by John Carr
“She is the most attractive of four otherwise-equal candidates, Galen,” his mother answered. “ ‘The eye wants something, too’.”
Diettinger studied his parents for a moment; it had always been obvious to him that they loved one another very much. His own love for them was, at times, almost distracting in its intensity.
Almost.
But Diettinger also knew his parents to be ferociously rational people, and it was a wonder to him that after sixteen years, they still could misjudge him so completely.
He reached forward and picked up the dossier on Firstholder Heiress Diana Kirk; all relevant data was there. As Sauron society revolved around breeding, the periods of Diana’s ovulation were a matter of public record, for review by anyone considering her as a prospective mate, as was all information regarding Firstholder Heir Galen Diettinger’s own fertility.
He glanced at the dates, his mind running ahead, always to the next step, the next task, the long view...
Diana’s family will be informed of the choice this afternoon. The union will be recorded by tomorrow, the family celebrations concluded by the weekend two days from now.. .Diana and I will take up residence in the Heir’s House the following week, consummating our union that night.
Exactly as he had calculated: The first night of their honeymoon would coincide with the start of Diana’s peak fertility for this cycle. The next three days of sexual activity would virtually guarantee a new birth within the year. None of the other prospects possessed ovulation cycles so fortuitously timed. And he knew it was important that he give his parents grandchildren - soon.
Because war is coming, he thought. No one will admit it, not yet. Because it will be civil war against the Empire. Sauron’s rulers will soon insist that we must be free, and the Empire will never allow that. We are too wealthy, too powerful. Our limited autonomy is a thorn in their side as it is. They do not dare let Sauron become a fully independent political entity. Even the Imperial Senate will not admit that civil war is inevitable, that cracks in the monolithic Empire of Man could possibly exist. But it is so obvious. At least to me.
He smiled at his parents. With luck, all the wedding activity would be concluded before he was called up for mobilization. But who could say what the Empire would do? Or the Sauron’s own High Council, for that matter?
For now, he decided, let my parents enjoy their romantic notions.
Diettinger had no doubt that he would, in time, come to love Diana as his father loved his own mother. But like anything which was both inevitable and yet removed in time from his immediate concerns, he could spare no more attention for the wedding than it required. When it happened, it would happen; if it did not, it would not. Either way, he would prepare for the situation fully, without on erg of wasted energy, and deal with it when necessary, and not a moment before.
He had too much to prepare for right now. For when the war did come, Galen Diettinger intended to be a Vessel Third Rank at the very least, and he would bend every effort to gaining his own command without delay. There were serious weaknesses in Sauron naval theory, he knew, and if not redressed, they would doom Sauron in any conflict with the Imperial war machine, every element of which revolved about a naval tradition that was centuries old, and which Sauron simply could not -
“Galen,” his mother sounded almost cross, but her laugh was beneath her tone.”I know that Miss Kirk is lovely, but surely you can spare a moment from your anticipatory daydreaming to tell us who you would like to invite as guests to the ceremony?”
He blinked, smiling at his parents. “Of course, mother,” he said. “You know how important it is to me.”
III
He was leaning over in the cramped fighter seat, his face pressed against the cool surface of the aircraft canopy. Turning from his blind side allowed him to look out the starboard window and see the Amberlea airport wheeling beneath the craft’s wing as the pilot lined up for her final approach.
He had cadged a ride in a twin-seat supra-orbital fighter, identical to those carried in the Fomoria’s launch bays, and now the whine of its lift thrusters drowned out the quiet thump of touchdown.
The ground crew had his hatch opened immediately; he thanked his driver as he threw one leg over the side, slid down the ladder and handed off his loaned helmet. He turned to face two Rankers of the airport security staff; one watched him while the other consulted a datapad. Empowered to arrest anyone, they were outside the normal chain of command. Neither saluted.
“Vessel First Rank Galen Diettinger,” the one without the datapad addressed him. “You are in Amberlea without travel authorization.”
