The Domination

Chapter Nineteen

CENTRAL OFFICE, ARCHONAL PALACE

ARCHONA

DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA

MARCH 27, 1998: 1700 HOURS

“Sweet—mother—Freya,” Yolande said, looking wide-eyed at her uncle. Rank and station, the slight residual awe this office evoked, all vanished. “Shitfire!”

“Both appropriate,” he said, rising stiffly and walking to the sideboard. “So is a drink . . . Arch-Strategos.”

For a moment even the news she had just heard could not block a stab of concern. He looks so much older. Nearly eighty, but with modern medicine that was only late middle age. Still straight, but he moved with care, and the lines were graven deeper into the starved-eagle face, below the thick white hair. It was a killing job, this; his pallor was highlighted by the dark indigo of his jacket and the black lace of his cravat. Then the immensity of what she had heard swept back, and she felt her stomach swoop again. My teeth want to chatter.

She accepted the glass and knocked half of it back: eau de vie. The warmth spread in her belly, and she closed her eyes to let the information sink in.

“Uncle, this is the best news I’ve had since . . . Loki, I don’t know.”

“Is it?” He sank down behind the desk. “Is it really?”

Yolande looked up, met the cold gray eyes, and refused to be daunted. “Uncle Eric—Excellence—I’ve spent the past decade dead-certain convinced that we were headin fo’ the Final War without a prayer of comin’ out on top. You just gave me hope—fo’ myself, not so important; for my children and the Race, rather more so!”

He nodded and rested his face in his hands for a moment before raising his drink.

“Now you know, daughter of my sister, what only a dozen other people outside Virunga Biocontrol know—and we’ve kept the ones who worked on the project locked up tighter than a headhunter’s heart.”

For an instant his voice went flat-soft. “Yo realize, even the suspicion that yo might reveal this would mean a pill?”

Yolande held one hand in a gesture of acceptance. A bullet in the back of the head was an occupational risk at the highest levels of command and power. “And when is acceptable saturation?” she continued.

“Well . . . ” Uncle Eric seemed oddly reluctant. “This year, accordin’ to projections. No way to be absolutely sure, so they put a large margin of error in. Didn’t want a wholesale infection; that would increase the chance of detection too much. We coded a stop; it replicates a certain number of times and then goes noninfectious. Then we used unknowin’ vectors for the various targets: their command an’ control echelons, Space Force and so forth. There may be some spillover to the bulk of their military, even civilians, but not much. You little brush beyond Luna gave us a random sample that fitted right in with our best-case hypothesis.”

“Trigger?” she said.

“Coded microwave; resonates, activates it. Irregular period beyond that, but once it starts, stress accelerates the process.”

“No way of shieldin’?”

“Not unless yo know. Heavy tranquilizers an’ psychotropics can mitigate the effects, until the thing cycles itself out; takes about four, five days iff’n the subject is restrained that way. But even so, you not worth much in that condition. Questionin’ the test subject indicates it’s like . . . a combination of Berserkergang and paranoid schizophrenia, with some mighty nasty hallucinations thrown in. Works best on the highly intelligent.”

Yolande sipped again at the fiery liquid, imagining the consequences. In the crowded workstations of a battle platform, in the tight-knit choreography of a warship’s control center. A hard grin fought its way toward her face, was pressed back.

“Effectiveness?” she asked.

“Depends . . . they’re more automated than we are, but they still haven’t cut humans out of their action loops, not at the initiation stage. Given surprise, an’ an all-out attack along with it, the projections indicate we could take out their Earth-orbit capacity to about ninety percent, and still come through with enough of our own to block what little of their offensive strength survived. We’ve built redundant, fo’ exactly that purpose.”

“Ah,” Yolande exclaimed. “The Militants, they must know, too! That’s why they’re confident enough to talk openly about startin’ the Final War.”

