My Favorite Vors is the Vorkosigan Saga parody of My Favorite Things from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical The Sound of Music, dedicated to all the fen who appreciate filk. It has references to these stories, by Lois McMaster Bujold except where noted:
and mostly refer to Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold, with one reference to Barrayar .
Betan survey ships refers to a ship from the Survey Service of Beta Colony, captained by Cordelia Naismith. Beta Colony has a reputation for pacifism, which some mistake for cowardice. Whose captains are taken refers to the capture of Cordelia by Captain Lord Aral Vorkosigan from Barrayar, near the beginning of Shards of Honor. . During her captivity, Captain Vorkosigan’s armsman Sergeant Konstantine Bothari has extreme mental illness, due to his mistreatment in the military, but is extremely loyal to Captain Vorkosigan. Vorbarran warships that with strife are shaken refers to Political Officer Radnov’s mutiny against Captain Vorkosigan. When Cordelia’s own crew, Lieutenants Stuben and Lai, sneak down to rescue her (against her explicit order to go home), they encounter the fugitive ringleaders Radnov and Darobey hiding in the woods. A Barrayaran patrol has come looking for the pair; Stuben’s crew ambushes and stuns them, then takes their uniforms and shuttle and uses Radnov and Darobey’s countersigns to transport themselves aboard undetected. Once aboard, Radnov and Darobey’s fellow mutineers are freed from the brig and seize engineering, threatening to cut life support. Cordelia slips away from her own rescuers, talks a guard out of his plasma arc, and helps put the mutiny down herself before the ship can be lost. Mess with Cordelia A slit throat she brings refers to an incident where Admiral Vorrutyer has tied Cordelia, a prisoner for the second time, to his bed, tortured her and ordered Sergeant Bothari to rape her. Bothari instead slits Vorrutyer’s throat.
A surprise reception planned by steady Freddy refers to Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan being awarded a medal by “Steady Freddy,” the President of Beta Colony, for her alleged killing of Admiral Vorrutyer — it was actually Bothari who slit his throat. Furious at the propaganda use being made of it, she flings the medal back at him.
Her toe in his crotch, because she wasn’t ready refers to security guards grabbing Cordelia the instant she flings the medal back; struggling against them, the toe of her jackboot catches the President in the groin with perfect unplanned accuracy.
Underwater breathing refers to Cordelia garroting Dr. Mehta with a belt and holding her head underwater in an aquarium, telling her to “grow gills” and dunking her under again, until she gets the information she needs.
Mehta refers to the psychiatrist who secretly drugged Cordelia during a supposedly voluntary interview — justifying it afterward as ethical since “permission is obtained post facto” — and who later tries to have her involuntarily committed.
In the novel Barrayar , Cordelia, pregnant with Miles Vorkosigan , is exposed to the teratogen Soltoxin during an assassination attempt on her husband Aral, unconnected at the time to Vordarian. The treatment would have killed Miles, so the medical staff transfer him to a uterine replicator.
, and refer to Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold.
Gas through the window refers to the attack by Evon Vorhalas,
whose younger brother Carl was beheaded that day for killing a friend in
a drunken duel; Aral, as Regent, would not pardon him. Evon fires a
soltoxin gas grenade into the Vorkosigans’ bedroom.
A pillow, not breathing: Aral covers Cordelia’s face and
gets her out. Cure that is poison: the antidote saves them
both, but it destroys bone development in the fetus she is
carrying. His vengeance bequeathing, “You got my son,”
and the drowning it brings: facing the captured Evon, Aral wills
him all the vengeance he wants: he missed Aral and Cordelia, but he
got their son, and Aral will see it in her eyes for the rest of his
life. Evon, made to say the word baby
, breaks down in sobs
(chapter 8).
Some time later, in a separate and unrelated power grab, Stealing the son refers to the capture of Miles’s uterine replicator during Count Vidal Vordarian’s coup. Aral refuses to divert the resources needed for a rescue attempt.
A helpless Vor Lady refers to Cordelia, who organizes a forbidden rescue party: armsman Bothari and Ludmilla Droushnakovi (“Drou”), a Betan-trained bodyguard previously assigned to Princess Kareen, now serving Cordelia, break into the Residence with her while Clement Koudelka (“Kou”) — Aral’s own war-wounded aide-de-camp, who walks with a cane — runs a separate diversion.
During the rescue, Vordarian’s consort Princess Kareen — who believes Vordarian had her own son Gregor killed — grabs a guard’s weapon and tries to shoot him herself; she is disarmed and killed by the guard’s reflexive shot, and the chaos lets Bothari sever Vordarian’s wrist and take him captive.
Losing your head is the fate that it brings is what happens to
Vordarian after Cordelia captures him. He refuses to accept that
his cause is lost, Cordelia orders Bothari to execute him, and he
says What? You're a Betan! You can't do—
. Bad guess ;-)
When she starts to go shopping refers to an incident soon
after Cordelia returns home with her rescued son. Security staff
want to see what is in the bag containing Vordarian’s severed head,
after looking they ask how to list it in the security inventory,
and Koudelka says
Put it down as a Winterfair gift for Admiral Vorkosigan. From
his wife.
