They stepped through the open door. It swung shut behind them, and she took a deep breath. Filtered air, the subliminal hum of life-support systems; pale glow-panel light, and the neutral surfaces of synthetic and alloy. Space, Yolande thought. Even though they were still on the surface, it had an environment all its own. She ducked her head through the connecting door into the control cabin. There were comfortable quarters aft; it was essentially a very expensive yacht. Not that they’re likely to become a hot item anytime soon, she thought wryly. Even discounting the cost of the drive as part of the research overhead, the Mamba would price in at about the combined family worth of the Ingolfssons and the von Shrakenbergs. For now, the Archon and the Commandant of Aresopolis were assigned one each.
She returned the pilot’s salute. The control deck was horseshoe shaped, with pilot and copilot forward, Weapons and Sensors to either side on the rear. Only the two pilots were here now, of course.
“Pilot Breytenbach,” she said to the number two. “You can go aft; I’ll sit in on this.” Yolande grew conscious of her servant hovering behind. “Well, come in, wench.” Marya flinched slightly, fingering the bare strip on her wrist; the controller cuff would have shocked her away from activated military comp systems like this. Yolande saw her take a deep breath and step forward. Good wench, she thought.
“That crashcouch,” she said, indicating the Sensor station. She swung herself into the copilot’s seat and pulled the restraints down. “All yourn, Pilot,” she said. He nodded briefly, running his eyes in a last check over the screens.
“Highly cybered,” Yolande said, indicating the control panels. “ ‘Less you has to fight her”—in which case you bumfucked, because those lasers are a joke—“menu commands to take you anywheres within range.”
She settled back happily. “I’ll take ovah out of atmosphere,” she said. They would be back to the world of the Commandant’s office soon enough. TechSec designs a toy, I might as well use it, she reflected. The big vehicle lifted off the runway with the peculiar greasy feel of maglev and turned toward the long reach.
Chapter Twenty
DRAKA FORCES BASE ARESOPOLIS
MARE SERENITATIS, LUNA
NOVEMBER 11, 1998: 0930 HOURS
“Sector Seven, level twelve,” the transporter capsule said. The lid hissed open, and Marya stepped out.
“Ident,” the guard said. The room was a narrow box with only one exit, brightly lit and completely bare, smelling of cold rock. The guard was in Security Directorate green, battle-armored and carrying a gauntlet gun; his head turned toward her like a mirrored globe, her own distorted face reflecting off the helmet shield.
She stepped up to the exit and laid her hand against the screen set in the wall beside it. “Marya E77A1422, property of Arch-Strategos Ingolfsson, Commandant, on personal errand.”
Her mouth was tissue paper, and the pulsebeat in her ears roared louder than trumpets. This was action, covert action. It was impossible to disguise, impossible to cover, no matter her skill on the infonet. Recognition sets were embedded in the central brains, and flagging from a station with this priority was direct-routed down to read-only memory. It would stand out, stand out, the minute anyone did a search on her activities today. Even the most dimwitted Orpo would notice someone being in two places at once.
Only for you, my brother, she thought, controlling the impulse to shudder. The message had been like none she ever received. Far longer. Not just instructions on a new drop, a new contact code; orders to do. The thing she carried at her belt. Something is very wrong here. Fred’s never been in the loop before, neither of us would dare.
The screen flicked light at her eyes. A laser read the pattern of her retina; the information sped away as modulated light. Another scanned her palmprint, the abstract of her voice. Information flowed into a central computer’s ready-storage peripheral; embedded instruction sets were tripped. Data from deep storage was copied, run through a translator into analog form, compared. Another code phrase tripped a set in the response machine.
“Confirmed. Marya E77A1422, property of Arch-Strategos Ingolfsson, Commandant. Literate Class V-a. Delay, query.” The idiot-savant routines would be calling her owner’s private quarters. Marya breathed in, calmly. That was where the interception loop she had established would work; or not. The machine spoke again: “Query, confirmed. E77A1422, proceed.”
The guard nodded. “Confirmed. Present, wench,” he said. Marya turned and bent back her head to bare the serf-tattoo beneath her right ear. There was a box clipped to the serf policeman’s waist; he pulled free a light-pencil on a coil cord and ran the tip down her tattoo. The box chirped, encoding her ident on a data plaque within: another footprint.
With a slight hiss, the door opened. Marya noted the thickness of it, featureless sandwich-armor alloy. The corridor beyond was plain, but there would be instruments and weapons in the walls. Another door, and she was out into a vestibule of the factory; more guards, crewing control desks. They waved her through. She walked on, past color-coded doors and more corridors. Through a transparent tube, over a long room where workers bent to their micromanipulators and screens. They were assembling circular electrowafers in tubes, building the precoded stacks that contained the instruction sets for major computers and their closed-access internal memories. Others fitted the pillars of wafers into the rectangular platforms of the logic decks; she could imagine the submicroscopic tools soldering their gold-wire and optical-thread connections.
All familiar enough; the basic technology had not changed in a generation, despite vast improvements in detail. And I’ve heard Draka complain the Alliance isn’t introducing as many refinements for them to steal lately, she recalled. Exterior data storage, translator/interfacer unit, memory, instruction sets, logic deck. And beyond this complex, the most crucial area of all, where the design teams’ compinstruction data was turned into physical patterns for embedding in the cores . . .
“Hello,” she said to the receptionist in the office area. Polite but not servile; she was a command-level officer’s personal servant. Not as formally high-status as this expensively trained technical secretary, but they were both Class V-as, and her owner outranked the Faraday Combine exec who ran this facility. “Is Master MacGregor in? The plant manager?”
The receptionist looked up from his keyboard, looked Marya up and down. “Your message?” he said. “Master MacGregor can’t be interrupted, he’s in conference.” He’s checking my clothes, Marya thought. Silk shirt, pleated trousers, jeweled clasps on the sandals and belt. Obviously a houseserf, equally obvious from someone not to be offended.
“It’s an invitation,” she said. “From the Commandant.” Marya held out a folded parchment sealed in gold with the Drakon signet, then pulled it back when the man reached for it. “Personal service.” That was one of her duties, keeping track of the obligatory social functions Yolande hated, and seeing that the invitations were in harmony with the relative status of each participant. A personal hand-delivery to a Commandatura reception was just slightly more than MacGregor rated; just enough that no underling of sense would endanger it.
“Oh, excuse me.” The serf’s heavy Arab features knotted. “Ahh . . . ” There was a waiting area behind the desk, but that was for Citizens. “Here, I’ll take you to his office. You can wait there, and give the invitation.”