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  “I—” she faltered, and then recited, “I was born in the Sandstone crèche. I was raised in the collective boarding school until twenty. I went to medical technical school for a month, and I graduated last month. And now I’m here.”

  “Wait, wait…” Something wasn’t right, here. The numbers… “You said you finished your boarding school at twenty, then went to tech school for a month, but you’ve only been here a month. What happened to the rest of the two years between twenty and now?”

  The question seemed to confuse Doris. “A year is twelve months.”

  “It sure is, most places.”

  “That means two years is twenty-four months. I’m only twenty-two.”

  Straker grabbed Doris by the shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “You’re twenty-two months old?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ugh.” He was kissing a baby, even if she had a woman’s hot body and face—and the emotional development of a middle-schooler, it seemed. And no doubt she was a virgin. Even if he hadn’t been Carla’s man, he wouldn’t just jump Doris’s bones here and now. The whole experience would confuse the young Facet, and she’d no doubt be infatuated with him. At some point he’d have to leave Doris behind, and Straker wasn’t the love-’em-and-leave-’em type. That was Loco’s department.

  Then he wondered why he even cared. Doris was a creature, barely a person, mass-produced by the Opters as a biological machine to do their bidding. A Slug, Don had callously termed the type, though perhaps a bit better educated.

  Maybe that was why Straker cared—the innocence of all these Facets like Doris, the helplessness, the hopelessness. What kind of fulfillment or accomplishments could come from lives like these?

  Then he wondered how long Doris had to live.

  “Is something wrong?”

  Straker tried not to look sad. “Many things, honey, but nothing’s wrong with you. You’re perfect.”

  “Oooh, you too!” she squealed, and took to kissing him again.

  “Hey,” he said around the smooching, “how long do the people here usually live?”

  “That’s a weird question.”

  “Is it? For a medical tech?”

  Doris frowned. “I’m not a geriatric specialist.”

  “But how long? You must have some idea.”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe a thousand?”

  Straker converted a thousand months to years. Eighty-three and change. So, a relatively normal lifespan, give or take. The Opters simply compressed twenty-four years of human development into two, and the Facets stayed adults for longer.

  But something didn’t fit, at least with Doris. “Have you ever been anywhere else?”

  “Than Glasgow? No. I know there are other places, but most people don’t get to travel until they’re at least fifty, or if they get Selected.”

  “Selected? What’s that?”

  Doris shivered and, for the first time, appeared afraid. “They say it’s a good thing, but then they take people away and they never come back. It doesn’t feel good when they take someone away.”

  Those Selected must be the ones to get run through the dizzes, the program to make Facets into people who could function in human society—a forcible and cruel introduction to the worst of the real world.

  Then again, was it any worse than what he himself went through, or what kids went through with dysfunctional families and badly run schools? Even Straker’s special school had its problems with its bullies and cliques and childish cruelties. The passive-aggressive teachers sometimes secretly loved it when the super-capable kids failed, and the insecure staff enforced rules without using their judgment. In other schools he’d heard about, there were even adults who lusted after the budding adolescents in their charge.

  Funny, he hadn’t thought of his pre-Academy days in a long time, and that brought back memories of his family—his steady, loving father, his caring but fretful mother, his sister, all slaughtered by Mutuality attackers who wanted Derek Straker dead.

  Not for the first time, he wondered how they knew which houses to strike, where the special children lived. Mutuality spies, he’d always thought… but now that he was aware of the Opter games—okay, to be fair, the Sarmok games, if he could believe Don—he wondered whether the spies hadn’t actually been perfected Facets, like Myrmidon himself. If the Sarmok wanted to sow trouble and keep the war going, they could have provided the information to the Mutuality and prompted the attack on Seaburn City.

  So in a way, the Sarmok might have killed his family.

  “Derek?”

  “Sorry, I was thinking. You know, you’re right about being Selected. It is a bad thing. Any time your government steals people away from their lives just because they can, and forces them to be something they don’t want to be, that’s bad.”

