Beyond was a rolling plain of bright-green neokikuyu grass, the plant of choice for first establishment, rolling in long thigh-high waves beneath the warm dry air. Beneath that, earthworms, bacteria, fungi helping grind dead soil into life with millennial patience.
Yolande grinned and sideslipped down to ten meters over the grasslands. A herd of springbok fled, scattering like drops of mercury on dry ice, their leaps taking them nearly as high as the belly of the car. Two grass-green cats a meter long raised implausible ear tufts and yowled at her with their forepaws resting on a rabbit the size of a dog. She banked around them, skimmed over a boulder-piled hillock planted in flat-topped thorn trees that exploded with birds.
“Mistis.” She looked back as her hands straightened the aircraft and put it on an upward path. Tina was looking green and swallowing hard.
“Sorry, Tina,” she said. Morning sickness had struck the brooder hard, and she was still easily upset.
They flew more sedately across tree-studded plain, then a section of still mostly bare whitish-brown soil—regolith, she reminded herself. Vehicles and laborers moved over it in clouds of dust, spraying and seeding. Then over another waterway, a stretch of forested hills beyond that curved out of sight on either hand. The area within was more closely settled, networked with maglev roads and scattered with buildings: lodges, inns, experimental plots, landscaped gardens. Ahead lay the central mountain.
Long ago an asteroid had struck here, carving the crater in a multigigatonne fireball; a central spike half as high as the walls had been left, when the rock cooled again. For three billion years it had lain so, with only the micrometeorite hail to smooth the sides; then the Draka engineers had come. The dome they built required an anchor point and cross-bracing; the mountain was bored hollow, and a tube of fiber-reinforced metal sunk home in it. That rose from the huge machinery spaces below through the ten-meter thickness of the dome itself, and the long monofilament cables that ran in from the circumference melded into a huge ring kilometers overhead. Yolande looked up, tracing their pathway. Thread-thin in the distance, like streamers of fine hair floating in a breeze; swelling, until they bulked like the chariot spokes of a god.
The slopes below had been carved as well, into stairs and curving roadways, platforms and bases for the buildings, or left rugged for the plantings and waterfalls that splashed it with swathes of crimson and green and slow-moving silver-blue. The buildings were traceries of stone and vitryl and metal, like an attenuated dream of Olympus, slender fluted columns and bright domes. Yolande brought the airsled in toward the main landing field, a construct that jutted out in a hectare of flange from a cliffside. She sighed at the sight of the reception waiting; some ceremony was inevitable. I am Commandant, after all, she thought reluctantly, and let the sled sink until it touched the gold-leaf tiles.
She touched down. Waiting Auxiliaries pushed up two sets of stairs, one for her and another for the servants. She stepped onto the red carpet of the first, and a band struck up “Follow Me,” the anthem of the Directorate of War. A cohort in dress blacks snapped to attention: human troops, Citizen Force. Her own Guard merarchy. Bayoneted rifles flashed, drums rolled, feet crashed to the tiles in unison. Not easy to do without kicking yourself into the air, here, she thought ironically as she saluted in turn, right fist snapped to left breast.
“Service to the State!” she called.
“Glory to the Race!”
The Section heads were waiting, with their aides and assistants. Aresopolis was still organized like a War Directorate hostile-territory base, although that was growing a little obsolete. Commandant, herself. Vice Commandant and Operations Chief, Alman Witter. Weapons, Power, Lifesystems, Construction, Civil Administration. The Security commander, in headhunter green—a surprisingly reasonable sort, she had found, with a weakness for terrible puns. The Aerospace Command chief. The civil administrators. In four years she had come to know them all quite well; twelve-hour office days were something they all had in common. Except during emergencies, when it was rather more.
There’s irony for you, she thought. Yolande Ingolfsson was niece to the Archon, an Arch-Strategos, and scion of two of the oldest Landholder families in the Domination. Wealthy in her own right even by Landholder standards, owner of several dozen human beings directly, and of thousands if you counted interests in Combine shares and other enterprises. And she actually had less leisure than a State-chattel serf clerk toiling away in one of the anonymous offices below her feet, and not much more in the way of personal freedom. Well, a little more. I have all sorts of choices. Who I go to bed with, and what clothes I wear. She looked down at her uniform. Sometimes.
“For this we conquered the world,” she muttered under her breath, then looked up. The Earth was in its invariant place on the horizon, and she could make out the shield shape of North America. Not all the world; it will be better once we have. Her teeth bared for a moment, and then she forced relaxation. Ah, well, it would get boring with nothing more to do than swim, hunt, and make love.
“Strategos Witter,” she said formally to her second in command. “Citizens,” to the others, “I expect to be back in about a week.”
There was the usual exchange of civilities, but only Witter stayed with her as the metal rectangle rose a handspan and floated off into the three-story arch in the cliff; there was a mesh of superconductor laid below the tiles.
“Thomas was notably uncommunicative about the patrol incident,” he said.
The skid was moving through a long corridor cleared for her use into a great circular hall, overlooked by ramps and walkways. The hall stretched out of sight in either direction, encircling the launch stations; crowds thronged it, away from the Orpo-cordoned path to her gate. Arches were traced on the walls, covered in brilliant mosaics; the sights of the solar system, mostly. Jupiter banded in orange and white, or the rings of Saturn against the impossible skystalk rising out of the hazy atmosphere of Titan. A few landscapes from Earth. And endlessly repeated above, the Drakon with its wings spread over all. She heard murmurs, foot slithers: a troop of new-landed ghouloons following their officer, peering about and hooting softly in amazement. One forgot himself and bounced two meters in the air, slapping at his chest and shoulders for emphasis as he spoke.
“Ooh,” he burbled. “Big big. Big.”
“Merarch Irwine had his orders,” she said.
“Meaning, shut up?” the other Draka replied.
“Not quite. But all is not as it appears, Alman. I’m goin’ down to find out. I may find out something; I may not. In any case—”
“There are Things We Were Not Meant To Know,” he replied. The skid stopped before a final door. “Exactly,” she said, stepping off the platform as it sank to the floor. “See you next Thursday.”
“Service to the State.”
“Glory to the Race.” She turned to the door guards. “Scan.”
One of them touched a control; something blinked at her eyes, like a light flashing too quickly to be noticed.
“Arch-Strategos?” the tetrarch said. “Ah, ma’am. You serf, the tall one.” Yolande turned; he was indicating Marya. “She’s cuffed, but you don’t have the controller activator on you.”
“Thank, you, Tetrarch, but I think I’m safe from my housegirls,” she said dryly, tapping her fingers on her belt. He flushed and stepped back with a salute.