Eric Flint's Blog, page 191

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 36

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 36

“Legally the general would have the power to bring at least his two personal regiments to Cologne.” Dannwitz, who had studied law before becoming a soldier, was now reading the dispatch. “And this part about stalling until reinforcements can arrive in a dispatch sent to Wolf could be taken as an order for him to get those reinforcements to the general as quickly as possible.”

“I’m pretty certain the general expected Wolf to take this letter to Vienna to speed up the permission to bring the all or most of the regiments to Cologne.” Dehn frowned at the Wolf. “Anything else would be quite contrary to the Melchior’s way of operating.”

“I completely agree.” The Wolf looked at Dehn still grinning. “But my cousin did put me in charge, and that’s not the way I operate. And before you get your dander up, old man, remember that my cousin has known me all my life, and he did not write a direct order for me to do this or that.”

“So,” Wolf looked around the table, “we’re leaving tomorrow morning with three regiments. Dehn, you take over as commander here. I’ll lead Melchior’s old regiment.  Lorentz you leave behind the newest recruits and those companies who failed to follow orders in Pisek. There’ll be absolutely no room in this for laggards or those who puts their comfort above getting things done. Dannwitz, your regiment is the smallest at the moment, so see if you can pad it a bit. Dehn might be willing to lend you some of his fastest riders, but Schierstedt and Mettecoven are not around to give permission. See what you can do, it need not be three full regiments, but I want the absolute best. We’ll take no wagons, and only those non-combatants who can ride at least as well as the soldiers. Food and tents must be packed onto the spare horses. I don’t intend for us to do any fighting until we reach the general, but I want us to reach the Rhine in little more than the time it took Pettenburg to get here. Pettenburg,” Wolf stopped and looked at Simon as if measuring the inside of his skull, “I want you to take charge of our recognizance, and that’ll be not just the couriers and scouts, but also our best saboteurs, spies, thieves and forgers. Talk with Allenberg about the permits and papers.”

Simon swallowed and mumbled something he didn’t know for sure if was a “yes, sir” or an oath.

South bank of the Danube between Vichtenstein and Passau, two days later

“And just how are you enjoying your first command?”

At the sound of Wolf’s voice Simon looked up at the grinning man, and wondered how much trouble he would get from giving the answer that first came to his mind. No, he was much too angry to give an honest answer, so instead he jumped to his feet, gave his most elegant bow and stood straight shouting: “Sir! Yes, Sir! Everything as you ordered, Sir!”

Wolf’s jaw literally dropped for a moment, then he laughed out loud and clapped Simon on the shoulder. “As bad as that, boy?”

The two men looked down the hill at the camp being organized on the meadow around the rickety barn. The general’s dispatch had given an estimate of the Hessian cavalry as two or three thousand, and Wolf had brought less than fifteen hundred, but there was just no way to get all the regiments to Bonn in time, and no one expected Wolf to try meeting the Hessians in open battle anyway. The men on the meadow represented the absolute maximum strike force the regiments could field in the least number of bodies. They were all veterans proven and trusted by their officers, all expert riders on well trained horses, and all equipped with the best weapons to be had in the HRE. All — that is — except for half of Simon’s little group of six persons now gathering around a campfire slightly removed from the rest.

Pettenburg’s Specialists — as they were called in the files — had been handpicked by Wolf, and only Marsch, Lenz and Niederthal were to do the work General von Hatzfeldt would normally have assigned them to. They were — like Simon — couriers and scouts supposed to ride very fast horses behind and through enemy lines carrying messages and gathering information about troop movements. Occasionally that also meant fighting — and usually against rather bad odds — so they were also better than average with both sabre and pistols. Of course slender, red-haired Marsch, who was the son of a very well-to-do locksmith, could also open any lock except the American ones, burly, swarthy Lenz, whose father owned a mine, was very good at setting off small precise explosions, and non-descript Niederthal, who never spoke of his background, had a padded crate filled with bottles and packets of American chemicals. Still, they were all three fine fighting men, and Simon would have been proud of being made their leader.

Ferret-like Schaden, on the other hand, usually worked at curing the sick horses in Lorentz’s regiment, and while he was really good at using any kind of knife, he was also well known for being unable to hit a barn with a musket at ten paces, and likely to do more damage to himself than his opponent with a sword. What he could do better than anyone else, was to sneak close to an enemy camp and silently remove any guards or other inconvenient persons. Not a skill often called for in the normal order of things, but being able to get that close to the enemy camps also meant getting really detailed information about their number, equipment and fighting moral.

Allenberg was a relative newcomer to the regiments, and normally the head quartermaster of Melchior von Hatzfeldt’s old regiment. He had joined shortly before the last campaign, and had made no secret of his lack of fighting ability and experience, but he was — in addition to being able to squeeze all kinds of information out of papers and ledgers for the general — also quietly known to be able to produce a most amazing range of papers and permissions. The general presumably didn’t know about Allenberg’s little nebengeschäft, but the Wolf had absolutely no objection to getting over a difficult ground as lightly as possible, and Simon’s talk with Allenberg had resulted in the finest set of forged papers Simon had ever seen. Simon rather liked the calm and solid looking forger, but Allenberg didn’t socialize much, and usually went back to quarters after buying his round at any tavern.

Allenberg’s assistant, “Rosy” Ross, on the other hand was usually the life and soul of any party. He was a fair and rather fragile looking Scot, who had all kind of outrageous stories about his background, but in Simon’s opinion the one about running away from his strict parson father to become an actor, sounded the most likely. Whether he had ever been the foremost player of female roles at the royal theater in London was a different matter, but he could in fact get away with impersonating a woman long enough to gather all kinds of information in a market, and had an almost uncanny ability to gain friends quickly in any tavern. What he could do in a fight no one had ever seen, but judging from the minimal training the general insisted on, it really wouldn’t be much.

“The road north from Passau is no easier than the one you rode from Nurnberg to Regensburg.” Wolf turned to look westward squinting his eyes against the setting sun. “That leaves us with Deggendorf, Ingolstadt, Donauwörth, or Ulm. I want you to enter Passau tomorrow, while the rest of us cross the Inn, and see what information you can gather.”

“Very well, sir. I’ll take Niederthal and Rosy with me. We’ll leave Rosy on his own, and go inquire about permission to set up a recruitment table at the Christmas Fair.” Simon stated calmly.

“Recruiting at Christmas is rare.” Wolf remarked “What’ll be the excuse for not waiting until the hiring fair in spring?”

“Unsettled times. Farmers seeing the harvest cannot last until spring.” Simon shrugged. “I’ll think of something.”

“While looking young, earnest and just a little naïve.” Wolf laughed and slapped the younger man on the shoulder. “Carry on, boy, carry on.”

 

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 28

By Decree Of He Who Writes (Ryk E Spoor), this is the last snippet.

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 28

Chapter 28.

“Fictional powers can be made real,” Laila Canning repeated slowly. Her sharp brown eyes studied Oasis as though the redheaded woman was a specimen on her dissection table. “How certain are you of this?”

“Between ninety-five and a hundred percent sure,” Oasis said. “I mean, Wu Kung already demonstrated he’s going totally beyond the normal limits of the Arena and he can do that talk-to-animals thing that no one does, as far as we know.”

“That’s… that’s a total game-changer right there,” Carl said after a pause. “I mean… the Arena giving Hyperions their… how do I say it? Natural superpowers?”

“It’s perfectly in line with the Arena’s normal behavior,” Simon said. “Although, based on other events, I have to assume that the Arena has a range of discretion it can use in interpreting its directives and actions. The real question isn’t so much how it can justify this… but why it has chosen to do so.”

Laila nodded. “That is indeed the question. As Carl says, this potentially changes everything — in general, favorably for us, although your possible sighting could be very much not in anyone’s favor, Oasis.”

“Fairchild? He’d be a total disaster for everyone. Especially with DuQuesne and Wu off for who knows how long.”

She still sounds worried. “Oasis, why DuQuesne specifically? I mean, we still have you, and Velocity, and I presume there must be a few others left.”

The woman’s long, slender fingers caught at the ponytail dangling near them and began twining the red strands around them, a nervous motion at odds with the cheerfully unflappable Oasis he was used to. “There probably are some more — I think DuQuesne said there might be fifteen, sixteen of us still around, so with me, DuQuesne, Wu, Maria-Susanna, and Vel, that’s ten or eleven still back in the System. But I didn’t know who they were. I didn’t want to know, remember? I was hiding out as Oasis Abrams, not really ever planning to be ‘K’ again. I think DuQuesne was the only one with a good idea of who the other survivors were and where or how to contact them.”

She took a breath, glanced at her hand, and with a visible effort made it release her hair and drop to her side. “DuQuesne is Fairchild’s opposite number. Fairchild… wasn’t exactly human, I guess is the best way to put it, and both he and DuQuesne had a lot of powers that go way, way beyond normal human capabilities. Way out of my league, or Vel’s. Plus being his designed opposite, in a world that assumed the good guys win and bad guys lose? That has to give DuQuesne a major edge over Fairchild.”

“Very interesting,” Laila said. “Eminently logical, if I accept the basic premises. The Arena is accepting their universes as real for the purposes of what powers it gives them; if the universe itself had a clear… definition of right and wrong and of victory conditions, you believe that at least some of that would also transfer to the Arena.”

“Yes. Or it’s at least a real good bet.”

“You know, we should be able to get an answer as to whether this Fairchild guy is here or not,” Carl said.

“Really? Aside from Oasis, none of us here would even recognize the gentleman,” Simon said.

“Probably not, but you’ve got that super-cheat-code in your head, right? Couldn’t you just look for him that way?”

Simon blinked, then chuckled. “I probably could, at that.”

“Will you?” Laila asked. “I understand very well your reluctance to abuse that ability, but I think time may be of the essence in at least knowing if we do have a Hyperion-born enemy out there.” For a moment, he saw unconcealed worry on the former biologist’s face. “Honestly, Simon, the idea of someone who is DuQuesne‘s equal out there as an enemy? That terrifies me.”

“You and me both, as DuQuesne might say,” Simon agreed. “Very well, Laila. I will make the attempt; at the least this capability of mine should be used to serve the needs of our Faction Leaders — permanent or temporary.”

Once more he drew on that transcendent feeling, the ultimate clarity that lay beyond mere mortality. Doctor Alexander Fairchild, he thought. Is he here? If he is, where?

Almost instantly he felt that sudden wrenching turn of virtual viewpoint, the sensation that presaged his ascension to a pure and detailed vision of his target.

But just as suddenly it stopped. He had the vaguest sense of the target and its location — somewhere in Nexus Arena! — and then… nothing. An impenetrable gray fog enveloped most of the gigantic construct.

He sat back with such startled force that he nearly tipped the chair over.

“What is it, Simon?” Oasis asked, steadying him with one hand on his shoulder.

