The Domination

Chapter Twenty-One

DRAKA FORCES BASE ARESOPOLIS

MARE SERENITATIS, LUNA

NOVEMBER 2, 1998: 0600 HOURS

“Whew.” Yolande collapsed into the chair. For a few minutes she forced herself to sit quietly, breathing, letting the wash of cool air from the vents help her body flush out the hormonal poisons. Then she reached for the communicator.

“Staff conference, immediate,” she said. “Forcecon 7.”

“ . . . And all nonessential traffic between sectors has been closed down,” the civilian administrator was saying.

Yolande looked around the table. “Mark?” she said.

The Aerospace Command Strategos shrugged. “We’ve moved all the available units into sheltered orbits,” he said. If there was one thing that a generation of skirmishing in space had shown, it was that ships were helpless in confined quarters with high-powered energy weapons.

“Move them out further,” Yolande said. “Outer-shell orbits fo’ the Cislunar Command zone. Sannie, start pumpin’ down the bulk water in the dome habitat, fill the reservoirs.”

“That’ll play hell with the Ecology people’s projects,” she warned.

“Don’t matter none.” The other officers around the table glanced sidelong at each other. Yolande saw carefully controlled fear. This was the nightmare that had haunted them all from their births. “And yes, that means I knows somethin’ y’all don’t. Somethin’ bad—and somethin’ good, too.”

“Now, and this is crucial”—she paused for effect—“startin’ immediately, and while you moving to full mobilization, bring you redundant compunits on-net. Then do a physical separation of the main battle units, and run simulations of actual operations—everythin’ but the final connections to the weapons units.” She held up a hand to still the protests. “Y’all will find malfunctions, I guarantee it. Report the make an’ number of the malfunctionin’ cores, immediate, to Merarch Willard here, who’s now Infosystems Officer fo’ Aresopolis. We’ll patch across to maintain capacity. Believe me, it’s necessary.”

CLAESTUM PLANTATION

DISTRICT OF TUSCANY

PROVINCE OF ITALY

NOVEMBER 2, 1998

“Vene, vene, keep movin’!” The serf foreman reached out to stop a field-hand family; one of the children was cradling a kitten. “No livestock in the shelter, drop it.” The girl began to cry in bewildered terror.

The bossboys were as ignorant as the rest of the serfs, but they had caught the master’s nervousness. John Ingolfsson whistled sharply to catch the man’s attention and jerked his head; the foreman’s rubber hose fell, and the line began moving again as he waved the serf girl through with her pet.

Makes no nevermind, the master of Claestum thought, watching the long column disappearing into the hillside. He swallowed to moisten a dry throat, pushed back his floppy-brimmed leather hat, and wiped at the sweat on his forehead. It was a clear fall day, and still a little hot here in the valley below the Great House. The shelter was burrowed under that hill, quite deep; begun in the ’50s, and refined and extended in every year since. This entrance was disguised as a warehouse, but behind the broad door and the facade was a long concrete ramp into the rock. The elevators were freight-type, and the thousand-odd serfs would be in their emergency quarters in another hour or so. Armorplate doors, and thousands of feet of granite—

It should be enough, if we have an hour, he thought. There was hatred in the glance he shot upward. Nothing but the coded messages over the official net, but you could tell . . . I always grudged the money and effort. Full shelter for all the serfs, sustainable if crowded; fuel cells, air filters, water recyclers, and food enough for three years on strait rations.

He had had just time enough to put most of the farming equipment under wraps; the sealed warehouses held seed grain. There was even room for basic breeding stock, on the upper level.

The last of the field hands passed through, and the overseer looked up from the comp screen by the door. “That’s the last of them,” she called. Rumbling sounded within, as thick metal sighed home into slots.

Silence fell, eerie and complete. Nothing but the hot dry wind through the trees, and the tinkle of water from one of the village fountains. He stood in the stirrups and looked around; the land lay sere as it did with autumn, rolling away in slopes of yellow stubble, silver-green olives, dusty-green pasture and the lush foliage of the vineyards. Commonplace infinitely dear. Yesterday his only worry had been the falling price of wheat and the vintage.

“Run one mo’ check,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to leave one of they brats out by mistake.” The overseer was taut-nervous herself, but her fingers were steady on the keyboard.

“All of ’em.”

“Right.” He ran a soothing hand down the neck of his horse as it side-danced with the tension. “Sooo, boy, easy. Now, let’s go jump in a hole and pull it in aftah us.”

DONOVAN HOUSE

NEW YORK CITY

FEDERAL CAPITAL DISTRICT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

NOVEMBER 3, 1998: 0700 HOURS

“Could it be a drill of some sort?” one of the figures in the screen said.

The Conference Room was nearly empty; just the president, and a few of her chief aides there. The Alliance Chairman was in the center of the holoscreen, with the military chiefs and some of the most crucial administrators. In theory the other Alliance heads of government were coequal, but this was a time for practicalities, and the American head of state was still much more than primus inter pares.

Carmen Hiero forced herself not to sigh in exasperation. “Amigo, they’ve started closing down factories and evacuating the population to the deep shelters,” she said. “Look at the reports; there are abandoned dogs walking through the streets of Alexandria! You think they’re doing this—it must be costing them astronomically—for a drill?”

Allsworthy tapped his fingers together and looked to one side, toward his pickup of the ACI chief. Hiero frowned slightly; she thought the chairman tended to rely on his Intelligence people rather too much. Enough, she thought. Listen.

“Anything congruent? Any reason for it to start now?” the chairman said.

The ACI man licked his lips slightly. “Nothing we can spot on short notice, Mr. Chairman,” he said. His face was calm, but the tendons stood out in the hands that twisted an ivory cigarette-holder. His Australasian accent had turned slightly nasal.

You too, my friend, Hiero thought.

“But . . . ” he continued. “Well, something jolly odd did happen yesterday, up on Luna. The Mamba—that’s the personal yacht of their Commandant of Aresopolis—did an unauthorized takeoff and is running for the Belt. Continuous boost trajectory for Ceres; should be there in about ten days.”

“That quickly?” Johannsen, the Space Force CINC.

“Well, it’s got one of their new fifth-generation pulsedrives,” the ACI commander said. “And whoever’s piloting it isn’t leaving any reserve for deceleration, we think. They’ve got two Imperator-class cruisers trying to catch it, and they’ve been beaming a series of demands that the Mamba stop, and warnings to everyone else to stay clear. We’ve no earthly idea what it’s about, really. The yacht is either unwilling or unable to communicate.”

Hiero leaned forward and touched the query button on her desk. “Can they catch it? Can we?”

“No, and yes, if we have something start matching velocities now. Considerably sooner than it might reach Ceres, if we use one of the New America’s auxiliaries.” A collective wince, that would mean blowing the Project’s last line of cover. “Under the circumstances, I’d say it’s justified.”

“I say we do it,” Hiero said.

“Sir?” The ACI man looked to the chairman, who nodded abstractedly.

“Ah, sir?” That was Donati, the OSS chief of staff; he was looking off-screen, and his fingers were busy. “We do have—yes, we do have something significant, just now. They’re . . . ah, yes. Trying very hard to keep it quiet, but our ELINT is picking it up. They’re pulling up their backup comps on . . . hell, one sector after another. Running some sort of check program on the central comps. Then—they’ve just put out an all-points to their military, to downline the AV-122 series. That’s their most recent battle-management comp.”

Hiero’s own fingers moved; yes, everyone here was cleared for the fourth layer of the New America Project.

“Is that one of the ones we managed to infect?” she said. Chairman Allsworthy’s question came on the heels of theirs.

There was a long moment of silence. “Mierda,” she whispered. “A leak.”

Allsworthy grunted, as if someone had hit him in the belly. “We . . . ” He looked down at his hands. Hiero felt herself touched with sympathy, and a moment’s gratitude that the final decision was not hers. The life of the planet lay in those palms. “Recommendations?” he continued.

