Ch 2 A focus is the Rock, 2 B moves on in space

“Glory to the Empire!” We all had shouted out, yet looking around no one could see anything that deserved praise. For, should it be told, this was rather a dismal, backward place, not worthy of such platitudes.

We were here though and here we would remain for a very long time. Of the hundreds, no thousands of systems available this near desolate rock was chosen merely to get me out of the way.

At least I had some company on the trip, they would be boon, gloom and perhaps doom, unless I was careful. There were several of us though, Their offspring would unwittingly become the nucleus of a new but fragile society. I say fragile not because our kind were weak and subject to human type frailties; rather we were ten to twenty times stronger; no, our one fault lay in the length of time required to reproduce on this world. If Joshua had not put forth his suggestion this single limitation might have resulted in the demise of the lander.

‘What was the real problem you ask?’ It had been some time that a warship might reach the plane, space travel without a portal was slow even using a worm-drive. From remnants of a report some of the original lander. left it was determined that through trial and error it was a lesser version of ourselves could be created, several kinds in-fact. With these in combination with blood servants, familiars and regular human slaves they thought they would soon become a viable clan or at least a family.’ This had not been the case.

Here is what my status report, dutifully submitted by my partner, Lula from the ship by Toor said: ‘Like all families, not everyone sees things one way though. Three groups soon became just that, three separate factions, so to speak. Each was led by the Alpha male and the nine Alpha females. Few Pure-bloods would ever born, most in number were natives turned or granted some measure of powers and immortality. Over time, those numbers would only grow and with that so did the problems and challenges they would face.’

To fix it, required several changes. That however, might not be what ‘others’ had planned.

That and what else we found out might explain why the problem with a base or bases.

“God Wills It!”

(Pope Urban II ‘s ‘Deus Vult’, not to be confused with the Muslim ‘Insha Allah’)

Some recollections of those left on the planet, 1,000 years later, planet time.

‘What a time to have arrived. Well. It might have been worse, Jerusalem could have just as well been where we set down instead of Romania; of course it was called something else then; at least I think so, hard to remember that far back. Wait, back then it was part of Hungary, It was only off about 900 years or so. My, how time flies, ‘Tempus something or other’.

Of course Bran Castle wasn’t there yet, neither was the town but for us it seemed to be the perfect place to begin from. Transylvania and eventually Wallachia would gain some stories from us, but never mind that right now. At the moment the imperative was to ‘get cracking’ and beef-up the ranks. It was a ‘hard’ thing to do but ‘duty is duty, you know’. Like I said it was slow going until 1330 or so when we got some ‘new blood’, pardon the pun, appeared in the neighborhood and a new way to increase ourselves.(Founding of Wallachia by humans) Again, forgot something else. We would see some souls about 1307 (The Children’s Crusade from Germany) small ones at that, who were only ‘snacks’. These, unlike those from France never made it to the slave pens (The Children’s Crusade from France). It would take 900 plus years to birth just 100 ‘pure-breeds’, those we turned never listened and tried sucking the blood of whomever and whatever came their way thinking they might discover some secret way to improve their lot, as if.

Getting back to the point I was trying to make. We began to change, slowly at first then, when more resource was available, much more rapidly. Notice I indicated ‘change’, life on this world would never be the same as it used to be back home for anyone.

Looking back now, that was a good thing for at least. The chance to start over became more important than ever. Of course one or two other things might have influenced that conclusion.

Something came to the forefront of interest, at least what might be called a difference of opinion; at least for one of our kind, maybe a few more names actually. some stayed out of it, luckily for them. It must have been 1500 or was it 1600, who knows; We already told you about time, right? Anyway, whether it was planned or a result of the situation on this rock, the sweet, kind, loving females turned, joining Bayon’s faction in an attempt to overthrow home rule. Not their brightest ideas I’ll have you know.’ Taken from a probe launched back to the Home World. Apparently the portal was no longer operational or not in their control. It was strange that for them so much time had passed. It should have been slower. Either that or ours was really slow.

Aboard the warship.

I said earlier that a few, a few dozen, I guess, folks would rather I never returned, so this episode might have been planned. Lula had a simple solution to it. “Kill them all then let’s get moving. Shiraz can take over for us. She never wanted to be a ‘Breeder’. If Daddy can just get busy in no time he can make someone else to replace her, it won’t be ‘THAT’ unpleasant a task for him I hear!”

I think I said she was smart, now I knew she was scary smart as well as dangerous. It took a little time, especially on our side of the portal, six times longer than back home, to convince everyone that this was a good thing.