Aral has ordered that she be taken to him as soon as she returns,
and she joins a sealed meeting. Aral’s father, Count
Piotr Pierre Vorkosigan
,
angrily asks her Good God, woman, where have you been?
,
she holds up the bag, replies Shopping. Want to see what I bought?
,
and spills the head on the table.
Verse refers to a scene from Barrayar .
Cordelia goes shopping in the capital for a swordstick for Aral’s war-wounded aide-de-camp Lieutenant Koudelka (“Kou”), who walks with a cane. The first sample she tries has its blade snap clean off against the wall; the shop clerk fetches a heavier second sample, which holds up. Told it was meant “to help keep you from running Kou completely into the ground,” Koudelka is touched, if startled by its unexpected weight. It’s the same swordstick Cordelia later draws on Vordarian, and the blade Bothari finishes him with — see “Losing your head,” above.
and refer to The Warrior’s Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold. On the night of General Count Piotr Vorkosigan’s funeral, seventeen-year-old Miles Vorkosigan sets out to find the mother that Elena Bothari’s father, Sergeant Bothari, never talks about (chapter 3).
Records of fathers and mothers long hidden: Bothari’s service record lists his own father as unknown, which Miles hides from Elena, giving her a name instead; most of the year before her birth is sealed under the personal mark of Simon Illyan, chief of Imperial Security. Opened with codes that are strictly forbidden: Miles opens the library comconsole, with its links to military headquarters and the Imperial Residence, using the access code of Captain Koudelka, who never revoked it after tutoring him, and then one of his father’s old codes. Wombs from the war, and what one of them brings: seventeen uterine replicators came back from the failed invasion of Escobar. Miles takes them for spoils of war; in fact the Escobarans returned them, occupied, to the Barrayaran fathers as a rebuke, “all your bastards” (Shards of Honor, chapter 11). One infant was released to Admiral Aral Vorkosigan on Elena’s birthday, and her footprint matches. Miles turns her fear into farce, but the search for her mother will take them to Escobar and end in her father’s death.
Necking for cover when warning comes knocking: Miles has asked the duty guard to rattle the door if anyone comes, and the guard assumes they want privacy for necking. When the door rattles, Miles shuts down the comconsole and pulls Elena onto the sofa just as Captain Koudelka, Sergeant Bothari and Count Vorkosigan walk in. A stocking left draped on his shoulder, still mocking: Elena had taken off her shoes and stockings for the footprint check; in the lift tube she points out her other stocking, hanging over the back of his shoulder. “Grant me this boon,” the excuse that he brings: Miles claims they were rehearsing a play, and coaches Elena in Lady Anne’s reply from Richard III (act 1, scene 2) as they escape (chapter 3).
, and refer to Miles’s visit to his grandmother, Mrs. Naismith, on Beta Colony in The Warrior’s Apprentice, and to the two men he picks up there.
Mortgaging land where the glass hole is glowing: within two hours of landing, Miles finds Arde Mayhew, a drunken jump pilot, holding his old freighter, the RG 132, against the salvage dealer Calhoun. Miles buys the ship with a note at cost plus ten percent, backed by land he has just inherited around Vorkosigan Vashnoi, the city the Cetagandans left a glowing glass hole in the ground. Checking the climate, the fallout not knowing: Calhoun checks the climate records, but not the radiation records. Sworn as an Armsman, the shield that it brings: to keep Betan Security and the Mental Health Board off Mayhew, Miles swears him as an Armsman simple, with Bothari as witness, and pledges him the protection of a liege commander, by his word as Vorkosigan. The case dissolves into untested interplanetary law (chapter 5).
Goldfish from fountains, a runaway’s dinner: that evening Hathaway, a neighbor of Mrs. Naismith’s, takes Miles to a Barrayaran hiding in his recycling center: Baz Jesek, a deserter, cooking a carp from the Silica Zoo’s fountains. Eaten off knife-point by lord and by sinner: Baz offers Miles a morsel on his knife, and Miles takes it, camp-fashion. Miles offers him a berth on the RG 132 (chapter 6). “Down!”—“this Vor lunatic”—home’s what he brings: when fear freezes Baz before the boarding of an Oseran ship, Miles drafts him on the spot. Baz swears as a forsworn military vassal of the Emperor, taking service under “this Vor lunatic”, since Miles cannot give his name; Miles pledges his protection by his word, and tells Baz he is home (chapter 9).
Pilots who credit their drink for his leaping: as the RG 132 leaves Beta Colony, Miles collapses; his crème de meth, Mayhew’s green stimulant liquor, has worn off. Friends who just wondered why he wasn’t sleeping: Elena had only wondered why he did not fall asleep, and could not really tell the difference. “Like that all the time?”: Mayhew realizes, with his laughter fading, that this is what Miles is always like (chapter 7).
– refer to the RG 132’s run to Tau Verde in The Warrior’s Apprentice, and to the founding of the Dendarii Mercenaries.
Boarders who ransack and call the lord “Shorty”: Oseran mercenaries under Captain Auson board the RG 132 and search it. Taking a girl for a hostage, so haughty: Auson takes Elena Bothari as hostage in place of the pilot, and beats Miles when he objects. Calling her liege lord, the right that it brings: Elena calls on Miles as her liege lord for protection (chapter 8).
