"For centuries," Darlanis spoke to me in that lovely voice of hers, "Man dreamed of someday meeting intelligent beings from another world. Of meeting with another form of intelligence in peace and friendship. But Man saw only that the Lorr were not like himself, and thought only of death and destruction. Yet, with the aid of the Lorr, Man perhaps could rebuild the glorious civilization that He once lost!" I thought Queen Darlanis an excellent speaker. She had a "way" with words that I wished I had. We were sharing wine, our own thoughts, ideas, ideals as Sarnian Lady now sailed over a seemingly endless rolling blue green sea.
"Same problem that humanity always had with anything or anyone `different'," I smiled. Racism wasn't too much of a problem any more due to "reasons" that I'll get into another time, but there was enough "caste prejudice" to suit any bigot! "Shoot first, ask questions later." I smiled. Darlanis nodding back. She had enough background in the idioms of the 20th Century that she could follow me fairly well as long as I didn't use "slang".
"Also similar to the problem we have with you making the Dularnians out as a bunch of pirates and them making you Imperials out as a bunch of slavers after their women," I added with a smile as Darlanis nodded. She had a first rate mind, better than her sister, who was intelligent, but not really a heavy thinker.
"Unfortunately there is some truth to those claims," the Empress admitted. Dularnian women were prized as slave girls. Dularnian men also thought much the same about Californian women in turn. One voyage and a hold full of captured women could make a man almost rich enough to retire! The Dularnians, having better ships than the Empire, using fore and aft rigged schooners, did do a brisk traffic in captured women, although they weren't all that careful or concerned just as to the nationality of the necks that got collared. It not being unknown that a raider would grab a blonde from some fishing village on the other side of the Dularnian island and sell her to some Imperial slaver in exchange for a pretty little brunette from Trelandar or Baja. Then there were the true pirates, who traded with both sides "undercover".
"You could always outlaw slavery except for convicts and such," I suggested with a smile, knowing Darlanis would never agree to that. In any case she didn't have the power to do it as such an action would have required a vote of the Imperial Senate. As about 95% of the Senate was composed of men who owned slave girls, they weren't very likely to vote against their own selves!
"We could always start a feminist 'revolution' and overthrow the government," Darlanis laughed, saying that she saw no other way that it could ever be done. As the men of the 26th Century were not the "pussies" of the 20th, any woman who tried to start any sort of "women's rights movement" either got killed or just simply "disappeared", perhaps to be found years later a collared slave girl in another country. Unfortunately the men of the 26th Century knew too much about the legends of the feminist movements of the 20th and 21st Centuries to allow anything like that again!
"I've got a hunch that your `Priestesses of Lys' have some form of perfected `electronic hypnosis' and access to advanced technology from what I've heard of them," I commented, changing the subject, curious to see what Darlanis knew about the subject!
"They have the means to control minds," Darlanis answered, although she admitted she didn't know just how they did it. As Janet Rogers had been interested in the topic and also had access to computer technology, I considered it likely that she probably had possessed such equipment during the time she ruled the Earth. That also explained the Priestesses of Lys as I recalled having told Janet Rogers one time that the most successful historical political organization I knew of was the Roman Catholic Church! I suspected that Janet had organized them before her death in 2045 A.D. The fact that the Priestesses of Lys took an active part in population control proved to me that they were aware of the need for such as Janet had not. The Priestesses of Lys providing the politically unchangeable "basic operating system" necessary for the continued success of any long lived civilization much like the Roman Catholic Church had done back in the Middle Ages. I had suggested the concept that any society must have certain basic "rules" that were not subject to political modification or alteration. A "basic operating system" that was intentionally made extremely difficult to modify. Such should be set up by those most competent. By those who could foresee the problems that might not even crop up for centuries to come. Population control one that Janet had ignored for the most part. She felt that if people had access to the proper information, and that there were no restrictions on contraception or abortion that the "population problem" would solve itself. I had been doubtful of that. Janet was too much of an "idealist", too little of a "realist" like myself. History shows that her World Federation was already falling apart due to population pressure before The War finally "solved" the problem for us! The Red Chinese had the answer back in the 20th Century, but Janet was strongly opposed to doing anything like that since it violated all those "libertarian" beliefs to which she held so dear back when I knew her.
