The Domination

Chapter Seventeen

DRAKA FORCES BASE ARESOPOLIS

MARE SERENITATIS, LUNA

MARCH 25, 1998: 2000 HOURS

Yolande turned her head to scan the other side of the Wasp-class stingfighter. This is what it’s like to be a ghost, she thought. She ran her hand through the solid-seeming bulk of a crashcouch, looked down to see her shins disappear into the deck. A Wasp had room for exactly two crew, clamped into their couches for most of the trip. Or what it’s like to be a time traveller. The events she was experiencing were nearly a thousand hours in the past. She watched the movements of the pilot’s gloved fingers on the rests.

“Coming up on pod,” the pilot said. “Twelve kay clicks and closing. Status.” The wall ahead mapped trajectories and ran digital displays.

“Locked,” her Weapons Officer said, his voice tight but steady.

So young, Yolande thought. Gwen will be that old in a few years. So young . . .

“Unauthorized craft, identify yourself.” That from a resonator film somewhere in the cabin. Flat, grating Yankee accent with the mechanical overlay of a simple AI-interactive system. “You are on an intercept trajectory to within prohibited distance. Identify yourself or alter course.”

“Visual,” the pilot said.

“Acquisition,” the Weapons Officer replied, and called it up on the screen.

A rough cylinder of slag-surfaced metal, pocked with bubbles and lumps from the vacuum-condensation refining process. A pod at one end with sensors and the guidance system, and rings of low-velocity hydrazine steering jets, a minimal course-correction system to send a hundred thousand tonnes of whatever from the asteroid belt to the Alliances melters and factories, here on the Moon and points inward. These days, a good deal of it might end up on Earth, headed for splashdown sites in the Sea of Cortes or the Cook Strait or the Inland Sea.

“Composition,” the pilot was saying.

There was a second’s pause and the Wasp’s computer replied: “Iron, fifty percent, nickel twenty-one percent, chromium group sixteen percent, tungsten ten percent, fissionables three percent, volatiles and trace elements.”

Valuable, Yolande thought. The Yankees were stronger in the asteroid belt; their initial lead in deep-space pulsedrives had given them an opening they had never relinquished. Much cheaper to drop heavy elements down into the solar gravity well than boost them out of Earth’s pull and atmosphere, even now that freight costs were coming down so low. The Alliance would trade metals for the water and chemicals the Draka took from the Jovian and Saturnian moons, of course, but it was cheaper to hijack where you could. Better strategy, too, since it hampered their operations and forced them to divert resources to guarding their slingshot modules and scavenging the asteroids for scarce volatiles . . . She had had a hand in formulating that policy.

At least it’s been better strategy until now. A rectangle appeared in the “air” in front of her, an exterior simulation of the two spacecraft. The Wasp drifted, a blunt pyramid tapering from the shockplate at the rear to the crew compartment at the apex. Slim tubes rose from each corner of the plate, linked to the pyramid with a tracing of spars; asymmetric spikes flared out to guide the parasite bombs riding in station around the gunboat. The simulation limned the outlines, since like any warcraft this was armored in an absorptive synthetic that mimicked the background spectra.

“Closing,” the pilot said. The outside view showed a needle-bright flicker behind the gunboat, deuterium-tritium pellets squeezed into explosion by the lasers. Yolande started, almost surprised not to feel the deceleration that pushed the crew back into their cradles. “One-ninah kay clicks, matchin’.”

“Unidentified craft, this is your last warning,” the robot voice droned.

“Eddie, shut that fuckah up, will you?” the pilot said, exasperated. The man grunted, touched a control surface.

The control chamber vanished, leaving a blackness lit only by the face of the investigating officer in the central portion. “That’s it, Strategos,” he said, shrugging. “End datalink. The fighter went pure ballistic from then until we grappled what was left.” Yolande gestured, and the black went to gray, then faded into her office. She motioned again.

“All right,” she said, as the rectangle expanded to occupy a square meter above the surface of her desk. “Give me the record of the recov’ry action.”

“Well, the Yanks scrambled once they’uns realized what was happenin’,” the Intelligence Section merarch said. The three-dimensional image lifted a cigarette to its lips. “Two Jefferson-class patrollers, with six and four gunboats respectively, in position to do somethin’. Thirty personnel, all told.”

Yolande nodded: Yankee gunboats were single-crew, and the Jeffersons had ten apiece. The Alliance military relied more on cybernetics than the Draka did. “That was all they had within range.”

Space was large, and even with constant-boost pulsedrive units it took a long time to get from anywhere to anywhere, compared with on-planet applications. There were times when she thought it was more like the situation back in her great-grandfather’s time, when it could still take weeks to cross an ocean, months to traverse a continent. Then trouble blew up, and the soldier on the spot was left with his ass hanging in the breeze and no way to call for mama.