Chairs flung by Sergeants: at Miles’s signal, Sergeant Bothari hurls a chair into the mercenary with the nerve disruptor, and the boarders are overpowered. Elena: “I’ll Shorty him down to a meter!”: Elena has Auson down with a broken nose. Prisoners now, and the problem it brings: Bothari suggests killing them; Miles has them stunned, and then has to decide what to do with them (chapter 8).
Welding the hold with the prisoners slumping: the stunned Oserans are welded into an empty hold, Elena dragging Auson in by the ankles. Seizing their shuttle, the cover it brings: Miles takes the Oserans’ shuttle so that the Ariel will think its own boarding party is returning (chapter 9).
Lives of his friends—so a free hand is given: for the sake of the friends who followed him, Miles gives Bothari a free hand with the captured pilot officer. Torture for codes, and the implant is riven: Bothari pries out the pilot’s neural implant with the dagger, and gets the codes. Washing his face, and the knowing it brings: after the Ariel is taken, Miles finds the pilot dead of a stroke from the torn wires, washes his face, and understands for the first time the terror that drives massacres of witnesses. He tells Mayhew that what Bothari does on his orders is his own responsibility (chapter 9).
Bursting through doorways the way vids do, yelling: Mayhew charges an empty storeroom with a war whoop. Baz charging plasma arcs, past all foretelling: Baz Jesek rushes a mercenary armed with a plasma arc, with only a stunner, and afterwards asks how Miles knew he could. Drunkards and sleepers, the tally he brings: Miles’s own captures are one drunk and two sleeping women (chapter 9).
Faking inspections, the Sergeant’s regs plundered: Miles bluffs the Ariel’s crew with a General Fleet Inspection, and turns Bothari’s old Imperial Service regulations into “Dendarii regulations”. Asking for pensions, the troopers all wondered: the captured Oserans ask about insurance, perquisites and pensions. Life is the perk, then: Miles tells them he is permitting them to live; further privileges must be earned. The sleep that Scotch brings: Bothari doses the overwound Miles with scotch, and he sleeps for sixteen hours (chapter 10).
Gooey tunes playing, “Stand by,” the sign saying: at the Felician refinery, Miles finds that the Pelians have taken it and faked its commander’s transmission, and stalls them with music and a technical-difficulties sign. Trojan horse boarding: Thorne proposes to ambush their ambush and take the station from within. Their armor betraying: the Pelian commandos wear Oseran full-feedback armor, and from the Oseran monitor ship Miles and Auson sabotage their suits. Backwash on full, and the swearing it brings: the first target is a soldier’s relief tube (chapter 11).
Ram with my warship? Shall we boil oil and fling it?: when Captain Tung’s dreadnought, the Triumph, arrives, Miles suggests ramming it with the Ariel, and Auson protests. Arde, unbriefed, just decided to wing it: Mayhew rams the Triumph with the RG 132 on his own initiative, pinning it against the smeltery. Rods bent like skis, and the Armsman it brings: the RG 132’s Necklin rods are bent beyond repair, and Bothari welcomes Mayhew to his lord’s service as a real Armsman (chapter 12).
Four times the shielding, thrice accelerating: Auson’s
estimate of the Triumph against the Ariel. “Hold
your tongue, Tung!” How long Thorne was waiting: Thorne
taunts the captured Tung. Caught by the comedy team,
and it stings: Miles points out to Tung that the—ah—comedy
team
has just captured him (chapter 12).
Dark eyes, a jawline, a dossier’s naming: among the new Dendarii recruits is Elena Visconti, an Escobaran comm link technician and former ensign, whose face and name lead Miles to suspect she is Elena Bothari’s mother. He arranges to meet her in private. Plasma arc lowered, her justice she’s claiming: she arrives with a needler, denounces Sergeant Bothari as Admiral Vorrutyer’s chief torturer, into whose hands she fell at eighteen during the Escobar war, and demands his arrest. Bothari, holding a charged plasma arc, lowers it. “Lady,” he whispers; the rest that it brings: he tells her she is still beautiful, and she shoots him dead (chapter 15).
Blood on his shirt front, “I think she’s your mother”: Miles stops Elena Bothari from killing the woman by telling her who she is. Cleaning his weapons—two truths and another: he tells the medtech it was an accident while the Sergeant was cleaning the weapons, two true statements out of three. Perched on his shoulder, the best view it brings: to Elena Visconti, who calls the killing a just execution, Miles answers that as a child who could not yet walk he watched every parade from the Sergeant’s shoulder. She spits on the body (chapter 15).
Bothari’s side of Escobar is told in Shards of Honor
and Barrayar. He had been Admiral Vorrutyer’s
batman for four years, and when he was first assigned to Aral
Vorkosigan’s ship, the General Vorkraft, he was on the
verge of a split personality (Shards of Honor,
chapter 14). After Escobar, Barrayaran military therapists used drugs
to suppress his memories of it: the doctors called it
suppression-therapy; Bothari says We just called it hell
, and
trying to remember brings blinding headaches (Barrayar,
chapter 6). Aral, who got him off after he killed Vorrutyer, had
Count Piotr take him on as an Armsman, since a uniform, a weapon and
regulations seemed to give him an anchor; and Aral believed that
the Escobaran woman was what Bothari chose to try to remember from
Escobar (Shards of Honor, chapter 14).