“It was… the most disorienting thing I have ever experienced,” he said after a moment. “I had the feeling I was about to see, or at least locate, this Doctor Fairchild… and then … nothing. I had a sense that he was indeed here, somewhere in Nexus Arena… but after that, it was as though the truth were cloaked, hidden in shadows I could not penetrate.” He gave a wry smile, trying to hide how startled and, truth be told, upset he felt. “After never encountering a limit with this power, I must say I was unprepared to find one.”

Oasis could not hide the fact that she had gone pale. “But you did sense him.”

He frowned. “I think so. But I admit I have never tried to look for an individual before. Perhaps that is not allowed except in a very broad sense.”

“Simple to find out,” Carl said. “Try locating someone you know is around.”

“Very well. Let me see…”

He rose to the Olympian heights and thought, Dr. Relgof.

Without a pause, he felt that turn, and his vision sped away from Humanity’s Embassy and across Nexus Arena. He found himself looking down on Relgof Nov’Ne Knarph as he engaged in some form of discussion with a number of other members of the Analytic, inside the huge Great Faction House.

That worked. It’s terrifying, also, but it worked. He thought for a moment. Perhaps it doesn’t work on Hyperions?

Easy enough to test. He thought about Oasis, and his perception swiveled and spun, to come to rest above, well, himself, looking down upon the red-headed Hyperion. So much for that theory.

Perhaps it has to do with that… universe of origin? In which case I should be able to find Ariane but not DuQuesne.

But both attempts rebuffed him; he streaked off through vast spaces of the Arena, to a location that would be distant indeed… but long before he even got a clear sense of where that was within the titanic confines of the Arena, everything dissolved in grayness. Odd. Decidedly odd.

The transcendent feeling still remained with him, and a few quick tests showed that he could still hold details beyond human comprehension in his mind. The power did not seem weakened. But there are particular beings, or locations, that refuse to be… remote-viewed, scryed, whatever I might call it. He tested a few other choices, finding it easy to locate and view Oscar Naraj, Sethrik, and even Mairakag Achan, serving various customers in his restaurant.

But when he tried to look in on Nyanthus, he was once more completely stymied by gray indeterminism. Then, perhaps, it has to do with particular capabilities. If so, perhaps I could not locate Ariane because she has such powers locked within her.

Maria-Susanna was also grayed-out. Now that worries me. I did not get the impression she had inhuman abilities per se. Why can I not locate her?

He opened his eyes, letting that sense recede. “I can locate some people but not others. I am not yet entirely sure of the rules that determine which I can, well, spy upon and which I cannot. It is not, however, based on whether they are inside a Faction House, or a member of any given Faction, or limited by species. My best guess at the moment is that it reflects people who have some type of Arena-granted special capabilities, but even that is not universal.” He looked at Oasis. “I could view you easily enough, even though I know you must have at least some special talents or powers from your Hyperion background.”

Laila frowned and smoothed back her pageboy-cut chestnut hair. “Nonetheless, we have confirmed the existence of Doctor Fairchild. Correct, Simon?”

“I… am afraid so. The sensations were the same as the ones I felt for other people I know exist but who were hidden for some reason.”

“Damn,” Carl said. “That’s bad. Do you think we could sort him out of the people who’ve come through our Sphere?”

Oasis bit her lip, thinking. “I really don’t know. He’d want to leave no trail. If we knew exactly what he looked like now, maybe. But while I’m pretty sure whatever body he cloned for himself will look like his sim image, I’m also very sure it won’t be identical. He’s not stupid. He’s a genius and he’s really, really good at thinking things out a hundred steps ahead.”

Someone with DuQuesne’s brain and the moral compass of a classic villain — a smart — villain — in one of the grandest-scale tales ever written. Very much not what I would have wanted to hear. With an effort, he made himself smile. “This is bad news, but it’s not nearly as bad as it could be. We have at least two advantages over him, after all.”

Oasis looked up with surprise, and even one of Laila’s eyebrows curved up like a seagull’s wing. “Really? What are those?”

“Well, first, he doesn’t know we know he is here. If he insists on wearing that outfit you described — a white classic suit — we can make sure many people keep an eye out for him and report; we’ll locate him fast enough.

“But more importantly, we know that you Hyperions can use your special abilities… but he won’t. He’s undoubtedly read the reports sent back and could tell that none of you were doing anything beyond what your special engineering would allow. He may figure it out eventually, but for now, it’s a clear advantage.”

He was glad to see Oasis’ face smooth out a bit. “You’re right, Simon. And he’s also without a Faction — or else he’s stuck under the rules of Humanity’s Faction. It will take even Fairchild a while to figure out the Arena and how to exploit it.”

“And in the meantime we will do our best to locate him and, hopefully, contain him,” Laila said. “Carl, if I understand our delegated powers, we have essentially absolute authority in the Arena, correct?”

“Basically, yes. As long as we follow the Arena’s rules, which are pretty loose when it comes to internal Faction business.”

“Good. Then we will do our best to locate him — and capture him when opportunity presents itself. Put him back in regular space and put him on trial for murder — as I believe we can all agree he is the primary suspect for the deaths of the other Hyperions?”

Simon saw Oasis nod, and added his own. “And, quite likely, the one who was guiding General Esterhauer — and tried to wipe her when things weren’t following his script. Yes, I think that you not only can use your delegated Leader of Faction powers to capture him, but also have more than enough justification to keep him back home.”

“I don’t think you can keep him imprisoned forever,” Oasis said. “Or even for very long.”

“I would think we can keep him busy enough until DuQuesne gets back, at which point, if you’re right, we will have the antidote to his poison, so to speak.”

Oasis suddenly grinned. “I think you’re right!”

“Good,” Laila said decisively. “The news was not what we hoped, but we have a plan of action — a practical plan of action, I think. Oasis, I know you don’t have standard headware, but please generate some images of this Fairchild for us so that we can transmit them to all our people who might be in a position to find him.”

“Will do!”

Simon nodded, but somewhat absently. He was still trying to figure out the rules of this strange gray blankness. A quick test showed that he could locate the other known Hyperion — Velocity Celes — as he practiced piloting one of the Arenaspace vessels near Humanity’s Sphere. Carl Edlund, ditto, just as easy as anyone else.

But there was one other individual about which there were some questions…

Even as Simon felt his eyebrow rising in surprise, he realized Laila was speaking to him. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said, I just realized there is one other question you might be able to answer for me. Well, more precisely, for our negotiator Oscar Naraj, although I admit it is important to me as well.”

“I’m always willing to help. What is the question?”

“It is more a fact that poses a question. You understand that Mr. Naraj is an extremely observant man, and especially so in his specialty of negotiation and diplomacy.”

“I would expect so, yes.”

“Well, he has of course kept a close eye on the doings of our enemies as well as our allies, and just the other day he asked me if I knew of any particular events that might have affected the Molothos. When I said I did not and asked why, he said that he was fairly certain that neither he, nor anyone else, had seen or heard from their Leader, Dajzail, in quite some time.”

“Hmm. Well, I can certainly try to answer the question as to where he is.” He closed his eyes once more.

He rose above and through the Embassy, and thought the question where is Dajzail, Leader of the Molothos?

A wrenching turn and a rush of speed, flying through the varicolored clouds and spinning Spheres and innumerable living things of the Arena, until he found himself seemingly floating in air within a compartment that to his eyes was too brilliantly lit, and filled with Molothos attending to various duties. In the center sat Dajzail, squatting on some sort of support structure that Simon presumed was a chair. The Leader of the Molothos was examining something on a screen projected before him.

He’s on board a ship, it would seem. But what ship, and where?

With barely an effort of thought, Simon rose up, through the hull of the vessel, and floated beyond, looking around, trying to sense the position of the ship below him.

Wait. There was more than one ship. Simon concentrated, expanded his vision. Two ships. Three. A dozen. Two dozen… no. There were hundreds… no, thousands of ships in this fleet!

And he suddenly knew where they were.

His eyes snapped open and he realized he had already stood. “Laila… I believe we have a far bigger problem than a mere renegade Hyperion.”

 

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 54

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 54

Which, naturally, made Denise bridle. The girl did not react well to instruction, especially coming from someone who was no farther up Denise’s mental pecking order than her best friend. Anybody except a jerk heard what her best friend had to say, but that didn’t mean you had to listen to her.

“Why?” she demanded immediately. “Are you planning to leave?”

“No. Why should I? Don Francisco doesn’t need both of us to report back to him. And while it’s true my reports are better than yours — more concise; better organized; way less commentary — yours are still good enough for what he needs to know right now.” She slipped into a slightly singsong tone, as if reciting something memorized. “Yes, boss, the Ottomans are coming to Vienna, there is no doubt about it in anyone’s mind. The Viennese are worried but they’re not as worried as they ought to be. They keep thinking that the up-time history books are some sort of magic talisman. Didn’t happen in 1529; wouldn’t have happened in 1683; so how could it happen now? That kind of silliness.”

Denise glared at her. “You just want to stay because you’re scheming. About that stupid fucking prince.”

“First, he’s not a prince. Except in a few places — I’m quoting the immortal words from The Princess Bride — that word does not mean what you think it means. Leopold Wilhelm is an archduke.”

“Same thing. Close enough.”

“Not the same thing. And to quote other immortal words, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”

“You’ve never played horseshoes in your life.”

“Of course not. It’s amazing how many stupid games you Americans came up with. Football! Thankfully, most of them didn’t make it through the Ring of Fire. Secondly –”

Minnie ignored her friend’s splutter of outrage at this grotesque denigration of American games, which was ridiculous anyway because Denise’s opinion of football was abysmal and so far as Minnie knew she’d never played horseshoes once in her life.

“– you can’t call it ‘scheming’ because a scheme implies that you’re trying to pull a fast one on someone who’d never agree to what you want him to do if you just proposed it straight up and you know as well as I do that Leopold’s got the hots for me. The problem, him being an archduke, is that he can’t figure out how to approach the subject on account of the last time he put the make on an up-timer he got his balls mashed.”

“You’re not an up-timer.”

“I’m an honorary up-timer. You’ve said so yourself about a thousand times.”

Denise looked sulky. “I don’t think I said that more than once or twice. Maybe half a dozen times. Tops.”

“Still true — and what’s more to the point, Leopold agrees with you. That’s why he’s scared of me. Which — we’re up to point three now — is why I need to stay in Vienna so I have the time to decide if I want to pursue it myself — which I probably do, since I still thinks he’s pretty cute — and, if so, I’ll need the time to educate him in the proper ways of a man with a maiden.”

“You’re not a maiden. Not even close!”

Minnie gave her friend a look of pity. “I’m speaking in poetry, not prose. I can do that because I’m a singer.”

****

Elsewhere in the room, two other people were having another dispute on the subject of leave-taking.

“There is no reason for you to stay, Cecilia Renata. Having one of us remain in Vienna during the siege is quite good enough.”

