The Vor Game

'I always thought Illyan would do more with them, after,' said Gregor. 'However inadvertently, you brought a whole military organization secretly into the service of Barrayar.'

'Yes, without them even knowing it themselves. Now, that's secret. Come on. Assigning them to Illyan's section was a legal fiction, everybody knew it.' And would his own assignment to Illyan's section turn out to be a legal fiction too? 'Illyan's too careful to get drawn into intergalactic military adventuring as a hobby. I'm afraid his main interest in the Dendarii Mercenaries is to keep them as far away from Barrayar as possible. Mercenaries thrive on other people's chaos.

'Plus, they're a funny size—less than a dozen ships, three or four thousand personnel—not your basic invisible six-man covert ops team, though they can field such, and yet they're too little to take on Planetary situations. Space-based, not ground troops. Wormhole blockades were their specialty. Safe, easy on the equipment, mostly bullying unarmed civilians—which is how I first ran into them, when our freighter was stopped by their blockade, and the bullying went too far. I cringe to think of the risks I ran. Though I've often wondered if, knowing what I know now, I could have. . . .' Miles stopped, shook his head.

'Or maybe it's like heights. Better not to look down. You freeze, and then you fall.' Miles was not fond of heights.

'As a military experience, how did it compare with Lazkowski Base?' asked Gregor bemusedly.

'Oh, there were certain parallels,' Miles admitted. 'Both were jobs I wasn't trained for, both were potentially lethal, I got out of both by my skin—lost some skin. The Dendarii episode was . . . worse. I lost Sergeant Bothari. In a sense, I lost Elena. At least at Camp Permafrost I managed not to lose anyone.'

'Maybe you're getting better,' Gregor suggested. Miles shook his head, and drank. He should have put on some music. The thick silence of this room was oppressive, when the conversation faltered. The ceiling was probably not hydraulically arranged to descend and crush him in his sleep; Security had far less messy ways of dealing with recalcitrant prisoners. It only seemed to lower at him. Well, I'm short. Maybe it'd miss me.

'I suppose it would be . . . improper,' Miles began hesitantly, 'to ask you to try and get me out of here. It's always seemed rather embarrassing, to ask for Imperial favors. Like cheating, or something.'

'What, are you asking one prisoner of ImpSec to rescue another?' Gregor's hazel eyes were ironic under black brows. 'It's a little embarrassing to me to come up against the limits of my absolute Imperial Rule. Your father and Illyan, like two parentheses around me. His cupped hands closed in a squeezing motion.

It was a subliminal effect of this room, Miles decided. Gregor was feeling it too.

'I would if I could,' Gregor added more apologetically. 'But Illyan's made it crystal clear he wants you kept out of sight. For a time, anyway.'

'Time,' Miles swallowed the last of his wine, and decided he better not pour himself any more. Alcohol was a depressant, it was said. 'How much time? Dammit, if I don't get something to do I'm going to be the first case of human spontaneous combustion recorded on vid.' He jerked a rude finger at the ceiling. 'I don't need to—don't even have to leave the building, but at least they could give me some work. Clerical, janitorial—I do terrific drains—anything! Dad talked with Illyan about assigning me to Security—as the only Section left that would take me—he must have had something more in mind than a m-, m-, mascot.' He poured and drank again, to drown the spate of words. He'd said too much. Damn the wine. Damn the whine.

Gregor, who had built a little tower of tacti-go chips, toppled it with one finger. 'Oh, being a mascot isn't bad work, if you can get it.' He stirred the pile slowly. 'I'll see what I can do. No promises.'

Miles didn't know if it was the Emperor, the bugs, or wheels already in motion (grinding slowly), but two days afterwards he found himself assigned to the job of administrative assistant to the guard commander for the building. It was comconsole work; scheduling, payroll, updating computer files. The job was interesting for a week, while he was learning it, mind-numbing after that. By the end of a month, the boredom and banality were beginning to prey on his nerves. Was he loyal, or merely stupid? Guards, Miles now realized, had to stay in prison all day long too. Indeed, as a guard, one of his jobs was now to keep himself in. Damn clever of Illyan, nobody else could have held him, if he'd been determined on escape. He did find a window once, and looked out. It was sleeting.