“Attack immediately; we’re already at Defcon 4,” Hiero said.

“Attack.” Donati, more decisive than usual.

“With all due respect, Mr. Chairman, that would be premature.” The ACI commander’s balding head shone. “If . . . a leak in the Project security would not be enough to put them up to this level of alert. They’d know it would focus our attention; they’d try and isolate the infected comps clandestinely, so that we wouldn’t know it’s been done. There’s another factor here, one we haven’t grasped . . . Maybe the Mamba has the answer. Whatever it is, God, sir, even if we win with the present inadequate level of infection in their infosystems, we’re talking hundreds of millions of dead. Everybody, if they use Fenris. We have to play for time.”

Hiero sat silent, listening to the debate. This was not a committee, could not be, and she had said what she believed . . . At last the chairman raised a hand for silence.

“We’ll present an ultimatum,” he said. “How long until the Mamba is intercepted?”

“Twenty-four to thirty hours, sir.”

“I authorize immediate interception. Take whatever measures are necessary. Secretary Ferriera, draft an immediate note to the Domination; their mobilization is an intolerable provocation and threat, and we will consider ourselves in a state of war unless they begin withdrawal by exactly”—his eyes went to a clock—“1000 hours tomorrow. General Mashutomo, all Alliance forces to Defcon 5 and proceed on the assumption that hostilities begin as of the expiration of the ultimatum.” He looked around. “Any questions?”

Hiero waited until she was sure there would be none, before she spoke. “No. I disagree with this course of action, but we must have discipline or we are truly lost.” A weary smile. “And I very much hope I am wrong and you are right, Señor Chairman.”

“Roderigo,” she said, as the last of the president’s council were leaving. “Wait a moment.” When they were alone. “Miguel and the grandchildren are still on Ceres. Send a message, tightbeam, priority: Stay. He will understand.”

EAST TENNESSEE

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

NOVEMBER 3, 1998: 1500 HOURS

“Captain, what the hell is this place?”

The trooper was nervous. They all were, after the sudden Defcon 5 and the scramble of orders that had sent them barging off into the hills, away from any news of what was going on.

The Ranger officer looked up from his maps; they had walked the last half-mile, up into the hills. The air was cool here in the high Appalachians even in summer, chill with winter now the steep mountain ridges were thick with oak and maple and fir, the scars of the mines long healed. He had been born not far away, and he remembered the deep woodland smell of it, a little damp and musty, deeply alive. There were few enough left who could call the mountains home. Unforgiving hard country to scratch a living out of, once the pioneers had taken the first richness; the timber companies and the coal miners had passed through, and then the people had followed, down to the warm cities and the sun.

“It’s a disused coal mine, son,” the captain said. They’re supposed to be independent-minded, he reminded himself. And they’re feeling lost, yanked out of their regular units. Most of the Rangers were helping with the last crates, up from the disused road and through the carefully rundown entrance. The shielding started a little way beyond that, and then the storerooms and armories. “You married, son? Close relatives?”

“No, sir,” the soldier answered. He was in his late teens, with a fluffy yellow attempt at a mustache standing out amid the eye-blurring distortions of a chameleon suit that covered his armor. “Not really.”

“Nobody here does,” the officer continued. “And in that cave there’s everything we’d need for a long, long time.”

The soldier swallowed. “Yessir. I get the picture.” The officer noted with pleasure that he did not ask if there were other refuges like this. I suspect so, the captain thought. But neither of us needs to know. One of the noncoms below called with a quietly menacing displeasure, and the young Ranger saluted and turned to go. That gave him a glimpse of the last contingent, looking unaccustomed to their fatigues and carrying various items of black-boxed electronics.

“Girls?” he squeaked, then remembered himself and saluted again.

“Technicians,” the captain said softly to himself, looking up. “Edited out of the comps, like all the rest of us. Unlikely to be missed. Not on paper either, anywhere.”

The last chameleon-suited troopers were following up the trail, replacing bent branches and disturbed leaves, spraying pheromone neutralizers. He folded the map and tucked it into a shoulder pouch. It was going to create the biggest administrative hassle of all time, getting this set up again when they had been stood down.

“I hope,” he murmured. “I sincerely hope.”

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

MALVINA SSN-44

NOVEMBER 3, 1998: 1700 HOURS

“Take her down to a hundred meters,” the captain of the submarine said. “All ahead full.”

Commodore Wanda Jackson glanced around the command center. It was up forward, near the bows of the metal teardrop. Only half a dozen in the bridge crew, a score more in the rest of the vessel. The drive was magnetic, superconductor coils along the length of the hull; most of that was filled with the nuclear power plant, essential life support, and thirty torps. Hypervelocity sea skimmers with multiple warheads, on a ship that could do better than fifty knots, or dive as deep as the water went, in most places. The finest class of submarine the Alliance had ever built, and the last, nearly obsolete.

“Well, they seem to have found some use for us,” she said. “Number Two.” The Executive Officer came to stand by her chair. “We’ll open the sealed orders now.” Their squadron was spraying out from Norfolk like a fan of titanium-matrix minnows, each with its own packet of deadly instructions.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Her thumbnail hesitated for a moment on the wax of the seal. I’m glad we never had kids, she thought; her husband was in Naval Air, out of Portsmouth. The paper sprang free with a slight tock sound.

The commodore’s eyebrows rose. “Make course for the Angolan Abyssal Plain,” she said. “Down to the bottom, and wait.”

* * *

ABOARD DASCS MAMBA

TRANSLUNAR SPACE

NOVEMBER 4, 1998: 0500 HOURS

“God,” Marya muttered. The new trace on the screen was matching velocities fast.

She was in the pilot’s couch of the yacht, where she had been since the takeoff. Never leaving it, except for a few dashes to the head. The floor around her was littered with the wrappers of ration bars; it was important to keep up the blood sugar. Sleep you could avoid, by popping stim, even when you were accelerating at a continuous 1.3 G. Over forty hours now since the last sleep, and things were beginning to scuttle around the edges of her peripheral vision. The icy clarity of her senses was growing disconcerting, a taunting, on-edge twisting that left you wondering if the information coming in to the brain was accurate. Could she really smell so sour already? Am I thinking straight? The dimmed lights still seemed hurting-bright.

Her eyes flicked back to the board. The Draka cruisers were still there behind her, three of them. Not gaining much; this ship was fast. Grotesquely overpowered, and the deuterium-boron-11 reaction was fantastically efficient. The first drive that really didn’t need reaction mass; all it produced was charged particles for the coils to squeeze aft . . . Those cruisers were fourth-generation, deuterium-tritium fusion. This much continuous boost was probably doing their thrustplates no good at all, they must be using just enough water mass to protect the diamond films. Still, eventually they would get close enough to get parallax and bring their beam weapons to bear.

An alarm chimed, one of the warships’ lasers was impinging on the Mamba’s thrustplate. Marya’s fingers touched the board, and the magnetic fields twisted slightly against the fusion flame. The Mamba skittered sideways . . . The Draka craft were still light-seconds away, enough to make dodging easy. Missiles and slugs were out of the question without matching or intersecting vectors; not enough sustained boost.

“Oh, shit, no way I can fight this thing,” she muttered, looking over to the vacant couches. One untrained person could just barely pilot it, on an idiot-proof minimum time, maximum thrust boost, if they knew the theory and how to stroke computers. A quarter of the screens were dead anyway, the com systems, all of them down, and no time to check why without getting sliced into dog meat by the pursuit. In the meantime she was half-delirious and wholly terrified.

She laughed. “And I feel great. Fucking wonderful!” Because she was doing, accomplishing; perhaps only her own death in a quick flare of plasma, but that would be something. It was helplessness that was the worst thing about being a slave. Not abuse, not privation, not the ritualized humiliation; it was not being able to do anything except what they wanted. This was the most alive she had felt in twenty years.

The new trace was still closing. Marya blinked and recalibrated. Her eyes felt dry, but the lids slid up and down as if lubricated with mercury.

