Archive of Our Own ^beta

When the groundcar pulled up at the Tanery Base Shuttleport, you could tell Nikki had won his argument with all comers because Armsman Pym was the one driving it. None of Nikki’s very busy, extremely embarrassing relatives were on board. All their goodbyes had been said tearfully at Vorkosigan House, and then Nikki had been bundled aboard for the hours-long trip with Armsman Pym and Arthur for a week-long adventure during which they could talk about jump ships as much as they liked.

Arthur was sulking because Armsman Pym was driving. “Quick,” he hissed as he slithered out behind Nikki, “before Da can make a scene.”

“Your da has never made a scene in his life,” Nikki retorted. “Can you imagine if mine were here?”

“Yeah,” said Arthur wistfully.

“Bye, Pym!” Nikki called back over his shoulder. “Come on, Arthur, let’s go.”

“It’s not like we’re going to be late,” Arthur said, jogging a bit alongside Nikki, urging him to go just that little bit faster away from their erstwhile guardian.

“But it’s jump ship summer camp, finally,” Nikki replied. “We could be early. I want to know where everything is.”

It had taken years to get the summer camp to the point where boys of Nikki’s dubious security clearance were allowed to attend. That, and the process of changing the material to not bore boys of Nikki’s class-by-his-mother’s-second-marriage, had taken ages to arrange. Nikki didn’t really care what they taught - he just wanted to be on the ground in a shuttleport, within view of the entire galaxy, and talking to people who cared about things that really mattered, like five-space math and quicktime and -

“I want to see where Aral Vorkosigan had his inner camp during the Vordarian Pretendership,” said Arthur. Nikki rolled his eyes.

“It’ll be boring,” he predicted. Everything about Grandfather Vorkosigan was boring. Endless military stories: boring. Long political discussions with Stepdad over interminable dinners: boring. The entire planet of Sergyar: boring, boring, boring. But Arthur Pym, like every other idiot their age, was military-mad and regarded the Academy as some sort of reward for good behavior instead of a lingering, inevitable doom. Nikki had been friends with Arthur since he’d come back to Barrayar, which was a third of their lives ago, and they were each willing to give their old friend a bit of leeway with his passions - Arthur, even so far as going to jump ship summer camp, provided he could take the Military Maneuvering courses Nikki was avoiding like a hereditary mutagen.

“You think everything is boring,” Arthur said.

“Not this,” Nikki swore. Not even if they talked about the basic components of jump ships that he’d known since he was a nine-year-old baby for the entire week. Not if he could be around people who actually cared about things that actually mattered. “Look, there’s another kid. Let’s say hello.”

He towed Arthur across the plaza, if not by force then by force of personality. He’d seen Stepdad do much the same thing, though he wasn’t sure if Stepdad were doing it on purpose - Nikki did it by putting on his Stepdad posture. And he was determined to do as Great-Aunt Alys had said and Introduce People with Thoughtful Details.

“Hi, I’m Nikolai Vorsoisson and my favorite jump ship is the 4XV390 because of the -“ he began.

“And I’m Arthur Pym,” Arthur said, over or around him.

“- rods and the -“

“Alexandre Vortugarov,” said the other boy, who like Nikki had gotten his growth spurt but unlike Nikki seemed to be growing breadth along with it. “Sasha.”

“Nikki,” Nikki admitted.

“Still Arthur,” said Arthur.

“I don’t have a favorite jump ship,” said Sasha. “I’m here because I want to up my chances of being a ship’s officer when I graduate from the Imperial Service Academy.”

Oh no, Nikki thought, it’s another one. Here, of all places. His estimation of jump ship summer camp sank a couple of notches, though he held out hope that Sasha might at least have an opinion on QFD generators.

“Isn’t that a bit premature?” Arthur was asking, sounding almost like Grandfather Vorkosigan. “We haven’t even taken the entrance exams.”

“Well,” said Sasha, shrugging, “I’m Vor.”

“Oh,” said Arthur, nonplussed, and looked to Nikki like Nikki was supposed to know what to do with such an abysmally stupid statement.

“My stepdad is Vor and he nearly didn’t get into the Academy,” Nikki said.

“Well, he can’t have been very -“

“He got a perfect score on the written exam first try,” said Nikki.

“Oh,” said Sasha, looking rather like his entire world were crumbling before his eyes.

“It’s a very selective examination,” said Arthur, his eyes dancing just for Nikki.

“Well, we’ve got to be getting on,” said Nikki quickly. “Lots of important people to meet, make sure we fall in with the right crowd.” He was trying for that tone every woman seemed to have learned from his Great Aunt Alys, the one that said and you’re not part of that crowd, but he wasn’t any good at it. Maybe you had to be a woman to get it right. He pulled Arthur off in the direction of the next arrival anyway. “What a moron, eh?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Arthur. “Vor are like that. I mean, not you, obviously, we met when we were nine. But he seemed like he at least was going to care about the military, and for a Vor -“

“Speaking of Vor,” said Nikki. “While we’re here, I am Nikolai Vorsoisson only. Neither of us has heard of…” He lowered his voice. “Vorkosigans.”

Arthur blinked. “But why?” he asked. “I mean, if you care about the Vor stuff. That Sasha is going to talk himself round to thinking your family isn’t good at anything. You might as well make yourself seem like the right crowd by being the descendant of Lord Auditors and Regents and, and generals.”

“But I’m not,” said Nikki. “I’m a Vorsoisson from deltoids to dystrophy. And I finally have a chance to not be associated with that…” He gestured vaguely in circles off to one side. “Bag of crazy.”

Arthur gave him a strange look and said nothing.

“Promise,” said Nikki.

“It’ll come out when the teachers call your name,” said Arthur.

“They’re not teachers, this is summer camp. And I’ll think of something,” said Nikki. “Please, Arthur?”

“Everything about this camp is please, Arthur,” Arthur grumbled. “If you’ll show me where the Regent had his headquarters during the Pretendership, I’ll keep your secret.”

“Your word as Pym?” Nikki asked. Arthur smiled. Nikki asked him for his word as Pym nearly every chance he got, because Stepdad said things like Barrayaran unity and Mama said things like dismantling of Vor entitlement but Arthur looked like Nikki had handed him a Winterfair gift every time he asked.

“You have my word as Pym,” he said, “if you show me that command room.”

“Do you want to go now or keep meeting people?” Nikki asked.

Arthur looked around, torn. “Maybe if we meet some people they’ll want to go too?” he suggested. “Only if they’re good people.”

So Nikki introduced them some more. He rapidly lost faith in their potential as friends, even as Arthur became progressively more satisfied with the prospect of camp. Nikki thought that if he wanted to be surrounded my military morons, he could have stayed at home and gone back to school.

Most of them were Vor. Some of them seemed to care about jump ships. There was one kid who actually met Nikki head-to-head on jump ship technology and Nikki was almost certain he had met a soulmate at last when the boy switched to geometry and Nikki had the sudden, disorienting feeling of realizing he had been talking to a bore who just happened to drone in Nikki’s language. He wasn’t fascinating, he was just… an engineer like Grandpa Vorthys. Grandpa Vorthys was Nikki’s second-favorite relative, but he was good as a grandpa, not as a friend.

