ASCENSION ISLAND
SOUTH ATLANTIC OCEAN
ALLIANCE FOR DEMOCRACY
APRIL 1, 1990
Eric von Shrakenberg - newly elected Archon of the Domination of the Draka - squinted against the tropical sun as he descended the forward ramp of the Andrapoda, the dirigible that had brought him to this isolated island of volcanic rock. Before him the forward elements of Archonal Guard spread out to secure the immediate area of cracked concrete of the landing zone, the Citizen soldiers panning their Holbars T-7 assault rifles around slowly, hands on the pistol grips forward of the action, their eyes cold and alert behind the visors of their helmets. Others were behind him and at either side at the minimum respectful distance, their unit blazon visible on the lobster-tail plates of their armguards: an armored gauntlet crushing a terrestrial globe in its fist.
Trailing behind the vanguard of the Draka party were a group from the Security Directorate in their olive green uniforms with skull patches on their collars, their hands resting on the butts of their late-model Tolgren pistols with a 30-round horizontal casette magazine of caseless 5mm ammunition above the barrel. Their eyes flicked back and forth, backs straight and ignoring the almost palpable air of derision the Archonal Guard soldiers were aiming at them with lordly disdain.
They a bit closer to the sharp end a' things than usual, Eric thought wryly. He was a man of nearly seventy-two, still straight but moving with care. He had the typical hawk-nosed von Shrakenberg looks, as well as a mustache and thick hair with more white than yellow nowadays. Lines were scored down his face on either side of his beak nose, the look of a man that had seen and experienced much in his long life. He made a sharp contrast to the much younger men and women around him in his linen suit of indigo and white lace with silk cravat, compared to their cermet armor and uniforms.
Waiting about thirty feet away were three vehicles, large six-wheelers with an enclosed body of molded composite armor. Copied from us. Vehicles were one area that the Domination had always held the advantage over the Yankees, from Trevithick's first steam drags of the early 19th Century to modern ducted fan aircars. These were based on Eurasian War-era Draka transports, what the Alliance officially designated ATWVs: All-Terrain Wheeled Vehicles, or as their soldiers had nicknamed them, Weevils. Surrounding them were a group of American soldiers wearing their own version of cermet armor with American flag shoulder flashes, quivering tense as they held their own Springfield-16 assault rifles at the ready but not quite pointing at the Draka party. In front of them all was an officer in the dress uniform of the United States Army, his swarthy complexion and slanted eyes speaking of a likely Hispanic-Asian mixture.
The officer's eyes were cold as he approached Eric, his steps and stature stiff and machined. The soldiers to either side of the Archon bristled as the American came to a stamping halt and snapped his right forearm up in a formal Yankee-style salute. "Excellence," the Army soldier began, "I am Captain Benito Aguinaldo, United States Army. President Hiero welcomes you to Ascension Island. We are to escort you and your party to the meeting site."
Eric inclined his head politely to the young officer. "Greetin's to you, Captain. Quite the welcome party you've arranged fo' us," he observed dryly, his eyes taking in the armed force. Behind him three Velite-class armored personnel carriers rolled down the ramp from the cargo bay of the Andrapoda, an aged design by Draka standards, but the War Directorate's Intelligence Section had been reluctant to risk any of the latest of the Domination's technology in a visit to Alliance territory.
"Merely an escort, Excellence, as I said." The hooded look to Aguinaldo's eyes seemed to say something completely different as his eyes flicked around to take in the Citizen Force soldiers and Security Directorate headhunters. Disgust practically radiated from every stiffened line of his body.
Yankees sho' taught this one well, Eric thought idly. Must be Filipino-Mexican at a guess. Both areas where American states had been carved out of regions heavily populated by non-Europeans. And this Aguinaldo has that famous Yankee holier-than-thou attitude down pat. That strait-laced moralism grated with more than just brief encounters, so mirror-opposite to Draka ways.
"Well then, shall we?" Aguinaldo replied with a curt nod, made an about-face and walked back to his comrades waiting by the Weevils. There was a low mutter from the young soldier to his right, a member of the New Race, who likely thought his voice too quiet for the aged human Archon to hear: "Damnyankee pigfuckah..."
