Chapter 5

Volunteers (TY12-month 135)

I’d passed my probationary period without really remarking on it. We managed to recruit more drones into the Militia even though the work was no better than being a slave to a sponsor. There was a little more independence, but not much. Being master of your own home, though, was attractive.

And that was a stretch for some of the people who enlisted. Sadly, we discharged about one out of ten who simply weren’t suited for the Militia. They came to us thinking they would have a life of leisure like they mistakenly thought sponsors lived. When they found out it would be two years before they were fully vested in planetary citizenship and could have their own concubines, suddenly wading through a shallow lake collecting the floating green algae for processing into fertilizer didn’t seem like a better deal than being a sex slave.

Which reminded me, I was qualified for two concubines but hadn’t considered them at all. Rika and I continued to satisfy each other on a regular basis, even though she was now stationed at Oasis and had taken two concubines herself.

My third year in the planetary Militia was comparatively quiet. That was fine by me. I’d had enough excitement in my first two years. I envisioned Militia service as a time of hard work, but not one of constant emergencies.

Valerie Hodges narrowly missed being dismissed. Her initial attitude was that she would stay in the Militia through her two years probationary period so Donald couldn’t just claim her and then she’d resign from the Militia and take her chances with a new owner. Donald, however, had gone through retest and fell below his previous 7.0. He was punished by losing another of his concubines. He was no longer eligible to reclaim Hodges. By the end of her first year in the Militia, she’d invested enough in her independence that she wanted to maintain it. Once her attitude improved, she was no longer on the verge of being discharged. I selected her for my administrative staff and she was doing a good job keeping my office running.

Nearly all fourteen-year-olds who tested above 6.5 left Tara to enlist in either the Marines or Navy or Fleet Auxiliary now. The invasion of Earth and news reports of the battle were inspiring enlistment. In two years, we would begin to see younger kids, born on Tara, turning fourteen. To those kids, there was little connection to Earth and Tara was out of harm’s way. Working on a farm from age four to fourteen didn’t really prepare people to go out and save the Confederacy. I wondered how that would affect our numbers of volunteers.

Some of the new sponsors who left took a concubine or two with them and others decided to try their luck on a different world altogether. It was rumored that some colonies were almost overrun with concubines already due to battle losses but others had such a high rate of sponsor conversion on fourteenth birthdays that they were importing concubines from wherever they could get them. The Civil Service was working hard to place concubines with new sponsors, but new extraction programs running from Earth were just taking concubines and dependents. Every ship of Filles du Roi raised the concubine to sponsor ratio. The dependent ratio was out of sight. [See Frozen Chosen II by lordshipmayhem]

We received a partial shipload of Kindertransport. [See Kindertransport by Zipper D Dude] The ship was dropping some of its load at each of several colonies. There were about thirty concubines and a couple hundred dependents in that load. We worked hard to place them with sponsors, but several still were absorbed into the available concubine pool managed by Centurion Oswald. We had to turn down half a dozen volunteers for the Militia because they had primary responsibility for several dependents. We started talking about building an orphanage.

I worked with all the new recruits at Drovers Run. I still led most of the PT sessions early in the morning but some of the recruits would simply never be able to hold a gun or defend themselves with martial arts. There was no limit, however, to sending entire outfits into the fields at harvest time or out to work on terraforming a new site near a township for farming. Many of the male concubines, who arrived with male sponsors in our fading number of immigrants from Earth, immediately went to the recruiting office and bid their sponsors goodbye. Fewer of the female concubines took the option and we turned away many who did attempt to enlist because they were already pregnant. Hard reality.

The two-year probationary period before a new Militia member became a full citizen and could claim concubines was a long time for some comrades to wait. But we did have brothels and it wasn’t unusual for us to spend time at one on the weekend. Some of the recruits also developed favorites who tended to favor them.

One guy came back to base on Saturday spoiling for a fight. I’m glad he didn’t try anything off base, but he came at me with both hands flying. I really hate having to fight my own men because they’re upset about something. This guy had just returned from two months in Drylanders patrolling the borders and I hadn’t had much of a chance to talk to him yet. He was really pissed, though, and seemed to think I was to blame for something. I tried not to hurt him but he ended up knocked out for about two minutes while I dragged his ass to a med tube.

When the tube opened after about three minutes, he sat up and scowled at me.

“Talk,” I commanded. He grunted a bit but finally made words I could hear and understand.

“You sent me to Drylanders.”

“Everybody does a rotation at Drylanders. They’re only two months now. We started with three-month rotations.”

“It was too long. She didn’t wait for me.”

“What? Who?”

“Sally. I’ve been seeing her every week at Simone’s Pleasure House. She’s why I joined the Militia. She was going to be my concubine. But while I was gone, she went off with some damned rancher from Cold Comfort,” he said sullenly. There were tears in his eyes. “She said she’d wait for me.”

“Damn. I’m sorry to hear that. You know sometimes a concubine has to take her chances. There aren’t many opportunities on Tara. You should be glad she got a good sponsor.”

