Shards of Honour (Vorkosigan Saga, #1)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

The botanist, Ensign Dubauer, grinned over his shoulder at Cordelia and fell to his knees beside one of the silvery tussocks.

Yayyy nice view? why is he grining

Cordelia’s mind ratcheted over a dozen possible disasters, each more bizarre than the last. So the unknown breeds dragons in map margins, she reflected, and suppressed her panic.

A smoldering scar burned in the grasses where the shuttle had been parked, opposite the camp from the ravine.

Why is it across a ravine wont they habr to crossz the ravine to get to camp then

yes, she saw, even the privy had been torched.

First toilet reference!

“Who could? Who did this?” “Multiple choice, take your pick—Nuevo Brasilians, Barrayarans, Cetagandans, could be any of that crowd. Reg Rosemont’s dead.

I guess violence is pretty expedcted?

and a heavy lump she recognized sadly as having once been a delicate and very expensive meteorological recorder.

Girl there are human corpses about too

they made quickly for cover, past Rosemont’s body. Dubauer stared back at it as they scuttled by, ill at ease, angry. “Whoever did that is damned well going to pay for it.” Cordelia just shook her head.

“That was murder! All he had was a stunner!”

Cordelia shut her mouth. Oh, great. He hasn’t even started to wrench my arms off, and already I’m giving away free intelligence.

Lol

I know why my people left me behind—why did yours leave you? Isn’t one’s commanding officer, even a Barrayaran one, too important to mislay?” She sat up straighter. “If Reg couldn’t hit the side of a house, who shot you?”

His own guys?

was this stern Barrayaran commander dealing with a mutiny?

Your Barrayaran thugs may know more about killing, but not one of them could have died a more soldierly death.”

She turned to Vorkosigan, tears of fury and pain blurring her vision. “Not dead! Liar! Only injured. He must have medical help.”

gave off an eerie but bright blue-green glow.

Arent they hiding from nthe mutinerrs? Maybe those guysz left

this rate, we’ll be here until next week.” If she moved fast enough, she wondered irritably, could she succeed in hitting him with the shovel? Just once . . .

He reminded her of a dwarf king in some northern saga, digging in a fathomless deep.

“A sort of scuttling noise, coming from the forest.”

Wgat if the fuzzy crabs are like … ginormous

They were the size of pigs.

Told u

inward prayer for her dead. It seemed to fly upward and vanish in the void, echoless as a feather.

Radial symmetry was popular among the tiny creatures occupying the ecological niches held by insects on Earth.

Some aerial varieties like gas-filled jellyfishes floated above the ripples in iridescent clouds, like flocks of delicate soap bubbles, delighting Cordelia’s eye.

Jellyflies!

Still she was bothered by a subliminal alarm, a persistent sense of something of importance forgotten.

My Political Officer countermanded my order, and had them killed behind my back. I executed him for it.” “Good God.” “I broke his neck with my own hands, on the bridge of my ship. It was a personal matter, you see, touching my honor. I couldn’t order a firing squad—they were all afraid of the Ministry of Political Education.”

Taking care of business

“And you aren’t?” “They’re afraid of me.” A sour smile turned his lips. “Like those scavengers last night, they’ll run from a bold attack. But one must not turn one’s back.”

Prophecy?

Now it was brightly decorated with fresh green and yellow growth, and dozens of varieties of low-growing wildflowers. Dubauer did not seem to notice them, Cordelia saw sadly.

The radials, colored now like wineglasses filled with burgundy, inflated themselves and retreated into the air. “Vampire balloons?” asked Vorkosigan. “Apparently.” “What appalling creatures.”

Vorkosigan grinned like a boy over his shoulder at her, and jogged after his prize. “Oh,” she murmured, stunned herself by the effect of the grin. It had lit his face like the sun for that brief instant. Oh, do that again, she thought; then shook off the thought. Duty. Stick to duty.

“From spaceman to caveman in three days,” she meditated aloud. “How we imagine our civilization is in ourselves, when it’s really in our things.” Vorkosigan glanced with a twisted smile at the carefully tended Dubauer. “You seem able to carry your civilization on the inside.”

Shhhh the cave people also had a civilization

were you in love with him?” “With Dubauer? Heavens, no! I’m no cradle snatcher. He was a good kid, though. I’d like to get him home to his family.” “Do you have a family?”

Lol not obvious at all

“After my mother—died,

In plot relevant fashion

“Outsiders—you Betans particularly—have this odd vision of Barrayar as some monolith, but we are a fundamentally divided society. My government is always fighting these centrifugal tendencies.”

They imagine they’re the wave of the future, but it’s only sewage flowing downhill.”

Lol

The breed of scavengers that ranged the plains was larger than its mountain cousins, and, if possible, uglier.

The radial held captive in Vorkosigan’s shirt had died and deflated during the night, turning into a horrible gelid blob.

i feel kinda bad for it

I’m right, everyone aboard ship thinks I’m dead. All but one.” “Which one?” “Wouldn’t I like to know. The one who hit me on the head and hid me in the bracken, instead of cutting my throat and dumping me in the nearest hole. Lieutenant Radnov seems to have a ringer in his group. And yet—if this ringer were loyal to me, all he’d have to do is tell Gottyan, my first officer, and he’d have had a loyal patrol down to pick me up before now. Now who in my command is so confused in his thinking as to betray both sides at once? Or am I missing something?”

She flinched from the smile, and his face fell, then became closed and grave again.

If it ever came down to exerting power by force, it would mean I’d already lost it.

can’t imagine how my cavewoman ancestors cared for families under primitive conditions.” “I suspect they worked together in groups,” said Vorkosigan.

Bingo

You have the competence one would look for in a mother of warriors.”

Is he a klingon ? cannot unsee

“Are you glad, or sorry?” “About children?” She glanced at his face. He seemed to have no awareness of having hit a sore point dead on. “They just haven’t come my way, I guess.”

can’t imagine what old Yuri thought he was about, to kill my mother and leave my father alive. That was when my father threw his corps behind Ezar Vorbarra, in the civil war that followed.”

Uhhh are u sure Ezar didnt send some assassins of his own and blame it on Yuri

better prepared, stronger, tougher, faster, meaner son-of-a-bitch than any who came through that door.

Lol avanging his mom and accidentally calling her a bitch

That day at Komarr, when I killed my Political Officer—I was angrier that day than the day I—than another time.

while she could not say that all Barrayarans looked alike to her, she was forcibly reminded of the old conundrum that starts, ‘All Cretans are liars.’

???

They flopped down in the soft grass and watched the glorious flaming sunset in silence, like an old married couple too tired to get up and turn it off.

You’re as professional as any officer I’ve ever served with, without once trying to be an, an imitation man.

on Barrayar, for a man to take a woman of the soldier caste for a lover was regarded as stealing her honor, and he was supposed to die a thief’s death for it.

She paused, in the friendly dark. “I knew this woman, once—a very good friend of mine. In Survey. She was rather—socially inept. Everyone around her seemed to be finding their soul mates, and the older she grew, the more panicky she got about being left out. Quite pathetically anxious.

"friend"

and she wondered if her story had been as transparent to him. It certainly seemed so.

Lol why lse would he launch into his own story about his ex

was assumed the two lovers had killed each other—I swear, he never planned it that way—and that she’d killed herself in despondency. No one ever asked him the first question about it.”

Dude you could turn yourself in