The Domination

Chapter Twenty

DRAKA FORCES BASE ARESOPOLIS

MARE SERENITATIS, LUNA

NOVEMBER 11, 1998: 0930 HOURS

“Sector Seven, level twelve,” the transporter capsule said. The lid hissed open, and Marya stepped out.

“Ident,” the guard said. The room was a narrow box with only one exit, brightly lit and completely bare, smelling of cold rock. The guard was in Security Directorate green, battle-armored and carrying a gauntlet gun; his head turned toward her like a mirrored globe, her own distorted face reflecting off the helmet shield.

She stepped up to the exit and laid her hand against the screen set in the wall beside it. “Marya E77A1422, property of Arch-Strategos Ingolfsson, Commandant, on personal errand.”

Her mouth was tissue paper, and the pulsebeat in her ears roared louder than trumpets. This was action, covert action. It was impossible to disguise, impossible to cover, no matter her skill on the infonet. Recognition sets were embedded in the central brains, and flagging from a station with this priority was direct-routed down to read-only memory. It would stand out, stand out, the minute anyone did a search on her activities today. Even the most dimwitted Orpo would notice someone being in two places at once.

Only for you, my brother, she thought, controlling the impulse to shudder. The message had been like none she ever received. Far longer. Not just instructions on a new drop, a new contact code; orders to do. The thing she carried at her belt. Something is very wrong here. Fred’s never been in the loop before, neither of us would dare.

The screen flicked light at her eyes. A laser read the pattern of her retina; the information sped away as modulated light. Another scanned her palmprint, the abstract of her voice. Information flowed into a central computer’s ready-storage peripheral; embedded instruction sets were tripped. Data from deep storage was copied, run through a translator into analog form, compared. Another code phrase tripped a set in the response machine.

“Confirmed. Marya E77A1422, property of Arch-Strategos Ingolfsson, Commandant. Literate Class V-a. Delay, query.” The idiot-savant routines would be calling her owner’s private quarters. Marya breathed in, calmly. That was where the interception loop she had established would work; or not. The machine spoke again: “Query, confirmed. E77A1422, proceed.”

The guard nodded. “Confirmed. Present, wench,” he said. Marya turned and bent back her head to bare the serf-tattoo beneath her right ear. There was a box clipped to the serf policeman’s waist; he pulled free a light-pencil on a coil cord and ran the tip down her tattoo. The box chirped, encoding her ident on a data plaque within: another footprint.

With a slight hiss, the door opened. Marya noted the thickness of it, featureless sandwich-armor alloy. The corridor beyond was plain, but there would be instruments and weapons in the walls. Another door, and she was out into a vestibule of the factory; more guards, crewing control desks. They waved her through. She walked on, past color-coded doors and more corridors. Through a transparent tube, over a long room where workers bent to their micromanipulators and screens. They were assembling circular electrowafers in tubes, building the precoded stacks that contained the instruction sets for major computers and their closed-access internal memories. Others fitted the pillars of wafers into the rectangular platforms of the logic decks; she could imagine the submicroscopic tools soldering their gold-wire and optical-thread connections.

All familiar enough; the basic technology had not changed in a generation, despite vast improvements in detail. And I’ve heard Draka complain the Alliance isn’t introducing as many refinements for them to steal lately, she recalled. Exterior data storage, translator/interfacer unit, memory, instruction sets, logic deck. And beyond this complex, the most crucial area of all, where the design teams’ compinstruction data was turned into physical patterns for embedding in the cores . . .

“Hello,” she said to the receptionist in the office area. Polite but not servile; she was a command-level officer’s personal servant. Not as formally high-status as this expensively trained technical secretary, but they were both Class V-as, and her owner outranked the Faraday Combine exec who ran this facility. “Is Master MacGregor in? The plant manager?”

The receptionist looked up from his keyboard, looked Marya up and down. “Your message?” he said. “Master MacGregor can’t be interrupted, he’s in conference.” He’s checking my clothes, Marya thought. Silk shirt, pleated trousers, jeweled clasps on the sandals and belt. Obviously a houseserf, equally obvious from someone not to be offended.

