S. M. Stirling - Draka 01 - Marching Through Georgia

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Marching Through

Georgia by S.M.

Stirling

CHAPTER ONE

"… finally in 1783. by the Peace of Paris. Great Britain made

peace with the American revolutionists and their European

allies. However, the revival of British naval strength in the last

years of the war made Spain and France ready to offer a

face-saving compromise, particularly when they could do so at

the expense of the weakest partner in their coalition, the

Netherlands. Franco-Spanish gains in the West Indies were to

be balanced by allowing Britain to annex the Dutch Cape

colony, which had been occupied in 1779 to prevent its use by

the French—almost as an afterthought, in an operation nearly

cancelled.

Poor and remote, the Cape was renamed after Francis Drake

and used as a dumping ground for Britain's other inheritance

from the American wan the Loyalists, tens of thousands of

whom had fought for the Crown and now faced exile as

penniless refugees. As early as 1781 shiploads were arriving;

after the Peace, whole regiments set sail with their families and

slaves as the southern ports of Savannah and Charleston were

evacuated. They were joined by large numbers of Hessian and

other German mercenaries formerly in British service. Within

a decade over 250.000 immigrants had arrived, swamping

and assimilating the thin scattering ofDutch-Afilkaander

settlers…

200 Years: A Social History of the Domination,

by Alan E. Sorensson. Ph.D.

Archona Press, 1983

NORTH CAUCASUS FRONT, 20,000 ft. APRIL 14, 1942:

0400 HOURS

The shattering roar of six giant radial engines filled the hold

of the Hippo-class transport aircraft, as tightly as the troopers of

Century A, 1st Airborne Legion. They leaned stolidly against the

bucking, vibrating walls of the riveted metal box, packed in their

cocoons of parasail and body harness, strapped about with

personal equipment and weapons like so many deadly slate-grey

Christmas trees. The thin, cold air was full of a smell of oil and

iron, brass and sweat and the black greasepaint that striped the

soldiers' faces; the smell of tools, of a trade, of war. High at the

front of the hold, above the ramp that led to the crew

compartment, a dim red light began to flash.

Centurion Eric von Shrakenberg clicked off the pocket

flashlight, folded the map back into his case and sighed. 0400,

he thought. Ten minutes to drop. Eighty soldiers here in the

transport; as many again in the one behind, and each pulled a

Helot-class glider loaded with heavy equipment and twenty more

troopers.

He was a tall young man, a hundred and eighty centimeters

even without the heavy-soled paratrooper's boots, hard smooth

athlete's muscle rolling on the long bones. Yellow hair and

mustache were cropped close in the Draka military style; new

lines scored down his face on either side of the beak nose,

making him look older than his twenty-four years. He sighed

again, recognizing the futility of worry and the impossibility of

calm.

Some of the old sweats seemed to have it, the ones who'd

carried the banners of the Domination of the Draka from Suez to

Constantinople and east to Samarkand and the borderlands of

China in the last war. And then spent the next twenty years

hammering Turks and Kurds and Arabs into serfs as meek as the

folk of the old African provinces. Senior Decu-rion McWhirter

there, for instance, with the Constantinople Medal and the

Afghan ribbon pinned to his combat fatigues, bald head shining

in the dim lights…

He looked at the watch again. 0405: time was creeping by.

Only two hours since liftoff, if you could believe it.

I'll fret, he thought. Staying calm would drive me crazy .

Christ, I could use a smoke . It would take the edge off; skydiving

was the greatest thing since sex was invented, but combat was

something you never really got used to. You were nervous the

first time; then you met the reality, and it was worse than you'd

feared. And every time after that, the waiting was harder…

Eric had come to believe he would not survive this war many

months ago; his mind believed it, at least. The body never

believed in death, and always feared it. It was odd; he hated the

war and its purposes, but during the fighting, that conflict could

be put aside. Garrison duty was the worst —

In search of peace, he returned to The Dream. It had come to

him often, these last few years. Sometimes he would be walking

through orchards, on a cool and misty spring morning; cherry

blossoms arched above his head, heavy with scent, over grass

starred with droplets of fog. There was a dog with him, a setter.

Or it might be a study with a fire of applewood, lined with books

with stamped leather spines, windows closed against slow rain…

He had always loved books; loved even the smell and texture of

them, their weight. There was a woman, too: walking beside him

or sitting with her red hair spilling over his knees. A dream built

of memories, things that might have been, things that could

never be.

