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He grinned. “Well, I can’t argue with that. I’ve been to a couple of these whirls of your mother’s, remember. They’re lots more boring than you are.”

She arched one eyebrow. “Thanks a
lot!”

He laughed, teasing. “I do wonder why you hate the things so much.”

“I’m not sure, really. Somehow… well, especially when there’s a mission coming up. The closer the op gets, the more tedious Mums’s parties get. And the shallower and stupider her guests get.”

“Sounds like the problem’s in you, not the parties.”

“Of course. But it doesn’t mean I have to enjoy them.”

“Well, all we have to do is put in a showing, right? Maybe we could odie someplace private afterward.”

“I’d like that, Ran. I think I’m going to
need
it.”

Conventional military wisdom insisted that sexual liaisons with other members of your unit weren’t a good idea, and Kara was aware of any number of good reasons for that prohibition. Jealousy could wreck a unit’s effectiveness… as worry about a sexual partner could wreck an individual’s effectiveness. There were no rules against sex with someone else in your unit, though, and everybody did it. Her mother and Dev Cameron had been deeply involved with one another, Kara remembered, involved enough that her brother had been the result. As she’d been the product later on of Katya and Vic Hagan.

But Kara was beginning to understand the reasoning behind the nonrules. By accepting the Skymaster role in Operation Sandstorm, she’d taken the 1/1 out of the fight—and put the 1/3 into it. If she’d kept her mouth shut, if First Squadron was still riding the ascraft down to the shores of Noctis Labyrinthus, Ran and the 1/3 would still be slotted to stay in reserve.

Safe…

She found herself fighting against the urge to use her influence to keep Ran out of the Kasei expedition. It was going to be a damned hairy op…

“I can’t wait for this thing to get going, though,” Ran told her. “We’ve been training long enough. It’s time to go
do
it!”

“The opsims are coming back sixty- and seventy-percent plus success,” Kara said. “Skymaster is going to make a difference, I think.”

“I’m going to be worried about you up there,” he told her.

She smiled, or tried to. “And I’ll be worried about you. Damn, I wish the one-three wasn’t being pulled into—”

“Whoa, there,” he said in mock warning. “I thought you were the one who got mad when your parents tried to keep you out of the action, tried to keep you safe. You wouldn’t be pulling the same stunt with me, would you?”

Kara laughed. “I don’t think I’d dare. Not now. Just the same, I’ll sure be glad when this is over.”

“You and me both, Kara.You and me both.”

Her parents lived in a somewhat remote estate in the forest Outback, looking across a lush valley to the ice-glint beauty of the Silverside Cascades. The region was dotted with the homes of other high-ranking military and government types. Vic Hagan had named the estate Cascadia.

The floater’s AI banked the vehicle and extended its varigee wings. They were in free flight for several moments, and then Cascadia’s gaussfield caught them and gentled them in to the estate’s landing deck.

Guests had been arriving for some time. The parking area was half full, and the approaches to the house were cluttered with small groups of people, some in formal dress or military uniform, others—the women especially—in displays of skin, holoprojection, and nano expression that managed simultaneously to be imaginative and to leave very little to the imagination.

It was well past Second Eclipse, and the long Newamie day was slowly fading into night. Gloglobes hung suspended on their magnetics, and radiant pools cast soft, pastel ripples across the stonework. Inside, the gathering room and the broad atrium were crowded, with people spilling out onto the back patio. Viewalls displayed shifting, abstract patterns, matched by the vividly glowing floor display. Servots floated on hidden maglev traces set into the floor, passing out drinks and food as quickly as people would take them. Animated conversation mingled with the soft tones of neural harmonics floating from hidden speakers. New America might still be a frontier society, lacking the more civilized amenities of old Earth and the Shakai—the upper-class society of the Imperium—but the people did appreciate a good party.

She identified herself and Ran to the servot greeting each new guest, and then they walked into the house’s atrium. Her mother was there, literally radiant in pastel skin tones and holographic light. “Kara!” her mother cried, reaching out and hugging her. “Thanks for coming.”

“Your invitation didn’t leave a lot of options open,” Kara replied. “Mums? You remember Lieutenant Ran Ferris.”