“It’s an invitation,” she said. “From the Commandant.” Marya held out a folded parchment sealed in gold with the Drakon signet, then pulled it back when the man reached for it. “Personal service.” That was one of her duties, keeping track of the obligatory social functions Yolande hated, and seeing that the invitations were in harmony with the relative status of each participant. A personal hand-delivery to a Commandatura reception was just slightly more than MacGregor rated; just enough that no underling of sense would endanger it.

“Oh, excuse me.” The serf’s heavy Arab features knotted. “Ahh . . . ” There was a waiting area behind the desk, but that was for Citizens. “Here, I’ll take you to his office. You can wait there, and give the invitation.”

“Will he be long?” Marya said, with a frown of concern. “Mistress, the Arch-Strategos Ingolfsson, expects me back.” Sometime this evening, probably, but the rank ought to make you sweat. Marya’s owner took her lunches at her office, and it was vanishingly unlikely that her absence would be noted. Even less likely that anything would be made of it. Marya was authorized to leave the household and entitled to do so at discretion, so long as her work was done. But every minute is another chance to be missed.

“It’s right this way,” he continued. She followed; there was carpet here, muffling even the light sound feet made under lunar gravity. He touched the wall, and a section slid upwards; that’s right, lay on the courtesy. He could have made her wait in the hall, but it was never wise to antagonize one who had the ear of your superior’s superior. She stepped through. A typical office chamber, big enough for pacing, with a holowall landscape, desk, workstation. That was activated, notes and papers left carelessly around the terminal. The release of tension was like nausea or orgasm. She turned that into a one-two-kneel motion, sinking down on her heels and closing her eyes, hands and invitation folded in her lap. The Perfect Servant, concentrating on the task in hand. Go away, she thought with deadly concentration at the receptionist. Don’t make polite conversation, don’t offer me refreshment, go away.

He did; she waited until the door closed, and sixty heartbeats beyond. When she rose, it was with a smooth economy of motion that wasted no second of time, time that she was buying with her life. There was no turning back; it could be months before she might have to use the pills carefully hoarded in her room, even years, but the clock was running from this moment.

Exec MacGregor had been careless, leaving his terminal up. A violation of procedure, even here in the heart of a guarded facility. Even behind a door only those with authorization could access. She took the dataplaques from the pouch at her waist and touched the keyboard.

-Work in progress-, she typed.

[Core memories. Actuation sequences.] A long string of codes; she picked out the ones she knew, the ones on the plaque she should have wiped but could not bear to, the one with her brother’s image.

[Cr-ex 5-5 Btstation orbital: launch sequence. IFF. ] There.

Her fingers moved. -Halt. Memcheck, active-. Then the only time embedded sets were held in access memory. While they were being transferred to the cores. Feverishly, she checked the work-in-progress table on the status of the sets; they were finished, ready to be templated for the master pattern in the assembly hall.

-Modification,- she typed.

[Delay.] Seconds of white terror. [Accepted. Load sequence.]

Marya stared at her hand until the slight tremor disappeared. She pushed the first of the palm-sized synthetic rectangles into the receptor.

-Create parallel file temp:l-

[File standing.]

-Load receptor D: seq-

An almost inaudible whine, as the reader/translator loaded the contents of the plaque into the virtual space she had created. Another. Another. There were five of the plaques. Three minutes in all; now for the difficult part. She gave silent thanks that the Domination used a standard working compinstruction language. There were three in the Alliance, not to mention illegals.

-Run temp:1 comparison workfile: Cr-ex 5-5 keyphrase com; master-

The screen flickered, as the computer matched the sets.

[Congruence sector core: code exe.] The master recognition commands, friend-foe.

-Mergeset: modify workfile Cr-ex 5-5 keyphrase com: master-

[Merging.] Long seconds, while the machine knitted the new symbols with the old, matching smoothly where the coded ends fitted the set. [Complete. Workfile 2temp:l.]

Shit, she thought. It was making duplicate drafts, not substituting.

