The Vorkosigan Companion - Lillian Stewart Carl [106]
The Vor Game (1990)
Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel
Having graduated from Barrayaran Imperial Academy, Miles is ready to begin his first assignment as an ensign, but is disappointed when he is stationed to be Meteorological Officer at the remote Lazkowski Base on bleak Kyril Island. Before he leaves, he learns that if he can keep his nose clean for six months there, he will be assigned to the Prince Serg, the newest dreadnought in the Barrayaran space navy. Miles ships out to Camp Permafrost, as the base is colloquially known, and finds his superior officer a drunk, the base commander a humorless martinet, and the rest of the camp treating him with the usual mixture of disdain and insubordination. After nearly being killed when a practical joke almost drowns him in mud, Miles settles down to the job at hand. He solves a brief mystery of a dead cadet found in the sewers, and thinks he's about to get through his tour unimpeded when what starts as a routine accident turns into a near-mutiny. When ordered to clean up a fetaine spill, the cadets refuse to go near the virulent poison, leading the base commander to threaten them all with being shot if they don't obey. Miles joins his lieutenant in resisting the order, resulting in their arrest, and him being shipped back to the capital, Vorbarr Sultana. Miles offers to resign in exchange for the charges being dropped against the other men. After being held more or less incommunicado for a few months, with visits only from his mother and Emperor Gregor himself, Miles is instead brought out of involuntary confinement and given an assignment to dust off his Admiral Naismith persona and investigate the sudden heavy military activity on the various planets surrounding the Hegen Hub, a system with four wormhole jump points that is a nexus linking routes to several planets. Miles also learns that the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet has been hired by one of the sides. Posing as an arms dealer, Miles is recognized by one of his former mercenaries, nearly blowing his cover. Meeting with the man later, Miles finds out Admiral Oser has taken back command of the Dendarii, demoting Baz Jesek and Ky Tung, but keeping them on staff. Still playing the weapons dealer, Miles has another meeting with a potential buyer, only to find his target has been replaced by a blond woman named Livia Nu, who is interested in the single-person nerve disruptor shield net he's selling, and also in seducing Miles, which he resists, thinking it might be an assassination attempt. Later, however, there is a charge of murder against Miles's cover identity, forcing him and his superior officer to flee from the Pol Six station to Jackson's Whole jump-point station, where Miles is found and captured by hired thugs executing a bid arrest by a person named Cavilo. Miles is thrown in the local jail, where he is astonished to meet Emperor Gregor, who has fled the stifling realm of politics and planetary rule and is off on his own. Switching identification with engineers press-ganged into building Aslund's new space station, Miles and Gregor get aboard, partly to escape prison, and also to learn what's really happening in the region. However, Miles gets captured by the Dendarii first, and brought before Admiral Oser, who is none too pleased to see him, and who responds to Miles's suggestion of allying again by ordering him thrown out the nearest airlock. Saved by Elena, Miles contacts Ky Tung for help smuggling Gregor off the station to safety. Unfortunately, the shuttle pilot is a double agent, and delivers Miles and Gregor into the hands of the mysterious Cavilo, who, it turns out, is also Livia Nu. She is the leader of Randall's Rangers, a mercenary outfit hired by