Miles conceals his seizure and the Vorberg incident

Miles conceals his seizure and the Vorberg incident at a point where private medical uncertainty, command responsibility, and the accuracy of an official report collide. The episode is not simply a secret about his health: it shapes what he tells Elli Quinn, what he considers telling Simon Illyan, and how he tries to describe the consequences of the Zoave Twilight mission. His retreat from disclosure ends with a compromised report in hand, but not with the false account he had contemplated submitting.

The Seizures and the Concealment

Miles initially describes the episode to Elli Quinn as a seizure resembling epilepsy, while wondering whether it is an aftereffect of his cryo-revival the previous year. He touches the faint scars on his neck as he explains. Quinn’s emergency treatment had accounted for his prolonged unconsciousness and headache, but his explanation leaves a more consequential fact unresolved: this was not the first seizure.

When Quinn asks whether it had happened before, Miles admits that he had experienced three or four episodes—or perhaps five—soon after his return from stasis. His cryo-revival surgeon had thought they might disappear on their own, as Miles’s memory loss and shortness of breath had appeared to do. The seizures seemed to stop, and Miles had treated that apparent pause as reason to manage the risk privately. Their return makes the earlier episodes newly relevant, especially because he has been on a covert operation without telling Quinn.

The concealment was selective rather than complete. Miles had informed the surgeon of the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet and sworn her to secrecy; together they were pursuing a causal diagnosis, without much progress. Her specialty was trauma, which Miles connects to the medical demands of the mission, including Lieutenant Vorberg’s treatment. But Miles had not informed Quinn, although she was both his second in command on the mission and personally close to him. He acknowledges that he should have told her. The omission therefore withheld information from the person most directly positioned to share operational responsibility, not merely from an outside authority.

The Mission Record and Its Consequences

Miles later reviews Appendix C, which contains recordings of the combat-armor penetration and hostage-retrieval sequences: Sergeant Taura’s Green Squad rescuing the freighter’s crew, followed by Miles’s Blue Squad and the events surrounding it. The recordings include sound, color, medical telemetry, and communications data. Among them, Suit #060’s video documents Lieutenant Vorberg’s condition during the aftermath of the seizure. Miles watches the record and reacts with evident distress, recognizing the human consequence attached to an episode he had tried to treat as a manageable private risk.

Vorberg is convalescing and has been handed over to the Barrayaran Counsel’s office on Zoave Twilight for shipment home through normal channels. Miles is relieved that his covert status spares him from having to visit the sick bay and apologize in person. Before the accident, Vorberg had not seen Miles’s face beneath his combat-armor helmet; afterward, his memory of the rescue is reported to be vague and confused. Those circumstances do not erase Miles’s responsibility in his own mind. They instead leave him facing a report that must account for an incident its most injured participant can scarcely remember.

The Report as a Second Concealment

Miles considers omitting the Blue Squad record from his report. He recognizes that removing only the most revealing sequence would attract Simon Illyan’s attention, so he considers deleting the whole appendix and disguising the gap among the absent squad records. He also drafts a shorter account that would attribute the mishap to Suit #032’s right-arm plasma arc locking in the on position. In that version, the equipment malfunction and the interval spent correcting it could lead the reader to misunderstand how the subject was struck. The proposed phrasing would not simply reduce detail; it would shift the apparent source of the failure from its wearer to the suit.

Miles rejects that account, explicitly recognizing that he cannot lie to Illyan, even through passive wording. Yet the decision does not immediately settle the matter. He reassures himself that deleting the fuller appendix would be editing for length rather than lying, and later argues that the mission report can exclude the matter neatly. He also discounts Illyan’s reputation for omniscience, reasoning that the intelligence chief’s memory chip does not make him a genius and that ImpSec’s secret files reveal institutional disorder behind its appearance of control. These arguments do not alter what the record shows; they help Miles imagine that the concealment might escape notice.

The Decision and Its Limits

Quinn’s reaction makes the personal and operational cost of the secrecy explicit. She protests that Miles withheld the information not only from someone close to him but from his second in command. Miles admits she is right, but the argument does not lead him to disclose the full history to ImpSec. He says he will take Sergeant Taura as a bodyguard, treating the choice as sufficient to satisfy a cautious ImpSec superior. Quinn leaves after giving him a forced salute, and Miles returns to his work alone.

He then makes a consequential distinction between the short report and the long one. Miles enciphers the short mission file onto a security card, opens the long version, and erases it. He puts the card in a code-locked pouch, leaves it on his bed, and begins packing for the journey home. The outcome is neither straightforward confession nor complete destruction of the evidence: the fuller account has been removed from the active record, but a protected copy remains in his possession. The action thus preserves the possibility of disclosure while allowing the immediate report to omit the episode. Miles’s refusal to fabricate a specific equipment failure limits his deception, but does not resolve the underlying breach of trust with Quinn or the concealment of a seizure during a covert mission.