Leopold Wilhelm tilted his head so he could look down his nose at his sister. That did less good than it might have with someone else, because Cecilia Renata was no slouch herself in the down-nose-looking department. True, he had the advantage of four inches in height, but that was easily offset by her advantage of three years of age.

The noses being evenly matched, Leopold tried sentiment. “I won’t be able to concentrate on my duties, because I’ll be so worried about you.”

“I am not planning to stand on the walls with a musket, brother. If it makes you feel better, I can have the cellars under the outer wing stocked with supplies so I can take shelter there during especially heavy bombardments.”

That… wasn’t a bad idea, actually. The cellars were deep enough to provide protection from any cannon fire, certainly. And in the very unlikely event that the Ottomans managed to breach the walls and make an incursion into the city, they would also provide his sister with an excellent hiding place. The entrance to the cellars had been disguised when it was built for precisely that purpose.

That wing was a portion of the imperial palace that was not directly connected to the rest of the Hofburg. It had been built in the middle of the last century, and its original purpose had been to provide separate housing for crown prince Maximillian. His father, Ferdinand I, suspected his son and heir of Protestant sympathies and wanted him quarantined away from the rest of the family.

In the event, Maximilian had remained faithful to the Catholic Church, and when he succeeded his father as Holy Roman Emperor in 1564, he transferred his residence to the Hofburg proper. In the years thereafter, the outer wing had been used for a variety of purposes, one of them being a place for Leopold to begin accumulating the collection of art which he intended to become one of the best in Europe. He’d only gotten started on the project, of course.

Thinking of his nascent art collection…

Regardless of whether Cecilia Renata stayed in Vienna or left, it would be a good idea to move his art collection down into the cellars. A stray cannonball might do unspeakable damage.

But that was a matter to be dealt with later. For the moment, he still had an obstreperous sister to deal with.

Sentiment having failed, he fell back on logic.

 

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 27

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 27

Chapter 27.

“Your words tantalize me, my friends,” Orphan said as DuQuesne was still trying to wrap his mind around this latest revelation. “It is clear — it has, in truth, always been clear — that there is some great mystery surrounding Doctor DuQuesne, and his compatriots Wu Kung and Oasis and, I believe, Maria-Susanna. I have to believe it also has to do with Wu Kung’s extraordinary performance in the recent Challenge.

“It seems that these connections now encompass our Captain as well, yes?”

“In a way, yes,” DuQuesne admitted. “But we’re not going into detail here.”

Wu Kung was looking puzzled, unlike Ariane who was still shell-shocked. “I’m right, aren’t I?” she said, and transmitted an image to him.

The man in the faded denim was undeniably familiar, and the details that DuQuesne could notice — a particular faint scar on one cheek, the pattern of wrinkles around the eyes — confirmed it. “It checks out, Ariane. That’s Bryson, all right.” He grinned suddenly. “And you know what, it makes a whole lot of other things make sense. How many people these days even heard of Doc Smith’s work? He’s not even a fringe thing, he’s ancient history, older than Shakespeare was in his time, and never even vaguely that popular. I never met another person in my life outside of Hyperion who recognized my name; hell, he wasn’t much remembered only a century after publication, and now it’s three hundred fifty-plus years later than that. Your parents let you get half-raised by that old throwback and that’s how you came to be this way.”

“But… but you said he was alive!” The dark-blue brows had come together and he could see anger welling up within her. “He died in a fire. They even found a body, so –”

“Maria-Susanna,” DuQuesne said quietly. “Saul and I helped him run to start with, but he had to live his life, or lives, real careful. I’ll bet he stuck around a lot longer than was safe, watching you grow up. But finally he knew he’d pushed his luck too much and had to die. A clone body’s not hard to get made if you know the tricks to it.” He reached out, touched her arm. “Don’t be mad at him, Ariane. He did it for his safety and yours. He probably didn’t think Maria-Susanna would hurt a kid, but he couldn’t be sure. She’s not easy to predict.”

He looked over at Orphan. “Sorry I can’t clear things up much for you, Orphan, but the real answers you’d want are way too valuable.”

“Quite understood, Doctor. Alas, I cannot guarantee any privacy here.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Ariane shook her head, and then he saw her eyes widen and her gaze snapped to meet his own. “Marc –”

With a visible effort, she stopped herself. “Well… damn. That’s going to make it hard to talk about anything we don’t want to give away.”

And I’d really like to know what it was she just thought of, because whenever she gives that expression you know it’s going to be a doozy.

“I can understand your reluctance,” said a high, clear voice, “but I assure you that I have no intention of intruding upon any privacy you may require.”

Standing in a wide doorway that had not been in that wall a moment ago was a tall, slender figure in robes of pearl-gray, edged with green and gold threads. Its stance and outline indicated a bipedal form, highly attenuated and graceful. The robes had long sleeves which currently fell in a way as to conceal the limbs within, and the hood of the robe allowed only a hint of features to be seen within. It was not quite the utter shadowed void that Amas-Garao seemed to favor; the faint outlines of what seemed a face could be made out.

Ariane rose to her feet as the figure approached; now she bowed; DuQuesne and, he saw, Wu followed suit, with Orphan performing his pushup-bow. “Vindatri, I presume,” Ariane said.

“I am,” the figure answered.

“Is this your real shape?” Wu Kung asked.

A rippling laugh echoed around the room. “It is a shape that is mine, and not copied from any of you, and a form that should be one you can accept. In that sense, it is real.”

“But it’s not the shape you were born with,” Wu persisted.

“No,” conceded Vindatri, “but is the form so important? I have worn more than could be easily counted in the ages that have passed since that time. To me, the effort to craft an appropriate shape is less than the effort one of you might put into choosing a set of clothing.”

He (DuQuesne decided to stick with that pronoun, as it was the one Orphan had used) gave an extravagant bow and flourish of the arms. “Welcome to Halintratha,” Vindatri said, and the name or word momentarily had that eerie many-in-one resonance. DuQuesne caught hints of bastion or castle, of vault or safe, of mystery and knowledge, of quester or researcher, of the Arena itself, and other words as well. A stronghold of knowledge? Bastion of Mysteries? Not a library, though.

“Welcome to Halintratha,” Vindatri said, “you who have journeyed far through the Deeps to find me. Orphan I know, and have given my first greetings to each of you as well. Now it is time for us to speak together, and understand the ways in which fate and the Arena have brought you hence.”

“Wasn’t ‘fate’, it was Orphan,” Wu pointed out. “He’s got some sneaky reason for it, too, besides the one he’s already told us.”

Orphan gave the open-shut shrugging gesture. “And I have admitted that I was not allowed to speak of the second reason, as you know, Wu Kung.”

“That is, however, past,” Vindatri said. “I give you leave to speak as you wish, Orphan. And if you describe fully, I will be learning as well, so do not be overly coy with your words.”

Orphan bob-bowed to Vindatri, but his posture shifted, and his tone was dry and humorous. “Be not overly coy? You remove much of the joy of speaking, o Vindatri.”

The half-seen features within seemed to crease in a smile. Which would be really strange; how many animals on Earth do things that are really like smiles? An alien doing that? I’d like to see what’s really under that cowl.

But Orphan had now turned to them. “As you know, the first condition was a simple one: bring news of First Emergents, and of course if I could bring one or more such with me, that would be a far better form of news.

“However, I had terribly specific instructions that I must bring members of any First Emergent species with me if they were to demonstrate a particular characteristic.”

As usual, Orphan chose to pause at this intellectual cliffhanger. Wu obliged Orphan’s need for dramatics. “Well, don’t stop there, what was it?”

“It was something which was both incredibly broad in its definition, yet something which, Vindatri assured me, I would know if ever I saw it. Specifically, that the First Emergents in question would have ‘the blessing of the Arena upon them’.”

DuQuesne thought the phrase was familiar, but it was Ariane who stiffened and stared at Orphan. “That… that’s part of the Canajara prophecy.”

“Ah, you know of the prophecy of the Faith?” Vindatri said with an air of faint surprise. “Or I should say prophecies, as the Canajara is a complex and often contradictory myth cycle for that Faction, with at least four significantly different tellings of the tale — each with of course almost numberless variations. But forgive me, Orphan, continue.”

“Of course. I observed your people very closely, as you know. You became my allies — rather tolerant allies, I must admit, as I gave you ample reason to suspect me, or even to sever any alliance with you. And the result of those observations was to conclude that indeed you fit this description.”

“This has to do with that… secret you’ve been keeping,” Ariane said with certainty. “And for some reason you thought it was going south during the Genasi Challenge, and suddenly you were absolutely certain, like you’d been vindicated.”

“And when you were all mysterious during the battle against the Blessed,” DuQuesne said, starting to see the pattern. “When you said… oh, what was it… ‘”Let us just say I believe I have confirmed a hypothesis, and that this is most in your favor’.”

Orphan’s buzz-laugh was delighted. “Quite on-target, both of you — and a fine memory you have, Doctor DuQuesne!”

DuQuesne grinned back. “Well, I can’t take all the credit; that was a weird enough comment that I actually filed the quote in my headware. So out with it. What’s this ‘Blessing of the Arena’.”

“Surely you can guess, Doctor DuQuesne,” Orphan said slowly. “And you, Captain Austin. Perhaps not Sun Wu Kung; he has not been privy to all the relevant events. But let us review the points that impressed themselves upon me, some at the time they happened, others upon deep reflection.

“First, your encounter with me. You happened upon me just as I was cornered by the Blessed, and managed — with the assistance of a rather unexpected visitor — to cause them to depart. Then, having just entered the Arena with my guidance, within days you discover that your Upper Sphere has been invaded… and repel the invasion with but two of your limited number.” His black eyes measured DuQuesne. “Correct me if I am wrong, Doctor, but it would be my contention that it was, specifically, your presence that made that possible — and to be even more specific, that your victory had something to do with the secret you share with Maria-Susanna, Wu Kung, and Oasis Abrams.”

DuQuesne glanced at Ariane, who nodded. “All right, I’ll give you that one. Carl wasn’t in any way useless, and he was crucial for some of it… but yeah, given the way that all went down, no one else in the crew could’ve pulled it off without me, and you’ve got the connection right.”

“Excellent. And would I also be correct in assuming that your victory over the Molothos was one involving some… oh, desperate improvisation, perhaps?”

“That’d fit, yeah.” Rigging together controls for an alien ship we’d never seen a few hours before and turning it into a kamikaze to take out a full-sized warship? Desperate enough.

A satisfied hand-tap from Orphan. “So, moving on, there was the startling performance of Doctor Franceschetti at the casino, leading to your Challenge by the Blessed to Serve. Your victory over Sethrik in that race was also highly instructive.

“And then you attained victory over Amas-Garao of the Shadeweavers — not once, but twice, the second time in direct Challenge of personal combat.”

Now the tall figure of Vindatri went rigid. “Is this truth that you speak?”

