Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold Read Free Book Online Page A

she found that Rish had discovered that the flat’s comconsole was not code-locked, and was searching for any Solstice Dome Security reports on their intruders.
    “Find anything?’
    Rish shrugged her slim shoulders. “Not much. Just a time stamp, and our address. ‘In response to a witness report of a possible break-in, officers arrived and apprehended two men in possession of burglary equipment. Suspects are being held pending investigation.’ It doesn’t sound like anyone’s stepped up to outbid the arrest order yet.”
    “I don’t think they do it that way here,” said Tej, doubtfully.
    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