The Stone Dogs

by S. M. Stirling

  Far below serfs in the plantations of the Kuban valley paused for an instant at the flash of silver overhead, the rolling crack-crack as the fighters passed, then bent again to the immemorial rhythm of their hoes; it was a familiar thing, and the bossboys were watching.

  Mach 1 and dropping. Lost him—shitshitshit! The scanning warning started up again, the beeps coming closer and closer together. The rubber taste of the mouthpiece was bitter against her tongue; he must be close now, very close. Still nothing on the detectors.

  "Override stops," she said. The computer acknowledged with a patterned light, releasing its control of maneuvers that threatened the integrity of the aircraft. Threatened to leave me as long greasy smear on the landscape, she thought, and pushed it away.

  Fingers moved, like an artist's on the piano. Left-two-right-one-one. Fractional seconds, time floating by so calm, so leisurely. Touch, touch, crack the vent and bleed air into the turbines for low-altitude boost. Bring the vectored-thrust louvers online, still closed. Now.

  The fighter flipped up, presenting its belly to the axis of flight. In the same moment the underside jets cut in, superheated air pumping out like retrorocket thrust. Shock struck, like hitting a brick wall, and this time she did grayout, felt the jolt of the medicomp pushing stimulant into her veins. Something in the airframe pinged audibly, and a warning light began strobing crimson.

  And something flashed by outside, above, a streak from one side of the sky to the other. "Eeeeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaa!" she shrieked exultantly, and pushed at the throttle. Speed crawled back up, then the ram cut in, building to maximum thrust, and the giant was back on her chest. Too low for optimum burn, too rich a mixture, the ramjet sound was wrong, thready. But the enemy was on her screens now, the thermal signature of a ramscoop engine centered in the weapons section. He had still been declerating when she did the kick-up; Yolande's Falcon must have disappeared from his board as if teleported out.

  The release of tension was like neat brandy on an empty stomach, like orgasm after a long teasing tumble.

  "Die, yo' shit, fuckin' die!" she screamed happily. Closing, closing; the rearward sensors were less powerful than the ones in the nose, and her own ECM would help. Visual range, nothing fooled the ol Eyeball Mark I, they were both accelerating fast but she had the edge. A touch and the gunsight sprang out on the weapons screen, with the green blips at the lower corners; a Falcon had two 30mm Gatlings at the wing-roots, a concession to the dogfighting days. Not going to give him a lock-on warning, she thought. Closer still, and she remembered her mother's advice: an ace is someone who climbs right up the enemy's asshole before they shoot.

  He dodged, too late and too point-blank now. Her fingers danced on the pads, and the slim form of the fighter was one with her, dancing in sky. The triple line of the vents filled the sight, and she fired. Ping-ping-ping, and the computer stitched a line of hitmarks across the instructor's fuselage; his own machine went rock-steady and began a careful circle back to base, sign that the AI had acknowledged defeat and taken control for landing. Yolande pulled her own plane back and drove for the upper levels.

  She was halfway through the second victory roll when the weakened tail-vanes blew.

  "That was without any shadow of doubt, the most stupid, arrogant, purely moronic thing yo've done, in a course of study marked by mo' than its share of fuckups, Ingolfsson."

  Yolande swallowed. The ejection had produced instant unconsciousness; the next thing she remembered was the murmur of Russian as the fieldhands lifted her out of the pod, their broad weathered faces whirling against a nauseatingly mobile sky. A day in the infirmary had taken the worst of the sting and ache away, but her neck still felt as if it had been wrenched all the way around twice and every vertebra in her back seemed to have been squashed into its neighbor. The medicomp weighing down her right forearm clicked and dribbled something into her veins, and the pain behind her eyes eased—the physical pain. Her stomach twisted, and she could taste acid at the back of her throat. Clammy sweat ran down her flanks from the armpits, and the light fabric of her garrison blacks was a clinging burden.

  "Yes, ma'am," she said, bracing to attention and staring over the head of the seated Chief Instructor; she fixed her eyes on the crossed flags behind the desk. The national Sag, the Drakon, a crimson bat-winged dragon on a black background, clutching the slave- fetter of mastery and the sword of death in its claws, a green-silver-gold sunburst on the shield across its chest. The Air Corps banner, the skull of an eagle in a circle of gold on black, with flames in its eye-sockets.