“Of course, Lieutenant. How are you?”

“Fine, Senator.” He gazed around the atrium. “A nice party.”

“Thank you.”

“So,” Kara said. “Is Daren here tonight?”

“He should be.” She sounded distracted. “He’s working late at the university tonight, but he promised he’d be out as soon as he could get away.”

“Mums? You okay? You seem preoccupied.”

“No. No, I’m just tired.” Katya looked at her daughter. “I… know you’d rather be elsewhere tonight.” A smile tugged at her lips. “Both of you.”

Sometimes, Kara thought, her mother could be a little too observant. Or was it that Kara herself was too transparent? In an information-intensive culture, it became harder and harder to maintain a polite mask. Even after the Rebellion, many aspects of New American culture were still drawn from the Imperial Shakai, such as the need to present a neutral face. In Nihongo, the word for one’s physical face,
men,
was the same as the word for “mask.”

“I’m always glad to see you, Mums. You know that.”

“Hey! Kara! Good to see you!”

Kara turned at the voice. At first she didn’t recognize the speaker, though the voice was familiar. The nude man standing in front of her possessed skin that was a rich, light-drinking ebony, and she couldn’t see his features well enough to be able to place the face.

“Hello, Senator!” the black-skinned man added cheerfully.

“Hello, Geoff,” Katya said. “Enjoying yourself?”

A name and a position dropped into her mind, thanks to her mother’s use of the name: Geoff Rawlins, one of her mother’s executive assistants.

“Sure am.” He looked Kara up and down appraisingly. “Still in uniform, huh? You should do something about that.” He grinned at her, his teeth and the whites of his eyes startlingly bright against the black skin. It was hard to look at the man without staring. She could tell he wanted her to ask.

“Okay, I’ll jack in,” she said. “When did you become a worshipper?”

She’d heard about sun worshippers, of course. They wore yet another type of Naga expression, one that transformed the outer cells of their skin to jet black, the better to absorb every watt of sunlight that fell on their skin, then incorporated it into the worshipper’s metabolism as additional energy. They still had to eat—sunlight couldn’t provide enough energy even over a couple of square meters of skin to keep a human going long with no other input—but they claimed that taking a substantial part of their nourishment this way was more natural, and healthier, than old-fashioned eating.

“A couple months ago,” he told her. He held one hand out and looked at it, turning it to admire its tone. “Nothing like it in the universe!”

“Mmm. What are you doing in here, then? I thought you people didn’t like the ‘taste’ of artificial light?”

“Hey, until the sun comes up in another forty hours or so, we take our pleasure where we can. You should try it, sometime, Kara! You’d look fantastic in basic black!”

“Not my style, Geoff. Hard getting enough to eat inside a warstrider.”

“Ah, yeah.Didn’t think of that.” He opened his other hand and extended it, revealing a smooth sphere of polished gold, glistening against the black of his palm. “Take a jolt? Either of you?”

“Kuso,
no!” Kara said, making a face and turning away.

Katya, more diplomatic, shook her head. “Thank you, Geoff. No.”

He grinned. “I’ll be glad to wait while you reset.”

“Listen,” Ran said firmly. “Can’t you see we’re trying to talk?”

His bluntness didn’t seem to bother Geoff. He simply shrugged. “Hey, suit yourselves. I’ll be around if you change your minds.”

There was nothing improper about senspheres… though public attitudes toward them had been changing somewhat since Naga Companions had started becoming popular. Held against the old-style nanogrown palm implants, senspheres generated a mildly stimulating, erotic tingle throughout the body. People with Companions, however, with their skin circuitry and artificial implants absorbed and reformed by their Naga, could set their body’s interpretation of the sensphere’s stimulation to be something considerably more than a euphoric tingle. Companion-linked people who used senspheres had the reputation of being wild and daring sexually.

“Kuso, Mums,” Kara said. “Where did you download
him?”

Instead of answering directly, Katya looked at Ran. “Lieutenant? I wonder if you could get us all something to drink? Icecaf for me.”

“Certainly, Senator. Kara?”

“I’ll have a Columbiarise.”

“Be right back.”

“Take your time,” Katya said. “I need a quick private link with Kara.”

