(Author's note: This is the final part of the crappy fan fiction based on the S.M. Stirling's Draka series. Have fun, excuse the typos, I'm going out for pizza and beer.)
From the journal of Richard Douglas
Captain, United States Aerospace Force
Original Timeline
Leaving the quarters I share with my
wife for the last time I step out into the morning sun and see the
lines of refugees streaming onto the massive Atlas cargo planes
sitting on the tarmac with their engines idling like thoroughbreds
waiting to be lead out to the starting gates. The lines of scared and
despairing humanity seemed to stretch forever, most carry small bags
like precious relics knowing their lives were over. Going completely
against standing orders and common sense I stopped and watch as they
patiently await orders to board the planes.
So far the skeleton crew of army
soldiers and aerospace force security police were managing to keep
the civilians under control but it was clear everyone would soon
reach their breaking point. Especially when word leaked out that this
was the last day the Atlases would be ferrying civilians to the
hidden sanctuaries. Not only were the Draka marshaling forces for a
major push deeper into East Tennessee, which barring some god-like
miracle the airbase would certainly be overrun. The other reason for
the coming cessation of flights was more practical but no less
depressing, simply put fuel supplies were running low as were
everything else for the United States and the Alliance as a whole.
Once the Atlas transports reached
maximum capacity the military troopers forced the crowd back a safe
distance allowing the cargo planes to use their vertical takeoff
engines to liftoff and then head off to the various redoubts in the
Rocky Mountains. Once the lumbering giants reached five-hundred
meters in the air, laser stations and air defense batteries began
defending them against the barrage of Draka missiles and drones that
were stationed just behind their lines.
Each time the Atlases began to
accelerate for their relatively short flight to the Rocky Mountains I
couldn't help but remember that they were originally designed back in
the late 1960's for a possible Alliance invasion of Draka dominated
western Europe. Why the Alliance just didn't go after the Draka at
the close of the Eurasian War I'll never understand, we could have
driven them out of Europe and a huge chunk of Asia completely
changing the geopolitical makeup of the world. But that was back
before Alliance Command and even the political leadership became
enamored with the idea of seeding computer viruses into Draka
electronic hardware. The computer plague did seem like a cleaner,
smarter, and more civilized solution than throwing nuclear warheads.
At the time the Draka were stealing
every damn electronic thing made in the Alliance but yet had little
real idea how the stuff worked. They would steal an improved chip
design, learn the basic working principles, then in blind rush
incorporate their version into the Draka infrastructure, including
weapon and command-and-control systems. All the while totally
oblivious to the viruses incorporate into the very equations that
allowed the chips to work in the first place.
The grand plan was supposed to have the
Alliance sit back and wait until the right time, then throw a switch
and watch as the Draka war machine literally fell apart. It wasn't
that neat and clean, the nukes were used anyway with the Alliance
being blindsided by a similar plan, not based on electronics but
genetic engineering, the one field the Draka had a significant lead
versus the Alliance. Truthfully, it all seemed like the ultimate in
cosmic jokes to me, nothing but children playing a more dangerous
vesion of some child's computer game. Of course, Fate in its sick and
deluded sense of humor seems to have selected me as Western
Civilization's one chance to reboot the system for a different
outcome.
My destination was the Hercules gunship
at the far end of the tarmac, essentially a smaller version of the
Atlas transports it sported an array of gun ports on both sides of
the fuselage designed to devastate enemy ground forces. Instead of
being up in the air supporting the beleaguered American forces and
the increasing number of civilians turned guerrilla fighters, it had
been confiscated by Black Projects Command to transport primarily me
and what seemed to be an insane theoretical physicist in ridiculous
last ditch attempt to stop the Draka before they were even born.
“What the hell are you doing Captain
Douglas?” General Connor Powell asks when he sees me walking
towards the hangar where Black Projects has stored their equipment
since arriving. “Where the hell is your security escort? Have you
forgotten what I told you about operational security. What if there's
a Draka recon team just outside the base perimeter or a group of
ghouls waiting to pounce?”