“Luckily, we’n’s had three Iron Limper corvettes on, ah, patrol.” Corsair duty, her mind added sardonically, using the crew slang. “This’s what happened.”

The view shifted to points and data columns, a schematic of the corvettes and their twelve—no, eleven—gunboat outriders, and the machinery’s best guess on the Yankees. The usual thing for space combat, a long gingerly waiting before a brief flurry of action. A pulsedrive was sort of hard to hide anywhere in the solar system unless you had something the size of a planet to shelter it, but that told you very little except the past position and a fan of possible vectors. Spaceships were another matter; between stealthing and datamimic decoys, long-range detection had always run a little behind the countermeasures.

“Well, both parties knew they’d have to intersect somewhere along the trajectory of the cargo pod and the stingray.” A section of the curve that looped in from beyond the orbit of Mars turned red, the area where either set of warships could match velocities. “The Yankees went into constant-boost, figurin’ to overrun us on the pass, then go back fo’ it. We went silent, coastin’; had the advantage, comin’ out-system from sunward.”

“Ah.” She could guess what came next. You could think of a pulsedrive as a series of microfusion bombs and field-shielding and reaction mass heated to plasma—or as a sword of radiation and high-energy particles tens of kilometers long. That was the Staff way of seeing it. Her imagination flashed other images on the inner screen of her consciousness. The matte-black shapes of the Limpers falling outward. A shallow disk perched on a witch’s maze of tubing like some mad oil refinery,all atop the great convex soup plate of the pusher. The dozen crewfolk locked into their cocoons of armor and sensors, decision-making units in a dance of photonics. Units that sweated with fears driven down below consciousness; the ripping impact of crystal tesseract mines scattering their high-V shrapnel through hulls and bodies, blood boiling into vacuum. The pulse of a near-miss and secondary gamma sleeting invisibly through the body, wrecking the infinitely complex balances of the cells. Tumbling in a wrecked ship, puking and delirious and dying slowly of thirst . . .

Fears carried down from the ground ape; hindbrain reflexes that twitched muscles in desperate need to flee or fight, pumped juices into the blood, roiling minds that must stay as calm as the machines that were master and slave both. Yolande swallowed past dryness, and used the inward disciplines taught by those who had trained her for war. The slamming impact of deceleration; railguns, lightguns, mine showers, missile and countermissile, the parasite bombs driving their one-megaton X-ray beams like the icepicks of gods. The drives punching irresistibly through fields and shieldings, perhaps a single second for the stricken to know their fate as plasma boiled through the corridors.

Silence. Long slow zero-G fading past, waiting for the sensors to tell you if you were already dead . . .

She shook her head. “Hugin totalled.” Sheer bad luck, a parasite-bomb impact just as her drive was cycling out a new pellet. Twelve dead. “Lothbrok mostly made it.” If the biotechs could repair tissues so riddled. “Ragnar, no losses.”

“A successful engagement,” the Intelligence Officer said. “But . . . .”

“But we still don’t know what the shit happened with that-there original intercept.”

“Strategos . . . ” The merarch hesitated, then continued. “Strategos, admitted all we’ve got is what downloaded to optical storage befo’ they bought it . . . but somethin’ catastrophic did happen. If’n I didn’t know better, I’d say point-blank parasite bomb hit, with a chain fire in the feed tubes fo’ the drive. But there weren’t no parasite bombs travellin’ with that cargo pod.”

“Incorrect, Merarch. There were five.”

For a moment the man looked blank, then his eyes widened slightly in shock. Their gaze met in agreement: With the fighter, its own weapons. “This is speculation, an’ not to go on record. Understood?”

He nodded. They were silent for a moment; his voice was slow and musing when he continued: “ ’Bout the prisoners . . . we kept them in filterable-virus isolation an’ did a complete scan, as per usual.” Security had gotten even more paranoid of late, now that Alliance nanosabotage capacities were approaching the size level of Draka gene-engineering skills. Not to mention the ever-present nightmare of data plaque contamination; the Alliance’s superiority in compinstruction was indisputable. The Domination took what precautions it could—offline backup systems for all essential functions, manual overrides, physical separation—but there were limits to what could be done in an environment as dependent on computer technology as space.

“Well, somethin’ sort of odd came up. Very damn odd. The biotechs found somethin’ on six of the seven livin’ prisoners, some sort of latent . . . weeell, virus or somethin’ back in the central nervous an’ limbic systems. Very tricky, very; they only found it on ’count the discrepancy in the neural DNA analysis was the same on each. Wouldn’t have found it, say, two years ago; it would have come out as the usual noise garbage.” The cellular codes of any mammal have far more information capacity than they need.

