Alexi disembarked from the mail auto-shuttle, barely acknowledging the salutes from the enlisted men on the tarmac who were there to pick up the incoming mail sacks and ship off the outgoing, just as he'd barely acknowledged the shuttle backup pilot's existence. He shouldered his duffle bag and picked up his single valise and went straight towards the base command post. He'd spent his final day in Vorbarr Sultana memorizing most of the base regs as well as most of the base map, so he didn't need to ask for directions. Also, he had copies of the regs and the map in his porta-reader in case he needed to look something up. Complete self-reliance. That's the credo in this place, he thought grimly.
He found the base commander's office with no trouble at all. The corporal in the outer office stood and saluted.
"Good afternoon, Corporal." Alexi returned the salute, presented his orders and asked, "Is the base commander in?"
"No, sir. General Vorlakail is on leave to the capital, to attend the Emperor's wedding."
After absorbing the surprise that the highest ranking officer here was another Vor, Alexi realized that naturally a Vor general would have received an invitation to Gregor's and Laisa's wedding.
Ah, yes, the wedding! The Wedding. How could I have forgotten about That? he sneered inwardly.
"Did he leave orders for me? He must have known I'd be coming."
"Yes, sir. I'll log you as reported in, Lieutenant--" a quick glance at the orders "Vormoncrief." The corporal smiled and handed back the orders, along with a hardcopy of the base regs, a hardcopy base map and the hardcopy manual on his new assignment: laundry officer. He hesitated, then said "Sir, it's my unhappy duty to tell you that the officer you're replacing has already left the base... He took an early leave. Sir." The corporal indeed looked unhappy.
"In other words, he took advantage of the CO's absense to skip out on his duty of training his replacement." Fortunately Alexi had already spent a little time reading up on his new duties as he traveled here. It was a no-brainer almost literally, a thorough waste of an Imperial Academy graduate. Just a routine, mind-numbing assignment that had to done properly--and supervised properly. If you did it right, nobody cared. That was just to be expected. Doing it wrong was when people paid attention to you, and in a very unwelcome fashion.
The corporal shrugged and said, "Yes, sir. Do you need directions to the officers' barracks or the mess hall, sir?"
"No, I'll find them. Thank you, corporal."
Instead of saluting, the corporal spoke again. "Sir? I was wondering, ... with you coming from the capital ..." The corporal was unsure whether to proceed.
He wouldn't dare ask me how I got posted to this place, and this job! Would he? "Yes?"
"Sir, I was wondering if you'd ever met Lord Vorkosigan."
Alexi could scarcely believe his ears. He remembered the unpleasant interruption by Miles Vorkosigan during his courtship of Ekaterin Vorsoisson in her aunt's parlor. That evil dwarf ostensibly came to talk to her about a gardening project. Ha!
Then he heard his uncle's voice: Keep your opinions to yourself. "No, I've never met him. Why?" he asked in an almost dangerous tone.
The corporal didn't seem to notice. "Well, he's something of a legend around here, sir. I gather you'll be hearing a lot about him eventually, especially from the longtimers. If you'd met him, everybody'd want to know what you knew about him personally, sir."
"Including you?"
The corporal nodded and gave an embarrassed smile.
"How exactly is Lord Vorkosigan a 'legend' here?"
"This was his first post, right out of the Academy, sir. As the Chief Meteorology Officer."
Miles Vorkosigan ... was posted here? As Meteorology Officer?
"--pretty much saved the base from a toxic spill. Had to go head-to-head with 'Madman' Metzov to do it." The corporal sounded almost like a worshipper describing his favorite priest, or his favorite god.
"'Madman' Metzov?"
"Yes, sir. General Metzov was the base commander back then, oh, ten years ago now, I guess. Everybody says he was a dangerous lunatic, that's how he got the nickname 'Madman'. Not to his face, I'm sure, sir.
"Anyway, Ensign Vorkosigan was fresh out of the Academy and he replaced a retiring weather officer. Nobody seems sure why the son of Admiral Count Vorkosigan got posted here as the weather officer but they all say he dug right in and learned his job. Then in his first winter, there was a real nasty accident in one of the toxic storage bunkers -- deadly stuff called fetaine got spilled -- and the techs wanted to thermo the whole bunker but 'Ma-- er, General Metzov wasn't having any of that. He was going on about 'obligations' and so on, despite the danger to the whole base if the winds shifted the fumes this way. Ensign Vorkosigan backed him down somehow. There's different versions of what happened exactly but it's the most talked-about incident to ever ... happen ... here ..." The corporal noticed the shock on Alexi's face and wound down.
Miles Vorkosigan was posted Here? And he's a bloody Hero?
He regained his composure. "Yes, well, I imagine I'll be hearing all those versions in due time. Carry on, corporal."
"Yes, sir." They exchanged salutes and Alexi left the admin building to get settled in his new quarters.
The base was practically deserted, which was to be expected during the summer off-season but probably even more so than usual with all the activity elsewhere surrounding the Wedding. There would be celebrations almost all over the planet for the Great Event. Alexi told himself he didn't care about that kind of thing anymore, and almost convinced himself of it.
He found his quarters and got his things stowed away, then headed for the laundry building. He found the lone enlisted man on duty sleeping at a rear desk with an empty bottle of beer next to him. But there were no bags of dirty laundry waiting to be cleaned, and there were several bags of clean laundry sitting in the pick-up area. Reading the riot act now to this trained and apparently competent subordinate would be more counterproductive than anything else. He'd come in tomorrow at the start of the fresh duty day to get the area shaped up.
He went into his new office to see if his predecessor had left anything of importance. It turns out he had: a recorded disk full of particulars relating to the proper filling of the base's laundry needs, including specific special-care details on how General Vorlakail and a couple of other top officers expected their laundry to be handled. Alexi sighed and took this disk back to his barracks to study in private with his porta-reader.
And to think unhappy thoughts about Miles Vorkosigan.
... to be continued