Empress of the Drahvins (audio story)

Empress of the Drahvins was the second story in the Bernice Summerfield box set The Story So Far: Volume Two.

Publisher's summary
Benny and her friend Ruth honestly don't mean to cause a revolution. When they crashland on the planet Drahva, they just want to get off it immediately. But the fearsome matriarchy has other ideas for Benny and Ruth. For one thing, they need a new empress.

Plot
Benny and Ruth crash a malfunctioning rental spaceship into Drahva and go looking for the Golden Bough, a survey ship which Benny knows to have crashed here forty years previously. They are captured by Captain Varda and her Drahvins, who believe that they are Downlanders, and taken by airship to the city. Upon learning Ruth's name, Shekkina, High Priestess of the Uplands, declares her the resurrected Empress of Drahva and points out the resemblance between her and a bas-relief of the Empress. Their rental ship is discreetly destroyed.

Ruth's return is accounced to the people and she is crowned as Empress Eternal. Ruth is told that, as a formality, she will soon be required to take a consort and is shown to her rooms, where Benny detects ion energy and deduces that the Golden Bough is in the Tomb of Nelsor. A person with a jetpack claiming to be part of the Downlands Liberation Army attempts to kidnap Ruth, but Benny manages to scare her away and Shekkina says that they will have to fortify the Uplands and reintroduce conscription. Ruth suggests diplomacy and is told that such a move would be unpopular.

Ruth presides over the Citizens' Court and ignores Benny's advice, granting an annulment to a woman whose husband had stopped caring for his appearance, and starts making her bow and call her "Your Majesty". Benny admits to Zabel that she and Ruth are not from Drahva and asks her for help in getting into the Tomb of Nelsor; Zabel agrees to keep her secret, but declines to help. Ruth selects Gorath VI as her consort from a line-up and accuses Benny of being eager to leave because she is jealous of her having all of the attention. Benny swears that she will get to the Golden Bough and leave with or without her.

Zabel tells Benny that Shekkina and Captain Varda seem to be hiding something about Ruth's wedding and, frustrated, agrees to help Benny enter the Tomb of Nelsor. They steal the key from Shekkina's study and find pages from The Chronicle which, after entering the tomb, Zabel reads; they describe how the Empress and her consort will be locked in a chamber which will be filled with cement to preserve them both for all time. With the door having closed behind them, continue through the pyramid and find the Golden Bough, as well as the skeleton of its pilot and a captain's log indicating that the Downlanders are a fiction.

Ruth is chained up until her wedding ceremony, which Benny and Zabel interrupt by destroying the Tomb of Nelsor and flying the Golden Bough. The wedding is stopped and Shekkina and Captain Varda arrested on Zabel's orders to await the judgment of the Citizens' Court. Now aware that Varda was her attempted kidnapper, Ruth gives her a kick in the shins before leaving in the ship with Benny, wondering about their effect on the Drahvins' future developments.

Cast

 * Bernice Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman
 * Ruth - Ayesha Antoine
 * Shekkina - Eve Karpf
 * Captain Varda - Mina Anwar
 * Zabel - Rosanna Miles
 * Gorath - Luke MacGregor

Worldbuilding

 * The Drahvins have clockwork rifles that fire shockwaves.
 * Drahva is shaped like a doughnut.
 * Benny and Ruth are found in the Forests of Gahza.
 * Ruth eats puréed jungle-hog. She says that it looks like custard but tastes like bacon. Jungle-hogs eat refuse.
 * Benny picks up ion energy.
 * Benny brandishes her scanner like a weapon and tells the intruder that it is the Wand of Chaka Khan. She later tells Zabel that it is the Scrying Device of Grandmaster Flash.
 * Ruth was once in court because of a parking fine.
 * Benny and Ruth watched Judge Judy whilst stranded on an asteroid.
 * Oona is the daughter of Hester. She is married to Lothar IV, but he stops looking forward to himself, cannot cook and rarely has sex with her.
 * Narda is a cloth merchant.
 * Velnor is a clothier.
 * Ruth gives permission for watchtowers to be built at the Draziglian Pass through the Mountains of Kashar.
 * Ruth says that Gorath smells like sexy almonds.
 * Benny says that Gorath's name sounds like something out of The Lord of the Rings.
 * Gorath IV was sent to Lake Drahva for breeding.
 * Zachary Lopez was the pilot of the Golden Bough.

Continuity

 * Benny hints that the Drahvins' technological advancement will not be an entirely good thing. (TV: Galaxy 4)