Abruptly he shook himself free of it. War was full of times

with nothing to do but dream, but this was not one of them.

Most of the others were waiting quietly, with less tension than

he remembered from the first combat drop last

summer—blank-faced, lost in their own thoughts. Occasional

pairs of lovers gripped hands. The old Spartans were right

about that, he thought. It does make for better fighters…

although they'd probably not have approved of a heterosexual

application.

A few felt his gaze, nodded or smiled back. They had been

together a long time, he and they; he had been private, NCO and

officer-candidate in this unit. If this had been a legion of the

Regular Line, they would all have been from the same area, too;

it was High Command policy to keep familiar personnel

together, on the theory that while you might enlist for your

country, you died for your friends. And to keep your pride in

their eyes.

The biggest drop of the war. Two full legions, 1st and 2nd

Airborne, jumping at night into mountain country. Twice the

size of the surprise assault in Sicily last summer, when the

Domination had come into the war. Half again the size of the

lightning strike that had given Fritz the Maikop oil fields intact

last October, right after Moscow fell. Twenty-four thousand of

the Domination's best, leaping into the night, "fangs out and

hair on fire."

He grimaced. He'd been a tetrarch in Sicily, with only

thirty-three troopers to command. A soldier's battle, they'd

called it. Which meant bloody chaos, and relying on the troops

and the regimental officers to pull it out of the can. Still, it had

succeeded, and the parachute chiliarchoi had been built up to

legion size, a tripling of numbers. Lots of promotions, if you

made it at all. And a merciful transfer out once Italy was

conquered and the "pacification" began; there would be nothing

but butcher's work there now, best left to the Security

Directorate and the Janissaries.

Sofie Nixon, his comtech, lit two cigarettes and handed him

one at arm's length, as close as she could lean, padded out with

the double burden of parasail and backpack radio.

"No wrinkles, Cap," she shouted cheerfully, in the clipped

tones of Capetown and the Western Province. Listening to her

made him feel nineteen again, sometimes. And sometimes older

than the hills—slang changed so fast. That was a new one for "no

problems.

"All this new equipment: to listen to the briefing papers, hell,

it'll be like the old days. We can be heroes on the cheap, like our

great-granddads were, shootin' down black spear-chuckers," she

continued.

With no change of expression: "And I'm the Empress of Siam;

would I lie?"

He smiled back at the cheerful, cynical face. There was little

formality of rank in the Draka armies, less in the field, least of all

among the volunteer elite of the airborne corps. Conformists did

not enlist for a radical experiment; jumping out of airplanes into

battle was still new enough to repel the conservatives.

Satisfied, Sofie dragged the harsh, comforting bite of the

tobacco into her lungs. The Centurion was a good sort, but he

tended to… worry too much. That was part of being an officer,

of course, and one of the reasons she was satisfied to stay at

monitor, stick-commander. But he overdid it; you could wreck

yourself up that way. And he was very much of the Old

Domination, a scion of the planter aristocracy and their iron

creed of duty; she was city-bred, her grandfather a Scottish

mercenary immigrant, her father a dock-loading foreman.

Me, I'm going to relax while I can, she thought. There was a

lot of waiting in the Army, that was about the worst thing…

apart from the crowding and the monotonous food, and good

Christ but being under fire was scary. Not nice-scary like being

on a board when the surf was hot, or a practice jump; plain bad.

You really felt good afterward, though, when your body realized

it was alive…

She pushed the thought out of her head. The sitreps had said

this was going to be much worse than Sicily, and that had been

deep-shit enough. Still, there had been good parts. The Italians

really had some pretty things, and the paratroops got the first

pick. That jewelry from the bishop's palace in Palermo was

absolutely divine! And the tapestry… she sighed and smiled, in

reminiscence. There had been leave, too—empty space on

transport airships heading south, if you knew the right people. It

was good to be able to peacock a little—do some parrying, with a

new campaign ribbon and the glamour of victory, and some

pretties to show off.

Her smile grew smug. She had been very popular, with all the

sexes and their permutations; a change from ugly-duckling

adolescence. Men are nice, definitely, she thought. Pity I had to

wait 'til I reported to boot camp to start in on 'em.

