The Legacy of the Iron Dragon: An Alternate History Viking Epic

by Robert Kroese

  “Gleeson, Schwartz and I need your help with a, um, logistical problem.”

  *****

  Their discussion with Gleeson confirmed Schwartz’s thoughts: Freedom had been designed to allow complete and indefinite segregation of the crew from the colonists, in case of mutiny or outbreak of contagious disease. The crew area had a separate food pantry and galley, although the former was currently almost empty; they would need to raid the cargo holds for supplies.

  “How long are you planning to maintain this arrangement?” Gleeson asked.

  Olson looked to Schwartz, who shrugged. “Indefinitely.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Gleeson said. “The Captain never would have gone along with this.”

  “Trust me,” said Olson, “nobody wishes the Captain were here more than I do. But he’s not, and we’re stuck with the situation he created. What exactly was his plan, Gleeson? Get a bunch of Roman soldiers and Jewish prostitutes on a spaceship, and then what? I’m all ears.”

  “Look,” said Gleeson. “It just doesn’t work, in practical terms. This voyage could last five hundred years. The crew will all be dead in seventy. There won’t be anyone left to land the ship even if we do find a suitable planet.”

  “We’ve got eight people and six stasis pods,” said Olson. “Three quarters of us can be in stasis at any given time. That gives us…”

  “Maybe two hundred years,” Gleeson answered. “Then what?”

  “We’ve got some time to figure it out,” said Schwartz.

  “Freedom requires minimal maintenance while in transit,” Gleeson said, “but we’re going to need a trained crew of at least five to manage a landing.”

  “Eventually we’ll probably have to start bringing over a few colonists to keep up our numbers,” Olson said. “Like Schwartz said, we have time.”

  “What about the original colonists?” asked Gleeson. “The Genevans?”

  “There are too many of them to bring all of them over to the crew area,” said Schwartz. “We can’t produce our own food, and the cargo holds will be empty in a few years. We’d have to raid the colonists for provisions, which would be risky. And keep in mind that every body that we add to the crew is one fewer person raising crops or caring for livestock.”

  “Or having babies,” Gleeson added.

  “That’s right,” Schwartz said. “As things stand, it’s not clear whether we have enough genetic material to ensure humanity’s survival. We can’t afford to subtract people from that pool because we’re lonely.”

  “It sounds like we need to include Lauren Foley in this discussion,” Gleeson said.

  Schwartz and Olson exchanged glances, but neither spoke.

  “Oh,” said Gleeson after a moment. “You’re not planning on bringing Dr. Foley over.”

  Schwartz and Olson hadn’t spoken of the matter, but they’d both come to the same conclusion. “We need her expertise,” said Olson, “but we can’t trust her.”

  “You think she’ll try to convince the crew to bring Freedom back to Earth?”

  “There’s no telling what she’ll do,” Schwartz said. “In my unprofessional opinion, she’s a narcissistic sociopath. She already orchestrated a hostage situation, and we still don’t know how the hell she even managed to get aboard. In any prison I’m running, I know which side of the bars I want her on.”

  “Then the question is,” said Gleeson, “can we use her expertise without pulling her out of the general population?”

  “I think so,” said Olson. “She’s a narcissist, yes, but she also has a messiah complex. In her mind, she’s the savior of humanity. She will do her damnedest to see her mission through, no matter which side of the bars she’s on.”

  “To be clear,” Gleeson said, “you think you can get Foley to implement a selective breeding program among the colonists?”

  “I don’t think I can get Foley to do anything she doesn’t want to do,” said Olson. “But if we leave her to her devices, she’ll do what she does.”

  “You think two hundred Roman soldiers are going to take orders from a woman?”

  “No,” said Olson. “I think they’ll take orders from their general. And I think that if we send Gaius back in there, Dr. Foley will have him wrapped around her finger in a matter of days.” He glanced at Schwartz. “The general has a weakness for strong women.”

