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

  The Legacy of

  the Iron Dragon

  A Novel by Robert Kroese

  Book Four of

  The Saga of the Iron Dragon

  Copyright ©2020 Robert Kroese. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or other—except for brief quotations in reviews, without the prior permission of the author.

  Contents

  Contents

  The Story So Far

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Epilogue

  Review This Book!

  Acknowledgements

  More Books by Robert Kroese

  The Story So Far

  I n the 23rd century, humanity has been hunted to the verge of extinction by an alien race called the Cho-ta’an. Earth has been rendered uninhabitable and every other human world is at risk of Cho-ta’an attack. The crew of Andrea Luhman, an exploratory ship in the service of the Interstellar Defense League, has been given a weapon that could alter the balance of the conflict: a “planet killer” bomb left behind by an extinct race. Pursued by a Cho-ta’an warship, Andrea Luhman flees through a hyperspace gate to the Sol system, but a fluke accident sends her back in time to 883 AD.

  Its primary thrusters badly damaged, Andrea Luhman limps into orbit around Earth, and a small crew, led by engineer Carolyn Reyes, is sent to the surface to fabricate a replacement part. The lander is shot down by a Cho-ta’an ship that followed Andrea Luhman through the gate. The Cho-ta’an ship falls into the North Sea, and the lander crashes in Norway.

  While the crew of the lander fight for their lives in Viking Age Scandinavia, Andrea Luhman is blown to pieces by a second Cho-ta’an ship that followed them through the gate. The planet killer is destroyed, and the crews of both ships are killed. But there is still hope: if the spacemen can get to the Cho-ta’an ship still in orbit, they may still be able to retrieve another planet-killer before humanity is defeated. The indomitable spacemen press on.

  Nearly fifty years after the lander crash, the Iron Dragon—a replica of a Titan II rocket carrying a Gemini Launch Vehicle—launches from a secret base in the Antilles. A single young astronaut named Freya, the granddaughter of Carolyn Reyes, reaches the Cho-ta’an ship and sets it on a course to a distant star in the hopes of locating another planet killer to change the course of the war.

  Some fourteen years later, however, Freya’s ship is intercepted by a warship called Varinga, which is crewed by a group of humans who seem to hail from a previously unknown branch of humanity. The year is 955 A.D., but these people, who call themselves Truscans, possess technology far in advance even of the IDL in 2227. With their hyperdrive-equipped starships, the Truscans could be powerful allies against the Cho-ta’an. But the Truscans have their own problems: they are at war with a race of human-like aliens called Izarians—the same race who built the planet killer. To defeat the Izarians, the Truscans need an army. Freya suggests that her people and the Truscans might come to an understanding. But where did this other branch of humanity come from?

  I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth.

  – Numbers 24:17

  Prologue

  Judaea, 130 A.D.

  The most powerful man in the world stood atop the northern portion of a narrow spur of hill, overlooking a rocky and desolate land. A quarter mile to the west, beyond the narrow Tyropean Valley, was another hill of similar elevation, once called Zion. To the west, beyond the Kidron Valley, lay another group of hills, chief among which was the Mount of Olives. To the south, the spur sloped sharply downward to the place where the two valleys met. There were no trees and only scrub vegetation. It was only mid-morning, but already the heat was becoming oppressive. Other than the clear outlines of several stone walls, there was little indication the place was ever inhabited—or could be inhabited.

  “Surely you are mistaken, Rufus,” said Hadrian to the governor of the province, who had led him to this place. The contrast between the two was stark. Tall, thin and bearded, Hadrian stood half a head taller than the clean-shaven, portly governor. The two were accompanied by the Emperor’s personal guard as well as a century under Rufus’ command, most of whom waited out of sight on the road below. “Never was there a village in this place, to say nothing of a city.”

  “I beg your forgiveness, Emperor,” Quintus Rufus said. “The land about you is the site of the ancient city of Hierosolyma, once the jewel in the crown of the Kingdom of Israel. This hilltop where we stand was, in fact, the site of their most sacred place, the Temple of Solomon. It is where the Jews went to worship their God, whom they call Yahweh.”

  “How is this possible? There is hardly one stone atop another. The Jewish temple was said to be a marvelous structure. Did Titus have so little respect for beauty and antiquity?”

  “The destruction was thorough, but your predecessor was not fully to blame. It is said that toward the end of the rebellion, when Roman victory was assured, General Titus—for this was before he ascended to the Emperorship—ordered the preservation of the temple. But the Jews, in their desperation to repel the Roman soldiers, started a fire in the sanctuary. The soldiers attempted to follow the general’s orders by stamping out the flames, but they were attacked by the Jews. Enraged, one of the soldiers grabbed a firebrand and threw it through a doorway, and the conflagration erupted anew. The Jews fought with the Romans while the temple burned around them.”