-Compare workfile / workfile 2temp:l-

[Congruence 99.73 abs.]

-Wipe workfile-

[Query?]

-Wipe workfile-

[Query?]

“Oh, shit, shit, shit!” she said. Think. Think, damn you, wench. What are you, Draka cattle or a human being? The station and table around it were littered with paper notes; this MacGregor was a worrier. Hated to do anything irrevocable. Calmly. There are only a few ways you can alter the procedures. Designer compinstruction sets were embedded as well, after all. A single note at the bottom of a stack, old and faded, in pencil.

Marya gave a shark grin and returned her hands to the keyboard.

-Wipe workfile-

[Query?]

-coverass-

[Execute -wipe workfile-]

-Load workfile seq all mainmem-

[Unfind: query? namefile.]

“I got it, I got it!” Quickly now, but carefully.

-dename workfile 2temp:l/ rename workfile-

[Execute -dename workfile 2temp:l/ rename workfile-all. Wipe workfile 2temp:l?]

-command aff-

[Execute-wipe workfile 2temp:l-]

Now to check; only an anal retentive of the first order would log under a code like this, but . . .

-time/work log coverass perscode/master-

[Query? coverass unrec Logtime/work MG-A1?]

Marya looked at the time display in the lower right corner of the screen; 09:41, exactly eleven minutes since she entered the fabrication complex.

-time/work log thisdate MG-A1-

[Inlog 0800 01/07/98 lastsrk 0929 dto MG-A1]

“Exactly why only designers get these free-access memories,” she muttered to herself. “Too easy to cheat a little.” Her handkerchief dusted across the keyboard, no use making it easy for the greencoats if things blew soon. A quick pass across her face left it damp; nothing she could do about the trickles from her armpits down her flanks.

I have just condemned myself to death, she thought, as she settled back on the floor—Can’t pollute the Race’s holy chair with my serf ass—and folded her hands. “And I haven’t felt this alive in decades.”

“No, I don’t want anything,” Yolande snapped, then forced herself to calm. The house girl isn’t to blame, she thought. It would be alarming enough that she was back here at the Commandant’s quarters at 1200, only four hours after she left. The serf was looking at her wide-eyed. Be gentle. They’re frightened when the routine is upset. “Run along, Belinda. I’ll call later if I want lunch.”

The memory of the message from Archona was a sour taste at the back of her mouth as she stalked past the fountain into a lounging room. No party planned. Invitation superfluous.

“He isn’t going to do a fuckin’ thing,” she told herself, lost in rage and wonder. Months past saturation point on the Stone Dogs, and no action whatsoever. Be honest with yourself, she thought, flinging herself down on a couch and staring at the ceiling. Throwing yourself down was curiously unsatisfying on the Moon; like punching pillows, there was no thump.

It’s two months into Gwen’s voyage. She’s out of the inner system, out of any possible combat. And Gwen was the only one of her children old enough for military service. Short of a catastrophe that wrecked the planet, the others would be safe. The Draka prided themselves on being a foresighted people; since before her birth they had been building deep shelters, every plantation and school, city and town in the Domination was ready. And the facilities had been improved constantly. They would work, provided there was a living world to return to.

“All right.” She asked herself, coldly realistic, “What can you do, Yolande?”

Very little. It was bitter knowledge. She knew of the Stone Dogs, now; perhaps two dozen others did. Could I get in touch . . . No. The only others she knew of for certain were Gayner and the two Militant leaders; they would not trust a niece of the Conservative bossman. And it would be like shooting Uncle Eric in the back. Morally unthinkable, and . . . you did not betray Eric von Shrakenberg and enjoy the consequences. Perhaps it would be worthwhile, if there was no alternative. Not until there was no alternative. She had a year until the Lionheart returned from the edge of the system. For that matter, Gwen would not thank her for being sheltered from danger. So she’s as stupid as anyone else that age. No more essential to the State than a hundred thousand other junior officers. A fine balance, duty to the Race and to family, but clear in this case.