  “Maybe so,” said Gleeson, “but you’re betting a lot on that personal dynamic, as well as the ability of Gaius and Foley to maintain some semblance of control over the others.”

  “Agreed,” said Olson. “But this is the hand we’ve been dealt. Do you think our odds of success are greater if we bring Dr. Foley in?”

  The line was silent for a moment. “No,” said Gleeson. “I think your instincts are correct. If we didn’t have a doctor among the crew, I might have said otherwise, but with Dr. Zotov aboard, we can get by without her. If we do this, though, we will need full buy-in from the crew, officers and enlisted.”

  “I agree,” said Schwartz. “With only eight people left in the crew, we can’t afford to have any weak links.”

  Olson frowned. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “All right, as soon as we’re out of Earth’s gravity well, I want all hands in this room for a vote.”

  *****

  Lauren Foley stood beside the fountain at the center of the garden level, trying to will away her headache. The other Genevans were still asleep, but several of the Jewish women had woken up and were looking around groggily. Toward her left, a few of the soldiers—now disarmed, thank God—were beginning to stir as well. In a few minutes, all hell was going to break loose.

  “Olson, are you there? Olson, come in.” No response. “Captain Olson, please come in.”

  Foley took several deep breaths. Her anger was only making her headache worse. Calm down, she told herself. Everything is going to be fine. They can’t leave you in here with these people. You were in charge of this mission, for Christ’s sake. You spent two years planning it. Yes, it all went to hell, but they still need you. If humanity is going to survive, they need your expertise.

  “Olson, come in. This is Doctor Lauren Foley. Answer me, God damn it.” Still there was no response.

  What the hell was Olson doing? Had the Romans taken over the bridge as well? She’d been told that was impossible. Hell, she was the one who had insisted on the reinforced carbon steel doors separating the crew areas from the colonist decks. Even if something had happened to Olson, somebody would be in charge. “Schwartz, are you there?” she said. “Gleeson. Anybody. Please come in. This is Dr. Foley. I’m still on the garden level, and there are about two hundred very confused and angry men here who are coming out of sedation. I need to be extracted immediately.”

  They’re doing this on purpose, she thought. Reminding me who’s in charge. Trying to make me sweat. Don’t give them the satisfaction. Stay calm. Remember, they need you.

  She walked calmly toward the elevator door, skirting the Roman soldiers who sat rubbing their heads and peering after her. Any moment now, that door will open, and crew members with guns will escort me to the bridge. I’ll have a terse conversation with Olson or whoever is in charge now, and then take a shower and get some sleep. And then I’ll get to work on figuring out how to save the human race.

  As she neared within ten paces of the door, there was a chime, and it began to slide open.

  “Thank God,” she said. “I was beginning to think you people were going to—” She stopped, her mouth hanging open, as a man with stern, aquiline features stepped out of the elevator. A simple deep blue tunic lay over his tanned, sinewy flesh. He stopped before Foley, meeting her eyes with a merciless gaze.

  “Ego Legatus Gaius Aemelius Numisius,” he said. “Hic impero.”

  Foley raised an eyebrow at the man. “We’ll see about that,” she said.

  Epilogue

  Captain Rachel Beaulieu sat in semi-darkness in one of the dilapidated chairs on the bridge of IDLS Freedom, knowing this was
the last time she was going to put herself through this.

  Fourteen times Freedom had approached promising star systems. Fourteen times Freedom had continued on her way, the captain having judged the planets of the system to be uninhabitable. The first three of these encounters had occurred before Rachel was born. Two were barely remembered events from her childhood. Two happened while she was in training to become an officer. Three occurred after she had taken on a more-or-less official (whatever that word meant) role in maintaining Freedom’s various systems. The last four had been on her watch as Captain, the most recent having been over six years ago. Three days ago, Freedom’s sensors had alerted the crew to the existence of a promising planet orbiting a yellow dwarf star a few million kilometers ahead of them. A probe had been sent out, and it was expected to report back with its findings at any moment.

