Miles resigns from ImpSec

Miles Vorkosigan's resignation from ImpSec is the culmination of a breach of trust that his record of service cannot erase. Simon Illyan confronts him with evidence that Miles concealed post-revival seizures and falsified a report, then offers him a medical discharge without prejudice if he resigns. Miles accepts, but not before a seizure and a desperate attempt to defend his service make clear that leaving ImpSec means surrendering more than a position: it threatens the identity and future he has tried to preserve.

The records and the breach

The confrontation begins with medical records from Miles's cryo-revival, not with a new assignment or an investigation into a fresh mission. The records had taken months to assemble and assess. The Durona Group's hurried departure from Jackson's Whole had scattered them between Escobar and House Fell, and House Fell had not supplied further information readily. Even after the records reached ImpSec, their implications were not recognized until someone examined them closely. Their late arrival gives the scene its suddenness: Miles is being confronted with a history he believed had already been put behind him.

The decisive issue for Illyan is not simply that Miles has seizures. Miles concealed them from ImpSec physicians who were trying to return him to duty, and the concealment extended through those physicians to Illyan. Illyan identifies the dishonesty as a betrayal of both subordinates who relied on Miles and superiors who trusted him. The falsified report makes that betrayal concrete: Illyan says it was a knowing act, proved by Lieutenant Vorberg's body. The consequences are therefore not contained within Miles's private medical history. His choices have affected another officer and compromised the trust on which his command responsibilities depended.

Service against the charge

Miles's first defense is the scale of his service. He invokes nine years under Illyan, more than thirty missions, and a record in which only two operations could remotely be called failures. He points to the people who could testify to his work, including the Marilacans, and to the occasions when he had put his life at risk. His argument is not that the concealment did not happen; it is that a long record of loyalty and sacrifice should still count when his conduct is judged.

Illyan grants that it counts for much, but does not treat past service as cancelling the present breach. Instead, it helps explain the form of the offer: a medical discharge without prejudice, provided Miles resigns. Illyan presents this as the best course for Miles and for his name, and makes clear that he has considered the decision for weeks. The offer is both an exit and a limit. It avoids turning the confrontation into a public accounting of Miles's entire career, but requires him to leave the service whose record he has just used to defend himself.

The resignation becomes physical

The administrative process is prepared in advance. Illyan has Miles's records ready to sign out, requiring a palm-print and retinal scan. Miles may keep his uniform because it did not come from military stores, and keeping insignia is traditional; he must, however, hand over his silver eyes. That distinction turns a routine inventory into the immediate trigger for Miles's panic. He reacts as though the request means the loss of his eyes, insists that it cannot be true, and tries to explain before his perception sharpens and breaks into a vision of green fire and colored fragments.

Miles comes to on Illyan's carpet with a desk stylus in his mouth. He has struck his face in the fall, his nose is bleeding, and his mouth is swelling. He initially refuses a medic and insists that he can walk, but one leg buckles and he falls again. Illyan gives him a handkerchief and helps him back into the chair. The scene interrupts the formal procedure at the moment Miles is asked to surrender the visible signs of his service: the resignation is not a smooth exchange of documents but an ordeal that his body makes impossible to control.

Signing out of ImpSec

Once he is seated, Miles acknowledges to himself that panic was behind his earlier concealment: he did not want to lose Admiral Naismith, or everything bound up with that identity. He tears a pin from his collar and thrusts the insignia at Illyan, declaring the contest over. Illyan takes them with a quiet expression of distress rather than triumph. Miles then asks for the read-pad and retinal scan so the process can be finished. His hands continue to shake, and he is afraid he will begin crying in front of Illyan.

Illyan gives him time to compose himself and directs him to wash before leaving, keeping the office door locked until Miles is fit to go out. Miles's face in the mirror is bloody, and careful washing cannot remove every bloodstain from his torn collar and shirt. He returns, sits, provides the palm-print and retinal scan, and records a brief formal resignation. The paperwork is completed, but not as a clean emotional severance: even after signing, Miles is still shaking. He tells Illyan it will pass and asks to be let out. The resignation thus ends the immediate confrontation while leaving its cost visible in his injured face, torn clothing, and continuing physical distress.