I couldn’t believe I actually said that shit. It was just one more reason to hate the Confederacy and sponsors who tore up people’s families. She could have waited, but the reality was she’d have spent another year and a half on her back for the Marines and bored farmers before Comrade Cass would qualify for concubines. The two years was too long for Sally to wait when there were good offers on the table. Or even adequate offers. I wondered if Comrade Cass would stick it out now or if he’d resign and go back to the concubine pool. He was usually a nice guy but not the sharpest tool in the shed.

“I’m staying. But I’m not going to offer to take her as a concubine if she gets tossed back in the pool. A guy’s got to have loyalty in his concubines. He can’t be wondering if she’ll still be there when he gets home at night. Sorry I took it out on you, Officer.”

“You owe me time on algae duty for that. You’ll be harvesting at Lake Genoa for the next four weeks. Learn to hold your temper.”

“Yes, sir.”

Personally, I was happier just inviting Rika over on the weekend. Sometimes she brought one of her concubines with her. We didn’t pretend we were life mates or that one of us owned the other. The idea that we’d combine households lasted about as long as our first weekend together. The sex was great. I loved her lithe body. We’d taken endurance enhancements and could fuck each other for hours. One of us usually lost interest in it before our bodies had worn out. But living together wasn’t in the cards. There was too much personality there for one household.

I visited Simone’s occasionally and the girls were friendly. It seemed like they always had something else on their minds, though. Money didn’t change hands in our society, but a girl who’s selling her body expects to get something valuable in return. She was always on the hunt for a permanent meal ticket. I understood ‘Sally’ going off with a rancher when she had the opportunity. There was no retirement plan for whores.

I spent my evening learning all I could about the population projections for Tara and thinking about what we could do. Our new adults were testing at only about six percent becoming sponsors. It was improving, but we weren’t going to have anywhere near enough sponsors for the concubines with a fifteen-to-one ratio of new concubines to new sponsors. As much as I hated the Confederacy generally, I also recognized that the only way to have true freedom was by becoming a sponsor. We needed to improve our test results.

I also needed to expand the recruiting program and that meant finding more places to use the Militia. No one wanted fifty thousand bored concubines with weapons running around.

I could sympathize with the idea of rebellion. One day, I’d be happy to lead in the overthrow of the whole sponsor/concubine culture. But not today. Today, the AIs had a death hold on us. As much agriculture as we had, most of our meals still came from replicators. Our health was monitored by med tubes and nanites. Manufacturing was done by robots. It was almost as if the AIs wanted us all in enforced idleness. We needed some old-fashioned industry and rewarding work for the vast number of slaves that would soon inhabit Tara.

Planning for the Future (TY12-month 138)

“Cricket, can you tell me how things are on Earth?” I asked aloud.

“The war is being hard-fought,” my AI quoted from the released news. I already knew that. I wanted something more specific. It wasn’t that news from Earthat was being censored, but only broad reports were being released. Earth had been invaded multiple times. Battles in Earthat space had been devastating to our forces and the Sa’arm had landed on nearly every continent. But we didn’t know how the war on land was going.

“Do you have any information about my father?” I sighed. It had been five years since I received the one and only letter from my father. I’d written to him a dozen times but had no idea if any of my letters actually reached him. “Is he fighting the Swarm?”

“Captain Seol-woo Cho is in the North American Defense Force engaging the Sa’arm at the edge of the occupied territory on the United States/Canadian border. I’m afraid that was all the information I could glean from the last evacuation ship that arrived,” Cricket responded.

“Thank you for searching,” I said. I moved my knight to Q4 and Cricket actually had to pause to consider his next move.

“You are not the only one requesting information about family left on Earth. The Earthat AIs try to glean as much information about friends and families of the immigrants on any planet a ship is bound to. Often, however, the only information maintained is where a defender was last deployed.” He moved his bishop in to intercept my knight. “Checkmate in seven moves.”

I tipped over my king and conceded.

“We need more recruits and more jobs for them.”

“Drovers Run base has already expanded the number of manual jobs by reducing use of the replicators and nanites. Cooking and cleaning are now done by the comrades.”

“We have ninety-five comrades on base and fifty-one new recruits. In the past year we’ve sent another one hundred trained comrades to be stationed under Deputy Kramer and Officer Wilson. Their ranks are nearly full now. We need to deploy more trained cadres so we have room for more here.”

“There were 198 comrades and recruits on base when Deputy Kramer moved his company headquarters to Cold Comfort and Officer Wilson moved his outfit to Green Acres. We are not nearly at capacity.”

“No, we aren’t. But we aren’t preparing more bases for the future. We do a lot of patrolling around Drylanders because of its unique position between the future harbor and the growing forest. I’d like to put a base there. I could staff a lot of positions between border patrol and building the harbor.”

“I’m sorry to state a negative reaction to your plan,” Cricket said. “You do not have the authority to create a base and move cadres.”

“No. I’ll need Deputy Kramer and Director Kotter to issue the orders. Then I can execute them. I want to go to them with a plan they can review and approve, not ask them for a plan. They have too much on their plates to spend time on something so speculative.” I reached for a tablet and called up a terrain map of Drylanders. It was the newest and farthest outpost on Tara but already had a population of nearly 100,000. “What’s the population breakout at Drylanders?”