“So we blipped the info to Biocontrol Central.” Yolande waited while the man moistened his lips. “Order came back, freeze in place. Then about two hours latah, a priority-one command to wait fo’ a courier. One came direct, with orders to turn them ovah to the headhunters. That an’ wipe the data an’ forget we’d ever seen it.”

“Castle Tarleton?”

“No, from the Palace. From the Archon’s office, an’ under his personal code.” They exchanged another glance; he had placed his life in her hands with those words. A calculated risk; that Eric von Shrakenberg was her uncle was widely known. That she met regularly with him on more than family matters was not.

“Well.” For the first time in the interview, Yolande smiled, a slow cold turning of the lips. “Well, we can’t argue with that.” Normally there would have been a bureaucratic gunfight; Aresopolis was War Directorate territory, after all. “Not that I don’t love to trip our esteemed colleagues up as much as anyone, but in this case . . . ”

She grinned at the thought of the slow disassembling the Security Directorate would use on the prisoners, and the other officer turned his eyes aside slightly. Yolande Ingolfsson’s feelings concerning the enemy in general and Americans in particular were well-known, but still a little disconcerting to meet in practice.

The grin faded, to be replaced with something resembling a human expression. “And, Thomas . . . ” The first name was a signal, and he leaned forward, an unconscious expression of attention. “ . . . I have an odd feelin’ about this. That data had better really disappear. Or I think we might.”

“What data?” he said.

She nodded. “Ovah. Service to the State.”

“Glory to the Race,” he replied formally, and the rectangle went blank.

“Fade,” she said, and the lights dimmed. “Review, casualties.”

Her mouth thinned; this was a disagreeable chore. Theoretically, the unit commander . . . No, she had ordered the action. The general policy was set higher up, but she made the operational decisions. It was her responsibility. A figure in the form-fitting vacuum skinsuit blinked into existence before her, turning toward the pickup and laughing, bubble helmet in one hand. A cat hanging in midair beside it, obviously unused to low-G and falling in spraddle-legged panic. The figure was young, with fair hair cropped close. Data unreeled below: Julian Torbogen, born . . . Very young, only a year older than her oldest. A face with the chiseled, sculpted look the Eugenics Board was moving the Race toward, but an individual for all that. The dossier listed it all: pets, hobbies, grade evaluations, favorite foods, friends, love affairs, hopes {habitat design is so complete an art!), hates.

Yolande called up the medical image and placed it beside the laughing youth. Explosive decompression is not a pleasant way to die, especially combined with a wash of radiant heat that melts equipment into flesh across half the body. Two-thirds of the face was still there, enough for the final expression to survive.

A long moment, and then she closed her eyes and began to dictate. “Dear Citizens. As your son’s commanding officer, I . . . ”

It took an hour to complete the messages: they were brief but it was crucial to give each one the individual attention it was due. These were Citizens, the hope of the Race. Cells must die for the whole to live. But we must mourn them, because we are cells who know what we are. That is our immortality.

She shook off the mood and rose, calling the lights back to normal. Coming home, she thought wryly. Half her existence these days seemed to be spent in illusion and shadows, riding the silica threads and photon pulses, until she could hardly tell waking from sleeping.

“Call Tina,” she said to the machines that always listened. “Brandied coffee, please.” Absurd to use a form of courtesy with a computer, but it was another connection to real life.

This outer room of her sanctum—was this home? As much as anyplace, the last five years. A long box-rectangle, her desk at one end. Lunar-basalt tiles, covered by fur rugs from animals created by biotech. Leather-spined books, and shelves of real wood, expensive on Luna, but Loki knew there were some compensations for this job. The outer wall was set to a soft neutral gray for concentration’s sake; it was a single blank sheet five meters by ten, a thin-film sandwich holding several hundred thousand thermovalves per square centimeter. It could be set to display anything at all, well enough to fool even an expert’s eye until you touched it, but she was suddenly weary of vicarious experience. And of the fresh clean recycled air.

“Transparent and open,” she said. It blinked clear and slid up with a minor shhhh as she walked out onto the balcony.

That was near the top of the ring wall, a lacy construction of twisted vitryl, filaments of monocrystal titanium-chromium-vanadium alloy and glass braided together. Those were words; the reality was smooth curves of jade-green ice, thin as gossamer, stronger than steel. The sky above was of the same material, a shallow ribbed dome across the hundred-kilometer bowl of the crater. A thousand meters over her head one of its great anchor cables sprang out, soaring up and away until it dwindled into a thread and disappeared into the distance; the sky was set to a long twilight now, and she could just make out the blue-white disk of Earth. She walked to the waist-high balustrade, looked out and down.

