Bootstrap Colony 5 Snippet 2

 

Chapter 2

 

Ianna Imperium, Colony World

 

For a guy who was maybe a king, okay, prince consort? King Consort? He wasn’t sure nor did he particularly care about the titles. But he should be happy. And he was, to a degree.

It was all about fronts, Eugene Ryans thought as he looked out from the tower over the battlements of the capital castle.

If he’d been a woman, it would be a storybook fantasy come true. Prince meets and marries a woman making her his queen. Except, in his and Diedra’s case, the roles were reversed. She was the queen, and he was the outsider. He wasn’t even from this world.

He looked over to the kids playing with the nanny and smiled briefly. He went back to brooding. It seemed the day for it—moody, overcast. Cold, he thought with a slight pang for the poor serfs still stuck in hovels across the planet.

He glanced at the reflection of his wife in the chair reading by the fireplace. That was something that he liked about her; she liked to read. She had taught herself English and read some of the books that the printers printed ferociously.

Especially the romances that the girls had put them up to printing, he thought in amusement. What was it with women and reading romances? He thought with a slight shake of his head.

The slight movement attracted his wife’s attention. She glanced up but then went back to her reading.

He noted the movement and went back to brooding. Okay, a recap woolgathering he thought with a mental snort at his inner narrator.

He had found and captured the wormhole in the Atlantic with the help of Max and other engineers and scientists. People had thought they were crazy, which was why they’d kept it all quiet until they were ready to announce the gate was stable.

Then of course the U.S. government had gotten involved. They had insisted on joining the expedition. He’d welcomed the military support, even if it came with strings.

Fifteen civilians and fifteen military personnel of different stripes had crossed over. Unfortunately, some like Colonel Richards hadn’t made it. At each transit, the wormhole portal on this end of the wormhole had moved backwards along a cliff. The very last hummer had unfortunately come out midair, alla something like a Looney Toon cartoon.

It might have been funny for the horrified watchers, a bit of black comedy except that a group of people had been in the hummer. Colonel Richards had died along with his driver and three others.

The explorers had been cut off from a quick escape. They’d been forced to go inland, to wait out when the wormhole would inevitably be attracted to the cliffs once more and return.

In returning to the original mission they had met their destiny. They had wandered into a warzone of medieval cultures clashing in a classic siege. Well, classic if you replaced the animals with alien animals for the most part and if you mixed up the architecture and weapons from different cultures on Earth.

Apparently, the wormhole had been bouncing around Earth for some time. It had sucked up thousands of people over that time period. Those that had banded together and survived in the alien world had learned to thrive … to a degree. But they’d been stuck in the dark ages of technology. Newcomers called gaijin were highly prized for their new blood and knowledge.

The main country was called the Ianna Imperium, founded primarily by Romans with a smattering of other cultures thrown in. To the northeast was the kingdom of Duluth settled by Vikings and Celtic tribes.

Sometime in the past, the Imperium had begun to expand and eventually inevitably fractured. Two duchies were formed beyond the mountains to the north and south. A third tribe, Nuevo Imperium, had set up their own kingdom in the southwest.

The continent looked vaguely like Great Britain. It even had an island off the west coast of comparable size to Ireland that was home to slavers and pirates.

Duluth, who had a bad winter, had decided to invade in the early spring of their arrival. It had turned into a full siege of the Duchy of Emory. The group of explorers had tried to avoid it only to be drawn in when they stumbled on a group of Vikings busy raping and torturing a refugee party. The party’s survivors turned out to be Princess Deidra and her sister Zara. Their little brother had been killed in front of them.

They’d had a bunch of adventures getting the girls back to where they belonged. Along the way, they had lost more people, mostly to the local alien wildlife. He had saved the girls a few times. The others had jokingly coined the Princess Rescue Inc tag line.

In the capital, Eugene had been told that he was to marry the elder princess and become king. The king died and well, he’d been stuck in a moral quandary. Abandon the girls to be torn apart by the local court or the Vikings or help.

He’d pitched in to help and help they had. They’d made a deal with Deidra and her people to share some of their knowledge. In doing so, they’d revolutionized the Imperium. They’d also slaughtered the poor Viking bastards.

