The war had ended, eventually, with the USNA now independent of Geneva and the Terran Confederation. It had been a costlyvictory, however. Tens of millions had been vaporized in Columbus; the exact number, likely, would never be known.
Around Gray, the New City was still rising from the ruins, as nanoconstructors rearranged the atoms of dirt and rock and brokenrubble (and, likely, bodies) to create gleaming new structures rising above the lake and encircling parkland. The place wasbeautiful now, as the late-morning sun filtered through rising clouds of mist, creating a bright rainbow deep within the crater.One would never guess that the temperature of the lake itself was still close to boiling even now, several years later, andthat much of that picturesque rising mist was steam. When the Pan-Euro warheads had struck, every molecule of pavement orbuilding or bedrock or person had been split into its component atoms, yielding heat . . . a very great deal of heat, andthe crater would be cooling for a long time to come.
Gray wondered why Alexander Koenig had asked him to come here this morning. He’d been in Washington, D.C., preparing a talkhe would give in front of the House Appropriations Committee, when the in-head message had come through. And when the formerPresident of the USNA asks a favor of you, you do it. He’d had to catch a suborbital shuttle to be in central Columbus ontime.
A perfect hurry-up-and-wait scenario. He didn’t see Koenig, and Koenig hadn’t responded to his message that he’d arrived, so he studied the rising architecture of the New City, as it was popularly known, killing time until Koenig made the next move. On the far side of the crater, a brand-new skyscraper already reared its angled surfaces into the clouds, as robotic construction molds moved over the surface, applying nano and raw materials.
For Gray, however, it was the people who were the most interesting. There were crowds of them, with a diversity that strained the limits of any definition of whatit meant to be human. A majority were . . . human, fully human, that is, but many showed a range of gene mods, cybernetic enhancements, and organic prostheses. He watched a youngwoman walking along the promenade, fully nude but covered, head to toe, in animated tattoos that made her skin wink and flashand pop with abstract designs. The young man with her sported an extra pair of arms hanging from his sides. Likely, they’dbeen grown from some of his own tissue and grafted in place at a fast-doc outlet somewhere. They appeared fully functional,though, as he caressed his companion’s back and hip with two right hands, so they’d rewired his central nervous system aswell.
The naked minotaur was just . . . disturbing, a celebration of testosterone. Gray hoped that the expression of those bull-humangenes was temporary, a costume rather than something permanent.
Why the hell had Koenig brought him here? He was in uniform and felt as visibly out of place as a tarantula on a dinner plate.
“Drune!” a young voice said behind him. “An admiral! Whatcha doin’ here, Ad?”
“I wish I knew,” he said, turning. “I . . .”
He stopped when he saw her. She was pretty enough . . . except that she’d had a chunk carved out of her face right at thebridge of her nose, and a living third eye implanted in the hole. It winked at him.
“I . . . ah . . .”
Gray was completely at a loss for words. He knew lots of people went in for body mods nowadays, and his take on it was hey,it’s their body, they can do what they like. But in the USNA Navy, he was more or less protected from this sort of thing.Heavy body mods, especially organic prostheses, were discouraged in military service, and you rarely saw anything this extreme.
His mind could only circle around one key question: Why?
At first he thought she was in uniform, but then he realized the rank tabs and decoration bars and holographic mission patcheswere all wrong. She was wearing both a sergeant’s chevrons and a captain’s bars. That made her a poser, someone who wore the garb but had never been there.
Gray didn’t like posers—they were riding the prestige of men and women who’d actually served—and normally he would have turnedaway and ignored her, but he was fascinated by that third eye. “Can . . . can you see with that?” he asked.
“Nah. Couldn’t afford the neurals. But it’s warpin’ drune, innit?”
“That would be one word for it.”
She theatrically rolled that one eye, closing the other two to give her the momentary look of a cyclops.
“So whatcha doin’ here, Admiral?” Her hand extended toward his chest as though to touch him, but he stepped backward to avoidit. She had a distractingly erotic way of shifting her hips, and he wondered if she was available for hire.
Not that he was interested. Not a poser.
“Meeting someone.”
He noticed she had a crusty discharge around the eyeball itself, tinged with red. Was it supposed to be like that? He doubted it.
“Drune. Me . . . I’m into military and kink.” She said it as if it were a life-changing accomplishment. “My name is Jo, by the way. Jo de Sailles.” She pronounced it de-Sails, and he wondered if the mangled French was an affectation, was butchered upon immigration, or was simple ignorance. She heldout her hand, but Gray ignored it. There were nano infections that could be passed on by touch, and Jo just might be settinghim up for a mugging, or something more sinister.
Instead, he gave her the slightest of bows. “Charmed.”
“And I like military types. A lot. We could go back to my place . . .”
The thought of taking a three-eyed woman to bed, of lying there with her face inches from his own, made Gray feel just a bitqueasy.
“I don’t think so, miss,” he said. “I . . . ah . . . think you may have an infection in your middle eye, and a little bleeding.You should have that seen to.”
“Shit,” she said, rubbing at the offending organ. “Cheap fast-doc, y’load?”
“I . . . load. A quick shot of medinano’ll fix you right up.”
He took the opportunity to
