The Vorkosigan Companion - Lillian Stewart Carl [109]
Whole arrives, Ethan discovers it is filled with nonviable ovaries. At the Population Council meeting afterward, it is decided that a representative from Athos will go off-planet to procure viable stock for the planet. The council also decides that Ethan is the right man for the job. Unceremoniously sent to Kline Station, Ethan encounters the opposite sex for the first time in his life. Elli Quinn, a commander in the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet, takes a particular interest in him, saving him from a nasty beating at the hands of several station techs. She escorts him back to his room, where he is immediately kidnapped and harshly interrogated by a Colonel Millisor. Ethan tells everything he knows—which isn't much—and is taken out to be killed by one of Millisor's men. Just before he is about to die, Ethan is saved by Elli, who kills the assassin in the process. Wanting some answers, Ethan helps her dispose of the body, a difficult task, given the space station's efficiency in tracking its resources. Afterward, she and Ethan exchange information, and he learns that the shipment destined for Athos came from House Bharaputra, but that Colonel Millisor and his team have been chasing it for months, killing anyone who gets in their way or is associated with it. After accidentally running into Colonel Millisor again, Ethan escapes by virtue of being disguised as a maintenance engineer. He is then approached by Terrence Cee, the man that Colonel Millisor is really after, and who began this entire mess. Terrence is a telepath, specially bred on Cetaganda for use as a military weapon. Along with another female telepath, Janine, he tried to escape with her and four telepathic children, but everyone else was killed during the flight from Cetaganda, leaving Terrence alone and on the run. He inserted an ovarian culture made from Janine's remains into the shipment, in hopes of somehow bringing her back to life. However, the shipment is still missing, and Terrence doesn't know where it is. Showing up at Terrence's doorstep, Elli tries to get him to join the Dendarii Free Mercenaries. Terrence, however, won't do anything until he is able to probe both Ethan's and Elli's minds, to ascertain that they are who they say they are. After proving their identities, the three try to deduce the possibilities of who might have the missing shipment, but there are simply too many suspects to narrow their search. Quinn then gets a message that a relative of hers, Teki, whom they used earlier to expose one of Millisor's surveillance teams, has gone missing, and they figure he was taken by Millisor for interrogation. Elli calls Biocontrol on Millisor's suite, pretending that the colonel is carrying a nasty STD. They find Teki, and in the ensuing chaos afterward, learn that the head of Biocontrol was the one who intercepted the tissue cultures meant for Athos, in a vain attempt to force her son to come back from the planet. Millisor and his second-in-command are taken to Quarantine, but both escape with the aid of his third man on the station, and capture Ethan, Elli, and Terrence, intending to kill the first two to keep the telepathy project a secret, then take Terrence back to Cetaganda. There seems to be no way out, until Ethan remembers an electronic message device given to him by an unnamed man in a pink suit to deliver to Millisor. Realizing it's a boobytrap, Elli uses it to create a diversion, then shuts off the gravity in the spacedock to try and stop Millisor from killing all of them. Millisor and his henchmen are killed by two men from House Bharaputra, who then capture Elli and try to get back the money they paid her to assassinate Millisor. However, she negotiates a deal with them that costs her only a dislocated elbow. Ethan is about to resume his quest for ovarian cultures, but first convinces Elli to donate one of hers to the Athosian cause. As Ethan is about to leave, Terrence and he locate the lost shipment of original ovarian cultures, and he brings both it and Terrence back to Athos, securing his planet's future, and perhaps a new life