Drakon (novel)
Encyclopedia
Drakon is a follow-up to S. M. Stirling
S. M. Stirling
Stephen Michael Stirling is a French-born Canadian-American science fiction and fantasy author. Stirling is probably best known for his Draka series of alternate history novels and the more recent time travel/alternate history Nantucket series and Emberverse series.-Personal:Stirling was born on...

's alternate history series, The Domination
The Domination
The Domination of Draka is a dystopian alternate history series by S. M. Stirling. It comprises a main trilogy of novels as well as one crossover novel set after the original and a book of short stories...

.

Plot introduction

Set centuries since the last war between the Domination and the Alliance, the Domination has conquered the Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

 and the solar system, while the Alliance survivors have fled to the Alpha-Centauri star system where they have started a new civilization called the United States of Samothrace
Samothrace
Samothrace is a Greek island in the northern Aegean Sea. It is a self-governing municipality within the Evros peripheral unit of Thrace. The island is long and is in size and has a population of 2,723 . Its main industries are fishing and tourism. Resources on the island includes granite and...

.

The two societies have traded technology and skirmished some, focusing most of their efforts on colonizing all new habitable worlds they discover. Space combat is rare since faster-than-light
Faster-than-light
Faster-than-light communications and travel refer to the propagation of information or matter faster than the speed of light....

 travel is impossible. Combat only occurs when colonists from both sides reach the same world, an incident that happened only once. (Stirling later said the Samothracians won due to their superior ship .) The Draka continue their enslaving any new intelligent species they discover, using genetic engineering
Genetic engineering
Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification, is the direct human manipulation of an organism's genome using modern DNA technology. It involves the introduction of foreign DNA or synthetic genes into the organism of interest...

 to produce a meek and submissive version of it.

Plot

The book starts in 2442 A.D. somewhere in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

, where Gwendolyn Ingolfson is ending a camping and hunting trip. On her way back to the civilization she contacts legate Tamirindus Rohm, who sends her to the Reichart Station to oversee the creation of a wormhole
Wormhole
In physics, a wormhole is a hypothetical topological feature of spacetime that would be, fundamentally, a "shortcut" through spacetime. For a simple visual explanation of a wormhole, consider spacetime visualized as a two-dimensional surface. If this surface is folded along a third dimension, it...

 generator. During a test of the generator an error occurs and before she can get clear she is caught by the wormhole and is sent to an alternate Earth, called Earth/2. The event is detected by the USSNF President Douglas, which is a ship for the United States of Samothrace and is positioned a tenth of a lightyear outside Pluto
Pluto
Pluto, formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-most-massive body observed directly orbiting the Sun...

.

Gwendolyn lands in a warehouse where a drug deal is taking place between 22 persons. They notice her and try to kill her, but she kills all of them instead and steals their money. Detective Henry Carmaggio arrives later on the crime scene where he learns that most of the victims died by being beaten to death and by some form of sharp blade weapon. They also find an arm that does not belong to any of the victims and appears to be from an animal.

Meanwhile Gwendolyn tries to figure out where she has ended up and learns that she is in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 in 1995. She quickly learns that not only did she travel back in time but also to a parallel Earth, one where the Domination of Draka never existed. She hides out for a while in various apartments, after killing the owners. Carmaggio is constantly one step behind and during his interviews with the victims’ acquaintances he meets Jennifer Feinberg.

Gwendolyn decides that she needs to figure out a way to contact her Earth. In an effort to make her stolen drug money look legitimate she decides to go to Cali
Calì
Calì, also written in English as Cali, is an Italian surname, widespread mainly in the Ionian side of Sicily.For the surname Calì is assumed the origin of the Greek word kalos , or from its Sanskrit root kali, "time."The surname refers to:...

, Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

 where she recruits her first followers. Gwendolyn also starts a company named IngolfTech to use as a front to sell high technology to raise the capital necessary to build the equipment necessary to contact her Earth.

During the same time Kenneth Lafarge comes to Earth/2, ending up in a cornfield somewhere in Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

. He starts with trying to contact the CIA, explaining why he's there and who Gwendolyn is, but everyone thinks he's insane and he is forced to fight his way out. However, this makes Carmaggio look deeper into Gwendolyn and her business, but he still can't do much. At the same time he and Jennifer Feinberg start to develop a relationship.