“Oh, it was a magnificent — and at times heart-rending — battle, Vindatri. Captain Ariane Austin, a First Emergent but a few scant weeks in the Arena, facing Amas-Garao, one of the oldest of the Shadeweavers, and — ultimately — defeating him with a maneuver that shocked both Shadeweaver and Faith — and required them both to act to preserve their own lives as well as those of most in the stands who had been watching.”

Vindatri turned slowly towards Ariane. “You … you Awakened yourself?”

Ariane’s white grin was a deadly, beautiful blade. “I did.”

“That is impossible.”

“Ahh, Vindatri, I have heard — and spoken! — that word in association with Humanity so many times, it has become a comforting refrain to me,” Orphan said wryly. “I am sure you, too, will become very familiar with it. Perhaps you already are.

“But we have hardly finished yet, my friends. As you mentioned, Doctor DuQuesne, there was our chase and confrontation with a fleet of the Blessed to Serve. There was the utterly inexplicable ability of Doctor Sandrisson to repair — and then improve — my own vessel, and your similar ability to make use of my own ship’s controls with a skill that seemed barely short of the supernatural.

“And there were other events, several of them… but then we reached the Genasi Challenge, and it seemed that perhaps I was wrong, as I saw what was happening. But then I formed a modified hypothesis, and indeed, the Grand Finale of that little race turned out precisely as I had guessed.”

Turning all the events over in his head, DuQuesne thought he saw what Orphan was driving at… and it was both impossible and terrifying. “You think… you think we’re, well…”

“… lucky,” Ariane finished. “Naturally — or if you’re right about the ‘Blessing’ business, unnaturally — lucky at almost anything.”

“Precisely,” Orphan said. “Random factors align for you. The right people are at the right place at the right time. The accidental offense, or the deliberate, turns out to be precisely what you needed. Your own cavalier attitude towards risk itself was another hint — one borne out by several of the entertainment modules your people shared with me. It seems to be a common trait of your heroes to say something to the effect of ‘never tell me the odds’. Partly, of course, that is because you have never integrated the same probability-evaluation technology that most of the Arena natives take for granted… but it seemed to me that you truly had less respect for the threat of random chance.”

He looked around slowly, and DuQuesne could tell Orphan was enjoying the reactions he was getting. “Yet if you were truly anomalously lucky, surely your people would have noticed it back home; you are not incapable in the areas of statistics, after all. But then, as I watched that final Challenge, I thought that there was one possible explanation, and that Challenge, I felt, confirmed it. Not proof, perhaps, but good enough.”

Klono’s Tungsten… “Maria-Susanna.”

“Very good, Doctor DuQuesne. If you were all lucky, the luck would cancel out when it was, in short, human versus human, or in this case, human faction versus a faction with one rather unusual human in it. You had your… trump card, yes? Yes. Your trump card in the form of Sun Wu Kung, but for once your preternatural luck could give you no headway in the card game, because Maria-Susanna had joined the Vengeance… and brought her own luck with her, even though she was not directly playing.”

“But that’s… how?” demanded Ariane.

“That’s the sixty-four thousand-dollar question, isn’t it,” DuQuesne said slowly. “Though with the Arena involved I guess it’s not all that hard to explain. As long as you don’t need to explain why.”

“And that,” Vindatri said, “is of course the question of interest. Why? Why would the Arena favor you? For I do not accept any possibility that this is some kind of natural ability; ‘luck’ is a spurious concept in normal conversation, a perception that because random factors have aligned well several times that this represents some sort of special phenomenon. But with the Arena’s powers? It would be quite possible to influence events exactly in the manner necessary to provide such luck.

“But how this would serve the Arena’s interests? That, now, that is a difficult question indeed.”

“Does it have to serve the Arena’s interests?” Ariane countered. “I haven’t even been convinced that the Arena has ‘interests’, in the sense of things it wants to accomplish, rather than rules it has to follow because it’s built that way.”

Vindatri fluttered his hands in a way that somehow symbolized argument. “The very existence of those rules imply some form of purpose. The Factions have debated the nature of that purpose, of course, and it is certainly true that it may not be the Arena, proper, that has the purpose… but whether it be the Arena or the Voidbuilders of myth, I think we must agree that there is a purpose, and thus some number of interests, involved in the operation of the Arena.”

“So what’s your interest?” Wu Kung asked bluntly. “You gave Orphan directions on who to bring back, your own words tell me that you must have some purpose, yes?”

“Yes,” agreed Vindatri. “But I will not tell you that purpose. Doing so would fail to serve said purpose.”

“Would your purpose mean that you can’t help us — specifically, help me?” Ariane asked.

Another hint of a smile. “I can say that no, it would not impede me from providing you with some level of assistance in unraveling the mysteries of these powers. And for my own part, teaching you would perhaps reveal to me something about the powers I have not yet learned; as my own surprise doubtless revealed, I have never heard of a self-Awakening happening, and certainly never in combat.”

DuQuesne could see Ariane’s expression lighten. “Really?”

“Indeed and in truth. I will be happy to help you unbind the seals the Shadeweaver and Faith placed upon you, and then show you the way in which those powers may be used.”

“And what do you want for this help?” DuQuesne asked. “I don’t think you just give stuff like that away for free.”

“Free?” Vindatri’s gaze was coldly speculative, despite the shadowed smile that reappeared beneath the hood. “Oh, certainly not. Yet to some it may appear so. I will consider the price before we begin. To an extent, learning precisely what your Captain is would be payment; never before have I heard of a self-Awakening. It is of course assumed among the Shadeweavers that there had to once be such, to begin the order, and similarly the Faith presume there were those touched by the Creators directly to begin the Faith, but in all the records of both there are no mentions of such actually happening.”

Yeah, that would be valuable. “But that wouldn’t pay the whole freight, I’m guessing.”

“In all likelihood, no. As I have said, I must consider.” Vindatri gestured, and a sparkling white light appeared in the air before them. “Follow, and you will be led to quarters suited for you.”

“We could just sleep on board Zounin-Ginjou,” Ariane said.

Orphan made a swift gesture of negation, even as the figure whirled about, tense and menacing. “My apologies, Vindatri! She means it in a kindly way, to not put you to additional effort on her behalf when we already have comfortable spaces aboard my vessel.” The undertones of Orphan’s voice showed he was very nervous, even afraid. And the way Vindatri’s standing, he’s probably got a reason to be afraid.

Slowly, Vindatri straightened from what had been almost a predatory crouch; his head tilted as his gaze fell on Son Wu Kung, who had instantly placed himself between Ariane and Vindatri.

By now Ariane had grasped the situation. “Many apologies, Vindatri. I did indeed mean no offense to you in any way.”

Vindatri gave a broad, fluttering gesture. “Then I apologize for my anger, which must have been apparent. It is … very rude for a host to not provide accommodations for his guests, and similarly exceedingly rude to refuse such accommodations when offered. But I see you did not understand, and thus I thank you for the thought of courtesy, but beg you accept my own.”

Ariane glanced at him. Reluctantly, he nodded. Last thing we need to do is piss this guy off.

“We would be honored,” Ariane said, and Orphan relaxed as they began to follow the light.

DuQuesne was not relaxing, even as Vindatri disappeared through another doorway. One crisis averted. But this guy’s ancient, powerful, and used to doing things his way. Working with him’s going to be like walking through a minefield.

And if you keep walking through minefields, sooner or later something’s gonna blow up in your face.

 

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 35

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 35

Chapter 19

Linz, Austria, The Scribe

October 1, 1634

“My, my, look what the cat just dragged in.” The lean dark haired man threw the cards he was holding down on the scarred table and picked up his goblet. “Hansi, my dear, stop fondling Dannwitz’s purse and find Lieutenant Peckerbun a mug of hot beer.”

The other card players half-turned in their seats and looked at the mud-splashed young officer standing in the doorway. Despite the table littered with cards, dirty plates, bottles and smoking pipes, the room had suddenly taken on a decidedly businesslike air.

Lieutenant Simon Pettenburg gave a silent sigh, and handed the dispatch to his — hopefully temporarily — commanding officer. Colonel Wolf von Wildenburger-Hatzfeldt was a good combat officer, but off the battlefield, the Wolf tended to spend his time drinking, gambling, wrenching, and setting up elaborate jokes of a kind he really should be too old to find funny. Having his own name repeatedly changed in some ribald way hadn’t really bothered Simon once he realized that the Wolf was always extremely correct and polite towards people he didn’t like, but Simon’s slight build and boyish face already made it difficult to get the respect due an officer, and the nicknames didn’t help.

“Where’s the general?” Captain von Dannwitz reached behind the Wolf to pull a stool around for Simon.

“In Bonn.” Simon sat down and accepted the mug from the barmaid, while trying to ignore the breasts she pressed against his neck when leaning over to remove the empty jugs in the middle of the table. “Duke Wilhelm of Hessen-Kassel is besieging the town, but the general managed to get out letters before the town was closed off. This came through his brother in Mainz.” Simon nodded towards the dispatch, which the Wolf was slitting open.

“And just where were you and Sergeant Mittelfeldt?” Like the other men around the table Colonel Lorentz had known General Melchior von Hatzfeldt since serving with him in Wallenstein’s campaigns several years ago, and hadn’t liked their old friend and commander-in-chief going off with only the sergeant to guard his back and Simon to carry his messages.

“The sergeant took a tumble when his horse slipped. His thigh landed on a wooden spike and the wound festered. We got him to Frankfurt and the general paid for the new American medicine so the leg didn’t rot, but the general ordered me to stay with the sergeant, and only continue when we both could travel.”

Simon drank of the warm, spicy beer, and felt his body starting to thaw. It had been a cold two week’s journey across Bavaria with soaking rain and temperatures close to freezing. He hadn’t quite been able to avoid the fighting along the Danube, and considering the general chaos, he’d kept his armor on even at night. As a result the padded tunic he wore under everything else had never really dried, and he’d never really been warm.

“What’s the situation in Bavaria?” The Wolf looked up from the dispatch with no sign of his previous lazy amusement.

“Bad, Sir.” Simon lifted his mug and looked at the barkeeper to signify that he wanted another serving. “The Protestant armies under Báner have taken Ingolstadt and is said to be in control of everything north of the Danube.”

“Never mind Báner.” Wolf leaned forward and fixed his full attention on Simon. “I want to know if Bavaria is passable or we would have to fight our way across it?”

“Perhaps you better tell us what’s in the dispatch from the general, Wolf.” Old Colonel Dehn met the Wolf’s angry stare with calm. Dehn had been the officer usually given the over-all command when the general had to leave the regiments, and while he had made it clear that he didn’t mind the younger man being put in charge this time, everybody also knew that the Wolf would need his support for anything involving all the regiments.

“Are you challenging my authority, Dehn?” Wolf leaned back in his seat and picked up his goblet with his narrowed eyes still fixed on Dehn.

