Falling Free is an engineering adventure set in the same universe as Vorkosigan books, but separated from the main events by a couple centuries. Very professional engineer Leo Graf is sent to a space habitat to teach vacuum welding to the quaddies, a genetically modified human species with arms instead of legs and a host of subtler adaptations to zero-G. When advances in artificial gravity make the quaddies a net loss instead of a gain for GalacTech, the company decides to pull the plug and dispose of the "post-fetal biological waste samples". You know, genocide one thousand kids because the PR implications of revealing their existence would be messy. Graf, with an iron morality around safety and quality disagrees, and leads a quaddie revolt to hijack a starship and turn their habitat into a colony ship. There's some good stuff about quick and delicate work under trying circumstances, but this book is mostly forgettable, with thin characters and amateurish (for Bujold) writing.

It's interesting to compare Falling Free to Cyteen as paired biological thrillers centered around the slavery of near humans. While Bujold goes with contemporary liberal morality that slavery is bad, Cherryh finds a way to say that the azi are workable, might even be better than humans in some circumstances. Weird synchronicity.