“Their top triumvirate. Gayner was in on it from the beginnin’. The rest, no, of course not. They’re just the bloodthirsty nihilistic loons they come across as.”

“Shitfire,” Yolande whispered again. The alcohol seemed to slide down her throat without effect. “Gayner nearly lost it right there on the viewer when you got the reelection vote, back in ’97,” she said.

Eric smiled thinly. “One of my mo’ pleasant memories. She was wild to be in this chair when we reached go-level.” A harsh laughter. “What immortality, fo’ the Archon who led the Race to victory in the Final War? Someone in that position could do anythin’, get any program put through. Trouble would be to keep the Citizenry from electin’ him—or her—to godhood.”

“When do we attack?” Yolande said.

“You, too,” the Archon said with resigned bitterness. “I’ve been hearin’ that question with increasin’ frequency fo’ six months now. Accompanied by thinly veiled threats, from Gayner and her cutthroats.”

She looked at him bewildered for a moment, then felt her eyes narrow. “Why not, fo’ Wotan’s sake?” she said. “Every moment we hesitate longer than we have to is deadly dangerous. Use it or we risk losin’ it.”

Eric gave a jerk of his chin. “Oh, yes. They behind in biotech, but makin’ slow progress . . . and computer analysis is basic to that, too. The rate of increase in computer technology is slowin’—the experts say it’s pushin’ the theoretical limits with known architectures—but it hasn’t stopped. Sooner or later, they’ll get a clue; if nothin’ else, from the strategic deployment choices we’ve been makin’. On the other hand . . . ”He looked up at her and tapped his fingers on the desk. “This incident of yourn, it wasn’t the bioanalysis of the prisoners that got you interested initially, was it?”

“No. Somethin’ destroyed that stingfighter. Some sort of interference with they infosystems.”

“Our nightmare. And they’ve been matchin’ our deployments. Increasin’ the proportion of orbit-to-ground weapons. Exactly the sort of thing you’d put in, if you expected to be in a position to hammer Earth from space with impunity.”

“Wait,” Yolande said with alarm. “They could just be matchin’ us tit fo’ tat. Their buildup didn’t start until well after our current six-year plan.”

“But it points to somethin’ they are doin’ to us. And . . . ” he hesitated. “I saw the results of nuclear weapons, in Europe, back at the end of the last war. Stoppin’ almost everythin’ isn’t the same as stoppin’ everythin’.” He looked out through the wall, at the lights of the city winking on below, and continued very softly. “Not to mention how many of them we’d have to kill. Not to mention . . . ” He looked up. “Arch-Strategos, the final decision in these matters is mine; the responsibility comes with the office. We will move when I authorize.”

Yolande rose and set the peaked cap on her head. “Understood, Excellence,” she said, saluting. Then: “I’m takin’ a week’s leave, Uncle Eric. That all right?”

“Oh, yes. We won’t begin the war without you, niece,” he said. “Besides, it’ll keep the enemy from wonderin’ what you doin’ back on Earth.”

Yolande grinned at the sarcasm, it was just like Uncle Eric. A little too squeamish, she thought. But basically a good man.

“Service to the State,” she said.

“Glory to the Race,” he replied.

She left, and he turned down the lights, watching the multicolored glow of Archona below. Minutes stretched, and he sat motionless. “Glory indeed,” he said. His mouth twisted. “Glory.”

* * *

SPIN HABITAT SEVEN

NEW AMERICA PROJECT

CENTRAL BELT, ALLIANCE INTERDICTED ZONE

BETWEEN THE ORBITS OF MARS AND JUPITER

MARCH 31, 1998

“First-rate dinner,” Manuel Obregon said.

Cindy Lefarge nodded thanks and finished loading the dishes into the washer. She touched a control and the cylindrical hopper sank into the countertop. A quiet hum sounded through the serving window. The Lefarge living-dining area was open-plan in the manner that had become fashionable in the ’70s, when the price of live-in help rose beyond the budgets of the upper middle class. It always was, here in the Belt, she thought with slight cynicism. Amazing how fast domestic gadgets got invented when it was really necessary. The thought was a welcome distraction from what would be said tonight. She picked up the tray with the coffee and carried it around to set on the table.

