Chapter 11 – Filles du Roi

Optio Samantha Redburn sat in the Officers' Club, having lunch with Lieutenant Carruthers, the engineer who was in charge of all facilities on Thule.

“So what's this big problem you've got?” he asked, as the scantily clad concubine waitress left with their order.

“Well, I'm supposed to be running a whorehouse,” Samantha began.

The Lieutenant, looking far younger than his 36 years, snorted into his Manhattan. “I bet your mother's proud of that!”

“Like you wouldn't believe,” she confirmed sarcastically. “But to make it brighter for Mom, at least it's a whorehouse without any whores.”

“What? Nobody?”

“At the moment, no.” She sighed. “I got four when that last draft arrived Sunday of last week, two more when that private went nuts on us on Tuesday, gave one of his away to her brother that night, Wednesday had three boys turn 14 and CAP test out at over 6.5 so they took the remaining five. The one boy is still shy a concubine.”

“I'm sure one will pop up with the third draft weekend after this,” the lieutenant reassured her.

“Great, except I don't need just one.”

He flashed her a quizzical glance.

“I have over the next six months, some three hundred boys and girls, mostly boys, coming of age and the AI estimates that of that total, I can expect maybe 20 concubines.” She leaned back, took a swig of her Twilight Dove and made a face. No, she decided, let's not order this mocktail again. She decided she didn't like lavender soda.

“So you need a few girl concubines.”

“I need about five hundred and eighty girl concubines, all unassigned. Notice any ready source of supply around here?” She indicated the elegant creme-white Streamline Moderne dining room, done in a style evoking a restaurant for a four-star hotel from the 1930's. The room was filled with men and women in full-dress officers' uniforms representing all four branches of the Confederacy military, all sipping fancy cocktails and sitting at tables with real cloth napkins and gleaming cutlery and glassware that matched the room's retro style. The only concubines present were already owned by somebody else, functioning as waitresses and bartenders, and dressed up in costumes based on the one worn by Josephine Baker in her Danse Banane, only skimpier.

“OK, I'll concede you have a challenge.”

“Yes, it's a challenge all right. Do you have anything in the way of a solution?”

Lieutenant Carruthers leaned back in his chair and took another swig of his cocktail. “The Office of Targeted Extractions.”

“The what?”

“Targeted Extractions. It's this tiny department that's officially attached to DECO, but operates fairly independently. It's small but stuffed full of oddballs. They're headed by this completely off-the-wall Decurion named Whitefeather – apparently the Old Man and him go back aways.” He took another sip of his Manhattan. “That's the crew that snagged your dad. If anyone can help, they can.”

“So I should talk to the Colonel, then.”

“Yep. Well, as Governor and as senior military officer, it's his problem as much as it is yours. Get the Old Man involved.”

“I probably already am involved,” advised a voice from behind the Lieutenant.

“Oops,” Carruthers whispered. “Colonel, Sir, may I get you a drink?”

“Thank you Carruthers, I'll have a Bronx.”

“Very good, Sir.” The lieutenant gestured to the waitress.

Two days later, a high-speed supraluminal message drone showed up in the Thuleat system – not the routine weekly message drone, carrying routine messages between Earthat and the colony, but a special courier. It triggered a special meeting, in which every officer and NCO was “invited” to participate, and further “invited” to bring one concubine, preferably their straw boss. In order to accommodate all the bodies, the Junior Ranks Club was persuaded to offer their facilities.

Bob's pod was the only one with 100% attendance from his pod: Samantha's Aunt Alice got in under the young CS officer's ticket. Even the usually unflappable Alice felt a little overwhelmed surrounded as she was by almost every NCO and officer in the Brigade, and other services besides.

Each table was served coffee or tea – no cocktails – and glasses of water. Most of the concubines wore their shifts, although a few scattered through the crowd were wearing different apparel. The Colonel's (former) wife wore a string of pearls and her “hooker heel” shoes, with her hair up in a fancy wave... and that was pretty well it.

As the noise died down, Michael stood up and strode to the podium. “We have been chosen for a unique honour,” he announced to the assembled throng, using his lapel device to project his voice rather than an old-fashioned microphone. “A special operation is under way, and we are the lucky recipients of the fruits of their labour.

“I refer to the Office of Targeted Extractions.” The enormous wall behind him lit up with the title, “Operation: Filles du Roi”

The crowd erupted in surprise. If the Office of Targeted Extractions was involved this wasn't military, necessarily, but it certainly held potential to be interesting.

“The name translates into English as 'The King's Daughters'. Let's talk about the background behind that name. Prior to 1663, the King of France and his advisers regarded New France as an outpost rather than a true colony, and had allowed the local population to be largely voyageurs, soldiers and priests – men, in other words. The few women present had had to pay their own way to get there and therefore most of them were either indentured servants or nuns.

“In that year, they realized that with the expanding English colonies along the Atlantic coast, they needed to treat New France less as an outpost and more as a true colony, and that meant families with children.” He paused for dramatic effect.

“And that meant women.”

