David Drake - Reach Trilogy 1-3 - The Reaches

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INTRODUCTION:

The One That Got Away

I'm a very organized writer—insanely organized, one

might say, and we'll get back to that in a moment. I

take extensive notes before I start plotting, and I do v

detailed plots (usually in the range of 5–15,000 words

per plot, though a few have been much longer).

ery

Occasionally I hear

a writer say something along the lines of "My hero

went off in a direction I didn't expect." I shake my head: my heroes don't d

anything of the sort. It turned out, however, that they could still surprise

me.

I got the notion of using the Age of Discovery as the background for a

series of space operas. I'd bought a set (eight volumes) of Hakluyt's

Voyages (the 1598 edition, which adds a great deal of material but drops

David Ingram's very interesting account from the 1589 edition) while I was

still an undergraduate and dipped into it frequently. When I chose that

world for my setting, I read and took notes of the whole work. I then

started plotting.

The life of Francis, later Sir Francis, Drake lent itself to development

into a trilogy: his first voyages to the Caribbean, which made him an

enemy of Spain and gained him a name; the round the world voyage of

1580–1, which brought him great wealth and a knighthood; and finally the

climactic struggle against the Armada. I actually followed Drake's life quite

closely, but especially in the second book I wove in events which happened

to some of his contemporaries.

Though Drake was my model, I didn't attempt to tell the stories from

his viewpoint. He's a very attractive man in many ways. His luck was in

great measure the result of careful planning. For example, he didn't lose a

man to scurvy, the deficiency disease which nearly wiped out Magellan's

crew during the only round the world voyage preceding Drake's. Anson, a

century and a half later, was still losing large numbers of crewmen to

scurvy. Drake had figured out something that the greatest navigators

before and after him did not, to their great cost.

Furthermore, in a cruel age and under brutal conditions, Drake wasn't

himself cruel and didn't allow those under him to practice cruelty. This is

truly remarkable, more remarkable than readers who haven't been in hard

places themselves can imagine. Drake, suffering a painful wound from an

Indian ambush, prevented his men from bombarding the Indian village. He

said, probably correctly, that the Indians mistook him for a Spaniard—but

the man who could do that after an arrow has been pulled from his face

was humane in the best sense of the word.

But.

Drake was a religious fanatic and a fanatical patriot. He had sufficient

reason—Philip II of Spain was a tyrant from the same mold as later

provided the world with Hitler—and Drake's behavior was almost

invariably within what now are accepted civilized norms. (The one instance

of a war crime in modern terms involved hanging a hostage priest and

promising to hang more if the Spaniard who'd murdered an envoy under a

white flag weren't surrendered for punishment.)

But if what Drake did is acceptable, what he was is not. I don't say

that I couldn't get into the mind of a fanatic, but the world and my world

wouldn't be better places if I did so. I told the story—the stories—from the

point of view of fictional sidekicks who, though men of their times, took a

detached attitude toward the great issues of their day. Men, in short, who

weren't very different from me.

I won't say that was a mistake, but I think it is the reason that the

wheels came off my careful plan. Those viewpoint characters turned out to

have minds of their own: my mind. And as a result, the novels weren't at

all what I'd intended them to be.

That's the background to The Reaches. I'll now offer three . . . well, call

them caveats regarding the books themselves.

1) I postulated a future in which war had brought Mankind to the brink of

extinction. The civilization that returns is based on individual

craftsmanship, not mass production (although that's clearly on its way

back by the end of the series). Some readers, faced with stories in which

the characters fly starships but fight (some of them) with single-shot rifles,

were not only baffled but infuriated.

2) Though I didn't use ideologues for my viewpoint characters, the period

itself was fiercely ideological. I didn't attempt to hide that reality by

inventing characters with modern sensibilities to exclaim with horror at

situations which everyone of the day took for granted. Thus the books are

deeply steeped in ideology that readers may find not only foreign but

distasteful.

3) Finally, I'd intended The Reaches to be light space opera, the sort of

thing I later did in the RCN series. Space opera they are, but they're very

hard, harsh books. Through the Breach in particular is a more realistic view

of what war does to a citizen/soldier than Redliners was. I'm more self-

aware now than I was when I wrote the series, but I'm honestly not sure

whether more than chance was involved in my choosing to write Through

the Breach in first person, which is nearly unique in my fiction.