There were six others dining at Brigadier Lefarge’s house that night, four men and two women. Department heads, or in two cases shockingly not, a few steps further down the chain of command. They shifted uneasily, buying a few more minutes passing sugar and cream around until everyone was settled; these were people of authority, but not military, not conspirators. Scientists for the most part, or scientific administrators at least, engineers, used to hard-material problems and juggling workers and resources. This smelled political, and not office politics either.

“All right,” Fred said abruptly. Cindy could feel a harshness behind the tone, the same force that had been hag-riding him since his return from Earth. There were new lines graven in the heavy-boned face, down from nose to mouth. “First, let me say you’re all here because I trust you. Your intentions, and your ability to keep your mouths shut. We’ve all worked together for . . . at least a decade now. You’ve all shown that you are willing to cut yourselves off from the outside world to work on the Project in its various phases.” He paused, looked down at his hands for a moment. “I think most of you who haven’t been told have guessed; the New America is not the only purpose of this installation.”

Ali Harahap nodded. “Indeed so,” he said in his singsong Sumatran accent, lighting a cigarette that smelled sharply of cloves. “But what is not said, cannot be betrayed.” There were more nods around the table.

“Good man.” Fred nodded, satisfied. “That was the right attitude. It isn’t anymore. Before I go on, I want to make clear that what I’m about to say is unauthorized. If this ever gets out, I could be shot.” A slight intake of breath among the others. “And all of you could be ruined, your careers ended. Does anyone want to leave?”

Colin McKenzie laughed shakily and wiped at the sweat on his high forehead; he was Quebec-Scots, a heavy-construction man. “Wouldn’t do any good, would it, unless we finked? And you’re the OSS rep here, Fred.”

The security chief waited. When a minute had gone by, he turned to de Ribeiro. “Fill them in, Professor.”

“We all know we have been building a starship,” he began stroking his goatee, “with surprising success—although the only way to test it is to undertake the voyage. Scarcely a low-risk method! Many of you have suspected that the reason for this is as a last-ditch guarantee against defeat, to preserve something if the Alliance falls.”

Patricia Hayato nodded. “We’ve all gotten used to secret projects,” she said. “Since the war, every five years another group of scientists drops out of sight. The Los Alamos Project pattern. Mistaken, in my opinion. It sacrifices long-term to short-term; more suitable for wartime than the Protracted Struggle.”

De Ribeiro inclined his head graciously. “What is the best disguise? A disguise that is no disguise at all. Here we hid the New America within a series of concentric shells of secret projects, each one genuine. Within the New America, the ultimate secret. A weapon.”

Hayato threw up her hands. “Oh, no, not some superbomb!” Everyone else winced slightly; the rain of fission weapons that had brought down the Japanese Empire toward the end of the Eurasian War was still a sensitive subject. “Just what we need, more firepower. What have you discovered, a way to make the sun go nova?”

Lefarge rapped sharply on the table. “Ladies, gentlemen, we’ve all been cooped up with each other so long our arguments have gotten repetitive. Let the professor speak, please.”

The Brazilian examined his fingertips. “We’ve developed a weapon that is no weapon—which should appeal to you, my dear colleague.” Hayato flushed, she took neo-Zen more seriously than the founders of that remarkably playful philosophy might have wished. “You were quite right; bigger and better means of destruction have reached a point of self-defeating futility. But consider what controls those weapons.”

“Data plague,” Henry Wasser said. He was head of the antimatter drive systems, and worked most closely with the Infosystems Division de Ribeiro directed. “I always did think you had too much facility for what we needed.”

