Captain Vorpatril's alliance

Rish scanned down the file. “‘Officers called to domestic altercation…vandalism reported at bubble‑car platform…attempted credit chit fraud by a group of minors…’ Oh, here’s one. ‘Beating interrupted of man spotted by bar patrons stealing public emergency breath masks. Suspect arrested, patrons thanked.’ I suppose I can see why no one would have to pay for that arrest order…The Solstice patrollers were busy enough last night, but really, the crime here seems very dull.”

“I think it’s restful. Anyway, bath’s yours, if you want it. It’s really nice, compared to that dreadful sonic shower we’ve been living with lately. I can recommend it.”

“I believe I will,” Rish allowed. She stood and stretched, looking around. “Posh place. You have to wonder how he can afford it on a Barrayaran military officer’s salary. I never had the impression those fellows were overpaid. And their command doesn’t let them hustle on the side.” She sniffed at this waste of human resources.

“I don’t think it’s his real home, that’s back on Barrayar. He’s just here for some work thing.” Recently arrived, judging from the contents of his kitchenette, or maybe he didn’t cook? Tej nodded at the comconsole. “I wonder how much we could find out just by looking him up?”

Rish’s golden eyebrows rose. “Surely this benighted Imperium doesn’t allow its military secrets out on the commercial planetary net of its conquest.”

Throughout the Jackson’s Whole system, information was tightly controlled, for the money, power, and security it could bestow, and for that narrow edge that could mean the difference between a deal succeeding or failing. At the other extreme, Tej’s favorite tutors from her youth, a trio of Betans her parents had imported at great trouble and expense, had described a planetary information network on their homeworld that seemed open to the point of madness‑suicide, perhaps. Yet somehow Beta Colony remained, famously, one of the most scientifically advanced and innovative planets in the Nexus, which was why the tutors had been imported. Of all the instructors she’d been plagued with, the Betans were the only ones whose departure she’d mourned when, homesick, they had declined to renew their contracts for another year. Most other planetary or system polities fell somewhere between the two extremes of attempted information control.

“I think we may be thinking too hard,” said Tej. “We don’t need to start with his secrets, just with what everybody else knows.” Everybody but us.

Rish pursed her lips, nodded, and stepped aside. “Have at it. Shout out if you find anything useful.”

Tej took her seat. Stuck hiding in their flat, Rish had been allowed far more time to learn the arcana of making this net disgorge data than Tej, but how common could that odd name be? She leaned over and entered it.

A Komarran database was the first to pop up above the vid plate, bearing the promising title of The Vor of Barrayar. All in alphabetical order, starting with V and ending with V. Oh. There were, it seemed, hundreds and hundreds of Vorpatrils scattered across the three planets of the Barrayaran Empire. She tried reordering the names by significance.

At the top of that list was one Count Falco Vorpatril. The Counts of Barrayar were the chiefs of their clans, each commanding a major territorial District on the north continent of their planet. In their way, Tej supposed they were the equivalents of a Jacksonian Great House barons, except that they came by their positions by mere inheritance, instead of having to work and scheme for them. It seemed a poor system to her, one that did nothing to assure that only the strongest and smartest rose to the top. Or the most treacherous, she was uncomfortably reminded. Count Falco, a bluff, hearty looking, white‑haired man, had no son named Ivan. Pass on.

Several high‑ranking military officers followed, and some Imperial and provincial government men with assorted opaque and archaic‑sounding titles. There was an Admiral Eugin Vorpatril, but he had no son named Ivan either.

Belatedly, she remembered the little paper cards from Vorpatril’s pocket. There were several Ivan Vorpatrils, including a school administrator on Sergyar and a wine merchant on the South Continent, but only one Ivan Xav.

His entry was short, half a screen, but it did have a confirming vid scan. It seemed to be of him as much a younger officer, though, suggesting that he had improved with age. Tej wasn’t sure how such a stiff, formal portrait could still look feckless. His birth date put him at 34 standard‑years old, now. The entry listed his father, Lord Padma Xav Vorpatril, as deceased, and his mother, Lady Alys Vorpatril, as still living.

Her eye paused, arrested. His father’s death date was the same as his birth date. That’s odd. So, her Ivan Xav was half an orphan, and had been so for a long time. That seemed…painless. You could not miss, fiercely and daily, a man you’d never met.