Falling Free (Vorkosigan Saga)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “This is mutiny!” yelled Van Atta.

  “No, it isn’t,” Bannerji disagreed cordially. “This isn’t the military.”

  Van Atta glared red-faced at Bannerji, who studied his fingernails. With an oath, Van Atta flung himself into the weapons console seat and reset the aim. He might have known—anything you wanted done right you had to do yourself—he hesitated, the engineering parameters of the D-class superjumpers racing through his mind. Where on that complex structure might a hit not merely disable the rods, but cause the main thrusters to blow entirely?

  Cremation, indeed. And the deaths of the four or five downsiders aboard could, at need, be blamed on Bannerji—I did my best, ma’am—if he’d done his job as I’d first requested …

  The schematic spun in the vid display. There must be a point in the structure—yes. There and there. If he could knock out both that control nexus and those coolant lines, he could start an uncontrolled reaction that would result in—promotion, probably, after the dust had settled. Apmad would kiss him. Just like a heroic doctor, single-handedly stopping a plague of genetic abomination from spreading across the galaxy …

  The target schematic pulled toward alignment again. Van Atta’s sweating palm closed around the firing switch. In a moment—just a moment—

  “What are you doing with that, Dr. Yei?” asked Bannerji’s voice, startled.

  “Applying psychology.”

  The back of Van Atta’s head seemed to explode with a sickening crack. He pitched forward, cutting his chin on the console, bumping the keypads, turning his firing program to confetti-colored hash in the vid. He saw stars inside the shuttle, blurring purple and green spots—gasping, he straightened back up.

  “Dr. Yei,” Bannerji objected, “if you’re trying to knock a man out you’ve got to hit him a lot harder than that.”

  Yei recoiled fearfully as Van Atta surged up out of his seat. “I didn’t want to risk killing him… .”

  “Why not?” muttered Bannerji under his breath.

  Furiously, Van Atta’s hands closed around Yei’s wrist. He yanked the metal wrench from her grasp. “You can’t do anything right, can you?” he snarled.

  She was gasping and weeping. Fors, space-suited but still minus his helmet, stuck his head through again from the rear compartment. “What the hell is going on up here?”

  Van Atta shoved Yei toward him. Bannerji, squirming uncomfortably in his seat, was clearly not to be trusted. “Hold onto this crazy bitch. She just tried to kill me with a wrench.”

  “Oh? She told me she needed it to adjust a seat attitude,” remarked Fors. “Or—did she say ‘seat’?” But he held Yei’s arms. Her struggle, as ever, was weak and futile.

  With a hiss, Van Atta heaved himself back into the weapons console seat and called up the targeting program again. He reset it, and switched on the view from the exterior scanners. The D-620–Habitat configuration stood out vividly in the vid, the cold and distant sunlight silver-gilding its structure. The schematics converged, caging it.

  The D-620 wavered, rotated, and vanished.

  The lasers fired, lances of light striking into empty space.

  Van Atta howled, beating his fists on the console, blood droplets flicking from his chin. “They got out. They got out. They got out—”

  Yei giggled.

  *

  Leo hung limply in his seat restraints, laughter bubbling in his throat. “We made it!”

  Ti swung his headset up and sat no less limply, his face white and lined—jumps drained pilots. Leo felt as if he’d just been twisted inside out himself, squeaking, but the nausea passed quickly.

  “Your mirror was in spec, Leo,” Ti said faintly.

  “Yes. I’d been afraid it might explode, during the stresses of the jump.”

  Ti eyed him indignantly. “That’s not what you said. I thought you were the hot-shot testing engineer.”

  “Look, I’d never made one of those things before,” Leo protested. “You never know. You only make the best possible guesses.” He sat up, trying to gather his scattered wits. “We’re here. We made it. But what’s going on Outside, was there any damage to the Habitat—Silver, see what you can get on the com.”

  She too was pale. “My goodness.” She blinked. “So that was a jump. Sort of like six hours of Dr. Yei’s truth serum all squeezed into a second. Ugh. Are we going to be doing this a lot?”

  “I certainly hope so,” said Leo. He unstrapped himself and floated over to assist her.