Eric maintained his inscrutable exterior, but inwardly sighed and shook his head as he made his way to one of the Velite APCs. Relations between the Domination and the Alliance had gone from the usual aggressive espionage and border skirmishes and spiraled to downright venomous in the year since the convoy carrying alien artifacts and a copy of the complex's database had been pirated by the newly revealed Alliance fleet based in the Belt.
The fact that he had to attend this meeting in person on Alliance territory was a measure of how bad things had gotten: the Security Directorate and its political allies among the Militants had outright refused to allow Yankee electronics in the Archonal Palace to establish a personal line of communication between the Domination's Archon and the American President in Donovan House. From all accounts the OSS had been just as strident with regards to Domination equipment.
Now we have to risk this damn flashpoint to have a civilized conversation, Eric thought coldly. The meeting place was on an isolated island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, roughly midway between Alliance Brazil and Draka West Africa. Both leaders had had to travel in unescorted slow-moving dirigibles that could be easily monitored by either side, and both sides still had massive naval forces standing by, ready for someone to get an itchy trigger finger and launch the Final War. Eric knew for sure that the Domination's XV Fleet had sortied out from Capetown to oversee the meeting between the two heads of state from just outside the island's territorial waters. Wotan knows what the Yankees have out there. They always had been better at the naval side of warfare, while the Domination had been a primarily land power for most of its existence.
The view outside the window as the Draka convoy - flanked to the front and rear by the Alliance Weevils - made its way along the dirt road was a barren wasteland of volcanic rocks and cinder cones with the rare green plant hopefully poking up here and there amidst large lava fields. Eric's lips twisted with distaste; a similar island within the Domination's territory would have had its mountain peaks sown with planned forests by the Conservancy Directorate with the rest of the island following suit in the ensuing decades. Say what you will about the Draka, at the very least my people know how to make things pleasin' to the eye, he thought.
It wasn't long before the greenery surrounding Georgetown, the island's capital, came into view. The outskirts were made up of suburbs of housing remarkably small, drab and uniform to Draka eyes, military houses built to house Ascension Island's swelling garrison as the Protracted Struggle between the Alliance and the Domination heated up. The core of the town, however, was made up of the same 19th Century buildings that had been constructed after the town had been founded to house a Royal Marines garrison to oversee Napoleon Bonaparte's exile to St. Helena, and then its expansion as a waypoint between South America and Africa after the establishment of regular airship lines in the 1890s.
The convoy stopped in front of a large Victorian building of wooden construction with white paint and a steeply sloped red tile roof. Slightly faded gilded lettering declared it the Exiles Club, what Eric knew from his pre-summit briefing to have been a hotel-cum-resort visited by assorted celebrities and dignitaries during its heyday in the years leading up to the economic recession of the 1930s. Its fortunes had fallen sharply upon the outbreak of the Eurasian War and the break in relations and travel between the Domination and the Western Hemisphere in the late 1940s.
Eric stepped out of the APC and strode towards the double doors of the hotel, inclining his head respectfully to the formal salutes from the two American soldiers standing guard. One of them stepped away from the door and was replaced by one of the Archonal Guard soldiers as he approached, one of the protocols that had been agreed on beforehand. A few paces behind him, another Draka soldier and the American from the doors followed him inside, trailed in their turn by the Security Directorate officers and representatives from the Foreign Affairs Directorate that had accompanied him to this summit.
The front hall still had the smell of mustiness about it, a building that had obviously seen little use for many years until today. Two staircases of tropical hardwoods with marble veneered steps trimmed with gilt swept upward to either side of the elaborately carved front desk. Eric imagined he could almost hear the bustle of smartly uniformed bellhops rushing about, carrying the luggage of European, Brazilian or even American big game hunters taking a few days leisure on their way to the vast game preserves of the then Dominion of Draka, part of the British Empire, or those of Draka Citizens making forays into the Empire of Brazil to visit or tour foreign plantations until slavery was finally abolished by Pedro III in the early years of the 20th Century. The walk to the dining room reinforced that impression, the walls adorned with framed pictures of the more famous visitors of the Exiles Club: royalty, nobles, celebrities, politicians, mostly dressed in white linen suits of eye-searing brilliance under the tropical sun.