General Powell, the single surviving
member of Black Project Command, was obviously dealing with a
crushing load of stress. I realized that comes with the job of
running the only possible operation that could save everything we
hold dear but in the last few days a particular, very nonmilitary
attitude had overwhelmed me. “Sorry general,” I said throwing my
backpack on the ground, “but I just spent what will in all
likelihood be the last moment I have with my wife. As far as a Draka
recon team is concerned, their first target would be the Atlases and
the ghouls, they would head straight for the civilians.”
Powell was an unknown to me until very
recently, but my initial impression he was a scientist who
circumstance had forced into far more of a military role than he
found normal or actually wanted. Given the wartime situation another
general would have probably shot me between the eyes because it was
clear I wasn't totally committed to the plan. I thought it crazy, but
Powell couldn't escape the fact that I was even more important to its
success that Doctor Bernard Randal Lewis, the man who had developed a
working time machine. My master's degree in Colonial American history
essentially meant I was the only person left who could even begin to
understand the world of that time.
“Is that our history major whose
going to save the world?” I heard the bizarre Doctor Lewis say from
inside the Hercules defusing the tension. Lewis came out of the
aircraft wearing his usual shockingly colorful Hawaiian shirt and to
my surprise an old west-like double cowboy leather gun holster over
his blue jeans. Resting comfortably in the holster were two .44
magnum revolvers, which I was sure were loaded. Throw in the amber
colored sunglasses he was wearing and the unlit pipe projecting form
his clenched teeth and he seemed like a character from a surreal
nightmare.
“General Powell,” Lewis said after
walking several feet to the edge of the tarmac, “my gear is loaded
and we need to leave as soon as possible.”
Powell seemed to take Lewis' behavior
in stride, “Fine,” he said, “Douglas I've heard your wife is
staying back.”
“Yes sir,” I said going over in my
mind what Aileen and I had discussed the night before, “she refuses
to leave the hospital. Too many patients and not enough doctors,
we've said our goodbyes.” My wife, along with the other doctors had
made plans when the base was overran, they weren't about to let
anyone be taken alive.
Both Powell and Dr. Lewis silently nod,
understanding the implications. “All right then,” Powell said to
everyone, “let's be airborne in five minutes.”
***
The only thing that turned out spookier
than the mostly undamaged but abandoned city of Colorado Springs,
Colorado were the vast underground chambers of Black Project
Command's Cheyenne Mountain research facility. Like most everyone
else, outside Black Projects, I was lead to believe it was just one
of the many redundant command-and-control stations scattered all
through North America from the Canadian states down to the ones
carved out of Old Mexico. Once we landed the Hercules gunship and
rode down the hidden cargo elevator it was clear this place had been
a science nerd's paradise. Most everything was locked up behind huge
armored doors but the reams of classified paper work scattered about
like fallen leaves more than strongly suggested that had the Alliance
had as little as ten more years it would have been the Domination of
the Draka going down for the count.
“Where are all the bodies?” I ask
assuming the Cheyenne Mountain facility was hit with the same
biological weapon that had decapitated the Alliance political and
military leadership at the start of the war.
“The Draka,” one of the technicians
on the Black Project's team began to answer, “seeded their
bio-weapon all through the Alliance about fifteen years ago. Somehow
they developed a way to activate it with an ultra-low wave radio
signal. insidious really, but I admit damned clever. The granite of
the mountain shielded us from the effects, but we knew what was going
on in Colorado Springs. It was some type of virus whose effects drove
everyone infected insane. General Powell had us on lock down until
some unknown Alliance intelligence operative found out the details on
the weapon and got on what was left of the worldnet to warn us and
explain how to counter it. By that time Powell knew the situation was
hopeless and sent everyone out to either find Dr. Lewis or the other
members of the project.”
It took several hours for Dr. Lewis and
the surviving members of his support staff to gain access to the
level where research into his time displacement equipment was stored
including all the items the purposed teams of time engineers would
need to safely destroy the Draka without damaging the Alliance and
the United States beyond recognition.
“Holy shit,” I said looking at all
the carefully reproduced articles from the late colonial-era America
once we gain access. It ranged from formal clothing for both males
and females, weapons, coins, to such trivial items as wire framed
bifocals.