Whatever it was was boosting at 2G to match velocities, and had been for the better part of a day. Better than the Mamba herself could do. Again she looked in acid frustration at the dead com screens; there was probably enough information flying back and forth, threats and warnings and demands, to tell her everything she needed to know. I might as well put a message in a bloody bottle and throw it out the airlock, she thought. 3K klicks and closing at 1k per second relative. Soon they would be in visual distance, as something more than a point of light . . .

“Visual,” she muttered to herself, unconscious of speaking aloud. “Maybe, if they’re looking—”

Impatiently, she called up the maximum magnification and waited. Presently it appeared, no class of vessel she was familiar with. For a chill moment she thought it might be another like the craft she was flying; the tapered-wedge shape was plainly meant to transit atmosphere. Then she saw the Alliance colors, the Space Force blazon. Even the name Sacajawea. It was bigger than the Mamba as well, corvette-sized, a couple of thousand tonnes payload. Her hand touched a section of the console.

-Airflight mode-

[CURRENTLY IN VACUUM], the computer replied with electronic idiot-savant indifference to circumstances.

-Airflight mode, landing lights, exterior.-

[OPERATIONAL: ON/OFF (Y.N)?]

She touched on. Off. On . . .

“Sir.”

Frederick Lefarge looked up from the plotting console. The Sacajawea was one of a dozen shuttlecraft the New America would carry, mirror-matter powered, equally suited to atmosphere or deep-space work. That was easy enough with a power supply as energetic as antihydrogen. If the New America ever sailed, it would be a one-way trip with not much hope of return, and a long time before a functioning economy could be established at the target star. Her auxiliaries had been designed to last a century, and do everything from lifting kilotonne-mass loads out of a terrestrial-sized gravity well to interplanetary freighting. This one could cross the solar system and back in forty days, without refueling.

And it could fight an Imperator-class cruiser quite handily; hence the large bridge crew. Lefarge looked hungrily at the spread of trajectories on the board before him. Those Snakes were going to get a very unpleasant surprise, if push came to shove.

“Sir?” That was the Sacajawea’s captain, Ibrahim Kurasaka.

“Sir?” Lefarge said in turn. He outranked the other man but there was only one commander on a bridge. For that matter, his manning a board here was irregular, but there were times when the book didn’t matter all that much.

“Ab . . . Brigadier Lefarge, I’m getting a damned odd pattern of visuals from that Snake pleasure barge.”

“I’ll be glad to take a look,” Lefarge said. An image blinked into the center of his screens, and he narrowed his eyes. Not a random pattern . . . Suddenly, he chuckled harshly.

“You didn’t go through the National Scouts, did you, Captain?”

“No, Brigadier, I didn’t,” Kurasaka said. He was Javanese-Nipponese, and the Indonesian Federation had not been advanced enough for a universal youth movement back then.

“That’s an antique system; Morse, it used to be called. Probably in the datastore; let me . . . yes.” He raised one hand with enormous effort against the drag of acceleration and began keying. After a moment: “Oh, my God.”

“Marya, Marya! Ma soeur, ma petite soeur—”

For a moment she was lost, content simply to hold him. Then she pushed herself to arm’s length. There was shock in his eyes, enough that she was startled. Do I look that bad?. Forty hours of stim, but still—

“Fifff—” Appalled, she stopped. The stammer she had overcome so long ago was back. Not now, not now! A medical corpsman was floating down the connecting tube behind her brother, crowding along the wall to let the squads of Intelligence types past as they headed for the quick ransacking of the Mamba that was all the available time would allow. She had an injector in her hand, and the single-mindedness that went with the winged staff that blazoned her elbow. Antistim and trank.

“NNnnnnno!” Marya stuttered, pointing. Her brother half-turned, cut off the medic’s protest with an angry gesture.

“You need rest,” he said. The words were banal, not the tone, and there were . . . yes, tears at the corners of his eyes.

Tears are for later, she thought, and felt a flat calm return. A deep breath in.

“Liii-sten,” she said slowly. “Therrre is a bbbbiological . . . ”

CENTRAL OFFICE, ARCHONAL PALACE

ARCHONA

DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA

NOVEMBER 4, 1998: 0500 HOURS

“So.” Eric von Shrakenberg looked around the circle of the table. “Is that the consensus?”

Louise Gayner snorted and snapped a thumbnail against the crackle finish of her perscomp. The others glanced sidelong at each other; the Supreme General Staff representatives, the Directors of War and Security, the Council members. No teleconferencing, not for this. A dozen human beings, and they were all those who must be consulted in this matter.

Silence. Nods. At last the head of the Staff spoke:

“Excellence, we’ve already lost twenty percent of our capacity to this damned comp-plague, and there’ll be mo’. Must be mo’. The Stone Dogs are our only hope. If we lose that there’s nothin’. There’s no time, Excellence; every moment we wait is a nail in our coffin.”

The Archon looked down at his fingers. They’re waiting for my decision, my choice. The thought was hilarious, enough so that he did not know whether laughter or nausea would be more fitting. All my life I’ve wanted to set us free, he thought. Free from a way of life based on death. Now my only chance of it is to inflict more death than the combined totals of every despot and warlord in the whole mad-dog slaughterhouse we call human history. Could it be Yolande’s fault? Could it be anyone’s fault that it had come to this, the whole of human history narrowing down to this point? Ten thousand generations, living, rearing their children, working, dreaming, going down to dust, and now . . . He would say the words, and they would lie like a sword across all time, no matter the outcome. If there were humans at all, a generation hence, they would call this the decisive moment. The ultimate power, and in his hands.

A leader is someone who manages to keep ahead of the pack, he knew bitterly, feeling the cold carnivore eyes on him. There was exactly one practical choice he could make, within the iron framework of the Domination’s logic, and the Draka were nothing if not a practical people. Or he could refuse it, and the only difference would be that he would be safely dead in twenty minutes. For a second’s brief temptation he wished he could; it would spare him the consequences, at least.

No. At seventh and last, I am a von Shrakenberg, and I have my duty. Besides that, if nothing else it would give Gayner too much pleasure.

“Activate the Stone Dogs,” he said; his voice had the blank dispassion of a recording. “Force Condition Eight. Service to the State.”

“Glory to the Race,” came the reply. There was another brief pause, as if the men and women gathered around the table were caught in the huge inertia of history, the avalanche they were about to unloose. Then they rose and left, one by one.

Gayner was the last. Eric watched her with hooded eyes as she snapped the perscomp shut; time had scored his old enemy more heavily than he, for all his extra years. Only traces of red in the gray-white hair, and there were spots on her hands.

“Happy?” he said, at last. There was a curious intimacy to a perfect hatred, like a long marriage.

“Not particularly,” she replied, straightening her cravat. Their eyes met. “The Yankees . . . that’s not personal. They’re cattle.” Then she smiled. “You, on the other hand. Ahhh, come the day, that will make me happy.”

“Nice to know Ah can afford anothah human being such satisfaction,” he said. There was no particular hurry now; neither of them was much involved in implementation. The snow was moving down the slope. Still glacial slow, but there was no stopping it. “Headin’ fo’ y’ bunker?”

“No.” She looked up at the wall. “I’ve got a trans-sonic waitin’. I’ll sit this one out in Luanda. Home.” Gayner looked at him again. “But don’t worry. I’ll be back.”

* * *

DOMINATION SPACE COMMAND PLATFORM MOURNBLADE

LOW EARTH ORBIT

NOVEMBER 4, 1998: 0900 HOURS

The commander of the battle platform looked up sharply. “That’s the code,” he said. His second nodded, confirming. They were in the center of the platform, and the Chiliarch allowed himself a moment’s pride; this was the newest and best of Space Command’s orbital fists.

“Initiate Zebra,” he said.

There was heavy tension on the command bridge, but no confusion, no panic. This was what they had trained long years for; if any of the operators at their consoles were thinking of homes and families below, it made no difference to the cool professionalism of their teamwork.