“You know, Mums,” Kara said as Ran walked away. “I really don’t have a lot in common with all of this.” She nodded toward Geoff and a young woman wearing a Companion-grown spray of scarlet feathers. The woman held out her hand, nodding, and Geoff passed the sensphere to her. “With all of
them.”

“I know. Sometimes I don’t mink I have much in common with them either. But it all comes with the job. Come on. Let’s get comfortable.”

Together, they walked out of the atrium and into the conversation room, a circular, comfortably furnished area with a three-step-down pit in the center ringed with soft sofafloor that wasn’t occupied at the moment. Sitting side by side, the two women faced one another, extending their hands.

They touched, hands clasping hands. Katya could sense her Companion reforming part of itself, flowing out through both of her palms to make direct physical contact with Kara’s Naga. With their Companions able to intermesh smoothly with the human CNS to the point of actually becoming part of it, they were, in effect, directly joining their brains.

“This is a lot better,” Kara said in Katya’s thoughts. It was like being in a com module with the words appearing in your mind, but closer,
warmer
somehow. Other people in the room would see them sitting together on the sofafloor, eyes closed, holding hands. Social protocol was specific about such things. They would not be disturbed.

“Yes…”

There was worry in her mother’s thoughts. Kara could taste it, dark and smoky. There were no masks here, in the intimacy of linked minds.

“I should tell you first,” Katya said in her mind. “I… I don’t want you on this mission.”

“Mother, we’ve been through this before. Many times, in fact.” She hesitated. “Damn it, you were in the military. You should understand what it all means if anybody can. The closeness. The
rapport.…
”

“I understand too well. Why do you think I’m so scared? I don’t want to lose you. Like—” She stopped abruptly.

“Like Dev Cameron, you were going to say?”

“Sometimes, daughter, I think there’s a lot of Dev in you, even if Vic was your father. Your humor reminds me of him sometimes.” Katya gave the mental equivalent of a sigh. “Anyway, I needed you to come tonight because I wanted to let you know. Sandstorm is go. You’ll be shipping out tomorrow.”

Kara felt a flash of excitement, a leap behind her breastbone… but she reined it in when she sensed the answering pain in her mother’s mind. “I am glad,” she said. “We’ve been running those sims until I think we’re going to wear out the AIs. We’ve been getting good success rates lately. And low casualties.”

“I know. I’ve been keeping tabs. There’s more. Would you like to know what it is you’re going to Kasei to collect?”

“Of course! Most of the people in First Squadron are betting it’s a prototype for some new Imperial warstrider.” That had been Kara’s guess as well, the only target that really made sense. A raid against Kasei—old Mars—itself was certain to escalate the long-standing chi-war between Empire and Confederation, could easily lead to the all-out conflagration of full-scale, planet-busting interstellar war. Whatever Sandstorm’s objective was, it had to be of vital importance.

“The Imperials,” Katya said, “have probably developed a prototype quantum-messaging device. Instant communication, across any distance.”

Kara said nothing. She couldn’t. The shock of her mother’s words had momentarily stunned her. “An FTL com unit?” she managed at last.

“That’s right. And if we don’t catch up with them on that little piece of high-tech magic, the Confederation stands to lose everything it’s won.
Everything.”

“Mums…” It was difficult holding on to the link. “Mums, do you have any idea how
bad
this could be?”

“The raid? I think I do. Yes.”

“I meant the FTL comm. I was thinking about the Sinclair Doctrine.”

“I’ve been thinking of it too. So have most of the military committee people. That’s why we’ve authorized this raid, why we’re risking a much larger war. Our survival, as a people, as a culture, could be at stake.”

The Declaration of Reason had been written during the war by General Travis Ewell Sinclair both as apologetic and as unifying inspiration for the Confederation’s war of independence. Central to the Declaration was the concept that it was both impractical and immoral for any government to impose its will upon a subject people so far removed from the seat of that government that true representation was impossible. With K-T technology, New America was a three-month round trip from Earth. If an Imperial governor could dispatch a report—or a call for help—and have it acted upon the same day instead of three months later, that government and the power it wielded were suddenly much closer at hand… and far more dangerous.