Drakas!

by edited by S. M. Stirling

  He squeezed off a short burst in the direction from which the enemy fire seemed heaviest. A couple of Citizens were down in spite of body armor, one writhing with a leg wound, the other motionless, shot through the head. Moirarch Arnold cursed again. Dammit, the Race shouldn't be spending men like this in a country it had already conquered.

  One thing—everybody who heard the fighting would move toward it. The Draka took care of their own. They had to—nobody else would. He just hoped the other units in these stinking woods weren't pinned down like his men.

  Well, if they had to fight the old-fashioned way for a while till they could beat the jamming, they bloody well would. "Forward by squads!" he yelled, hoping his voice would carry. "Leapfrog!"

  What would the Yankees least expect? A movement straight toward them, unless he missed his guess. He didn't think so. He wanted to get at close quarters with them. At close quarters, he and his men had the edge.

  He scrambled out from behind the rock and dashed toward a tree up the slope. The men from the squads not moving fired to make the enemy keep his head down. Bullets stitched the ground by his feet. Grenades burst not far away. Mortar bombs started raining down on the Draka. And one of his men stepped on a mine that tore him to red rags.

  Arnold dove down behind the tree. Somewhere behind him, more Yankees opened up on his beleaguered men. He cursed every von Shrakenberg ever born. Hunting preserve, my left ballock, he thought. The Americans couldn't have set a better ambush if they'd planned it for years.

  Of course, they had planned it for years. And now the Draka would pay the price. Arnold's grin behind the mask was savage. The Alliance for Democracy had already paid the price. In the long run, this was just small change. But a man who got killed in a fight that didn't mean much was every bit as dead as one who got killed any other way. Benedict Arnold didn't want to die. That, after all, was what enemies and serfs were for.

  * * *

  Ground combat was even more chaotic, even more frightening and frightful, than Anson MacDonald had thought it would be. On a ship, he was part of a smoothly functioning team. He didn't have that feeling here. On the contrary: he'd never felt more alone in his life. And every Draka in the world seemed to be trying to kill him and nobody else.

  He'd hit a couple of Snakes. He was sure of it. He wasn't sure he'd killed them. Their body armor was at least as good as his, and they could carry more than he and his countrymen did. The sons of bitches were just out-and-out strong.

  They were quick, too. As Captain Fischer had predicted, the Draka came straight at the men who opened up on them. "Don't try to duke it out with a Snake," Fischer had warned. "You'll lose. We can't afford that. Shoot him or run away."

  Fischer had told that to the twenty-year-olds who were supposed to be fast and strong. What about me? MacDonald wondered. But the answer seemed pretty obvious. If you're dumb enough to volunteer for the Poor Bloody Infantry, you deserve whatever happens to you. And it will.

  I'm putting my body between my home and war's desolation. That sounded very fine and noble . . . till the bullets started flying. And war's desolation had already visited his home, and all the other homes in the Alliance for Democracy—and a good many homes in the Domination of the Draka, too.

  So what am I doing here? The answer there wasn't subtle, either. No room for subtlety, not any more. I'm going to kill a few Snakes before they kill me. All right—fair enough.

  A few tiny holes were left in the jamming that scrambled radio reception through the area above the Redoubt. "Fall back!" Captain Fischer called through the speaker in MacDonald's left ear. "They're putting a little more pressure on us than we thought they'd be able to."

  That would do for an understatement till a bigger one came along. Enemy firing came from both sides of MacDonald now, not just from in front of him. In spite of everything, the Draka had got in among the Americans. Guessing what they'd do didn't necessarily mean you could stop them. Who was outflanking whom was now very much a matter of opinion. They're good, damn them, MacDonald thought as he scuttled back toward another foxhole. If the Snakes hadn't been so good, he would have been fighting on their home turf, not his.

  His heart thudded in his chest as he scrambled through the thick undergrowth. He panted when he threw himself into the new hole in the ground and looked around for targets. That'd be an embarrassing way to check out—dying of a coronary on the battlefield. You won't do it—you won't, you hear me? He tried to give his body orders as if it were an able seaman. But if it decided to be insubordinate, what could he do about it? Not much.