So he had just about resigned himself to slouching his way down to the conference room that Grandfather Vorkosigan had pointed out as “oh, I spent a lot of time there during the Pretendership” while making hopeful faces at Nikki as if that would make him suddenly burst into enthusiasm about the military and become a grandchild Grandfather Vorkosigan could understand - he had just about resigned himself to slouching his way there when Arthur tugged his arm and pointed at the latest arrival making his way across the courtyard.

“Another one?” Nikki asked, looking askance at the collection of boys Arthur had selected as his Inner Circle. Admittedly this new boy had to be somewhat more interesting than the rest of them; he was scrawny and long-limbed like Nikki, but he grew his hair out long like he didn’t care what the other boys thought. Nikki ached to not care what the other boys thought. And this boy walked like Uncle Don - “It’s a girl,” Nikki hissed at Arthur in surprise and outrage. “What are they doing letting a girl in here? And in trousers!”

“Your grandmother wears trousers,” Arthur pointed out.

“She’s old,” said Nikki.

“She’s coming this way,” said Arthur.

“Then let’s not be here when she is,” said Nikki. “We’ve got that conference room to see, right?”

He pushed through Arthur’s group of friends, Arthur following in his wake as usual, though with an air of smugness this time. That happened, curse it. Nikki could generate Stepdad energy until individual people fell in line, but give Arthur a bit of time with a group of people - especially if they assumed he was Vor, which they frequently did - and they’d all be following Arthur like he was some sort of ancient prophesied king, and forgetting all about how Nikki was leading him by the nose to some stupid boring conference room, about which there were a great many oohs and sighs and speculations about where the Vicereine had stood and how far Vidal Vordarian’s head had rolled.

Nikki slipped out after a while, the tongue twister about Vidal Vordarian rolling around his head and spinning new verses about his new grandparents as it did. Vash Vidal Vordarian, Viceroy ee Vicereine…

He got the rhyme stuck in his head, but he also got a solid reminder of where everything was in this place. Grandfather Vorkosigan had let him explore once before when they were waiting for a shuttle, when Nikki was a baby and wanted nothing more than to explore and when all the Vorkosigans had been trying to win him over by showing him things like conference rooms. Stepdad approved of exploring and called it reconnaissance, and had showed Nikki enough tricks with fancy names that Nikki was able to spend the entire time before the welcome ceremony rediscovering hallways that, unfortunately, didn’t lead to the shuttle hangars.

In his imaginings of jump ship pilot summer camp, he had thought he would have found enough friends who really cared about jump ships by the time of the welcome ceremony that he would be standing with a whole group of cool kids. Instead, he slipped in late and found the chair Arthur had reserved for him, like he did every time there was a gathering at school.

Arthur, of course, had a whole nest of boys with him, which lent Nikki consequence. Some of the boys who weren’t with Arthur were sitting entirely by themselves. Only… Nikki took a closer look, while the man in uniform on stage was talking about service to Barrayar in the raptured tones he usually heard at home. Yes, at least one of the boys sitting alone was that creature in trousers that he and Arthur had retreated from earlier that day. Which meant the others…

There were three girls, total. That was what. Not all of the boys sitting apart from the others were girls, but the friendless were pretty clearly leaning toward each other in two camps, girl and boy, as God and the schoolyard intended. They were integrating Nikki’s summer camp, and if Grandma Cordelia had nothing to do with it, Nikki would eat his hat.

He slunk down in his seat. Vorkosigans. They were incorrigible. Well, he’d told them he wanted nothing to do with the military or politics, and he certainly wasn’t going to have anything to do with integration. He’d just steer clear of the girls. Not his problem.

It wasn’t like they’d have to bunk together. Not even Grandma Cordelia was that crazy.

#

If Grandma Cordelia was that crazy, at least she hadn’t bedded the girls down in Nikki’s dormitory. They had the boys sleeping in bunks in dormitories, and the ones in Nikki’s room - which did not include Arthur - were all tittering over how it was just like the Academy. How they knew Nikki did not care to speculate. The first night he lay awake in bed staring at the ceiling, telling himself he was just nervous in case a girl walked into the dormitory, and that it wasn’t that he was desperately homesick. Jump ship pilots didn’t get homesick. They had to be away from home for weeks or months at a time, and Nikki could do one measly little week.

But if the boys and the welcome ceremony and the first night were disappointing, the first day of activities was all that Nikki had hoped for. Well, there was the boring stuff, like going over the basic design of jump ships, as if anyone didn’t know what a Necklin rod was, and there was math of course, but no one was handing out homework and nobody had to do the work. It was just fun stuff as an introduction to the sort of math you had to be comfortable with as a jump ship pilot, which Grandpa Vorthys had been teaching Nikki on the side, and they framed it all as games, and Nikki won all of them. He’d never been top of his class before, and now not only did he have that thrill, but when they picked sides for contests everybody wanted to choose Nikki first. Nikki was so thrilled he forgot that he didn’t care about their stupid military exercises.

He still came dead bottom third of the pack when they got to physical exercises, which still wasn’t fair. The problem with having an inherited high security clearance and going to fancy schools where everyone was military-crazy was that everyone was also bizarrely invested in their physical prowess, whereas Nikki liked to set standards low enough that he didn’t have to work too hard to reach them. The advantage of being unusually good at the maths and strategy exercises was that nobody knew Nikki was a wuss and they still picked him first for the team games.

The game was Capture the Flag, of course, with harnesses that lit up when the fakezers hit them. It was just stunner tag, really - the Vorkosigan armsmen played much the same thing with real stunners, when there was no one to order them not to - but somehow there was an extra thrill to it when several dozen boys were eyeing each other up from their appointed teams.

So when the instructors gestured to where the barrel of equipment was, Nikki pelted pell mell after it, heart thumping, swinging his arms for speed. And arrived, as usual, at the top of the bottom third of the pack.

Arthur made it to the front and had his equipment and was back out of the throng while Nikki was still waiting, listening to Sasha Vortugarov proclaim from the front, “My father says there are recruiters from the Academy watching the games, and he’s a captain, so he would know.”

Nikki nearly snorted. Stepdad and Cousin Ivan both made captain before they were thirty, and everyone knew that Cousin Ivan was an idiot. Nikki had been carefully not learning the military rank system, but Sasha’s dad had to be at least thirty-five, so he had clearly stalled out.

“What’s so funny?” asked a boy from Nikki’s left - the engineer from yesterday, Gregor Vortsorok, promptly nicknamed Gregor Forty since there were so many Gregors Nicky’s age. Practically everyone who wasn’t in line for a Countship was named Gregor.

“Family joke,” Nikki said. He thought about explaining - Gregor Forty was the closest thing to a real jump ship afficionado that he had found - but there were a lot of boys around to be offended, and Gregor Forty wasn’t even on his team. So he hesitated, and then it was time to choose equipment.

To his surprise, Sasha pressed a set into his hands. “These are broken,” he said. “Leave ‘em to the end. Pass it on.”

Sure enough, when Nikki ran an equipment check the lights didn’t come on. He shrugged, passed them to a boy behind him with the same instructions, and dove on a set that did pass muster.

Once he was out of the mess, he busied himself with double-checking the equipment’s functionality, keying in his biometrics so it could track his score, and pulling the harness on. Then he looked across the hall and found Arthur on an opposing team to exchange thrilled hand signs with. Then he made the mistake of looking back at the equipment barrel.