“I’ll have to fuckin’ wait,” she hissed to herself, and then clamped down on her own mind. The Will is Master, she repeated. Breathe . . . Presently she won a degree of calm.

“Belinda,” she said to the air; the housecomp would relay it. “Lay out a fresh uniform in my changin’ room.”

“Marya!” she said, pushing open the door. It had no lock, of course. “Yo—”

The room was empty, and there was no sound from the others. Yolande stopped, blinking slightly in surprise. Could have sworn the comp said all servants present, she thought in puzzlement, looking around. It was a fairly standard upper-servant’s suite, bedroom, sitter opening off the corridor through a nook, and a bathroom at the rear. The lights had come on as she entered, but the air had the slightly dead feel of space not used for several hours. I wonder where she is? It was annoying; grabbing a quick nooner was not something she did all that often, and there was nobody else in the household right now she would feel that relaxed with; Jolene was down dirtside, visiting her daughter and Nikki back at Claestum.

Oh, well. It was no great matter; she turned to go, and then hesitated. I’ve never actually been in here, she thought.

No reason to visit the servants’ quarters, really, except a sudden impulse to surprise . . . Nothing in the bedroom but a bed with a quilt coverlet; there was a signed holo of Gwen by the bed, and a book open beside it. The sitter was a room about four meters by three, lit by a glowceiling, walls of foam rock and tile floor covered by throw rugs. A couch along one wall, a couple of spindly low-G chairs, cushions. The viewer screen, and a bookshelf with a dozen titles, mostly classics; a row of dataplaques beside it, with the garish covers of serf entertainment. The new perscomp on a table, with a chair still pushed back as if in haste; the screen was dark, but the indicator was on, something running.

“Careless,” Yolande chuckled, and walked over to it. There was a wrap-robe on the back of the chair. The Draka picked it up and brought the cloth to her face; there was a faint scent of Marya on it. Damn, I wish she was here, Yolande thought, sitting and picking up the dataplaque lying on the table.

“ ‘Serving Pleasure #15,’ ” she read, and laughed again. An erotic-instruction sequence. No wonder she’s getting so imaginative, she thought, flattered. Wonder what’s on it. Impulsively, she snapped it into the port and hit the DIVIDE command on the keyboard. The perscomp was a fairly capable one, the type midlevel serf bureaucrats were issued. Embedded accounting, datalink and display functions. A million-transistor logic deck, two hundred thousand bits of core storage besides, and a plaque receptor.

The screen blanked to light gray, then lit. Yolande watched in growing bewilderment. Sodomy? Basic Passive Sodomy? she thought, watching as the instructor showed the young buck how to brace his elbows on his knees before stepping behind. What in Freya’s name is Marya doing with—

The screen blanked again, the grunting figures replaced by a man’s face. In an Alliance uniform, with brigadier’s shoulderboards. American eagle, OSS flashes. Unremarkable face, square, rather dark, big-nosed; in his fifties, plenty of gray in the flat-topped black hair, eyes black too, so that the pupil didn’t show. Deep grooves, ridged forehead, the face of a man hagridden for many years. Yolande heard her own breath freeze in a strangled gasp, felt a sheet of ice lock her diaphragm.

Him.

“Marya, my sister, you must realize from this how desperate the situation is.”

Him. India. The cool Punjab night, and the missiles arching up from the trees. Psssft-thud, and Myfwany’s graceful stride turning to a tumbling fall.

“This plaque must be wiped as soon as you’ve read it. Likewise the others. Those most of all. Here are your instructions.”

Him. The face, under the upraised visor. That single glimpse.

“ . . . je t’aime, ma soeur,” the voice concluded. A moment of blank screen, and the instruction sequence cut back in. She touched the controls. Her own face reflected dimly in the darkened screen. Eyes gone enormous, lips peeled back until the gums showed. A trickle of hoarse sound escaped her throat.

“His sister. His sister. I’ve had his sister in my own household fo’ twenty-five years?” A bubble of laughter escaped her, and she ground her teeth closed on it, feeling something thin and hot stabbing between her eyes.