“Yeah,” one of the female members
of Lewis' staff said, “we had already assembled teams and were
training them in every aspect of normal life and customs back in
those times. Then some bright boy or girl high up in the Alliance
killed the project and made sure everything was locked down. They
even confiscated the data from the probes we sent back in time to
test the procedure.”
In the weeks before we left the base in
East Tennessee I had talked to many of Dr. Lewis' staff in an attempt
to get more information on my Hail Mary mission but they were under
orders from General Powell to keep silent. Now that we were in the
mountain they were opening up but something else deiced to get in the
way. “All right Captain Douglas,” General Powell said after
running into the storage room, “Lewis has the machine operational
and I want you in it before another disaster hits us.”
***
“Alright,” Lewis said to me while
his hands danced over the controls, “you understand the objective?”
“Yeah, your machine will throw me
back in both space and time to around February of 1782, hopefully in
the area that should become Columbia, South Carolina. From there my
primary objective is to kill the American loyalists attending a
meeting at the Conrad family plantation that takes place on April
second of that year. The place where it was first decided to leave
the newly independent America for southern Africa. After that I will
hit the secondary targets, all of which have descendants who become
important leaders in the early Draka settlements.”
Unlike the original idea, there was no
time to try and engineer events to fundamentally change the monster,
the only option was to kill it before it even exists. While never big
in theoretical science, I knew enough to understand that very learned
men and women thought time was static, that no matter our location in
the stream of events humans called history nothing could be changed.
“Good,” Lewis said, “just
remember every proto-Draka you put down increases the odds the
timeline will be altered to the point they will cease to exist. It
also means the Alliance and the United States will be changed in ways
we cannot fathom, maybe to the point they never develop either. The
computer tablet I gave you should have all the information you need
to complete the mission, plus a few surprises.”
Despite it all I felt ridiculous
standing on a pad that looked like something from a Star Voyager
television episode while dressed in clothes that should allow me to
go unnoticed among the general public of colonial America. Throw in
all the shots the doctor had given me to ward off diseases common to
that era along with the thin but high-tech winter long johns to keep
me warm I actually felt feverish as well, but I wasn't about to say
anything to Lewis or Powell about that. I wanted to be on my way, and
get this mission started.
“One last thing,” Lewis said, “if
you survive the mission itself you can return to your starting point
in both space and time in whatever reality that is created. During
the research phase with the probes we got hints at several new forms
of radiation we had no idea existed, that in all likelihood will kill
you outright if you expose yourself to a second temporal trip. All I
can suggest is make a life for yourself there and let fate proceed on
no matter if you fail or succeed.”
“Understood,” was all I said while
clutching the bag on my shoulder that held the computer tablet, some
ration bars, a pistol designed to look like those common to the era,
gold coins that could used to purchase items, and three explosive
devices. I also felt for the strange little box that would fling me
back to the future wondering if I would live long enough to use it.
Lewis then punched a few buttons on his
console causing a low level whine that I found unpleasant but which
only grew in volume to the point I thought my head would explode. The
next sensation was one of both falling through eternity and being
crushed as if I had fallen into a black hole. I guess I passed out
because the next thing I remember was waking up in the middle of a
pasture.
PART FIVE
My first sensation was the cold wind
blowing across my exposed face. Other than breathing and a few
involuntary twitches, every part of my body utterly refused to move.
Somehow my head ended up turned to the left allowing me to see the
pasture that stretched off a tree line about four or five kilometers
away. Above the trees the color of the sky and the low sun suggested
it was mid-morning.
Laying there in the field I began to
shiver, it actually occurred to me that after surviving the crash of
my jet, killing a genetically engineered ghoul, having a Homo
drakensis kick my ass, then jump through time that I might die of
simple exposure.
“Hello good sir,” I heard someone
say off to my right. “Are you all right,” this unknown person
asked a few seconds later. From the change in the pitch of his voice
I knew he was walking closer to my spot on the glass.
A moment later, the man who saw me
laying in the middle of the pasture knelt beside me and turned my
head. “Can you speak sir?” he asked seeing that my eyes were open
and that I was breathing. My possible rescuer was huge, a real
hardworking farm type but dressed like a gentlemen. From the looks of
his clothes, I made a quick guess that he was possibly a landowner,
and I thought I heard hints of a southern drawl in the way he speaks.