It was just the three girls, holding two harnesses that didn’t light up. They were all stiff with rage, and Nikki abruptly felt sick. A harness that didn’t work, a gun that wouldn’t fire… their sum score would be straight zeroes, as if they had spent the whole game hiding. As if they were cowards. And this had very definitely been done to them.

He had to remind himself that Grandpa Vorkosigan didn’t plan this camp. This was not a test. If Grandpa Vorkosigan had designed this, it would be a test, and Nikki would have just failed. The girls still had a chance - a choice to report the failure, whatever that meant, or decide among themselves who got the working equipment.

Or Nikki could still pass, by offering them his equipment. But this was not a test, and he had already entered his biometrics. Maybe the data wouldn’t accept changes.

It was a pretty thin excuse to do nothing, but crossing the room would mean being on the girls’ side, and he was not, he was not going to be that Vorkosigan. He looked to Arthur, but Arthur was busy talking to someone, someones, a gaggle of people while Nikki stood here with his gut twisting and his face hot -

At that minute, one of the girls grabbed the functioning harness and sprinted across the room with it. Which decided it for the other two - they slung on their defective harnesses and trotted away, one of them right toward Nikki’s team.

So they were down a man from the start, with a dead harness. Well, they had been as soon as they were forced to take a girl. Nikki turned back to their team captain, Gregor Vorreedi, chosen at random by the instructors.

“Any plans?” Gregor Vorreedi asked Nikki, startling him.

“Uh - only if we’re topside,” he said. Several boys looked up reflexively. Which wasn’t a bad idea. “Anybody good at climbing?”

The planning almost, almost took Nikki’s attention back. Except for how everyone acted like the girl did not exist. Well she didn’t, functionally, her equipment didn’t work.

And whose fault was that?

They didn’t even know her name. Nikki was feeling sick again, this time low and slow, deep in his belly.

“Before we go,” he said. “We should do names. So we recognize each other out there, a bit.”

“Good idea,” said Gregor Vorreedi.

They went around, Nikki said he was Nikki not Nikolai but no one laughed. There were three Gregors - well, two and a Gregoir, who became Wiry though he wasn’t. The others were Greg and OrVor, and the girl, who said her name was Galya before she could be skipped.

That’d be short for Galina. Rus, like Stepdad and Mom and Nikki at least on Mom’s side. Not that that was uncommon. Nikki tore his gaze away, and tried to memorize everyone else’s names, and nicknames, and the occasional patronym. Greg was Gregor Gregorovich, and proud of not being named after the emperor.

They didn’t really have anyone who was good at strategy the way Stepdad was, so in Nikki’s opinion they were screwed from the start. His idea about going up to hide their flag wasn’t bad, but at a man down and with no idea where the others were making forts, splitting their forces was probably a dumb idea. But he wasn’t going to argue with their leader and make people think that he wanted that job, so he went off with two other boys - because Nikki’s group could be smaller, clearly Nikki was a powerhouse just because he was good at math - and The Girl followed along.

“Chain of command,” one of the other boys said to her. “You weren’t ordered to follow us.”

“I wasn’t ordered to do anything,” Galya said. “I can do whatever I want.”

None of them knew enough to contradict her, so they followed Nikki’s lead and pretended she wasn’t there.

This worked admirably up until their first skirmish, when Nikki prudently ducked behind a crate for cover, and the other two charged in bravely and got shot. Nikki was pinned down by constant fire - he could hear the chorus of sound effects from the other boys’ guns - without the slightest idea what to do next. He was frenetically checking the charge on his fakezer when he saw Galya sprint toward him and clamber up over the crate Nikki was sheltering behind, then heard the hammer of her feet as she continued her charge into a leap at their attackers.

A moment later, the scuffle went silent.

“Get over here and shoot him,” Galya called. Nikki peeked around the crate. Galya was sitting on top of a boy Nikki didn’t know, his arm pinned down where it still clung to a fakezer.

“He hit you like six times,” said one of the boys on Nikki’s team, who was glowing like an aviation light after having been shot, and sitting quietly out of the way since he was officially dead.

“Did he?” Galya asked, sounding like Grandma Cordelia at a political function. “My harness didn’t light up.”

“He was aiming right at you.”

“Maybe his fakezer overheated,” said Galya in the same tone. “He was firing an awful lot, for one person. Shoot him, Nikki.”

Nikki stood over the pair of them, dithering. Grandfather Vorkosigan would kill him if he executed a prisoner like this. But he wasn’t a Vorkosigan.

“You’re cheating,” the pinned boy complained.

“Oh, so you admit it’s just a stupid game?” Galya answered.

Nikki shot the boy, whose harness lit up and whose fakezer deactivated. Galya climbed off of him and dusted her hands off.

“Well, what say you?” she asked Nikki. “I’ll be your immortal warrior if you’ll be my gun.”

“They’re right,” said Nikki. “It is cheating. I’d’ve just died if you hadn’t been there. Leave me alone.” He’d take himself out of the game.

“Oh, come on,” Galya groaned, but Nikki put himself in the middle of the other boys and walked away from her.

Not a Vorkosigan. Didn’t help the girl, did shoot the prisoner. Any Vor would have taken himself out of the game. Anyway afterward he got to sit with the others in an overlook and watch the game play out across a real shuttle hangar. Nikki’s team was eliminated pretty fast, but it took the others so long to think of climbing that theirs was the last flag found.

#

Nikki was… not exactly popular. Arthur was popular, sufficiently so that he had very nearly surmounted the Vor social barrier and was certainly in the inner clique of the most popular Vor. Nikki was still the friend Arthur brought into that circle, but he was the friend who understood five-space math - he kept telling them that he did not understand five-space math - and could think in three or more dimensions, so he was the valuable friend Arthur called into his circle.

It was nice. Nikki liked being sought-after. It kept him from sitting at the table with Gregor Forty, who was The Nerd, and therefore slightly more popular than the girls. Nikki had never been at the nerd table even at school, and he wasn’t about to start now, but he did look over a little wistfully at the one person who actually wanted to talk about jump ships, between trips to Arthur’s lounge to explain what they had done in class today.

Which was great! He’d never been The Nerd, and he’d never been smart, either - top of the bottom third of the class, that was Nikki. Now people were asking for his help, and he could help them, and he could try to figure out what they didn’t understand, and that was fun. It was just that he wasn’t learning anything, which was awfully selfish of him, but -

“How come you know so much about math anyway?” one of the boys asked.

“I don’t know much about math,” Nikki said for the umpteenth time. “I know a bit about whatever math you have to know to pilot jump ships. Because that’s what I want to do. My uncle taught me.”

He did not mention that his uncle was Lord Auditor Vorthys and also his great-uncle who he called Grandpa. Having a professor uncle was cool, but having a Lord Auditor uncle was weird, not to mention how close it came to saying “Vorkosigan” out loud.

“How’d your uncle teach you, then?” asked the brashest of the boys, whose name Nikki had very deliberately not learned because he didn’t like the way the boy seemed to have to deliberately try not to make every sentence a sneer. “This stuff is hard.”

“He gave me this book…” Nikki shook his head. “Maybe they have a copy in the library here.”