  Space around the wormhole was empty and serene—Leo’s secret paranoid vision of jumping into waiting military fire was not to be, he noted gladly. But wait, a ship was approaching them—not a commercial vessel, something dangerous and official-looking… .

  “It’s some sort of police ship from Orient IV,” Silver guessed. “Are we in trouble?”

  “Undoubtedly,” Dr. Minchenko’s voice cut in as he floated into Nav and Com. “GalacTech will certainly not take this lying down. You will do us all a favor, Graf, if you let me do the talking just now.” He elbowed both Silver and Leo aside, taking over the com. “The Minister of Health of Orient IV happens to be a professional colleague of mine. While his is not a position of great political power, it is a channel of communication to the highest levels of government. If I can get through to him we will be in a much better position than if we try to deal with some low-level police sergeant, or worse, military officer.” Minchenko’s eyes glinted. “There is no love lost between GalacTech and Orient IV at the moment. Whatever GalacTech’s charges, we can counter—tax fraud—oh, the possibilities… .”

  “What do we do while you’re talking?” asked Ti.

  “Keep boosting,” advised Minchenko.

  “It’s not over, is it?” Silver said quietly to Leo, as they floated out of Minchenko’s way. “Somehow, I thought our troubles would be over if only we could get away from Mr. Van Atta.”

  Leo shook his head. A jubilant grin still kept crooking up the corner of his mouth. He took one of her upper hands. “Our troubles would have been over if Brucie-baby had scored a hit. Or if the vortex mirror had blown up in the middle of the jump, or if—don’t be afraid of troubles, Silver. They’re a sign of life. We’ll deal with them together— tomorrow.”

  She breathed a long sigh, the tension draining from her face, her body, her arms. An answering smile at last lighted her eyes, making them bright like stars. She turned her face expectantly toward his.

  He found himself grinning quite foolishly, for a man pushing forty. He tried to twitch his face into more dignified lines. There was a pause.

  “Leo,” said Silver in a tone of sudden insight, “are you shy?”

  “Who, me?” said Leo.

  The blue stars squeezed for a moment into quite predatory glitters. She kissed him. Leo, indignant at her accusation, kissed her back more thoroughly. Now it was her turn to grin foolishly. A lifetime with the quaddies, Leo reflected, could be all right… .

  They turned their faces to the new sun.

  FIN

  Author’s Note

  The Vorkosigan Saga Reading Order Debate: The Chef Recommends

  Many pixels have been expended debating the ‘best’ order in which to read what have come to be known as the Vorkosigan Books, the Vorkosiverse, the Miles books, and other names, since I neglected to supply the series with a label myself. The debate now wrestles with some fourteen or so volumes and counting, and mainly revolves around publication order versus internal-chronological order. I favor internal chronological, with a few caveats.

  I have always resisted numbering my volumes; partly because, in the early days, I thought the books were distinct enough; latterly because if I ever decided to drop in a prequel somewhere (which in fact I did most lately with Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance) it would upwhack the numbering system. Nevertheless, the books and stories do have a chronological order, if not a strict one.

  It was always my
intention to write each book as a stand-alone so that the reader could theoretically jump in anywhere, yes, with that book that’s in your hand right now, don’t put it back on the shelf! While still somewhat true, as the series developed it acquired a number of sub-arcs, closely related tales that were richer for each other. I will list the sub-arcs, and then the books, and then the caveats.

  Shards of Honor and Barrayar. The first two books in the series proper, they detail the adventures of Cordelia Naismith of Beta Colony and Aral Vorkosigan of Barrayar. Shards was my very first novel ever; Barrayar was actually my eighth, but continues the tale the next day after the end of Shards. For readers who want to be sure of beginning at the beginning, or who are very spoiler-sensitive, start with these two.

  The Warrior’s Apprentice and The Vor Game (with, perhaps, the novella “The Mountains of Mourning” tucked in between.) The Warrior’s Apprentice introduces the character who became the series’ linchpin, Miles Vorkosigan; the first book tells how he created a space mercenary fleet by accident; the second how he fixed his mistakes from the first round. Space opera and military-esque adventure (and a number of other things one can best discover for oneself), The Warrior’s Apprentice makes another good place to jump into the series for readers who prefer a young male protagonist.

