Corporal Job frowned as he watched the update on the vidscreen mounted to the wall of the general's private quarters. The news from the Kuiper asteroid belt wasn't good, as usual. The Drinkers had developed a new weapons array, as usual. Many lives had been lost in the initial assault near Neptune, as usual. But scientists were busy at work on new defense strategies, as usual. While victory was not yet assured, the inhabitants of Earth would most assuredly live to fight another day. As usual.
The girl continued to thrash on the floor on the other side of the general's desk, but the extra straps seemed to be sufficient for the time being.
"Any minute now," he said to her sheet-wrapped body. It wasn't normal for the general to run late. Precision and punctuality were core chains in every officer's genetic code, including his own. As well as less obvious DNA strands
Job granted his mind the rare privilege of wandering, and wondered if he would live long enough to be promoted to a command assignment. He could get used to this level of personal accommodations. Not to mention the fringe benefits, he noted as the girl screamed uselessly into her gag.
Not much had changed in his lifetime. Almost a century had passed since the arrival of the Drinkers. Make that "inescapable presence became known," he corrected himself, since they had been lurking around Earth for thousands of years. But most people had been blissfully ignorant until that fateful day in 2005 when the old governments confessed everything. The pyramids. Stonehenge. Crop circles. Roswell. UFOs. All true.
The feds had long known that something was out there, and that something was very interested in this particular planet. But it wasn't until their gigantic tanker parked itself over the Atlantic Ocean and started sucking that they finally understood.
He clicked the screen to "receive," then stood up and stretched. Coated in white linen from head to feet, the girl looked uncannily like the old-fashioned missile that had taken down the first tanker. It had been a day more infamous than every political assassination and terrorist attack combined; the suddenly-united militaries of the world tried to communicate with the extraterrestrial visitors, but received no response except more thick cylinders snaking down from the hull of their tanker into the sea. Finally, a pilot from what used to be called China got anxious and fired a Vympel air-to-air at the huge spaceship, which promptly exploded into a billion shards of whatever had been holding it together.
Unlike the leather belts cinched tight up and down the length of her body. Why upgrade things that worked just fine? Especially when there was so much that desperately needed to be invented. Like an antidote to the global warming the Drinkers had unleashed in the 1970s. Scientists reasoned that ice was just too difficult to load.
Bored, Job picked up the girl's scancard again and stuck it into the viewslot on the general's desk. Nineteen years old; bred once; breasts too small to be a successful Milker; reassigned to the front lines as an anal Comforter; caught trying to escape the transport before it departed for Mars, which resulted in an immediate "non-essential" designation...in other words, your basic organ cow.
"Lucky you," Job deadpanned to the squirming tube of cloth-entombed flesh on the floor. "You got yourself a sugar daddy who thinks your kidneys are more useful inside you."
Officers like him and the general literally had the weight of the world on their shoulders. And they couldn't help their genetic code. In fact, biologists had drawn a direct link between military leadership and the overwhelming need to dominate sexual partners. What they used to revile as "deviant" was now a much-desired character trait. DNA research also helped identify people who were predisposed to submit to such acts, so everyone who chose that particular file in the folder went back to work smiling.
"Corporal Job, please acknowledge and reply," the wall speaker bleated as the vidscreen flashed back to life.
"Corporal Job, present," he spoke crisply to the image of a colonel he couldn't place. Must have just rotated onto the general's staff. Poor bastard was probably orchestrating recon missions around Europa, although they surmised that the Drinkers had drained whatever water had been on that particular moon of Jupiter centuries ago.
"The general wishes me to convey his regret that circumstances beyond our control will prohibit a timely arrival at his personal quarters. He also asked me to inquire of the condition of his package."
"Still wrapped, colonel," Job responded.
"Very good, Corporal Job. The general requests that you attend to any physical requirements of the contents while awaiting his arrival at 2200 hours."
Job sneaked a glance at the clock on the wall that read 1138.
"Ten-four, colonel."
"Carry on, Corporal Job. Out."
Ten fucking hours. Oh well, Job figured it could be much worse. The general lacked for nothing in terms of creature comforts. Then again, nobody really did. Nobody male, anyway.
He shuddered as he imagined what happened in the breeding centers. It had been decades since women had been given complete control of the process. Sperm was carefully harvested from superior donors, but that was as close as men got. As children, they were indoctrinated with the same fairy tales about pride and duty and necessity in the face of global adversity. Everyone has a special talent. Girls make babies. Boys died, unless they were predisposed to order men to their inevitable deaths. The prime directive, like they used to say in that old television show, the one where the aliens at least had faces.
Job had always heard the rumors about the general's collection of antique implements, the ones that got him banned from even the most lenient pleasure stations. But someone somewhere had decided that refusing his urges could lead to clouded judgment under pressure. So they set him up with a private Comforter. Even though exclusive personal relationships were rarer than an uncorked bottle of pre-synthesis wine.
He started opening cabinets at random. Some casual clothes. A collection of books on paper. Several antique riding crops, the kind military commanders used to carry even in the 20th century when horses had already begun their slow descent into extinction. Job had been taught that natural leaders had always carried the gene, even when it hadn't been socially acceptable. Not like today, where sexual cruelty was a one-way ticket to what passed for royalty in their supposedly-classless society.
Must be getting warm, Job thought when he found a neatly-organized bin of old-fashioned padlocks in the next drawer. He picked one up and admired its mechanical simplicity. Self-sealing metal was certainly more trustworthy, but there was something to be said for the old ways.