  “It sounds bad… but what happens to the Selected?”

  “They suffer. Many die. A few come out changed, and then they’re sent to live somewhere else, far from family and friends.”

  “What’s… family?”

  “You don’t know… of course not.” Straker took Doris’ face in his hands, a face that if he’d encountered it before he met Carla he might have fallen in love with, and kissed her forehead. Any ardor he’d felt toward her cooled. Now, she seemed like a daughter, not an object of desire. “Sweetheart, family is people you love, and who love you. The people who raise you, the people you’re connected with… the people you’d defend, the people you’d die for.”

  “I’d die for you, Derek,” she declared passionately.

  Straker sighed. “I’m sure you feel that way.” How could he explain that he knew how she was feeling—exactly how he’d felt when he fell in love with Carla—and how, now, he was so much older, so far beyond Doris, that he would never be what her adolescent hormones wanted him to be.

  He held Doris, and eventually spooned with her chastely on her narrow bed until she fell contentedly asleep. No doubt she was filled with the feeling of her first crush. As her breathing deepened, he used the time to think.

  He’d have to leave Doris behind, breaking her heart and leaving her life forever changed. He wondered if the Facets in Glasgow were allowed to pair up, have sex and relationships and babies, even if they weren’t allowed to form families and raise their own children.

  Probably not. Don had talked about larval pods and vats.

  That seemed a horrible beginning to a lonely existence.

  This whole world, this whole planet, was an abomination. Bad enough that human governments or corporations, nations or collectives, separated people into the rulers and the ruled, the haves and the have-nots, the masters and the slaves. Those places, those planets, could be changed. Their regimes could be overthrown. People could be freed—had been freed, by Straker and the Liberation—to choose their own paths, to make their own destinies. He knew the New Earthan Republic wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be better than the Mutuality it replaced. There would always be those who wanted to lord it over others, to stand on their necks, to brutalize their bodies and pillage their hard-earned property just to satisfy their lusts for power and control.

  This place took that evil to the next level. The overlords of this Terra Nova—such an irony, he’d abolish the name if he ever could—weren’t even human, and didn’t see people as anything more than cogs in a vast machine. The Opter Queens sat atop the pile, the lives of their thralls worthless to them—including these odd humanopts they’d grown in their pods and vats.

  Odd humans, he reminded himself. If they looked like humans, thought like humans, lived and died like humans—and wanted to make love like humans, even if they didn’t know it yet—then they were humans. More human than Ruxins or the insectoid Opters, for sure.

  Chapter 11

  Engels, aboard Indomitable, planetary nebula, Calypso System

  Admiral Engels admired Braga even as she gave orders to close the trap on his fleet and crush him. She couldn’t imagine anyone doing any better than he’d
done, given the tough circumstances.

  “Comms, transmit our call for surrender again.”

  “No reply, ma’am.”

  “Set it to repeat every minute.” She’d hoped for a response, but not really expected one.

  Not yet, anyway. Braga was a fighter.

  Indomitable had taken out four superdreadnoughts singlehandedly, firing from beyond visual range using targeting data relayed from her stealth drone network. Undoubtedly Braga would believe he faced at least two fortresses, unless he had better-than-expected data on the battleship. He also couldn’t know how many supporting ships those “fortresses” had with them, and so would undoubtedly turn away, believing he’d already destroyed Felicity Station.

  Engels had deliberately ordered Indomitable’s targeting and power adjusted downward from maximum effectiveness. At the current two-hundred kilometer range, her weaponry could’ve utterly destroyed those four SDNs, leaving no survivors and nothing but slag.

  That would have been a twofold mistake. Not only would it cause unnecessary casualties, but crippled ships could be repaired and rebuilt—or at least salvaged—and the Republic needed all the warships it could get. She had plenty of forces to compel their surrender. In fact, today’s haul in prizes would provide a much-needed boost to Republic fleets, if they had the time to absorb them.

