An Interesting Draka Fan-Fic (SPOILERS)

Proof Through the Night

Found this the other day and read through the whole thing in one sitting.

I really like the story.  It's good to see Eric von Shrakenberg trying to balance the fact that the system he serves is EVIL and he darn well knows it with his dedication to the survival of his family and his people.  In the canon timeline, he solves this equation (thanks to his niece deliberately leaking plans of the Draka superweapon to an Alliance spy to force his hand) by launching the Final War that kills 700 million people and then trying to hand out Citizenship to as many Alliance survivors as he can.  Rather tragic, considering how he described the Citizen lifestyle as "a way of life based on death" and sent his serf-born daughter to America to be free when he was a young man, at great risk to his life.  This timeline will give him a happier ending.

It's also good to see someone on the side of the angels not being a complete moron as far as the Draka are concerned, one of the canonical series' major failings.  The elaborate backstab the Anglo-American alliance pulls on their ostensible Draka allies is well-done.

The strategic picture of the nuclear Pearl Harbor inflicted on the Domination by the United States and the British is really cool.  On the micro level, there's a race against time as Eric tries to take his army to Genoa and then across the Mediterranean into Africa, which the Draka have ruled in its entirely since the 1880s while an American carrier group trapped in the Mediterranean attempts to nuke the last surviving Draka-held port in southern Europe and strand him there.

There are also some nice little touches, such as:

-Selections from this timeline's version of Eric's daughter's autobiography hinting that with the fall of the Domination, she could safely seek out the father she'd missed so much.

-The hint that Eric's sister Johanna had survived the war as well (her daughter is quoted in the epilogue).

-The way the vile Security Directorate hooligan Vashon and his men get what they deserve.

-The famed Tuskegee Airmen obliterating the descendants of exiled Confederates.

-Eric toasting the end of the Domination with wine from his family's African estate--the last vintage it will ever produce--and Sofie's speech about why she can't join him.

-The line earlier in the story where Eric tells Vashon that it's time "to come to Jesus" when he finds out Vashon hasn't been telling him that U.S. agents have been smuggling radios to European resistance groups for the last year and that they're likely coordinating in the aftermath of the nuclear strike.

The only flaw I can think of is that the Domination in Africa crumbles far too easily too quickly, but when 10% of the Citizen population lives in Archona (our world's Pretoria) and 10% of the Citizen population lives in Alexandria and both of them go up, the fact that the Draka are outnumbered 9-1 by their slaves presents a bigger problem than usual.

A nice treat for Draka fans, especially since this time, Evil is not victorious and yet its destruction does not take its most noble adherent (Eric V.S.) down with it.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Draka, here's the Wikipedia entry on the whole series:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Domination