“Hmpf! Pretty words from somebody, who usually think authority is a town up by the Baltic Sea.” Dehn looked totally undisturbed by what Simon knew could easily lead to a duel. “What I’m saying is that you’re excellent at scouting missions, not bad at tactics, but your big scale strategies stink. So if you plan to take some of my men along on one of your hare-brained escapades without a direct order from either the Emperor or the general, I’ll box your ears, m’boy.”

The Wolf looked somewhat surprised at the words from the usually taciturn Dehn, then he threw back his head and roared with laughter with the other officers joining him only a moment later.

“Very well, old man. You win this one.” Wolf smiled and reached across the table to hand Dehn the dispatch.

“Hm.” Dehn quickly scanned the two handwritten pages. “So the general is cornered, has nothing with which to fight his way out, and will try stalling and negotiating. And the date?” He turned back to the first page. “Almost five weeks since he wrote it. When did you get this, Lieutenant?”

“The dispatch was almost two weeks from Bonn to Frankfurt, probably because it was brought to Mainz by the sergeant’s cousin who had to row up the Rhine while playing hide and seek with the Hessians.  After that I was more than a week in reaching Bavaria, as the shortest road is almost destroyed by the heavy rains, and finally another week across Bavaria from Regensburg.” Simon looked around the table. He was the most experienced of the couriers in the six regiments under contract to General Melchior von Hatzfeldt, and while he didn’t have the longstanding relationship with his superior officers that would permit dropping all formality, he also didn’t want the general to lack the backup he needed because Simon wouldn’t open his mouth for fear of overstepping his rank. “There’d be problems getting even a single regiment along the northern roads in time to be of any help for the general, but taking the Bavarian route might take even longer despite the better roads. It’s bad there. Everybody is looking over their shoulders and putting up defenses, but it isn’t Báner they are worried about.”

“A peasant uprising?” Dehn frowned at Simon.

“No. The Ram was mentioned, but only in whispers.” Simon swallowed and tried to gather his thoughts to explain what had bothered him. “Colonel Lorentz, you once told about the inquisition gaining force in your home town, how everybody feared to gather or talk, and was watching their neighbors. It was more like that. My papers were checked several times during a single day rather than just when I wanted to enter a walled town for the night. It was also difficult to buy travel food even in inns, as if everybody were hoarding their stores. No one was really willing to talk to me, and what I managed to overhear indicated that strangers of any kind simply wasn’t welcome.” Simon took a deep breath. “And that the people they were most worried about were those working for Duke Maximillian. The opinion seems to be that he’s gone insane.”

“Well, those rumors made it here as well.” The Wolf looked up into the smoke curling about the blackened beams beneath the roof. “Before starting back towards Cologne in August Melchior told me that he couldn’t take the regiments with him across Bavaria without a direct order from the Emperor, and even then Maximillian might decide to take it as an attack. The old emperor was dying in Vienna, but Archduke Ferdinand gave my cousin plenipotentiary powers in making any deal and taking any action that would keep the middle Rhine in Catholic hands.”

“Was that the exact wording?” Dannwitz pushed away his goblet, and waved away the maid.

“I didn’t read it, but that was how Melchior phrased it.”

“Hm. And no new orders from Vienna since the funeral.” Dehn started rubbing his goblet with a fingertip, a sure sign that he was thinking and didn’t like his own thoughts.

“Exactly.” The Wolf started to grin. “And asking for new orders would add at least another couple of weeks. Any dispatches going on to Vienna, Lieutenant?”

“No, sir. Just the letter for you. Unless somebody else has travelled faster than me, Vienna is unaware of Hesse’s attacking Bonn and Cologne. When the general left us in Frankfurt, he was only concerned with the problems created by Archbishop Ferdinand of Cologne, and Hesse seemed fully occupied with conquering Berg.”

 

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 53

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 53

Chapter 26

Vienna, capital of Austria-Hungary

The young woman on the stage finished the piece she was playing with a flourish, both vocally and with the fiddle itself. The audience in the reception chamber burst into applause.

Some of the applause was tentative, tepid, even tremulous. The audience was mostly made up of Austrian and Hungarian nobility, who were not accustomed to this sort of music. Some of them were dubious that it qualified as “music” at all. But since the performer was closely associated with Americans, even if she was not American herself, they extended her the benefit of the doubt.

Others, though, had no doubts at all. No sooner had Minnie Hugelmair finished her rendition of “The Wabash Cannonball” than Denise Beasley and Judy Wendell both jumped to their feet and started whooping and hollering to go along with their hand-clapping.

The audience stared at them for a second or two, unsure whether this unseemly display should be the cause of further applause or disapproving silence. But that issue was settled a moment later, when Archduke Leopold rose to his feet and joined the clapping — thought not the hollering and whooping — followed almost immediately by his sister, Archduchess Cecilia Renata. It took the assembled audience, most of whom were well-trained courtiers, no time at all to mimic their betters.

Minnie did a bow coupled with a curtsy of sorts — something of a truncated one, since she had both hands engaged with the fiddle and the bow — grinning in a manner than was just as unseemly as the music itself. Those who knew her well, which now included Judy as well as Denise, understood that the grin was largely derisive. Minnie Hugelmair had no illusions at all concerning her position in the eyes of Austria-Hungary’s aristocracy — and didn’t care in the least.

When her eyes — eye, rather — met those of Leopold, the grin transmuted into something a lot more friendly. She hadn’t decided yet what sort of relationship she might wind up having with the youngest of the Austro-Hungarian empire’s four royal siblings, but of one thing she was now certain. Unlike most of the people feigning applause in the room, Leopold’s applause was genuine. And unlike most of the people in the room, Leopold understood that she was an actual person.

Not very well, to be sure. He had been born and raised in a manner that made such an understanding difficult. But she was willing to give him credit for trying. He was having a definite influence on his sister, too.

All four of the siblings were close to each other, from what Minnie and her friends had been able to ascertain. That was probably due in part to the fact they were close in age. Ferdinand, now the emperor, had been born in July of 1608. The other three had all been born in the month of January — of the year 1610, in the case of Maria Anna; 1611, in the case of Cecilia Renata, and 1614 in the case of Leopold Wilhelm. Less than a six year spread, all told.

The fact that Leopold was favorably inclined toward Minnie had made Cecilia Renata less skeptical of the ragamuffin and her friends than she would have been otherwise. That lowered guard, in turn, had led her to become better acquainted with Judy Wendell. Up until then, Cecilia Renata had very mixed feelings about the beautiful young American. On the one hand, she’d been just as outraged as any other proper aristocrat at Judy’s astonishingly rude treatment of her brother Leopold Wilhelm when the archduke had made physical advances on her. On the other hand…

He was also her younger brother and who knew better than his closest sibling — especially a sister! — just how richly deserved that rebuke had been. True, Judy shouldn’t have kneed him in the testicles. That was very crude. But she was a commoner, so what could you expect? Cecilia Renata could remember plenty of occasions in her childhood when she’d been sorely tempted to do the same.

Well… perhaps not knee him in the testicles. But hit him on the head? Oh, surely. Punch him in the nose? Yes, that too.

Once Cecilia Renata became better acquainted with Judy Wendell, she found herself becoming friends with the girl. She was a few years older than the American — twenty-four years of age as opposed to Judy Wendell’s eighteen years. But Judy had a dry, sardonic wit that Cecilia Renata enjoyed and which resonated with her own detached and acerbic view of most of the people around her. Being a member of the royal family who lacked much in the way of direct power but had a great deal of indirect influence had made Cecilia Renata skeptical of most people’s motives. When they fawned on her they usually wanted something.

Judy Wendell never fawned on Cecilia Renata — nor on anyone else, so far as she could determine. The young American knew she was gorgeous and accepted that in the same spirit she accepted the sky being blue and water being wet. It was just a fact — an enjoyable one, in this case — but nothing she took credit for herself, any more than she’d take credit for the color of the sky or the wetness of water.

Cecilia Renata knew that she herself was not beautiful. She didn’t think she was ugly, certainly, and everyone agreed that she had very lovely red hair. But she also shared her brother Leopold’s long, bony nose, even if she didn’t have as pronounced a lower lip as most Habsburgs. And, like Leopold, she was on the tall and gangly side.

When you were royalty, of course, looks didn’t matter very much. Someone would marry you even if you looked like a troll. But that too, in its own way, strengthened Cecilia Renata’s sometimes mordant outlook. Trust nothing anyone says to you, especially about yourself, unless you know them very well.

She was becoming more and more inclined toward getting to know Judy Wendell very well.

****

At the reception, following the performance, most of the gathered nobility fell back into comfortable habits and ignored Minnie Hugelmair completely. This suited her just fine because there weren’t that many people there whom she had any desire to talk to anyway.

She started with Denise, as she usually did. “You should leave with Eddie,” she told her, in a tone that made the statement an outright command.

 

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 26

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 26

Chapter 26.

“Doctor Alexander Fairchild,” repeated Simon, studying Oasis closely.

The Hyperion-born woman was still not entirely herself; the strain showed in the stiffness of her arm as she reached out for the water-pitcher and poured herself a glass. She drank, looked aimlessly around the conference room that Simon had chosen when they had returned — in haste — to the Embassy. “Yes,” she said finally.

The name finally clicked. “Masaka. That was the name of the Hyperion AI that nearly –”

“– did kill me, Oasis, forcing K to take me in. Yes.”

No wonder she’s so shaken. Fairchild literally ripped her mind apart trying to take her body. “But… K, you seem just as upset as Oasis, so to speak. That is, it seems that all of you is terribly shocked — by what has to be a coincidence or misperception.”

Oasis’ smile was weak and without humor. “You are right, Simon. I am upset, and if DuQuesne were here, he’d be freaking out, too.”

“Why? Oasis,” he put a hand gently on hers; she immediately gripped his painfully hard. “Ow. Oasis, why?”

“Because Doctor Alexander Fairchild was DuQuesne and Seaton’s worst enemy in their universe, Simon.”

Other people might not have quite grasped the import of that statement, but Simon had been around enough Hyperions to understand. If Fairchild had been a long-running enemy to DuQuesne, it meant he was at least DuQuesne’s equal. “I see. Yes, that would be terrifying. But, Oasis, you know it’s impossible. Fairchild was an AI. Formidable as he might have been, there is absolutely no way he could enter the Arena.”

When she did not immediately answer, he went on. “We know this. AIs do not work here, ever — unless the thing we call the Arena is an AI, and in that case it suffers no rivals. The Minds of the Blessed have spent tens of thousands of years, perhaps more, trying to evade that law of the Arena’s, and failed completely. According to both Orphan and Sethrik, the Minds have tried placing versions of their intellects into bodies prepared for them, bodies otherwise perfectly identical to any other Blessed. The bodies collapse upon entrance. The Arena is not fooled.

“So you see, what you saw was a trick of perspective, a chance coincidence of form and color. It had to be, because there is absolutely no way that — even if this Fairchild is the renegade Hyperion AI we encountered in our own space — he could possibly be here in the Arena.”