“Correct.”
The one with the datapad looked up; the other one blinked. Both were startled by Diettinger’s obvious lack of concern. No Sauron simply walked away from Security Officers. Sauron society was ordered, rational and proper. Structure had made them what they were today, yet Diettinger seemed to be immune to the natural order of how things were done. Both Security Rankers matched stride with Diettinger as he walked past them.
“You do not have official clearance to leave the Capital,” the first one tried a new tack.
“Also correct.” Diettinger pushed open the doors to the terminal and looked around the room; two Rankers in Naval Security uniforms saw him, rose from their seats and began to approach.
The Security staff Ranker played his trump. “No officer of Vessel Command Rank is permitted internal travel without clearance.”
Diettinger nodded. “Right again.” The naval Rankers reached them as the Security Ranker, at last comfortable with the direction the conversation was going and with the presence of naval support, concluded: “I must therefore detain you until this matter is resolved.”
Diettinger smiled, but shook his head. “Ah, no. And you were doing so well.”
“Good morning, Fleet First Rank,” one of the naval officers greeted him, saluting. “Local time is 0300 hours.”
“I trust you had a good flight,” the other said, as she leaned forward to place a new insignia on his collar.
“Under the circumstances.” Diettinger answered, adjusting his collar as they headed for the exit.”Report.”
Diettinger nodded occasionally as he was updated on various matters during the walk to his ground transport. He did not look back at the bewildered airport security Rankers as he left. But he did think about them.
Unable to adapt to the situation, unable to shift parameters to understand why he ignored them, they were trapped. Their witnessing of Diettinger s on-site elevation to a rank which authorized his actions negated their interest in him as suddenly as switching off a light. The memory of those two anonymous Security Rankers would haunt him for decades. Had they been told to march in a circle, he had no doubt they would have continued to do so until they died.
Thirteen
Two hours later Diettinger, showered and in a fresh uniform, stepped from the ground car onto the gravel path that led to the front door of his home. The driver took the car back to the front gate and waited. Diettinger walked up the front steps alone.
Firstholder homes, the residences of the original landowning families of the planet Sauron, had all started large; building materials were free, labor was cheap, and indigenous predators meant that staff and additional family members could not be left defenseless in outbuildings. Saurons had learned that safety lies in numbers, and they eventually legislated birth rates to guarantee it.
The flagstones were fifteen-foot wide slabs of maroon slate from Sauron’s Vineland Heights; one of dozens of prized stones from the Homeworld’s original boomtown days as a mining colony. Fifty of them led in eight-inch rises to the triangular portico flanked by eight columns of Sauron Stygian Marble. Every surface bore the work of master sculptors in frieze or bas-relief; Sauron art had begun in the Homeworld’s quarries, where the colonists and their descendants had brought forth beauty from the unyielding stone and rich ores. Inlays of gold, platinum and precious glowsilver vied with master carvings in
every sort of stone available.
Through the entryway, Diettinger could see into the atrium, classical in origin, timeless in design, functional in purpose. Long after water purifiers had made its impluvium unnecessary as a back-up water supply, the Diettinger family’s atrium remained as a garden of water-flowers, lovingly - or at least, loyally - tended by successive matrons of the family, generation after generation.
Set into the arch of Sauron Blue Granite was a plaque, cut from the hull shielding of the first colony ship to reach Sauron, the ancient CoDominium Corporate Transport Minnesota. Diettinger’s fingers traced the painstakingly even lettering in Anglic and Latin, carved into the shielding by a fine-cut mining laser in a rough, robust hand:
This homestead
is the work and legacy
of Brennus Diettinger.
Sic Itur Ad Astra,
The inscription always made him smile. Thus one goes to the stars. “And a fine way, it was,” Diettinger whispered to himself. Or perhaps to Brennus.
He stepped into the atrium and looked up through its open roof at the stars; they were fading in the approaching dawn, but he could still make out the constellations he’d learned in his youth. For years, one or both of his parents would come out here and find him asleep beside his telescope, the glow of a datapad screen lighting his face.
