at the worst possible time. Tackling the expanded problem of what the engineers had been ordering and working on at the experiment station, Miles, Vorthys, and other engineers figure out that the group had been working on a wormhole destroyer, and were planning to permanently close the wormhole between Barrayar and Komarr, cutting Barrayar off from the rest of the galaxy forever. However, there is a fifty-fifty chance that the device will actually release the wormhole energy in a destructive wave that would destroy the device and anything nearby, such as a ship—or a space station. At the same time, Ekaterin had been sent up to the jump station to meet her arriving aunt, Helen Vorthys, where they both stumble into one of the plotters, forcing him to capture them and hold them hostage until the device can be utilized. After attempting to foil them once by pulling a fire alarm, Ekaterin manages to get her hands on a remote control for a float cradle holding the device, and smash it, foiling the Komarrans' plan. However, they still have their two hostages, and it takes all of Miles's wits and determination to negotiate their release, and the surrender of the terrorists. Miles has to head back to Barrayar to report, but he is secure in the knowledge that Ekaterin will be following, and he intends to do whatever is necessary to make her his—the first step being to make her even consider another marriage.

A Civil Campaign
(1999)
Winner, Sapphire Award

With Emperor Gregor's wedding fast approaching, Miles, Mark, and others arrive on Barrayar to add their own unpredictable chaos to the social event of their generation. Fresh from preventing either the destruction of a jump station or the collapse of Barrayar's wormhole, Miles returns to Vorkosigan House to prepare for his role as Gregor's Second in the upcoming nuptial ceremony. Head-over-heels about Ekaterin Vorsoisson, who is still in her traditional year of mourning, he plots to stay close to her by offering her a commission to create a garden on a bare spot of ground near Vorkosigan House. Meanwhile, Mark has returned from Beta Colony after a year of university and therapy, and has brought with him Doctor Enrique Borgos, a scientist from Escobar who has created "butter bugs," bioengineered insects that he thinks can be modified to eat Barrayaran pest plants, and which secrete a nutritious paste as a product that they plan to market. Mark's burgeoning relationship with Kareen Koudelka, however, has hit a snag, as she is having a bit of an identity crisis, feeling pressured returning to Barrayar and her family, whom she hasn't told about her relationship with Mark, and also worrying about how she will afford her next year at the Betan university. At the same time, Ivan Vorpatril is having his own problems; besides being drafted to help his mother Alys with any of the thousand and one jobs that need doing in preparation for the Emperor's wedding, he's also feeling the acute shortage of Barrayaran brides, courtesy of the previous generation's mania for male children, to the extent that choosing their babies' sexes has created a serious gender imbalance. Working with Ekaterin almost every day, Miles manages to keep his true feelings from her, but can't keep quiet to anyone else, extracting a promise from Ivan to stay away from her, and telling everyone in earshot about his cunning plan. Miffed, Ivan keeps his promise, but sets another man, Lieutenant Alexi Vormoncrief, to woo her instead, figuring his lack of   personality won't make him a serious threat, but will shake up Miles a bit. It does shake Miles, for when he next sees Ekaterin, she is tensely entertaining not one, but three gentlemen, Alexi, a ne'er-do-well named Byerly Vorrutyer, and a Major Zamori. Miles immediately puts his plans for a dinner party into high gear. Meanwhile, Ivan is entangled in even more problems of his own; first, Vormoncrief becomes quite taken with Ekaterin, to the point of proposing marriage, which was not what Ivan had in mind at all. Second, one of his former paramours, Lady Donna Vorrutyer, is contesting her late brother's estate passing to his brother Richars, a cold, cruel man. To stop it, she has gone to Beta Colony and has changed herself into a man—completely. Ivan introduces the new Lord Dono to Gregor, who lets him press his claim to the estate. Meanwhile, Mark, Enrique, Kareen, and Ekaterin have been choosing sites for their expanding butter bug business. Miles's carefully planned dinner party disintegrates into a shambles, from the unexpected Lord Dono making an appearance, to the use of bug butter as a last-minute ingredient in several dishes, to Enrique engineering the Vorkosigan House crest on the backs of his latest batch of butter bugs—and then accidentally releasing them throughout the household. The