“Preparin’ fo’ launch,” the Weapons Officer said.

The commander touched his screen.

[Detonation sequence activated]

“What the fuck—that’s not the launch protocol.” There was controlled alarm in his voice. “Weapons, pull that sequence!”

Frantic activity. “Suh, it’s not responding. The central comp’s not acceptin’ input.”

[Ten seconds]

A warning sent through Security crept into the Chiliarch’s mind. “Dump the core, over to dispersed operation.” A sound of protest from the Infosystems Officer; that would reduce their combat capacity by nine-tenths. “Do it, do it now.”

“Initiatin’ . . . suh, it won’t respond. Null board.”

“Get in there and slag the core, physically, now.”

[Seven seconds]

Fingers were prying at access panels. Hands tore bunches of wire free, and sparks flickered blue.

[Five seconds]

Sections of screen were going dark. He could see globes of fire rising and flattening against the upper atmosphere, down below on Earth. Vortexes of black cloud were gathering.

[Three seconds]

Even now there was no panic. Desperate effort . . . Impossible, he decided. The Chiliarch closed his eyes, called up a certain day. He was small again, and his father was lifting him . . .

[Two seconds]

. . . up so high toward the tree . . .

[One second]

. . . with Mother smiling, and . . .

[Detonation]

* * *

DONOVAN HOUSE DEEP SHELTER

FEDERAL CAPITAL DISTRICT

NEW YORK CITY

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

NOVEMBER 4, 1998

“This had better be worth it, compadre,” Carmen Hiero said, fastening her robe. It was the early hours of the morning, and she reached grumpily for the coffee. Then she saw her aide’s face, and gulped without tasting. “Something more about those broadcasts?”

“No, still just harmless modulated signals,” the aide said. “But there’s something else . . . Madam President, the chairman’s gone to the Denver War Room.” Thousands of feet under a mountain; she felt something clutch at her windpipe. That was where the real decisions would be made, as was right and proper; the Alliance was sovereign, not the member states. “Please, the briefing’s being prepared.” It was a short walk to the War Room; even after all these years, she still found the salutes a little incongruous for an elderly Sonoran lady in a housecoat.

“What’s the status?” she asked, sinking into the command chair. There was a tired smell of cigarettes and stale coffee, under the artificial freshness.

“They’ve gone to Force Condition Eight,” the general said. “Full mobilization. Evacuations in progress; nearly complete, in fact. Nothing overt, not yet; we’re matching, of course. No panic . . . ” Unspoken, the knowledge that the civil defense measures were inadequate passed between them. Yes, yes, General. I did my best. Pray that we will not see how far short of enough that is.

“And they’re continuing that crazy broadcasting. The experts say the only thing it’s going to affect is the homing sense of pigeons. Evidently that’s in the same range, planetary magnetism or some such. And . . . yes, Denver says the Project people in the Sacajawea did match velocities with the Mamba.”

Hiero nodded. She had always felt that name was a little ill-omened; Sacajawea had led Lewis and Clark on their expedition to the northwest. Heroic, if you looked at it from a Euro-American perspective, but even if the family did not talk about it, there were indios in the Hiero background. And from their point of view, of course—she forced her mind back to the present. Best not to think too much of the past, here and now. That way lay thinking that somehow she could have prevented this.

“They’re—” He frowned. “That’s odd, they’re making a Priority A broadcast, from the shuttle.”

She snorted. “Get me Orbital One. Split screen, and call up the Sacajawea broadcast.”

Reason fought with sick dread. It made no sense; the balance had not changed. Von Shrakenberg was still in power over there, and still a rational man, for a Draka. They had been counting on that, on him keeping the Militants out until the Alliance was ready . . .

How could they have found out about the Project? she thought; that was enough to send a stab of pain from the incipient ulcer through her stomach. “Milk,” she said. No. It must be more. They would know we are not ready.

“Madam President, we’re having a little trouble with the link to Orbital One,” the comtech said, puzzled. “The signal’s odd. Here’s the Project broadcast.”

It was Brigadier Lefarge. She sat bolt-upright at the sight of his expression. “To all Alliance bases and personnel. To all Alliance bases and personnel. The Domination has engaged in a”—his voice paused, as if searching for words—“an act of biopsychological—”

She felt a sudden quietness spread from the tech’s desk, rippling out. “Put them on central screen and get Orbital One,” she said. Oh, my children. “Now. Vamous . . . ”

The communications desk of the orbital battle station came on, but there was no one behind it. Silence, then a flicker. Then the image on the screen jumped, to the command deck. A man turned to look at them, and Carmen Hiero crossed herself reflexively. There were screams, and one of the techs started vomiting on her console. The man on the screen wore the uniform of an Alliance general; there were deep nail gouges down the side of his face, and an eye hung loose on a stalk along his cheek.

“Urr,” he said, advancing on the screen pickup. They could see the body behind him, broken and floating in the zero-G chamber. Little else, too much blood was coming from the throat. More floated around the general’s mouth. “Aaaaa.” The mouth swelled enormous, and a slick grating sound came through the speakers; the sound of teeth on crystal sandwich. The general was trying to gnaw his way to the command room on Earth. Wet mouth on the screen, and the teeth were splintering now. Chewing, with shreds of tongue hanging between the jagged ends. “Ah. Ah. Gggggg.”

Below her in the War Room the tech was screaming again, but now he was standing, tearing out handfuls of his hair. The president lifted her hands against the sight, and the fingers turned on her. They smiled, showing their fangs. Burrowed toward her face and began to feed, smiling.

Pain. That was the first thought. Then, absurdly: So this is what madness is.

She stood, floated upward, landed on feet that rooted themselves deeper than the world. That was terrible, because she must run, she must hide. The Anglo girls at Mount Holyoke had sprinkled brown sugar over her sheets again and—

—She was walking down the corridor toward the elevators, and the wall kissed her shoulder wetly. A tech was kneeling in a corner, hands locked around her feet, shivering with a tremor that sent waves of blue into the air in time with her whimper. Hiero pulled her own hands away from her face, feeling the tendrils stretch and pulse. A man stumbled toward the tech and squatted before her. He had a fire ax in one hand, and a mass of bloody tissue in the other; the spurting wound between his legs showed what it was. He held it out to her, and Hiero wanted to weep with the numinous beauty of the motion that smelled of pomegranates.

Instead she walked into the elevator and keyed for the surface. It shot upward and inward, compressing her into a fetal curl. Bones snapped and flesh tore as it masticated her, rolling her into a ball that it spat out into the corridor. Tissue and fragments flowed together and she crawled along a carpet that moaned in pain and writhed away from her. Something grabbed her and jerked her upright. Insect-stick limbs, oval body, buzzing wings, centered in a face she knew. What is this monster doing with Roderigo’s face? she thought, and felt rage seep wetly out her stomach. Words spattered around her, heavy with evil oils. She lunged forward and it ran, ran before her out onto a balcony beneath a sky that shivered and thundered.

Light blossomed, and there was a moment of total clarity as her melted eyeballs ran down her cheeks. Then—

SEABED, ANGOLAN ABYSSAL PLAIN

MALVINA SSN-44

NOVEMBER 4, 1998: 1005 HOURS

“Damned fragmentary, Captain,” the Exec said. The lines scrolling up the screen were the longwave relay from Hawaii. “What the hell does that mean?”

“The first part’s an all-points from some Space Force johnny,” Jackson replied, rubbing one hand across the other. She felt a little off, as if things were blurring at the edges. Christ, I can’t be coming down with the flu now of all times. “The stuff after that is completely garbled. Rerun the first, the comp ought to have decoded it by now.” That was NavCommand for you, nothing better to do than cryptography.

Wanda Jackson read the report over once and then again, then turned her head to look at the Exec. Her hand reached for the controls, and she keyed the general circuit.

“Now hear this,” she said. “All hands. This is the captain speaking. All hands will proceed to the nearest medicomp and take the maximum waking trank dose, immediately. Remain calm. Once you have taken the medication, report to sickbay by watches.”