That was the other thing about the Army; it was better than

school. Draka schooling was sex-segregated, on the theory that

youth should not be distracted from learning and their

premilitary training. Either that or sheer conservatism. Eight

months of the year spent isolated in the countryside: from five to

eighteen it had been her life, and the last few years had been

growing harder to take. She was glad to be out of it, the endless

round of gymnastics and classes and petty feuds and crushes; the

Army was tougher, paratroop school more so, but what you did

off duty was your own business. It was good to be an adult, free.

Even the winter in Mosul had been all right. The town was a

hole, of course—provincial, and all new since the Draka conquest

in 1916. Nothing like the mellow beauty of Capetown, with its

theaters and concerts and famous nightspots… Mosul—well,

what could you expect of a place whose main claim to fame was

petrochemical plants? They'd been up in the mountains most of

the time, training hard. She flexed her shoulders and neck

complacently. She'd thought herself fit before, but four months

of climbing under full load and wrestling equipment over

boulders had taken the last traces of puppy fat off and left her

with what her people considered the ideal feminine figure—sleek,

compactly curved, strong, and quick.

Sofie glanced sidelong at her commander; she thought he'd

been noticing, since she qualified for comtech. Couldn't tell,

though; he was one for keeping to himself. Just visited the

officer's Rest Center every week or so. But a man like that

wouldn't be satisfied with serf girls; he'd want someone he could

talk to…

Or maybe it's my face? she thought worriedly, absently

stripping the clip out of the pistol-grip well of her machinepistol

and inserting it again. It was still obstinately round and

snub-nosed; freckles were all very well, enough men had

described it as cute, but it obstinately refused to mature into the

cold, aquiline regularity that was most admired. She sighed, lit

another cigarette, started running the latest costume drama over

again in her head. Tragic Destiny: Signy Anders and Derek

Wallis as doomed Loyalist lovers fighting the American rebels,

with Carey Plesance playing the satanic traitor George

Washington…

God, it must have been uncomfortable wearing those

petticoats, she thought. No wonder they couldn't do anything

but look pretty and faint; how could you fight while wearing a

bloody tent? Good thing Africa cured them of those notions.

* * *

0410, Eric thought. Time. The voice of the pilot spoke in his

earphones, tinny and remote.

"Coming up on the drop zone, Centurion," she said. "Wind

direction and strength as per briefing. Scattered cloud, bright

moonlight." A pause. "Good luck."

He nodded, touching his tongue to his lip. The microphone

was smooth and heavy in his hand. Beside him the American war

correspondent, Bill Dreiser, looked up from his pad and then

continued jotting in shorthand.

Dreiser finished the paragraph and forced his mind to

consider it critically, scanning word by word with the pinhead

light on the other end of the pen. Useful, when you had to consult

a map or instrument without a conspicuous light; the

Domination issued them to all its officers, and he had been quick

to pick one up. The device was typical of that whole bewildering

civilization; he turned it in his hands, feeling the smooth careful

machining of its duralumin parts, admiring the compact

powerful batteries, the six different colors of ink, the moving

segments that made it a slide rule as well.

Typical indeed, he thought wryly. Turned out on specialized

machine tools, by illiterate factory-serfs who thought the world

was flat and that the Combine that owned their contracts ruled

the universe.

He licked dry lips, recognizing the thought for what it was: a

distraction from fear. He had been through jump training, of

course—an abbreviated version tailored to the limitations of a

sedentary American in early middle age. And he had seen

enough accidents to the youngsters about him to give him

well-justified nightmares; if those magnificent young animals

could suffer their quota of broken bones and wrenched backs, so

could he. And they would be jumping into the arms of Hitler's

Wehrmacht; his years reporting from Berlin had not endeared

him to the National Socialists…

He glanced across the echoing gloom of the cargo hold to

where Eric sat, smoking a last cigarette. His face was impassive,

showing no more emotion than it had at briefings around the

sand table in Mosul. A strange young man. The eagle-faced blond

good looks were almost a caricature of what a landed aristocrat

of the Domination of the Draka was expected to be; so was his

manner, most of the time. Easy enough to suppose there was

nothing there but the bleakly efficient, intellectual killing

machine of legend, the amoral and ruthless superman driven by

the Will to Power whom Nietzsche had proclaimed.

