The Vor Game

by Lois McMaster Bujold

A few kilometers past the last practice fields, a row of turf-topped barrows hunched in the snow. A cluster of vehicles was parked at the end of one bunker—a couple of scat-cats, including the one belonging to the base fire marshal, and medical transport. Hand-lights moved among them. Bonn slewed in and pulled up, and popped his door. Miles followed him, crunching rapidly across the packed ice.

  The surgeon was directing a pair of corpsmen, who were loading a foil-blanketed shape and a second coverall-clad soldier who shivered and coughed onto the med transport. “All of you, put everything you're wearing into the destruct bin when you hit the door,” he called after them. “Blankets, bedding, splints, everything. Full decontamination showers for you all before you even start to worry about that broken leg of his. The pain-killer will hold him through it, and if it doesn't, ignore him and keep scrubbing. I'll be right behind you.” The surgeon shuddered, turning away, whistling dismay through his teeth.

  Bonn headed for the bunker door. “Don't open that!” the surgeon and the fire marshal called together. “There's nobody left inside,” the surgeon added. “All evacuated now."

  “What exactly happened?” Bonn scrubbed with a gloved hand at the frosted window set in the door, in an effort to see inside.

  “Couple of guys were moving stores, to make room for a new shipment coming in tomorrow,” the fire marshall, a lieutenant named Yaski, filled him in rapidly. “They dumped their loader over, one got pinned underneath with a broken leg."

  “That ... took ingenuity,” said Bonn, obviously picturing the mechanics of the loader in his mind.

  “They had to have been horsing around,” said the surgeon impatiently. “But that's not the worst of it. They took several barrels of fetaine over with them. And at least two broke open. The stuffs all over the place in there. We've sealed the bunker as best we could.

  Clean-up,” the surgeon exhaled, “is your problem. I'm gone.” He looked like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin, as well as his clothes. He waved, making quickly for his scat-cat to follow his corpsmen and their patients through medical decontamination.

  “Fetaine!” Miles exclaimed in startlement. Bonn had retreated hastily from the door. Fetaine was a mutagenic poison invented as a terror weapon but never, so far as Miles knew, used in combat. “I thought that stuff was obsolete. Off the menu.” His academy course in Chemicals and Biologicals had barely mentioned it.

  “It is obsolete,” said Bonn grimly. “They haven't made any in twenty years. For all I know this is the last stockpile on Barrayar. Dammit, those storage barrels shouldn't have broken open even if you'd dropped ‘em out a shuttle."

  “Those storage barrels are at least twenty years old, then,” the marshal pointed out. “Corrosion?"

  “In that case,” Bonn craned his neck, “what about the rest of them?"

  “Exactly,” nodded Yaski.

  “Isn't fetaine destroyed by heat?” Miles asked nervously, checking to make sure they were standing around discussing this upwind of the bunker. “Chemically dissociated into harmless components, I heard."

  “Well, not exactly harmless,” said Lieutenant Yaski. “But at least they don't unravel all the DNA in your balls."

  “Are there any explosives stored in there, Lieutenant Bonn?” Miles asked.

  “No, only the fetaine."

  “If you tossed a couple of plasma mines through the door, would the fetaine all be chemically cracked before the roof melted in?"

  “You wouldn't want the roof to melt in. Or the floor. If that stuff ever got loose in the permafrost ... But if you set the mines on slow heat release, and threw a few kilos of neutral plas-seal in with ‘em, the bunker might be self-sealing.” Bonn's lips moved in silent calculation. “...Yeah, that'd work. In fact, that could be the safest way to deal with that crap. Particularly if the rest of the barrels are starting to lose integrity too."

  “Depending on which way the wind is blowing,” put in Lieutenant Yaski, looking back toward the base and then at Miles.

  “We're expecting a light east wind with dropping temperatures till about 0700 tomorrow morning,” Miles answered his look. “Then it'll shift around to the north and blow harder. Potential wah-wah conditions starting around 1800 tomorrow night."

  “If we're going to do it that way, we'd better do it tonight, then,” said Yaski.

  “All right,” said Bonn decisively. “I'll round up my crew, you round up yours. I'll pull the plans for the bunker, calculate the charges’ release-rate, and meet you and the ordnance chief in Admin in an hour."