The crater was in natural terrace steps to either side and sheer cliff below, nothing but air and haze three kilometers to the tumbled jungle-shaggy hills at the base. To her right a river sprang out of the rock, fell with unearthly slowness in a long bright-blue arc until it misted away into rain; a lake gathered underneath, and the river flowed like silver off through the mottled greens of the landscape below. Clouds drifted in layers, silver and dappled with Earth light; they cast shadows over fields, meadows, forest, roads. There was no horizon, only a vast arch that melted green into blue. Lights were appearing here and there; far and far, she could just make out the high spike of the mountain at the crater’s center, bright-lit, with the thin illuminated streak of the elevator tower rising to the landing platform on the airless side of the dome.

“Mistis.”

A presence at her elbow; she took the cup without glancing around, murmured abstracted thanks, propped one haunch on the balustrade, sipped. Kenya Mountain Best, diluted with a quarter of hot cream and a tenth of Thieuniskraal. Warmth and richness flowed over her tongue, with a hint of bite at the back of her mouth and down her throat. It was very quiet, the thunder of the falling water far enough away to be a muted background. The soft wind that flickered ends of her gray-blond hair about her face was louder; she ignored their tickling caress. All about the balcony, rock that had lain lifeless since the forming of the Earth was covered in rustling vines that bore sheets of pale-pink blossoms; they smelled of mint and lavender.

As they had been designed to do. So had the multicolored birds that flitted through the flowers been designed for the intricate flutelike songs they trilled; farther out a yellow-feathered hawk banked on four-meter wings and called, a long mournful wailing. Yolande sipped again, feeling a sensation that was half contentment, half the repletion that followed the end of a poem. This was a composition, and she one of its manifold creators; part of what she had dreamed, as a child looking up at the new lights in the sky over Claestum. The Glory of the Race was more than power; that was just the beginning. It was accomplishment, it was to do.

She closed her eyes, squeezing them against a flash of old remembered pain. Myfwany, darlin’, if only you could be here to see it with me, she thought. Then somewhere far back in her mind a ghost met her gaze with sardonic green: Freya, what a sentimentalist you are, Yolande-sweet, to let me haunt you so. One thing I never aspired to be was the drop of fall in your cup; you alive, so live, girl.

“Such good advice, and as always easier to give than to follow,” she murmured to herself.

“Mistis?”

“Nothin’, Tina,” Yolande said to the serf who squatted at her feet and peered through the finger-thick rods of the balustrade.

The wench rose. Tina had a glass of milk in one hand, and a white mustache of it on her upper lip that she licked away with unselfconscious relish; then drank more, taking the slow care needful in one-sixth gravity. Eighteen and softly pretty in a doe-eyed Italian way, big-hipped, the four-month belly just starting to show. Yolande smiled and laid a hand on it; the serf smiled shyly back and put her hand over the Draka’s in turn. For a moment Yolande wondered what it must feel like, to bear a living child beneath the heart. She was too old herself, of course, even if there had ever been time, and bearing your own eggs was eccentric to the point of suspiciousness now, anyway. Strange to think that she herself was of the last generation of the Race born of their mothers’ wombs.

She rubbed her serf’s stomach affectionately. “Time to get you home to Claestum, Tina,” she said.

The later stages of pregnancy did not do well below .3 G; in theory, regular centrifuge was enough to compensate, but she did not intend to take any chances at all. Strictly speaking, there was no need to get involved in the process to this extent; a lot of people just sent the fertilized ova in to the Clinic and picked up the baby nine months later. Yolande had always found that too impersonal; she insisted on being present at the implantation and the birthing, and used only family servants as brooders, volunteers from the plantation. It seemed more . . . more fitting, somehow. Birth was no less a miracle because the Race had mastered its secrets, after all. And this was the most important of all, truly hers and Myfwany’s, now that the ova-merging technique was perfected.

“Yes, time to get home Mistis,” Tina said with a sigh, leaning into the caress and looking out over the crater. “I will miss this. It so pretty.”

And such a vanity, Yolande thought. Oh, not so difficult, not when you could use fusion bombs and bomb-pumped lasers for excavation; not when energy poured down in vacuum, to be stored as pressurized water or liquid metal or in superconducting rings . . . Anything local and not too complex was cheap, given autofabricators, and the whole construct was basically titanium and glass. Oxygen and silica and light metals were abundant on the moon; launch lasers and magnetic catapults at Gibraltar and Kilimanjaro and in the Tien Shan were part of the War effort, and might as well be kept to capacity with cargo loads; an abundance of water and volatiles was coming in from the outer system. Also, a closed ecosystem was a tricky thing; the bigger you made it the easier it was to manage.