  Above the crackle and thunder of gunfire came another sound, a loud thuttering. It came literally from above: from over the forest canopy. MacDonald couldn't see the machines making the new racket, but he knew what they were. In spite of the jamming, the Draka had got helicopter gunships over the right part of the field.

  They won't use them when their fellows are all mixed up with ours . . . will they? The Snakes would. They did. They seemed to take the view that getting rid of the holdouts was worth whatever it cost.

  Gatlings overhead roared, a sound like giants ripping thick canvas. Snake gunners ripple-fired rocket pods under their helicopters. MacDonald had never imagined such punishment. The ground beneath him shuddered as the rockets slammed home. Blasts picked him up and flung him down. He tasted blood in his mouth. Those explosions had tried to tear his lungs right out of his body, and they'd damn near done it.

  He knew he was screaming, but he couldn't hear a thing. Maybe the din all around was too loud. Maybe he was partly, or more than partly, deafened. He felt all turned around. Where the devil was the closest cave mouth? He could use his compass to find out, he supposed, doing his best to think straight in the midst of hell. But what were the odds he'd get there? Thin. Very thin.

  More rockets rained down. One of them burst close to his new hole—much too close, in fact. It picked him up and slammed him down, harder than he was designed to be slammed. He felt things snap that had no business snapping. Pain flared red, then black, as consciousness fled.

  * * *

  With the Yankees' damned jammers still going flat out, Benedict Arnold had no control over the air strikes flown to help the Domination's troopers. He wasn't at all sure they were helping; they were right on top of the Americans, sure enough, but that meant they were also right on top of his own men.

  He wasn't ashamed to scream when rockets from the helicopter gunships plowed up the landscape right under his own boots. Anybody who said he'd been in combat without getting scared almost out of his sphincters was either a dangerous liar or an even more dangerous psychopath. It was necessary. That didn't make it fun, except talking about it afterwards over booze or kif.

  Not far away, one of his men went down, head neatly severed by a chunk of rocket casing. Even through the gas mask, Arnold smelled blood and shit. Friendly fire, they called it, the lying bastards.

  Another Citizen fell, this one shot in the face. The pounding hadn't settled the Yanks' hash, then. Moirarch Arnold cursed. He'd known it wouldn't, though it did help some.

  And then, from a few hundred meters behind him, came a roar louder than any of the mortar rounds or rockets bursting. He cursed again: that couldn't be anything but a gunship going down in flames. Bad luck? Or did the Yankees have some of those nasty little shoulder-mounted AA missiles of theirs? He wouldn't have been a bit surprised. In their shoes, he would have made sure he stocked some.

  Another gunship crashed, even more noisily than the first. "Missiles," he muttered. Even without the din all around, the mask would have muffled the word. Not all the helicopters were out of action, though. Gatling fire and rockets flagellated the forest.

  Some of that came in much too close to him. He dove into the nearest hole he could find—and then started to dive right out again, because an American soldier, his camouflage uniform a medley of shades different from the Domination's, already occupied it. But the Yankee didn't go for the assault rifle by him—he wa
s either dead or unconscious, Arnold realized. One of his legs bent at an unnatural angle.

  An old man, Arnold thought. Then he saw the single stars the American wore; they were almost invisible against his uniform. Excitement coursed through him. I've caught a big fish, if he's still breathing.

  He felt for a pulse, and felt like whooping. The Yankee had one. And he was coming to; he stirred and groaned and reached for the rifle. Benedict Arnold grabbed it before he could. And the moirarch shed his gas mask. If the American wasn't wearing one, he was damned if he would.

  The Yankee's eyes came open. They held reason—reason and danger. He might be an old man, but he's nobody to screw around with, Arnold thought. If he looked away for even a second, this fellow would make him pay.

  Well, don't look away, then. Field interrogation was an art form in its own right. He smiled. It could be fun, too. "Hello, Yank," he said.

  * * *

  "Hello, Yank." The words told Anson MacDonald the worst. So did the greens of the other soldier's combat uniform—they were jungle greens, not those of the forest. And so did the barrel of the Holbars T-7 aimed at his head. That 4.45mm barrel looked wide as a tunnel.

