"Breakthrough" Author: sabaytis Rating: gen. AU. Writen for the Winterfair Open Exchange on the prompt: " AU. What if the Komarran plot to collapse the wormhole had worked?" Translated from Russian ("Прорыв") by Tel

Gregor winced as the comconsole's emergency chime rang, perceiving it as a punishment from the Imperial bureaucracy for the few hours of free time he'd made in his schedule to see his grandchildren. The comconsole was there to relay those messages at night, though, otherwise it wouldn't be in their bedroom.

Laisa uneasily rolled over, but didn't wake. The Emperor reached to take the call, and frowned when he saw the face of Admiral Vorpatril on the screen.

"You, Ivan? I hope it's worth it, at four in the morning. What's happening out there? An alien invasion?"

"Uh...Sire..." Ivan seemed forty years younger all of a sudden, his eyes mischievously twinkling. "Miles... he's back!"

"Through the collapsed wormhole?" Gregor began feverishly to get dressed. With a Vorkosigan around, things would get interesting. He'd deeply regretted not having a single representative of the clan on the planet at the beginning of Barrayar's second Time of Isolation.

"We're not sure, Sire. The ship appeared far from any known jump point and may have come in on a new route."

In the middle of pulling on his shirt, Gregor reached for the button that called his chief of Imperial Security.

"Duv, you already know about this?"

On his half of the screen, Galeni looked pained at his emperor's excitement.

"I have all of my analytical department working feverishly on this, sir. We're not sure how keep the arrival of this new ship secret, but clearly we're no longer cut off from the rest of the galaxy. The unknown vessel is currently is a zone of radio silence due to solar activity. Communications can be restored in no sooner than two hours. It... looks like it's really Vorkosigan."

"Ivan, prepare my ship. I'll fly to meet him. Duv, what have your people discovered so far?"

"Will do, Sire!" Vorpatril's image on the screen winked out.

On the bed, Laisa awoke, looking bewildered at her husband's frantic preparations. "What's going on, love?" she asked.

"I only have a preliminary analysis so far," Galeni reported simultaneously. "The ship appeared unexpectedly two hours and fifteen minutes ago. Its initial velocity was slightly less than 0.5 cee, causing serious communications difficulties. We successfully received a short information packet encrypted under the Lord Auditor's seal, but the noise in the signal has made decoding it difficult. So far we've only been able to determine that Count Vorkosigan and his wife are aboard."

His wife? Gregor wondered about that for a second, but then reminded himself that their last meeting was nearly forty years ago, and in that time even someone with Miles's irrepressible personality could find a mate.

"We don't know how it got here. Sensors picked up a five-space disturbance, but there's no sign of an active jump-point at that location. Vorkosigan's safe return suggests that at least some part of Barrayar's galactic empire has survived in our absence..."

Laisa gave her husband a stunned look, having finally figured out what was going on.

"And further, there's reason to believe that our second Time of Isolation has ended," Duv continued. "Miles, of course, may be crazy, but he seems to have managed to get here somehow."

"We'll fly out there together," Laisa said firmly, and Gregor couldn't find it in himself to refuse his wife.

***

"So it was Komarran terrorists after all," Gregor muttered to Miles, who, while greying, hadn't lost his charm. "I really hadn't expected that. A natural disaster or the Cetagandans, maybe, but Komarrans?"

"A small group of zealots," the Lord Auditor said. "You might not remember, but the mirror accident was their work. That is to say, their failed field test. We just missed them by a couple of hours - I was still en-route to the station when it went off. Their naivety was indescribable. They had no idea what kind of a genie they were letting out of the bottle. Imagine destroying the wormhole to Barrayar and thinking it would only affect Komarr! But after their hopes for a second uprising failed to materialize, things got very difficult. The Cetas tried to steal Komarr on the sly, but by the time they invaded, Professor Vorthys had reproduced the effect and begun mass production of the wormhole-collapsing device. We sent Emperor Giaja a secret ultimatum to back down or we'd destroy their wormholes, but he must have thought it a desperate bluff."

"And then what happened?" Galeni asked. He'd been sitting quietly in the corner and biting his lip. "I hope you followed through."

"Not completely." Miles shuddered slightly at the memory. "We left them a way out through Vervain. The ships of the Hegen Hub alliance have the tech installed, though, to prevent further Ceta interference. The fact that Barrayar... uh... the galactic part of it anyway... now had the ability to cut off any planet from the galaxy did cause major diplomatic problems. Especially with Beta Colony. But at least we secured ourselves from invasion and somehow put together a government..."

"I'd like to hear more about that, Miles," Gregor said, carefully concealing a smile. "I'm curious how you managed to keep together two-thirds of the Barrayaran Imperium in the absence of its Emperor."

"Three-quarters, actually." Miles looked down. "We ended up having to conquer Escobar. Father bitched terribly, but we needed the R&D and manufacturing facilities."

"I asked about what you did about the government, Miles," the Emperor reminded him. "Don't get distracted. We'll discuss your Escobaran adventure later."

"As the Emperor's Voice, I had to declare myself Steward," Miles admitted, cringing a little. "An unpleasant job, I confess. How can you stand it, Gregor?"

"I'm used to it all," Gregor shrugged. "But we can talk about that later too. How come you're back? How did you manage to get here?

"Oh, that! Yes!" Miles jerked his chin up and gave the room a blinding grin. "We continued to study, refine, and develop variants on the wormhole collapsing technology and pursued a few promising leads. Six years ago, Dr. Riva discovered that if you concentrate the energy pulse from five of those devices at one point in space, you can create a brief five-space anomaly very similar to a wormhole. Very brief, and unstable. Yet we succeeded in making it last longer, learned how to aim it - it's there for around three seconds now, long enough to shove one ship through if it's fast enough. Riva thinks we can make it last even longer, but I didn't want to wait. I've missed the mountains very badly."

"Then the jump to Komarr is still gone?" Laisa asked. "You made a one-way jump?"

"We brought descriptions of all the science behind 'five-punch' with us," Ekaterin said. "The algorithms for calculating the arrival point need to be adjusted, but there aren't any limits on where you can go. One jump can take you to Beta, or Earth."

Ivan shuddered, seemingly imagining what this technology would do to interstellar warfare.

"It's a revolutionary technology!" Miles confirmed. "And it's terrible to imagine what kind of a revolution it'll produce in interstellar politics. Fortunately, I can now surrender power over three planets to their rightful owner with a clear conscience!"

Gregor exchanged a glance with his wife, and then looked at Duv. The two of them would support him, and Miles... would have to suffer a little longer.

"According to tradition, the reward for a job well done..." the Emperor of the Barrayaran Imperium began, clearing his throat.