De Ribeiro beamed; he had always had something of the teacher about him, and enjoyed a sharp student. “Exactly.” A sip of coffee. “To be more precise, contamination of the embedded compinstruction sets of mainbrain computers, the cores.” The white-haired Brazilian sighed. “Their complexity has reached a point barely comprehensible even to us, and the Domination’s people are somewhat behind.” He brooded for a moment. “The paranoia both sides labor under has been a terrible handicap. Both in designing our little infovirus, and in spreading it. The absolute barrier between data storage and compinstruction . . . ” Another silence. “Still, perhaps our errors in design have spared us certain temptations, certain risks. Often I feel that computers might have been as much a snare, a means of subverting our basic humanity, as the Draka biocontrol. As it is, we have reached a limit and will probably go no further—” Lefarge rapped on the table again, and he started.

“Sí. In any case, it was unleashed perhaps a year ago. It spreads slowly, from one manufacturing center to another, as improved instruction-sets are handed out. In the event of war”—he grinned—“the Draka will find their machines . . . rebellious.”

“And when enough are infected, the Alliance would move. That was the original plan.” Lefarge looked around the table. “We’re cut off here. Not from the latest fashions or slang; we get those coming in. But from the movement of thought, opinion, the climate of feeling. They’ve relaxed, down there, this past decade. They’ve started to think there might be some alternative to kill-or-be-killed. Fewer and fewer clashes, no big incidents. The Draka have been cutting back on their ground forces; these so-called ‘reforms’ . . . ”

His fist thumped the boards. “They know enough to see that tanks aren’t going to win them any more wars. And a better-treated slave is still a slave . . . Hell, I don’t have to tell you all this. The crux of it is, they’ve changed the plans, there in San Fran. They’re thinking in terms of an ultimatum; demonstrating our capacity, then demanding that the Draka back down, accept disarmament as a prelude to”—his mouth twisted—“gradual reform.”

Their eyes turned to Hayato. The lifesystems specialist fiddled with her cup. “No,” she said. “It wouldn’t work.” Meeting their regard: “Yes, I know I’ve made myself unpopular by saying Japan would have surrendered without cities being destroyed by nuclear weapons. I still think so. The Domination is a different case entirely. The old militarist caste in Japan, they could surrender, sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the nation. The Draka, the Citizens, their caste is their nation. If that’s destroyed, everything worthwhile in the universe is gone, and they’d bring the world down with them out of sheer spite.”

Lefarge turned his hands palm-up. “Anyone think different?”

McKenzie hesitated, then spoke. “Fred . . . look, I’m just a glorified high-iron man. What the hell do I know? That’s what we’ve got spooks like you for, and a government we elected, come to that. Policy’s their department.”

Lefarge opened his mouth to speak. Hayato cut in: “That’s bullshit, Colin, and you know it. We’ve got the power; that means we have the responsibility to make a decision, one way or another. And it is a decision, either way.”

He slumped. “I’ve got kin back on Earth,” he said.

“We all do,” Lefarge said. “Every indication of the way they’ve configured their off-Earth forces, every intuition I’ve built up about Draka behavior, tells me that the Snakes have some sort of ace in the hole comparable to us. It’s a race, and we know for a fact that they won’t hesitate a moment once they’re ready; they aren’t going to suffer from divided counsels. That’s why we’ve got to act. Right, let’s have a show of hands.”

One by one, they went up. McKenzie’s last of all, but definitely.

“I hope everybody realizes we’re committed? Good, here’s what we do. First, we make multiple insertions of the infovirus; we’re set up for it. Next—”

Cindy Lefarge held her husband’s hand. The grip was strong enough to be painful, but she squeezed back patiently, waiting in the silence of the emptied room.

“Am I doing the right thing?” he asked at last, in a haunted voice.

“It’s what Uncle Nate wanted, honey,” she whispered back.

“Yes, but . . . he was an old, old man by that time.”

“And he’d taught you to think for yourself,” she replied sharply. He looked up, startled, as she continued.

