Vorkosigan's Game

An omnibus edition.

• The Vor Game (1990)
• Borders of Infinity (a collection, 1989)
  • Borders of Infinity (a framing story for this collection, 1989)
  • The Mountains of Mourning (1989)
  • Labyrinth (1989)
  • The Borders of Infinity (1987)

Miles Naismith Vorkosigan was not a mutant, though he was often mistaken for one. His home, Barrayar, was a militant world shaped by a bitter history and political strife. Years earlier, an assassin had chosen poison gas for an attack on Aral Vorkosigan, former Regent of the Barrayaran Empire – now Prime Minister – and the pregnant Lady Cordelia. They survived; unborn Miles was the terrorist's only real victim. Cursed with brittle bones that neither grew nor healed properly, a dwarf-like body and a face prematurely lined with the agony of too many corrective surgeries – and too many people who could not accept his difference – Miles refused to hide behind his Vor rank. With a brilliant mind, courage honed by a desire for adventure, and an ever-ready sense of the absurd, he carved out his own place in the galactic scheme...

"The Mountains of Mourning" (included with two other novellas in Borders of Infinity). It was just after his hard-won graduation from the Imperial Academy and before he began active duty that Miles met the hill woman. Distraught, she claimed her husband had murdered their baby daughter, who'd been born defective – an old back-country practice for culling mutants, now illegal but impossible to stamp out. The woman demanded Lord Vorkosigan's justice, and she was no less surprised than Miles himself when he was appointed his father's Voice in the matter. But he did indeed exact justice – for the sake of a child whose needless death would haunt him all his days...

The Vor Game. Every cadet wants space duty; many are disappointed. In Ensign Miles Vorkosigan's case, however, being assigned as Meteorological Officer at a remote arctic base was more than disappointing; it came close to being deadly. The commander of "Camp Permafrost" was a brutal, vindictive reactionary who despised Miles on sight. When the C.O. decided a mass murder was in order to put down what he deemed a mutiny, Miles had little trouble choosing which side he was on. That decision ended his meteorological career... and started him on his highly irregular way up in the Emperor's Service – first with a job in Imperial Security, then on to an admiralty! Well, it wasn't an official commission...