A number of his men raised their water tumblers – “To women!”

“Over the next ten years, a number of young ladies, aged from twelve to nineteen, were sponsored by the King. He paid their passage, they were to go over and get married. In the end, somewhere between 700 and 900 of what were referred to as 'the King's daughters' went to the New World. They were ladies, primarily from poor but honest peasant stock, used to hard work but also with a decent set of morals – only one out of all those hundreds was ever charged with being a prostitute. Some died, some never made it out of France before they changed their minds, and a small handful returned to Europe without marrying, but the vast majority did get married, did have kids and did work the family farms. Many of today's Quebec population have at least some blood of a King's Daughter in them.”

On cue, his second-in-command asked the pertinent question that was on everyone's minds. “And Sir, this relates to Thule... how, exactly?”

“The first draft, roughly a thousand sponsors, were drawn from a hockey tournament. Their offspring are overwhelmingly sponsor class. The AI's and young Optio Redburn...”

Here he had to pause for a moment as the room erupted into thunderous applause and shouts of “Hear, hear!” Her stunt the previous week fending off a man with a Marine standard package and the rage of a bull elephant on crack still inspired awe, and she found herself blushing.

“...have confirmed that we can expect some 280 or so sponsor-class fourteen-year-olds over the next couple of months, and only about 20 newly matured concubines. We've already dried up our concubine pool. To fill their concubine needs, we are looking at somehow scaring up some 580 unattached concubines.”

A number of people whistled mournfully at the number.

“So, we have an old friend coming.”

“Santa Claus?” suggested one wag.

“No, close though. Very close: the colony ship Aurora. It's making a special run. Its pods will be configured to hold two over-17-year-old concubines and four under-18-year-olds, plus any dependants they've managed to acquire, for a total of 576 concubines.”

“And just where did they magically acquire some 576 concubines?” Lieutenant-Colonel Waterman wanted to know.

“Well, that's the next point in our torrid little tale. The teens are technically orphans – they are sponsors' and concubines' daughters who weren't with their parents to be picked up. They have no other relatives left on Earth, or no close ones anyway, and had been living in Confederacy-funded facilities as they continued their education and tried to keep going with a normal or near-normal life until they could wangle a ticket to the stars. Such a ticket is not guaranteed because their scores were less than sponsor-class, but still the hope remained.”

“And did His Royal Highness the Sun King tell us exactly when the Aurora was due to arrive?” enquired a mildly amused Lieutenant-Colonel Desrocher.

“Next Friday,” came the bald response from the Old Man.

“Next Friday?” screamed Samantha. “Oh, god – the Pisces Clipper!”

“What about the Pisces Clipper?” demanded her father.

“It's coming in on Saturday. On Friday I get to stickhandle 576 unassigned concubines for the next six months – and the very next day 1,024 more families are showing up.” Samantha was on the verge of despair.

“Now, as you can see from the numbers our CS officer has just related, she is in for a hell of a lot of work,” Michael announced. “I'm perfectly aware that I'm stating the obvious, however sometimes to solve the problem it helps to define it first. We're going to use, some might say ruthlessly abuse, our straw bosses. We'll assign the families through the battalions, and the corporals and sergeants will instruct their head concubines to take the families of the newcomers under their wing. We'll scatter the newcomers throughout the battalions fairly evenly. As far as the King's Daughters issue goes, we'll handle that at the officer level. They'll still sleep in the unassigned concubine quarters and work at whatever Optio Redburn assigns them to do, but our concubines will see to it that they're made welcome.”

As the meeting ended and the party began, Samantha had a favour to ask of her father. “Daddy, I need you to ask Lieutenant Carruthers over here immediately, if you could.”

“Why don't you?” he asked.

“It's gotten a little noisy in here, and I still don't have a subvocalization implant, remember? I'm still under age, dammit!”

Every once in awhile Bob was forcibly reminded that his daughter, despite the adult uniform she wore, despite the adult responsibilities that she handled so maturely, despite the sixty-nines that she joyfully dragged her willing aunt and reluctant mother into, was not quite yet a full adult. This was one of those times. His mind replaying the lovemaking the four of them had enjoyed last night, he subvocally called Lieutenant Carruthers over to their table.

Carruthers escorted a gorgeous blond bombshell with Marilyn Monroe curly locks and wearing... “What are you wearing?” Samantha demanded. It looked like mighty thin cloth...

The concubine struck a coquettish pose, her unfettered breasts swaying pertly. “Glitter!”

...or not cloth at all....

“You called?” the Lieutenant asked.

“Yes,” Samantha confirmed, ripping her gaze unwillingly from the delightful sight. “About those Filles du Roi...”

“Yes?”

“There are 576 of them...” Samantha pointed out.

“Yes?”

“I've got space for about fifty people in the Unassigned Concubine Quarters, including dependants.”

“Yes,” Lieutenant Carruthers conceded, “I can see how that could prove a problem.” He took a highball from the concubine waitress as she passed. “We'll meet tomorrow morning and solve it.”