Chapter 13

The first thing the Team noticed was that "feudal society" did not necessarily mean Hollywood-style castles and knights with lances riding around on giant horses. Feudal society meant a triangular power structure with one person on top ultimately responsible for everything. The guy on top was usually called a king, but he could be called anything: boss, fuhrer, chief executive officer, or high muckety-muck. With this responsibility came absolute authority: whatever the boss said, went. It was really not a bad system, as long as it was maintained with compassion. Unfortunately, that was often the first casualty of expedient government.

This Earth had suffered an economic melt-down about 100 years before and had not yet completely recovered. It had been operating a capitalistic economy that had somehow become highly protectionist with high barriers to international trade and free movement of population surpluses. The collapse that resulted had produced warlords which had become local kings who badly oppressed their subjects. The result was thousands of half-baked kingdoms interlaced with anarchy in the intervening territory.

And then, along came Queen Elizabeth, a ray of light in the darkness. She had access to one of the few remaining libraries and had devoted a lot of time to reading books on political theory. She had come to the conclusion that feudalism left too much room for abuse and the system needed changing. She selected as her preferred form of government a constitutional monarchy with a parliament of elected representatives to make laws and levy taxes. She also wanted an independent judiciary to interpret these laws in a compassionate manner.

She had been very successful in implementing this new government and her people were learning to live with it. Unfortunately, her country, Alteria, was surrounded by powerful kings who saw an opportunity to expand their authority. So far, there had only been a few probing raids from her neighbors, but there was no doubt that a major war was in the offing.

Esther had been about her hobby, no, passion, of skimming through the parallel universes when she ran across Alteria and Queen Elizabeth. She called the situation to George's attention and asked if something could be done to help a deserving people stave off a return to slavery. This resulted in a major decision by TWT's board of directors to intervene and help Alteria, and, possibly, to spread Queen Elizabeth's influence over more of the world.

This is where Doug and the Team came in. The team signed a contract with TWT to train Alteria's minuscule army into an effective fighting force and increase its size to be an effective defense for the country. Adequate numbers of stun rifles and similar weapons would be provided and the only rule of engagement was "don't kill if you don't have to."

The plan was to meet the opposing armies in combat and stun them into surrender. The defeated army would then be invited to join the Alterians and continue the fight for freedom, but this time fighting with the stun weapons.

A highly mobile force was contemplated with three-man crews mounted on personal fliers. The crew would consist of a pilot/driver and two riflemen. A nonmetallic composite would be used for shielding, thick enough to stop bullets but transparent to the stun ray and visible light. Trans-coms would be used for communication. The Alterian Army should be invincible, at least, in the beginning.

Queen Elizabeth (in private, call me Liz) was a charming person who knew how to gain the cooperation of her people. She explained what TWT and the Team were trying to do for them and received nearly unanimous support (there are always suspicious people everywhere).

Army enlistments had to be limited, at first, until training facilities and cadre could be organized. The native Alterians handled basic training and physical conditioning while the team did the advanced training with the new weapons and fliers. Every man in the army could fire a rifle, so teaching them to use the stun gun was only a matter of letting them get used to the extra features available.

The fliers were a different story! Fortunately, the fliers were very sturdy vehicles, because there were many crashes during training, particularly in formation flying. A disappointingly large number of drivers had to be replaced, they just couldn't get adequately coordinated in three dimensions. Most of the crashes resulted from flying into the ground. If the damned vehicles had wheels, it would have been a different story, but wheels weren't allowed after the second week of training. The point was finally made with the question, "Can you imagine going into battle with your training wheels still attached?"

It hadn't been planned that way, but the final training exercise was a pitched battle with the neighboring Eglands. King Barnabas had heard about the new army being built up by Queen Elizabeth, so he decided to attack her before she was ready to attack him. He marched his army across the border without a declaration of war; he just attacked. His army was slowed down because they stopped to rape and pillage at every opportunity and this gave time for Doug to get the Alterian Army mobilized and to the front.

Doug and Jasmine figured that a flanking attack would be the most surprising to the Eglands, so Esther transported half of the Alterian forces to each flank of the invaders and Doug turned them loose. The Alterian troops were wearing the energy absorbing uniform with the IFF (Identify Friend or Foe) device which eliminated stuns from friendly fire, so they could shoot pretty much in any direction they chose. The stun duration was set for 12 hours, which should allow time for mopping up after the main battle.

The left and right wings of the flanking attack consisted of 40 fliers, each, and they bore down on the invaders like a swarm of avenging bees. It took less than an hour to wipe out the effective fighting capacity of the invaders, the only holdouts were those who had accidentally found themselves protected by metal walls, such as in silos and water tanks.

A new and very effective weapon was deployed against these people. One of Jim's researchers had come up with the idea of a magnetic beam modulated with a very low frequency sound wave. This caused any magnetic material to vibrate with a low frequency which was simply intolerable to any sentient being. It only took only a few seconds jolt of this beam to flush the most stubborn enemy. Actually, the beam would work with any material affected by magnetism, it was just more effective with ferromagnetic materials.

The war was over in about 2 hours, and nobody was more surprised than the grunts in the Alterian Army. They now felt like they could conquer any foe, somebody just should point them in the right direction!

The question of settling the peace now fell into Queen Elizabeth's lap. She could either take over Egland and operate it under her direct rule or she could have King Barnabas swear fealty to her and return to ruling his country as her minion. She didn't trust Barnabas, so she decided to take over Egland, but what to do with Barnabas? She could kill him, exile him, or just put him where he couldn't possibly cause her any trouble. Obviously, she chose the latter possibility.

She had Barnabas and his most loyal coterie transported to a universe similar to Earth-Alpha2 where he and his people could make a life or go to hell, their choice. They were given a year's worth of supplies and bid good luck. This particular version of Earth was devoid of human life, so they had only themselves to depend upon. It would be interesting to see if they could survive.

Queen Elizabeth decided to merge Egland into Alteria and govern the larger country. Her first act was to free all the slaves and start teaching them the fundamentals of self government. She appointed loyal followers who thought as she did as local rulers and turned her attention to her other neighbors.

Meanwhile, the Egland Army was eager to join an army which could supply them with such effective weapons. They were mustered into the Alterian Army and immediately subjected to a series of instructions in how to invade another country without resorting to rape and pillage. This part wasn't very popular, but they got with the program when they were told that the alternative was to join King Barnabas on what was now called Alcatraz.