Drakas! Read online

  He went through an archway to the torch-lit garden, and stopped to stare at one of the most horrific scenes he'd ever witnessed.

  He could recognize the Mahdi—or at least his severed head—even at a distance by his fine white teeth, visible because the mouth was open in a rictus of false suffering. False because the Mahdi was dead and truly beyond all pain and suffering.

  The fine dark eyes were shut, the bladed nose smashed askew, the flesh of his cheeks torn away so that his birthmark was missing. The entire head was caked with dirt and blood.

  As Gordon watched, the Draka officers crowded around it as it lay on the ground, and laughed uproariously. One of them stepped back half a dozen paces, drew his sidearm, and fired at it. He missed, and the officers laughed again.

  "I'll show you what a marksman I am," someone said. It was Quantrill. There was no mistaking him for another officer. He was a short man, not much taller than Gordon. His arms and legs were lank and thin, making his bloated stomach appear even more colossal than it was. His face was red and flushed, certainly from excitement and drinking both. His eyes were bleary, his nose the size and shape of a rotten potato discarded in the field at harvest. The sight of him made Gordon sick, but his actions were even more disgusting.

  He approached the Mahdi's severed head until he stood right over it, undid the fly of his trousers, and urinated upon it. He shook with laughter as his piss struck the Mahdi's head between what was left of his eyes, cascaded down his features and dribbled down his chin to splatter on the dusty ground.

  The other Draka laughed like this was the funniest thing they had ever seen, but Gordon went cold, inside and out, though a white hotness flashed before his eyes.

  "Is that the use to which you put your peter? That and satisfying your lust upon barnyard animals?"

  His voice rang out hard across the laughter, which was silenced instantaneously, and Gordon didn't know who was more surprised to hear it, Quantrill or himself. He scarcely realized that he had spoke and he wondered where the words had come from.

  Quantrill whirled, his face scarlet with anger.

  "What did you say?"

  In that moment, Gordon suddenly realized he knew to what end he had spoken. He wondered if the words had come from Agag, or from himself, but in the end, he realized also that it didn't matter. He was Agag, or at least Agag was a piece of him. He was made up of a multitude of pieces, and he could live with them all. He didn't have to crush them down and hide them away, he didn't have to cut them away from himself. This realization struck him with the force of an epiphany that come over him as hard and fast as a gift from God. Was it? he asked himself wonderingly. Was it?

  "You're pissing on your boots," he said to Quantrill politely.

  "Huh?" Quantrill looked down, swore to himself, and cut off the flow of urine. He put himself back in his pants, and looked back up at Gordon, who was approaching slowly.

  "Gordon? Is that you, Gordon?"

  "It is, sir. Charles George Gordon, sir, Field Marshall in the Armies of China and the Ottoman Empire, proud possessor of the Peacock Feather given me personally from the hands of the Empress of China, Governor-General of the Sudan, and lately Colonel in Her Imperial Majesty's Army!"

  Agag, loose at long last, simply faded away, disappearing to where Gordon knew not.

  "You, sir, on the other hand, are a drunken, filthy, treacherous swine." Gordon added when he'd gotten within arm's reach of Quantrill, "Of course, such behavior is only to be expected from one with the taint of negro blood."

  Quantrill eyes bulged until Gordon thought they would literally pop out of their sockets. The veins in his neck swelled and Gordon could see them pulse in time to the blood pounding in his forehead.

  "Wha—wha—"

  Around them was deathly silence as most of the Draka officers looked on in blank incomprehension, though from the looks on some faces, several had guessed what Gordon was doing. None tried to stop him.

  "I wonder. Was your mother raped by a negro, or did she go to his arms eagerly, willingly, because your father—"

  Quantrill hit him in the face with his clenched right hand. Gordon's head jerked back at the force of the blow, but he caught Quantrill's left before it could land. No one else moved, though a shudder, partially of excitement, partially of dismay, went through the onlookers.

  Gordon twisted Quantrill's wrist, painfully, moved in even closer, and spit right in his face. Quantrill gurgled incoherently and his hand dropped for the hilt of the pistol that was thrust in his belt.

