The Vorkosigan Companion - Lillian Stewart Carl [101]
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