Dendarii Mercenaries

In Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga, the Dendarii Mercenaries are the mercenary organisation founded by Miles Vorkosigan in The Warrior's Apprentice.

The mercenary fleet begins almost by accident. While visiting his grandmother on Beta Colony, Miles acts on a sudden impulse by buying an outdated interstellar cargo freighter and employing its down-and-out pilot, Arde Mayhew. He offers the freighter's services to the beleaguered government of Tau Verde IV, a planet wracked by civil war. The government's opponents in the war have hired a mercenary fleet, the Oseran Mercenaries, to blockade the planet. By accident, Miles leads the Tau Verde representative to believe that he himself heads a mercenary fleet. Miles takes his freighter to Tau Verde and, through clever tactics and considerable luck, successfully captures a vessel of the Oseran mercenary fleet. Despite his vastly inferior force, he outmanouevres the Oserans at every turn; eventually the defeated Admiral Oser agrees to join Miles' fictitious fleet, giving the previously nonexistent 'Dendarii Mercenaries' (named for a mountain range on Miles' planet of Barrayar) a real existence.

Miles is summoned to Barrayar (see The Warrior's Apprentice in Vorkosigan Saga) to answer charges of treason. In clearing his name, he persuades the Emperor Gregor Vorbarra to declare the mercenaries part of the Barrayaran Imperial Military Service.

Miles's one-time lover, at the end of Memory she commanded the Dendarii as Admiral Quinn. She is a native of Kline Station and hates living on planets, which she luckily doesn't have to worry about, having declined numerous marriage proposals from Miles and also being a mercenary fleet Admiral.

Elli Quinn began the series rather unremarkable in appearance, but was horribly injured by a plasma arc, which scorched off her facial tissues and almost all of her features. Miles subsequently purchased her the finest reconstructive surgery money could buy, more than restoring her appearance, and she is now stunningly beautiful.

This Betan hermaphrodite became the Captain of the Ariel as a result of Miles's conquest. Thorne is fired from the Dendarii at the end of Mirror Dance for taking part in Mark's scheme to free the clone-slaves from Bharaputra's laboratories. Bel becomes a roving ImpSec agent and eventually settles in Quaddiespace, resuming a relationship with the Quaddie musician Nicol, whom Thorne had first met on a Dendarii mission to Jackson's Whole.

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