Drakas!

Drakas! collects science fiction stories that take place within S. M. Stirling's alternate history universe known as The Domination. The book was released in the United States in October 2000, though no specific day is confirmed. In "Custer Under the Baobab," William Sanders follows George Armstrong Custer, a former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel dishonorably discharged for cowardice in battle for not attacking a group of Sioux. Now in Draka territory, he is brought into the Kalahari Mounted Police by J.E.B. Stuart and sent to hunt down a group of bushmen who killed a white Draka farmer, leading a lochos of old Confederate soldiers. John J. Miller's "Hewn in Pieces for the Lord" features Charles George Gordon, once field marshal in both the Ottoman Empire and China. In Draka-controlled Alexandria, he pursues a plan to dam the Nile to create a navigable waterway to the Great Lakes of Africa. Alexander von Shrakenberg offers a deal: defeat the Mahdi in Sudan, who recently beat William Hicks' army, and Gordon gets his project. Gordon agrees, only to find he must beat William Quantrill of the Security Directorate to the Mahdi. Roland J. Green's "Written by the Wind" places two Draka observers on a Japanese airship during the Russo-Japanese War, where they witness a brutal sea battle. David Drake's "The Tradesmen" is set after the Eurasian War (the timeline's World War II). At a rural Draka outpost in Europe, mercenaries clean up remaining free locals, paid per ear of a killed person. A change in protocol and a field coincidence spark conflict over whether killing a child earns full or partial payment. In "The Big Lie," Jane Lindskold has a sniper who supposedly served with Centurion Von Shrakenberg during the Eurasian War retell events from "Marching Through Georgia" in a cynical, anti-propaganda tone. Lee Allred's "The Greatest Danger" takes place in the Channel Islands, recently passed from Nazi to Draka control. A relatively enlightened Draka governor tries to prevent the enslavement of the British inhabitants. The story notes that Dutch-descended Afrikaners, marginalized by Draka expansion, concentrate in the Draka Navy and show some dissent. A Draka propaganda film depicts the Danish royal family enslaved brutally to set an example.