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Originally posted on the S.M. Stirling discussion group at egroups.com (now Yahoo! Groups) as message #16446, saved 1999-10-06.
Disclaimer : Chapter 1 : Chapter 2 : Editor's Notes
Subject: Here's a cleaned up version, plus chapter two.
From: Ben Breeck
To stirling group: Here's a cleaned up version, plus chapter two.
I did some editing on it, as per Anne-Marie's suggestions. BTW, Anne-Marie, could you send this to Mr. Stirling for his OK?
Anyone else with comments?
Disclaimer: Draka, Domination of the Draka, and all related persons, places and symbols, especially the chest shielded red dragon holding sword and shackle, are copyrights and/or registered trademarks of S. M. Stirling and Baen Books. Merovence, Matthew Mantrell, and all related material are copyrights and/or registered trademarks of Christopher Stasheff. The geography of the afterlife used in this story is taken straight from TSR universe of Planescape and is a registered trademark thereof and of E. Gary Gygax, Wizards of the Coast, and Hasbro. The following story is not to be construed as challenging said copyrights and trademarks.
Permission is granted to reproduce this story in any way, shape, or form so long as this disclaimer is kept intact and no one is financially remunerated except S. M. Stirling, Christopher Stasheff, E. Gary Gygax, Wizards of the Coast, or Hasbro, Inc.
Historian's Note: The following fan fiction takes place in substitution of the events of Drakon. In the universe of Merovence, they take place one year after the events of My Son the Wizard. Also, the mechanics of melee combat have been altered from those used by Stasheff: there is no magically bestowed proficiency in swords except on the wielder of an intelligent sword, and sport-fencing techniques have no special advantage over actual medieval sword arts.
Domination Timeline
Earth 1
May 21, 442nd Year of the Final Society
(Anno Domini 2442)
Gwendolyn Ingolfsson walked off the blue-and-yellow shuttle ramp and inhaled. It had been an exciting vacation at Mars' Dinodome. Too exciting, really. At one point, the raptors had ripped across her belly and nearly penetrated her subdermal armor. Thankfully, her latest makeover insured that she healed up in only six hours.
At least they're not as smart or as well armed as bushmen, she thought. She had lost her darling Alois on that trip almost three hundred years ago when they were hunting hillbillies in Eastern Kentucky. Lots had changed since then. Her great-grandchildren had grown up, Mars Terraforming was completed, and there was that minor feud with the Greisendorfers. Actually, there was only one Greisendorfer who had caused problems with her and her kin, but it had felt like all of them had.
She forced herself from that. The day was beautiful. A light wind was blowing off the sea. Of course, on an island, what other sort place could the wind be blowing from? The concrete pavement led to the largest and indeed only building on this island. At one time, before the Final Society, it had been known as Jersey. Now, it was referred to as Air Strip One, an ironic tribute to an old Pre-Final Society writer who had hated everything the Domination had stood for, back when it's master race was still completely human. He probably would have hated it even worse now.
Part of Gwen had wanted to check on her ganja farms in what used to have been Colombia, but the message she had gotten had been urgent. She reached the door of the building and stopped.
"Please place your right palm on the blue glass grid," said a pleasant male voice. Gwen smiled as she did so, thinking about how far voice synthesis had progressed from when she had been a child. She had designed this particular system herself. The Grid went green. Part one of the verification was complete.
"Please look at the scanner and identify yourself, my dear," the voiced continued, in a more seductive tone.
Focusing on the light so that it could read her retinas, Gwen said, "I am Gwendolyn Ingolffson, love you too."
Parts two and three were complete. The huge lock chunked home. Getting a big grip on the door, which weighed as much as any bank vault door, Gwen pulled it open, entered it and allowed it to slam shut behind her, making a profound clompk.
Inside, she was assaulted with stainless steel white, blank monitor gray, and blue highlighting. The background noise had a few occasional beeps and boops. The smell of ozone, at a level barely perceptible to an archaic human, assaulted her nose. She walked into the elevator and pressed the down button. The door closed.
