Miles's dismissal from ImpSec

Miles Vorkosigan’s dismissal from ImpSec turns a concealed medical condition and a falsified report into the end of a thirteen-year career. The distinction matters: Miles makes clear that he was not discharged for having seizures, but for falsifying a report. Even so, the seizures—an aftereffect he traces to his cryo-revival—frame the choices and silences that precede his departure, while his belief that Simon Illyan cannot take him back makes the loss feel final.

Career and Concealed Illness

For a decade, Miles had perfected his cover identity as Admiral Naismith, leader of the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet, and become one of ImpSec’s most creative agents in galactic affairs. The Dendarii gave the Empire a way to act beyond the reach of its regular forces, across political barriers and the wormhole routes connecting distant systems. His career depended on moving between identities; the private medical danger he concealed, by contrast, threatened to expose a vulnerability he had not shared with ImpSec’s doctors.

After his cryo-revival, Miles experienced several seizures, each lasting two to five minutes and apparently triggered by extreme stress. His surgeon believed they might resolve on their own, as his memory loss and shortness of breath had begun to do. When the seizures seemed to abate, Miles chose not to tell the ImpSec medical staff. He later admitted that the episodes had occurred three or four—or perhaps five—times soon after he was revived from stasis. In another account, he acknowledged that Mark knew, but ImpSec did not. The concealment thus extended beyond a medical judgment: it left the institution sending him into covert operations without knowing about a condition Miles himself feared might become a time bomb.

The Grounds for Discharge

Miles’s own account draws a firm line between the illness and the dismissal. He was not expelled for having seizures; he was dismissed for falsifying a report, and he acknowledges that the report concerned no minor matter. The available account does not specify the report’s contents, but it establishes that the discharge followed a breach of professional trust rather than a medical finding that he was unfit for service.

The distinction does not lessen the consequence. In speaking to Harra Csurik, Miles describes the sequence as a medical problem, a foolish act, a further mistake in lying about the first, discovery, and discharge. He measures what has been lost as thirteen years of career effort, gone at once, and says that civilian status was never among the futures he imagined for himself at thirty. His abrupt self-description as medically discharged to Lieutenant Vorberg carries the same finality: he is no longer on medical leave, and he says he exceeded the special dispensation Vorberg thought he had, citing a needle grenade.

Refusal and the Closed Door

When Ivan Vorpatril asks why Miles has not pursued treatment, Miles rejects the idea that restoring his health would restore his post. Even if doctors could return him to guaranteed perfect working order immediately, he says, that would not change the reason he was removed. In his view, Illyan cannot take him back—not because Miles’s seizures make him incapable, but because Illyan’s principles make the falsified report decisive. Ivan offers to arrange appointments at three clinics specializing in cryo-revival cases: one in Vorbarr Sultana, one in Vordarian’s District, and one on Komarr. Miles declines.

That refusal makes the dismissal more than a medical or administrative problem. Treatment might address the seizures, but it cannot reverse the lie or restore the trust Miles believes he has forfeited. His old identity as an agent cannot simply be recovered by returning his body to working order; the institutional judgment and his own sense of the breach remain.

Civilian Aftermath

The discharge follows Miles into conversations that have little to do with ImpSec. At Vorkosigan House, Ivan makes him drink tea for rehydration before asking him to explain what happened. Miles recognizes the temptation to offer practiced excuses and denials, but chooses a direct account instead. The change in setting—from covert service and official reports to a kitchen conversation with his cousin—makes the confession an immediate consequence of the career’s collapse: private knowledge that he once withheld from doctors must now be spoken to family.

Later, while talking with Harra in the District, Miles connects his own losses to her earlier insistence that he stand up straight and tell the truth. Her question about whether his discharge means he will spend more time there receives only a tentative answer. He has lost the professional future he expected, but the possibility of a different life remains open without being settled. The dismissal therefore closes his ImpSec career while leaving its aftermath unresolved: Miles must reckon with the choices that ended it before he can know what civilian life will become.