The Exec handed her an injector; she pressed it against her neck and felt a cool bite. A wall of glass came down between her and the world, imposing an absolute calm. That was close. The sick feeling at the edge of her vision was still there, but now she could feel it as something apart from her. The captain touched another control, this time to sickbay.

“Dr. Fuentes?” she asked.

“Sí, Capitan,” he answered. Dull, heavy tone. Good.

“Have your psychotropic basket of tricks ready. You understand?”

“Sí.”

Still with the flat lack of caring; trained reflex would take over, when motivation was gone. That would be enough, until they took the counteractants. Paranoia and schizophrenia were reasonably well understood, and you could suppress the symptoms quite readily, for a while.

It would reduce their efficiency, of course. But they could do the job. Good thing I don’t care much what must be happening, she thought idly, and rose to head down the corridor.

OFF THE COAST OF NORTH ANGOLA

2,500 METERS ALTITUDE

NOVEMBER 4, 1998: 1035 HOURS

“Oh, shit, oh, shit,” the pilot of Louise Gayner’s aircar was saying as he fought the controls.

“Pull yourself together, man,” she snapped, and looked down at her wrist. 1035, November 4; not a day she was going to forget very soon. Perhaps that was a little unfair she thought, as he quieted. The aircraft was down low, no more than two thousand meters, and doing better than Mach 2; not bad, considering the turbulence since the blast front hit. That had probably been Lobito, considering their position on the coast; a medium-sized port city. Pity. Thought they’d stick to counterforce. The weather outside was turning strange, with cloud patterns she had never seen before. Nothing on the standard channels, nothing but the roaring static bred by the monstrous electromagnetic pulses that were rolling around the Earth. High-altitude detonations. Her aircar was EMP hardened, of course . . .

Nothing but cloud above, choppy blue-gray ocean below, visually. The radar was crawling with images, higher up: hypersonic craft, decoys, suborb missiles, bits and pieces of this and that. She swallowed, and realized with a start that her throat was dry; her flask was steady as she raised it to her lips. Wine and orange juice; to hell with the doctors. Two more traces, lower down, fast. From off to the west, only a few kilometers ahead of them. Something lanced down out of the sky, a pale finger that touched one of the traces. The explosion was a bright blink against the sea; the other trace was gone away, over the horizon.

“I don’t think . . . ” Gayner began. Another dagger from the sky, this time brighter and more ragged. Ablation track, she thought, and sipped at the flask again. Missile, trying for the submarine. As if to punctuate the identification, the sea erupted in a dome of shocked white, kilometers across. A low-yield fission weapon, tactical type. “I don’t think there’s much point in continuing on to Luanda,” she continued.

The canopy went dark, and showed only the blossoming sunrise in the east. For a moment there were two suns; Gayner braced herself, and felt the automatic shock bars clamp down around her body. “Not much point in trying to reach home,” she whispered. “We’ll divert east and land in the Kasai.” If we make it.

A fist struck.

* * *

DRAKA FORCES BASE ARESOPOLIS

MARE SERENITATIS, LUNA

NOVEMBER 4, 1998: 1200 HOURS

Yolande Ingolfsson felt the rock tremor beneath her. “What was that?” she asked sharply. For an instant she felt bitter envy of the operators crouched over their screens. They had no time to think.

“Sector Ten,” one replied. “Levels one through eight not reportin’. Penetrator.” That was serf housing, she remembered. The breakthroughs seemed almost random; the last hit had been a fabrication plant. This would mean heavy casualties, ten thousand or better. Crushed, burned, explosive decompression. Probably fairly quick, at least. It was a good thing that grief was not cumulative; impossible to really feel more than you did for an individual. If you could pile one up on top of another, human existence would be impossible.

“Incoming.” Yolande looked up from her warship-style crashcouch to the main screen. Another spray was coming into sight over the mountains, fanning out in blinking tracks. Some vanished even as she watched, but that quadrant’s main battlecomps were down, the weapons reaching for the warheads were under individual control.

“Those three are going to—” The faint vibration again, then a louder, duller sound. “That’s the dome gone.”

A hand closed on her throat. Don’t be ridiculous, it’s only an artifact, she told herself.

“Outside com?” she asked.

“Very irregular, from Earth,” the officer replied. Yolande looked over to the main view of the mother planet, routed in from a pickup well out. Cloud reached unbroken around the northern hemisphere, and large patches of the south. Even as she watched a light blinked blue-white against the night quadrant. Decision firmed.

“Order to Ground Command,” she said. That was the Army CINC here in Aresopolis—what’s left of it, her mind japed at her. The Damage Control board’s schematic of the city showed nearly half red; the residential sectors were mostly still blue, but much more of this and there wouldn’t be enough afterwards to maintain the people. And there would probably be very little help from Earth. “Activate Contingency Horde-Two.”

“Ma’am?” The Tac officer looked up from his board. “Now?”

Yolande keyed the releases of her combat cradle and stood, pushing herself up with a brief shove of one hand. “The troops will be safer dispersed on the surface,” she said dispassionately.

Her chin jerked toward an overview of this area of Luna. “Most of this garbage is comin’ from New Edo. It must be civilians or reservists, takin’ over from incapacitated military personnel; we didn’t get complete exposure fo’ this Stone Dogs thing. That’s why it’s so irregular an’ uncoordinated; we can almost handle it even crippled up as we are. That bein’ so, they can’t noways be in a position to stop us if we go in, dig out their perimeter on the surface, an’ then blast down to get at the inhabited levels.”

She thought of forests frozen dead in the dome, and then of ghouloons hunting the enemy through their own tunnels. There was a certain comfort in it, dry and chill though it was.

“Oh, and please to info’m Strategos Witter that I’ll be with the assault brigade.” The Tac officer made to protest, shrugged, fell silent. “Don’t worry, Merarch, he’ll object, too, but all the policy-level decisions’ve been taken. This is our last throw. I’m certain-sure not needed here.”

CENTRAL OFFICE, ARCHONAL PALACE

ARCHONA

DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA

NOVEMBER 4, 1998: 1700 HOURS

“Excellence, they’re getting some of the birds away,” the liaison officer said pleadingly. “Please, it’s important that you get to the shelter.”

Eric von Shrakenberg shook his head. “We didn’t expect to disable all the submarine launchers,” he said quietly. “But if they get Archona, then it’s pointless anyway. I’ll live or die with my city . . . Call it an old man’s fancy. Status report.”

The Palace infosystem was excellent. Not that he was in the command loop, of course. Today he was a spectator.

Have I ever been anything else? he thought wearily. The lines traced over the globe. Somewhere outside there was a mammoth crack, like thunder. Manmade thunder, a laser burning a trail of ionization through the atmosphere, and a particle beam following it.

“We got the sub!” someone shouted. Lines were spearing out from somewhere off the Cape of Good Hope. “Four skimmers away.” Hypervelocity, low level. “Sweet mercy of the White Christ, that’s Mournblade’s sector.”

“The close-in will stop it . . . One down. Two. Three. Come on, baby, come on—”

The voices cut off, as if sliced. An awed voice spoke. “That’s Cape Town gone.”

The mother city, Eric thought. Cradle of the nation. Taste victory, old fool. Savor it.

“Status,” he said, without opening eyelids that felt heavier than worlds.

“Excellence, we’ve lost . . . Wotan, we’ve lost nearly half the discrete platforms out to L-5. Alliance, ninety percent down an’ falling fast. Freya bless, Excellence, if it hadn’t been fo’ the Stone Dogs”—a quaver, hastily suppressed—“there wouldn’t be anythin’ left, Excellence.”

Another stone-shaking roar of manmade thunder through the walls. Eyes darted to the screens, relaxed; the last salvo had been at low-orbit targets, ones that were unlikely to respond. Eric forced his eyes open, onto the screens. Forced his mind to paint the full picture of what the bloodless schematics meant, through the hour that followed. Your doing. Your responsibility.