  “
It is a pity,” said Hadrian, shaking his head. The Emperor was not a sentimental man, but he seemed genuinely moved. “Even so, it does not explain the utter desolation of this place.”

  Rufus nodded. “My predecessors, having seen the zeal of the Jews, thought it wise to tear down anything that was left of the temple and to pull down the buildings of the city itself so the stones could be used elsewhere. Every tree was cut down, and it has been forbidden to build here since the end of the revolt.”

  “I do not understand. What harm is there in resettling the area?”

  “With all respect to your great intellect and wisdom, Imperator, it is difficult for one who is not a Jew to understand the significance of this place. I have lived here for six years and do not truly understand it. The place is spoken of repeatedly in their holy book. They believe that an anointed one, whom they call moschiach, will rebuild the temple here and secure the independence of the Jewish people from Rome.”

  “I see. You expect to disabuse them of this notion by barring them from building here.”

  “The Jews are a stubborn people, Imperator, not easily disabused of their religious fancies. You see how they persist in their traditions despite attempts to Romanize them over nearly two hundred years. As you know, they refuse to recognize the divinity of the emperor, claiming that there is but one God. I’m afraid the best we can do is contain the problem.”

  “But how it must pain them, having this scar across their land! It cannot remain this way forever.”

  “I suppose not,” said Rufus cautiously. “You saw the jubilation with which they greeted you?”

  “It is fitting for the Emperor to be greeted in this way. So it has been in Egypt, Lebanon and Syria.”

  “Of course, Imperator! I only meant to say that in the case of the Jews, one must always be wary of their motivations. Some say you have come to re-establish the temple, as foretold in their prophecies.”

  “Don’t speak foolishness, Rufus. Any fool could see how inappropriate it would be for the Emperor, chosen by the gods themselves, to consecrate a place to a deity known only to the Jews. A deity who could not even preserve his own temple!”

  “I understand that, Imperator. My point is that the Jews are… well, certainly not fools, but they have a peculiar way of thinking about things.”

  “You speak of the peculiar nature of the Jews, but I do not believe they are so different from the other peoples of the empire. Perhaps they reject my divinity in principle, but they greet their emperor in appropriate fashion. They pay their taxes and obey your decrees, do they not?”

  “With some exceptions, Imperator. You are, of course, aware of the recent violence.”

  “I know there is lingering resentment among some, but how could it be otherwise? Look at this place! Something must be done about it. Something will be done.”

  “I will respect your will in all things, Imperator, as always. However, I must urge caution—”

  “It has been sixty years since the end of the rebellion. The time for caution has passed. If we are to fully bring Judaea into the embrace of the Empire, we must bury the past once and for all.”

  “What do you have in mind, Imperator?”

  “A city,” Hadrian said. “In the place of Hierosolyma, I shall build a great city in the Roman style called Aelia Capitolina, in honor of myself and the king of the gods, Jupiter Capitolinus. And here on this mountain there shall be a temple—dedicated not to this Yahweh, but to Jupiter himself. It will be so magnificent that even the Jews will come to abandon their ancient superstitious and learn to bask in the glory of Rome.”

  “Forgive me for speaking boldly, Imperator,” Rufus said, “but I must protest. If you spend some time among the people, you will find—”

  “I have done nothing for the past week but meet with the people, Rufus!” Hadrian snapped. “They bowed before me and shouted praise and pledges of undying loyalty. Over the past years I have visited Gallia, Germania, Hispania, Mauritania, Libya, Sicily, Athens, and a dozen other corners of my empire. Everywhere people bend the knee to Caesar, as they should. You wish me to treat the Jews differently because they are ‘peculiar.’ I tell you that it is this very peculiarity that must be stamped out if the Empire is to thrive. Treat the Gauls as Gauls and the Libyans as Libyans, yes, but if we begin to alter the substance of our policies to accommodate the idiosyncrasies of the most implacable members of each town and tribe, we signal the beginning of the end of the Empire. No. Leaving this land like this is an insult both to the Jews and to Rome. Construction of Aelia Capitolina will begin at once. The Jews will accept the gift with gratitude.”

  “I am certain you are right, Imperator. But… if they do not?”

  “Then we shall have the opportunity to crush the troublemakers among them once and for all.”

  Chapter One

  Geneva Orbital Defense Command, 2227 A.D. (Earth Reckoning)

  Admiral Cole Huiskamp was in his quarters when a warning klaxon informed him of a problem. A glance at his wrist comm confirmed his worst suspicions: a group of unknown ships had just materialized in the Geneva system, less than half a billion klicks from Geneva herself. This was the moment he had feared since taking command of the Geneva System’s defense eighteen months earlier. He set aside the speech he’d been preparing—an inspiring exhortation intended for the colonists who would shortly be boarding the three seedships bound for uncharted parts of the galaxy—and hurried to the command deck.