Parchment, black-ribboned, and Ivan forgetting: Ivan Vorpatril arrives at Tau Verde by hitching a ride; his courier ship, Captain Dimir’s, left Beta Colony without him. Among Dimir’s orders was a parchment with a black ribbon, which Ivan never thought to mention. Treason and death, then, a trap they are setting: Miles reads it as a capital charge of treason against himself in the Council of Counts, lost with Dimir’s sabotaged ship, a trap meant to bring down his father either way. Hessman’s own wineglass? The “No” that it brings: asked whether he would drink wine offered by Admiral Hessman, through whom his orders came, Ivan at last answers soberly that he would not (chapter 18).
“Lost in the mail,” then, his summons, he’s pleading: Miles and Ivan reach the Council of Counts while Count Vordrozda is arguing Miles’s guilt from his absence. Miles explains that his invitation was lost in the mail, and accuses Admiral Hessman of the sabotage that killed Captain Dimir’s crew. Goaded by Miles, Hessman turns on Vordrozda. Needler drawn, Counts are toward it stampeding: Vordrozda draws a needler to silence him, in the Emperor’s presence, and the Counts rush the weapon instead of fleeing it. Knees first for Ivan, the honor it brings: Ivan makes the first tackle (chapter 21).
Emperor’s Own, then, a Crown Troop he’s giving: in private before Gregor, Miles tells the whole story. The usurpation charge collapses, but Count Vorhalas, Aral’s old enemy, points out that Miles is still in breach of Vorloupulous’s law against private armies, and makes Aral kneel and beg; Miles faces him down. To settle the Dendarii, Miles offers them to Gregor as a Crown Troop. Secretly ImpSec’s, for Simon’s misgiving: the gift is kept private, the fleet becoming a free mercenary company secretly owned by Imperial Security, which means by Simon Illyan, still in prison on the false charges. Terrible ensign the Academy brings: Aral proposes the Imperial Service Academy for Miles, the reward he had scarcely dared hope for, and predicts a terrible ensign (chapter 21).
– refer to The Mountains of Mourning by Lois McMaster Bujold. Ensign Miles Vorkosigan, two days out of the Imperial Academy, goes as the Voice of his father, Count Aral Vorkosigan, to the hill hamlet of Silvy Vale, where Harra Csurik has charged that her baby daughter Raina was murdered for being born with a cat’s mouth, a harelip.
Four days of walking, her justice she’s seeking: Harra Csurik walks four days to the Count’s summer retreat at Vorkosigan Surleau to demand her justice, the district magistrate being away for weeks; the gate guard tells her to go back and report it in her district. Daddy who died in the Service she brings: she insists that seeing her lord Count is her right, because her father died in the Service, and Miles, hearing the ring of truth, gets her past Security. Standing up straight and the truth she is speaking: his advice before she goes in is to stand up straight and speak the truth; the Count will take it from there. Miles gives her the same advice again at the end, when she agrees to try Hassadar Teacher’s College.
Sleepy-eyed Aral who might fool a stranger: Count Aral Vorkosigan hears her with his strategy-session look, a slit-eyed intensity of thought that could be mistaken for sleepiness; that would be a grave mistake. Those who know better can recognize danger: his deceptively mild questions put Miles on full alert. Miles as his Voice and the justice he brings: the Count offers to send his son as his Voice, and Harra accepts.
Raina, whose neck for a cat’s mouth was broken: Dr. Dea’s autopsy finds the neck broken and twisted back into place; the defect was not even a mutation, and fairly simple plastic surgery would have corrected it. Oaths at her graveside, in fury, unspoken: while Harra burns her small offering on the grave, Miles silently swears by his word as Vorkosigan to give Raina a better sacrifice, whose smoke will be seen from one end of the mountains to the other. He keeps it: a scholarship to the teacher’s college in Hassadar for Harra, and a school for Silvy Vale, to be named the Raina Csurik Primary School. Sappers, not lances, for windmills with wings: in his last vow to Raina, he will not just tilt at windmills for her, but send in sappers to mine them and blast them into the sky.
Keeping his word, though the doctor is pressing: Lem Csurik turns himself in, but he has guesses about who killed Raina and will not be the one to name them; he will take fast-penta only if Miles swears not to ask. Miles swears by his word as Vorkosigan to ask only about what Lem saw himself, not about persons or events he did not witness. Under fast-penta Lem clears himself: when he left, Raina was alive and crying. He admits meeting someone on the path, and Dr. Dea urges Miles to ask who; Miles refuses, having given his word. Trap with no warning, the hypospray springs: in Speaker Karal’s cabin, Miles has Dea ready a second dose of fast-penta and fills the time with the story of his grandfather, who had begged Miles’s mother to abort him. First through the doorway gets penta, confessing: when footsteps sound on the porch, Dea doses the first person through the door, Ma Mattulich.
