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were entirely laggard in obeying my position orders, and the quaddies' own militia, such as it is, was allowed to move into position around us. We froze in a standoff for almost two full days. Then we were ordered to stand down and wait your arrival."
    Thank all the gods for that . Military intelligence was as nothing to military stupidity. But to slide halfway to stupid and stop was rare indeed. Vorpatril deserved some credit for that, at least.
    Brun put in glumly, "Not much choice at that point. It's not as though we could threaten to blow up the station with our own ships in dock."
    "You couldn't blow up the station in any case," Miles pointed out mildly. "It would be mass murder. Not to mention a criminal order. The Emperor would have you shot."
    Brun flinched and subsided.
    Vorpatril's lips thinned. "The Emperor, or you?"
    "Gregor and I would flip a coin to see who got to go first."
    A little silence fell.
    "Fortunately," Miles continued, "it appears heads have cooled all round. For that, Admiral Vorpatril, I do thank you. I might add, the fates of your respective careers are a matter between you and your Ops command." Unless you manage to make me late for the births of my very first children, in which case you'd better start looking for a deep, deep hole. " My job is to talk out as many of the Emperor's subjects from quaddie hands, at the lowest prices, as I can. If I'm really lucky, when I'm done our trade fleets may be able to dock here again someday. You have not given me an especially strong hand of cards to play, here, unfortunately. Nonetheless, I'll see what I can do. I want copies of all raw transcripts pertaining to these late events provided for my review, please."
    "Yes, my lord," growled Vorpatril. "But," his voice grew almost anguished, "that still doesn't tell me what happened to Lieutenant Solian!"
    "I will undertake to give that question my keenest attention as well, Admiral." Miles met his eyes. "I promise you."
    Vorpatril nodded shortly.
    "But, Lord Auditor Vorkosigan!" Cargomaster Molino put in urgently. "Graf Station authorities are trying to fine our Komarran vessels for the damage done by Barrayaran troops. It must be made plain to them that the military stands alone in this . . . criminal activity."
    Miles hesitated a long moment. "How fortunate for you, Cargomaster," he said at last, "that in the event of a genuine attack, the reverse would not be true." He tapped the table and rose to his feet.
     

CHAPTER THREE
    Miles stood on tiptoe to peer through the little port beside the Kestrel 's personnel hatch as the ship maneuvered toward its assigned docking cradle. Graf Station was a vast jumbled aggregation, an apparent chaos of design not surprising in an installation in its third century of expansion. Somewhere buried in the core of the sprawling, bristling structure was a small metallic asteroid, honeycombed for both space and the material used in building this very oldest of the quaddies' many habitats. Also somewhere in its innermost sections could still be seen, according to the guidevids, actual elements from the broken-apart and reconfigured jumpship in which the initial band of hardy quaddie pioneers had made their historic voyage to this refuge.
    Miles stepped back and gestured Ekaterin to the port for a look. He reflected on the political astrography of Quaddiespace, or rather, as it was formally designated, the Union of Free Habitats. From this initial point, quaddie groups had leapfrogged out to build daughter colonies in both directions along the inner of the two rings of asteroids that had made this system so attractive to their ancestors. Several generations and a million strong later, the quaddies were in no danger whatsoever of running out of space, energy, or materials. Their population could expand as fast as it chose to build.
    Only a handful of their many scattered habitats maintained areas supplied with artificial gravity for legged humans, either visitor or resident, or