“You wouldn’t be doing this if you didn’t think it was right,” Cindy went on. “For what it’s worth, I agree . . . but you know what Uncle Nate always said: ‘You take the choice, you bear the responsibility.’ ” More gently: “I can’t be sure that what you’re doing is right, Fred. But I’m behind you, and I always will be.”

“I know,” he said, and raised her hand to his cheek. His shoulders were still slumped, as if under an invisible weight. “I’m left with another question. Is what I’m doing enough?”

INGOLFSSON ISLAND PRESERVE

SEYCHELLES DISTRICT

ZANJ COAST PROVINCE

DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA

APRIL 2, 1998

Marya Lefarge shaded her eyes and looked out over the waves. It was a clear day, and the afternoon sun was white light on the hammered indigo metal of the ocean; there was enough wind to ruffle it, throwing foam crests on the waves and up the talc-fine powder sand of the beach. The endless background hiss of the light surf was the loudest sound; above her the wicker sunshade thuttered, and the fronds of the coconut palms rustled over that.

Out in the water the three Draka were playing, and she could see their bodies flashing through the surface layers. Then they were in the shallows, and Gwen and her young man swept Yolande up between them. They came trotting up the beach with an effortless stride; New Race muscles could do on Earth what ordinary humans did in low gravity.

She studied them as they washed off the salt under a worked-bronze waterspout and walked over to the blanket and deck chairs. You could see the differences better nude and wet; slight variances in the way the joints moved, the pattern of muscles sliding under tight brown skin. It was natural; they could secrete melanin until they were at home under this equatorial sun or pale to cream white at will; tablets had done that for Yolande and herself. No body hair, save for the scalp and the pubic bush. They walked unconcerned over sand that had made the elder Draka slip on thong sandals, Yolande moved with the studied grace of an athlete in hard training; the younger pair had the fluid suppleness of leopards.

Oh, Gwen, she thought. It was easier when you were a child. A saddening thing, not to be able to wish luck and happiness to one you loved.

“Remind me not to play tag with you New Race types,” Yolande was saying, her hands resting on their shoulders. “I wonder that you puts up with us fossils.”

“Oh, we’ve got time,” the man chuckled. He was a handspan past six feet, with a head of loose white-gold ringlets.

That they do, Marya thought with a slight shiver in the warm tropical day. They were in their early twenties, and it would be two centuries before they showed much sign of age. How can even a Draka bear to cut themselves off from their descendants so?

Gwen gave her companion a good-natured thump on the ribs. “A little mo’ respect for my momma, there,” she said. “See you up at the house, Alois.”

“Gwen. Miz Ingolfsson,” he nodded to the two.

Yolande threw herself down on the blanket and stretched. “Nice boy,” she said. “Drink, please, Marya.”

Marya smiled to herself as she opened the basket and took the pitcher from the cooler. Yolande regarded her daughter’s newfound enthusiasm for the opposite sex with tolerant indulgence, as appropriate for her age. To the elder Ingolfsson, Marya suspected, men were nice enough in their way, often pleasing, but with some exceptions basically rather stupid and prisoner to their emotions. Not an uncommon attitude among female Citizens . . . She glanced up and met Gwen’s eyes, for a moment they shared amusement.

“Ma,” Gwen said, taking one of the chairs. “Do me a favor?”

“Anythin’, child of my heart,” Yolande said, accepting the chilled papaya juice. “Thank you, Marya. Have what you like.”

“It’s that damned controller cuff,” Gwen was saying. Marya froze for a moment, with a feeling of insects crawling on her skin, then made her hands busy themselves in the basket. “Tantie-ma’s never said much about it, but it makes my backbone crawl. Take it off her, would you?”

“Ah.” Yolande rose on one elbow and considered the serf, “As a matter of fact . . . Hand me that case from the bottom of the basket, would yo, Marya?”