Grandmas who murder a babe, no repentance: under fast-penta, Raina’s grandmother, Mara Mattulich, confesses that she broke the baby’s neck so that Harra would think the death natural, and that years before she had killed two of her own newborns for their defects. She insists she did the right thing, and hates Miles for changing the rules. Dead to the law by the mutie lord’s sentence: Miles sentences her to death and holds the execution indefinitely; she is as dead before the law, her property and her person given into Harra’s power. Death without burning, no memory clings: no one may make a burning for her when she is buried; she will die as the childless do, without remembrance.
Verse refers to The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold. Ensign Miles Vorkosigan, fresh from the Imperial Academy, is posted as weather officer to Lazkowski Base on Kyril Island, under General Metzov.
Stripping to stand with the Greeks who are frozen: techs ordered to clean up a spill of the obsolete mutagen fetaine refuse, even in protective gear. Metzov calls it mutiny, and has the fifteen of them strip in five degrees of frost, ringed by trainees armed with nerve disruptors. Lieutenant Bonn strips and joins his men. Miles, seeing a massacre coming, sets down the disruptor he has been handed, strips, joins the line, and talks Metzov into arresting them all instead (chapter 5). Over half the techs are from the Greek-speaking minority; a massacre would have set the language separatists rioting, and Miles reasons that if he died with them it would at least be clear it was no plot of the government (chapter 6).
Charges dismissed at the cost he has chosen: at Imperial Security headquarters, his father, Prime Minister Count Aral Vorkosigan, offers to have the charges against the techs quashed by Imperial fiat; the price is that Miles could never serve again. In a way, Miles says, they were his men; he tells his father to do it, and agrees to resign. Guarding not life but the honor of kings: instead, the Count has him assigned to Imperial Security itself: many officers may be trusted with the Emperor’s life, rather fewer with his honor (chapter 6).
Verse refers to a scene from Labyrinth .
Making Ryoval’s day
is tongue in cheek — with Miles
guiding her, Taura guts his life’s work: years of irreplaceable
genetic samples, destroyed by his own creation turned against him.
Miles shows her the temperature control on Ryoval’s
high-security tissue-sample freezers and has her turn it with a
single finger, ruining the lot. This refers to Miles Vorkosigan’s
escape from House Ryoval on
Jackson’s Whole with Taura, one of Ryoval’s own genetically
engineered creations, in
Labyrinth
.
Not take much pressure is a literal pun as well as a figurative one — ruining years of Ryoval’s genetic research takes no more than the pressure of Taura’s one finger on a temperature dial.
Verse refers to a later, separate scene from the same Labyrinth, included in the collections Borders of Infinity, Miles, Mutants & Microbes and Miles, Mystery and Mayhem.
Vorbarran agents refers to Miles Vorkosigan in his persona as Admiral Naismith, on a covert mission to extract Dr. Hugh Canaba from House Bharaputra’s Laboratories on Jackson’s Whole, with a cover story of weapon shopping from House Fell.
A gene-tailored soldier refers to an 8' tall super
soldier
developed by Dr. Canaba and commissioned by people who
have never seen combat, known only as Nine
and treated as a
laboratory animal. Dr. Canaba insists on retrieving samples of
radical advances in gene engineering, encapsulated and injected
into Nine’s calf. He explains that Nine has been sold to
House Ryoval. Miles infiltrates House Ryoval in an attempt to
extract Nine, but is caught and thrown into a basement with her.
She won't believe that Miles considers her human unless he makes
love to her. Miles, appalled at her treatment, names her Taura,
helps her to sabotage an irreplaceable collection of genetic
samples and
almost succeeds in escaping with her, but they are fetched by
Baron Ryoval,
A rescue float truck refers to Bel Thorne’s mission to ransom Miles, exchanging him for the quaddie Nicol. Miles conveys a cryptic order to fight, and his party is able to subdue the guards and escape in a stolen float truck, which is damaged by enemy fire but gets away with Miles, Nicol and Recruit-trainee Taura unharmed. The Dendarii’s own drop shuttle, undamaged, only arrives afterward to collect everyone.
– refer to Memory , the novel in which Miles loses Admiral Naismith and finds his footing as Lord Vorkosigan.
Seized in his armor: on a Dendarii mission to rescue the kidnapped Imperial courier Lieutenant Vorberg, Miles has a seizure, a hidden aftereffect of his cryo-revival, and his suit’s plasma arc cuts off Vorberg’s legs below the knee. He edits the seizure out of his report to Simon Illyan, Chief of Imperial Security, and erases the full version. When the truth comes out through the cryo-revival surgeon’s records and the Dendarii surgeon’s private files, Illyan calls it a betrayal of those who depended on Miles and those who trusted him, and offers a quiet medical discharge; Miles has another seizure on Illyan’s carpet, and hands over his silver Horus eyes (chapters 1, 2, and 6).