“Do not worry sir,” the guy said,
“I will take you with me to my home and call for a doctor.” With
that he turned his head and yelled, “Joesph, come here now and help
me put this fellow in the back of the wagon.”
Seconds later a black man dressed in
dirty but seemingly serviceable work clothes assisted the other man
to gently lift me off the ground and place in the back of a wooden,
horse drawn wagon. At least my unknown benefactor was honest enough
not to take advantage of my situation and look into my satchel and
see all the goodies I brought from the twenty-first century. The
black man, Joesph, took a spot in the back of the wagon with me. He
said nothing but watched me with eyes that spoke volumes. It didn't
take a degree in history to know I was looking at a slave.
Time seemed to move achingly slow in
the back of that wagon but as the hours went by I regained the
ability to move and speak. Before long I was sitting on the bench at
the front of the wagon beside my rescuer. Joesph, the slave, remained
in the same place clearly lost in a world of his own thoughts. I
would have been doing the same thing if the option was open to me.
Because it seems Fate had decided to either make my mission
infinitely easier, or play another cosmic practical joke.
“Tell me Mr. Conrad,” I said
couching my words carefully, “what do you make of Cornwallis'
surrender to the Continental Army at Yorktown?”
It turned out that the person who saw
me laying in the pasture was none other Alexander Lucas Conrad, owner
of the plantation where in a little over a month thirty-three
families would meet and decided to leave North America for Africa and
eventually become the Draka. In the hours that I had already spent
with Alex Conrad I had found him a genial, good-natured guy, that was
about to change.
“General Washington and every member
of the Continental Congress should be caught and hanged.” He said
with a surprising amount of rage. “My family and I will not live
under such a collection of traitorous rebels who proclaim all men are
created equal. Such notions go against God and reason and could lead
to the mixing of the races.” He continued, motioning his head back
towards Joesph in the back of the wagon for the part about the races
mixing.
After recovering enough to speak, I
told Conrad my name and said I was a merchant who had been living in
India since before the start of the conflict. It was a great way to
explain away my twenty-first century accent. “I am loyal to the
king,” I said lying my ass off. “I imagine I will eventually
leave for England and make my home there.”
“Please sir,” Conrad said returning
to his gentlemanly disposition, “please stay at my plantation and
recover for in less than two months a group of like minded people
will be meeting there to discuss our immigration to southern Africa.
Such a location much closer to India could be advantageous to you and
our possible colony.”
I had explained away him finding me in
such a strange condition as the results of an illness I had
contracted while in India. To Conrad, I had fallen off my house and
staggered around in the pasture before passing out. All that was
small potatoes now, because he had just made my mission so easy I was
now scared Fate might now really start screwing with me. “Absolutely,
Mr. Conrad, “ I said, “ I accept your offer and look forward to
meeting everyone.”
****
Mail being the only dependable means of
long distance communication the meeting of the loyalist families that
would leave America and form the backbone of the Draka was eventually
scheduled for the second of April. Just as I was taught in college
and backed up by the history outline on the computer tablet Dr. Lewis
provided me.
As I expected the Conrad family, Alex,
his wife, and twelve children made me feel right at home, and there
were times I had to force myself to remember their descendants would
go on to destroy everything I held dear. But there were many more
days when it was easy to see the Conrad family for the monsters they
truly were deep inside. Joesph, the old slave, regularly took the
blame and the beatings for supposed infractions done by younger
slaves. Alex Conrad made a point of showing no mercy during those
times despite the fact he greatly depended on Joesph for many small
tasks in the course of a normal working day.
Alex's plantation overseers were
brutal thugs who regularly raped young slave girls whenever they felt
the urge. Even two of Alex's older sons, boys in their late teens,
joined them sometimes. All one had to do was briefly look at a few of
the slave kids running around to know Alex was their grandfather.
The actual gathering of families began
the last couple of days in March and I spent many nights in the
bedroom they provided looking at the computer tablet double checking
the list waiting for the others. As the days passed I volunteered to
help out around the main house setting extra accommodations for the
arriving families, something Alex in his early Southern ways
protested. I was a guest, and as far as he was concerned, a fellow
believer in the dominance of the white race.