Suddenly, she felt extraordinarily light, and her stomach was falling. A normal human might have screamed in fright, but not Gwen. The sensation lasted an hour if it lasted a second, but it was over as fast as it started. The elevator doors opened again.
There, in front of a console, was the person who had made the call, flanked by two assistants and two Ghouloon guards with wicked looking plasma guns. Gwen smiled at both. Tolya's family had been an Ingolfsson family possession for generations. Tolya had left Gwen's service to become a pet scientist for Technical Section with Gwen's blessing. The fact that there were no drakensis standing over her or her team, breathing down their necks, was a testament to Tolya's trustworthiness.
"Tolya, my dear, how are you doin'? I got your message and came over quick as I could. Something about the moleholes? You know how angry I can get at false alarms and other trifles, don't you?"
"Yes, Overlord. You see, The Samothracians have been experimenting with moleholes and so far, we haven't been able to open them very wide. When we try too hard, the molehole collapses in an incredible explosion."
"What happens to the objects in transit?" demanded Gwen.
"Well, it it's a type two, the object is snipped off. Presumably the other portion was dangling at the other side. If it's a type two and the object was stuck inside before it could get to the end? Well, we don't know. There's simply no trace of it ever again."
Gwen grunted. The Samothracians were the descendants of American settlers who had made the trip to Alpha Centauri after losing the Final War. By the time the Domination had recovered, their descendants had fortified that system so thoroughly that any attack by either party could easily be repulsed. As a result, combat consisted of exchanging taunts back and forth at four-year intervals.
Recently, though, new developments, or at least new from the point of view of immortal beings like the Draka New Race, had become cause for concern. The Samothracians were experimenting with new drive systems. One could drop an object into a molehole, and depending on the type of molehole it could reach its destination either shortly or instantly. It didn't matter if it was across the room or across the galaxy. It wasn't a perfect system. For one thing, it wasn't an objective superluminal process. If you went through a four light year long hole, four years will have happened for everyone but you. Of course, if you went back through the hole, you went back in time, too. There were a few strange limits, though. You couldn't go back before it formed. And if you tried to go through one end after the other closed, tough shit.
Of course, it had been the Samothracians who started this line of research. They were much farther along that the Draka. It was only through the sheerest of accidents that the Draka had discovered what the experiments were about. In all likelihood, the Samothracians were planning a massive attack even as they were speaking.
"I take it then that you are trying here on earth? Why?"
"Because, Overlord, we believe that it may be easier here in a gravity well. This has the approval of the Archon himself."
"So my grandson signed off on this," mused Gwen, "Well, it had better work. When is the next test?"
"In a couple hours, Overlord," answered Tolya, "Everything is set up. In theory, I could press this keyswitch and the test would run itself."
"Excellent, Tolya. Now, let's you and me and your assistants go over to that couch and have some fun."
Tolya and her assistants, twins, one male and one female, smiled beatifically.
The nicest thing about homo servus was their attitudes. They had none. Gwen though about how much her still human ancestors would have envied her, the way the Final Society had had no more serf rebellions. Even better was their instinctual knowledge of bedroom technique. No need to train them that way either.
***
"So lets fire this baby up," said Gwen.
"Yes, Overlord." Tolya ordered the two assistants, "Prepare the molehole generator."
There was a buzz and a crackle and a whirr as machines came on.
"Initializing field," said the male assistant, whose name was Trent.
"Bringing safety capacitors on line," said the female assistant, whose name was Janet.
"Charging Generator. Generator Charged," said Trent.
"Good," said Tolya, "Activate generator."
"Generator activated," said Trent.
"Molehole at one nanometer," said Janet. She was speaking of the diameter of it.
"Increase it to one micron," said Tolya.
"Molehole at one micron."
"Increase it to one millimeter."
"Increase it to one centimeter."
"Molehole at one centimeter."
Then Gwen began to see it over at the plexiglass box. It was beautiful, motes swirling blue and green, with a dark purple center and a light red border.
Suddenly a warning klaxon went off, a regular, loud rrrh rrrh rrrh rrrh!
"What's going on?" Chorused Tolya and Gwen.