A man was cursing softly. “Oh, shit, oh, shit, that’s Shanghai. Penetrator. Two. Another.”

“Northern hemisphere stations report high-incidence cloud cover—”

“I don’t believe it,” somebody said. Eric looked up; that had been soft awe, not the hard control that had settled on most. “London’s gone.”

Eric slammed a hand down on the arm of his chair. “Who ordered that? Get me their name!”

“Excellence—” the operator looked back over his shoulder; the New Race control of hormone levels must have slipped, inattention, because there was a sheen of moisture across his forehead. “Excellence, they did it themselves.”

Eric sighed and sat back, reluctantly letting go the balm of anger. “It’ll happen, if you inflict insanity on those in charge of nuclear weapons,” he said quietly.

“Multiple detonation, Japan.” A toneless voice, lost in procedure. “High-yield groundbursts. Sublevel.” A pause. “Jacketed bombs. Prelim’nry sensor data indicate radioactivity—”

The Archon listened through the figures. “Schematic on distribution, given projected wind patterns,” he said. “Give me an intensity cline, geography an’ timewise.” The deep lines beside his beak nose sank a little deeper as the maps twisted themselves. “Note to Plannin’ Board: We’ll probably have to evacuate the survivin’ shelters from the Korean Peninsula up through the Amur Valley, minimum. Draw up estimates.” The Japanese had been true to their tradition, and had taken a good deal more with them to the land of the kami than their home islands. They never liked the Koreans, anyhow, he thought.

Minutes stretched into hours, as the quiet voices and screens reported. The thunder spoke less often now, outside; more of it was being directed offensively, into space, to make up for battle stations left derelict. More and more often his eyes went to the screens that showed the cumulative effects, graphs rising steadily toward the red lines that represented estimates of what the mother planet’s biosphere could stand. Conservative estimates . . . we think, he reflected.

At last he spoke. “Strategos, a directive to the Supreme General Staff. No mo’ fusion weapons within the atmosphere. Kinetic energy bombardment only, on Priority Three targets and above.” Active military installations. “Throw rocks at them.”

“Excellence—” A glance of protest from the Staff’s representative.

Suddenly Eric felt life return, salt-bitter but strong. “Gods damn yo, that’s our planet you fuckin’ over, woman!” A dot expanded over the Hawaiian Islands. “There goes twenty-five percent of Earth’s launch capacity! Do it. Get them on the blower, do it!” What’s a few million lives in this charnel house? he asked himself mockingly. Go on, finish the job.

“If only it were that easy,” he muttered to himself. “If only.” Aloud: “I’m goin’ to catch some sleep.” Chemicals would ensure that, and these days they could bring true rest. Whether you deserve it or not.

“Wake me immediately if we get any substantial info’mation on the translunar situation.”

Even this day had to end, sometime.

BEYOND THE ORBIT OF MARS

ABOARD DASCS DIOCLETIAN

NOVEMBER 5, 1998

The bridge was still chaotic, but it was a more orderly confusion now. Merarch Gudrun von Shrakenberg took another suck at the waterbulb and glanced over at the console that had housed the main compcore; there was an ozone and scorched-plastic stink from it even hours after they had crashed it with two clips from a gauntlet gun. A bit drastic, but it had worked . . . Now the circular command chamber was festooned with jury-rigged fiberoptic cables, and a daisy chain of linked perscomps floated in the center.

“Ready?” The Infosystems Officer looked up from his task. Goddamn New Race bastard still doesn’t look tired, she thought, then caught herself. It was amazing how habits of mind stayed with you, long after the circumstances had made them irrelevant. Now everything is irrelevant, with two exceptions, she mused.

“Ready,” he affirmed, and looked down, flexing his hands.

“Sensor Officer?”

That one spoke without taking her eyes from screens that had to be manually controlled. “They’re still matching at what they think is a safe distance.” There was a vindictive satisfaction in the tone, and Gudrun nodded in agreement. Safe distance from the standard suicide bomb, but not from everything on the cruiser rigged to go at once.

She felt very tired, herself. “The rest of the squadron?”

“Still acceleratin’, Cohortarch; looks like they’ll be able to break contact.”

The Stone Dogs had scourged the enemy fleet even more drastically than the comp-plague had crippled the Draka; it was the Alliance’s civilian jackals who were closing in on the helpless Diocletian now. Miners and haulers and prospectors, fitted with a few haphazard weapons and crewed by irregulars . . . gathering like buzzards around a prey they would not dare to approach if it were hale.

“Cleon,” she said conversationally, “you were at Chateau Retour last leave, weren’t you? Met my mothah?”

“Yes, Cohortarch,” he said, making a final adjustment. “Always admired her paintings.” And he was probably sincere, considering what they were about to do.

That had been a good leave. It would be good to see home again, she thought. The vintage would be in; the fruity red of Bourgeuil, the Loire Valley Pinot Noir that smelled ever so faintly of violets.

“Actually, I was thinkin’ of somethin’ she told me about the Eurasian War. She was in tanks then, the Archonal Guard.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, they had a sayin’ . . . Is that damn fool still comin’ in to board?”

The Sensor Officer nodded. “Makes sense, actually. We’ve been givin’ a pretty good imitation of a dead ship. Be quite a prize if they could get it.”

The Infosystems Officer made an affirmative sound, then asked: “About that saying, Cohortarch?”

“Oh. ‘If you tank is out of fuel, you becomes a pillbox.’ ” Her hand closed on an improvised switch, and her eyes went to the screen. Nothing fancy, someone had chalked a line on the surface. When the blip crossed it . . . “ ‘If you out of ammunition, become a bunker. Out of hope, then become a hero.’ Service to the State!”

Her finger clenched.

“Glory to the R—”

CENTRAL OFFICE, ARCHONAL PALACE

ARCHONA

DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA

NOVEMBER 14, 1998

“So,” Eric said, looking at the head of Technical Section. The table was more crowded for this conference than it had been for the final one on the Stone Dogs. “Strategos Snappdove, what you sayin’ is basically that we in the position of a man in a desert with a bucket of water. There’s enough to get us to safety, but we got a dozen holes in the bucket and only one patch.” Somebody actually managed to laugh, until Eric stared at her for a moment with red-circled eyes.

The Militant Party’s man frowned. “None of the problems seem insoluble, on the figures,” he said suspiciously.

Eric kept his face impassive; somewhere within him, teeth were bared. You’ll be dancing to our tune for some time, headhunter, he thought coldly. The wall-screens were set to a number of channels; one showed the streets outside. Rain was falling out of season, mixed with frozen slush . . . We humans may have earned this, went through him. The plants and the beasts did not. His hand gestured to the scientist.

“Ah.” Snappdove tugged at his graying beard. He looked as if he had not slept for a week, and then in his uniform, but that was common enough here today.

“Hmm,” he continued. “Strategos, you are missing the, ah, the synergies between these problems.” His hands moved on the table before him, calling up data. They scrolled across one wall, next to a view of Draka infantry advancing cautiously through a shattered town. The troops were in full environment suits, ghosting forward across rubble that glistened with rain. It was raining in most places, right now.

“We lost some fifteen percent of our Citizen population,” he went on.

Unbelievable, Eric thought. Worse than our worst predictions.

“And twenty-two percent of the serfs. Three hundred million in all. But these losses are concentrated in the most highly skilled, educated components, you see? Then again, half our Earth-based manufacturin’ capacity is still operable. But crucial components are badly hit. And to rebuild, we need items that can only come from zero-G fabricators: exemplia, superconductors and high-quality bearings. Not to mention the electronics, of course.”

“Ghost in the machine,” the Faraday exec half-mumbled. They all glanced over at her. “We still haven’t gotten certain-sure tracers on that comp-plague,” she went on, and returned her gaze to her hands. “May have to close down all the fabricators commissioned in the last decade—what’s left of them—an’ start from scratch.”