  Gordon smiled. Always with the gun, he thought, and his hand dropped to the pommel of his jambiyah and drew it in one swift motion.

  Quantrill's pistol had cleared his belt. He was bringing the muzzle up to point at Gordon's stomach, but Gordon was already slashing backhandedly with the jambiyah. It went in shallow at the right side of Quantrill's abdomen and sunk in deeper as he cut across the mass of fat that sheltered Quantrill's guts. Quantrill's finger tightened on the trigger and the pistol discharged into the ground between them. Gordon never even flinched.

  "That's for ordering my death," Gordon said into Quantrill's anguished face. With all his strength he rammed the point of the jambiyah as hard as he could into Quantrill's guts. "And that's for the Mahdi, God rest his soul."

  Quantrill's breath exploded from his lungs and all the strength flowed from his legs. Gordon held him up for a moment, then pushed him savagely away. The knife slipped out of his abdomen, and, as Quantrill fell backwards his guts came out in great shining coils. He lay whimpering on the ground, his hands making feeble motions to stuff his intestines back into his slashed stomach, flies already buzzing hungrily around him.

  "The devil take yours," Gordon told him.

  He looked up and around at the Draka officers who stood in a tight knot, looking from Quantrill, crying quietly on the ground, to Gordon, and back again.

  "Self-defense," Gordon said, and turned and walked away.

  It was over. He was done with soldiering and fighting and killing. He had a life to live, a dam to build, a river to tame. It would be hard work, but he'd never been afraid of hard work. At least from now on his hands would be dirty with only soil, not with blood.

  * * *

  May, 10 1883

  Alexandria

  My Dearest Augusta:

  I fear that it shall be some time before I'll be able to visit you and the family again. I have an enormous amount of work before me, but for the first time in a long time I feel as if I'll be able to get it all done. I am done, forever, I hope, with soldiering. I've had enough of that to last a lifetime. To last several lifetimes. Perhaps when I am really old and feeble and can do no more than grip a pen, I shall write my memoirs. There are stories to be told, no doubt, if the world is ready to hear them.

  I am staying for now with Alexander von Shrakenberg. There are some questions about the curious death of a Draka merarch that must be answered, but von Shrakenberg assures me that matters will work out just fine. The affair ended satisfactorily for the Draka, and that really is all they care about. The Mahdi's Revolt is over and the Sudan is pacified. Not in the way I would have wished, but as you know my dear, that is often the case in life.

  I'll find my own lodgings in time, but now I take an odd comfort in living in the household of this strange Draka. He'll probably burn in Hell, though, I'm not the one to judge him. He is a likable man, for a Draka.

  He's involved in more activities than any ten men. Cotton plantations, dirigible plants, government projects of all types and stripes, yet he also has time for a full social schedule.

  As you know I find that sort of thing tiresome, but just this morning he and his wife Edith were telling me about this new houseguest due to arrive later today. Alexander swears that he's a brilliant conversationalist and great wit and that I'll just adore him. He's a writer, like that Frenchy, Rimbaud. I guess all and all Rimbaud wasn't a bad fellow, but he's hardly someone you'd care to invite to your home. (Hah! Like myself, s
ome would say. Perhaps, like Our Lord Christ, I will learn to practice more tolerance.)

  Anyway, he's an Irish chap, name of Oscar Wilde. Ever heard of him?

  Your Loving Brother, in Christ:

  Charles

  WRITTEN BY

  THE WIND

  A Story of the Draka

  Roland J. Green

  I.

  Roland Green is a man of letters who dwells in Chicago. He has written fantasy—Wandor's Journey—and alternate history, a continuation of the great H. Beam Piper's work in Great King's War.

  Besides writing, Roland reads a great deal, especially in history maritime and military. He really knows the details, and in his hands they're anything but dull and dry; they're the stuff of living, breathing human beings.

  In this story, the rising Draka meet the Rising Sun, as two powers of the periphery of the world challenge the older states for room to live.

  However bad it was, it could have been worse . . .

  Sasebo Naval Airship Base, Empire of Japan 0430, August 18, 1905

  A hundred meters aft, one of Satsuma's engines came to life. Horace Jahn felt the vibration through the big dirigible's aluminum structure before the sound reached his ears. Once it did, the diesel sounded like the purring of a cat—a distant cat, the size of an auto steamer.