I’m dead. The thought was almost welcome. I’m a walking corpse. Nothing and nobody could save her from Security after this. The message had mentioned previous drops; even if nothing vital—there couldn’t be, I hardly talked to her for years until—“Until she volunteered to play pony, gods damn me for a fool, why else would she suddenly decide she wants to lie down with me,” she said. And now a sabotage operation.

I could kill her, Yolande thought. Just one quick bullet, and call disposal. Or apply for some drugs, get the information, then kill her. Perfectly legal—no, the headhunters would smell something immediately. The Directorate of Security was an unofficial arm of the Militants, or vice versa. They watched the von Shrakenberg connections like vultures around a dying camel. For an Ingolfsson to kill a houseserf was a break in the pattern, a red flag that something unusual was going on. They would ferret it out if it took them a decade.

No, it was her duty to report this. Put down everything she knew and suspected, write up a report, then one quick bullet of apology to the temple. The family will be involved, tolled through her with dreadful knowledge. A knot like the claws of something insectile hooked under her ribs. Gwen will be disgraced.

Duty—

“Oh,” she breathed. There was a way to use this. A spy you know about is an asset, not a liability, she reminded herself. A slow, calm smile touched her lips. It’s even personally fitting, she reflected. He’s known I had his sister as my serf. Used her for a brooder, probably knows she’s been serving pleasure. Torture, to a Yankee. Her hands touched the keys; she would have to find out what the perscomp was running. Carefully, Yolande, carefully. She can’t suspect, not for a moment.

This evening . . .

“You bit me, Mistis,” Marya said.

Yolande bent and kissed the U-shaped bruise on the inside of the serf’s thigh. The bedroom was dark, and she had set the wall for a winter landscape in Tuscany.

“I was excited,” she said, lying back. True, by Loki, lord of lies. I didn’t expect that. It was odd, she felt no hatred. I suppose I burned all that out long ago, for her.

“It usually doesn’t take you like that, Mistis.”

“It’s the news,” Yolande said. “Here, rub my back.” She rolled on her stomach, felt the serf’s breath warm on the damp skin of her neck as her fingers kneaded at the muscles along her spine.

“What news, Mistis?”

Yolande made herself hesitate. “Well, it can’t hurt now. No point in bein’ overcorrect. Remember the good news I got back when, in Archona?”

“I thought it must be important,” Marya said calmly, with a hint of a wink. “Certainly set you at me, Mistis.”

Are her fingers trembling? Yolande thought. Good. Sweat a little. Don’t stop to think.

The Draka laughed. “It’s our secret weapon,” she said. “There really is one. I always knew they must have somethin’ planned . . . A biological, to disable the Yankee crews in near-orbit. Really nice piece of work; code name Stone Dogs. It’s a stone killer, too! Delicate trigger, modulated microwave emission. We go to War-Condition Alpha tomorrow.”

The serf’s hands were shaking now. Yolande put a raised eyebrow into her voice. “What’s the matter, Marya? Don’t worry, yo aren’t in any danger. Should be a cakewalk, and anyways, this is the best-defended place on Luna.” She pulled the other close and kissed her. “Think I’ll get a land grant in California, after,” she continued. “Anyways, stay close to the quarters, the tubeways’ll be closed down.” The lights dimmed toward sleepset.

“On second thought, I’ve got a few things fo’ you to do. There may be some surface damage, worst-case. That crate of Constantia ’87 Uncle Eric sent, fo’ that cruise on the Mamba.” She felt the serf jerk slightly at the mention of the yacht. “Be a shame to lose it, even if that damned toy’s not here when Gwen gets back fo’ the victory party. Go on out tomorrow, and supervise strippin’ all the personal effects out, bring them back to quarters. No droppin’ hints, now!”

* * *

“What?” Yolande looked up from her desk at the holo image of Transportation Central, the traffic control nexus for Aresopolis.

“The Mamba, Commandant, we would have appreciated notification of a lift!”