  Bonn posted the fire marshal's sergeant as guard to keep everyone well away from the bunker. An unenviable duty, but not unbearable in present conditions, and the guard could retreat inside his scat-cat when the temperature dropped, toward midnight. Miles rode back with Bonn to the base Administration building to double-check his promises about wind direction at the weather office.

  * * * *

  Miles ran the latest data through the weather computers, that he might present Bonn with the most refined possible update on predicted wind vectors over the next 26.7-hour Barrayaran day. But before he had the printout in his hand, he saw Bonn and Yaski out the window, down below, hurrying away from the Admin building into the dark. Perhaps they were meeting with the ordnance chief elsewhere? Miles considered chasing after them, but the new prediction was not significantly different from the older one. Did he really need to go watch them cauterize the poison dump? It could be interesting—educational—on the other hand, he had no real function there now. As his parents’ only child—as the father, perhaps, of some future Count Vorkosigan—it was arguable if he even had the right to expose himself to such a vile mutagenic hazard for mere curiosity. There seemed no immediate danger to the base, till the wind shifted anyway. Or was cowardice masquerading as logic? Prudence was a virtue, he had heard.

  Now thoroughly awake, and too rattled to even imagine recapturing sleep, he pottered around the weather office, and caught up on all the routine files he had set aside that morning in favor of the repairs junket. An hour of steady plugging finished off everything that even remotely looked like work. When he found himself compulsively dusting equipment and shelves, he decided it was time to go back to bed, sleep or no sleep. But a shifting light from the window caught his eye, a scat-cat pulling up out front.

  Ah, Bonn and Yaski, back. Already? That had been fast, or hadn't they started yet? Miles tore off the plastic flimsy with the new wind readout and headed downstairs to the Base Engineering office at the end of the corridor.

  Bonn's office was dark. But light spilled into the corridor from the Base Commander's office. Light, and angry voices rising and falling. Clutching the flimsy, Miles approached.

  The door was open to the inner office. Metzov sat at his desk console, one clenched fist resting on the flickering colored surface. Bonn and Yaski stood tensely before him. Miles rattled the flimsy cautiously to announce his presence.

  Yaski's head swivelled around, and his gaze caught Miles. “Send Vorkosigan, he's a mutant already, isn't he?"

  Miles gave a vaguely-directed salute and said immediately, “Pardon me, sir, but no, I'm not. My last encounter with a military poison did teratogenic damage, not genetic. My future children should be as healthy as the next man's. Ah, send me where, sir?"

  Metzov glowered across at Miles, but did not pursue Yaski's unsettling suggestion. Miles handed the flimsy wordlessly to Bonn, who glanced at it, grimaced, and stuffed it savagely into his trouser pocket.

  “Of course I intended them to wear protective gear,” continued Metzov to Bonn in irritation. “I'm not mad."

  “I understood that, sir. But the men refuse to enter the bunker even with contamination gear,” Bonn reported in a flat, steady voice. “I can't blame them. The standard precautions are inadequate for fetaine, in my estimation. The stuff has an incredibly high penetration value, for its molecular weight. Goes right through permeables."

  “You can't blame them?” repeated Metzov in astonishment.
“Lieutenant, you gave an order. Or you were supposed to."

  “I did, sir, but—"

  “But—you let them sense your own indecision. Your weakness. Dammit, when you give an order you have to give it, not dance around it."

  “Why do we have to save this stuff?” said Yaski plaintively.

  “We've been over that. It's our charge,” Metzov grunted at him. “Our orders. You can't ask a man to give an obedience you don't give yourself."

  What, blind? “Surely Research still has the recipe,” Miles put in, feeling he was at last getting the alarming drift of this argument. “They can mix up more if they really want it. Fresh."

  “Shut up, Vorkosigan,” Bonn growled desperately out of the corner of his mouth, as General Metzov snapped, “Open your lip tonight with one more sample of your humor, Ensign, and I'll put you on charges."

  Miles's lips closed over his teeth in a tight glassy smile. Subordination. The Prince Serg, he reminded himself. Metzov could go drink the fetaine, for all Miles cared, and it would be no skin off his nose. His clean nose, remember?

  “Have you never heard of the fine old battlefield practice of shooting the man who disobeys your order, Lieutenant?” Metzov went on to Bonn.