To the right was the window of his old room. Through it he would climb and, once out here, he would study astronomy and military science, principles of Newton, Einstein and Alderson set cheek-by-jowl with those of Sun-Tzu, Clausewitz and Challinor.
In this spot, he had researched the campaigns of Hannibal, Napoleon and Li-Kuan; the battles of Thermopylae, Austerlitz and Second Washington, and the fleet actions of Salamis, Midway and Trans-Luna.
Set upon a stone slab, the day he left for Academy, was the preserved trophy of his Grizzly, the base bearing a plaque with the date of the kill. It was the only hunting trophy in the house. Beside it stood a new telescope; his father now dabbled in astronomy as a hobby. Diettinger leaned down and looked through the eyepiece, surprised that it was only a simple reflector apparatus without image enhancement equipment of any kind.
Perhaps that is not so surprising after all; it is probably all that is legally available, even to a Firstholder. Doubtless there were - or soon would be - a great many things in near-space which the State would prefer its more influential citizens did not see.
“Galen?”
The voice came from the rear of the atrium, at the main entrance to the house. He turned to see a tall figure in a warm robe, hooded against Sauron’s night chill. The figure approached, graceful hands drew the hood back; and Diettinger smiled, stepped forward and embraced his mother.
“We don’t sleep much these days,” another voice said from the door a moment later, and he was in the arms of both of his parents. Usually in firm control of his emotions, Diettinger found he was no less relieved for their safety than they were for his, which, he realized, was probably the nature of all homecomings for soldiers fighting on the losing side.
“I can’t stay for very long,” Diettinger told his parents from his seat at the breakfast table. His mother was everywhere at once, moving about the kitchen like a field surgeon, while his father was leisurely preparing some kind of egg dish and, incredibly, staying out of her way.
“Hardly surprising,” his father commented. He smiled over his shoulder at his son. “In fact, much like old times.” He covered the eggs and poured three cups of coffee.”In honor of your well-deserved promotion,” he said, setting down the cups. “Jamaica Blue Mountain,” he finished off-handedly.
“That’s reserved for the Imperial table at Sparta,” Galen blurted.
The elder Diettinger nodded. “So it is. But it has to get there somehow, and many ships fail to reach their destinations in wartime. Word has it that some privateer from Burgess System, a fellow named Hawksley, dropped off a tremendous quantity of it at Slater a month ago, cargo from a prize ship he turned over to Sauron in exchange for re-fit and resupply.”
“I didn’t know that you rated such luxuries, Firstholder or not.” Diettinger savored the coffee, sipping, wondering why ships were being wasted on commerce raiding duty when the Homeworld was threatened.
His mother laughed from the sink. “We don’t. We simply still have friends in the Capital. That was a gift from Breedmaster Kirk.” Her voice did not quite fade off at the name, but while she held her composure, her eyes glistened. She turned to smile at her son.”He asked that we give you his regards whenever we happened to see you, Galen.”
Unconsciously, Galen reached out to place his hand over his mother’s. “Thank you, mother. Please return my good wishes to Breedmaster Kirk.”
The Diettinger family never spoke directly of Breedmaster Kirk’s daughter Diana. They had not done so in thirty-seven years, not since the day she had been killed in a lifter accident on her way to the Diettinger estate to be married to their son.
An alternate choice of wife was acceptable and, in fact, required by law. Except that one month later, Sauron had attacked St. Ekaterina, and the almost three decades long conflict now known as the Secession Wars had begun. Galen Diettinger had been commissioned directly from Academy to the bridge crew of the Sauron frigate Aberlea, and the tempo of his career had thereafter precluded any possibility of a normal life.
Instead, Breedmasters had collected genetic samples from him, all of which had gone to the breeding crèches, and that was as close as his mother would ever get to seeing grandchildren from her eldest son.
“Your sister is well,” Diettinger’s father said. “Another son, the last we heard.”