  MacDonald took inventory. Everything hurt—ribs and right leg worst. He could, after a fashion, bear it. If the Draka decided to give that leg a boot . . . Snakes were supposed to enjoy things like that, and they weren't exactly meeting over a tea party.

  "My name is Anson MacDonald," he said. "My rank is commodore, U.S. Navy. My pay number . . ." He rattled it off. For close to forty years, it had been as much a part of him as his name.

  How much good would any of this do? The Draka acknowledged the Geneva Convention only when they felt like it, and now there was nobody on the outside to pressure them to behave. The only rules left were the ones they felt like following.

  For a moment, he'd succeeded in surprising this Snake. "Commodoah?" the fellow drawled. "You're a hell of a long way from the water, Navy man."

  MacDonald started to shrug, then thought better of it. "I don't have to answer that," he said.

  The Draka didn't reply, not in words. He just flicked out a booted foot and kicked MacDonald's right leg. MacDonald shrieked, then clamped down on it. "That there's just a taste," the Draka said mildly. "Don't waste my time, serf, not if you want to keep breathin'."

  "Not likely," MacDonald said. "You'd never trust the likes of me as a serf, anyhow. You'll squeeze me and then you'll get rid of me. But I'll tell you this: when I go to hell, I'll have a couple of Draka sideboys along for escorts."

  He wondered if that would get him killed in the next instant. But the Draka—a moirarch, MacDonald saw, gradually noticing finer details: my luck to have one of their colonels get the drop on me while I was out—just nodded. "All right, pal," he said. "We both know what's what, then. You better remember who's top and who's bottom, though."

  Sex slang, MacDonald thought scornfully. But he nodded. "I'm not likely to forget."

  "Right." The Draka had an easy, engaging smile. MacDonald might have liked him—had he not been one of the slaveowning sons of bitches who'd murdered the United States. "Now, Commodoah, suppose you tell me all about this holdout base of yours."

  "Suppose I don't," MacDonald said.

  That earned his broken leg another kick. He'd been sure it would. This time, he couldn't clamp down on his scream. Amid battlefield chaos, who noticed one more howl of anguish? Still smiling, the moirarch said, "You're hardly any sport, Yankee—too easy. But we're got all day, or as long as it takes."

  Wrong, Anson MacDonald thought when he was capable of coherent thought again—which took some little while. Panting, he said, "I'll tell you something even more important first."

  With a shake of the head, the Draka officer said, "No deal, pal. Tell me what I want to know."

  "Afterwards."

  "Who's top, Yank? You haven't got much in the way of a bargaining position."

  Better than you think. MacDonald braced himself for another kick, not that bracing himself would do the slightest bit of good.

  But the moirarch looked thoughtful. "Well, why not? Make it short, make it sweet—and then sing. You know how unhappy I'll be if you're lying or wasting my time. You know how unhappy you'll be, too."

  "I have some idea," MacDonald said dryly.

  And that made the Snake laugh out loud. "I like you, Yank, stick a stake up my ass if I don't. You're wasted on your side, you know that? Now sing."

  "Oh, I will," MacDonald said. "How long to you think it'll take the Domination to clean things up here?"

  "Fo'ty, fifty years," the Draka answered at once, and surprised MacDonald with his candor. "You Yankee bastards are a tough nut, maybe even tougher'n we reckoned. But so what? You're busted open now. We can do what we want with you—an' we will."

  "No." Anson MacDonald shook his head. In spite of everything, this was what triumph felt like. "Because all the resources you spend here aren't going after what really matters."

  "Nothin' really matters, not any more. This is mop-up time," the Draka moirarch said. "The Earth is ours. The Solar System is ours."

  Baring his teeth in a fierce grin, MacDonald said, "And the New America is ours, by God." Those two words, New America, had kept him going after disaster engulfed the USA, engulfed the Alliance. "Alpha Centauri will be a going concern long before you Snake bastards can even start to try snuffing it out. It's not over, damn you. It's only starting. And I live for that, and so does everybody else in the Redoubt."

  The Draka leaned forward. "The Redoubt, eh? So that's what you call it? Now you've made your speech, and you're going to tell me all about it . . . one way or another." Anticipation filled his voice.

