Borders of Infinity

This collection gathers three Miles Vorkosigan novellas -- The Mountains of Mourning (1989), Labyrinth (1989), and the title story The Borders of Infinity (1987) -- tied together by a framing narrative in which Miles, recovering in a hospital bed, is grilled by Barrayaran Security chief Simon Illyan over the wildly expensive, wildly irregular missions recounted in each story. The throughline is Miles at his most improvisational: talking his way out of impossible situations by sheer nerve, on a backwater murder case, undercover in a genetics lab, and inside an unwinnable prisoner-of-war camp. It sits early-to-mid in Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga, between Miles's Academy years and his later command.