The Stone Dogs (55 page)

Ah… she didn't match my disclosure of her project's location.

Only a half-dozen
knew the full to most of those charged with
implementation. And don't start flailing about to discover her
source. The effort itself could tell them too much.

Overwhelmingly probable they have discovered only that it is a
secret, and important.

He glanced polite inquiry. "Stone Dogs… an old nickname fo'

our Janissary infantrymen. Perhaps a code name? I can't very well follow every project, of course." Their eyes met in perfect understanding of the game of bluff and double-bluff. "Well, we all have our little surprises," he said. "Tell me, do yo' ever suspect what yo' subordinates aren't tellin' yo'?"

She gave him a glance that was half ironic, half a reflection of shared fear. He remembered times when he had lain awake sweating with that particular horror, the worst of which was that there was no way to disprove it. A successful deception ploy was invisible by definition, and thinking of it too much that was the road to paranoia and madness.

"It has been, ah, interesting," the president said at last.

"At least that. Perhaps in another few months."

"Of a certainty. Excellence."

"Madam President."

The holo vanished, and Eric waited a long moment with the heels of his palms to his eyes before he touched a control on the desk. "Shirley," he said. "Send in the estimates, would yo'?"

His eyes sought the curtains. The sun had fallen… Perhaps next week there would be time for a visit home.
Stop reaching
for the carrot, donkey,
he told himself brutally.
Bend your neck
to the traces and pull.

President Carmen Hiero shook her head thoughtfully as the aides bustled about, rearranging the room.

"The poor man,"
she murmured, in her mother's language.

"Ma'am?" the Secret Service agent said.

"Nothing, Lindholm," she said, standing. It had been a long day, and there was a dull pain in her lower back.
And more dull
pains to be endured at dinner
, she thought wryly. For a moment she looked again at the air the transmission had occupied.

"Nothing that matters… in the end."

NOVA VIRCONIUM

COMMAND CENTRAL

HELLAS PLANITIA, MARS

DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA

NOVEMBER 17, 1991

Eerie,
Yolande decided, watching her own image on the screen, on the bridge of the
Imperator,
the latest fourth-generation cruiser-carrier, flagship of the 2nd Trans-Lunar flotilla.
Watching an image of
myself watching
images,
she decided. Ghosts of ghosts… out there so far away, six months ago.

A dozen cruisers, plus the new stingfighter auxiliaries many of them carried. Dispersed so far that the reports took long seconds to arrive, almost as long as the blue-white visual signatures of nuclear explosions. Battle became a slow and stately dance, until the distances closed; then inertia made the commitment final, and the exchange of energies grew too swift for human reflexes to follow.
Lovely. Long
enough for every doubt, then- no time to
do anything at the end.
She turned up the sound.

"Forward vessels reportin'… Wotan, look at the particle-beam intensities!" Data flowed across a screen.

"Well," she heard her own voice replying, "now we know the linear accelerators
are
dual-purpose. Pull them back if they aren't already." The big fixed installations had more punch than any ship, more than any ship's shielding could take. Not to mention neutral-particle beams, which were hard to shield against at all. "Report on the minor vessels, Tac Eval."

"Nothin' like as good as the stingfighters, but there are so many of them," the flotilla Tactical Evaluation Officer had said.

Well, the Alliance've certainly learned about arming their
minor vessels,
she reflected. There had been dozens of them around the secret project base; it was a major enterprise, with active traffic, at least outside the habitats where enemy personnel went in and nobody came out. None of the smaller vessels was up to military standards, and they were slow. But with the big installation lasers to provide emergency boost, and her own ships trapped in this narrow sliver of orbit, the warships did not have enough hands to swat them.

"
Batu's
hit!" Flotilla Damage Control. Another stream of numbers, energy input and missiles from the enemy battle stations. "She can't—" Half a dozen screens went blank. The light-signature arrived seconds later, secondary explosions.

"Gone, Merarch."

Yolande closed her eyes in remembered pain. Teller's ship.