As we spoke together, both of us now a little bit drunk, there came a soft knock on the panels of the door, which opened to Darlanis' order, Jers Bisan stepping in, saying, "We believe that we have sighted the Seahawk, your highness," his eyes for a moment meeting mine, studying me, seizing me up in a way that told much of the sort of a man that he was. Jers Bisan a young gentleman that any mother would have been delighted to have courting her daughter, the thought already having passed through my mind earlier that he really wasn't "that" old and that Sharon was "older" than her years after everything she had been through!
"Beat to quarters and make all possible speed under both sails and oars," Darlanis snapped back, standing up, adding, "And signal the Ronda to stick close to us if she can." I thought it best to take my leave of Darlanis then as I saw her slave girl slip into the cabin, the wench's dark eyes wide with excitement or fear for all I know as Darlanis took down a golden helmet and slipped it over that lovely head. A tunic of golden chain mail hanging there on a hook beside her along with her own weapons.
"What is it, Lorraine?" Sharon asked as she joined me there on the quarterdeck, Lana at her side. Janis standing there watching everything, a grim smile on her lips as the Californians dashed about making preparations for battle. Sarnian Lady now turning, a young midshipman signaling the Ronda as it turned to follow us. A new flag being raised, this one a blood red in color as it flew over Darlanis'. Sarnian Lady had raised her battle flag. We were going to fight Seahawk, whatever "Seahawk" was!
"I think we are going into battle," I answered, a clatter drowning out my words as the oars were slid outboard, the oarsmen taking their places between decks, their horny palms doubtlessly now gripping the leather padded extensions of the rowing frame to which the oars were fastened. Then as the big trireme came about fifty four oars as one bit deep into the water, and with a surge that made us all sway on the deck, the Imperial warship leaped ahead, the ram splitting the waves before it. The blood-red battle flag snapping in the wind over our heads. It would be dark soon, I noticed, the sun low and red there in the west over the smoothly rolling ocean as we once again headed towards Dularn.
"I don't see anything!" Sharon protested, shading her eyes with her hand and looking out to sea over the bow of Sarnian Lady, the men at the ballistae and catapults greasing and testing their weapons. Others dashing here and there over the one hundred and ninety foot length of the great Imperial flagship.
"Here, try this," the young Prince said, handing Sharon a telescope. My stepdaughter giving him a sweet smile. Her azure eyes flirting with his as he said, "You probably won't see much, even the lookout can't see more than the tops of the masts." He would make her a good husband, I thought to myself. Girls as young as her were often married women here in this era, I knew.
As Sharon looked through the telescope Janis stepped up and explained that the "Seahawk" was a big three masted schooner stolen from the Dularnian Navy. Its present captain and crew a gang of blood-thirsty pirates that had plagued both the Empire and Dularn for several years now. Sharon's eyes growing wide at the tale, excited at the thought of seeing "real pirates" up close!
"Oh, there they are!" Sharon breathed, spotting the tips of the three masts just above the horizon. I did not think we had much chance of catching a ship like that if even the Ronda had been able to outsail Sarnian Lady. The powerful surge of the oars and the steady beat of the drummer telling that the speed we were now making was taking its toll of the men there at the oars!
Suddenly cheering broke out all over the ship as Darlanis stepped out on deck, glowing there in the dying sunlight almost like a Grecian goddess in her golden armor, a compound bow in her hand, a quiver of arrows slung over her back, her sword at her hip. Briefly standing there looking out over the bow before stepping below to where the rowers were giving their best. The oars suddenly dipping into the water with renewed force as She walked among the rowers, perhaps briefly touching them, encouraging them to greater efforts. The thought going through my mind that men would follow her anywhere! To the Gates of Hell itself!
"We could lose the Ronda if she falls too far behind and the pirates circle around," the young Prince commented to the captain as he nodded, glancing behind where the Ronda was now but a toy there on the waves nearly a mile behind us. I thought it was perhaps time that I spoke to Darlanis and "earned my keep" as her new advisor. I knew Sarnian Lady would never catch the pirate.
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