The Vor Game

'What?'

Ahn shook his head. 'Nothing. It was a long time ago. A lot of crazy things were happening, at the height of the Komarr revolt. But it's better that you should stay out of his way.'

'I've had to deal with old martinets before.'

'Oh, he's not exactly a martinet. But he's got a streak of … he can be a funny kind of dangerous. Don't ever really threaten him, huh?'

'Me, threaten Metzov?' Miles's face screwed up in bafflement. Maybe Ahn wasn't as sober as he smelled after all. 'Come on, he can't be that bad, or they'd never put him in charge of trainees.'

'He doesn't command the grubs. They have their own hierarchy comes in with 'em—the instructors report to their own commander. Metzov's just in charge of the base's permanent physical plant. You're a pushy little sod, Vorkosigan. Just don't . . . ever push him to the edge, or you'll be sorry. And that's all I'm going to say.' Ahn shut his mouth determinedly, and headed up the ramp.

I'm already sorry, Miles thought of calling after him. Well, his punishment week was over now. Perhaps Metzov had meant the labor detail to humiliate Miles, but actually it had been quite interesting. Sinking his scat-cat, now, that had been humiliating. That he had done to himself. Miles waved one last time to Ahn as he disappeared into the transport shuttle, shrugged, and headed back across the tarmac toward the now-familiar admin building.

It took a full couple of minutes, after Miles's corporal had left the weather office for lunch, for Miles to yield to the temptation to scratch the itch Ahn had planted in his mind, and punch up Metzov's public record on the comconsole. The mere listing of the base commander's dates, assignments, and promotions was not terribly informative, though a little knowledge of history filled in between the lines.

Metzov had entered the Service some thirty-five years ago. His most rapid promotions had occurred, not surprisingly, during the conquest of the planet Komarr about twenty-five years ago. The wormhole-rich Komarr system was Barrayar's sole gate to the greater galactic wormhole route nexus. Komarr had proved its immense strategic importance to Barrayar earlier in the century, when its ruling oligarchy had accepted a bribe to let a Cetagandan invasion fleet pass through its wormholes and descend on Barrayar. Throwing the Cetagandans back out again had consumed a Barrayaran generation. Barrayar had turned its bloody lesson around in Miles's father's day. As an unavoidable side effect of securing Komarr's gates, Barrayar had been transformed from backwater cul- de-sac to a minor but significant galactic power, and was still wrestling with the consequences.

Metzov had somehow managed to end up on the correct side during Vordarian's Pretendership, a purely Barrayaran attempt to wrest power from then-five-year-old Emperor Gregor and his Regent, two decades past— picking the wrong side in that civil affray would have been Miles's first guess why such an apparently competent officer had ended up marking out his later years on ice on Kyril Island. But the dead halt to Metzov's career seemed to come during the Komarr Revolt, some sixteen years ago now. No hint in this file as to why, but for a cross- reference to another file. An Imperial Security code, Miles recognized. Dead end there.

Or maybe not. Lips compressed thoughtfully, Miles punched through another code on his comconsole.

'Operations, Commodore Jollif's office,' Ivan began formally as his face materialized over the comconsole vid plate, then, 'Oh, hello, Miles. What's up?'

'I'm doing a little research. Thought you might help me out.'

'I should have known you wouldn't call me at HQ just to be sociable. So what d'you want?'

'Ah … do you have the office to yourself, just at present?'

'Yeah, the old man's stuck in committee. Nice little flap—a Barrayaran-registered freighter got itself impounded in the Hegen Hub —at Vervain Station—for suspicion of espionage.'

'Can we get at it? Threaten rescue?'

'Not past Pol. No Barrayaran military vessels may jump through their wormholes, period.'

'I thought we were sort of friends with Pol.'

'Sort of. But the Vervani have been threatening to break off diplomatic relations with Pol, so the Polians are being extra-cautious. Funny thing about it, the freighter in question isn't even one of our real agents. Seems to be a completely manufactured accusation.'

Wormhole route politics. Jumpship tactics. Just the sort of challenge his Imperial Academy courses had trained Miles to meet. Furthermore, it was probably warm on those spaceships and space stations. Miles sighed envy.

Ivan's eyes narrowed in belated suspicion. 'Why do you ask if I'm alone?'

'I want you to pull a file for me. Ancient history, not current events,' Miles reassured him, and reeled off the code-string.

'Ah.' Ivan's hand started to tap it out, then stopped. 'Are you crazy? That's an Imperial Security file. No can do!'

'Of course you can, you're right there, aren't you?' Ivan shook his head smugly. 'Not any more. The whole ImpSec file system's been made super-secure. You can't transfer data out of it except through a coded filter-cable, which you must physically attach. Which I would have to sign for. Which I would have to explain why I wanted it and produce authorization. You got an authorization for this? Ha. I thought not.'

Miles frowned in frustration. 'Surely you can call it up on the internal system.'

'On the internal system, yes. What I can't do is connect the internal system to any external system for a data dump. So you're out of luck.'

'You got an internal system comconsole in that office?'

'Sure.'

'So,' said Miles impatiently, 'call up the file, turn your desk around, and let the two vids talk to each other. You can do that, can't you?'

Ivan scratched his head. 'Would that work?'

'Try it!' Miles drummed his fingers while Ivan dragged his desk around and fiddled with focus. The signal was degraded but readable. 'There, I thought so. Scroll it up for me, would you?'

Fascinating, utterly fascinating. The file was a collection of secret reports from an ImpSec investigation into the mysterious death of a prisoner in Metzov's charge, a Komarran rebel who had killed his guard and himself been killed while attempting to escape. When ImpSec had demanded the Komarran's body for an autopsy, Metzov had turned over cremated ashes and an apology; if only he had been told a few hours earlier the body was wanted, etc. The investigating officer hinted at charges of illegal torture—perhaps in revenge for the death of the guard?—but was unable to amass enough evidence to obtain authorization to fast-penta the Barrayaran witnesses, including a certain Tech-ensign Ahn. The investigating officer had lodged a formal protest of his superior officer's decision to close the case, and there it ended. Apparently. If there was any more to the story it existed only in Simon Illyan's remarkable head, a secret file Miles was not about to attempt to access. And yet Metzov's career had stopped, literally, cold.

'Miles,' Ivan interrupted for the fourth time, 'I really don't think we should be doing this. This is slit-your- throat-before-reading stuff, here.'

'If we shouldn't do it, we shouldn't be able to do it. You'd still have to have the cable for flash-downloading. No real spy would be dumb enough to sit there inside Imperial HQ by the hour and scroll stuff through by hand, waiting to be caught and shot.'

'That does it.' Ivan killed the Security file with a swat of his hand. The vid image wavered wildly as Ivan dragged his desk back around, followed by scrubbing noises as he frantically rubbed out the tracks in his carpet with his boot. 'I didn't do this, you hear?'

'I didn't mean you. We're not spies.' Miles subsided glumly. 'Still . . . I suppose somebody ought to tell Illyan about the little hole they overlooked in his Security arrangements.'

'Not me!'

'Why not you? Put it in as a brilliant theoretical suggestion. Maybe you'll earn a commendation. Don't tell 'em we actually did it, of course. Or maybe we were just testing your theory, eh?'

'You,' said Ivan severely, 'are career-poison. Never darken my vid-plate again. Except at home, of course.'

Miles grinned, and permitted his cousin to escape. He sat awhile in the office, watching the colorful weather holos flicker and change, and thinking about his base commander, and the kinds of accidents that could