  Indomitable continued to pick off big ships with her main particle beam. The massive railgun became almost useless as soon as Braga’s fleet turned unexpectedly away from a nose-on aspect, toward the planet.

  Engels instantly divined Braga’s intention: to drive a wedge between her battleship and the rest of her englobing fleet, to escape with what he could by slingshotting around C1.

  “Helm, set course to cut them off,” she ordered.

  “This ship is a pig, ma’am. We’ll still end up chasing them.”

  “Do your best. Weapons, continue maximum rate of fire, prioritizing undamaged big ships.”

  “Aye aye, ma’am.”

  Inertial compensators and gravplating held Engels and the crew in place as Indomitable clawed her way around a semicircle, aiming her nose ahead of Braga’s faster ships. Twice more her great particle beam lashed out, crippling superdreadnoughts, before the gas became too dense to penetrate.

  Engels chewed a nail in thought as Indomitable slid in behind the enemy, chasing them like a buffalo hopelessly following swift wolves. What would she do if she were Braga? Where would he break away from C1’s gravity? What direction would he take?

  Given his current course and actions, one thing made the most sense. She used her cursor to circle an area within Indomitable’s hologram. “Pass to Zholin and Dexon to adjust course toward this zone, starward from C1, and form a dense hemisphere to intercept. Helm, take us here at all possible speed.”

  Engels’ comms team sent her orders over the relay system. Returns from the network updated the hologram in realtime, and she watched as Zholin moved his local task force to plant itself directly between C1 and its star.

  It occurred to her that if Braga were really clever, he’d try to follow the curving streamer of gas that extended from Calypso to the planet. She didn’t have stealth sensors there. “Tell Zholin to shift position to make it harder for Braga to turn and dive back into the streamer,” she ordered. “Dexon can cover the other angle with his lights.”

  Zholin’s monitor didn’t move, but he slid the rest of his ships sideward to flank it, making any Hun turn toward the gas ribbon a costly one.

  Dexon’s light fleet continued to decelerate furiously. The computer predicted its resting point farther out from Zholin’s ships and behind them, in a position to backstop them. The lights continued to emit their fake dreadnought signatures. Until Braga got solid visuals, he’d believe he faced an overwhelming force.

  Now came the frustration of flag rank as Engels watched her forces interpret her orders while her own vessel was out of firing range. She wanted to reach into the hologram and adjust the positions of ships to their most efficient fleet configurations, but micromanagement would do more harm than good. She had confidence in the older, more experienced Dexon, but she’d appointed Zholin as squadron commander based on his trustworthiness, not tactical depth. Less than a year ago, he’d been a mere frigate captain.

  Then again, she herself was just a jumped-up gunship pilot.

  She wished she’d been able to bring along Ellen Gray, but she also needed an experienced hand to run the Home Fleet—and incidentally, to guard the Liberation from getting hijacked by former Mutuality politicians and bureaucrats.

  Wishes, fishes.

  The moment of truth approached. The hologram showed Braga’s core fleet speeding low around the giant gas planet, adjusting course as they flew. Any minute now, she’d see whether she’d guessed right.

  If not, this might turn into a long, running, chase of attrition. She’d still win—she’d already won—but the crushing victory she craved might elude her.

  There! Braga’s fleet made its move to break out of its skimming partial orbit. Engines flared at maximum and his ships rose as one in a smooth curve that dead-ended at the exit point closest to the star.

  Exactly where she hoped.

  As Braga broke out of the nebula and Zholin’s command ambushed him, Engels breathed a sigh of relief. She sat up and straightened her dress jacket, worn deliberately for this moment. “Comms, record a new message. Vidlink when ready.”

  “Recording.”

  “Admiral Lucas Braga, this is Admiral Carla Engels.”