Eric paused at the entrance to the dining room, taking in the sight before him. A long table had been set at the center of the room, lined with chairs. Against the far wall two flags were hung next to each other: the American Stars and Stripes, what many Draka called the 'Bloody Zebra' with its star-spangled blue field in the upper left corner; and the Domination's Drakon, a crimson bat-winged dragon with a green-silver-gold sunburst on its chest on a black background, clutching the slave-fetter of mastery and the sword of death in its claws.
And standing in front of the table was a short Hispanic woman, flanked by Secret Service agents in their plain dark suits, as well as uniformed OSS officers. Eric stepped forward even as he felt his skin crawl. I know Virunga Biocontrol says the Stone Dogs has adequate controls in place, but standing right here with them... His face maintained its polite amiability as he inclined his head to her. "Madam President."
"Excellence," she replied, with meticulous courtesy.
She may have been added to balance the ticket, but I don't think the Yankees lost when Liedermann slipped on the soap, Eric decided. President Carmen Hiero was the second Hispanic and the first woman to sit in the same chair as Jefferson and Douglas; before that she had been a Republican jefe politico in Sonora, still very unusual for a woman in the States carved out of Old Mexico. Fiftyish, graying, criolla blueblood by descent, mixed with Irish from a line of silver-mine magnates: that much he knew from the briefing papers. Old haciendado family, but not a shellback by Yankee standards; degrees in classics, history, and some odd American specialty known as political science, whatever that was. A contradiction in terms, from the title.
They shook hands, one brief firm shake while her black eyes met his calmly, then proceeded to their respective heads of the table. Almost as much body-language control as a Draka, he thought with interest. Better than some of us do, actually. I wonder how deep it runs.
"I suspect," Hiero began as they took their seats, "that you asked for this meeting with regard to the discovery on Mars."
"That does seem to be an obvious point of discussion," he replied dryly. A pause. "Why did you agree to this meeting, Senora?"
"I suspect my reasoning was much like yours, von Shrakenberg. The convenience of dealing with this issue without the circumlocutions essential where things are said in public, without the necessary lies of party politics. In addition, the chance of gaining personal insight into my enemy, set against the risk of him doing likewise. Well worth that risk. Always it is better to act from knowledge than ignorance." Eric nodded, spread his hands in silent acknowledgment as she continued. "Although, por favor, why did you not request such a meeting with the Alliance Chairman?"
Eric leaned forward slightly. "For one, it wasn't an Alliance task force that pirated our convoy. It was American." A flick of his eyes to a nearby OSS agent communicated exactly whose task force it had been. The man himself was unremarkable: about middle aged, thin and dark and precise, with a mustache that looked as if it had been drawn on. He bristled at the unspoken implication hanging in the air.
Hiero was quick to step in. "Excellence, may I introduce General Anton Donati of the Office of Strategic Services."
Donati inclined his head to the Draka Archon, hands clasped behind his back. "Excellence," the Italian said, voice neutral.
Eric returned the courtesy - his people were nothing if not unfailingly polite in formal settings - and returned his attention to Hiero. "To return to yo' question, Madam President... the second is much the same reason you would not have agreed, had Representative Gayner's nominee been sittin' in this chair."
Her eyebrows rose slightly. "I would not compare Chairman Allsworthy to your Militants," she said.
"Not in terms of policy... a certain structural similarity in position on our relative political spectra. Perhaps a similarity in believin' too strongly in our respective national mythologies. Besides, the American President is still rather mo' than first among equals."
It was Hiero's turn to spread her hands silently. Certain necessary fictions must be maintained even here, he read the gesture.
"Turnin' to business," Eric continued. "I must reiterate mah predecessor's protests regardin' the attack upon our convoy, and demand the return of the cargo it was carryin'." Not that it had been too much of a loss in the end, according to the TechSec people in charge of the project at the Prothean - the phonetic pronunciation of the alien race's name discovered in the data core - compound on Mars. The convoy had been carrying only a fraction of the artifacts found within, and more had been discovered since.