Simon in fetters: Illyan’s eidetic memory chip breaks down, and he is held naked, restrained, and sedated in Imperial Security’s clinic, reliving random days of thirty years every few minutes. General Lucas Haroche, the acting chief, refuses Miles a visit, revokes his clearance, and turns away Lady Alys Vorpatril. Lieutenant Vorberg, commanding the night guard, comes to Miles at dawn: Illyan keeps asking for him, and the word has gone up the chain and stopped there. Thrown out again, with orders that he be stunned if he returns, Miles sees Illyan as lost among people who should have been his friends (chapters 14 and 15).
Dressed in his House brown: on a bench across from headquarters, Miles decides that Naismith had to win, but Vorkosigan cannot surrender. He puts on his brown-and-silver House uniform with all his decorations at once, and asks Emperor Gregor to assign an Imperial Auditor to the case. Gregor appoints Miles himself as acting Auditor, and Miles’s first act is to request an assistant: his cousin Ivan, who complains that Miles wanted a donkey and thought of him first (chapters 15 and 16).
Bribed with his fleet back: Haroche offers to reinstate Miles, give him back the Dendarii, and make him a captain; the price is closing the case on Captain Duv Galeni, whom Haroche has framed. Miles locks himself in a small room, tells his mother and Illyan through the door that he is wrestling with temptation, best two falls out of three, and realizes that the offer is a bribe from the man who sabotaged Illyan to take his job. He proves it through the air filters. Afterward Gregor asks what stopped him, and Miles answers that some prices are too high: you cannot trade your heart for your heart’s desire (chapters 25 through 27).
Two keep a secret: the second conversation is with Lord Auditor Vorhovis, before Gregor and three other Auditors. Asked why he refused when no one would ever have known, Miles answers that Haroche, Galeni, and he himself would have known; two can keep a secret if one of them is dead, not three. Someone might have survived with his name and in his body, but it would not have been Miles; it would have been a man he did not much like. He has learned to value himself, and Vorhovis says the Auditors may as well too. Gregor appoints him eighth Imperial Auditor and, at Miles’s request, a retired captain (chapter 28).
Spymaster pensioned: once the chip is removed, Simon Illyan retires, leases a flat a couple of streets from Lady Alys Vorpatril, and asks Miles to float rumors that he is more incapacitated than he is. Alys, Ivan’s mother and Gregor’s Baba, runs the social arrangements for the Emperor’s wedding and has just taken on two new social secretaries; Illyan’s old colleagues, Guy Allegre among them, still turn up at tea time. Illyan escorts Alys to a concert at the Vorbarr Sultana Company Hall, where in all his years of running security he never once sat down to watch the show: she talked, he listened, and he found it restful. Ivan is scandalized to learn that after the betrothal they will spend a half-month at a south-coast resort ImpSec has never heard of, with beach chairs and drinks with fruit on a stick (chapters 19 and 27).
Bar her from Simon: General Haroche, the acting chief, turns Lady Alys away from Illyan’s bedside as no sight for a lady, and she asks what he was doing during the War of Vordarian’s Pretendership. In that war, as told in Barrayar, she watched Vordarian’s guards shoot her husband Padma Vorpatril in the street, and gave birth to Ivan that same night in an abandoned room (chapter 16). Miles points out that as Gregor’s Baba she will run the social side of the Imperial wedding; Haroche calls her himself, asks her as a personal favor to sit with Illyan, and, told she said so yesterday, meekly agrees that she was right (chapters 15 and 17).
Thinking him past it: Haroche judged Illyan to be getting stale, and sabotaged his memory chip to take his job (chapter 27). Caught on his knees swapping the air filter in his old office, he looks up to find Illyan there. Illyan remarks that ImpSec needs new traditions for changing its chiefs, since assassination and retribution are so disruptive, and wants no easy way out for Haroche: let him stand his court-martial, every minute of it (chapter 26).
– refer to the Vorkosigan Saga stories by Lois McMaster Bujold .
In the novel
A Civil Campaign
,
If you like Science Fiction and have a sense of humor, this is a must read.
Miles is in love with the recently widowed
Ekaterin Vorsoisson
,
whose husband
Etienne Vorsoisson
died of accidental asphyxiation after bringing Miles out to the
Waste Heat experiment station at night to show him evidence of the
embezzlement scheme run by the Komarran conspirators from whom he
had himself been taking bribes — he was having second
thoughts and trying to retrieve his honor. They unexpectedly found
the conspirators still there, packing up to flee; furious at his
betrayal, the plotters stunned and chained both men to punish him,
taping documentation of his own bribe-taking to his back to be
certain of disgracing him when found, never dreaming Etienne would
be too careless of his own
safety to have checked his breath mask’s reservoir before
going out; it was nearly empty, and Miles could not break the
chains in time. Due to security issues, neither Miles nor Ekaterin
is permitted to divulge the circumstances of Etienne’s
death.
Ekaterin and Nikki are living in the house of her aunt
Dr. Helen Vorthys
and Helen’s husband
Dr. Georg Vorthys
,
an imperial auditor, one of a handful of officials who investigate
in the Emperor’s name with his full authority.