She squeezed his hand again, then looked up, but her eyes were still haunted. “I wish I could be so sure, Simon. But it’s possible that that rule doesn’t apply to Hyperion AIs.”

“What? Why not?” He remembered something. “Does this have to do with whatever you discussed in secret with DuQuesne?”

She nodded, twirling one of her four ponytails absently. “Yes.” Oasis bit her lip, thinking. “Simon, I think I have to tell you. Because honestly you could probably find it out anyway, if you wanted, and you haven’t. Right? I mean, that power of yours could do that, don’t you think?”

“Yes. Probably.”

“Then… why not try? I’m going to tell you anyway, so it’s not like you’d be stealing the information.” Her voice was more animated, and he could tell she was genuinely curious, and the question at least was drawing her back out of the completely atypical state of tension and fear she’d been in.

Nonetheless, the question made him tense, as any serious consideration of using that ability always did. Still… he could think of no sensible reason to refuse the test. He drew in a breath, preparing himself. “Very well.”

Preternatural clarity rose up within him more swiftly, more readily than before, infusing him with an absolute perception of his surroundings; he could hear Oasis’ breathing, sense her heartbeat, observe the tiniest motion of each hair on her head, watch motes of dust in their random courses across the room, and hold it all within his head as easily as a three-letter password. Great Kami, I forget. Every time, I forget what it’s like to have this power… yet I always remember enough.

He focused now, focused on a single question: what was the secret DuQuesne told Oasis here, before they left?

The answer came to him in a flash.

He opened his eyes, then closed them as he banished that godlike perception once more. His hands shook and he took a moment to calm himself.

This time it was Oasis’ hand on his, and his squeezing hers tightly. “What’s wrong, Simon?”

“You don’t understand, do you?” he asked quietly. “Yet… of all people, you should.” He drew another breath, let it out slowly. “Even the fringes of that… power, perception, access to the Arena… goes beyond anything a human mind should be able to process, yet I do, it seems like mere child’s play. I can rise up, see… oh, anything, it feels like, expand my perceptions and knowledge so far that, honestly, I have never even tried to push its limits. A part of me fears there are no limits, even if that sounds utterly ridiculous.”

He could see a dawning understanding in her eyes. “And it feels so right, so perfect, especially for a scientist, someone whose goal has always been to understand the world. I want this power, Oasis. And I am terrified of it.”

Oasis’ eyes were wide and he could see she did understand. “Oh, God, Simon, I didn’t realize… of course you would be. One moment you’re not all that… and then you are ‘all that’. You can see anything, know anything… and that’s your heart’s desire. And maybe your worst fear, because if you ever did know everything, what would be left to know?”

“And if I did know, not everything, but even a measurable fraction of the Cosmic All, as Ariane’s Mentor calls it, what would I be thinking then of the people who could not even understand a billionth of it?” he murmured. “Would I still even be human? Would I care about humanity?”

She suddenly reached out and hugged him. “Simon, you asking those questions is one of the best arguments that you would. You have to trust yourself… and maybe us, too… to keep you anchored to who you really are, no matter what… head-rush the Arena-sense gives you.”

She let go, but the warmth and affection, the comfort, of that embrace lingered, and he felt the fear and apprehension fading. “Thank you, Oasis. Yes, I’m afraid of all that… but you and Ariane and DuQuesne all seem to think I can handle it. So perhaps I should trust you and use this power more often.”

“Well, don’t go too far. I don’t want to have to deck you if you go all glowy-eyed ‘A GOD AM I’ on me. And I’ll do it, you know.”

He chuckled. “I am sure you would. And I give you full permission to do so, if that ever happens.”

Her smile answered his, then faded back to a more serious expression. “So? Did you get it?”

“Ah, yes. I did, I believe.” He studied her, replaying the revelation and what it might mean, and found that even without the cosmic vision it was an awesome thing to contemplate. “That the Hyperions — by virtue of having been raised from birth in settings that were completely real to them, by people whose sole purpose was in making those lives as real as possible, those people as real as possible — may potentially have the same powers and abilities here in the Arena as they did in their Hyperion worlds.

“The Arena gives to those entering it the abilities that were natural to them, even to the extent of tailoring environments in all ways. To the Hyperions, the worlds they were raised in were natural — they had not an inkling that they were not, and their creators had no other thought in their minds but to fulfill that perception. In other words, they are not limited by the restrictions of the Arena on other species, and may even be aided by the Arena in achieving abilities that would normally be… well, utterly impossible, but are natural to them.”

“That’s it. We already know one big piece of evidence: Wu Kung gets to talk to, and influence, animals in the Arena. No one else — that we know of, anyway — can do that. And his winning of the Challenge proves that he’s not subject to the normal physical limits, anyway.”

Her brows came down. “And that is why I’m not so sure about Doctor Fairchild. Sure, a normal AI couldn’t find a body and move into the Arena… but a Hyperion AI who, like his physical counterpart, had been designed and raised to be a particular person, who believed they were that person, who lived the life of that person… I’m not so sure that they couldn’t pull that off. That the Arena wouldn’t see them as legal entries, so to speak. Maybe it would, but maybe not.”

The thought gave Simon something of a chill. “I wish I could disagree, but you’re right. It fits with what we know of the Arena’s rules. As an AI — in a computational chassis — I am sure he would not be allowed. But if he could transfer himself into a human body, then … yes, it might be something the Arena would permit.”

He stood up. “Oasis, this is of course your secret. But I think it has now become imperative we share it with Laila and Carl, if no one else. Because if it is possible that a Hyperion AI — or, as Mentor said, possibly as many as three — has even the slightest chance of entering the Arena with their full fictional capabilities, we are not going to be the only people in danger.

“It could be every Faction in the Arena.”

 

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 52

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 52

PART III

June, 1636

There burns a truer light

Chapter 25

Prague, capital of Bohemia

On their last night in Prague, Janos Drugeth came to Noelle’s suite. When she opened the door and let him in, he had a peculiar expression on his face. If she hadn’t known him better, she would have thought him to be undecided about something — no, more than that. He seemed downright indecisive.

An optical illusion of some sort. By now, Noelle had learned that Janos was a complicated man in many respects. But the one thing he wasn’t, ever, was indecisive.

Clearly, though, he wanted her advice about something. So, despite the late hour, she ushered him into the small chamber that served her as a salon of sorts, and invited him to sit.

Right after he did so, a servant hurried into the room, looking a bit disheveled. Her name was Ilona and she’d already retired for the night since Noelle had told her she wouldn’t be needed again until the next day.

Noelle looked from Ilona to Janos. “Would you like something? A glass of wine?”

“No. Well. I suppose… Yes. I would.”

Noelle had never seen him like this. She turned to Ilona and said, “Bring us two glasses of wine, please. I’ll have one also.”

She didn’t understand what was causing Janos to be so unsettled, but she figured if she had a glass of wine with him that might help settle his nerves. She drank little in the way of alcoholic beverages, although she’d found her consumption rising as time passed. In this as in so many ways, the seventeenth century’s standards were different from the ones she’d been accustomed to in the world of her birth.

Janos remained silent until Ilona returned with the glasses of wine. “Are you going to want another glass later?” she asked him.

Again, he seemed indecisive. “I don’t… Ah. I am not sure.”

Fascinating. But there was no reason to keep Ilona up. The poor girl seemed tired.

“Go back to bed, Ilona,” she said. “I know where the wine is, if we need more later.”

The servant seemed a bit scandalized by the notion that her mistress could — and would! — pour herself a glass of wine. But she said nothing; simply curtsied and left.

Noelle turned back to Janos. By then, he’d already drained half the glass — which was also quite unlike him. Drugeth, like almost all noblemen Noelle had encountered since the Ring of Fire, drank a lot of wine in the course of a day. But he stretched it out, so that he never seemed tipsy. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him guzzle half a glass like that.

Fascinating. What was on his mind?

She went straight to the point. “Something is bothering you, Janos. What is it?”

“Ah…” He drained the rest of the glass in one swallow.

“Would you care for some more wine?”

He raised the empty glass and stared at it for a moment. He seemed a bit startled that it was already empty.

“Ah, no.” He set it down on the side table next to his chair. That motion, at least, was decisive. “The reason I came here tonight is because tomorrow we will fly back to Vienna.”

She nodded. Janos had finished his negotiations with Wallenstein that afternoon. Nothing further could be settled until he spoke with Ferdinand to get the emperor’s approval to the terms he and the king of Bohemia had finally thrashed out. Eddie had flown the plane into Prague that same afternoon and would be ready to fly back out as soon as Janos and Noelle arrived at the airfield.

“Once we get to Vienna,” Janos continued, “we will be staying in the Hofburg and as I’m sure you remember, it is rather crowded.”

“To say the least,” she said, smiling. The type of buildings that up-time Americans thought of as “palaces,” like Versailles, generally dated from a much later period. There was a travel guide to Vienna in Grantville’s public library that Noelle had looked at before coming to Austria, and the “Hofburg” it depicted — much less the later and still more elaborate palace called Schönbrunn — was a far cry from what existed in the year 1636. Like most palaces in this time period, the Hofburg was a ramshackle structure parts of which dated back to the thirteenth century.

As lavish as the furnishings might be, the Austrian royal palace was overflowing with people, between the royal family and live-in courtiers and a horde of servants. It had a population density that reminded Noelle of some of the poorer trailer parks she’d seen in West Virginia. Kids everywhere; dogs everywhere; people idling on every stair stoop.

It finally dawned on her what Janos was skittering around, like the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof. She felt her own face getting warm.

“Oh,” she said. “You’re worried we, ah, won’t have any privacy.”

Janos smiled crookedly. “I can’t say I’m ‘worried’ about it, exactly. It is an absolute given that we will have no privacy.”

His expression became solemn. “One of the things I will try to persuade the emperor to do is to remove the royal family to Linz. They should not be there when the Ottoman army arrives. Once the siege begins, it may prove impossible — it will certainly be difficult — to get them to safety. And you should go with them.”

She started to protest but he held up his hand in a sharp gesture. “Please, Noelle! There is nothing you can do in a siege, and a great deal you can do elsewhere.”

“Will you be staying?”

“That will be up to the emperor. I suspect he’ll have other assignments for me, though, since he has Baudissin and other officers to lead the garrison. Once the royal family leaves the city, morale is likely to suffer, but the remedy for that is to have one of the younger family members volunteer to stay behind. That would be Leopold. Possibly Cecilia Renata as well.”

The logic was cold-blooded, but she understood it. The two oldest of Ferdinand II’s four children were the current emperor Ferdinand III and his sister Maria Anna, now married to Fernando, the King in the Netherlands. Ferdinand III had already sired a son and a daughter, and Maria Anna was reported to be pregnant. Even if that pregnancy did not come to term, Maria Anna was safely ensconced in Brussels, half a continent away from the oncoming Ottoman army.

That left the two youngest siblings, Leopold and Cecilia Renata, as something in the way of supernumeraries so far as preserving the dynasty was concerned. Having one of them stay in the capital during the siege would help the morale of the defending forces.