  * * *

  Braga realized he’d failed to outguess the enemy when he saw the Hok monitor loom in front of him. He watched in horror as the huge ship fired her cluster of primary lasers, ripping the last of his superdreadnoughts—save only his flagship—to shreds, at point-blank range. Had they spared his flagship because they knew it was the commanding vessel, or was it mere luck?

  He’d been outguessed so badly, it couldn’t be luck.

  He didn’t need to order return fire. All of his ships had been given leave to engage, and they unleashed a storm of railguns shots, missiles and beam weapons—lasers, masers, particle beams, any raw destructive energy that could be focused and sent toward an enemy. The nine closest heavy cruisers quickly broke, smashed or driven back, and the superdreadnought he faced slid closer to the monitor for mutual support even as it gave and received furious blows.

  A terrifying blizzard came back at him, and in his holotank his ships began to turn shades of yellow and red as their capabilities were methodically stripped from them—though less so than he might have expected. In fact, the many capital ships backing up the enemy monitor, the ones that had transited in behind Braga, seemed to be withholding the worst of it, only engaging with lighter weapons.

  Yet, he was outmatched, outgunned and out-tonned.

  Though he was proud of how his ships fought, his first duty was to get them out of this new trap. “Hard to starboard, thirty degrees angle toward the gas streamer,” he snapped. “Give them more deflection and try to get back into concealment. They can’t have sensors everywhere!”

  But the Hok fleets moved to block him, to stay with him. There was simply nowhere to go, and though he was moving fast, he didn’t have enough velocity to simply flash past and outrun them.

  “Admiral,” Lexin spoke up, “I believe I know why the fire from the enemy backing fleet is so light. It appears they have no ships heavier than a light cruiser.”

  “But the display—”

  “Shows dreadnoughts, I know. They appear to be using spoofing emitters more sophisticated than any I’ve ever seen—alien technology, perhaps. However, in empty space, optical scanners clearly show these ships are of escort class.”

  “Those bastards... Those clever fucking bastards.” Braga straightened. “Your pardon.”

  Lexin chuckled, as did a couple other of those within earshot . “I believe threat of death merits the occasional burst of vulgar language, though why you believe the enemy w
ere born out of wedlock, I don’t know.”

  “I was briefed,” Braga deadpanned. He sighed and rubbed his temples. “Will we make it out?”

  “My analysis says some of us will,” Lexin replied. Just then, Luxemburg shuddered and the power feeds flickered. “The monitor’s targeting us.”

  “Full reinforcement!” Captain Verdura said.

  “At full, ma’am,” replied the Defense chief.

  “I’m getting shorted power for evasives,” the Helm complained.

  “Go to emergency power on the reactors. Divert from life support. Seal suits as needed.”

  Braga thought furiously, looking for any way out. There seemed none. Yes, because of the enemy’s light-unit fake-out, more of his fleet would get past the monitor to dive into the gas streamer, but the Hok ships would immediately turn and stern-rake him. Then, those two hundred light units would harry him all the way to Calypso and around—and he’d eventually run out of plasma to hide in.

  He’d be lucky to get ten ships to flatspace and transit out, and there was no guarantee his flagship would be among them.

  “Admiral, incoming transmission from the enemy, full vid, with a vidlink request.”

  “Play it,” Braga ordered. “But don’t halt operations.”

  The holotank moved its display far enough out of the way to give Braga easy view of the leftmost of three main holoscreens. On it, a young, half-familiar human woman with the broad stripes of an admiral appeared, seated in a command chair.

  “Admiral Lucas Braga, this is Admiral Carla Engels. I’m recording this in hopes you’ll accept a truce and talk to me about an honorable surrender. If not, I’m going to have to break you, ship by ship, until each one strikes her colors or is utterly crippled. I don’t want that, and I don’t think you do either. Please accept the vidlink. As soon as you do, I’ll order my fleet to stand down, and I would expect you to do the same. If you don’t like what I have to say, well…” The stern young woman leaned forward to stand, clasping her hands behind her back. “…I’ll regretfully order your annihilation.”