  The Chief Instructor's office was a plain white room in what had once been the Livadiya Palace, here in Yalta, looking out over the garden and with a view down to the Black Sea. The Livadiya was more than a century old, once a resort for Russian nobles. The time of the Czars had passed, and it had been a playground for the more exalted of the Soviet nomenklatura. The Eurasian War came, and now for thirty years the Crimean peninsula had been a training reserve of the Directorate of War.

  "Well, have yo' anythin' mo' to say fo' y' self?" Merarch Corinne Monragon was a small woman, no taller than Yolande; in her fifties, with an ugly beak nose and a receding chin and gray hair streaked with an indeterminate mousy color. There was an impressive array of ribbons over the left breast of her garrison blacks: the Flying Cross, for more than six confirmed kills in air-to-air combat, and the Anti-Partisan medal.

  Freya, not a washout. Disgrace, at this stage. Everyone carefully avoiding talking about it, not-friends commiserating. Two years driving some lumbering gun-truck groundstrike monstrosity with damn-all chance of space training. No chance of being posted to the same base as Myfwany. Black edged in around her sight.

  "Ah…" Yolande pulled on her training, clamping inwardly on the tremors that threatened to make her voice shake. Her face was expressionless, save for the beads of moisture along her hairline, and that could have been the crash-trauma. The windows behind the big desk were slightly open on a pale winter noon gray with cloud, and chill damp air cuffed at the heavy silk of the banners, slid across her face.

  "Ah, I won, ma'am."

  The officer sighed and touched a screen on the desk before her. "Records, Ingolfsson, Yolande, pilot-trainee." She examined it in silence for a moment, then looked up.

  "There is that, Ingolfsson. There is also this." Her hand tapped the screen. "Which contains good news an' bad, apart from the good-to-passable academics." She folded her fingers and leaned forward, the nose with its pearl stud like the beak of a bird of prey. "The good is that when yo' good, yo' very, very good indeed; a shit-eatin', bird-stompin' wonder of a pilot." The merarch's voice rose slightly. "And when yo' bad, yo' is fuckin awful!"

  Another sigh. "So this time, yo' suckered the best pilot-instructor we got. Wonderful. Then yo' turned a 1,750,000-auric trainer into a large, smokin' hole in a cherry orchard outside o' Krasnodar by doin' acrobatics—just didn't notice the air-frame alarm, eh? We have an enemy to shoot down our aircraft, Ingolfsson, but yo've decided they don't deserve the privilege, eh? Well."

  Wotan, Yolande thought, impressed despite herself. That was half the price of a fully-stocked plantation. Some imp of the perverse spoke in her ear: They aren't going to dock it out of my pay, are they, ma'am?

  The instructor took a deep breath. "Well, yo' application fo' scramjet or deep-space trainin' is, of course, denied." Those postings were reserved for people with squadron experience.

  "I suspect if it weren't fo' yo' friend Venders's steadyin' influence, yo'd have washed out into ground-support work, or even the infantry, a while ago." A pause which grew long. The five friends who had entered pilot-selection training were down to three now; Muriel and Veronica had transferred out. "As it is, yo've made it. Just. Barely. See the adjutant fo' yo' orders; the usual two months' leave, then report fo' squadron service."

  "Yes, ma'am!" Yolande threw a cracking salute, right fist to chest. Calm. Why do I feel so calm?

  "An' Ingolfsson?"

  "Ma'am?"


  "Flyin' fighters isn't a game, Ingolfsson. I know there's a killer instinct somewheres inside of yo'; find it. Or it may turn out to be avery good thing fo' the Race that we have a deposit of yo' frozen ova, understand?" She rose and came around the table. "Congratulations," she said, and they exchanged the wrist-grip Draka handshake. In her other hand was a box with Pilot's rank-tabs.

  "Thank yo', ma'am." The ruby bars clipped onto the epaulets, and she tucked the old silver cadet's pins into a pocket of the tunic. Yolande forced her face to graveness as she pulled the peak-billed cap from her shoulder strap, unfolded it, and settled it home on the regulation recruit's inch-long haircut.