There was a thin leather binder about the size of a small book; the serf’s hands shook slightly as she handed it to her owner, kneeling beside her. She had not noticed it, slipped in among the bowls and packages and softcover volumes of poetry brought along for a day by the ocean. Yolande opened it and took out a slim jack on the end of a coil cord.

“Hold out you hand, wench,” Yolande said.

It was shaking worse as the Draka took it and slid the jack into an opening on the front edge of the thin metal circlet. The bright sun darkened and the world blurred before Marya’s eyes. She saw Yolande’s fingers touching controls within the opened binder. There was a tingling in her wrist, and a subdued click. Marya heard herself whimper slightly as the metal unclasped; the skin beneath it was very white. Angry, she caught her lower lip in her teeth as Yolande turned her palm up and dropped the cuff into it. The metal was still warm from her skin.

“Do what you want with it,” the Draka said.

Marya looked at it, feeling the tears cutting tracks down her cheeks, and making herself remember the pain. It had been twenty-four years, and not a day had passed when she had not suppressed that memory; now she let the holds crack. The two Draka were looking politely aside as she rose unsteadily to her feet and walked out into the light, down to the edge of the water. The sand was scorching through the thin sandals, the waves cool as she walked into their knee-high curling. There was an intense smell of ocean, of iodine from the seaweed along the high-water mark. A gull went by overhead, shadow against dazzle, grawk-grawk-grawk. Her arm went back, seeming to drift. Forward with an elastic snap, and the cuff was soaring until it was a dot. Hesitating at the top of its arc, then dropping down at gathering speed. A last plek as it broke the smooth curve of a wave in a tiny eruption of white.

Gone. She dropped to her knees and bent forward, heedless of the ends of her hair trailing in the foam. Gone.

Yolande looked back to her daughter with a smile. “That seemed to go well, honeychile,” she said.

Gwen nodded and lay back on the deckchair to spare the serf intrusive eyes. “Thank you, Ma,” she said.

Yolande shrugged. How strong and beautiful, and how sweet with it, she thought. It was an ache in the chest, pride and love beyond bearing. Me and Myfwany—you have the best of us both, she thought. Of both your mothers. Marya was still down by the water’s edge. Or all three.

Gwen took a fig from the basket and nibbled. “Almost a shame to be leavin’,” she said happily. “It’s been a good three days, just you and the sibs, Ma.”

“Liar,” Yolande said amiably. “Y’all are indulgin’ me, and I know it. You thoughts are divided about equal between the new ship an’ dancin’ the mattress gavotte with Alois; he’s likewise, and polite to me because he’s got long-term designs on you. Holden is bored in the manner of six-year-olds, and Nikki”—she shrugged again; her oldest son was fifteen—“likes it here because there are a whole new set of housegirls to lay. Plus good spearfishing.”

Gwen laughed, turning her eyes skyward. “Lionheart’s a real beauty, though, Ma,” she said musingly. “Gods, when we took her out fo’ the shakedown! Deuterium-boron drives’ve got it all ovah the older types, the exhaust’s all charged particles.” Her voice took on a dreamy tone. “Fifty thousand tonnes payload, she’s fitted out like a liner! Even a spin-deck at one G. Only—”

“Gwen.”

“—two months to Pluto! Granted we’ll be there a year settin’ up the base, but—”

“Gwen, honeychile, I was on the design committee.”

Her daughter laughed and waved acknowledgment. “Sorry, Ma.”

“You’ve been noble not talkin’ shop, Gwen. I recognize true love when I hears it.”

“And, well, I am sorry to be leaven’ you. And not . . . Know what I mean?”

“Oh, yes, child of my heart, I know exactly.” A long laugh, and she reached up to squeeze a shoulder. “Fo’ reasons too numerous to state, I’m feeling first-rate just now. But you are always a . . . string of lights around my heart, child. Ah, here comes Marya.”

Gwen rose. The serf stopped at arm’s length and threw back her head; she had never stooped, but Yolande thought she saw a different curve to the neck. “Thank you, Missy Gwen,” she said.