“There’s a library here?” asked the first boy.

“Oh yeah. Just sort of reference material, though, nothing good,” said Nikki. “Here, I’ll go fetch that book for you.”

“Hurry back,” said the brash boy languidly, turning away from Nikki already. So Nikki left, hoping the empty corridors would clear his head a bit.

He did not afterwards remember whether it had in fact cleared his head. This was because the little spaceport library, which had likely once been a rather spacious office, was occupied. He heard voices as he approached, and when he opened the door he found not two but five occupants looking up guiltily at him. One of them was, of course, The Girl.

“Ah, Vorsoisson,” said one of the boys. After a moment’s thought, Nikki placed him as Sasha Vortugarov again; he didn’t know the others. “Actually, I think it’s right that you have a hand in this.”

“In what?” Nikki asked, looking between them. “It’s not…”

“Not what?” asked a different boy as Nikki trailed off, and was elbowed in the side by a third.

“Not four boys and a girl in a room with a closed door, idiot,” said the third boy. “No, it’s not. It’s a matter of honor.”

“It was a game,” said the girl. All right, it was the same girl as from that afternoon and he knew her name was Galya. “And a stupid game at that.”

“Are you calling honor a game?” Sasha demanded.

“No,” said Galya. “Well, now you say it - yes.”

Nikki thought of what he knew of honor, of the secrets he kept for Gregor and swearing them on his name when he was barely old enough to know what that meant. He’d been shivering with the excitement of it, honestly, but any boy his age would scoff and say a nine-year-old was too much a baby for anything important.

“What’s happening?” he asked. “I just wanted a book.”

“We’re having duels,” the second boy announced. “Each of us to fight this worm for how she touched our honor.”

Nikki frowned. There wasn’t anything honorable in what Galya had done, but he didn’t recognize any of these boys from the game. Well, maybe one, the fourth one who hadn’t said anything and hadn’t taken his eyes off Galya. “You weren’t there,” he said.

“We’re here,” said the third boy. “At Tannery Base, where legends were made, and they’re letting girls and commoners come in and besmirch the place. Her being here is an insult to us, to this school, to our history as Vor, and to all the girls like my sisters who act like proper Vor.”

“Oh,” said Nikki, feeling again the walls of the Vorkosigan trap rise around him. Part of him wanted to say that Grandma Cordelia was part of that history and she wasn’t a man or a Vor or even a commoner. The rest of him was screaming that if he opened his mouth once he would be letting in all the military and the legend and the Vorkosigan expectations that were not just things he did not want but were anathema to his nature, that if he gave an inch he’d be in the Imperial Academy the next step he took, and it would drown him. “No, thank you,” he managed.

“It’s your honor she touched today,” said Sasha. He was a very big boy. “Your place in the skirmish. She made you shoot a prisoner. If anyone has a right to go first -“

Nikki clamped his mouth shut and shook his head, backing back out the door. “I won’t tell anyone,” he promised. Duels were illegal. Carl Vorhalas had been executed for fighting a duel, he’d seen it in a play.

“It’s weak honor that won’t defend itself,” said the second boy as Nikki closed the door behind him.

That was the wrong thing to do, he thought, and immediately followed it with, and I know it, and I’m going to have to live with it, because that’s the choice I made.

That was fine, except something kept niggling at him, telling him he still had time to change his mind. Except he didn’t, because he’d made it up, and what sort of honor would he have either way if he changed his mind?

Anyway honor wasn’t anything like they said. He knew it because he’d tasted it when he gave his word at nine, which any of them would have said was too young to have honor. They hadn’t seen Mama’s honor either, they’d never see it, how she kept her word in silence and made herself untouchable when people were calling her a murderess. Even Stepdad, whose honor as Lord Auditor should have been blazingly obvious, who kept a drawer full of more medals than their dads would ever see, had followed Mama’s lead as the rumors flew. And Da would have had just as many, if anyone had noticed all the important things he did.

But Da had died alone in the cold, and no one said his name anymore, no one even seemed to remember the good things about him. Nikki checked his breath mask every day, even though they were no longer on Komarr, as if he would have the chance to go out now and save his Da.

Or anyone else.

It’s not the same, he thought fiercely, but he was already turning in the hallway. Da was caught outside without a good mask, and Galya jumped a group of boys. Bigger than her. With no combat training, because not even Arthur’s sisters have combat training.

And all right, maybe he was this much Vorkosigan: by the time he hit the library door, he was running.

“Vorsoisson,” said the first boy. A couple people were getting up off the ground, looking guilty, like Nikki might have called a teacher on them. Yeah, that would have been the smart thing to do. “Change your mind?”

“Forgot your book?” sneered the second boy, the one who had questioned Nikki’s honor.

“It’s a poor honor that’s damaged by someone existing near it,” Nikki sneered in response, shouldering past them. He was taller than any of them, having come by his growth spurt early. Maybe that would work in his favor. He slid his feet out sideways, the way he’d worked so hard not to learn from Arthur’s dad, and put his back to Galya.

“Well, we were going to do this one on one, like gentlemen,” said the first, biggest boy, moving so the group surrounded both of them. “But if Vorsoisson is going to change the rules…”

Maybe they’ll get in each other’s way, Nikki thought. In the vids, groups of attackers always got in each other’s way.

Of the pair facing him, one went high and one went low. Nikki surprised himself by catching the punch on his forearm, threw himself off balance by trying to kick the lower attacker at the same time, and landed on his butt. Or his hip, anyway. Galya, retreating, kicked his head, tripped, and fell sprawled across his side. There was a pause.

“Do you want to try that again?” the first boy asked.

The sneerer swore in Russian. “He started it! If he’s on the ground it’s because our cause -“

He was kicking out at Nikki as he spoke. Nikki grabbed the calf and clung to it, climbing upwards. His weight overbalanced the other boy and sent him sprawling on top of Nikki just as Galya was getting up. She sprang backwards and Nikki reminded himself not to bite just as he felt her foot fly past his head and into the sneerer’s crotch.

Well, so much for not escalating. Arthur’s dad had eventually gotten tired of trying to teach Nikki to overwhelm an opponent, and told him that if he was going to let anyone who came along dump him on the ground, he might as well know what to do next.

He’d already slithered out of the way when Sneerer drew his legs up after Galya’s attack. Now he saw Sasha circle to get at Galya’s back and scuttled after him, staying low, weight propped up on his elbows. He flipped into a crab position and swung his hips up, aiming the kick not at the jaw like he’d been taught, because he had never made it that high, but at the knee.

Sasha caught the flicker of movement and batted Nikki’s foot aside. “What are you doing, Vorsoisson?” he demanded, but he took his attention off Galya’s back. Nikki let his kicking leg cross over the other, rolled with it, and fired a kick off what was now behind him. This time it hit his opponent in the gut. Sasha huffed and staggered backwards a couple of paces. Nikki scrambled to his feet.

“All right,” said Sasha, and came back at him. Nikki raised an arm to block a punch again, and found it grabbed and held as Sasha landed a punch solidly in Nikki’s gut. He dropped Nikki’s arm to let him double over, wheezing, and brought a knee up into Nikki’s plunging head. It took very little effort at that point to push Nikki onto the floor, this time not in a position he could easily get out of even if he hadn’t been dizzy and wheezing. Sasha kicked him twice more to keep him there, looked back over his shoulder, and went after Galya.