  Now I can grow it long enough to comb, she thought gleefully, as she did a smart about-face and marched into the outer office, past the desks and the gray-uniformed serf Auxiliaries. Out into the corridor, past the two motionless Janissaries, like giant insects in segmented impact-armor and visored sensor helmets. She looked down; her hands were shaking. I didn't even notice, she thought. She concentrated a moment; the floating feeling at the back of her skull diminished. Down the arched colonnade, thin rain falling on tiles and potted trees on her left, bas-reliefs of the Eurasian War on her right through more offices, into a waiting room.

  Her pace picked up as she saw Mandy and Myfwany, turned to a jog as they saw her grin and wave. Then she was running, dodging tables and people in uniform, and flinging herself into the air, heedless of the jar to her bruises.

  "Wuff!" Myfwany caught her in midleap, Yolande wound her legs tight around her friend's waist and propped her elbows on the hard muscle of her shoulders. "Why, Cadet Ingohsson, someone might think yo'd had good news."

  Yolande clasped hands behind the redhead, as close-shaven as her own, and kissed her. It turned long and passionate, until she felt herself as breathless as in a high-G turn, lost in touch and scent and taste. Taste of salt, as two tears slid down her cheeks to the meeting of their lips. She turned her head aside and buried it in the collar of the other's uniform.

  "Yo' hurtin', love?" Myfwany whispered into her ear.

  "No. Happy. Well be together." Her hug turned fierce.

  "Oh, moo," Mandy said. "Y'all are always at it. Good news, yo' make out. Bad news, yo' make out. Nothin' else to do, yo' make out. C'mon fellas, we've all gotten through Selection, let's go celebrate."

  Yolande unlocked her legs and slid down to stand. "Well," she said huskily, smiling up into Myfwany's turquoise-green eyes. "Myfwany an' I could celebrate by goin' back to our room an' fuckin' our brains out—oof." She broke off as the blond jabbed her under the ribs with her fingertips.

  Myfwany laughed. "Do we complain at the boys y' always draggin' in?" she said.

  "No, y' all steal 'em," Mandy said.

  "That's not fair, we just borrowed a few; they are reusable, yo' knows," Myfwany replied. "Anyways, yo' know what they say: "Men fo' amusement, women fo' pleasure, cucumbers fo' ecstasy.'"

  Yolande sighed, closed her eyes, and leaned into her friend's side; they were just the right height for that, about a handspan's difference. As far as she was concerned, Mandy could keep the men—it was as often uncomfortable as enjoyable—but she supposed Myfwany was right, you had to broaden your experience. I guess I'm just a prude, she thought regretfully. For that matter, she didn't much like sleeping with serfs, either; it was always difficult to tell whether they really wanted to, and if they didn't why bother?

  "There's always the Flamingo Feather," Mandy said.

  The Crimea had been taken by amphibious assault in the fall of '42, early in the War, and had become a major base area for the drive west, since the harbors had fallen relatively intact. Between the Germans and the Draka and the general chaos, there had been little of the native population left; when the European section of the Eurasian War wound down in '45, it had seemed sensible to make it a military reservation, and the remaining locals were moved out to provide labor on the wheat plantations of the Ukraine. There were mountains, plains, seashore, forest, and steppe, a reasonable facsimile of a Mediterranean climate along the southern shore for barracks, and every other type of weather and terrain within easy reach. Recruit-training became the major occupation as the settlement of the lands west of the Volga proceeded, and the Citizen population built up.

  So the Crimea was not really part of the Province of Sarmatia; not really of any specific location. It was Army, an island in the archipelago, a way-station in the Domination's largest institution, and a cog in the slaughterous efficiency that had conquered two-thirds of the human race. That meant more than barracks and armories.

  "Hoppin' tonight," Mandy said, as they pushed through the bead curtain. The Flamingo Feather was an aviator's hangout, a dozen linked public rooms with the usual facilities, palaestra and baths and bedrooms.

  "Everybody glad to be off restriction," Myfwany replied. Few Draka used enough of anything to endanger their health; it was stupid, and illegal besides. Pilot-trainees were on an altogether stricter regimen, enforced by the medical monitors they wore at all times; there were even restrictions on sex, leading to a good deal of resentful graffiti about the Orgasm Police.

