"Right. Well, the man who headed the invasion of Komarr was Aral Vorkosigan, my brother's father. Brilliant strategist, and a planet where everyone lives in sealed domes because they can't breathe the air is a pretty easy target, so he brought it off with almost no casualties... except that some bloodthirsty fuckwit in his chain of command decided to round up two hundred of the most wealthy and influential Komarrans and massacre them, for reasons that are lost to history because when Aral found out he flew into a rage and executed this numbskull on the spot."

"Ah, the military."

"Unfortunately for Aral, the Solstice Massacre ended up attached to his name, because he had a hard time proving that the dead man hadn't acted on his orders. A substantial portion of Komarr therefore hates his guts. One particular Komarran decided to express this hatred via a clone substitution plot. So he created me... the reason I'm so short and funny-looking is because of extensive surgery to make me look exactly like Miles, who suffered some serious prenatal damage in an assassination attempt on his father. Totally unrelated to Komarr, as far as I know; Aral was Regent of Barrayar at the time, so plenty of people wanted him dead for other reasons."

"You have got one hell of a complicated family."

"You can say that again. My childhood was pretty hilarious too. Fail at imitating Miles, get the shit kicked out of me as an incentive to improve; succeed at imitating Miles, get the shit kicked out of me anyway as the closest available proxy for Aral Vorkosigan."

"That doesn't add up to that much incentive as seen from over here, just a whole lot of shit coming and going." She switches to standing on her other foot.

"Most of the difference was in the surrounding rhetoric. Anyway, it was pretty obvious to me that out of my available role models, Miles and his family were vastly more stable and pleasant people than my creator. But there wasn't much I could do about it, because he managed to secure a functional kind of loyalty from me by being so terrifying that I had crippling panic attacks if I tried to substantially disobey him. So when Miles showed up unexpectedly on Earth and Galen decided to take the opportunity to activate me—" He shrugs.

"Does this end badly for Miles?"

"Happily, no. Galen meant it to, but - well, I'll get there. I successfully captured Miles and pulled off the switch, but his wife was on the planet and when she scooped me up as she would her husband I discovered I have a low-key panic reaction to friendly physical contact. It's possible I could've made the save, but it was easier just to capture her too, not to mention that I wasn't enormously keen on impersonating her husband to her in the first place. Then when I went back to the hideout and took Miles aside for a solo interview, I did the same with her, just out of curiosity. Hence why she was tied to a chair. And now I assume you'd like the rest of the story."

"Yes please."

"They were both rescued not long afterward. Galen hauled me off before anyone could track me down, and made me kidnap Miles's cousin Ivan to lure Miles into a poignant final confrontation. That worked as far as it went. His plan fell apart when he handed me a deadly weapon meaning me to shoot Miles, and I shot him instead. The crippling panic attack was very definitely worth it."

"Go you."

"Thanks."

"You keep saying Miles is your brother then referring to his cousin, his father."

"Miles personally claimed that relationship, to my face. None of the rest of them have. I haven't even met most of them."

"Huh. Okay."

"Anyway. Then Miles gave me a large sum of money and I fucked off into the galaxy at large, where I spend my time evading Barrayaran Imperial Security and having emotional breakdowns." He spreads his hands. "Happily ever after."

"More fun than a barrel of monkeys, sure."

"You bet."

"I'm in the IF, in Command School, but the 'school' part collapsed all to hell when they put me an' Sue in charge of the invasion force," she volunteers.

"And who are you invading?"

"Buggers. Insectoid hivemindy aliens. They invaded us first, we're invading back."

"No aliens to speak of where I'm from."

"Lucky you."

"If you say so."