"I, in turn, must protest the selfishness of the Domination in withholding such momentous information as the discovery of proof of alien life." The two of them briefly shared a look of perfect understanding. We both know the dance isn't going anywhere, but the steps must be followed.
In reality, the uncharacteristic American attack upon Domination ships had forced the former into a disclosure of the existence of the Prothean bunker to the Alliance Chairman and Grand Council. Which leak like a sieves. Their news media had caught wind of it and jumped on the story, which in turn had gotten it spread to the general Citizenry of the Domination. The mostly atheist Draka had reacted to the news with amazement, but in the end with far more equanimity than the Alliance general public. Every one of their media outlets had run with the story. Who were these mysterious aliens? Where were they now? Were they extinct? Would they return? What impact did they have on humanity's past evolution? What impact would they have on humanity's future?
Every major religion on Earth had been rocked to its core. The small fringe of Interventionary Evolutionists had zealously proclaimed the discovery as proof of their beliefs and had gained large followings. Many existing faiths were trying to incorporate the reality of alien species into their existing mythologies, and most religions in Alliance territory were still trying to reassemble the pieces.
The Domination's Security Directorate, on the other hand, had dealt with the disclosure in a far more controlled fashion. The religious hierarchies of the serfs were scrambling to rewrite the history, creeds, and beliefs under the all-seeing eye of Skull House while the news was being slowly disseminated to the serf population.
Hiero leaned forward in her seat. "In all seriousness, this discovery is both momentous and dangerous. We now know there is alien life out beyond our solar system." Her dark eyes searched his. "Can Earth's children truly afford to be divided as we are?"
Eric laughed harshly. "You Americans have been a lucky people, on the whole... what convenience, to have national interest an' high-soundin' ideals so congruent." He waved his hand briefly. "Forgive a slight bitterness. Moral judgment - that has to be made in the context of political and historical reality, not some imaginary situation where we start with a tabula rasa. If'n a Draka thinks of choice at all, it's as constrained within narrow bonds; human beings make history, but they don't make it just as they choose." He laughed again, this time with more genuine humor. "Interestin' question, whether perception is the result or cause of social reality..."
He leaned forward in his seat. "Madam President, remember always that there is no true symmetry between our positions, here. There is an element in the Alliance which seeks to simply grow around and beyond us, reduce us to an irrelevance." She nodded. "This is precisely what much of our strategy has been designed to prevent. The border tensions, the convention we have allowed to grow up that there is no peace beyond Luna... It is you dynamism we fear. The tension inhibits it, forces you into military an' security measures where we can compete mo' easily."
Hiero's mouth clamped in a grim line. "Si. So my analysts tell me."
Eric leaned back. "My fathah once said to me, you nation is like you children; loved because they are yours, not necessarily because they deserve it. Our system is the only one we have, the only one we can without destroyin' ourselves. Protheans or not, if we let up and allow the tension to subside, let you dynamism grow unchecked..." He sighed. "A world bound in chains of adamant, that's our legacy."
A stiff nod from the president. "I see. Perhaps if we moved on to other issues of mutual concern then..."
President Carmen Hiero shook her head as the Draka party exited the dining room of the Exiles Club and made their way outside.
"The poor man," she murmured, in her mother's language.
"Ma'am?" a Secret Service agent said.
"Nothing, Lindholm," she said, and looked over at Donati. The OSS officer met her eyes, his own face grim. He was being groomed to take charge of the desk held for so long by Nathaniel Stoddard in Donovan House, the latter being quietly retired as a sacrificial lamb to mollify the Alliance hierarchy after the 'rogue' OSS attack on the Draka convoy.
"Is it as bad as I think?" she said quietly.
Donati shrugged, with a very Italian gesture. "I believe Archon von Shrakenberg explained it best, Madam President. The Domination can't afford a united front with us." He leaned forward, suddenly looking much older than his years. "The Final War looks unavoidable."