Also a chance to put the Drakon’s eye up here on the Moon, she thought. And wouldn’t the Yankees love to stick a thumb in it.

Which was why the bulk of Aresopolis was burrowed kilometers deep into the lunar crust—factories and dormitories, refineries and chemosynthesis plants, the far-down caverns with their stores of liquid hydrogen, oxygen, methane, ammonia, metals, a Fafnir’s horde gathered from as far out as Saturn. The orbital battle stations clustering about Earth were largely armed and built from here; so were the outposts at the L-5 points, the far-flung bases, Mercury, the Venus study project, Mars, a scattering of outposts in the Alliance-dominated asteroids. Half the two million souls the Domination had sent into space lived here, in this strange city of warriors and warriors’ servants; a third of them free Citizens, the highest ratio of any city in the Domination.

All of there beneath her command—and able, in their leisure, to come out here to walk naked under living green, swim in water that bore silver-speckled trout, to fly with muscle-powered wings as no humans before them had ever done. She flicked the last droplets from the cup out into the void, watching the long dreamy slowness of the fall.

“They say the neoredwoods we’ve planted down there will grow a thousand meters tall in another fifty years,” Yolande said, softly. “I’ll bring the children here, and we’ll rent wings and fly off the highest branches like eagles.” She should still be hale, then, with modern biotech.

“Will you bring me to watch?” Tina asked, and snuggled another question.

“Yes,” Yolande said. “That’s a promise. And no, get you off to a nice quiet bed, wench; mind you health.”

The serf left with the long glide-bounce of an experienced Aresopolite. Yolande lingered for a moment, yawning and rolling the still-warm porcelain of the cup between her palms. The sky had gone true dark, and the hard bright stars were out; the clouds below reflected blue-silver Earth light back into her eyes. Moving stars, many of them, and she could see another rising swiftly to join them from beyond the crater rim, a laser-boost capsule from one of the emplacements that studded the mountains around the city. That was one of their functions; another might be to rip targets as far away as Earth, one day.

Suddenly she was on her feet, shaken with a wild anger. The flung cup arched out into emptiness with maddening slowness; there was nothing on the planets or between that could express the wash of loathing she felt. They were there, too, the Yankees, the destroyers of all happiness, the oaf-lump impediment that stood always in the Race’s path. This single city, an ornament above a fortress, when the Moon might be laced with them like living jewels. Scorched meat made of lordly golden boys who should be here playing tag with eagles, or going out to make green paradise of frozen Mars and burning Venus. Always intriguing, threatening with their sly greasy-souled merchant cunning, menacing the future of her blood. Gwen, Nikki, Holden, Johanna still unborn, whose years ought to stretch out before them like diamonds in the sun . . .

“I will be back with them, in you despite,” she said in tones quiet and even and measured. “Everythin’ you are, we’ll bring to nothin’; we’ll grind you bones to make our bread, and you children will serve mine until the end of days.”

With an effort she turned back into the office. A consummation devoutly to be wished, she thought. To which end, I’m going to get Uncle Eric to tell me precisely what’s been goin’ on here.

“Message,” she said to the sensors. “Strategos Alman Witter, Vice-Commandant; Allie, I’m droppin’ down to HQ fo’ the week. You step in as per, stay on top of the patrol incident an’ keep me posted soonest. Message: Transport, Aresopolis to Archona”—she looked at her desk: 2140—“departin’ 1100 to 1200 tomorrow. Message: private, code follows—”

“One-hundred-forty-nine, one-hundred-fifty,” Marya Lefarge gasped as she finished the series of situps, and sank back on the exercise table, panting.

No more. That finished her daily three-hour program, but there was a druglike pleasure to exhaustion as hard to fight as sloth. The 1-G exercise chamber was crowded and close, a slight smell of sweat among the machinery that glistened in the overhead sunlamps. The floor had a slight but perceptible curve; it was a wedge section of a giant wheel spinning deep beneath Aresopolis. Dual purpose like most things offplanet, a flywheel storing energy for burst use, but time here was still limited and rationed. Most of the occupants were pregnant brooders, wearily putting in their minimum on exercise bicycles, with a scattering of others whose owner’s credits allowed or tasks required high-gravity maintenance. Mostly they leafed through picture books, listened to music on ear plugs or chattered among themselves, leaving her in a bubble of silence.