He had mentioned that to Eric, once. A useful myth, had been

the Draka's reply. That had led them to a discussion of the

German thinker's role in developing the Domination's beliefs;

and of how Nietzsche's philosophy had been modified by the

welcoming environment he found among the Draka, so different

from the incomprehension and contempt of his countrymen.

The Domination was founded by losers, Eric had said, letting

an underlying bitterness show through. Ex-masters like the

Loyalists and all those displaced European aristocrats and

Confederate southerners; prophets without followers like

Carlyle and Gobineau and Nietzsche. The outcasts of Western

civilization, not the "huddled masses" you Yankees got. My

ancestors were the ones who wouldn't give up their grudges.

Now they're coming back for their revenge.

Dreiser shrugged and brought his mind back to the present,

tugging at the straps of his harness one more time. Times like

this you could understand the isolationists; he had been born in

Illinois and raised in Iowa himself, and knew the breed. A lot of

them were decent enough, not fascist sympathizers like the

German-American Bund, or dupes like Lindberg. Just decent

people, and it was so tempting to think the oceans could guard

American wholesomeness and decency from the iron insanities

and corruptions of Europe…

Not that he had ever subscribed to that habit of thought; it

led too easily to white sheets and hatred, destroying a tradition

to protect it. Or to the Babbirtry that had driven him to Paris in

the 1920's; the America he returned to in the Depression years

was more alive than Hoover's had been, finally acknowledging its

problems. Trying to do something about the submerged third of

the population, taking up the cause of the Negro abandoned

during Reconstruction, reforming the Hispanic backwaters

south of the Rio Grande, where annexation in 1848 had

produced states free only in name.

Dreiser ground his teeth, remembering the pictures from

Pearl Harbor—oily smoke pouring to the sky from Battleship

Row, the aircraft carrier Enterprise exploding in a huge globe of

orange fire as the Japanese dive-bombers caught her in the

harbor mouth… The United States had paid a heavy price for the

illusion of isolation, and now it was fighting on its own soil,

full-fledged states like Hawaii and the Philippines under enemy

occupation. His prewar warnings of the Nazi menace had not

been heeded; now his reports might serve to keep the public

aware that Japan was not the only enemy, or the most dangerous

of the Axis.

"JUMPMASTERS TO YOUR STATIONS!" Eric's amplified

voice overrode even the engines; there was a glisten of eyes, a

hundredfold rattle as hands reflexively sought the ripcords.

"PREPARE TO OPEN HATCH DOORS."

"And step into the shit," came the traditional chorus in reply.

* * *

Far to the south in Castle Tarleton, overlooking the Draka

capital of Archona, a man stood leaning on the railing of a

gallery, staring moodily at the projacmap that filled the huge

room below. He was an Arch-Strategos, a general of the

Supreme General Staff. The floor of the room was glass, twenty

meters by thirty; the relief map was eerily three dimensional and

underlit to put contrast against contour marks and unit

counters. The mountains of Armenia extended in an infinity of

scored rock, littered with the symbols of legions, equipment,

airstrips, and roads; the red dots of aircraft crawled north

toward Mt. Elbruz and the passes of the Caucasus. Stale tobacco

scented the air, and the click-humm of the equipment echoed

oddly in the unpeopled spaces.

"Risky," he said, nodding toward the map. "Twenty legions of

armor, thirty mechanized. Another sixty of Janissary motorized

infantry. Six thousand tanks, twenty thousand infantry carriers,

a thousand SP guns… two million troops, and it all depends on

two legions of paratroopers. North of the mountains, in an

open-field battle of maneuver, we can take the Fritz. The Ivans

are still holding hard east of the Volga, the Germans took on too

much; they haven't got a strategic reserve to speak of… But

butting our heads into the Caucasus, fighting our way over the

mountains, inch by inch—" He shook his head. "We can't afford a

war of attrition; there aren't enough Draka; it would ruin us.

And there may not be any limit to the number of serfs we can

conscript for the Janissaries, but there are limits to the number

we can arm safely."

"War is risk," the officer beside him replied. The cat-pupiled

eye of Intelligence was on her collar; she had the same air of

well-kept middle age as he, and a scholar's bearing. "Breaking

the Ankara Line was a risk, too; but it gave us Anatolia, back in

"17."

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