  After that: Brothers in Arms should be read before Mirror Dance, and both, ideally, before Memory.

  Komarr makes another good alternate entry point for the series, picking up Miles’s second career at its start. It should be read before A Civil Campaign.

  Borders of Infinity, a collection of three of the five currently extant novellas, makes a good Miles Vorkosigan early-adventure sampler platter, I always thought, for readers who don’t want to commit themselves to length. (But it may make more sense if read after The Warrior’s Apprentice.) Take care not to confuse the collection-as-a-whole with its title story, “The Borders of Infinity”.

  Falling Free takes place 200 years earlier in the timeline and does not share settings or characters with the main body of the series. Most readers recommend picking up this story later. It should likely be read before Diplomatic Immunity, however, which revisits the “quaddies”, a bioengineered race of free fall dwellers, in Miles’s time.

  The novels in the internal-chronological list below appear in italics; the novellas (officially defined as a story between 17,500 words and 40,000 words, though mine usually run 20k - 30k words) in quote marks.

  Falling Free

  Shards of Honor

  Barrayar

  The Warrior’s Apprentice

  “The Mountains of Mourning”

  “Weatherman”

  The Vor Game

  Cetaganda

  Ethan of Athos

  Borders of Infinity

  “Labyrinth”

  “The Borders of Infinity”

  Brothers in Arms

  Mirror Dance

  Memory

  Komarr

  A Civil Campaign

  “Winterfair Gifts”

  Diplomatic Immunity

  Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance

  CryoBurn

  Caveats:

  The novella “Weatherman” is an out-take from the beginning of the novel The Vor Game. If you already have The Vor Game, you likely don’t need this.

  The original ‘novel’ Borders of Infinity was a fix-up collection containing the three novellas “The Mountains of Mourning”, “Labyrinth”, and “The Borders of Infinity”, together with a frame story to tie the pieces together. Again, beware duplication. The frame story does not stand alone, and mainly is of interest to completists.

  The Fantasy Novels

  My fantasy novels are a bit easier to order. Easiest of all is The Spirit Ring, which is a stand-alone, or aquel, as some wag once dubbed books that for some obscure reason failed to spawn a subsequent series. Next easiest are the four volumes of The Sharing Knife—in order, Beguilement, Legacy, Passage, and Horizon—which I broke down and actually numbered, as this was one continuous tale divided into non-wrist-breaking chunks.

  What have come to be called the Chalion books, after the setting of its first two volumes, were also written, like the Vorkosigan books, to be stand-alones as part of a larger whole, and can in theory be read in any order. (The third book actually takes place a few hundred years prior to the more closely connected first two.) Some readers think the world-building is easier to assimilate when the books are read in publication order, and the second volume certainly contains spoilers for the first (but not the third.) In any case, the publication order is:

  The Curse of Chalion

  Paladin of Souls

  The Hallowed Hunt

  The short story collection Proto Zoa was an e-book experiment; it contains five very early tales—three (1980s) contemporary fantasy, two science fiction—all previously published but not in this handy format. The novelette “Dreamweaver’s Dilemma” may be of interest to Vorkosigan completists, as it is the first story in which that proto-universe began, mentioning Beta Colony but before Barrayar was even thought of.

  Happy reading!

  — Lois McMaster Bujold.

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  Photo by Carol Collins

  www.dendarii.com

  www.spectrumliteraryagency.com/bujold.htm

  Lois McMaster Bujold was born in 1949, the daughter of an engineering professor at Ohio State University, from whom she picked up her early interest in science fiction. She now lives in Minneapolis, and has two grown children. She began writing with the aim of professional publication in 1982. She wrote three novels in three years; in October of 1985, all three sold to Baen Books, launching her career. Bujold went on to write many other books for Baen, mostly featuring her popular character Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, his family, friends, and enemies. Her books have been translated into twenty-one languages. Her fantasy from Eos includes the award-winning Chalion series and the Sharing Knife series.