Nikki tried to haul himself to his feet, but by the time he’d gotten to his knees, he could tell Galya was down and the other four were back up. He figured that out by the hazy shapes beyond their shadows, right before someone’s fist connected with his ear and the beating began properly.

He tried not to cry, but it didn’t last very long.

#

The thing the books didn’t tell you about getting beaten by bullies was that once they had you down and hurting, there wasn’t actually anything you could do until they decided to stop. Nikki lay and hurt and waited, and eventually they stopped.

“Did we kill them?” asked one of the boys, not the sneerer, not Sasha.

“I don’t think so…” There was a long pause. Nikki, just to show them, held his breath and didn’t moan. “Look, she’s breathing.”

Nikki felt himself the target of four intent stares. This lasted about until his lungs gave way and he not only breathed, but coughed.

“Oh good,” said Sasha. “Let’s get out of here.”

“We should have hidden our faces,” said the sneerer thoughtfully. “Next time…” The door closed behind them.

Nikki rolled onto his back and contemplated getting up. He could hear the sounds of Galya doing something similar. He ran a hand over his ribs, wondering how many he had, and tried pressing lightly. It hurt. Did that mean they were broken? He’d never had a broken rib before, but Stepdad had impressed on him that they were very dangerous, telling morbid stories of punctured lungs. Da had just told him not to get into fights, Stepdad explained in lurid detail what would happen if he did.

“I’m going to find a teacher,” Galya announced.

“You can’t do that,” said Nikki.

“What am I supposed to do? Patch myself up with spit and a torn uniform? I don’t have a spare uniform.”

Everything Nikki had read said that they kept solidarity with their classmates and said they had fallen down the stairs, but Galya had made a practical point. If Nikki’s ribs were broken, one of the shards could puncture his lung and drown him in his own blood. Stepdad said he’d seen it happen.

“We should find a nurse,” he hazarded.

“Where? I wasn’t told about any nurse during orientation. We weren’t supposed to be doing anything more hazardous than shooting each other with flashing lights,” said Galya, and winced from her own vehemence.

“Fine,” said Nikki. “We’ll find a teacher.” He wrapped an arm around his chest and got up cautiously, then limped to the door, first on one leg, then the other. They both seemed to be working.

Galya’s were not. She was moving a lot more slowly, and her left eye was starting to swell up, and Nikki sure hoped he didn’t look as cut up as she did. Well, abraded technically, Stepdad said it was important to be as accurate as possible about the nature of one’s injuries so the medics could address them properly. He led the way out the door and down the hall, but had to keep stopping and waiting for her to catch up as they wove their way through the base largely at random, hoping to encounter a teacher before they ran into the other boys. The place had not felt so huge and empty the night before.

Eventually, they did run into a teacher, more or less. Nikki had Galya wait outside while he checked one of the bathrooms, and surprised a man at the urinal.

“Uh, hi,” he said, and the man jumped and shrieked. This was not how Nikki had expected adult assistance to begin. “We need some medical help,” he said desperately, hoping that would return the conversation to a standard track.

“Uh, I see that,” said the man. “Cadet… Student… Mr…?”

“Vorsoisson,” said Nikki. “Is there a nurse or… something?”

“I’ll get the medic,” said the man. “You stay here.” He dried his hands on his pants and walked out the door, and yelped a curse. “What -“ He poked his head back inside the bathroom, where Nikki was waiting obediently. “You stay out here until someone comes back for you,” he amended.

So Nikki stood awkwardly next to Galya, who had slid down to the floor and was leaning against the wall with one leg bent. There was an awkward silence.

“Thanks for standing up with me,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” said Nikki, awkwardly, because she wasn’t welcome and he regretted it.

“You made it worse, but I’m glad you tried,” she continued.

“Oh,” said Nikki.

“Did I just make it worse?” she asked. “My head hurts.”

“What kind of hurt?” Nikki asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Sharp? Piercing? Burning?”

“I don’t know. What is that supposed to mean?”

“Didn’t anyone teach you how to identify pain?”

They looked at each other in bewilderment. “Why would I need to identify pain?” Galya asked. “I’m going to be a jump pilot.”

“Well, so am I, but what if you fell down the stairs and broke something inside and were bleeding internally?”

“It’d probably show up on a med scan,” said Galya.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we don’t have a med scanner,” said Nikki.

“The only jump ships not equipped with a med scan were the Z4500 and the 43P80,” said Galya. “They’re no longer being run by anybody but museums. I’m hardly going to be out of range of a med bay once I’m a jump pilot.”

“What museum has the 43P80?” Nikki asked. “I saw a Z4500 in the museum in Vorbarr Sultana, but -“

“Lucky,” breathed Galya. “Which one is that?”

“It’s only pieces. It’s the one that blew up when the O ring froze,” said Nikki. “They were fishing for it for months afterward. They’ve got the nose reconstructed and one of the Necklin rods in Quikprint, it’s part of the History of Post-Isolation Flight exhibit. Have you really never been?”

“My parents won’t let me go anywhere unless it’s for school. I have to read about all of it on the net.”

After that they were talking, having a conversation about jump ships, finally, this was what Nikki had come here for! He was so deep into arguing about the benefits of computation speed versus accuracy that he entirely missed the teacher who came to collect them until he cleared his throat loudly and announced that they should follow him to the camp director’s office.

Nikki finished making his point about it not mattering how fast you were going if you couldn’t predict where you would emerge or if it would be on top of another ship on the way and Galya reiterated her worn argument that that didn’t matter with modern computation standards and accused him of being a military fetishist since the only reason anyone would jump that close to another object was as part of a formation. Nikki was raising his voice about traffic jams and civil infrastructure when their guide opened the door and Nikki went abruptly silent. Sasha’s cohort were here, and all good spirit left him.

“Vorkosigan and Zimfirova,” their guide announced, and abandoned them with the air of a man leaving before he could accidentally add ‘sir’ to his sentence.

“So,” the director said, and Nikki abruptly realized he had forgotten the man’s name and panicked. “It’s the second night of camp, and I find myself with six cadets more or less covered in bruises.” His gaze lingered on Nikki and Galya, who were displaying the best evidence of this. Nikki nervously flicked his collar up. “A man might think there had been a brawl.”

“I fell down the stairs, sir,” said Sasha quickly. There was a general murmur of assent. Nikki hastily mumbled something incoherent. Galya, on his right between him and the rest of the boys because he hadn’t done the gallant thing and come between them, was silent.

“How about we reconstruct this event from the beginning,” the camp director said. “I understand that Vortugarov fell down the stairs. Michelin?”

“I fell down the stairs,” said the quiet boy, the one who hadn’t spoken in the library. Now he had, Nikki noticed a thick provincial French accent, which might explain his reticence.

“They crashed into me,” said Sneerer before he could be called on. The camp director turned his pointing finger on the last of them.

“I fell down the stairs,” he said, without the imagination of Sneerer.

Galya snorted. “I was in a fight,” she said. “They challenged me to four sequential duels. Nikki interrupted us and took my side, and they said that was excuse enough to gang up four to two.”