Another friend. Another debit in your bill,
Yankee
.

"Withdraw." She heard her own voice say it, and the bile-taste was back. There had been a vibration of protest on the command bridge of
Imperator.
"This was a reconnaissance in force, and we've learned what we came to find out."
That their New
America project is important enough to warrant defenses as
tough
as Ceres—or Mars. That they're willing to spend lives like
water to keep us off, even to keep us from
pointblank
observation. "
No point in expendin' further resources. The Great Khan's're to cut trajectories fo' open space.
Imperator
and
Diocletian
will cover."

That had been the best decision; the deuterium-tritium pulsedrives gave the new ships longer continuous boost envelopes than the older cruisers could match. And were less vulnerable to combat damage, as well. Besides that, she hated to send warriors into a risk she did not share… It had been time to break off anyway, the Alliance fleet was burning their thrust-plates to get into action distance.

"End replay," she said, as the recording began to show the needlefires of the drives.

The office wall blanked for a second, then returned to a view of the outside. Command Central was actually burrowed far back into the basalt near the edge of the great lowland basin of the Hellas Planitia, but her favorite view was of the expanding base above.

Almost a city, now,
she thought with pride. The late-evening sky was pink with the dust-haze and ice-crystals of the thin Martian atmosphere. Yolande could make out the disk of the setting sun, only two-thirds the size it would be from Earth. And the larger but dimmer circle of the first of the orbital mirrors.

Just a proof-of-concept pilot project, concentrating the sunlight on a few hundred square kilometers around this equatorial base, but it had already made a difference in the nighttime temperatures.

"Record, fo' the Strategic Plannin' Board," she continued, standing with her back to the desk. "Note to previous reports.

The other conclusion that we should draw from this is that the Yankees are spreadin' through the Belt like a cancer metastasizing through the bloodstream. Not only is this a long-range danger in itself, but it hampers every other operation of ours. Takin' direct counteraction may be impractical, but we should squeeze harder on their lifeline back to Earth-Luna, up their costs, an' cut into the profit margins of all those two-denarius outfits they're allowin' into space. Well worth any countermeasures, since we're not vulnerable to the same economic pressures."

A long pause, considering. "I know it's not my department, but the headhunters should be usin' the opportunities this presents to speed up their infiltration of the New America project, and the other nasty surprises they may be brewin' fo' us there. Hans, come in."

The door hissed open, and her secretary walked in. His shaved head made a token bow. He was a serf Auxiliary, of course; Dutch, if she remembered correctly. But there was less formality out here on the frontier, too much work to be done to waste time.

"Hans, take the recordin', dress it up suitable, plug in the numbahs. Just to remind them, add the latest graphics of increased enemy traffic flows, Belt-internal—I don't know how much the Statistical Section gets through to the Board— and have it on my desk Monday."

"Consider it done, Merarch." The Auxiliaries had the privilege of addressing their superiors by title.

She thought for a moment. "I won't be in tomorrow."

Saturday; Yolande usually put in at least a half-day. "Oh, your son's gettin' married tomorrow, isn't he? To that systems tech?"

Hans bowed again, more deeply, smiling slightly. The serf was several years older than she, a longtime veteran of the Martian base. Old enough to have fathered the first generation to reach maturity; there were only a few so far, of course, but population was building up rapidly.

"Yes, Merarch," he said. "The authorization for the quarters came through. Thank you, Merarch."

She made a dismissive gesture. "Yo've given good service, Hans." This was her first major administrative post, and growing so rapidly that the Citizen executive staff were nearly as new to it as herself. Hans had been personal secretary to four Commandant-Governors, since the first minimal complex of bunkers back in '72: an invaluable element of continuity. "I may drop by the wedding fo' a minute or two. Get my car ready, would yo'?"

"At-at once, Merarch," he stammered, flushing with pleasure.