evening comes to a sudden and terrible end when Simon Illyan lets the cat out of the bag by asking Ekaterin how Miles's courtship is progressing. Since Miles hadn't even hinted of pressing his suit to her, she feels that he has lied to her about the garden commission, and was just using it to get close to her. Storming out, she runs smack into Aral Vorkosigan, followed by his wife, both of whom have just come back from Sergyar in time to see a distraught young woman fleeing their house, with Miles in desperate pursuit. Crushed, Miles retreats into the house to take advice from his parents, who advise making his true feelings known, and the sooner the better. Mark also had an inadvertent revelation come out at the dinner party which let Kareen's parents know of their relationship, and not in the tamest way either. Forbidden from seeing her, Mark is also not at his best. Ivan is still tied up with wedding preparations, and now has to juggle his involvement with the Lord Dono estate claim, which will be going to the Council of Counts in the next few days. Miles teams Dono with René Vorbretten, another lord who is suffering a challenge to his own right to rule, owing to the discovery that he is one-eighth Cetagandan, as a result of one of his ancestors' actions during the Cetagandan invasion, to work together, and strengthen each other's claims. Meanwhile, the events of the dinner party have spread throughout Vorbarr Sultana, and some of the conservative Vor lords, who have also been talking about what happened on Komarr, are spreading the rumor that Miles killed Tien to get Ekaterin. Threatened by Richars with a murder charge unless Miles votes for his confirmation as count, Miles decides to ensure that Richars doesn't claim the title. Lieutenant Vormoncrief, meanwhile, has been trying to gather support after Ekaterin turned down his marriage proposal, writing a letter to her brother and in-laws warning them that Miles was coming after her, and even interrogating Nikolai about the events on Komarr, causing Miles to arrange for Nikolai to meet with Gregor himself to explain how his father had died. Ekaterin is drawn more and more to Miles, particularly after the elegant and heartfelt letter of apology she received from him after the dinner party. Matters come to a head the night before the vote on both Lord Dono's and Count René's claims to their districts. When hired thugs attempt to neuter Dono—literally—Ivan and Olivia Koudelka foil the plan, and gather enough evidence to present Richars's involvement in the plot to several other conservative counts, who are furious not that he tried, but that the plan failed, and he was publicly implicated. At the same time, Ekaterin's brother and brother-in-law arrive at the Vorthys home, and attempt to take Nikolai with them, protesting that he isn't safe in the capital city. Nikolai calls Gregor for help, resulting in everyone being taken to Vorhartung Castle, where the Council of Counts is in session. Gregor clears up the misunderstanding regarding Miles and lets Ekaterin, Nikolai, and her relatives watch the rest of the proceedings. With several counts switching sides, Lord Dono is confirmed, and Richars is arrested, but not before he tries to goad Ekaterin into renouncing Miles. Stunned by his audacity, Ekaterin asks Miles to marry her instead, undermining Richars's plans completely. By the narrowest of margins, René Vorbretten is also upheld as the count for his district. While this is all going on, parole officers from Escobar come into Vorkosigan House to arrest Enrique on charges of fraud and grand theft, as it seems the butter bugs weren't quite his property, having been confiscated by his investors, and liberated, along with Enrique, by Mark. The two officers face the determined wrath of Kareen and Martya Koudelka, however, who pelt them with tubs of bug butter until they can get Enrique back and lock and barricade the laboratory door from the officers. Miles arrives home to find Enrique about to be hauled off to Escobaran jail, and frees him using another loophole in the Barrayaran bureaucracy maze. With all obstacles cleared, Emperor Gregor's wedding goes off without a hitch, the first commercial butter bug product, maple ambrosia, is a smash hit at the   reception, and the recolored butter bugs themselves, styled by Ekaterin and renamed Glorious Bugs, are also a success. After initial reluctance, the Koudelka parents, with help from Countess Vorkosigan, come to an arrangement with Mark and Kareen. Ivan, unfortunately, still hasn't found anyone to settle down with, as one of his last hopes, Olivia Koudelka, is engaged to Lord Dono. And Miles has won the heart of Ekaterin, but now has to leap from the wedding ceremony of his foster brother Gregor into a mission perhaps even more dire—planning his own.