The Vorkosigan Companion - Lillian Stewart Carl [54]
Miles fails the physical entrance test to the Barrayaran military academy, but, being Miles, he goes off to find something to do.
On Beta Colony, Miles buys a junkyard-ready starship, serviceable but old and not economical. Jump-ship pilots use neural interfaces to control their ships, particularly during the jump. The pilot of Miles's obsolete ship has the neural interface for the obsolete drive system and has been medically down-checked for a new interface. If he's ever to fly a jump again (which he thinks is "better than a woman—better than food or drink or sleep or breath"), he has to go with the ship.
Miles finds his cargo and supplies via the comconsole in a process quite similar to using the World Wide Web—noteworthy since the story was written a half-decade before the invention of the World Wide Web and a decade before most of us noticed it.
The logistics of paying and supplying a mercenary fleet become important. When receiving the fleet's pay Miles has a "fantasy of glittering diadems, gold coins, and ropes of pearls. Alas that such gaudy baubles were treasures no more. Crystallized viral microcircuits, data packs, DNA splices, bank drafts on major planetary agricultural and mining futures; such was the tepid wealth men schemed upon in these degenerate days."
On planets, most financial transactions are done with credit cards and electronic transfers; however, paper money is still used as currency on most planets.
The range and intermixing of technologies is a key part of "The Mountains of Mourning" as Miles investigates an infant murder in the backcountry hills of the Dendarii Mountains.
As deputy for his father, the district count, Miles meets the locals on their own terms by riding horseback into the mountains rather than using a lightflyer. The village speaker has a small, battery-powered radio to pick up news from the outside and that's about all the modern technology in Silvy Vale. Miles's armsman, Pym, uses a hand-scanner to search the brush for threats when Miles seems threatened.
It comes down to convincing the locals that Miles can't make a mistake on identifying the true murderer because he's going to use the modern technology of fast-penta, an effective truth drug.
The Vor Game technologies are similar to those in The Warrior's Apprentice. The action takes place on spaceships and space stations that are gearing up for war. When this resolves into the Cetagandan invasion of Vervain and the Hegan Hub, we see the only major space battle shown in the Vorkosigan Saga as Miles's Dendarii Mercenaries join in the defense of the Hegan Hub's jump point.
Since the development of the plasma mirror the plasma beam is less effective and several ships need to gang up on one to overwhelm the plasma mirror defense. The few ships with the short-range gravitic imploder lance try to find chances to use it. Another navy with longer-range gravitic imploder lances is much more effective.
One of the few uses of major automation in the series is the tactical computer. As Miles sits idly in the tactics room, he's reminded of the academy jape "Rule 1: Only overrule the tactical computer if you know something it doesn't. Rule 2: The tac comp always knows more than you do."
The main technologies in "Labyrinth" tend to be biological. Prototype 9, for instance, is a wholly engineered human. Nine is a constructed warrior human and a sixteen-year-old girl, albeit eight feet tall with fangs and claws. Other characters include Nicole, the quaddie (four arms, no legs), and Bel Thorne, a Betan hermaphrodite.
On the side is House Ryoval, purveyor of depravity in a bordello using bioconstructed and surgically altered slaves. Not somewhere you'd want to be taken captive—yet Nine, the girl, has been sold to Ryoval.
At one point, the Dendarii find themselves barreling along in a float truck, over the trees at a paltry 260 kilometers an hour,