She brought her mind back to the subject at hand. There was no way that her marriage to Janos could be moved forward. No date had even been set yet, since the looming siege would made the sort of huge semi-official — more like three-quarters-official — ceremony impossible to organize.

Noelle had been taken aback when she realized what Janos and Emperor Ferdinand had in mind for the wedding. She still found it surreal that anyone was deluded enough to think that one Noelle Stull, née Murphy, was a suitable subject for the sort of weddings she’d never seen except on television.

Abstractly, she understood the logic here as well. Janos Drugeth was one of Austria-Hungary’s most prominent noblemen and known to be one of the emperor’s closest friends and confidants. Any marriage in which he was one of the participants was bound to be a major quasi-state affair, if for no other reason than to satisfy the always-tender sensibilities of the Hungarian aristocracy. The fact that he was marrying an American added a certain frisson to the business. There was still a wide range of opinions on the part of Europe’s aristocracy on the subject of exactly where Americans should be placed in the established social hierarchy. A number of Austrians had settled on the formula of referring to all Americans by the appellation “von Up-time” — an expression which Noelle thought was ridiculous and which she knew both Mike Stearns and Ed Piazza actively detested.

But whatever their attitude might be, one thing was clear: Americans were all celebrities. Back in the day, some people had fawned over Zsa Zsa Gabor, some people had found her ridiculous or even contemptible, and most hadn’t cared very much one way or the other. But everyone had heard of her.

Of course, there were celebrities, and then there were celebrities. Some were movie stars known the world over; others were minor figures known only in a particular locale. So it was with Americans also, here in the seventeenth century. Nobody thought of the local American souse of a handyman as the prince of anything. But the fact that he was American was still a matter of note.

The changed reality had snuck up on Noelle, but she was now a lot closer to such people as Mike Stearns or Ed Piazza or Melissa Mailey in the pantheon of American Legendary Figures, Large and Small, than she’d been a year ago. She wasn’t very happy with the change, either. But…

Her thoughts were skittering away again.

When in doubt, Noelle usually found refuge in bluntness.

“I’m a virgin,” she said abruptly. She could have added the qualification technically speaking but saw no point in detailing the complex behavioral permutations of her relationship with a former boyfriend who’d never come through the Ring of Fire so he couldn’t gainsay her anyway. She way she figured it, appendages other than The One didn’t count.

Janos’ face was stiff. “I did not ask,” he said.

“Yes, I noticed. And I appreciated it. But since it looks as if my, ah, maidenly status is about to change, I figured you ought to know that I’m likely to fumble around the business. Some.”

That broke his wooden expression. “I am not concerned about that in the least!”

“Okay, then.” She rose to her feet and extended her hand. “Follow me.”

He came to his feet and took her hand. Then, hesitated. “I do not — are you concerned about — how to put it?”

“Getting pregnant? It’s not likely, tonight. But it doesn’t matter because I hold to our church’s teachings on the subject of birth control. If I get pregnant, so be it.”

He was still hesitant. “I may not — it’s possible — that I will not survive this war.”

“I understand that. In which case I might wind up with a so-called illegitimate child on my hands, even though I think coupling the words ‘illegitimate’ and ‘child’ is grotesque.”

She grinned, then. “Quit stalling, buddy. You started this, I didn’t — but the girl is willing.”

She didn’t expand that to willing as all hell because that might be blasphemy. In the seventeenth century, you never knew.

****

Prague’s airfield — you call hardly call it an “airport” — was located just beyond the walls of the “New Town,” the section of the city known in Czech as Nové Město. To get to it you had to pass through the Horse Gate, so named because the area adjacent to it within the walls was the Horse Market. The Horse Market would eventually be renamed Wenceslas Square, assuming the history of this universe remained faithful to the nomenclature of another.

Which… it might or might not. In the Americans’ universe, the name change hadn’t taken place until the revolution of 1848. But in this universe, it might never happen at all or it could happen at any moment. The city’s Jews were now often referring to the Jewish quarter as the “Josefov,” in honor of the emperor Joseph II in another universe who would emancipate Prague’s Jews in his Toleration Edict of 1781. Given that in this universe the city’s Jews had already been emancipated a quarter of a millennium earlier by King Albrecht II (aka Wallenstein), that renaming seemed impolitic as well as absurd.

But, such was the nature of terminological upheavals produced by cosmic catastrophes. As had been said more than once, the Ring of Fire had a lot to answer for.

Eddie Junker had the Steady Girl fueled and ready to go shortly after sunrise, because Noelle had told him the day before that she and Janos wanted to get to Vienna as early in the day as possible. So he was disgruntled — he’d risen an hour and a half before dawn — that they didn’t show up until late in the morning. By his very excellent watch, 10:06 AM, to be precise.

Seeing the way they held on to each other as they neared, which he coupled with their slow progress, constant nuzzling and generally vacuous expressions, he made certain deductions and came to certain conclusions.

He was still ticked off. Getting up at 3:30 in the morning was a wretched business and those responsible needed a really good excuse to justify their own failure to match the schedule. A major earthquake, an outbreak of plague, the apocalypse, something of that nature. Getting laid just didn’t cut the mustard, even if Noelle had waited a preposterous amount of time to take care of the business.

“Are we finally ready to go?” he demanded, once they had reached the plane.

There was no answer. They were back to nuzzling again.

“This is getting ridiculous,” said Eddie.

 

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 34

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 34

“Maxie!” The abbess shook her head before drinking, and Elisabeth pretended to cough to keep from laughing at Maxie’s audacity. The abbess couldn’t even protest or continue this line of conversation without being rude toward their hostess. Besides, the abbess had told the two girls that her dear friend had never seemed quite happy running that cloister in Munich, and she certainly seemed happy now.

Maxie now turned her infectious smile on Elisabeth. “I’ll introduce you to Father Johannes, so he can tell you more, but I do know that monthly magazines like Simplicissimus buy both news and written articles from a large number of people. A weekly or biweekly newspaper is different. I’m not sure exactly how, except that they employ people to seek out and write down enough news to fill every number of the newspaper.”

“Thank you, Sister Maximiliane.” Elisabeth smiled and nodded. “And so: to a newspaper it’s probably more important to find enough interesting news for an issue than it is to make certain that the person writing it knows what he is talking about.”

“Exactly. I suppose you have seen the recent edition of Magdeburg News?” Maxie laughed. “I would actually gladly forgive them their mistake about me, if I could only have seen Anna Marie’s face when she read the part about darling young Zweibrücken being the head of her family.”

“Maxie! Not Zweibrücken too. He could be your son.” The abbess spilled wine on her embroidered dress front and started rubbing it with a handkerchief, while a nod from her hostess sent the maid standing by the door hurrying to assist.

“Of course not, Dotty. He is just a darling boy; handsome, earnest, wanting to be a hero and save the world. He was in Verona on his Grand Tour when his father suddenly died, and when he hurried home, it was to hear the news of his sister’s capture by my mad cousin the archbishop.”

“H-how tragic.” Johanna had always been the lively one, both in her family and at school, but Maxie seemed to leave her almost stunned with delighted awe.

“Well, he absolutely despised his father for marrying Charlotte off to old Duke Wolfgang, and rushing to his sister’s aid gave the young Sir Knight all the excuse for adventure a young man could want.”

“I saw the brief message the Americans sent from Mainz.” The abbess accepted a damp cloth brought by a second maid. “– saying that Cologne and Bonn has broken with your cousin and want to join the USE, but are under attack from Hesse. Amalie confirmed the attack, and said that it was to free Charlotte and her baby, and to establish a safe western border for the USE. She also claimed that Cologne’s petition for membership was just a plot to gain time for the archbishop’s Bavarian relatives to come to his aid. Prime Minister Stearns and his supporters wanted to stop Hesse immediately, and the Chamber of Princes was split down the middle until the emperor finally cut the knot and ordered Hesse to stop, but not withdraw his troops until the matter was settled. Hesse doesn’t have a radio with him, so the order probably hasn’t reached him yet, but should do so soon. No one is certain if Hesse attacked with or without the emperor’s knowledge, and is in or out of the emperor’s favor. Certainly, Hesse stepped on a lot of toes this summer, when he tried to become both guardian and heir to Charlotte’s child, but that was a possible solution to the problem at the time — and Hesse is one of the emperor’s oldest supporters. So, start at the beginning, Maxie, and tell me what you know.”

Maxie smiled. “As far as I know the emperor, or at least somebody high in the government, knew Hesse wanted to take his regiments towards Berg and Cologne this spring, but not the details. After running around all summer chasing shadows, Hesse sent his cavalry down the Sieg Valley last month to try to take Bonn. That’s where Charlotte and her baby were rumored to be. But he had to move his infantry and artillery by way of Düsseldorf, getting De Geer’s permission in return for promising undisputed annexation of Western Mark and Kleve.”

“What!” The abbess nearly spilled her second serving of wine too. “Are you asking me to believe that Hesse and Amalie agreed to make a deal that involved promising the emperor’s land to somebody else?”

“Lucie von Hatzfeldt’s youngest brother Hermann has a lot of contacts in Essen, and that’s what he discovered just before he left for Mainz, and we went here to Magdeburg.” Maxie shrugged. “Hesse and De Geer are both in good favor with the emperor, and if they can bring him Jülich, Berg and Cologne, he might well let them keep those lands, and add Mark and Kleve too. And while Essen’s present claim on Kleve might be based on a rather suspect ‘public vote’…”

She shrugged again. “Actually it isn’t — or wasn’t — such a bad plan. Only, when Hesse arrived at Bonn, Charlotte and her son had disappeared, and the two councils of Cologne and Bonn decided they’d rather join USE than get conquered. Before the sieges enclosed the towns, they managed to send out two delegations. Hermann von Hatzfeldt was in charge of the one heading for Mainz, and from what you tell he obviously managed to reach the Americans there. Zweibrücken had arrived in Cologne just before Hesse surrounded the town, and once assured that his sister and nephew were safe and sound beyond the archbishop’s reach, the darling boy accepted leading the delegation here. He is to spend today with Axel Oxenstierna, but meet with the Chamber of Princes tomorrow.”

“But how about Charlotte and her baby? Where are they?” Johanna looked excited, and Elisabeth suspected her friend found this almost as good as those American novels. Zweibrücken had to be the hero, but then his sister could not be the heroine. Still, this was good.

“I’ve been told that they are still in Bonn, but my archbishop cousin believes them to have escaped into Berg, and wasted an awful lot of time and money searching for them before the siege. Lucie’s older brother, General Melchior von Hatzfeldt, has taken command of Bonn’s defenses, so they are as safe as anyone can be in that area. Hesse, I’m sure, doesn’t know where they are.” Maxie smiled. “But who’s in town right now? Zweibrücken is to be introduced to the emperor tonight, and I’m invited to the soiree at the palace and need to plan my strategy. I assume you’ll be willing to support Zweibrücken as his nephew’s guardian, Dorothea, but what else is on your agenda, and who can we bully, bribe and blackmail for support?”

