The Vor Game

A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind.

Cecil flashed a grin. "Quite. Plus your rather irritating habit of treating your superior officers as your, ah..." Cecil paused, apparently groping again for just the right word. "Equals?" Miles hazarded. "Cattle," Cecil corrected judiciously.

Think of the glory. Think of your reputation. Think how great it'll look on your next resume." On my cenotaph, you mean. Nobody will be able to collect enough of my scattered atoms to bury. You going to cover my funeral expenses, son?" Splendidly. Banners, dancing girls, and enough beer to float your coffin to Valhalla." - Miles coaxing Ky Tung to agree to an almost suicidal mission

The fourth approved approach for the problem of frontally attacking a guarded wormhole was to shoot the officer who suggested it.

It reminded him of that definition of his father's. A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind. The mind was the first and final battleground; the stuff in between was just noise.

War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.

Miles added it to his life's lessons list. Call it Rule 27B. Never make key tactical decisions while having electro-convulsive seizures.

Very good. But your most insidious chronic problem is in the area of . . . how shall I put this precisely . . . subordination. You argue too much.” “No, I don’t,” Miles began indignantly, then shut his mouth.

He bit his fingernails. He bit his toenails. He pulled tiny green threads from his shirt and tried flossing his teeth. Then he tried making little green designs with tiny, tiny knots. Then he hit on the idea of weaving messages. Could he macramé "Help, I am a prisoner . . ." and plant it on the back of someone's jacket by static charge? If someone ever came back, that is? He got as far as a delicate gossamer H, E, L, caught the thread on a hangnail while rubbing his stubbled chin, and reduced his plea to an illegible green wad. He pulled another thread and started over.

It’s so obviously bogus, no one will look for a second layer of, er, bogusity.

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.

But your most insidious chronic problem is in the area of, how shall I put this precisely, subordination. You argue too much.” “No I don’t!” Miles began indignantly, then shut his mouth. Cecil flashed a grin. “Quite. Plus your rather irritating habit of treating your superior officers as your…uh…” Cecil paused apparently groping again for just the right word. “Equals?” Miles hazarded. “Cattle.” Cecil corrected judiciously. To be driven to your will.

Carry on. Remember, I want maximum inefficiency, incompetence, and error. On the Vervani channels, that is. You’ve worked with trainees, surely. Be creative.

Elena’s eye lit with a skewed enthusiasm. “Dear God, Miles. Metzov—Oser—Ungari—all in a row—you sure are hard on your commanding officers. What are you going to do when the time comes to let them all out?” Miles shook his head mutely. “I don’t know.

Miles looked up at his father. “Did I do the right thing, sir? Last night?” “Yes,” said the Count simply. “A right thing. Perhaps not the best of all possible right things. Three days from now you may think of a cleverer tactic, but you were the man on the ground at the time. I try not to second-guess my field commanders.” Miles’s heart rose in his aching chest for the first time since he’d left Kyril Island. He nodded, satisfied.

But your most insidious chronic problem is in the area of . . . how shall I put this precisely . . . subordination. You argue too much.” “No, I don’t,” Miles began indignantly, then shut his mouth.

Other than that, how was Kyril Island, Ensign Vorkosigan?” inquired the Count. “You didn’t vid home much, your mother noticed.” “I was busy. Lessee. The climate was ferocious, the terrain was lethal, a third of the population including my immediate superior was dead drunk most of the time. The average IQ equaled the mean temperature in degrees cee, there wasn’t a woman for five hundred kilometers in any direction, and the base commander was a homicidal psychotic. Other than that, it was lovely.

Miles swallowed icy spit. Those who do not know their history, his thought careened, are doomed to keep stepping in it. Alas, so were those who did, it seemed.

There will be a ten percent surcharge for resisting arrest,

It’s possible we’re being hustled into doing just this, cutting and running.” “I don’t see how anyone could have anticipated my information source in Polian civil security. I think we’re meant to be locked up here in dock.” Ungari tapped his right fist into his palm once, a gesture of decision this time. “The Consortium it is.” He wheeled and exited, boots tromping down the deck. A change of vibration and air pressure, and a few muted clanks, told Miles their ship was now breaking from Pol Six. Miles said aloud to the empty cabin, “But what if they have plans for both contingencies? I would.” He shook his head doubtfully, and rose to dress and follow Ungari. Chapter Nine The Jacksonian Consortium’s jump-point station, Miles decided, differed from Pol’s mainly in the assortment of things its merchants offered for sale. He stood before the book-disk dispenser in a concourse very like Pol Six’s and flicked the vid fast-forward through a huge catalogue of pornography. Well, mostly fast-forward; his search was punctuated by a few pauses, from bemused to stunned. Nobly resisting curiosity, he reached the military history section only to find a disappointingly thin collection of titles. He inserted his credit card and the machine dispensed three wafers. Not that he was all that interested in The Adumbration of Trigonial Strategy in the Wars of Minos IV, but it was going to be a long, dull ride home, and Sergeant Overholt did not promise to be the most sparkling of traveling companions. Miles pocketed the disks and sighed. What a waste of time, effort, and anticipation this mission had been. Ungari had arranged for the ‘sale’ of Victor Rotha’s ship, pilot, and engineer to a front man who would deliver it, eventually, back to Barrayaran Imperial Security. Miles’s pleading suggestions to his superior on how to make more use of Rotha, Naismith, or even Ensign Vorkosigan had then been interrupted by an ultra-coded message from ImpSec HQ, for Ungari’s eyes only. Ungari had withdrawn to decode it, and emerged half an hour later, dead-white around the lips. He had then moved up his timetable and departed within the hour on a commercial ship to Aslund Station. Alone. Refusing to impart the contents of the message to Miles, or even to

The key of strategy, little Vor,” she explained kindly, “is not to choose a path to victory, but to choose so that all paths lead to a victory.

The trick was to pick out what was important, and never, ever to forget that the map was not the territory.

Harder to make peace, between totally vile enemies,” Miles reflected. “War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It’s peace that’s wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.

If two groups can cooperate to the incredible extent it takes to meet in battle, why not put in a tenth that effort to talk?

A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind. The mind was the first and final battleground; the stuff in between was just noise.

A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind.’ The mind was the first and final battleground. The stuff in between was just noise.

He’d slam his fist into the wall in frustration but the wall was sure to slam back with greater devastation.

Estas luchas por el poder le resultan extrañas, le repugnan, creo. Él es un técnico de corazón; ve un trabajo a realizar y lo hace.