Snappdove nodded. “So we need the orbital fabricators. But we lost mo’ than eighty percent of those. And of our launch capacity. We must rapidly increase our launch capacity, but”—he spread his hands—“much of the material needed for all forms of Earth-to-orbit launch is space-made. And so it goes.”

“Not to mention mo’ elemental problems. Miz Lauwrence?”

The Conservancy Directorate chief raised her head from her hands. “We stopped short of killing the planet,” she said dully. There’s someone who looks worse than I do, Eric thought with mild astonishment. “Just. Lucky the worst effects were in the northern hemisphere, where it was winter anyways. Even so”—she waved a hand to the screen that showed freezing rain dripping on the jacarandas and orange groves—“damn-all crops this year from anywheres. Not much in the north fo’ one, maybeso two years. Oceanic productivity will be way down, we got ice formin’ in the Adriatic, fo’ Freya’s sake. Even half normal will take a decade; it’ll be a century befo’ general levels are back to normal.” A death’s-head smile. “That’s assuming some beautiful synergism doesn’t kick us right ovah the edge.”

Eric looked over to the Agriculture Directorate’s representative. “We can make it,” he said. “If the transport system can get back to somewhere like thirty percent of normal in a year or two. And if there’s no more excess demands, and we impose the strictest rationing. We’ll have just enough in the stockpiles to tide us ovah without we have to eat the serfs.” A few hollow chuckles. “We’re already freezin’ down the livestock that died. Best we get control of the enemy territory’s grain-surplus areas as quick as may be.”

The Archon nodded to the Dominarch, the head of the Supreme General Staff. He was coolly professional as he took over control of the infosystem.

“Well, we made a mistake tryin’ fo’ immediate landings in North America,” he said. Casualty figures and losses in equipment flashed on the wall; his tone became slightly defensive at the slight but perceptible wince. On the screen beside the schematic a firefight was stabbing bright tongues of orange-red through the gray drizzle.

“Too much of our orbital capacity is out: reconnaissance and interdiction we don’t have. Not all that many organized fo’mations to oppose us, but we’re hurt badly, too; also, we’ve had to keep back a lot of troops to maintain order an’ help with relief efforts.” He paused. “An’ they had a damn good fallback force waitin’,” he said grimly. “Couple of cases, it was like stickin’ our dicks into a meatgrinder. It goin’ be a long time befo’ we get that area pacified. ’Specially if’n we have to give priority to economic uses of our launch capacity. We’re occupyin’ a few strategic areas, stompin’ on any major concentrations, an’ otherwise pullin’ back. Fo’ one thing, we still haven’t gotten the last of those subs.”

Snappdove joined in the general nod; Trincomalee had taken a hypersonic at short range only yesterday. “In any case, the survivors in North America would be almost as much trouble in labor camps,” he said. “Making better progress in some other areas we are, but . . . these are territories dependent on a mechanized agriculture. We cannot support it, and the industries that did we have smashed. Also, ground combat devours resources we need elsewhere, not so much of materiel as of trained personnel.”

“Aerospace?” Eric said.

A nod from another of the Arch-Strategoi. “Well,” she said, “in Cis-Lunar space, we won—if’n you consider bein’ almost wiped out as opposed to completely wiped out in those terms. Only Alliance installations survivin’ are in Britannia an’ New Edo, with our people from Aresopolis sittin’ on them. Aresopolis came off surprisin’ well, which is a good thing because fuck-all help we goin’ give them these next few years.”

“Outer system.”

A shrug. “Excellence, Mars is pretty safe, not least because what’s left of the Fleet is mostly in orbit around it. A lot of them with their compcores blown. Not much direct damage to the Martian installations; the comp-plague hit them bad, wors’n here, but they on a planet, which makes the life support easier. Trouble is, the Fleet units down are our best, the most modern.” Another shrug. “As fo’ the gas-giant moons, we be lucky just to keep them supplied, and that’s assumin’ no hostile action.”

“And in the Belt?”

“We lost. They whupped our ass, Excellence. We hurt them bad, totaled Ceres, but they’ve got pretty well complete control in there now. No offensive capability to speak of, but plenty of defense, all those tin cans with popguns an’ station-based weapons. And that starship. We don’t know much of its capacity, but we do know its auxiliaries are Loki on wheels; roughly equivalent to what’s left of our Fleet. Less the Lionheart, but they’re out of the picture and runnin’ their systems on the research computers.”

“Dominarch,” Eric said formally, “is it you opinion that, as matters stand, we can break the remainin’ enemy resistance?”

The head of the Domination’s military looked to either side at his peers, then nodded. “Depends on you definitions, Excellence. In Cis-Lunar space, not much of a problem, for what it’s worth. On Earth, we can prevent any organized military challenge, yes. Dependin’ on the resources made available”—he inclined his head toward Snappdove—“we can pacify the last of the Alliance territories in twenty to fifty years. Pacify to the point of bein’ open fo’ settlement. I expect some partisan activity fo’ a long, long time.”

He bit his lower lip and tapped at the table with a stylus. “Problem is Trans-Lunar space. There’s may be half a million ferals still left in the Belt, an’ they have that starship and the facility that built it. We have our own antimatter production, just comin’ on stream near Mercury, but the transport an’ guardin’ problems . . . And they are standin’ above us on the gravity well.” A long pause. “All factors considered, yes. We’ll have to devote everythin’ we can spare to it beyond survival, but yes. Certain advantages to bein’ nearer the sun, and we do grossly outnumber them, in production as well. Long, long war of attrition, though. Possibility of technological surprise, although I doubt it; rate of innovation was slowin’ down even befo’ this, and they won’t have nearly as much to spare fo’ research now.”

Eric tapped his fingers together, looking around the table. The Draka were not a squeamish people, nor easily frightened—but the magnitude of this was enough to daunt anyone. Myself included, he thought, and surprised them with a harsh laugh.

“Come now, brothers and sisters of the Race,” he said. “These are the problems of victory. Think how our enemies must be feelin’!” He turned to the Dominarch again.

“Consider as an alternative that we get a year’s grace,” he said. “In addition, that that starship actually leaves.”

“Oh. Much better. Same prediction here on Earth; then . . . oh, say forty years to mop up the Belt. Still difficult an’ expensive, but it would give us some margin.”

Eric tapped the table lightly. “Here is my proposal. We offer terms to the remainin’ enemies in Trans-Lunar space. The, ah, New America to be allowed to leave; we can guarantee that with exchange of hostages an’ so forth. They turn ovah the complete schematics on the comp-plague. In addition, we offer Metic Citizenship to any who surrender on Luna an’ beyond.” That meant civil rights but not the franchise, with full Citizenship for their children. “Between the ones who leave, and the ones who take our offer, we cut the problem down to size.”

Shock, almost an audible gasp. The Militants’ spokesman burst out: “Inconceivable!”

Thank you, Eric thought. Gayner would have been more subtle. “There’s ample precedent, aftah the Eurasian War, fo’ example.” Everyone there would be conscious that Snappdove was the child of such.

“No precedent fo’ that scale. And many of them would be racially totally unsuitable.”

Eric smiled thinly. “Is there any precedent fo’ the size of this war?. Fo’ the extent of our losses? Fo’ the situation? We need those skills, fo’ sheer survival’s sake. War to the knife now might bring down the Domination.” He paused at that, for the political implications to seep home. That’s right, think on the fact that I’m the Archon who’s winning the Final War. Who’ll be seen as the prudent one, and who the reckless, if you push this issue. “As to the cosmetic problem, the Eugenics Board can see that their children have suitable exteriors.” And they will know which party to throw their support behind, a factor not to be dismissed.

“But—letting them establish a colony, on the nearest star; an insane risk!”

“Nearest? With a forty-year transit time?” Eric said mordantly. Heads nodded; most of those here had a reasonably good idea of the sheer immensity 4.5 light-years represented. The whole solar system was a flyspeck by comparison. “Strategos Snappdove?” The Militant flushed, knowing this was collusion and unable to use the fact.