 

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 25

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 25

Chapter 25.

Dajzail ripple-walked from the airlock down the ramp; Alztanza himself waited there, holding his fighting-claws rigid in salute. “Guard not,” he said to Alztanza, who immediately relaxed his stance. “It is good to see you again, ‘Tanza.”

The Fleet Master clattered a smile at him and they briefly clasped claws. “And you, Daj. How was your journey?”

“Well enough, though it took me homeyears, it seemed, to extricate myself from the Embassy. I have selected temporary representatives, but they all needed individual instruction… so in any event it took me a while to get here.”

Alztanza rattled his claws in sympathy. “I do not envy you the administrative duties, Daj. For my part, it took me some time to reach here as well, as I traveled with my ships, and it takes no fewer than three Sky-Gate transitions to get here, one of them quite a long ride. Oh, greetings to you, Kanjstall,” he said as Dajzail’s Salutant stepped up near them, carrying the most vital of Dajzail’s luggage. “But in some ways, Daj, the time was well spent. I was able to complete arranging the basic strategy and drill our forces prior to your arrival, which is good. You know how the presence of an actual ruler can disrupt perfectly good training exercises.”

“True enough. So the entire two Forces are assembled?”

“All four thousand eight hundred and two vessels are here, yes. Of the original Force there were five not really suited for deployment, but I have received fine replacements for them. I would be honored if you would take Claws of Vengeance as your personal warship.”

“Claws of Vengeance? That would be a Twinscabbard vessel, yes?”

“It would,” said the Fleet Master, clearly pleased he remembered naming conventions well enough to make that deduction.

“Then I accept. A fine symbolism to lead from a vessel of the same class they destroyed, and such ships are excellent combinations of firepower and speed.” He saw Alztanza’s eye flickering in its scan. “No, I have no one else in my party.”

“Really? I had expected the Master of Forces, at the least.”

“Malvchait remains on the Homeworld, and is directing the assembly of the Fleet which will take their lowspace system, once we have secured their Sky Gates. That will be a matter of several turnings, I think.”

“I would expect so.” For a few moments Alztanza was quiet as they walked towards the military docking areas. “Faction Leader, might I ask if the secondary force is necessary?”

“In truth, I hope not,” he answered after a moment. “It will mean diverting a significant portion of our current military resources to one target which cannot be engaged for several homeyears at least, depending on how close we can Transition. That Fleet will have to come here and deploy, and deploying it will take a long time as well. If by terrible chance we are defeated here in Arenaspace, we would prefer to merely send near-lightspeed projectiles to destroy their worlds, but…”

Alztanza nodded. No military member of the Molothos could be unaware of the limitations the Arena imposed even in lowspace, including eliminating in one fashion or another any cataclysmic-level weapons or simply negating their effects. Fractional-lightspeed projectiles were one such weapon. “Still… if I may speak with all bluntness?”

Dajzail felt his head tilt, in the manner of a savaziene trying to find the best viewpoint. He and Alztanza had been second-nest friends, and even though they had been separated for a long time, he was startled that his friend would be so formal with him, especially in person rather than via official communications such as the one that had started this venture. “Always, ‘Tanza. Quicksand, friend, do you need to be so nervous around me?”

“You are not just Dajzail, the lightweight moltling that I kept from being pushed around by my nestmates. You’re the Leader of the Faction of the Molothos, and that means that yes, I have reason to be nervous — as you will probably see.” Alztanza took a breath so deep that Dajzail could hear it, and then spoke. “Daj… I am not sure this is a wise thing that we do.”

Dajzail stopped so suddenly that Kanjstall almost ran into him. He studied his friend and Fleet Master carefully with the full regard of his eye. “Kanjstall, please carry the luggage ahead and arrange transfer of the rest to Claws of Vengeance.”

Kanjstall, flicking his attention between them, asked no questions. “As you command,” he said, and ripple-walked away as fast as he could.

Once he was gone, Dajzail surveyed the quiet corridor carefully before turning back to Alztanza. “Explain your statement, ‘Tanza.”

His friend’s tension was — just slightly — less, realizing that by ensuring no witnesses Dajzail was also ensuring that there would be no one to tell him that he had failed to act properly. “Daj… first, the lowspace intrusion will reduce our ability to project force elsewhere. Especially in lowspace, since the majority of our forces are highspace-focused. We may be taking only a seventh of our total forces — which still is nothing to take lightly — but closer to fifty percent of our lowspace forces.”

Dajzail restrained an annoyed retort that of course he knew these things. Alztanza would realize that, and so there had to be more to it than that. “Say onward.”

“A lot of the undercreatures in our various systems may become restive if they believe we no longer have sufficient resources to control them,” Alztanza said bluntly. “Our lowspace military resources are outfitted for invasion, yes, but pacification and security are their other two missions, and we’re cutting those forces in half for a significant period of time for this mission.”

“But even if our current attack succeeds, ‘Tanza, we’ll need a lot of forces to send in and pacify the humans’ star system. Perhaps, I’ll grant you, not nearly this many, but it is also a statement, one that we will want to make known. But you’re right — we could at least wait until we know the outcome of this first strike mission. We’ll keep the forces assembling but they won’t deploy until we’ve secured the Upper Sphere and destroyed all exterior resistance. Better?”

Alztanza still did not look entirely happy, but he rocked his claws to indicate some level of assent. “Better, yes, Leader. But…”

“Place it all before me at once, ‘Tanza! Don’t draw it all out!”

“As you say, Daj, but then remember you asked and don’t strike at me without thinking.”

What in the name of the Homeworld?

Alztanza raised himself a bit higher. “In all honesty, Daj… I don’t know if this entire thing is a good idea.”

“You…” He felt his eye flicker. “You mean teaching the human undercreatures a lesson?”

“I mean exactly that, Daj. Remember, you promised!” That last was said with a sharp warning buzz, as Dajzail found his fighting claws rising of their own accord. He forced them down with difficulty as Alztanza continued. “Daj… Leader, we already have conflicts with several Factions. None of the Great Factions at the moment, although relations with two of the others are very strained and there are skirmishes, but several others. Speaking as a Fleet Master, I truly do not relish the thought of opening a new war-front without having eliminated at least one of the ones I already have. Especially doing so while drawing down our forces significantly. A single Force, or even two, that’s nothing to worry about, but a Fleet is many orders of magnitude more likely to cause problems.”

Dajzail waited; it was clear that Alztanza was not finished.

“And… we get into these wars so easily, Daj. Let us look clearly in the water and see what it reflects, not what we would prefer to see there. These First Emergents came out, found us on their world, and managed — through methods we do not know — to defeat our scouting force. They have won multiple other Challenges and lost none, to our knowledge. I studied what is known of these ‘humans’ carefully — if I am to lead a force against them I must know them. And…”

He paused, then sighed loudly, a whistling sound, and continued. “And we do not know enough, Daj. We do not know how they defeated a scout force with two and only two of their number. We do not understand how their Leader was able to gain the power to defeat Amas-Garao. Her defeat of the Blessed Leader Sethrik seemed due to utter insanity. And their most recent victory is even more inexplicable, implying that some of their number have learned how to evade some of the Arena’s most well-known restrictions. Truthfully? I would rather have a less conflicting interaction with them, perhaps to learn some of these truths.”

Less conflicting…? Dajzail heard the whistle-shriek of a breath drawn suddenly, knew it was his own. “Alztanza… you of all my people, you cannot be … a Beast-Talker?”

“What? No! Daj, I’m cautious, not insane!”

He felt a tiny bit of relief. “Well, they claim to be sane, you know.”

The Nest of Accommodation, more familiarly and insultingly called the ‘Beast Talkers’, were a small faction of Molothos who claimed that the undercreatures weren’t really under-creatures, but actually PEOPLE, hard though that was to believe, and that the Molothos should learn how to “go past” their usual behaviors and start treating these beings as equals. Of course, what they wanted everyone to “go past” was the obvious and inarguable truth that the Molothos were the only truly civilized species in existence and start consorting with undercreatures little better than mindless beasts.

The Beast-Talkers were a splinter movement from the Rational Reward movement, which was fairly radical but had shown some good results from creating a system of more generous rewards and privileges for undercreature slaves, and they had been a splinter from the Maintainable Nests, who were perfectly respectable and had created the current system that provided more sustainable undercreature service resources rather than the traditional methods which even Dajzail felt had been ridiculously wasteful. Because of this line of descent, there were a small — but unfortunately increasing — number of people who thought this implied there might be something to the Beast-Talkers’ ravings. This was the classic fallacy of the Extreme, similar to someone noting that you needed two milligrams of silicon carbide every day to keep your exoskeleton strong and from that claiming that you could be invincible if you just ate forty grams of it.

“That said… I am close to converting to the Rational Rewarders. Their results are impressive. But no, my point, Daj, was that we’re going up against a species that’s got too many unknowns in it and I’d rather try to trick, steal, or buy some of those secrets first before throwing my people into a mouth-grinder.”

“The longer we wait,” Dajzail said after a moment, “the more the humans will expand and fortify their position, Alztanza.”

He could see that his friend had no immediate answer to that, and went forward. “I’m not being overconfident here, ‘Tanza. Even the Master of Forces thought we could probably do it with a Seventh-Force, but I told him not to be stupid, and I’ve made it two full Forces. These are First Emergents, Alztanza. They’ve had a turning and a half in the Arena, and some of that was just getting home. They’ve got a few allies, and are trying to gather more. Right now they only have whatever they’ve been able to build on their own, which will be far from optimal for highspace Arena operations, and perhaps a few loanships from the Survivor.

“But if we wait and maneuver and try to bait them into revealing secrets, they will only be getting stronger. And we cannot allow these undercreatures to get away with their prior insults; you must agree with me on that?”

Alztanza stood immobile for a moment, then dipped all legs and his claws. “As you say, Leader. They cannot be permitted to do this with impunity.”

“And …?”

The Fleet Master gave a buzzing sigh, then laughed. “And you’re right, Daj. A full Force is probably ridiculous overkill, but if we wait a few more turnings we could find that they’ve made alliance with one of the Great Factions that’s willing to fight for them, or they get new Spheres, or something else. Sorry for bothering you with my misgivings.”

Tremendous relief washed over Dajzail. I absolutely feared getting in an argument with him — and if I had, I’d have had to remove him from command, something we might never have been able to forgive each other for. “Do not apologize, Alz; your points made sense. I just think this is the best course, and you seem to have agreed in the end. So it’s just been a good chance for me to face the reflection myself.”

He linked claws with his friend for an instant, and the two of them began to move up the corridor again. “Then let me get settled into Claws of Vengeance while you give the Seventh-Masters their final instructions prior to departure.

“Tomorrow we begin our mission of purification!”