Poor, he thought in disdain as he sniffed softly. Okay, maybe a few, but most had been all full of zeal to loot, rape, and burn. He shouldn’t feel bad about stopping them no matter what it took. It was his modern western ideals that such one-sided slaughters should be limited.

He knew where it came from, comic books, cartoons, and movies, and the idea that the hero didn’t go off slaughtering people. They had to have chivalry, a sense of restraint.

He snorted again softly to himself. Funny how it was always expected for the good guys to show restraint.

Well, they had to a degree. The surviving Duluthians had been patched up. Zara had been put on their throne and sent there to get their house in order.

Eugene had been intent on returning to Earth but it hadn’t worked out that way. A plague that had come from exposure to his explorers had swept through the Imperium. Worse, a fire had killed the queen leaving the two teenage princesses as orphans.

He’d sent his team back, all that wanted to return to Earth anyway, and then settled in to be with Deidra.

His lips twitched. It didn’t have anything to do with falling in love with Deidra and vice versa. Such romantic crap only happened in those tawdry romantic novels and movies the girls loved.

They had made great headway in slowly modernizing the Imperium. Zara had been sent to the northeast and Duluth to bring some of their tech there to help with their famine. But the locals there had turned on her and taken her captive.

Eugene had tried to stay out of conquest; it had been a part of his deal with the queen after all. But he’d found himself with a commando unit rescuing Zara in the cold winter. Plus dealing with crap from Earth and other shit.

His chest heaved in a soft sigh. That was it. Earth was bugging him. That and dealing with the other nation states on the continent. He was doing exactly what he did not want to do.

Damn them, he thought as his jaw flexed.

He saw Diedra’s eyebrow quirk up a little. Either she’d read something interesting or she was watching him closely. His fingers flexed a little.

No sooner had they gotten Duluth under control then spies from the two duchies had started to get blatant about trying to steal their tech. At one point, even kidnapping some of his people.

He’d tried to quell such things by agreeing to send a diplomatic delegation to the southeast and the duchy of Calliope. But again, the natives there had broken their word, taken the delegates hostage, and then tried to squeeze them for information about how to make modern gunpowder weapons.

He winced slightly.

Well, it hadn’t worked. Oh, they’d updated and upgraded their tech with what their spies had given them, but it hadn’t been enough to stop his people. They’d invaded and taken the kingdom apart like a chicken. His people had been rescued and well, Calliope was playing very nice right now.

They’d better, he thought moodily.

That still left their partner in crime, the Duke of Medicini, to the north of them. He’d played the duchess of Calliope against them and then left her hanging in the wind. Cold, he thought. Machiavellian, he added.

In other words, a smart ruthless bastard.

They had been cleaning up Calliope when humans from Earth had returned and seized the gate and the fortress nearby. They had killed some of his people.

His … well, their military had responded in kind, taking out the fortress and gate. He saw motion and turned just in time to feel hands rub his shoulders and then wrap around his waist from behind.

“Hi,” he murmured. “Done your book?”

“The chapter for the nonce,” Deidra murmured. She snuggled against him. He lifted his arm and she moved to snuggle under it and against his side. “What are you thinking about?”

“Just … getting my thoughts in order,” he admitted.

“We have too many enemies,” she agreed.

“I know. You’d think they’d get smart and back off,” he grumbled.

“Tis fear that makes them lash out in unexpected ways. Fear and desire to take what we have,” she said as her tone darkened slightly.

“I know,” he said with a slight sigh.

Duluth was a bit of a problem still, restless. For that matter, the Imperium was too. They had the occasional lord who wanted more or wanted to play stupid games. Stupid dangerous games like assassination or the like.

Then there was the restive natives of Calliope, and now Medicini. Factor in the humans from Earth and the pirates off the west coast and well …

He felt Deidra rub his back. “We’ll take on all comers together. And we’ll kick their arses,” she growled.

Despite himself he laughed. She was right. As long as they took on each foe one at a time, they could do it. If they had the right mix and had the right pieces in the right places at the right time.

But damn them all, they’d do it, he thought as the kids came over and hugged their legs. He chuckled and his rumble made Deidra respond. She tickled him and then they began to play with the kids, their problems of state momentarily forgotten.

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