The young Draka embraced her. “Always welcome, Tantie-ma,” she said. “Well—”

Her mother made scooting motions. “Alois and you have notions on how to spend the afternoon. Honestly, with an eighteen-month cruise ahead of you—”

“Ma!”

“But youth will be served. Or serviced—”

“Ma!” Mock indignation.

“Run along, you, Tantie-ma and I will find some way to pass the time.” Yolande winked, and thought she caught a hint of real embarrassment on her daughter’s face. One thing that hardly changes, she thought. It never seems quite natural when the older generation doesn’t lose interest.

“Strange, Mistis,” Marya said, watching the child she had borne walk away into the palms and oleander and hibiscus.

“How so?” Yolande turned her attention back to the serf. Her half-hour by the waves seemed to have composed her, at least. The coffee-brown synthtan suited her, as well.

“When . . . when she was little, she was so helpless as I held her. Now I can feel how gentle she’s being hugging me, and she could crush me like an eggshell. Strange to remember her so tiny.”

“True enough. Lie down here.”

Marya sat beside the Draka, wrapping her arms around her shins and laying her head on her knees.

“You want me?” she said, smiling faintly.

“You and a snack and a nap befo’ dinner,” Yolande said. “Settle for the snack and nap if you tuckered out.”

“Not yet,” Marya said, with the same slight curve of her lips. “You have been very . . . energetic, since Archona.”

“Good news does that to me, and no, I can’t tell you what.”

CLAESTUM PLANTATION

DISTRICT OF TUSCANY

PROVINCE OF ITALY

DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA

APRIL 4, 1998

“Hello, Myfwany,” Yolande said, sitting by the grave with her elbows on her knees. Wind cuffed at the spray of roses.

There was another nearby, now, her father’s. There were a few clouds today, white and fluffy. The air was just warm enough to be comfortable sitting still, with an undertone of freshness that was like a cool drink after the tropical heat.

“Tina’s coming along well,” she continued. “Gods, it’ll be interestin’ to see what a merger of my genes and yourn comes out to! With all the little improvements they puttin’ in these days.”

The wind ruffled the outer leaves of the flowers. They were still a little damp from the sprayer in the arbor where she had picked them. Yolande leaned forward to smell the intense wild scent.

“And Gwen . . . ah, love, you’d be proud of her. Assistant com officer on this new ship, the Lionheart. Exploration voyage, really; establishin’ a study base for the outer system and the Oort clouds. Cold out there . . . Hope it works out for her. Hope she settles with Alois, he’s a good sort.”

She smiled and touched the flowers and the short dense grass. “And there’s somethin’ else. Wotan and the White Christ, it’s so secret I hardly dare tell you, sweet! Gods witness, I’d begun to despair of the whole Domination, we seemed to be goin’ nowhere, until Uncle Eric let me in on the secret. Been in the plannin’ since”—she swallowed—“since befo’ India. A chance to put an end to the struggle, once and fo’ all.”

Yolande stopped for a moment. This is the most painful pleasure of my life, she thought. “I’m . . . worried, though. About Uncle Eric. He’s . . . not frightened—it’s just so easy to be indecisive at these levels, love! Always easier not to decide. He hates the idea of usin’ it, takin’ the risk. Even of the killin’ involved.” Slowly: “I admit it, love, I don’t like the idea either. The fighters . . . they take the chances, same as I. Always hated hurtin’ the helpless, and as fo’ throwin’ sunfire across the land . . . ” She made a grimace of disgust, looking out across the hills of her birth country. Birds went overhead, a flock almost enough to hide the sky for an instant.

She hammered a fist on her knee. “But what can we do, love? I could live with the thought of everythin’ bein’ destroyed, when there was no choice. Now there is. And the longer we wait, the worse. Ah, Myfwany, it’s so hard to know what’s right.”

