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 even dealt with outsiders. Graf Station was one that did accept galactics and their trade, as did the orbital arcologies dubbed Metropolitan, Sanctuary, Minchenko, and Union Station. This last was the seat of Quaddie government, such as it was; a variant of bottom-up representative democracy based, Miles was given to understand, on the work gang as its primary unit. He hoped to God he wasn’t going to end up negotiating with a committee.

Ekaterin glanced around and, with an excited smile, motioned Roic to take a turn. He ducked his head and nearly pressed his nose to the port, staring in open curiosity. This was Ekaterin’s first trip outside the Barrayaran Empire, and Roic’s first venture off Barrayar ever. Miles paused to thank his habits of mild paranoia that before he’d dragged them off-world he’d troubled to send them both through a short intensive course in space and free fall procedures and safety. He’d pulled rank and strings to get access to the military academy facilities, albeit on a free week between scheduled classes, for a tailored version of the longer course that Roic’s older armsmen colleagues had received routinely in their former Imperial Service training.

Ekaterin had been extremely startled when Miles had invited - persuaded - well, hustled - her to join the bodyguard in the orbital school: daunted at first, exhausted and close to mutiny partway through, proud and elated at the finish. For passenger liners in pressurization trouble, it was the usual method to stuff their paying customers into simple bubbles called bodpods to passively await rescue. Miles had been stuck in a bodpod a time or two himself. He’d sworn that no man, and most especially no wife, of his would ever be rendered so artificially helpless in an emergency. His whole party had traveled with their own personally tailored quick-donning suits at hand. Regretfully, Miles had left his old customized battle armor in storage. . . .

Roic unbent from the port, looking especially stoic, faint vertical lines of worry between his eyebrows.

Miles asked, “Has everyone had their antinausea pills?”