Yolande felt a cold pride at the expression of mild surprise on her face. Of course, it’s a good thing they don’t have a medical sensor going on me, she thought stonily. The face in the screen was New Race; they could control their heartbeats. She wondered how it felt . . .

“So would I,” she replied drily. “Since I am here, and have authorized no such mission. Where is the pilot?”

“I . . . ” The hawk-featured young face took on an imperceptible air of desperation. She knew the feeling; the sinking sensation of bearing very bad news to someone far up the chain of command. “You pilot is in his quarters, Arch-Strategos. That was why we assumed, ah—”

“Don’t assume, Tetrarch, do. I presume you’ve hailed?”

“Of cou—Yes, ma’am. No response.”

There wouldn’t be, Yolande thought. She had very carefully had all the com systems decommissioned for preventative maintenance. An investigation would find that significant, but far too late.

“Well, we’ll have to assume an unauthorized lift,” she said, frowning with the expression of a high-ranking officer forced to intervene in trivial matters. “Issue a warnin’ to the Mamba and whoever’s aboard, to surrender or be fired upon. Alert the orbital platforms.”

“Ma’am, it’s, ah, the trajectory indicates a boost for translunar space. Mars is, well—”

“I’m familiar with orbital mechanics, Tetrarch,” she said. Stop tormenting the poor boy. Her fingers touched the desktop. “On that burn, the Belt would be the logical destination. Hmmm. The Mamba’s fairly valuable, but there’s nothin’ on board we’d be all that embarrassed fo’ the Yankees to get . . . Worth a chance on not scrubbin’ it. Dependin’ on who’s aboard. Get Merarch Tomlins on the screen, we’ll see if we can set up an intercept.”

“You what? You pillow-talked a bedwench that, and then let her escape?”

The Archon’s image was alone before her. For a moment Yolande felt a sensation she had not known for many years: raw, physical fear.

He looked down at the copy of her report, and the fury on his face went cold and blank. “This had to be deliberate on you part. Usurpation of command prerogative as well as treasonous incompetence.”

“She was an agent, Excellence,” Yolande continued expressionlessly. “If you’ll examine the appendix to that report, you’ll see we found clear evidence of dataplague sabotage. No way of knowin’ how long this has been goin’ on, either.” A skull grin split her face, below eyes that were edged in red. “We went aftah the Yankee personnel. They planted a, a virus in our comps. Typical, isn’t it?” Her hand twitched slightly as she reached for the glass of water. “The fact remains, Excellence, that we no longer have an intercept or strike option on the Mamba. Inside of three days, the Alliance craft will intercept, and shortly thereafter they’ll know about the Stone Dogs.”

She waited the seconds it took for light to reach Earth and return, on this most secure of links.

Eric von Shrakenberg rose behind his desk, and she felt his will beating on her like waves on a granite headland. “I will have you shot. I will have you fuckin’ shot!”

“That is you prerogative, Excellence,” Yolande said. And I don’t care nearly as much as I thought I would, she realized. Yes, the body reacted: sweat rolling down from her armpits, muscles tensing in millennial fight-flight reflex. But somewhere deep in her soul, she would accept it. “If you wishes to relieve the Commandant of this installation just befo’ the . . . outbreak of hostilities.”

She saw that ram home. “Use it, or lose it,” she continued.

Silence, for long minutes. At last he looked up again, older than she remembered. “Why?”

“I—” A pause, while she considered how it could be said. “I disagreed with you hesitation, but I would have accepted that. On a professional level. But you gave me a weapon, Uncle Eric. And I decided to use it. Fo’ . . . personal reasons. Love and hate.” Another pause. “And afterward—if there is an afterward”—she laid her sidearm on the desk, in range of the receptor—“I’ll save you the trouble, iff’n it’s still important.”

The ancient, weary eyes stared into hers. “The fate of worlds, fo’ personal reasons?” he said wonderingly.

“Are there any other kind?” she answered.

At last: “Go to Force Condition Seven, and await further orders, Arch-Strategos.” With a touch of ironic malice: “Service to the State.”

“Glory to the Race, Excellence.”