"The power is being consumed at unpredictably high rates," said a very concerned Janet. "The generator is eating more than a member of the Master Race." A look of extreme terror suddenly crossed her face and she looked at Gwen, "No offense meant."
"None taken," Gwen breathed quickly.
"Molehole's fluctuating," said Trent.
"Shut everything down, now," said Tolya in the closest approximation of a top-of-her-lungs scream as a servus could get.
"Get everybody and get out of here," said Gwen. Technically, they were more expendable than she was, but they actually knew what was going on, and their report would make much more sense.
As the serf scientists and technicians were pouring into the elevators, the molehole visibly vibrated. The plexiglass shattered with the sound of a report of an ancient slug thrower pistol.
Gwen turned her head.
Everything went white.
***
"Looks like they almost got it to work," said the Captain.
Captain Marjorie Starns, SSSN, was nominally in charge of the Samothrace System Republic Star Ship Frederick Douglass. Nominally, because the engineer had more actual shipboard experience than her, and because he actually knew how the molehole generator worked.
She was referring to the latest attempt by the Snakes to create a working molehole. That event wave must have come from the Earth itself. Apparently they were now experimenting in gravity wells.
"Yes. English Channel, maybe," said her executive officer, Lyle Adumsen.
More data scrolled onto the screen. "And God just let Hitler, Stalin, and Gaynor out of Hell for good behavior," Adumsen swore, "they just made contact with another Earth!"
"What?", demanded the Captain.
"According to this, the displacement was vertically a millennium backward, give or take fifty years, but the horizontal displacement was immeasurably far."
"How far?"
"So far, the physical laws are somewhat different. I can't tell you what those differences are, just that the laws are different," said Adumsen.
"Do you want to wake up Menendez and have him thaw out Lafarge?"
"No, not really. On that Earth, intelligent life could have arisen from slugs, octopi, or even not arisen at all. For all we know, Earth is a gasless rock, or even not there at all, and the Snake, or servus, sucked vacuum for about four minutes and then died. Still, we are going back through the molehole we came from. No use letting them capitalize on this, now is there?"
Earth 2
April 17, 1446 A.D.
Gwen opened her eyes. The building was nowhere to be seen. For miles around there was nothing but treeless fens and rolling hills of grass.
Rolling hills?
Yes, rolling hills. Gwen scanned some more. The English Channel didn't seem to exist. Instead, she was on a gentle plateau that stretched over a vast plain. Off in the distance to the west, there was another broad, short hill that seemed to correspond to Guernsey.
As Gwen drew her layer knife, she wondered when she was. Probably the ice ages. She remembered reading texts that had said that the English Channel was dry as a bone during the glacial periods. She picked up a spare beacon, attuned to her transducer, and buried it shallowly. There now, she thought, now I know where the pickup point will be.
Gwen tasted the air. The pollens seemed to indicate that that this was early spring, though it felt more like February. Yes, definitely a glacial period, she mused. There... The scent of pine a little to the southeast. And where there's pine, there are forest animals.
***
Matthew Mantrell was looking out on the battlements of Bordestange Castle on the sides that faced the fields outside. The roads were, well, not full of wagons, but with a healthy number traveling them. That meant lots of work and business for the carpenters and the wheelwrights, as well as the smiths who made the nails and hinges, the lumberjacks who cut the wood, miners who dug the ore, the smelters who turned that ore into usable form, and the charcoal burners who made the charcoal, too. Then there were the goods those wagons were transporting, as well. There were glass cups, brass bells, bar stock, knife blades, ax heads, lead pipes, leather by the sheets, and even materials for making marl cement.