Was he going to get out of this bloody box before Winterfair? How long did it take the world to forget him, anyway? If he committed suicide, could he be officially listed as shot by a guard while escaping? Was Illyan trying to drive him out of his mind, or just out of his Section?

Another month slipped by. As a spiritual exercise, he decided to fill his off-duty hours by watching every training vid in the military library, in strict alphabetical order. The assortment was truly astonishing. He was particularly bemused by the thirty-minute vid (under 'H: Hygiene') explaining how to take a shower—well, yes, there probably were backcountry recruits who really needed the instruction. After some weeks he had worked his way down to 'L: Laser-rifle Model D-67; power-pack circuitry, maintenance, and repair,' when he was interrupted by a call ordering him to report to Illyan's office.

Illyan's office was almost unchanged from Miles's last excruciating visit—same spartan windowless inner chamber occupied mainly by a comconsole desk that looked like it could be used to pilot a jump ship-but now there were two chairs. One was promisingly empty. Maybe Miles wouldn't end up so literally on the carpet this round? The other was occupied by a man in undress greens with captain's tabs and the Horus-eye insignia of Imperial Security on the collar.

Interesting fellow, that captain. Miles summed him out of the corner of his eye as he exchanged formal salutes with Illyan. Maybe thirty-five years old, he had something of Illyan's unmemorable bland look about the face, but was more heavily built. Pale. He might easily pass for some minor bureaucrat, a sedentary indoorsman. But that particular look could also be acquired by spending a great deal of time cooped up on spaceships.

'Ensign Vorkosigan, this is Captain Ungari. Captain Ungari is one of my galactic operatives. He has ten years experience gathering information for this department. His specialty is military evaluation.' Ungari favored Miles with a polite nod by way of acknowledging the introduction. His level gaze summed Miles right back. Miles wondered what the spy's evaluation of the dwarfish soldier standing before him might be, and tried to stand straighter. There was nothing obvious about Ungari's reaction to Miles.

Illyan leaned back in his swivel chair. 'So tell me, Ensign, what have you heard lately from the Dendarii Mercenaries?'

'Sir?' Miles rocked back. Not the curve he was expecting … 'I . . . lately, nothing. I had a message about a year ago from Elena Bothari—Bothari-Jesek, that is. But it was only private, uh, birthday greetings.'

'That one I have,' Illyan nodded.Do you, you bastard. '— Nothing since?'

'No, sir.'

'Hm.' Illyan waved a hand at the spare chair. 'Sit down, Miles.' His voice grew quicker and more businesslike. Meat at last?

'Let's go over a little astrography. Geography is the mother of strategy, they say.' Illyan fiddled with a control on his comconsole.

A wormhole nexus route map formed in three bright dimensions over the holovid plate. It looked rather like a ball-and-stick model of some weird organic molecule done in colored light, balls representing local-space crossings, sticks the wormhole-space jumps between them; schematic, compressing information, rather than to scale. Illyan zoomed in on a portion, red and blue sparks in the center of an otherwise empty ball, with four sticks leading out at crazy angles to more complex balls like some skewed Celtic cross. 'Look familiar?'

'That in the center is the Hegen Hub, isn't it, sir?'

'Good.' Illyan handed him his controller. 'Give me a strategic summation of the Hegan Hub, Ensign.'

Miles cleared his throat. 'It's a double star system with no habitable planets, a few stations and powersats, and very little reason to linger in. Like many nexus connections, it's more route than place, taking its value by what's around it. In this case, four adjoining regions of local space with settled planets.' Miles brightened each part of the image as he spoke, for emphasis.

'Aslund. Aslund is a cul-de-sac like Barrayar; the Hegen Hub is its sole gate to the greater galactic web. The Hegen Hub is as vital to Aslund as our gateway Komarr is to us.

'Jackson's Whole. The Hegen Hub is just one of five gates from Jacksonian local space; beyond Jackson's Whole lies half the explored galaxy.

'Vervain. Vervain has two exits; one to the Hub, the other into the nexus sectors controlled by the Cetagandan Empire.