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the right to claim it under peacetime interstellar law.”
    “Then declare war!” Ranza cried. And this man was supposed to be smart.
    “I’m sorry, Flight Leader.”
    “This kid is mine!”
    “Right now it is,” Rob Roy agreed. “As long as it stays in your body, you have legal control—even to terminate it—”
    “No!”
    “That choice is entirely your own. But once the embryo is in the incubator, you’ve given Rome another citizen.”
    Ranza looked from the Medical Officer to the Legal Officer, helpless. Each wore the same pained sympathetic expression.
    “No,” she said. Went on the offensive. “What makes yous so sure I did a Roman?”
    “Romans always shoot live rounds,” said Rob Roy.
    “He told me he was Italian.”
    Mo Shah said, “The male contributor to this embryo is not being in the League DNA database. That is meaning Roman.”
    “Could be alien,” Ranza suggested. Bet they didn’t think of that, did they? “Ha. So there.”
    Rob Roy gave a faint smile.
    Mo said, “That is not being physically possible. There is being no such thing as ‘alien DNA.’”
    “Then where do little aliens come from?” Ranza said. Got him there.
    But Mo went on, “Aliens are having their own chemistry and their own genomes. ‘DNA’ is being that specific genome unique to life originating on planet Earth.”
    “Sure. Fine,” Ranza said quickly. She didn’t have time for this. She had to get to her post. “I’ll adopt it out.”
    “Transfer the embryo?” Rob Roy asked.
    “Yeah. I can give it up. My mom’ll prefer that anyway.”
    “You may,” Rob Roy said. Sounded awful iffy. “But it has to be to a Roman woman.”
    “No, it doesn’t,” Ranza said.
    Rob Roy never lost patience. “Legally, it does.”
    “I can do it in secret! I won’t tell yous about it.”
    “Flight Leader, these conceptions are never accidental—”
    “Hey! I didn’t know—”
    “—on their part,” Rob Roy clarified. “It’s always intentional on the Roman end. They will be monitoring you—”
    Ranza looked around as if there were Romans in the exam compartment.
    “They will know if an incubator leaves this ship,” Rob Roy said.
    Ever since its declaration of independence from the United States in AD 2290, the Roman Empire had been in constant need of population. Even before the catastrophic losses during the Hive years, Rome needed citizens. These days the bulk of Roman citizenry were still mass-produced. Mom and Dad often never met. Eggs and sperm met in vitro and were born from incubators. And there were also outright clones. Cloning was reserved for the brightest, the strongest, and the most beautiful. Beautiful, because Romans openly acknowledged their love of physical beauty. They claimed the bias was genetic.
    Not to let their breed stagnate, Rome brought in fresh blood any way she could.
    At war’s end there had been two million Roman citizens stranded on Earth. A lot of those Romans were still there—collecting fresh genes for the Roman pool the old-fashioned way before they found their way home.
    Ranza had been one of their targets.
    Rob Roy told her, “There are only three ways to go from here.”
    “Uh,” said Ranza, trying to think. “Can you hit me with those choices again?”
    “You can abort it.”
    “No.”
    “You can give it up to Rome.”
    “No.”
    “You can carry it to term.”
    “You mean have the baby.”
    “Yes.”
    “An American baby?”
    “Yes.”
    “For me to keep?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then I’ll do that.” And to Mo, “So is this a boy or a girl? I ain’t calling it ‘it’ if I’m carrying this kid the full tour.”
    “It is being—” Mo started, stopped. “You are being sure?”
    Once you knew the sex, it was hard to turn back.
    “Yeah,” said Ranza. “Hit me.”
    “You are carrying a boy.”
    “Boy,” she murmured. The hefty Fleet Marine lifted her brows. “My mom’s gonna kill me.”
    “You’ve made your decision?” Rob Roy asked.
    “Yeah.