Jennifer follows her boss and a few other co-workers down to the Bahamas where IngolfTech's headquarters is located. Lafarge learns about Gwendolyn's location and also travels there, attempting a sneak attack on her headquarters. He is forced to retreat, however, when he is unable to fight off both the security and Gwendolyn herself.

Lafarge returns to New York and contact Carmaggio and explains everything to him. Carmaggio agrees to help him stop Gwendolyn and recruits some of his colleagues as well. Lafarge provides them with a small number of plasma rifle
Plasma rifle
When discussing weapons in science fiction, a plasma weapon is a type of raygun that fires a stream, bolt, pulse or toroid of plasma...

s he has built with local technology.

Gwendolyn returns to New York and buys the warehouse where she first came to Earth/2 and the area around it. She intends to open up a wormhole there and let through large numbers of soldiers to take over Earth/2. During a brief contact with Earth/1, she learns the Samothracians attacked Earth but were beaten back "only just." Both Carmaggio and Lafarge decide that this is their best and only chance they have to stop Gwendolyn. They attack the warehouse and fight Gwendolyn and her security forces. Lafarge and Gwendolyn battle, damaging the wormhole generator and making it explode. Only Carmaggio and Jennifer survive.

Afterwards Carmaggio and Jennifer take over IngolfTech, thanks to Lafarge hacking Gwen's records and creating a fake will. At the same time, two of Gwendolyn's followers are traveling under the sea in a secret submarine and with them a cloned baby of Gwendolyn.

Main characters

  • Detective Lieutenant Henry Carmaggio: The main protagonist of the story, he is a detective at the NYPD
    New York City Police Department
    The New York City Police Department , established in 1845, is currently the largest municipal police force in the United States, with primary responsibilities in law enforcement and investigation within the five boroughs of New York City...

     whose investigation of Gwen's first murder leads him into doing everything in his power to prevent Gwen from conquering the Earth. After Gwen's death he becomes the owner of IngolfTech and decides to sell the advanced technology brought to this Earth by Gwen.
  • Gwendolyn Ingolfson: A genetically engineered Draka and the main antagonist, she is accidentally sent to Earth/2 when supervising construction of a wormhole generator. She tries to recontact her Earth to bring about the conquest of Earth/2.
  • Kenneth Lafarge: A Samothrace agent, sent to Earth/2 to stop Gwendolyn, teams up with Henry Carmiggio. Distant relative to Chantal Lefarge (Under the Yoke
    Under the Yoke (novel)
    Under the Yoke is the second of four books of S. M. Stirling's alternate history series, The Domination.-Plot summary:Tanya von Shrakenberg established a plantation in formerly-French Touraine Province. Her slaves include Marya Sokolowska and Chantal Lefarge, formerly a Polish nun and a French...

    ) and Frederick and Marya Lefarge (The Stone Dogs
    The Stone Dogs
    The Stone Dogs by S. M. Stirling is the third book in the alternate history series, The Domination. The Stone Dogs details the life of Eric von Shrakenberg's niece, Yolande Ingolfsson, and Chantal Lefarge's children, Frederick and Marya...

    )
  • Jennifer Feinberg: Girlfriend of one of Gwendolyn's victims, she later starts to have feelings for Henry Carmiggio and the two marry at the end of the novel.

Postscript

A framing device included in the collected edition, The Domination, is set several years after the events of Drakon. By that time Caramaggio is the wealthiest man in the world and is living in an orbital habitat. In the story he introduces a young scientist in his employ to the company's real secret: that they are reverse engineering technology instead of making new discoveries and that he hopes to allow them to advance Earth technology to be able to stave off a Draka attack.

Film adaptation

In a 2002 interview, Stirling said that out of all of his novels, Drakon would make the best movie and he would want James Cameron
James Cameron
James Francis Cameron is a Canadian-American film director, film producer, screenwriter, editor, environmentalist and inventor...

to be director. No information has been released on whether Drakon has been optioned though.
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