  MacDonald's smile got wider. "Goodbye," he said, and bit down hard. The false tooth the dentist had implanted cracked. The taste of bitter almonds filled his mouth, overwhelmingly strong, burning, burning—but not for long. The poison worked almost as fast as they'd promised. He nodded once before everything faded. He'd even got the last word.

  A Walk in

  the Park

  Anne Marie Talbott

  Anne Marie Talbott lives in central Tennessee, has a master of arts in clinical psychology as well as an MBA; she also has an impish sense of humor, and several cats. I knew when I saw their pictures that this must be a writer. This story confirmed my intuition. It's her first professional sale, but not, I think, her last.

  Many totalitarian movements of our century have used a "superman" ideology to inspire their followers. As a German joke used to go, the true Aryan superman would be as blond as Hitler, as tall as Goebbels, and as slim as Göring . . .

  But past totalitarians didn't have genetic engineering. The Draka, eventually, do, and they literalize the metaphor of racial superiority. In doing so they lock themselves biologically into their self-chosen cultural role of predators-on-humans.

  In Drakon, I imagined one of these engineered superbeings, designed to conquer and to personally dominate humans—through everything from strength to pheromones—loose in our world. Or at least something very like our timeline; one without an S.M. Stirling, who imagined the Draka.

  Of course, once you've allowed travel from timeline to timeline, an interesting question arise: What if the travellers from the alternate history stumble across the reality of the writer who "sensed" them?

  I amble along the riverwalk, binoculars ready for any bird that'll sit still long enough for me to get a bead on it. It's a bright, sunny day in early summer; the humidity hasn't reached mythical proportions yet, so it's not quite like being in a Tennessee Williams' play. There are various couples, the ever-present roller bladers, and some children bounding about. The familiar smell of the river—slightly fishy, but not bad; the scent of wildflowers threatens to overwhelm me. The daffodils and other late spring, early summer show-offs dance in the gentle breeze. It feels good: I'm wearing new shorts and a rugby shirt, and my favorite running shoes. I feel loose and relaxed; it's a feeling I enjoy thoroughly as
I proceed down the park path.

  As I walk past one viewing area, I notice people turning to look at a couple who are resting against the railing. I look, too, and am stunned by their beauty. It's hard edged, athletic, and somehow fierce looking. Both the man and the woman are something to look at, and I immediately understand why people are making an effort not to stare. I'm doing the same thing. A small group is milling nearby, uncertain of their destination, but wanting somehow to be near these unusual folks. I feel drawn to them myself and wonder why. That puts me on the defensive; old habits die hard . . .

  Finding a good spot to perch, I climb up onto a large limestone boulder on the side of the path, about twenty-five yards from the couple and the small crowd. I scan the trees listlessly now for birds, when what I really want to do is point the glasses at the couple and stare. I manage a few looks across them, and notice that they seem amused at something. The man, tall, lithe and muscular in slacks and a cotton short sleeved black shirt, deeply tanned, with bright red hair, leans over to his female companion and whispers briefly. She laughs, a husky sound that carries across the distance easily. It makes me shiver.

  I notice that she's as tall and muscular as he is, and has dark mahogany red hair. It's cut short on the sides and top but has a long braid in the back; she's wearing khaki shorts and a white shirt that shimmers like silk from this distance. The crowd of people, not really formed enough to be called that—more of a collection of people who have been captivated by the couple's indefinable presence—hangs around, quietly. Children who've been wildly running down the paved pathways are entranced, apparently, by the two people. The kids become quiet, meek; they yell less than they had been.

  Interesting, I think. They look like people I've seen somewhere before, but I can't place them. Are they famous or something? They certainly have a charismatic effect on folks, that's for sure. And that's odd, too. I wonder how . . . The peeping of a family of cardinals distracts me; I find the nest and watch the parent birds interacting for a moment or two. With my peripheral vision, I notice that the crowd is suddenly thinning out. People're taking their children and walking away, rather rapidly. That jerks my attention back to the couple by the cedar railing. They're not lounging anymore; standing more erect, they watch the people leave with a glint, seemingly, in their eyes. Of what, I'm uncertain, until I hear the man speak.