"Damnit this attack wasn't supposed to actually succeed!" -- RecklessPrudence
It was supposed to be a feint. A sacrificial lamb to the slaughter. A potential method of getting rid of Lord Auditor Vorkosigan without allowing the blood to come near his hands.
What he didn't know - not until the Emperor himself told him shortly before his permanent exile in Camp Permafrost - was that Lord Miles Vorkosigan had a significant and classified history of commanding inferior forces against a superior enemy and winning.
He also never knew that Vorkosigan's trick for getting the Mercenaries to turn against their former employers and join his own small fleet was personal association with its current Admiral, back in his ImpSec days.
So it was with no small amount of shock and awe that Fleet Admiral Voritus watched his sacrificial lamb turn into a ravening lion that consumed at least eighty percent of his previous battle plan.
And secured the rebelling colony with alarming rapidity and astonishingly low loss of life.
Voritus caught only the tiniest glimpse of who ImpSec called "The Little Admiral" before Vorkosigan resumed his Lord Auditor face to glare him down with Imperial Intent.
"No battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy," said Vorkosigan. "And no battle plan ever works against two of them."
Which was an excellent summary of what the Emperor Gregor Vorbarra had to tell him, much later, during the very classified and covert debriefing. Just before his exile into the next best thing to Hell.
The Lord Auditor Vorkosigan recommended that he be appointed as Weather Officer. And sent him a crate of really cheap whiskey.
(Muse food remaining: 14. Submit a Prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories! Or comment below!)