When the last loyalist family arrived
at the Conrad plantation a part of my mind basked in a joyous rage. I
had long since worked out the details of how I would dispatch not
just the families but Alex's overseers who I remembered at some point
became important members of the Draka colony.
The gathering of loyalist families did
take on the air of a celebration lasting long into the night and only
stopped when it began to rain. By that time most of the men had long
since drunk themselves into a blind stupor. I used this to my
advantage and slipped out the main house disturbing only the dogs,
and they had long since gotten use to my presence and quickly went
back to sleep in front of the fireplace.
The pistol I clasped walking through
the pouring rain towards the cabin the overseers shared, while
looking like a primitive flintlock was actually a cleverly engineered
semi-automatic. As I approached I could see the glow of a flickering
candle through the dirty glass of a small window. Amos, the senior
overseer, owned a large dog he had trained to be suspicious and it
began barking incessantly as I walked closer. A rope tied to one of
the cabin's porch support columns kept the dog restrained and all I
had to do was wait for Amos to come to the door.
Honed survival skills were vitally
important to an aerospace fighter pilot and that included being an
expert marksmen. When Amos opened the door, with his own pistol in
his hand, I shot him between the eyes before he had time to say
anything. I quickly rushed inside and saw his junior cohort, named
Adam, struggling to get his clothes on, I fired once hitting him in
the chest.
I wasn't surprised to see that both
Amos and Adam had taken two very young slave girls to their
respective beds that night. Instinctively, I cut the ropes that the
overseers had used to tie them down. “Both of you go back to your
families and tell them not to come out until morning.” Both young
girls, use to the worst forms of brutality, were too scared to move.
“Go now!” I yelled at them. That forced them into action and they
quickly scrambled out of the cabin and ran off towards the section of
the plantation where the slave quarters were located.
All I had to do now was wait, I had set
the three explosive charges before going after the overseers and I
figured there was just a couple of minutes left before the main house
became a raging fireball. When the sound and light of the fireball
erupted I felt a nauseating wave of satisfaction. I had just killed
almost two-hundred people in cold blood. I was a murderer, the fact
that they would have soon gone on to savaged the African continent,
then build a empire based on terror and slavery that would conquer
the world was only a small solace to my wounded consciousness.
I should have been more alert because
it was the sound of someone stepping on a small twig that save my
life. “How are you still alive!” I heard Alex Conrad rage at me
while swinging a sword.
I jumped back and rolled on the ground,
an ungraceful move given the awkward nature of the late eightieth
century clothes I was wearing but it worked nonetheless. “Everyone
in the house is dead, my wife, children, and all the other families,
how did it come for you to survive?” Alex bellowed moving
aggressively towards me far faster than it seemed possible for
someone his size.
With my primary mission accomplished, I
allowed my own hate and loathing of the slaver to come forward and
fired off two shots from my pistol. Both went wild but it scared Alex
enough to freeze in place. “I killed them Conrad because they, like
you, were all monsters. I enjoyed it you bastard because of what you
have done and will do to innocent human beings whose only sin was to
be born the wrong color!”
“You are insane!” he raged and
ran towards me with his sword.
I was able to fire off another shot,
luckily knocking the sword from his hand but on my second attempt to
shoot, which would have killed him, the pistol jammed and Alex's bulk
hit me like a speeding freight train. I wasn't about to die having
come this far but the man had lived a far harder life compared to
mine and had almost a superhuman level of strength, throw in his rage
and a small part of my mind figured I was going to lose.
During the struggle I our eyes locked
and somehow I saw everything the Domination of the Draka would
become. Call it crazy, the wishful thinking of a desperate man, or
some divinely inspired revelation but I just knew that if Alex Conrad
died so would the Draka.
But Alex was getting the best of me,
each blow he landed felt like a bomb and the stars appearing in my
field of vision said I could not take much more. I was on my knees
trying to scramble away even for the briefest moment when Alex
suddenly stopped. I staggered back and saw that the slave Joesph had
struck his master with an ax handle. In stunned surprise, Alex turned
only to see other slaves emerge from the darkness carrying an array
of farm tools. They fell upon Alex in a rage far greater than that he
had focused on me. When they were done there wasn't enough left of
Alex Conrad's body for the pigs.