  Geneva Orbital Defense Command—GODCOM for short—was a four-spoked aluminum-and-titanium wheel nearly a kilometer in diameter. Because it was in constant freefall in orbit around the white-blue sphere of Geneva, GODCOM was obliged to create its own simulated gravity—actually centrifugal motion—by spinning at just over one revolution per minute. The effective pull toward the outside at the “bottom” of the wheel was equivalent to one third of standard Earth gravity.

  The command deck was located at the end of one of the four spokes. The admiral’s quarters were in a cluster of living areas that ringed the spoke, just above the command deck, so getting there was a simple matter of walking to the access shaft at the center of the spoke and allowing the “gravity” to pull him down to the “bottom” of the wheel. The three-meter-diameter shaft was lined with rungs, but on the bottom few levels of the station these were used almost exclusively to ascend, not to descend. In the middle of the shaft was a fireman’s pole that could be used to rapidly descend to the lower levels. Some older officers preferred to climb down the rungs, and Huiskamp’s sixty-four-year-old knees would have thanked him for it, but using the pole was faster, and it had become a matter of pride. He descended the ten meters to the bottom, winced as the shock of the floor went through his knees, and then straightened up and went through the door to the command deck.

  The command deck was a forty-meter diameter dome-shaped chamber centered on the spoke. The surface of the dome was covered by a single high-resolution electronic display that depicted a 360-degree view of the space around GODCOM, integrated from the combined views of the several hundred cameras dotting the station’s exterior. The display continued seamlessly onto the floor, incorporating an artificial shift in perspective so that it appeared to an observer standing on the command deck that he were standing on a glass floor floating in space above Geneva. The white-streaked-with-blue surface of the planet rolled by underneath, while stars glowed brightly overhead. The entire display was an illusion, of course: if the dome were lined with windows, those on the command deck would be treated to a carnival ride view of deep space swirling on one side and Geneva spinning like a pinwheel on the other. Artificial gravity was hard enough to adjust to without the constant reminder that one was riding on the rim of a giant spinning wheel.

  The 360 display offered an idealized view of GODCOM’s surroundings—what an observer would see if the station were completely transparent and he was motionless at the center of it. In addition to being much less nausea-inducing, this idealized view was much more u
seful from a tactical and logistical perspective. There were only a few individuals for whom a single-camera viewpoint was sometimes useful—those executing manual docking operations with the station’s hub, for example—and it was a matter of a few keystrokes to bring up a view from any camera on one’s personal screen.

  Along the perimeter of the chamber, technicians, communications specialists and mid-ranking members of the Diplomacy Corps tapped away at consoles or murmured almost inaudibly into ambient-noise-canceling mics. Inset in the overhead view were dozens of windows of varying sizes relaying a staggering amount of information. Half the displays showed live feeds of the planet below or of GODCOM itself, either from one of the onboard cameras or a nearby satellite; the rest showed the status of ships currently within the Geneva system, weather on Geneva, telemetry from the various hyperspace gates still in operation throughout IDL space, and a great deal more. Ordinarily, many of the forty-or-so men and women on the command deck would be speaking to their counterparts on other planets or space stations, or on various IDL spaceships across known space, via the hyperspace gates, which allowed faster-than-light transmission. As the Cho-ta’an had taken control of more and more human planets, obliterating most of the IDL fleet, communications with IDL assets outside the Geneva system had dwindled to almost nothing. Many of the diplomatic, logistical and communications personnel on GODCOM had been re-tasked to assist the Geneva civil authorities to handle widespread unrest.

  Near the center of the dome, in the section of the command deck called “the pit,” was another ring of consoles, manned by the specialists responsible for GODCOM itself. GODCOM was not considered a ship, as it generally remained in a fixed orbit around Geneva, but it possessed all the same systems as any spaceship—life support, navigation, weapons, etc.—and therefore required a small but well-trained crew to manage them.

  Between the sound-dampening features of the room and the mics, which were shielded with nearly invisible transparent plastic sheaths that wrapped around the users’ mouths like aquatic breathing gear, the chamber was so quiet that Huiskamp could clearly make out the strains of Vivaldi’s “L’Inverno” wafting from the room’s sound system. The music had been Huiskamp’s idea: he found that classical music played at low volume eased tensions and made the command deck feel less sterile—although “L’Inverno” was perhaps a bit too on-the-nose given the current situation. Huiskamp could sense the tension in the room.