There's no single Truth in my world, but there are lots of little truths.

There are several of those woven into The Reaches, but they're not all of

them the truths that make me happiest in the hours before dawn.

Dave Drake

david-drake.com

Igniting the Reaches

To Rana Van Name

Who first heard about this one

when we were all going off to dinner;

And who is special.

Above Salute

Piet Ricimer stood out like an open flame on the crowded, cluttered

bridge of the Sultan as she orbited Salute. Stephen Gregg was amused by

the young officer's flashy dress.

Well, Ricimer was no younger than Gregg himself—but Gregg, as a

member of a factorial family, was mature in ways that no sailor would ever

be. More sophisticated, at any rate. Realizing that sophistication and

maturity might not be the same made Gregg frown for a moment until he

focused on the discussion again.

"I suppose it might be Salute," mumbled Bivens, the navigator. Gregg

had already marked Bivens down as a man who never saw a planetfall he

liked—or was sure he could identify.

"Look, of course it's Salute!" insisted Captain Choransky, commander

of the Sultan and the other two ships of the argosy. "It's just this tub's

lousy optics that makes it hard to tell."

His vehemence made the landfall seem as doubtful as Bivens' concern

had done. This was Gregg's first voyage off Venus, much less out of the

solar system. He was too young at twenty-two Earth years to worry much

about it, but he wondered at the back of his mind whether this lot would

be able to find their way home.

Besides the officers, three crewmen sat at the workstations controlling

the forward band of attitude jets. The Sultan had been stretched by two

hull sections after her first decade of service as an intrasystem trader. That

had required adding another band of jets.

The new controls and the sprawl of conduits feeding them had been

placed on the bridge. They made it difficult for a landsman like Gregg to

walk there under normal 1-g acceleration without tripping or bruising

himself against a hip-high projection. Now, with the flagship floating in

orbit, Gregg had even worse problems. The spacers slid easily along.

The most reassuring thing about the situation was the expression of

utter boredom worn by every one of the crewmen on the control boards.

They were experienced, and they saw no reason for concern.

"Sir," said Ricimer, "I'll take the cutter down and find us a landing site.

This is Salute. I've checked the star plots myself."

"Can't be sure of a plot with these optics," Bivens muttered. "Maybe the

Dove got a better sighting than I could."

"I'll take the six men who came with me when I sold The Judge,"

Ricimer said brightly. "I'm pretty sure I've spotted two Southern

compounds, and there are scores of Molt cities for sure."

Ricimer was a short man, dark where Gregg was fair. Though willing to

be critical, Gregg admitted that the spacer was good-looking, with regular

features and a waist that nipped in beneath powerful shoulders. Ricimer

wore a tunic of naturally red fibers from somewhere outside the solar

system, and his large St. Christopher medal hung from a strand of

glittering crystals that were more showy than valuable.

"Might not even be Molts here if it isn't Salute," Bivens said. "Between

the twenty-third and twenty-ninth transits, I think we went off track."

Choransky turned, probably as much to get away from his navigator as

for a positive purpose, and said, "All right, Ricimer, take the cutter down.

But don't lose her, and don't con me into some needle farm that won't give

me a hundred meters of smooth ground. The Sultan's no featherboat,

remember."

"Aye-aye, sir!" Ricimer said with another of his brilliant smiles.

"I'd like to go down with the boat," Gregg said, as much to his own

surprise as anyone else's.

That drew the interest of the other men on the bridge, even the

common sailors. Piet Ricimer's face went as blank as a bulkhead.

Gregg anchored himself firmly to the underside of a workstation with

his left hand. "I'm Stephen Gregg," he said. "I'm traveling as supercargo for

my uncle, Gregg of Weyston."

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摘要：

INTRODUCTION:TheOneThatGotAwayI'maveryorganizedwriter—insanelyorganized,onemightsay,andwe'llgetbacktothatinamoment.ItakeextensivenotesbeforeIstartplotting,andIdovdetailedplots(usuallyintherangeof5–15,000wordsperplot,thoughafewhavebeenmuchlonger).eryOccasionallyIhearoawritersaysomethingalongthelineso...

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