Cows, she thought bitterly, looking at them as she swung her legs off the table. Then: That’s unfair. Not their fault. Some of them looked back at her out of the corners of their eyes, then away again. She felt the slight ever-present tug of the controller cuff on her right wrist, more than enough reason to shun her; who knew what she had done, to need an instant pain paralyzer? Guilt was contagious, especially here, where every word and gesture were observed by the never-sleeping senses of the computers and the endless probing vigilance of the AI programs.

There was a man working with spring weights near her who did not look away. Handsome, younger than she, a Eurasian with smooth olive skin and bright blue eyes; he smiled, lifted his brows. Lithe-bodied and strong, he could be anything from a dancer to a Janissary . . . Why not, she thought, hesitating a second, then shook her head as she smiled and left, towel thrown over one shoulder. She felt his eyes on her neck, memorizing her number. Probably he could reference it through Records; probably he would sheer off when he learned who owned her.

And it would be too easy, too easy to make yourself comfortable with little compromises until there was nothing left. Better not to start, just as it was better not to talk too much. When every word could kill, talk meant fear. Fear until you censored the words, then the dangerous thoughts to make that easier, then stopped having the thoughts. Better to talk to yourself in the safety of your head.

Marya walked inward toward the hub, up steps that gradually flattened into floor as the centrifugal force weakened and lunar gravity took over. She ignored the faint ferris-wheel feeling of disorientation from her inner ears and halted before the gate; it slid open, and she stepped into the narrow chamber and pressed her back against the antispinward wall. There was a brief pressure as the inner ring of the wheel slowed and stopped; the inner door opened, and she walked through into the hub.

Showers and sauna were crowded, too, but at least they were not open-plan. She stripped off the exercise shorts and threw the disposable fabric into a hamper, nodding to a few persons she knew as she waited in line for a cubicle, studying herself in the mirrored walls. Not bad, she decided. Especially for fifty; not much sagging, although of course the light gravity helped, and the daily exercise she had kept up as a silent gesture of self-respect . . . and the fact that Strategos Yolande Ingolfsson bought her personal servants top-flight Citizen Level medical care, which meant the best in the solar system. Viral DNA repair, cellular waste removal, synthormone implants, calcium boost, the works. There were strands of silver in her long black hair, crow’s-feet beside her eyes, but for the rest she could have passed for mid-thirties.

A woman in her mid-thirties who had borne a child and breastfed it. Her fingers traced lightly over the cracked-eggshell pattern on the taut muscle of her stomach.

“Not now,” she murmured to herself, her eyelids drooping down as she turned attention within, finding the pattern of calm. Her gaze was cool as she raised it back to the mirror. Yes, not bad. That could be important, she thought with cold realism. Things are moving to a crisis; you’ve got to know. Clandestine-ops mode. Think of yourself as a sleeper. She grinned sardonically at the joke as she stepped into the vacated cubicle.

* * *

“Sector Three, level two,” the transporter capsule said.

The lid hissed open, and Yolande stepped out into the station, past the unmoving guards. Probably unnecessary; the machinery would simply not obey unauthorized personnel. On the other hand, there were ways to fool machinery, and it was not in the Draka nature to trust too completely to cybernetics. The Orpos were the regular pair, and saluted briskly; she blinked back to awareness of her surroundings and returned it. Downside there might have been actual physical checks.

Lucky we’re not quite settled enough to start importing surplus bureaucrats, she thought wearily. Sector Three was command residence country; Civil, War Directorate, Security and Combines both; status was being close to the main transport station. Yolande sighed slightly as she palmed the lock of her outer door; the inner slid open as the corridor portal cycled shut, another emergency airlock system. It might have been more efficient to pack everything close together in one spot, but this was supposed to be a fortress. Carving rock was no problem either, not when the original function of Aresopolis had been to throw material into Earth orbit to armor battle stations. So the city beneath was a series of redundantly-linked modules, any of which could function independently for a long, long time.

“Hiyo, Mistis,” Jolene said, waiting with a hot lemonade. The entranceway was a circular room ten meters in diameter, with a domed roof over a central pool and fountain. The walls were holo panels between half-columns, right now set to show a steppe landscape: rolling green hills fading into a huge sky, wind rippling the grass, distant antelope.

“ ’Lo, Jo,” Yolande said, accepting the glass.

Machiavelli IV came bounding into the room and raced around the wall to reach her, running with innocent unconcern across what looked to be empty space and soaring to land on the foam-lava floor by her feet. Two housegirls followed more sedately with her lounging robe and slippers; Yolande sipped moodily at the hot sweet-tart liquid while they removed her uniform and redressed her, moving only to transfer the glass from hand to hand.

