Lucas Haroche’s exposure and arrest

General Haroche’s exposure and arrest turn an invisible biological attack into visible evidence. Miles Vorkosigan builds a witnessed test around air filters, catches Haroche trying to remove a second filter, and orders his arrest for treason. The subsequent questioning establishes that Haroche had known about the Komarran prokaryotes for years, stole capsules from the Evidence Rooms, and used them against Simon Illyan before trying to make Duv Galeni a disposable suspect.

The Test and Its Evidence

Miles approaches the demonstration as both a scientific test and a safeguard against further harm. He hopes that keeping Haroche occupied and surrounded will prevent a last-minute attempt to arrange Galeni’s apparent suicide. Rather than confront Haroche at once, Miles brings along the head of Janitorial, a Forensics technician, and a group of witnesses. He explains enough to secure the department head’s cooperation, then leads the group through ImpSec headquarters to the Evidence Rooms.

In Weapons Room IV, Miles retrieves the familiar bio-sealed box from Shelf 9. His Auditor’s seal remains unbroken, and two brittle brown capsules are still inside. He snaps one capsule and waves it overhead. The fine tan powder disperses into the room; the demonstration puts the suspected delivery material into the air while the gathered witnesses watch. At Miles’s request, Vaughn Weddell allows ten minutes for it to circulate before proceeding.

Weddell’s test makes the otherwise invisible vector detectable. He fills an atomizer with a specially prepared chelation solution and sprays it onto the filter at the return-air vent. When he illuminates the surface with an ultraviolet hand-light, a red fluorescence appears. Weddell confirms that vector encapsulations have been caught in the filter. Miles calls this result the baseline and directs the Forensics technician to document, bag, label, and seal the filter. The sequence matters: the first sample establishes what the test detects before the party applies it elsewhere.

Haroche Caught in the Act

Miles next takes the witnesses to Duv Galeni’s small office in Komarran Affairs, then onward to Haroche’s former office. Haroche shows no obvious reaction to the group’s arrival. At the old office, a Janitorial colonel goes directly to the low wall grille, followed by the Forensics technician. Miles identifies the air filters as the object of the inquiry and notes that Haroche has never served in space, where attention to filtration would be more familiar.

The decisive discovery comes after Haroche has left. Told that Haroche had been carrying a flimsy-folder, Miles leads the group back to the Domestic Affairs outer office. The door to Haroche’s former inner office is locked; Miles overrides it with his Auditor’s seal. Inside, Haroche is crouched beside the desk, levering the vent grille out of the wall. An opened folder on the floor contains another fiber filter. His attempt to remove or switch the material is interrupted by the very people who can test and preserve it.

The group repeats the procedure. The colonel removes the grille, Weddell sprays the filter, and the team waits. Red fluorescence again appears under the black light, converting a trace that could not be seen unaided into a result that can be witnessed and documented. The repeated test links Haroche’s attempted removal to the same vector found in the earlier sample. The investigation’s method has anticipated the countermeasure: instead of relying on Haroche’s explanation, Miles has assembled people and procedures capable of checking the physical evidence.

Arrest and Charge

With the second filter showing the same fluorescence, Miles turns to Guy Allegre and informs him that he is acting chief of ImpSec, pending Gregor’s approval. Miles makes Allegre’s first duty the arrest of his predecessor. He initially hesitates over the exact charge, weighing sabotage, treason, and other descriptions, but settles on the capital charge of treason. The word visibly unsettles several people in the room.

Haroche denies that he committed treason. Miles leaves open the possibility of cooperation and a lesser charge: assault on a superior officer, to be handled by a Service court-martial, with imprisonment and dishonorable discharge as possible consequences. That offer does not undo the arrest or diminish the gravity of the accusation. It distinguishes the immediate charge from the eventual judgment and makes cooperation a possible path toward a different disposition. The scene ends with Haroche in custody and the matter moving from a covert investigation into an open examination of what he did and why.

Haroche’s Account

Gregor orders Haroche to recount his actions and reasons from beginning to end, asking for the facts rather than defenses. Haroche says that he learned of the Komarran prokaryotes at the beginning, while coordinating with Diamant of Komarran Affairs during the effort to sweep up Ser Galen’s saboteur group. He was present when Diamant stored the capsules in the Evidence Rooms, but says he thought little of them for years. He later recalls being praised by Simon Illyan for his work on the Yarrow case, a memory Illyan does not share.

Haroche connects his later decision to his professional ambition. After Miles damaged his prospects through his own mistake, Haroche believed he had regained a chance to rise while Illyan was growing tired and discussing retirement. Haroche says he wanted to serve the Imperium and Gregor, but also wanted that opportunity while he was still at his peak. The prokaryote powder, once a forgotten item in storage, became a means to force the change in leadership he desired.

Haroche admits that he took two capsules from the box after Miles emerged from Illyan’s office visibly distressed. He says the box, rather than its contents, carried the screamer tag, and that his authority gave him an ordinary-looking reason to remove items without being searched. A few days later, he administered the prokaryotes to Illyan, who regularly came to his office to check facts and ask his opinion. His account ties the attack to access, prior knowledge, and an opportunity created by his position within ImpSec.

Framing Galeni and the Investigation’s Reversal

Haroche also describes the pressure that followed. Miles would not stop investigating, and Haroche says that he first expected to make the case stick to Miles. When that failed, he turned to Galeni, whom he regarded as a more disposable target and a potential embarrassment because of his connection to the Empress-to-be. Haroche accelerated the plan against Galeni, intending to present him as a ready-made suspect, even as Miles continued pursuing the capsules and the evidence-room trail.

The reversal is particularly sharp because Haroche describes Miles’s persistence as the force that disrupted his timetable. Miles found the capsules within three days, much sooner than Haroche expected, and stayed close enough to keep pressing the investigation. Haroche says he tried to draw him toward Jackson’s Whole and later offered him bait, but Miles returned with Weddell and the filters while Haroche was elsewhere in the building. At this point in the questioning, Gregor asks what bait Haroche means; the evidence here does not yet disclose the answer. The arrest thus exposes both the original attack on Illyan and the effort to redirect suspicion toward Galeni, while leaving that final element of Haroche’s account unresolved.