“Ah. Well, we estimate that they could take no more than a hundred thousand, assuming they use our Low-Met process. No matter how well equipped, this is a very small figure to maintain a technological civilization, the specialists required . . . The Belt itself is not self-sufficient, not really; it is almost impossible to fully duplicate a terrestroid ecology without a terrestroid planet . . . Using worst-case analysis, that is best-case fo’ them, a century after arrival befo’ they are established firmly enough to think of anything beyond bare survival. Thereto’ we can expect no hostile action for a century an’ a half, at an absolute minimum. Mo’ probably a century beyond that.

“Besides which,” he went on, “our studies indicate conclusively that attackin’ a defended planetary system is virtually impossible. Interstellar war at sublight speeds is an absurdity; so is interstellar government. In two centuries, we’ll be fully recovered, mo’ powerful than a strugglin’ colony could possibly be, and I’ll stake my life and soul we wouldn’t have the slightest chance of successfully attackin’ them. If they did attack us, we could swat them like mosquitoes. Far mo’ rational to put a fraction of that effort into colonizin’ stars further out; which, incidentally, we’d be doin’ as well.”

Eric waited until the expressions showed the argument had been assimilated, the balance of doubt weighed, and acceptance.

“And finally,” he said, “a meta-political point. We Draka have always lived fo’—not necessarily war—but to excel, to dominate, to prove ourselves. As far as we can tell, there’s no other sophont race within reach. Leastways, none with a technological civilization. The universe isn’t enough of a challenge, it isn’t conscious; without some rival, even if it’s a rival we can’t fight directly, what is the Race to measure itself against?”

He cleared his throat. That was a good concluding note; he had shown them just how grim the situation really was, and a way to simplify it considerably. And besides the practical reasons, a philosophical one squarely in line with tradition.

“We’ll need to study this in far mo’ detail, of course,” he went on. “And a number of factors depend on the enemy’s reaction. But I take it we have a preliminary consensus to present to the Senate and Assembly?”

CENTRAL OFFICE, ARCHONAL PALACE

ARCHONA

DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA

JANUARY 14, 1999

The face of the man in the screen was haggard-blank. Eric suspected that that was more than the psychotropic drugs thwarting the viral saboteurs at the base of the American’s brain; it would be enough, to see a world perish while you stood helpless. There is something worse than these ashes of victory, he thought, moved. Defeat.

“You are a son of a bitch even for a Snake, you know that?” the American said.

“Those are the best terms you can expect,” Eric said, making his voice gentle. The minutes of relay time were an advantage; his brain felt gritty with lack of sleep. “Oh, you mean my little offer of Citizenship?” He raised an eyebrow. “Well, you can scarcely blame you compatriots—ex-compatriots—on Luna for mostly fallin’ in with it. Considerin’ the alternatives.”

“It’s not altogether over,” the voice from the screen grated. “We . . . hold the Belt. We’re standing over your head, Snake.”

“The war is ovah. Was over befo’ it began, or the human race would be dead. It couldn’t be fought, only finessed. We both knew that; you lost, General Lefarge.” For reasons you’ll never know. “Even assumin’ you support in the Belt stays rock-firm, all you can do is hurt us befo’ we drag you down. Which we will in the end; to kill the Race you’d have to kill Earth. Meanin’ two billion innocents; any one of whom, of course, can exercise the option of dyin’ on they own initiative any time they wants. In terms of you own ethic, sacrificin’ them for victory is one thing. Deprivin’ them all of they personal choice just to make the Draka suffer mo’ is a little questionable, isn’t it?”

“Not as questionable as trusting a Draka’s word on allowing the New America to leave peacefully.”

I’ve won, Eric thought. It brought a workman’s satisfaction, if no joy. “We don’t expect that. What I’m asking is fo’ you and I to work out a way which doesn’t require that you trust us.” He spread his hands. “To be absolutely frank, we don’t really have the capacity to stop y’all, only to make the best departure orbit unworkable and slow you down. Which you can send observers to verify. In any case, my offer has split you community. To the brink of civil war, if you refuse this option.”

Slow minutes of waiting. He felt the chill; it was colder than it should be, here in Archona, much colder. Not too much. Near the edge, but we pulled back in time. Our Mother is wounded, but she’ll recover, if I can buy her time. Eric used the opportunity to study the other’s face while the message arrived. That is a dangerous man, he decided. Am I doing the right thing?

“We accept, pending the details,” Lefarge spat. “And your sympathy isn’t worth shit, Snake.” He recovered an icy possession. “Tell me, though. Why not just offer admission to the Snake farm to our traitors?”

Eric spread his hands in concession. “Two . . . no, three reasons, Brigadier Lefarge. First, many mo’ will take the offer, if they can salve they consciences by knowin’ y’all have a place to go.” He smiled.

“Sun Tzu said that one should never totally block an enemy’s retreat; retreatin’ refugees are less troublesome than a last stand, at the moment. Second, and this I used with my colleagues, what are the Draka without an enemy, however distant? We won’t be able to follow y’all anytime soon—that’s anothah thing we can arrange to verify—but we’ll know that you there. Third, fo’ my private consumption . . . Well, let’s say that the Domination . . . forecloses certain options, as a path of human development. Better that not all the eggs be in one basket fo’ Earth’s children.”

A curt nod and the screen blanked. Eric sat in thought, watching the chill non-summer rains beat against the window. Then he keyed the office com again.

“Put Arch-Strategos Ingolfsson on,” he continued. There was work yet, before he could sleep. “Secured Channel Seventeen, and leave me, please.”

Yolande looked up from her desk, her hand shaking as she took another stim and swallowed it dry. Got to watch these, she thought.

“Excellence.” Wotan, he looks worse than I do. Of course, he’s eighty.

“Arch-Strategos. This is on Channel Seventeen, you can speak freely. In brief, you are relieved and ordered to return to Archona.” The starved eagle face leaned closer to the pickup. “Seven hundred million dead,” he continued quietly. “Includin’ millions of our own people. How does it feel, bein’ the greatest mass murderer in human history?”

Yolande squeezed thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose. “If this is victory, perhaps defeat is preferable,” she said. “I’m ready fo’ you firm’ squads, Excellence.”

“I’ve seen defeat just recently, and you’re wrong,” Eric said and laughed; she shivered slightly. It was the laugh a hanged man might make. “And I’m not lettin’ you off so easy as that.”

She looked up, and he was grinning at her.

“A third of the human species dies, and Louise Gayner survived; accordingly, I can’t spare the ‘Hero of the Tunnels.’ And y’are kin, aftah all . . . I ought to send you to Australasia to pacify it.”

A pause. “No, I’m givin’ Gayner that joy; it’s butcher’s work, she’ll enjoy it. And hopefully do it badly enough to give me an axe-swing at her neck . . . No, you, dear niece, are comin’ home to put the remnants of our space capacities together. We need them, if we’re to get this planet back on its feet.”

Another corpse smile. “Just to help, I’m goin’ to be sendin’ you lots of qualified personnel. We’re goin’ to be handin’ out Citizenship fairly liberal; some millions, as many as I can swing. Awkward to have them around here—off to you. Now you can really learn how to handle Yankees.” Flatly: “And that firin’ squad is in abeyance, not dismissed.”

She looked up sharply. “Think about it, niece. I just ‘won’ the Final War. I’ve got a decade at least in which to use that, politically, and I intend to use it. And you . . . you troubles are just gettin’ under way.”

Yolande nodded. It was difficult to care, when you were this tired. “Was that smart, lettin’ the New America go?” she said. And are the Lefarges escaping me, or have I taken the most complete vengeance any human being has ever achieved?

“I think so,” he said, nodding heavily. “Keeps us on our toes, makes sure the Race goes to the stars as well. And . . . maybe this victory”—his mouth twisted at the word—“means Earth is goin’ down a dead end, much as we try to see otherwise. The New America means an insurance policy fo’ our species, at least. See you soon, partner in crime.”