  Yolande looked down on the sunken room. There was a haze of blue smoke under the rooftop lights, a little tobacco, considerably more Kenia Crown ganja. Tables scattered around the edges, a dais for the musicians and singer; dancers going through their paces in the center. Big murals on the walls, holograph-copies. She recognized one: it had been done by her mother's uncle's daughter Tanya, who had been a cohortarch in the Archonal Guard until '45. Gray shattered buildings under gray sky, with a column of tanks going through, mud squelching up from under their treads. Hond III, mid-Eurasian War models. The hatches were open, and the Draka crews showed head-and-shoulders out of the turrets. Wrapped and muffled against the cold, looking with a weary and disgusted boredom at the skeletal corpses lying rat-gnawed along the avenue.

  "Euugh," she said, as they handed their rain-cloaks to the serf and walked down the stairs. She had seen her share of bodies—Draka children were taken to public executions fairly early to cure them of squeamishness—but this was just purely ugly. "I like that one bettah." The other side was a picture-holo A tropical beach, palm-fringed, backed by jade-green sugarcane and dark-green mountains beyond; the sun was setting over a stretch of purple sea speckled with white foam-crests, in a riotous banner of clouds in cream, gold, and rose."Nosy-Be, isn't it?"

  They found an unoccupied table in a nook, settled back in against the cushioned settees. The attendants had seen their new-minted Pilot's bars; this was Graduation Week, after all. A bucket of ice with a bottle of champagne appeared, and finger-food, grilled spiced prawns and crawfish.

  "I think so," Myfwany said. "Which raises the interestin' point, where do we go after the Great Escape?" The next two months would be the longest leave they would have before they mustered-out on their twenty-second birthdays.

  Yolande halted with the glass halfway to her lips and set it down again on the smooth stone of the table. "It's real," she said dazedly. "It just hit me, we're adults." Her eyes were wide, and she felt a slight tug of alarm. The speeches and parades would come later that week, but it was official enough NOW. "We can… oh, we can vote. Get elected Archon."

  She took a gulp of the wine, then slowed down as the chill piquant sweetness hit her mouth.

  "Watch the sacrilege there, that's Old Klik," Myfwany said, and took up the game as she sipped at her own. "Or we can get called out in a duel. At least while we're not Active Service."

  "Apply fo' a land-grant. Or get married," Mandy said, propping her chin on a hand with a distant look.

  The other two exchanged glances; their friend had been getting an awful lot of letters from Yolande's brother John. It was a bit May-September, but the difference in ages mattered less as they grew older.

  "Well, not much point in that," Yolande said. "Yo've got to live in barracks fo' the next twenty-six months at least. Not really practical to have children, either."


  "Oh, I don't know," Myfwany said. "Use a brooder fo' the children. These days, no need to incubate yo' own eggs. But it's true there's no point in marryin' until yo' can set up house together; I wouldn't consider it fo' another three, five years, myself."

  Yolande felt a chill that ran down her spine and settled under her ribcage. With too-familiar effort of will she shoved it aside and sprang up. "C'mon, love, let's dance," she said. "Shadowdance."

  Myfwany grinned back at her, the strong-boned young face the most beautiful thing in the world. "Sure, sweet," she said.

  They rose and threaded their way hand-in-hand to the dance floor, their soft boots rutching on the tessellated mosaic of the surface. The band were just setting up for a new number: Hungarian Gypsies by their look, and in native costume, playing violin and flute and czembalom, something like a hammer-dulcimer. Except as horse-handlers, Gypsies made poor workers, but they were fine entertainers and the leisure industries had bought up a good many of them. The lights dimmed. The music began low and sweet, with a swinging hit; then it grew wilder, sorrowful, and with a hint of dark empty places and wind through faded grass. The singer stepped up to the edge of the dais and began a soft throaty lament; the hoop earrings bobbed against the toffee-colored skin of her neck, and the multicolored silk flounces of her dress glittered.

  The two Draka stood face to face and extended their arms until their hands touched, very lightly, at the fingertips. Shadowdancing was a development of the martial arts, originally a method of training in anticipating another's movements. Yolande half-closed her eyes and let the music take her, the gentle pressure on her fingertips, the whole-body sense of the other. They turned, circling, swooping, bending, the lead passing from Myfwany to Yolande and back with each dozen heartbeats. She felt the boundaries of her self blur; motion was uncaused, unthought, total control merging into total abandonment of will. The tempo picked up, and they were whirling, leaping, then suddenly slowing to half-time and a languorous drifting. It was a pleasure halfway between flying and making love, and like both it translated you outside yourself. They slowed almost to a halt, palm against palm on either side of their faces, feet skimming the tile with cat-soft precision.