  Probably Engine #3, the Draka calculated. He could not have told a ground gripper how he made the calculation, but after ten years in airships, it took hardly more thought than breathing. (Say, hiding the need to sneeze at a formal banquet.) But even after he saw lights going on, he wondered why they'd started an engine.

  Like the rest of the Imperial Japanese Navy's First Air Kokutai, Satsuma was snugged down to her moorings, bow locked to the mobile mast and tail just as firmly gripped by the mooring car. Her internal electrics could run off ground power, saving fuel for her five diesels until she lifted off.

  Jahn strode forward, remembering to duck as he stepped off the catwalk and scrambled down the ladder to the control deck. Satsuma and her five sisters were first cousins to the Dominion's Harpy class, but when the Japanese Navy assembled them, they modified them for crews a good ten centimeters shorter than the average male Draka—and Jahn's North German genes ran him up several centimeters beyond that respectable height. The first few weeks aboard Imperial airships had left bruises and scrapes on his forehead, hips, knees, and elbows.

  More lights came on. Two crewmen in blue coveralls seemed to sprout from the deck. They bowed to Jahn, then scrambled up the ladder before Jahn could return the bow or take more than two steps forward. He did not believe that the Imperial Navy was really assigning ninja adepts to spy on the gaijin advisers they were letting watch them fight the Russians, but it was undeniably hard for any of the observers to be awake and alone for long.

  At least the Draka had found this easier to adapt to than some of the other nationalities, particularly the British and Germans. Omnipresent little brown men in blue or white were not too different from the household serfs that every Citizen took for granted, from the cradle to the deathbed, however un-serflike their behavior.

  The brightest lights and the only noise except the distant diesel seemed to come from the radio room. Jahn looked in through the uncurtained doorway, to see Warrant Officer Chiba at the central table, while a pair of long, blue-clad legs thrust out from what seemed to be the bowels of the radio cabinet.

  Jahn didn't need rude magnolia-accented mutterings floating out past the legs to know their owner. He had vivid and mostly pleasant memories of all his encounters with Tetrarch Julia Belle Pope of the Women's Auxiliary Service, and some of the most vivid were also the most pleasant.

  Repairs on the radio explained the power-up; the Shalamanzar XVI airship sets ate power like a mine serf attacking his dinner. Pope was a qualified radio operator and instructor, land, sea, and air. Was she aboard for maintenance, or—?

  It was less than an hour before the Kokutai was supposed to lift out on the biggest airship operation since the Draka burned Odessa. That was slicing time thinly, even with somebody who could work (or play) as fast as Pope.

  "Attention!" Jahn called softly.

  Scrape, rattle, thump, then:

  "Shit in your rice bowel, Horrie!" in excellent Japanese. Warrant Officer Chiba tried not to grin.

  Tetrarch Pope scrambled out of the radio housing, managed to combine a salute and wiping oil off her forehead, then finger-combed her dark hair as she looked Jahn up and down. He was familiar with her looks of friendly appraisal; this appraisal was hardly friendly.

  "Ah had a feeling it might come tah this, when the Archangels borrowed me for Satsuma," she said in English, using the term for the Arch-Strategos and Rear Admiral who nominally ran the Draka observation mission. "But Chief Yoshiwara's gone in for surgery. Appendix, ah heard. It came down to me joining the crew or Chiba flying solo. Surely y'all wouldn't want to gladden yo' male hearts that badly, now would y'all?"

  Chiba shot Jahn a look that combined mild alarm and complete resignation. Any Warrant radio operator had to understand enough English to know what was going on. The Japanese were up there with the fustiest of British cavalry generals, in preferrring women far behind the shooting line. But preferences were one thing; arguing with Julia Belle Pope was something else.

  "You getting killed isn't going to gladden my heart at all," Jahn said. "Or anybody else's."

  He thought he saw her shifting her feet, to be ready for a fight if things went that far. Then he raised her near hand to his lips, bowed over it, kissed it, clicked his heels in a perfect parody of Leutnant zur See Peter Strasser, and grinned.