Ekaterin admires Miles, but wants
a year in peace to recover from her disastrous marriage to Etienne
before even thinking of remarriage. Miles, afraid that someone
else will propose before him, hires Ekaterin to design a garden of
native Barrayar plants as a ruse to spend time with her. Miles,
however, foolishly confides in his cousin
Ivan Xav Vorpatril
,
(That idiot Ivan
— Miles’s own verbatim line for
him, from The Warrior’s Apprentice), who decides
to prank Miles. Ivan is the son of Miles’s aunt
Alys Vorpatril
,
a woman with no official authority but enough social clout to make
her a good friend and a dangerous enemy. Miles extracts a reluctant
promise from Ivan to leave Ekaterin alone; resentful at being
pressured into it, Ivan decides to get even by encouraging
potential rivals to court Ekaterin.
As a result of Ivan’s interference, Ekaterin is beset by a host of
unwanted suitors, of whom the worst is
Lt. Alexi Vormoncrief
,
who is attempting to discredit Miles.
Bungled Proposals refers to Miles’s panicky proposal after Simon Illyan , the former head of Imperial Security (ImpSec), asks about Miles’s intended proposal to Ekaterin. She is beyond angry at the deceit, even though she might have been receptive to a more honorable approach.
Draft the eleventh refers to the handwritten letter Miles
sends Ekaterin afterwards, his eleventh attempt, every one beginning
I am sorry.
He admits he tried to win her by stealth, using
her garden as a ploy, and that he is ashamed of it. Seal smeared
with blood: the seal on the envelope is rubbed in the old way,
with blood, as in the Time of Isolation. No plea at the parting: he signs himself
hers to command, and asks for neither forgiveness nor an answer.
Gifts can be victories, the dowry it brings: victories, he
writes, cannot be gifts, but gifts can be victories; the garden
could have been her gift, a dowry of talent, skill and vision, and
a victory worthy of their House (chapter 11).
Nikolai Vorsoisson (Nikki) is Ekaterin’s 9-year old son: a compulsive collector of model jumpships who dreams of training as a pilot himself, and who warms to Miles almost instantly, tech-spec for tech-spec. He is also, in the space of a few days, dealt a second blow on top of his father’s death: informed that he has inherited Etienne’s Vorzohn’s Dystrophy. It is treatable, though even treated it would bar him from military pilot training; for a while what frightens him most is what his classmates will think. When you mess with Nikki refers to a political attack against Miles by the head of the Conservative Party, Count Boriz Vormoncrief , and his nephew Lieutenant Alexi Vormoncrief , including spreading rumors about Ekaterin and Miles, which they are unable to refute without revealing highly classified information.
Blackmailing Miles refers to a threat by Richars Vorrutyer
to formally charge Miles with the murder of Etienne Vorsoisson
unless he votes his father’s proxy in his favor. Anybody who knew
Miles well would have warned Richars that Miles did not respond
well to threats. Pretending to agree to do as Richars demanded,
Miles starts assembling allies to ensure that Richars will lose
the vote — Beware the fury of a patient man
(Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel).
While Nikki is alone, Alexi badgers him and attempts to get
information damaging to Miles, insisting that Miles murdered Etienne.
Ekaterin hears the commotion and is outraged (How dare you come in
here uninvited and interrogate my son without my permission!
), as
is Simon Illyan (A very good question, Lieutenant. Would you care
to answer it for both of our curiosities?
), who reports Alexi to the current head of ImpSec,
General Guy Allegre
.
This is one of the incidents that eventually leads to Emperor
Gregor Vorbarra
exiling him to
Kyril Island
,
a dead-end and unpleasant duty station where he can do no harm.
Meddlesome shavetails refers to Lieutenant Alexi Vormoncrief, who has spread rumors that Miles murdered Etienne and has badgered Nikki in the Vorthys home, outraging Ekaterin and Simon Illyan, the former head of ImpSec. Both chastise Alexi, and Simon files a complaint with Alexi’s superior officer. Due to the political and diplomatic ramifications, Simon’s formal complaint to ImpSec goes up all the way to Gregor.
Nikki is distressed, and Miles asks Emperor Gregor Vorbarra to tell Nikki as much as he can. The emperor swears Nikki to secrecy, explains that there are some things that he cannot be told, tells Nikki that the rumors are false and gives him permission to call if he feels the need to discuss it further.
Gullible inlaws refers to Etienne’s cousin Vassily Vorsoisson , who is Nikki’s legal guardian under Barrayar’s archaic patriarchal laws; Lt. Vormoncrief has panicked him and Ekaterin’s brother Hugo Vorvayne , claiming that Miles murdered Etienne. Hugo and Vassily threaten to take Nikki away unless she stops seeing Miles. She agrees to stop seeing Miles temporarily, but not permanently.
trial refers to the trial of Richars Vorrutyer for plotting the castration of his cousin and rival Dono (née Donna).
Later, Lt. Vormoncrief convinces them that it is dangerous for
Nikki to be near Miles or even to remain in the capital, and they
attempt to take Nikki away. When Nikki balks, Vassily demands,
Madame, control your child!
Ekaterin, silkily: Why,
Vassily, I thought you were revoking my authority over Nikki. You
certainly don’t seem to trust my judgment for his safety and
well-being. How shall I control him, then?