“Duels?” the camp director asked. Nikki didn’t think he could even hear the other boys breathing. They all had to be thinking about that play, and the last man executed for dueling. “That’s quite the story. Vorkosigan? Perhaps you can clarify which of your companions is telling the truth.”

“It’s Vor -“ Nikki’s voice broke. It was the stress, it had to be. He swallowed hard and tried again. “It’s Vorsoisson, sir.”

The camp director glanced down at his desk. “My mistake. Vorsoisson-Vorkosigan? Was it stairs, or a… brawl?”

Brawl was a far, far better word than duel. They might get time outs for a brawl. Falling down the stairs, though… nobody could punish you at all for that. It was the excuse anyone with honor gave.

Except chivalry was rules for people with horses, to protect those without. Honor was for protecting people, and so were rules. Somehow these had become so far at odds that nobody was protected at all.

When he had stepped back into that room, he had wished that he had thought to bring a teacher.

“It was a brawl, sir,” he said at last.

“I see,” said the camp director, sounding disappointed. “Thank you for your honesty.” He shifted his weight, and his attention, back to Nikki’s right. “It will probably interest you all to know that we have security footage of the library.”

Nikki felt all the blood drain from his face. He heard Galya snort beside him. When he snuck a look at her, she was smiling, as if being caught fighting were a good thing.

“Zimfirova, Vorsoisson-Vorkosigan, you may go. The rest of you will have punishment details at the kitchen or laundry added to your schedule before reveille.”

“But that’s women’s work!” Sneerer protested.

“Oh?” said the camp director. “And who do you suppose does it at a military base, or on a starship, or on recon? Generally, the men who protest their commander’s orders.”

Nikki lost the rest as Galya shoved him through the door. “What’s so funny?” he demanded of her once the door was shut.

“Nothing,” said Galya, and seemed to mean it. “I mean, it was pretty great when Mr. Orikos said they had footage, did you see those boys’ faces? But then they all started back in on the military fantasy like nothing had happened, even Mr. Orikos.”

“I just want to go to bed,” Nikki said, politely omitting and never see you again. Even that didn’t quite seem to cover it, because she did know a lot about jump ships, but his side still ached and he wanted all of this to go away.

“Yeah,” Galya agreed. “I’ll see you in the morning?” Nikki pretended not to have heard.

#

In the morning Nikki was in trouble with the popular boys for not coming back with their book. By the end of breakfast, he was in trouble with everyone for having tattled. By noon, he was a disgrace to everyone and their grandmother for defending a girl, and not even the prospect of neuro-synaptic aptitude testing as a prelude to getting to use the simulator could cheer him up.

He had just chosen a free seat at an empty table, alone with his misery, when another tray slammed down next to his.

“You’re a Vorkosigan,” said a voice that had never been in any danger of breaking. Nikki immediately hated her worse than Galya.

“I’m a Vorsoisson actually,” he muttered without much hope. “There’s a clerical error.”

“No wonder you helped Galya out last night,” she continued over him. “Cordelia Vorkosigan…”

The name conjured up memories of endless days on Sergyar waiting for the shuttle home while Grandma Cordelia tried to push Betan therapy on everyone who wasn’t already taking it and pinned her hopes of a galactic descendant on Nikki’s dreams of piloting. Grandma Cordelia managed to make even wormhole nexuses sound boring. Nikki was used to zoning out the minute he heard the phrase “Count Vorkosigan.” Evidently he needed to add a name to the list.

“Helena,” said another girl, with another tray, who still wasn’t Galya. “Have you actually introduced yourself to Vorkosigan?”

“Oh! I’m sorry! I’m Helena Vorharopulos. Used to being introduced, you know.”

“And I’m Anna Vortienne.” The second new girl, who was kitted out full Vor and could never be mistaken for a boy even for a fraction of a second, looked expectantly at Nikki.

“Nikolai. And it’s Vorsoisson, not Vorkosigan.”

Helena frowned. She was a clearly Greek girl equally clearly trying to pull off Anna’s effortless femininity in a masculine space, and not succeeding. “But the teachers have you down as a Vorkosigan,” she said.

“It's a clerical error. I don’t have any legal claim to the name. Um.” Nikki tried to decide how polite to be. “Why are you here?”

“There’s a shortage of tables in the room,” said Anna wryly. “Not enough to shun everyone properly unless we bundle together.”

“I keep telling you, we should get here early and spread out, see what happens if all the tables are taken,” said Galya, settling down on Nikki’s other side. “Either they have to sit with us, or they all try to bundle onto the same benches. It’d be funny.”

“I’m not being shunned,” Nikki protested.

“Oh, come on,” Galya said. “Give me credit for knowing what shunning looks like. Anyway none of them even knows what a 4XV390 looks like. They barely know what a Necklin rod is.”

“You’re one of the girls now,” Helena put in.

“I’m not a girl,” Nikki protested. He received three horribly feminine looks of patient disbelief. “I don’t wanna be a feminist!” His voice was breaking again. He stepped out of the entrapping arms of the table and grabbed his tray. Arthur Pym would sit with him, and he could find Arthur anywhere.

“Hey, can I sit with you?” he asked perfunctorily.

“Um,” said Arthur, and Nikki’s heart sank. Arthur was sitting in one of the larger clusters, boys squeezed onto benches. There were trading cards on the table.

“All right there, Pym?” one of the boys asked. Arthur squirmed.

“Can I talk to you outside?” he asked Nikki.

“Sure,” said Nikki, shrugging as if nothing was wrong. He carried his tray after Arthur. Arthur, he noticed, was not carrying his tray.

“We are still friends, right?” Nikki asked as soon as they were out of the mess hall.

“Nikki, you know I like you, but I want to make it here. These guys might be my commanders some day, and you’ve always just made fun of me for wanting to be a twenty-years man.”

“I didn’t make fun of you,” Nikki said, stung.

“Whatever, you made it clear you thought it was stupid. So I thought we could play it cool here for a couple of days, and then we could be friends again afterward.”

“Oh,” said Nikki.

“You’re not upset?” Arthur asked.

“Oh, no,” Nikki lied.

“Great!” said Arthur, beaming, and clapped Nikki on the shoulder and went back in. Nikki stood in the hall and held his tray. After a while, thinking of teachers telling him he couldn’t just stand in unused portions of the base, he went back in and circled blindly until he found an empty place to sit.

“Welcome back,” said Anna snidely.

#

The worst part about being one of The Girls, Nikki found, was that he liked it.

Well, he didn’t like being shunned, derided, and bullied by everyone else there, or going to the bathroom in groups lest they repeat the brawl, or discussions of whether it would be appropriate to have a summer camp romance like in the vids. But other than that, the Girls were interested. None of them wanted to join the military and all of them had at least heard of five-space math and Galya even corrected him when he got a ship model number transposed.

When they announced the final group project, outlining a fantasy enterprise for how they could be pilots, Nikki knew he’d be stuck with The Girls but he hadn’t realized that meant the first comment would be, “Not the military.” Helena even came up with the idea of a charter jump ship, so that they could go anywhere they wanted, though that might have been because she liked plotting routes. And when Nikki did as his dad had taught him and wrote down all the tasks they’d need to do and figured out who could do what and when they’d need each part, Anna told him he was amazing.