“We’re leavin’ tomorrow,” she said abruptly. Then, to the apartment: “Walls, blank.” The holo panels dimmed to a neutral pearl-gray color. Yolande spared them a moment’s irritation, she would have preferred mosaic, but the necessary skills were still scarce on Luna, and anyway this was the Commandant’s quarters. Furnished rooms, in a sense.

“Tomorrow, Mistis?” Jolene asked, puzzled. It was a month before leave was scheduled.

“I said so, didn’t I?” Yolande snapped, then sighed and drew a hand across her face. “Sorry, Jo. Somethin’ came up. Down to Archona, stayin’ with Uncle Eric, then a quick trip up to Claestum to drop off Tina with John an’ Mandy, then back here. Call it fo’ days; just pack an overnight bag an’ Tina’s things.”

She looked down at the housegirls, kneeling with hands folded in their laps and eyes downcast; both rather new, and still a little shy, especially at hearing the Archon referred to as “Uncle.”

“Run along, there’s good wenches . . . I’ll take Lele, none of the other staff.” No point in carting a dozen servants along for a visit, and Jolene hated space travel. “Light supper, an’ . . . ”

The inner door sighed open and shut. Yolande looked over her shoulder; it was Marya. “ . . . An’ set up the chess game fo’ after, Marya.”

King’s pawn to knight four, Yolande decided. She moved the carved-ebony Janissary and leaned back in the lounger, sipping at the white wine; it was Vernaccia. Checkmate in, hmmm, seven moves. She was not doing as well as usual tonight, and it was getting a little late. Damn, I’m not sleepy, either, she thought.

The lounging room was arch-roofed, a relic of excavating techniques in the early days, back in the mid-1960s; the Commandant’s quarters had been enlarged but not moved as the city grew. There were a few pictures, some hangings, but she had had most of the walls left in the natural white-streaked black rock interspersed with hand-painted azulejos tile; the furniture was modern and local, spindly shapes of lacquered bamboo and puff pillows. The room seemed cavernous and dim now, yet somehow cramped despite space enough to guest a hundred. Perhaps it was subliminal knowledge of all those kilometers of rock above. Yolande stirred restlessly.

What was it Michelangelo said about Vernaccia? she thought, sipping again. It “kisses, licks, bites, thrusts, and stings.” There’s my subconscious telling me what I want. That was a little awkward; she had told Tina no . . . She was not in the mood for Jolene’s friendly complaisance, and the rest of the staff were unsuitable or too new, too much in awe, to be very interesting. Maybe a man? That was nice occasionally; unfortunately, no Citizen she knew well enough was available, probably. Well, she could have a nightspot send a buck around—perfectly legal nowadays; the Race Purity laws had been updated back in the ’70s.

No, maybe I’m old-fashioned, but no. Ah well, there’s always the headset. That brought sleep without chemical hangovers.

“Mistis.” Yolande blinked out of her reverie and saw the serf’s next move.

“Thought so. You shouldn’t be so . . . schematic about you pieces. See.” She took the other’s last bishop and indicated the alternatives. “Neither of us’s up to scratch tonight.”

“Ah, Mistis. There was an unusual note in the serf’s voice. Yolande looked up, saw that she was studying a piece held in one hand. A pawn in ivory, in the shape of a German soldier of the Eurasian War. “Ah, can I ask you a question?” The fall of her hair hid most of her face, and the tops of her ears were pink.

The Draka blinked puzzlement. “Certainly.”

“Were, ah, were you planning on going to bed alone tonight, Mistis?”

Yolande’s eyebrows rose, and she spoke with a chuckle in her voice. “Is that an invitation, Marya?” I hope so. Have for years; wonder what changed her mind?

A nod. “Well, well, that is a surprise.” She cleared her mind and looked. Rather nice. Not young, but then, neither am I anymore. It was getting to be a little embarrassing, bedding teenagers. Granted they were only serfs, still . . . And I’ve wanted you for a while. She rose and extended a hand. “Shall we?”

“Ah!”

Yolande went rigid as the orgasm flowed over her like waves of warmth, felt the world swim blue before her eyes. She was straddled, kneeling across the other’s shoulders, arched back on her heels with her shoulders resting on the serf’s upraised knees. Now she leaned forward and sank lower, linking her hands behind her neck and smiling down at the face between her thighs. “One mo’ time, pretty pony,” she said softly, moving her hips in languid rhythm to the sweet wet friction of tongue and lips. The serf’s eyes were closed below a frown of concentration; her head moved with the arching of Yolande’s pelvis, and she gripped the Draka’s hips with a clench that whitened her fingernails.

