The Vorkosigan Companion - Lillian Stewart Carl [53]
Making its escape, the fast Betan ship can easily stay away from the slow Barrayaran warship. The means of propulsion are never mentioned throughout the series. Normal space accelerations are high, in the dozens of gravities range, with acceleration compensated by the ships' artificial gravity system.
Spaceships never land and shuttles are used which can land without problems with exhaust or blast effects, apparently supported by an anti-gravity effect.
Once the invasion of Escobar starts, technology comes into play in the plot twists. Beta Colony has a defense against the major Barrayaran ship-to-ship weapon, the plasma arc—the plasma mirror reflects the plasma-arc beam back to the sender. Beta Colony helps its neighbor Escobar by providing this technology.
A bit of side plot involves Escobar's female military people raped in Barrayaran captivity. Using uterine replicators, Escobar gives the raped prisoners' fetuses back to Barrayar.
In Barrayar, technology is the thumbscrew used to torture Cordelia and Aral Vorkosigan.
Modern Barrayar may have jump ships, energy weapons, comconsoles and more, but the technological revolution is still new as Barrayar comes out of the Time of Isolation. Parts of even the capital city are still the old slums. The former city center, with narrow lanes and alleys and run-down buildings, has no electricity—old technology that is used well in the story.
Since Aral Vorkosigan is the regent for the child emperor, an attempt on his life is made with a "class four sonic grenade, probably air tube launched . . . Unless the thrower was suicidal."
In the next attempt, poison gas is used. Though failing to kill Aral, the gas poisons him, Cordelia, and their unborn child, who suffers permanent bone-destroying damage from the poison's antidote.
But now the thumbscrew is turned again. The child might be saved if he could be given heroic treatments which would poison and kill Cordelia. Enter the uterine replicators given to backward Barrayar by the Escobarans at the end of their war. If the fetus, Miles, can be transferred to the uterine replicator, heroic measures could be tried.
That's good till the next crisis.
Civil war breaks out as an opportunistic count sees a chance to make himself Emperor. In the fighting, we see the use of aircars (lightflyers) and scanners which can find people. Separating the animals from the people through a forest canopy is a lot harder, allowing General Piotr Vorkosigan, Cordelia, the child emperor Gregor, and Bothari to escape on the high technology of the Time of Isolation—horses.
The backcountry of Vorkosigan's district, the Dendarii Mountains, runs on old technology—no electricity, modern vehicles extremely rare, outhouses and wood-burning fireplaces.
Then comes one of the implications of having your baby in a uterine replicator—the unborn baby can be kidnapped and held for ransom. The unborn baby is in a technological device not understood by the kidnappers and needs heroic medical treatment to reverse the poison gas cure's damage. The kidnappers could never manage the treatment even if they knew of it!
Cordelia takes action, using car, truck, monorail, sewers, and the high technology of an actual sword to drive the dynamic final quarter of the book.
By the beginning of The Warrior's Apprentice, Miles, at seventeen, has already undergone "an inquisition's worth" of medical treatment to his ruined bones. He can walk, even run and do most physical activities, if he's very careful of his bones. He's short, at "just-under-five-foot," and distinctly hunchbacked. He looks like a mutie on a mutation-hating world.
Miles is the child of one of the youngest ship captains and admirals of Barrayar, who was then chosen as regent for the child emperor and later made prime minister of Barrayar. His astrogator mother was captain of a ship of the Betan