  Rachel Beaulieu had spent her entire life—two hundred eighty years, by ship’s reckoning—on Freedom. Ah, the irony of that name! Every second she traveled farther than most people in history traveled in a lifetime, but she was forever trapped in the two thousand cubic meters that made up Freedom’s “crew area.” At least the colonists, although they had less space per person, had the garden level—something that at least vaguely resembled the surface of a planet. She knew the colonists resented the crew, but she would switch places with any of them without hesitation.

  But Rachel had been born to an ensign, Garret Beaulieu, and a refugee woman named Leah, who had been brought over to the crew side in the early days of Freedom’s voyage. She never completely understood the circumstances that led to the transferring of seven refugee women from the colonist area to the crew area. Her parents never talked about it, and the other original crew members would only make vague comments about there being a lot of chaos and violence in those days. The result was to solidify what came to be called the Olson Doctrine: there was to be zero contact between the crew and the colonists.

  Captain Olson and the other original crew members were all dead now, and of course the original colonists, who did not have access to stasis pods, had been dead for several generations. The Olson Doctrine, although it had been violated a number of times over the past two hundred years, had nevertheless been elevated to a statute of near-religious significance. Most of the colonists alive today had never seen a crew member; Rachel supposed the colonists thought of the crew as some combination of demigods and prison wardens. They had stopped calling themselves “colonists” four or five generations ago; now they were just “the people” or sometimes “Etruscans,” a reference to the homeland of their beloved forefather, General Gaius. Unlike the crew, who spoke English, the Etruscans spoke a version of Latin now thoroughly bastardized with Aramaic.

  Meanwhile, the crew (there were eight of them at present, just as there had been at the beginning) regarded the colonists with some combination of envy, pity and condescension. In many ways the colonists had regressed culturally and technologically; Dr. Foley and the other Genevans with knowledge of twenty-third century technology had died without transferring much of their knowledge. On the other hand, they had become remarkably skilled at eking out an existence with the minimal resources they possessed. Most of the animal species had survived, and, after a few rough years, the colonists had learned which plants could be cultivated to best effect. Dr. Foley had managed to get sperm samples from nearly every male aboard, and this bank was still used by the colonists for procreation.

  Foley and Gaius had, after an initial rough start, formed an uneasy alliance that eventually led to the formation of a rudimentary government, the primary function of which was to ensure the long-term survival of the colonists. As Rachel understood it, Foley had ceded any claim of authority over the colonists’ day-to-day lives in exchange for a pledge from Gaius that she would have absolute control over reproduction. There was a lot of “uncontrolled coupling” in those days, but the colonists quickly learned that the fruit of unapproved unions would not be allowed to live. In the beginning, almost no babies were allowed to be born, as there simply wasn’t room aboard Freedom for any more people. After several years had passed, as some of the older colonists began to die, a few births were allowed. The colonists learned that their odds of being approved for a child were much greater if the union met the standards of the Reproductive Committee, and after a few generations nearly every colonist had become something of an expert in both genealogy and genetics. The elders of the group became adept at matchmaking, and in cases where genetic factors made the production of offspring inadvisable, artificial insemination and surrogate parenting was used.

  Had these draconian policies been imposed on the colonists by the crew, they might have led to rebellion. But because they had been handed down by their revered leaders, General Gaius and Dr. Foley, they were accepted as gospel. Gaius, in fact, made it clear that ensuring the future of the colonists was a revolutionary policy: although they lacked the power to overthrow their jailers at present, someday their descendants would do so.

  The crew had observed these developments with nervous approval. If the cost of ensuring the survival of humanity was allowing the colonists to entertain revolutionary fantasies, then so be it. The crew had assured themselves that the Olson Doctrine—and six centimeters of carbon steel—would ensure that such ideas remained in the realm of fantasy. And so it had, for two hundred and eighty years. There had been countless attempts to break through those doors or manipulate the crew into opening them, but none had been successful. Attempts had become less frequent over the past century, but the colonists still plotted and dreamed.