As he watched the wagons come and go into the city, he began contemplating how he had gotten to this point in his life. Eight years ago he had been a grad student at Columbia University, specializing in medieval literature. Then, one day, he had received a poem in an indecipherable language. After translating it into English, he was transported to this world, where magic worked through the power of rhyme and meter, the devil really existed in a tangible way, and the Pope and legitimate monarchs were actually infallible. He had sided with Allisande of the House of Deloman, the rightful queen of Merovence, the country he had landed in, and helped oust Astaulf and his evil sponsor Malingo from the Throne. He then spent the next seven years courting Allisande, overthrowing other evil magi who had taken up their thrones with his friends Stegoman the dragon and Sir Guy Toutourein, and restoring God-fearing and Christ-loving monarchs to their rightful thrones. In addition, three other people came into this world from his: his friend Saul Bremener, his father Juan Diego Mantrell y Montoya and his mother Jimmena Mantrell De Garcia. Then, the Almovrids had invaded Ibile, as the Iberian Peninsula was called, from their base in Morocco. Though they had not been totally dealt with, a truce had been temporarily hammered out.
Just presently, Saul walked out next to Matt.
"Hi, Matt," he said.
"Hi, Saul. I was just thinking. I'm bored. There are no Satanic rulers that need to be deposed, no blights, magical or otherwise, no Muslim attacks, no hoards of rampaging fiends and undead."
"Really..." Saul answered, "Well, maybe you can help set up the university with me, or magic up a genuine functional sanitation system, or a lot of other things that need to be done around here. You may be court wizard and prince consort, but even you are human too."
"The point I'm trying to make," continued Matt, "is that I like being bored. No worrying about where my next meal is coming from. No fear of running unprepared into an overwhelming ambush. Nothing but sweet relaxation."
"Careful, remember what the Fates said," Saul pointed out. Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos had promised that his life would be unending strife, and before he was old he would beg for death.
"I know, I know, the calm before the storm and all that. Still, this peace is glorious. Just like God, don't you think?"
"Oh, I don't know about that. At least, not the God of this world."
"Now Saul, don't start that line of reasoning again."
"And why not?" Saul began ticking off points with his fingers. "The Albigensian Crusade happened in this world too, with full papal approval, so did the rapine of the Order of the Blue Cross—also known as the Teutonic Knights— through the Baltics with nary a village spared. There was the slaughter of Arian Christians and the conscription of their small children into the first castrati choirs. Then there was the wanton destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria, and in both universes the author of that destruction is a doctor of the church. This may be Aristotle's universe as you say, but it definitely isn't Socrates'."
"How do you know it's God that's the problem and not man?" Matt asked, in spite of himself.
"My uncles and my grandfather on my mother's side were Fundamentalist Baptist preachers, I've told you this much before. Much of what they believed, the popes here and there would disagree with. One thing the popes here wouldn't disagree with was their creationism. One of their answers to the challenges of geology, paleontology, paleobotany, and evolutionism in general was that while the Devil couldn't affect living things without God's permission, he could do whatever he willed with the earth itself. So after the banishment of Adam and Eve, he set himself to creating a false fossil record, first for his amusement, then to lead man astray..." Saul's voice trailed off.
"So why don't you go searching in this world's Bible and the opinions of this world's early church fathers to see if they might have some similarities," suggested Matt. "I know for a fact that the first five books in each world's Old Testament are word for word identical, in the original Hebrew. Who knows, it might not be there."
"Because I'm afraid I might find it somewhere, or if I ask a current cardinal or the Pope, he might not think it a bad idea and add it into the catechism. Seriously, one day I fear one day being that Good Samaritan our world's Jesus talked about and then going to this world's hell because the man I harbored was an evil wizard, who even though stripped of all his magic and rendered harmless, must be burned at the stake or turned over to the people who can without ceremony or delay, and ignorance of the man's identity be no excuse."
"Like I said before, why do you say it's God and not man? That chat with Friar Ignatius must be the entire reason," insisted Matt.
"Listen, we've seen angels and demons, for crying out loud. The lines were very clearly drawn between them, now weren't they?"
"Lord Saul, Your Highness, dinner is served," said a man in the royal livery. Matt and Saul both jumped.
"Lead the way," Matt said, and hoped for Saul's sake that the servant hadn't heard their conversation. The halls of the castle and the street had eyes and ears, and one can never know what they weren't seeing and hearing. It wouldn't do for the defender of the papal palace against the monsters and troops of the sorcerer Rebozo to disappear into the bowls of the Inquisition's dungeons. Those torturers might get hurt, and then Saul would really be in trouble with the man upstairs.
