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

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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
 

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