Well, it can't hurt,
she thought, stepping into an alcove to change into a surface suit. There was a bedroom suite attached to the office, for the times when the Commandant-Governor had to stay near the levers.
I'll just stay for a few moments, any
more would make them uncomfortable.

The surface clothing was much less elaborate than a vacuum suit, a pressure-skin with temperature elements. Waste heat was less of a problem on the Martian surface than in space—the climate here on the equator ranged from chilly to Siberian, not counting the winds—but you did need warmth and protection from the UV.
Now, out of official mode,
Yolande told herself, and glanced at her wrist. 1800; the shuttle was due in an hour.

Gwen!
she thought, striding through the open-plan outer office with the bouncy pace that covered ground most efficiently in one-third gravity. Most of the workstations were dark, the Auxiliaries at home except for the evening shift. The few there rose and bowed as she passed; then out into the corridors, past the entrances to the office suites of the Citizen staff; the Commandant's headquarters was the nerve-center of Nova Virconium, after all.
Gwen, baby,
she thought again.
Nikki.

The shuttleport was several kilometers out from the center of Nova Virconium. New enough to include a few flourishes, including a terminal building finished in polished stone surfaces, combinations of colors Earth had never seen. Red in every shade from white-pink to blood-crimson, blue, black, swirling green.

With a two-story-high central fountain, not really such an extravagance in a closed system… The VIP lounge was on the upper terrace, skylight ceilings and plants and light airy furniture of locally-grown bamboo; Yolande had an excellent view out over the runways. She suppressed an undignified urge to pace; there were too many official spectators. Sipping at the glass of white wine, she glanced down into the main lobby.

Plenty of parents; the Transportation Directorate had advertised the first cruise of their spanking-new fusion-pulsedrive passenger craft as a Reunion Special.

"A milestone, in its way," she said to the aide in the lounger next to her. Kilometers away across the runways and dug-in hangars a finger of light probed into the sky with a ball of flame at its tip, a vertical-lift cargo pod rising on laser boost.

"Wotan, yes," he said. "Even if the Directorate of War did subsidize it." The liner
Sky Treader
was to double as a fast transport, in the event of emergency. "Well be gettin' a flood of tourists, next."

"I— Here she comes!"

The Martian orbital shuttle was like nothing else in the solar system. Delta-shaped, but with huge slender wings that could only have flown under this light gravity and tenuous wisp of atmosphere. It swelled from the east, out of sky already gone purple and starlit, its riding lights bright against the dark ceramic of the heatshield. Just then the outline lights of the pathways blinked on, like a great glowing circuit-diagram across the plain, stretching out to the horizon. Daggers of brighter light appeared beneath and about the shuttle: steering jets and final breaking. The flat belly and underwing surface drifted down to maglev distance, fields meshing with those of the runway, and it slid frictionless at half a meter until the gentle magnetic tugging brought it to a halt.

Yolande rose, straightened her uniform. The others in the party bustled likewise as the windowless arrowhead slid its nose into the terminal docking collar. The band made a few preliminary tootles…

"Marya," Yolande said. The serf had been standing at the railing; she turned silently and faded into the background of the welcoming party. The doors below cycled open, and the passengers came through. A big clot of children, which dissolved like sugar under hot water as they scattered to the waiting families. A small group that hung uncertainly near the doors.

Yolande recognized Jolene's blond mane first, then Gwen.

Another girl next to her, and a smaller form next to Jolene…

Nikki.

"Let's do it," she said.

The Martian Rangers decurion saluted with a grin, and called to his guard-party. They were ghouloons, of course; in surface suits and armor, but with faceguards swung back. Their muzzles dipped in unison as they wheeled, split into two lines of fifteen, and trotted down to take station in four-footed parade rest up the broad stairway that ran from the upper lounge to the lower.

Yolande moved to the head of the stairs; the band struck up the
Warrior's Saraband
, and the decurion turned to the double line of inhuman fighters.

"Commandant-Governor's…
salute!
" he barked, as Yolande walked down the stairs. The ghouloon troopers threw back their heads and gave a short barking howl.