April 20, 1446
It wasn't impossible, but finding enough food had been a struggle for Gwen. Game was rare, especially big game like deer. She had managed to dig up mice, and snare rabbits, but the big creatures shied away. The grassland she had been dumped onto was long gone, and how she was in a pine forest, with the occasional stream crossing it. For her veggies, she ate pine needles, weeds, and the occasional juniper berry, remembering to spit out the seed.
Presently, Gwen was wandering through the woods admiring the singing birds, the evergreen pines, and the scent if the air. Despite the cool weather, it had that semi-sweet, unashamedly fertile tang of humus.
Where are those deer, she wondered. Despite the fact that this was a pine forest, Gwen had yet to see hide or hair of deer. She hadn't even caught a scent of one, or seen dropped antlers, or—worst of all—discovered tracks or deer droppings. It was as if they had been hunted to extinction. Gwen didn't like it. It implied the existence of an intelligent but careless life form.
As she was (by her thinking) stumbling around the forest, she began to smell something off the wind. Was that maybe smoke? Gwen inhaled. Yes, it indeed was, from apple wood. That was strange; this was, after all, a pine forest. That further hinted at intelligent life. Even Gwen knew better than to make a campfire from pinewood. Gwen began creeping toward the source of the smoke. As he she did, she caught other scents.
Hmm... There are humans here after all, she thought. At least, they smelled human.
***
"Pierre, pass me one of those roast game birds."
"Sure, boss. Jan, how's about more barley and carrot soup?"
Dominique and his crew were spread around a campfire after a hard day's work of doing what they did best. And what they did better than anything else was highway robbery. It had been a good heist. An entire caravan of cloth, being transferred from Waloonia to Laturia to be dyed, had been seized. The guards had been woefully inadequate, and there had not been any people with any skill in magic, either. All that cloth would be rather conspicuous, though, so after putting all the people to the sword, they took the strong box, filled with Merovencian royals, Allustrian marks and pfenningen, and Ibilean denarri and mites. All told, there was enough there to purchase a minor barony.
"Of course, Pierre," said Jan, between mouthfuls of gamecock, "That was some caravan, wasn't it?"
"Yes it was, yes it was," replied Pierre, "They didn't even know what hit 'em."
"And where did that one guard get his training," put in Klaus, "a butchers' guild? I haven't seen such poor shield work since I was breaking elbows and noses for the Wasserburg Pimps' Guild."
"Perhaps he had a few lessons from a traveling klopfechter," suggested Jan, referring to itinerant performers whose demonstrations of swordsmanship were more style, dance, and acrobatics than actual usable technique.
"Say, boss," asked Marc, "why didn't we take any pretty cloth with us?"
"Because," Dominique explained, "it's not that valuable for its weight. Besides, it would be rather difficult to fence all that cloth without being noticed. Would you want to be hung for your greed? Or maybe lose a hand to the ax and bleed to death?"
"I know, I know, but still, I miss them. Is it a bad thing to mourn lost profits?"
There was a snicker round the campfire.
"Look at it this way," said Dominique, "We got clean away with a fortune that could be split twice our number but still let everyone live like a king. Imagine if that caravan had hired an actual wizard of some sort instead of that sheet reader. Or, for that matter, if they had spared the coins to hire actual freelancers instead of those bravos and butchers' guild rejects."
There was a moment of silence as the fire crackled and danced. Some in the band began digging into their meals. Jan pulled out a wineskin, took a pull, and passed it around.
Klaus, believing the silence to be a pregnant pause, broke it with a question. "What do you guys plan to do with your share of the money?"
"I'm going to buy myself a knighthood," said Pierre, "complete with lands, castle, and a fancy coat-of-arms. I figure Sir Otis' arms will do, once I remove all the warts and cankers." That brought a hearty guffaw from everyone present. Jan slapped his shoulder.
"I'll drink to that! Me, I plan to return to Walloonia and start a thieves' guild in my native Zeebekdam," he said.
"But there's already a thieves' guild in Zeebekdam," said Marc.