  “I ... don't think I can make that threat, sir,” said Bonn stiffly.

  And besides, thought Miles, we're not on a battlefield. Are we?

  “Techs!” said Metzov in a tone of disgust. “I didn't say threaten, I said shoot. Make one example, the rest will fall in line."

  Miles decided he didn't much care for Metzov's brand of humor, either. Or was the general speaking literally?

  “Sir, fetaine is a violent mutagen,” said Bonn doggedly. “I'm not at all sure the rest would fall into line, no matter what the threat. It's a pretty unreasonable topic. I'm ... a little unreasonable about it myself."

  “So I see.” Metzov stared at him coldly. His glare passed on to Yaski, who swallowed and stood straighter, his spine offering no concession. Miles tried to cultivate invisibility.

  “If you're going to go on pretending to be military officers, you techs need a lesson in how to extract obedience from your men, Metzov decided. “Both of you go and assemble your crew in front of Admin in twenty minutes. We're going to have a little old-fashioned discipline parade."

  “You're not—seriously thinking of shooting anyone, are you?” said Lieutenant Yaski in alarm.

  Metzov smiled sourly. “I doubt I'll have to.” He regarded Miles. “What's the outside temperature right now, Weather Officer?"

  “Five degrees of frost, sir,” replied Miles, careful now to speak only when spoken to.

  “And the wind?"

  “Winds from the east at nine kilometers per hour, sir."

  “Very good.” Metzov's eye gleamed wolfishly. “Dismissed, gentlemen. See if you can carry out your orders, this time."

  * * * *

  General Metzov stood, heavily gloved and parka-bundled, beside the empty metal bannerpole in front of Admin, and stared down the half-lit road. Looking for what? Miles wondered. It was pushing midnight now. Yaski and Bonn were lining up their tech crews in parade for array, some fifteen thermal-coveralled and parka-clad men.

  Miles shivered, and not just from the cold. Metzov's seamed face looked angry. And tired. And old. And scary. He reminded Miles a bit of his grandfather on a bad day. Though Metzov was in fact younger than Miles's father; Miles had been a child of his father's middle age, some generational skew there. His grandfather, the old General Count Piotr himself, had sometimes seemed a refugee from another century. Now, the really old-fashioned discipline parades had involved lead-lined rubber hoses. How far back in Barrayaran history was Metzov's mind rooted?

  Metzov smiled, a gloss over rage, and turned his head at a movement down the road. In a horribly cordial voice he confided to Miles, “You know, Ensign, there was a secret behind that carefully-cultivated interservice rivalry they had back on Old Earth. In the event of a mutiny you could always persuade the army to shoot the navy, or vice versa, when they could no longer discipline themselves. A hidden disadvantage to a combined Service like ours."

  “Mutiny!” said Miles, startled out of his resolve to speak only when spoken to. “I thought the issue was poison exposure."

  “It was. Unfortunately, due to Bonn's mishandling, it's now a matter of principle.” A muscle jumped in Metzov's jaw. “It had to happen sometime, in the New Service. The Soft Service."

  Typical Old Service talk, that, old men bullshitting each other about how tough they'd had it in the old days. “Principle, sir, what principle? It's waste disposal,” Miles choked.

  “It's a mass refusal to obey a direct order, Ensign. Mutiny by any barracks-lawyer's definition. Fortunately, this sort of thing is easy to dislocate, if you move quickly, while it's still small and confused."

  The motion down the road resolved itself into a platoon of grubs in their winter-white camouflage gear, marching under the direction of a Base sergeant. Miles recognized the sergeant as part of Metzov's personal power-net, an old veteran who'd served under Metzov as far back as the Komarr Revolt, and who had moved on with his master.

  The grubs, Miles saw, had been armed with lethal nerve-disruptors, which were purely anti-personnel hand weapons. For all the time they spent learning about such things, the opportunity for even advanced trainees such as these to lay hands on fully powered deadly weapons was rare, and Miles could sense their nervous excitement from here.

  The sergeant lined the grubs up in a cross-fire array around the stiff-standing techs, and barked an order. They presented their weapons, and aimed them, the silver bell-muzzles gleaming in the scattered light from the Admin building. A twitchy ripple ran through Bonn's men. Bonn's face was ghastly white, his eyes glittering like jet. “Strip,” Metzov ordered through set teeth.