  "But I suppose you wish to know what happens to me as soon as possible. I take the liberty of assuming that you would miss me—as I would indeed miss you."

  He thought his voice had been steady when he said that, as a Citizen's and a soldier's ought to be. Apparently he didn't quite succeed. Pope snatched her hand back, and Jahn could have sworn she was blushing as she dove back into the radio cabinet.

  "Yo' ain't good lookin' enough to just stand around lak a prettybuck, Horrie," floated out from the shadows. "So if yo' cain't think of anythin' better to do, check the battery in the Numbah Three worklight and ah'd be evah so grateful."

  "Aye aye, ma'am," Jahn said, pointed at Chiba, and switched to Japanese.

  "Hard work, Chiba-san, and while we're at it, count the rest of the torch batteries."

  * * *

  It had been Pope who kissed Jahn first, and that on the first day they met, in the third month of the war. That had been a surprise; most of the rest he'd learned about Julia Belle Pope in the seven months since hadn't been. Frightening, delightful, or outrageous in about equal proportions—and after a while, they could laugh together about even the outrageous parts. . .

  He'd been returning to the Draka Mission Compound outside Sasebo after the first airship patrol where the Japanese had allowed him to stand bridge watches alone. Since he'd commanded Fury out of Trincomalee two full years before the war broke out, they hadn't needed to take so long to admit that he was a qualified airship officer.

  However, Japan's industrial base was limited. Russian front-line strength was two to one against them, and the Americans were using financial influence and the threat of their Pacific and China Fleets to enforce an arms embargo that hurt the Japanese much more than it did the Russians. Modern weapons to the Japanese were like Citizens to the Draka—capital, not interest, to be expended with the same exquisite caution.

  Jahn unpacked his flight gear and took a sponge bath in his quarters. He always preferred to be alone for a few minutes, after days in the echoing crampedness of an airship's quarters. Then he headed for the palestra—the dojo, he corrected himself. Half an hour of exercise or even a few minutes' sparring would unkink the rest of his muscles and make him fit for the company of Citizens, Japanese hosts, or even other nations' observer teams.

  The dojo, however, was already occupied. Jahn's first proof of that came a
s he opened the door and saw a tanned bare foot dart toward Lieutenant Commander Goto's head. Goto saved himself from having the foot shatter his nose and cheekbone by a blurringly fast back roll, then pivoted on his thick arms and scythed down his opponent with both legs. An "Umpff!" and the sound of a body hitting the bamboo mats marked the end of the bout.

  Jahn stepped forward and bowed to Goto and the unknown other. He—no, she—was already rolling to her feet, favoring one leg a trifle. She was half a meter narrower and a head taller than Goto, who resembled a pocket-sized sumo wrestler.

  Goto and the woman returned the bows. "How was your flight?" Goto said, in Japanese.

  The Imperial officer probably already knew more about the patrol than Jahn did. Goto was an accomplished submariner temporarily assigned to the staff job of playing herdboy to the Draka observer mission. He'd abandoned none of his old contacts, even if they hadn't got him the submarine command he transparently wanted.

  Jahn looked at the woman, realized that she was not only European but Draka, and decided that the long-rumored Women's Auxiliary Corps detachment must have arrived while he was in the air. He also decided that a little courtesy might put a smile on a very agreeable face. It had vast pools of brown eyes, a wide mouth with dazzling white teeth, a frame of curling dark hair, and only one negative point—a nose so long and sharp that Jahn had a brief mental image both erotic and ludicrous.

  He bowed to the woman again. "Lieutenant Commander Horace Jahn, Airship Service of the Navy of the Dominion."

  She replied with a salute. "Tetrarch Julia Pope, Women's Auxiliary Corps, at your service." She spoke in fluent Japanese, with a more refined accent than Goto's, or even Jahn's. Then she grinned, and Jahn was not disappointed over what a grin did to her face.

  Jahn turned to Goto. "We flew as far as the Bonins—pardon, the Ogasawaras—but sighted little. Yubari is still aground on Iwo Jima, and nothing remains of last week's cruiser battle but wreckage and a few rafts. We saw no signs of life on any of them."