Aunt Vorthys catches
the nuance, and so does Hugo, father of three: she has just given
Nikki tacit permission to go to his limit. Bachelor Vassily misses
the curve. Cornered, Nikki threatens,
I’ll tell them you’re kidnapping me for ‘moral
purposes’!
— a phrase whose meaning he plainly
doesn’t know, to Vassily’s bafflement. Nikki bolts
upstairs and barricades himself in Professor Vorthys’s study.
Vassily demands a screwdriver to break in; Ekaterin, arms folded,
tells him Find it yourself
(leaving you blundering
nitwit unspoken but understood). In an absolutely hilarious
scene, Ekaterin, who normally controls Nikki’s assertive
streak,
gives him free rein, and Aunt Vorthys, noticing that the bathroom
connects her own bedroom to the study — a second, unguarded
way in that the two men pressing their ears to the door haven’t
thought of — says nothing. Nikki calls Emperor Gregor, and ImpSec brings
the entire party to Vorhartung Castle, where Gregor is presiding
over the Council of Counts that day. The emperor
rebukes
"Your concern is laudable but not necessary.
Your gullibility is less laudable. Correct it, please."
and "Madame Vorsoisson has my full trust, Lieutenant;
I recommend you give her yours."
Vassily for his gullibility.
Swords in a barrel: the day after Vassily’s visit, Ekaterin finds Miles sorting the north wing attic of Vorkosigan House, among swords thrust into barrels, a trunk of obsolete energy weapons with a sack of Cetagandan scalps, and Princess-and-Countess Olivia’s carved saddle, which he means to restore and ride rather than have appraised. She has come to give him up. Talking of her broken marriage oath, she learns that he was not medically discharged: Illyan fired him for falsifying a report about his seizures. Asked how he could take the Auditor’s oath after that, he asks whether her honor did not come with a reset button, and points to his navel (chapter 17).
Nikki is defiant, his spirit not broken refers to Nikki refusing to go with Vassily, dodging his grab, and threatening to tell everyone Vassily is kidnapping him — and that he’s not his father, both true.
Of bathroom to backstairs, no warning is spoken refers to
the bathroom connecting Aunt Vorthys’s room to the study
where Nikki has barricaded himself. Ekaterin realizes that Nikki is
about to call Gregor, and keeps quiet: like her aunt, she
doesn’t point out that unguarded route to Vassily and Hugo.
For a moment she considers dashing round to shut the comconsole down,
then thinks instead: Let’s see what happens. Yes.
Let’s. It is anticipated schadenfreude: she knows who is
about to answer, and what that will mean for the two men pressing
their ears to the wrong door.
A separate matter, not part of this verse: when Vassily demands a
screwdriver to force the same door — her uncle’s own
study, an Imperial Auditor’s — Ekaterin denies him even
that much help. Find it yourself.
She doesn’t add
you blundering nitwit
aloud, quite, but it seems to be
understood.
A comconsole rings refers to Nikki using the blank,
unmarked code-card Gregor gave him earlier — a direct line
to the Emperor’s own comconsole channel, reserved for
a very few friends and relatives
. Gregor had offered it for
a narrower purpose, someone to talk to about the rumors over his
father’s death, not rescue from a custody fight; Nikki
stretches its intended use, but under the circumstances the
stretch is justified.
Responds to his outcry refers to the emperor ordering
everyone involved in trying to take Nikki away brought to
Vorhartung Castle for an inquiry. When he hears of Lieutenant Vormoncrief’s role
in convincing Nikki’s relatives to take him away from
Ekaterin,
Gregor is
angry
Gerard, take a note. This is the third time this month
that the busy Lieutenant Vormoncrief has come to my
negative attention in matters touching political concerns.
Remind Us to find him a post somewhere in the Empire
where he may be less busy.
,
at Lieutenant Vormoncrief’s repeated interference,
provoking Gregor to exile him to
Kyril Island
,
a dead-end and unpleasant duty station where he can do no harm.
The face of the tyrant with sweat shortly glistens refers
to Vassily, hauled before the Emperor in a private side chamber at
Vorhartung Castle and rebuked: Your concern is laudable but not
necessary. Your gullibility is less laudable. Correct it,
please,
followed by Madame Vorsoisson has my full trust,
Lieutenant; I recommend you give her yours.
Sweet Nemesis refers to Alexi Vormoncrief getting the same dressing-down in the same audience that sends him to Kyril Island — see “Responds to his outcry,” above.
Ekaterin’s retort refers to Ekaterin
cross-examining Richars over his accusation that Miles murdered
Etienne: mid-argument she pauses to
propose
marriage to Miles on the spot, then resumes and finishes off
Richars’s case, capping it off with a single word aimed
squarely at him: “twit.”
You are mistaken, Lord Richars,
she snapped down at him.
Not your first mistake, apparently.
...
That’s your idea of proof?
Ekaterin snarled.
Fine. Your legal theory is easily demolished–.
...
Let’s finish this. Lord Vorkosigan!
Miles jerked in his seat, taken by surprise. Madame?
He made a little half-bow gesture. Yours to command...
Good. Will you marry me?
...
So much for that line of reasoning, Lord Richars,
Ekaterin finished. She sat back, and added, by no means under
her breath, Twit.