Shaking her head, she rose and dusted her uniform. “I wish you were here, honeysweet,” she said. “I promise . . . I’ll do my best fo’ the children. Good-bye fo’ now, my love. Till we meet again.”

“What the hell is that?” Marya exclaimed. “Mistis,” she added hastily.

“That,” Yolande replied, “is the most expensive toy evah built.”

She had managed to shake most of the crowd of officials at Florence Airhaven; even the officer from TechSec, who was reasonably interesting when he got onto the yacht’s construction. Enough of crowding hack on Luna, she thought, and besides, she had checked out fairly thoroughly on the simulators. They were almost alone on the floater; even this backwater had modernized maglev runways, now. The craft before them was not something it had seen before, or most other airhavens in the Domination, either. Ninety meters long, a slender tapering wedge; the bottom of the hull curved up at the rear into the slanted control fins. There were control-cabin windows at the bow, scramjet intakes below the rear edge. And what looked like a huge four-meter bell pointing backward at the stern.

“It’s from the test program fo’ the fifth generation pulsedrives, the Rex class.” A sliver of afternoon light fell within the thrust plate, and glittered off the lining. “Synthetic single-crystal thrust plate, stressed-matrix/mag equalizers, deuterium-boron-11 reaction. They had two of the first units left ovah. Decided to try matin’ them to a heavy scramjet assault transport; first Earth-surface to deep-space craft ever built, is the result.” A Yankee might have junked the test units, but Draka engineers had a rooted abhorrence of throwing anything that still worked away.

“The power-to-weight’s good enough you could take off on the pulsedrive,” Yolande continued, as they came to the lift and stepped on board. It hummed quietly and swept them past the black under-surface heatshield; the top of the craft was dark as well, but the texture was subtly different. “Though that wouldn’t be neighborly. Actually it’s a waddlin’ monster in atmosphere, and mostly fuel tank inside; liquid hydrogen, of course. Got good legs, though; that reaction is energetic. You could make it to Mars or even the Belt, iff’n you didn’t mind arrivin’ dry.”

They stepped through the open door. It swung shut behind them, and she took a deep breath. Filtered air, the subliminal hum of life-support systems; pale glow-panel light, and the neutral surfaces of synthetic and alloy. Space, Yolande thought. Even though they were still on the surface, it had an environment all its own. She ducked her head through the connecting door into the control cabin. There were comfortable quarters aft; it was essentially a very expensive yacht. Not that they’re likely to become a hot item anytime soon, she thought wryly. Even discounting the cost of the drive as part of the research overhead, the Mamba would price in at about the combined family worth of the Ingolfssons and the von Shrakenbergs. For now, the Archon and the Commandant of Aresopolis were assigned one each.

She returned the pilot’s salute. The control deck was horseshoe shaped, with pilot and copilot forward, Weapons and Sensors to either side on the rear. Only the two pilots were here now, of course.

“Pilot Breytenbach,” she said to the number two. “You can go aft; I’ll sit in on this.” Yolande grew conscious of her servant hovering behind. “Well, come in, wench.” Marya flinched slightly, fingering the bare strip on her wrist; the controller cuff would have shocked her away from activated military comp systems like this. Yolande saw her take a deep breath and step forward. Good wench, she thought.

“That crashcouch,” she said, indicating the Sensor station. She swung herself into the copilot’s seat and pulled the restraints down. “All yourn, Pilot,” she said. He nodded briefly, running his eyes in a last check over the screens.

“Highly cybered,” Yolande said, indicating the control panels. “ ‘Less you has to fight her”—in which case you bumfucked, because those lasers are a joke—“menu commands to take you anywheres within range.”

She settled back happily. “I’ll take ovah out of atmosphere,” she said. They would be back to the world of the Commandant’s office soon enough. TechSec designs a toy, I might as well use it, she reflected. The big vehicle lifted off the runway with the peculiar greasy feel of maglev and turned toward the long reach.