“Ah. Mmmmm.” Yolande moved more quickly, shuddered, locked immobile with a long hiss between clenched teeth. This time the color went beyond blue to indigo, shot through with veins of red. She nearly collapsed forward—would have in normal gravity.

“Wonderful,” she sighed as she eased herself down beside the other and reached up for the wine glass. Blood pounded in her ears like retreating drums, and the dreamy relaxation was like flying in dreams. Marya’s eyes fluttered open, dark and unreadable. Yolande poured the last of the wine on her lips and kissed her, savoring the pleasant mixture of tastes. The room was dark except for a wall set to show a landscape of lunar mountains jagged across the three-quarters Earth; that cast a pale silver glow over the circular bed. The air was lightly warm, and she could smell the roses in planters around the walls, musk, a slight tang of sweat and warm flesh.

Marya turned on her side and laid her head on her owner’s shoulder; Yolande stroked her back. At least the third-arm problem is less up here, she thought drowsily. Gods, I haven’t felt this relaxed in months.

“I’m glad you liked it, Mistis,” the serf said, yawning into the curve where neck met deltoid.

“Freya, yes. I’s so tense without knowin’ it, I went off like a sunbomb. That damn stingfighter’s got me tied in knots . . . can’t figure out how the damnyanks did it.” She was muttering, half thinking aloud; absently, she set the glass down on the fused stone of the headboard and began stroking down Marya’s flank. “And on top of that, those fuckin’ prisoners. Why is Biocontrol gettin’ into the decision-makin’ loop? They’re just a research institute, even if they’re so almighty impo’tant these day . . . ”

She paused, hand lingering on the firmness of the other’s hip. “Lift you knee . . . Did you like it, Marya?” Her fingers trailed down the inside of the serf’s leg and lightly cupped her groin.

“Couldn’t you tell, Mistis?” the other said. She smiled and rolled onto her back, raising and spreading her legs.

“Hmm, I could tell when you came; that isn’t the same thing.” Yolande slipped her free hand under the serf’s neck while she kneaded softly with the other, rising on one elbow and bending her head to Marya’s breasts. The nipples were dark and taut, the large aureoles around them crinkled, ridged smoothness under her tongue.

“I . . . ” Marya caught her breath as Yolande bit gently. “I volunteered. This time.”

There was quiet for a few minutes, broken only by the increasing sound of the serf’s panting. Yolande leaned closer, studying the other’s face. The dark eyes were wide, iris swallowed in the pupil. Ah, nearly, she thought, laughing and increasing the feather-light pressure of her fingers. Marya’s arms went back, gripping the headboard, as her knees pulled up and wide; the cords in her neck stood out as she gave a series of gasps and then a sharp cry.

“I think maybe you do like it,” Yolande said. “Pity you don’t like me; it increases the pleasure.” She wiped her hand on the sheet.

Marya sighed. “You’ve been . . . You haven’t been as . . . strict with me these last few years, Mistis.”

Embarrassed, Yolande lay back. “Oh . . . Well, I wasn’t thinkin’ straight, fo’ a while after Myfwany was killed. You sort of stood fo’ the Yankees, in my mind. But that isn’t fair, of course; you aren’t a Yankee anymore, you my serf. Not fittin’ to abuse you. Besides”—she patted the other’s stomach for a second, then took her hand—“you bore Gwen. Not willingly, of course, but you still carried an’ nursed Myfwany’s clone-child; I couldn’t keep up the hatin’ after I saw her at you breast, could I?”

She was silent for a moment, letting drowsy thoughts sift through her mind. “Still . . . playin’ chess, you get to know a person somewhats.” She yawned. “You strange to me. As different as two bein’s of the same species can be. Draka I understand. An’ serfs. Yankees I meet in structured situations, like battle; logic of objective conditions forces a certain amount of similarity to they behavior. Most of my serfs like me well enough; I’m a good owner. You . . . ” She shrugged. “You wasn’t raised to think that way.” I think I’m still the enemy, in your heart, she thought. What do they taste of, the kisses of an enemy?

“Mistis, take me with you, on this visit?”

“Why so?”

“I . . . ” Marya turned her head away from the one on the pillow beside her. “You’re right, everyone here is still strange to me, even after all these years; but you less than the born-serfs.”

“ ’Kay,” Yolande muttered. She turned on her side and threw an arm and leg across Marya’s body. “Sleep now.” Her eyelids fluttered closed.

Marya’s right arm was free; she raised it in the dim light of the reflected Earth, letting it shine on the imperishable metal of the controller. Then she brought it to her lips, opening them to the cool neutral taste, slightly bitter. She lay so, motionless except for an occasional slow blink, as the hours crept by and the sweat cooled on her skin.