Nikki crowed about it on the call home that evening. They only got one call all week, and he had the most excellent news for his mother, who listened and congratulated him even when he was saying how much he wished he could tell Da.

“You know, the PZ98D4 launch is only in a couple weeks,” Nikki said. “If they extended camp we could all go together. I bet Stepdad could make it happen.”

“You do have to come home some time,” his mother said, laughing. “I miss you already.”

“I miss you too,” Nikki said dutifully. He probably did, somewhere in between all that was happening.

“And about your stepfather… he’s been called off on business. He won’t be able to pick you up.”

“That’s okay!” Nikki chirped. “You can send someone else.” Anyone else. Nikki didn’t want people to see him with the mutie Lord Auditor.

“I’ll see who I can find. Aunt Vorthys has the flu and I’m over in the university district nursing her.”

“Give her my love,” Nikki said dutifully.

“Give Arthur my love,” his mother said in return. “Our time must almost be up, mustn’t it?”

“Yeah,” said Nikki, since the teacher had been signaling him for a while already, and they exchanged I-love-yous and Nikki went back to the glory of summer camp where people actually cared. Even if Arthur wasn’t speaking to him right now.

The days raced by with simulations, route calculations, and beautiful, beautiful math. Grandma Cordelia even sent a vast package of marshmallows for Nikki to “share with all his news friends,” something she must have ordered from Sergyar before Nikki ever left. They had a lollipop center and Galya and Nikki were still sucking on them the last night as they finished their final project. Helena and Anna, who had finished their parts hours ago due to not getting into an extended argument about Necklin rod evolutions, had already gone to bed.

“Do you know,” Galya muttered around her gobstopper, “this just might work.”

“What?” Nikki asked.

“This.” Galya gestured at the spread papers around them. “The charter business. My ship, Helena’s math, Anna’s financial model… it makes it all seem real, somehow.”

“And I could fly for real,” Nikki said. It hadn’t sounded real when they’d started. He hadn’t thought it would ever get off the ground. Helena’s routes took them all over the galaxy, ferrying merchants and tourists and race horses, without ever submitting to the constant grind of a puddle jumper or saluting even once.

“And I’d keep you running,” Galya agreed, looking over her engineering schematics proudly.

“And we’d be together,” Nikki agreed, and they did the forbidden thing, what they’d all been avoiding ever since the start of the project, since Anna ruled summer camp romances legitimate: they looked each other in the eye.

“Should we…” Galya said awkwardly. They’d both seen the vids: girls and boys at summer camp, flushed with sailing, locked eyes and leaned forward and kissed, always, and sometimes even cut to a shot of the camp cabin from outside as the sun rose. Even Captain Vortalon did it. So Nikki leaned forward, and so did Galya, and they pressed their lips together.

The first think Nikki felt was teeth. Galya’s mouth was open and her teeth smacked into his upper lip. He gasped, startled, and got a noseful of marshmallow and rancid olive off her breath. They hadn’t brushed their teeth yet and it was past midnight - was this what morning breath smelled like up close? But he wasn’t doing his part, what if she thought he was a bad kisser, so he opened his mouth and stuck his tongue out. For a moment their tongues collided like two nasty, slimy snakes, in his mouth, and then Galya drew back and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Nikki, conscious of the vids, panted a couple of times.

“Well - good night,” said Galya, like she was in one of the higher class vids.

“Good night,” said Nikki, and then they spent several minutes gathering their project off the floor and making sure they’d gotten the right papers.

“I think this one’s yours,” said Nikki, pulling it out.

“No, that’s your handwriting - oh, but I need that math. Thank you.”

“Good night,” said Nikki.

“Good night,” said Galya again, and they went back to their own bunks. Nikki, at least, finished his work clumsily under the blanket with a flashlight, because he wasn’t quite done but he knew you didn’t just keep hanging out after The Kiss at the end of the story.

#

The Kiss continued to haunt Nikki all through the next day, so much so that he got his worst score ever in the simulator and dragged their project down below the prize ranks. After that he didn’t have to worry about keeping Helena or Kitty between him and Galya lest she try for another kiss: all three of them were avoiding him.

“How disappointing,” said his favorite teacher, an ImpSec captain who came by to read his scores off the machine. “Are you feeling all right, Vorsoisson?”

“Yeah,” Nikki yawned. The teacher looked disappointed. “Just up too late.”

“Ah. Nerves,” said the teacher. “Perhaps your family could teach you some methods for dealing with those. They’re known for their cool heads.”

“My dad was an administrator,” Nikki said, confused. The teacher just motioned him on so the next boy could go.

After the prize ceremony it was straight out to the street to be picked up, everyone in shouting groups of their new friends. Nikki tried not to look too alone as he peered at the curb.

“Hey,” said Galya. Nikki jumped. “Look, I… never met someone who knows as much about jump ships as I do. So I wanted to give you my comm number. For the PZ98D4 launch.”

“Er,” said Nikki, looking at the shred of paper. “Oh look! That’s my family’s car!”

The float car eased to a stop at the curb and settled, just in time to rescue Nikki. He held up his hand to attract the driver’s attention and out climbed… Dono Vorrutyer.

“Oh no,” Nikki moaned. “Hide me. Why couldn’t he be late?”

“Why, what’s wrong?” Galya asked, peering at where Nikki had been looking before he ducked behind her.

“It’s Uncle Dono,” Nikki said. “Why couldn’t they have sent Uncle Ivan? Or Uncle Mark?” Uncle Mark was cool. Uncle Mark had taught Nikki to bet adults that a liter of maple mead contained more than one liter, which was true once you filled up the punt. Everyone would admire Nikki if Uncle Mark had been the one to pick him up.

“You know Donna Vorrutyer?!” Anna asked, instantly forgiving him his sim score. “She’s a feminist icon!”

“He’s a family friend,” Nikki moaned miserably.

Dono, certainly aware of exactly what he was doing, raised an arm and called, “Yoohoo! Nikki! Arthur!”

“Will you introduce me?” Helena asked.

“No,” Nikki said, and bolted for the car before it could get any worse. He tossed a “Hi Uncle Dono” on his way by, threw the door open, and catapulted inside where hopefully no one could see him. A moment later, Arthur landed on the seat beside him.

“In a hurry, are we, boys?” Dono asked, climbing into the driver’s seat. “Didn’t you have a good time?”

“How come you’re here?” Arthur demanded.

“Lord Vorkosigan has gone off-planet and of course Lord Vorpatril is on Komarr,” said Dono. “There was practically no one left.”

“Mama?” Nikki asked.

“With the children,” said Dono.

“Dad?” Arthur pleaded.

“With Lord Vorkosigan.”

“Uncle Mark?”

“Not back from Beta Colony for another few weeks.”

Nikki and Arthur mused on this for a while. Most of Arthur’s relatives were back in Hassadar or farther out in the country; Nikki wasn’t sure if any of them could drive, and he wasn’t sure he relished the idea of being picked up by a train of pack horses any more than being picked up by Dono.

“Grandpa Vorthys?” Nikki suggested after a moment, remembering Grandma Vorthys had the flu.

“Your grandfather… has been asked not to drive anymore,” said Dono carefully.

“They ought to ask Lord Vorpatril not to drive anymore,” said Arthur.

