The Vor Game

Miles Vorkosigan graduates from the Barrayaran Military Academy with high expectations of ship command but is disappointed with an assignment as meteorologist to an arctic training camp. There he narrowly averts a massacre between the trigger-happy base commander and mutinous recruits. Reassigned to investigate a suspicious military buildup near a wormhole nexus, he revives his undercover persona as mercenary Admiral Miles Naismith to negotiate between competing powers for control of the wormhole, to rescue the Emperor of Barrayar, and to watch his back for the arctic base commander seeking bloody vengeance.