****
The next morning the storm had passed
leaving the winter air feeling clean but cold. Spring was still a
long away off but I felt renewed in way I could not explain. Joesph
had a couple of his people carry me to a cabin and treat my injuries.
The remoteness of Conrad plantation ensured it would be weeks if not
months before knowledge of what happened became known to the outside
world.
The fate of Joesph and the other slaves
was unavoidable when the outside world learned of the death of the Conrad family.
They would surely be divided up among the other plantations. The only
possible course of action I knew for them was to flee south towards
Florida and try to find refuge with the Native Americans of the
Everglades. Something many escaped slaves did in the ninetieth
century but I knew of no reference of it happening in 1782.
Once Joesph and his clan slipped away a
few days later I decided on my own course of action. I collected my
own belongings and took one of the horses and made my way towards
Mount Vernon, Virginia. It was time to meet the father of my country
and seek his assistance in my mission. I was also going to ask him
about his own practice of owning other human beings.
First Epilogue
November 20, 2015
Current Timeline
Colonel Ellen Marcus silently escorted
Captain Aileen Perez into the hospital room. The cheap curtains over
the large window were drawn leaving the room dark. Colonel Marcus
immediately pulled them open flooding the room with bright sunshine fully
revealing the man in the bed hooked up to an array of monitors and
intravenous lines.
“Captain Douglas,” Marcus said,
“it's time to wake up. You've been slacking off for far too long.
Plus, I have someone you surely want to see.” Marcus then looked
over at the other woman, who even after being briefed on the comatose
patient still couldn't fathom everything she'd been told.
“Richard,” Aileen Perez said, “It's
me Aileen, I just want you to know you saved everyone. Those monsters
don't exist now.” For Captain Perez this was all insane, she was
happily married to man who even now was back in Germany taking care
of their children. The man in the bed was a complete stranger to her
but if Colonel Marcus and General McDonald weren't totally crazy in
another reality this man had been her husband, or still was, or had
never been. She wasn't a scientist and just couldn't understand the
temporal physics. Still though, the patient had apparently challenged
and changed the course of history saving the world. That meant he was
to be given every consideration short of betraying her family.
“Colonel Marcus,” Aileen said, “you
can leave. I'll sit with Captain Douglas.” Ellen Marcus whispered
thanks and then left the room.
It took a couple of minutes for Aileen
to think of something to say and when an idea came she realized it
was the perfect solution. “Let me tell you about my children.”
Two days later Captain Douglas opened
his eyes and began the slow process of learning about the world he
had changed.
Second Epilogue
July 2015
Paris, France
“One of the things I always wanted to
see was the Eiffel Tower,” Richard Douglas said to General Scott
McDonald who sat a about a meter away on the same park bench. “After
the Eurasian War with the Draka in control of western Europe that was
of course impossible. Oh, they allowed a limited amount of tourism
but only the really brave or stupid ever took the trip. To big a
chance some tourist might piss them off and be taken into custody and
disappear into their warm embrace.”
“Yeah,” McDonald said, “I can see
how that would be a drawback. Richard, there is a reason I wanted to
meet with you. In the after action reports and debriefings you never
answered the question as to whether the Draka might still exist. The
president would like an answer.”
Douglas thought about it for several
seconds while enjoying the feel of the warm sun on his face.
“General, my initial answer was that I just didn't know for sure.
You'd have to talk with Dr. Lewis but he doesn't exist in this
timeline, although your Hunter S. Thompson was a dead ringer for him
in both appearance and behavior. But to answer your question now, no,
I believe the Draka are gone but instead something even worse has
occurred.”
McDonald sat up, now worried what
Douglas was going to say.
“Everything the Draka were never left
your United States, its diluted and weak but there is a cruel streak
in Americans of this timeline that's like a person with multiple
personalities. One minute intelligent and compassionate, the next
wanting to dominate everyone and willing to use every means to
justify that end. Tell your president that, I've done my duty for the
Republic and humanity.”
Douglas then got up, threw his backpack
over his shoulder and walked away. “Have a good life,” McDonald
said watching him, “thank you for everything.”