“Yes, we did want you to get back in one piece,” Dono agreed. “So here I am. Happy to help. How was camp?”

Nikki’s eyed slid over to Arthur. Arthur caught the look.

“Brilliant,” he said. “I met these cadets…”

Nikki sat back in the seat and let Arthur talk. Inevitably, his mind drifted back to the Kiss.

#

It was still hovering around the Kiss days later while Nikki moped around Vorkosigan House, trying to avoid babysitting duty. All the Vorkosigans seemed united around the idea that Nikki should babysit as often as possible, to give the newest generation of Vorkosigans an idea of what normal was, he supposed. Grandma Cordelia had said something about suicidal high-achievers, concluding in her favorite word, “Barrayarans.”

But the less Nikki babysat the more time he had alone, and the more time he had alone the more time he spent dwelling on the Kiss. It made him want to lock himself in a room again. Why did it have to be his first kiss? Why had it been so… horrible? Slimy and sticky and wet… the traces of it had lingered even after he brushed his teeth. And there was no one he could talk to. Uncle Mark was on Beta Colony. Nikki wasn’t about to talk to any of his stodgy relatives, least of all Grandmother Cordelia, who would probably give him some traumatizing lecture about the social mores of Beta Colony. Nikki wasn’t sure he’d want to talk to any of his other relatives even if they were on Beta Colony. Look at Uncle Ivan, what could Uncle Ivan possibly understand about kissing? Stepdad would probably start talking before Nikki could even begin, and keep going until suppertime.

There was one person who listened, and Nikki had his comm number but… Well, he hesitated to use it. He wasn’t a baby anymore. And it wasn’t like he was cool, you just knew that if you told him something he’d listen, and not judge, and nobody else would ever know you'd said it.

Eventually Nikki gave up and shut himself in his room, to get as much privacy as possible, before he called the number.

“Uncle Gregor? Can I reserve an hour of your time soon?”

“Nikki. I do have secretaries for that sort of thing.”

“Yeah, but the secretary told me I shouldn’t bother the Emperor with teenage foibles.” Gregor stayed silent, by which Nikki knew that he really shouldn’t bother the Emperor with teenage foibles, which just made him feel worse. “Uncle Gregor!”

“I can do something very late or very early,” Gregor told him, and Nikki felt a wash of miserable gratitude that even so Uncle Gregor was looking through his calendar to find a space for Nikki.

“I’d much rather do late, but Mom wants me to get to sleep on time,” he said.

“Oh-five hundred day after tomorrow?” Gregor suggested. Nikki groaned, and reconsidered whether he really needed to talk to Uncle Gregor, and whether he’d still need to in a couple of days. But Uncle Gregor was the only one who ever listened.

“Fine,” he said.

“I’ll set an alarm,” said Gregor.

“Yeah, me too. Thanks, Uncle Gregor.”

“Any time,” Gregor lied, and cut the line.

#

At five to five Nikki’s alarm went off. Blearily he reached for the clock, flailing from under the blankets, and only succeeded in knocking it off the table, where it tumbled across the floor and continued to bleep obnoxiously. Nikki groaned and tumbled after it, patting clumsily at the ground until it finally silenced. He lay on the floor, groggy, trying to think why such a horrible thing had happened to him.

Oh right. Uncle Gregor. The Kiss.

He’d gone to bed in his dress clothes, so he was fit to call Uncle Gregor except for the wrinkles. Nikki heaved himself up off the floor, tugged his shirt straight, and sat down at the comm unit. He plugged in Gregor’s number and yawned hugely.

“Ah, Mr. Vorsoisson,” said the aide, finally someone who remembered Nikki’s name right. “The emperor is expecting you. One moment.”

Nikki was dreading seeing Gregor look perfectly made up and coiffed, but for once Gregor looked nearly as zonked as he himself felt. Gregor sent Nikki a return yawn almost as soon as he picked up the comm, but his voice when he greeted Nikki was as smooth and level as ever.

“Good morning, Nikki. How can I help you?”

“Unce Gregor,” said Nikki, his voice cracking, “I’m gay.”

There was a pause during which all the Barrayaran consequences of this statement thundered down on Nikki’s head. Why, why had he thought that telling the emperor of Barrayar was a good idea? Then Uncle Gregor said, “Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me so, Nikki. You know I still love you, right?”

Nikki, eyes prickling, sniffed and nodded.

“And you should know that this isn’t a bad thing. All the important people in your life will still love you, and you can still find romantic love, if that is what you want. You’ll just have to be a little more careful, and that isn’t exactly unusual for Vorkosigan House. Why, there’s places in Vorbarr Sultana where you can go in perfect safety but Miles and Mark dare not tread.”

Gregor sounded somewhat needled by that. Nikki hazarded a, “Because they’re muties, right? But - so am I.”

“Not visibly, and you’ve had your treatment. It’s not a thing that should matter in this galactic age, either the dystrophy or the gay thing. But - would you mind explaining, to an old straight man, how you came to this conclusion?”

So Nikki explained about camp and Galya and the project and the argument, about which he had been right, and the Kiss. “And it was horrible! I didn't like it at all! So I must be gay.”

Gregor bit his lip. “So you came to this whole conclusion because you didn’t like one - the kiss. Okay. Did you want to kiss her?”

“What?”

“Were you attracted to her? Did you want to be near her?”

“Uncle Gregor, she knew about the PZ98D4 launch.”

“Ah, yes. If we all based our love lives around jump ship product launches, the world would be much simpler.” Gregor considered. “Differently complicated, anyway. Nikki, it is perfectly possible to be attracted to women and still not enjoy kissing a specific one. I’ve done it many times, and I am very happily - and productively! - married to a woman. You might still be gay, and that’s okay. Plenty of people are, even on Barrayar - heroes of the Imperium even. You might not be attracted to anyone. But before you make any panicked decisions, make sure the person you’re making them on behalf of is someone you want to be close to, and to touch, in a particular maddening fashion. Just… see what happens.”

“Heroes of the Imperium?” Nikki asked. Gregor sighed, and it turned into a yawn half way through.

“Yes. If you read about them, sometimes it becomes clear. There are billions of people in the galaxy, I promise you that you are not alone, whatever is going on with you.” Gregor glanced off screen. “My breakfast is ready. But Nikki - this girl, Galya, you said she gave you her call number?”

“Ye-es…”

“Call it.”

“No!”

“Don’t make me request and require you. She is feeling at least as confused as you are right now, and you have no way of knowing if she has support in this or any other area of her life. Like her interest in jump ships. You don’t have to kiss her again, but you do have a responsibility to her. Understood?”

“Yes, Uncle Gregor.”

“I will know,” Gregor said, which was just an unfair use of ImpSec omniscience.

“Fine!” said Nikki. “After breakfast.”

“All right. Give my love to your family. And - thanks again for trusting me.” Gregor closed the line.

Nikki played games until breakfast. He didn’t call Galya immediately after. He touched up his models, played more games, even worked on his summer reading essay.

A few days later he sat down at his comm and punched in the number and asked to talk to Galya.

“Hey, Galya - do you want to go to the launch with me? No - no! As enthusiasts… Okay! Do you need a ride? All right! Call it a date. I mean, don’t call it a date. ‘Cause it’s not.”

And, gloriously, it wasn’t.