  Disbelief, confusion; only one or two of the techs grasped what was being demanded, and began to undress. The others, with many uncertain glances around, belatedly followed suit.

  “When you are again ready to obey your orders,” Metzov continued in a parade-pitched voice that carried to every man, “you may dress and go to work. It's up to you.” He stepped back, nodded to his sergeant, and took up a pose of parade rest. “That'll cool ‘em off,” he muttered to himself, barely loud enough for Miles to catch. Metzov looked like he fully expected to be out there no more than five minutes; he looked like he was already thinking of warm quarters and a hot drink.

  Olney and Pattas were among the techs, Miles noted, along with most of the rest of the Greek-speaking cadre who had plagued Miles early on. Others Miles had seen around, or talked to during his private investigation into the background of the drowned man, or barely knew. Fifteen naked men starting to shiver violently as the dry snow whispered around their ankles. Fifteen bewildered faces beginning to look terrified. Eyes shifted toward the nerve-disruptors trained on them. Give in, Miles urged silently. It's not worth it. But more than one pair of eyes flickered at him, and squeezed shut in resolution.

  Miles silently cursed the anonymous clever boffin who'd invented fetaine as a terror weapon, not for his chemistry, but for his insight into the Barrayaran psyche. Fetaine could surely never have been used, could never be used. Any faction trying to do so must rise up against itself and tear apart in moral convulsions.

  Yaski, standing back from his men, looked thoroughly horrified. Bonn, his expression black and brittle as obsidian, began to strip off his gloves and parka.

  No, no, no! Miles screamed inside his head. If you join them they'll never back down. They'll know they're right. Bad mistake, bad ... Bonn dropped the rest of his clothes in a pile, marched forward, joined the line, wheeled, and locked eyes with Metzov. Metzov's eyes narrowed with new fury. “So,” he hissed, “you convict yourself. Freeze, then."

  How had things gone so bad, so fast? Now would be a good time to remember a duty in the weather office, and get the hell out of here, if only those shivering bastards would back down, Miles could get th
rough this night without a ripple in his record. He had no duty, no function here....

  Metzov's eye fell on Miles. “Vorkosigan, you can either take up a weapon and be useful, or consider yourself dismissed."

  He could leave. Could he leave? When he made no move, the sergeant walked over and thrust a nerve disrupter into Miles's hand. Miles took it up, still struggling to think with brains gone suddenly porridge. He did retain the wit to make sure the safety was “on” before pointing the disrupter vaguely in the direction of the freezing men.

  This isn't going to be a mutiny. It's going to be a massacre.

  One of the armed grubs giggled nervously. What had they been told they were doing? What did they believe they were doing? Eighteen-, nineteen-year-olds—could they even recognize a criminal order? Or know what to do about it if they did?

  Could Miles?

  The situation was ambiguous, that was the problem. It didn't quite fit. Miles knew about criminal orders, every academy man did. His father came down personally and gave a one-day seminar on the topic to the seniors at midyear. He'd made it a requirement to graduate, by Imperial fiat back when he'd been Regent. What exactly constituted a criminal order, when and how to disobey it. With vid evidence from various historical test cases and bad examples, including the politically disastrous Solstice Massacre, that had taken place under the Admiral's own command. Invariably one or more cadets had to leave the room to throw up during that part.

  The other instructors hated Vorkosigan's Day. Their classes were subtly disrupted for weeks afterward. One reason Admiral Vorkosigan didn't wait till any later in the year; he almost always had to make a return trip a few weeks after, to talk some disturbed cadet out of dropping out at almost the finale of his schooling. Only the academy cadets got this live lecture, as far as Miles knew, though his father talked of canning it on holovid and making it a part of basic training Service-wide. Parts of the seminar had been a revelation even to Miles.

  But this ... If the techs had been civilians, Metzov would clearly be in the wrong. If this had been in wartime, while being harried by some enemy, Metzov might be within his rights, even duty. This was somewhere between. Soldiers disobeying, but passively. Not an enemy in sight. Not even a physical situation threatening, necessarily, lives on the base (except theirs), though when the wind shifted that could change. I'm not ready for this, not yet, not so soon. What was right?