Diettinger nodded. His sister and brother-in-law were administrators of a Sauron colony established early in the war, the location of which was still secret. None of the family entertained any notions they would ever see either of them again, or any of their progeny.
The meal passed with talk of family matters large and small, the list of insignificant yet crucial events that accumulated between visits in every human family. All the things which now seemed to Diettinger to be at once both trivial and vital.
An hour after sunrise, by an act of will, he checked his chronometer. “Father, mother; I have to go, soon. May we take a short walk to the family gardens, together?”
Diettinger saw his father glance across the table to his wife. For as long as Diettinger had known her, his mother had always differentiated between the atrium’s garden of water flowers, and the family gardens, which she visited and tended alone; but now she only looked down for a moment, smiled and nodded at him. “Of course, Galen.”
The family gardens were several acres of flowers and shrubs, herbs and experimental plants, trees and grasses, all a mixture of indigenous and imported plant life, all forming a horseshoe surrounding the Diettinger family cemetery; the true “family garden,” which represented the devotion to the Homeworld of the line founded by Brennus Diettinger more than half a millennium ago. At the apex of the curve were the tall headstones of Brennus himself, his wife Laura and their five children. Successive generations spread out into the arms of the horseshoe in tempo with Sauron’s history and that of the Diettinger line. Many of the graves bore insignia of rank and emblems of service in the armed forces of the CoDominium, and later the Empire. The last row of six graves bore, in addition to the names, the inscription: In Service to the Sauron State.
“It is very likely that you are already under surveillance,” Diettinger began quietly. “If not, you soon will be. In either case, I want to speak to you both about something I have in mind.”
“Son,” his father said quietly, “I don’t think that would be wise. I also know that it is not necessary.”
Diettinger looked into his parents’ faces, seeing the same resolution that had always been there, but now it was joined with something else. He looked at his mother and tried to force the issue: “You should both know that - ”
“We know, Galen,” she said. “Or we
know all we need to know. We’ve known it for some time. That’s why we’ve transferred all our duties here, to the estate. We want to spend these - decisive months - in our own home.”
Diettinger’s father put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “We’re Firstholders, Galen,” he said.” We’ve spent a lifetime in service to our world.” He looked back at his wife.”The time we have left, we think we’d like to spend in service to each other.”
He wanted to shout at them to come with him, to join him aboard Fomoria; whatever happened, at least they would survive. And they would be together. But that would be worse than dangerous; it would be humiliating. He looked at his parents, and a thought came back to him from the night before, and from before that; on a hot June day in a Wild Zone almost thirty years ago: Not an option...
“I understand.” He embraced his father.”I’m glad to have seen you.”
His mother leaned forward and put her arms around him, then kissed his cheek below the eyepatch. “And we, you, beloved son.” Her eyes were moist again, with no attempt to restrain the tears. “Before you leave Sauron again, get that eye regenerated. You look like a pirate.”
Diettinger only looked at her for a long moment. “Goodbye, mother. Father.” All Saurons saluted their superiors, military, social, familial. Diettinger’s was perfect. He turned and walked back up the path to the back of the house, turning at the top of the steps to look back at the gardens, bathed in morning sunlight, his parents standing beside one another, two more black silhouettes amid the headstones. Soon he could no longer tell the difference. He passed through the house without looking left or right, went to his car and was driven away.
Fourteen
I
Half of the Fomoria’s bridge crew was planetside, busily engaged in debriefing, genetic registration, and even, on occasion, shore leave. Vessel Second Rank Althene Adame held the conn, her attention focused on the sensor readouts tied in to her station screens. Fomoria had been in dry dock for four days and Vessel First Rank Diettinger had still not returned from planetside to relieve her. Althene did not normally crave leave time; she had no one to visit planetside, and temporary command of the Fomoria, even in dry dock, was a prestigious berth. But she had found upon looking out the viewport in the captain’s cabin that the sight of the Homeworld drew her as never before.