"True, true. But at least mine won't pretend we aren't stealing your money like the kikes do," came the answer. There was a roar of laughter around the fire.
"I'm going to get myself an education at that newfangled big school over in Bordestange," said Marc, "I figure 5000 Royals for Ancient Mastery in Medicine and Alchemy, 500 Royals for the shop on Mixer's Way, and half the rest of my share for the fake supplies." There was a round of oohs and aahs from the others in the crew.
Dominique spoke up, "I'm going to hire me out an outfitter. Gonna see if I can find me that Prester John out east that these legends keep talking about."
"What are you going to do if you meet up with people in our trade?" This was from Pierre.
"Why, recruit them!" came the leader's reply. "I'm also gonna recruit the most honorable knight I can find, after having some people tear up and deface all my wanted posters in his vicinity. What about you," he said, turning to Klaus, "What do you plan to do with your share of the money?"
"I don't know what I'm going to do with it," said Klaus as an evil grin crossed his face, "but I'm going to have a fun time finding out!"
Just then, Jan saw something out of the corner of his eye. He grabbed his sword and shouted, "Who goes there?"
Then she stepped out of the shadows.
She was beautiful. Imagine a statue of the ancient Dannic goddess Aphrodite brought to life and painted in human tones. Now color her hair fire red instead of glossy black and replace that huge Mediterranean honker of a nose with something a little perkier and you would have something approximating the magnificent creature in front of them. To bad she was so scandalously clad; only black pants and shirt so clinging that they left nothing to the imagination except for her truest womanhood.
Naturally, Marc, being Merovencian, was the first to speak up. Jumping up from his log, he rounded on her, scolding: "Strumpet, get out of those clothes and into something respectable. And don't toss your head like that. A woman like you caused Man's Fall..."
Just as he had one pointer poking between her breasts and the other jabbing her nose, she grabbed him by his codpiece and while her other hand balled a fist and pulled up to deliver a backhanded strike. It was just then that Marc realized how much he had been craning his neck to look at her face.
In the next instant, her hand came back across his face, snapping his neck with an audible crack! Klaus, Jan, and Pierre swore and drew steel. Marc hadn't been the brightest star in the sky, but in this crew, all for one and one for all.
It was too bad that rule was made to apply to this situation. If they had left her well enough alone, maybe she would have done the same. But the combination of cold, hunger, and indignation made her snap. It made her snap Dominique, to be specific. The rest she dispatched in other, more inventive ways.
The story, what there is of it, was originally written by Ben Breeck some unknown date shortly before October 6, 1999. I found this apparently never-completed fanfic as an HTML file on the old egroups.com Stirling forum back then, and saved it on that day. I wonder if a more complete version (or even an outline or notes for more) exists. The .ZIP archive available above contains the original web version, but the egroups website is now part of Yahoo!, and I don't know if this group's archives carried over. Like "Yearnings", and several AMT-written Draka fanfics, this one had disappeared from the Internet over the years. After somebody recently asked about another one that I may not have saved, I decided to find and re-present this fanfic on my own Draka website.
The story was apparently posted to the egroups site using their message tools. If you compare the archived original and this page's version, you'll notice numerous minor changes. The original HTML was pretty good, but the links were practically all broken. Only replacement of the "container" HTML around the story, and moving or changing a few tags was necessary to convert it to XHTML 1.0 Transitional. No actual text of the story has been removed. Punctuation (ellipses, em dashes, semicolons) was changed; headings, separators and fonts were changed to match my current website design. There were a few typos too, which I just couldn't leave be. But I believe my editing hasn't damaged the story. If Ben is still around, or anybody has something to add to "Wizards & Snakes", please share it.
Ben Breeck gave an address of Frankfort KY, USA once. He has written several fanfics involving the Draka and "Daria".
Peter Karsanow
September 14th, 2005
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The following are used with express or inherited permission of the original authors. Wizards & Snakes is © 1999 Ben Breeck. The Draka, Drakon, Gwendolyn Ingolfsson are © S. M. Stirling.
By Peter Karsanow.
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