  It’s the nature of humanity, thought Rachel. We hold onto hope long after the rational basis for it has slipped away. Here I am, sitting on the bridge, waiting for a report whose contents are predetermined. What will it be this time? Not enough oxygen. Too much ammonia. Too hot. Too cold. Unstable climate. No arable soil. Too much gravity. Not enough gravity. It was always something.

  She hadn’t asked for this. She’d never intended to become Captain. She had just been trying to make the best of her situation, like the other children unlucky enough to be born into the crew of IDLS Freedom. She had always thought Jack Olson, the previous captain’s oldest son, would become Captain when his father died. But Jack had been more interested in biology, and he’d eventually taken over as the crew’s resident physician after Dr. Zotov died. There hadn’t been a lot of other candidates. Two of the older members of the second generation had committed suicide, unable to accept that they would be spending their entire lives trapped on a spaceship. A third had made unapproved contact with a group of colonists who were planning mutiny. He was transferred to the colonist area permanently. When Devin Olson died of a heart attack one hundred and thirty-four years into the voyage, Mika Schwartz had taken over as Captain for the next seven years. Before succumbing to dementia, she had selected Rachel as her successor. Kyra Gleeson, the ship’s engineer, had died a few years earlier when her space suit had malfunctioned while she was repairing a sensor. The rest of the surviving original crew members were not in good enough health to take over the job. That left Rachel and three other second-generation crew members, any of whom, in Rachel’s opinion, would have made a better captain.

  When Rachel asked Mika Schwartz why she had picked her, Schwartz had cited Rachel’s “indomitable spirit.” Rachel had accepted the compliment and the charge with aplomb and then gone to her quarters to cry. She had no indomitable spirit. She had just gotten really good at pretending to keep the younger crew members from worrying. Half a year later, she had officially (whatever that meant) taken the role as captain. That was two hundred and four years ago, ship’s time. Three quarters of that had been spent in stasis, but fifty-one years as the captain of a ghost ship was more than enough.

  Rachel Beaulieu was tired. The other remaining members of the crew were almost as old as she was. There had been no third generation. It was hard enough to spend your life trapped on a spaceship without being burdened with the knowledge
that your children and grandchildren would suffer the same fate. The colonists faced the same bleak future, but at least they had some semblance of normal life. They had family. They had a community. They farmed crops and cared for animals. And they could imagine a better future, even if that future was based on a fantasy. She knew the sorts of myths and legends that had arisen among the colonists about what was beyond the Steel Doors. If they only knew!

  So here she sat, awaiting the sensors’ report on star system number fifteen. She knew she wouldn’t make it to sixteen, and there was no one to take her place. She and the others had agreed that this was the end of their watch, one way or another: if this planet wasn’t inhabitable, they would open the doors.

  She wondered what they would do? Would they murder the crew in a frenzied rage? Put them on trial? Demand to know why they had done what they had done?

  And then what? Would they force the crew to turn Freedom around so they could spend the next three centuries voyaging back to Earth? Would they keep going in a vain hope of finding a habitable world? Would they commit mass suicide when they learned the truth—that they had struggled for two hundred and eighty years only to escape into a slightly larger prison? That their gods had no answers?

  The door to the bridge slid open, and she turned to see Abel Schwartz enter. The son of Mika Schwartz and one of the original enlisted men (rules regarding procreation were considerably laxer among the crew than among the colonists), Abel was the youngest living crew member. He was, by ship’s reckoning, two-hundred and forty-four years old. Rachel had always admired his positive attitude, but maybe he was just pretending as well.

  “Any word yet from the probe?” Abel asked.

  “Nothing yet. Have a seat.”

  Abel sat in one of the few chairs on the bridge that were still usable. “I have a good feeling about this one,” he said.

  Rachel laughed bitterly. This was their fifth time through this routine together. Abel always had a “good feeling.”