Eric Flint's Blog, page 194

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 44

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 44

All of the soldiers were mounted as well. Some would ride on the carriage horses, others would accompany the wagons carrying the ammunition and equipment, and still others including all the officers would ride their own individual mounts. In short, the squadron was much more mobile than an infantry unit.

But they were still hauling gun carriages and wagons around — and even a light gun carriage drawn by only two horses is an awkward way to conduct forward reconnaissance. Not to mention that if they ran into an enemy cavalry unit without some warning they’d still be trying to set up their guns when the enemy started sabering them down.

So Thorsten wanted cavalrymen — defined as: one man on one horse with at least one weapon he could bring immediately to hand — to be scouting ahead of him. Well ahead of him. Half a mile, a mile — better yet, two miles.

****

And then, as it turned out, they could have dispensed with the cavalry screen altogether. By sundown they’d found the second ford they needed right where Captain Finck had said it would be, about seven miles upstream on the Isar. Roughly halfway between Moosburg and Freising.

They hadn’t encountered a single Bavarian soldier along the way. Not one. Not a sign of one. It was by then obvious that General Stearns’ counter-move was something the Bavarian commander Piccolomini had simply never considered. As so many commanders before him had done in the long history of war, Piccolomini had assumed that his opponent would do the same thing he would do.

Engler hadn’t discussed the general’s plans with him, but by now he’d come to know Mike Stearns fairly well. One of the things he recalled was Stearns telling him that mercenaries usually had predictable faults.

“They’re too conservative by nature,” he’d said. “Or let’s say they’re too conservative because of their economic position. War is a trade for them, not something they do because of ideals — or because of hatreds and bigotries, for that matter. I don’t think they’re even conscious of it, most of the time, but they’re always guided one way or another by a consideration of profit or loss. What do we gain or lose — not for our cause, but for us? And if the answer is, not enough for the potential loss we might suffer, they simply won’t do it. And what’s even more important, I think, is that they’ll assume — also without even thinking about it — that their enemy won’t do it either.”

The ineffable grin had come, then. “Whereas I damn well might.”

Thorsten didn’t have enough experience yet himself to decide if Stearns was right or wrong in general. But today, at least, he’d been right.

****

As an added bonus, soon after they began setting up their positions, Captain Finck himself and his Marine unit appeared. Materialized, as it were, out of nowhere.

“We saw you coming,” Finck explained to Engler and Mackay. He pointed to a small wood perhaps four hundred yards away. “We weren’t sure who you were at first, so we hid out there.”

Mackay and Engler looked at the grove, then looked at Finck, then looked at the western horizon where the sun had just disappeared, then at each other.

“We’ve been here setting up our camp for at least two hours,” mused Mackay. “Two hours of hard, unrelenting labor.”

“While you, expert scouts — ‘special forces’ they call you, if I am not mistaken,” Thorsten pondered, “couldn’t manage to determine who we were and cross a few hundred yards — that’s what? a quarter of a mile? don’t you have to prove you can run to the moon and back in fifteen minutes to qualify for your unit? — until the sun was setting and we have to retire for the night.”

Finck smiled at them. “We just got orders on the radio from General Stearns. At the crack of dawn — no, even before then — we have to be heading upriver again. He wants us to scout Freising to see how quickly and easily Piccolomini might be able to fortify it. So we’ll have to retire early — now, in fact. Good luck, gentlemen.”

He nodded toward the northwest, where the sound of occasional gunfire could still be heard.

“For what it’s worth,” Finck said, “the fighting mostly died away by mid-afternoon. We couldn’t actually see anything, since at this point the Amper’s at least two miles north of where we are. But all the indications are that Piccolomi and von Taupadel are squared off against each other, with von Taupadel anchored in Moosburg. This is just a guess, of course, but I’d say that right about now the Bavarian commander is a grumpy man.”

Bavaria, village of Haag an der Amper

Captain Finck was wrong. Ottavio Piccolomini wasn’t grumpy, he was worried. Everything today had gone the way he’d planned, for the most part. The resistance of the enemy had been more ferocious that he’d hoped for, but he wasn’t thrown off his stride by it. He’d already known from the reports he’d read and interviews he’d done of men who’d fought the Third Division that whatever else Michael Stearns might be as a military commander, he was certainly tenacious.

Bavarian casualties had been higher than he’d wanted — quite a bit, actually — but not ruinous. The enemy’s had certainly been worse. The ground that Piccolomini and his soldiers had crossed as they drove the invaders back into Moosburg had been littered with corpses, mostly enemy corpses. There’d been so many of them in some places that he’d ordered his soldiers to pile them up in stacks. They’d have to bury them in mass graves once the fighting was over.

Yes, everything had gone well this day. Not as well as he’d hoped, certainly; not even as well as he’d planned. But Piccolomini was too experienced a soldier to be surprised by that. War was what it was: at bottom, chaos and ruin. You could hardly expect it to fall into neat lines and rows.

Seated at the same table in the same tavern that he was all but certain his counterpart had occupied earlier that day, Piccolomini looked around. He finally realized what was worrying him.

The place was too neat. There was almost no litter. The door to the tavern had been smashed aside at one point, probably by an impatient officer who’d gotten jammed in the doorway when the door closed on him unexpectedly. But someone had taken the time to repair it before they evacuated the place.

Not much of a repair; just a piece of leather nailed in place. But why bother at all?

“Do you have any further orders, General?” asked one of his adjutants.

Piccolomini gazed at the repaired door for another second or two. “No,” he said. “Just be ready to move out tomorrow morning. Early. I want to launch our first assault on Moosburg as soon as the sun’s up.”

 

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 26

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 26

Melchior shook his head. “Sailing the Rhine past Bonn at night is something much too chancy to base your artillery movement on.”

“Well, you’re the expert on field-maneuvers. Outside the town the situation is that the archbishop’s regiment at Beuel is completely gone, and with them the lieutenant-colonel given the overall interim command while the four colonels were up-river doing something with Felix Gruyard.”

Melchior interrupted. “The archbishop’s torturer went with Irish Butler and the others? And the overall commander was across the river in Beuel?”

“Yes and yes. And while I’m glad not to have that Lorrainian creep Gruyard around polluting the wells, things might have gone better if those mercenary colonels had stayed.”

“Possibly, but go on.”

“When the Hessians took Beuel, they went straight to the ferry and continued the attack across the Rhine. They failed to take more than the old toll-tower, but there’s an arsenal in there, and a frontal assault would in my opinion not just be costly, I think it would fail completely. Those walls and gates are strong. Reducing the tower to rubble with the wall-cannons might turn out to be necessary, but it would seriously weaken the wall, leaving a hole in the defenses. And if we can just stall things for a few weeks, we’ll starve them out.” Wickradt sighed. “The archbishop’s other three regiments were supposed to patrol the river brink, to prevent more Hessians from crossing. But last night, when the rain started, the Hessians managed to get several barge-loads of musketeers across the Rhine before anybody noticed — or at least before anybody reported it. When the news reached the mercenary camp, two lieutenant-colonels couldn’t be found, one was so drunk he was incoherent, and the rest started quarreling. Eventually just one squadron went, only to return in panic, shouting that the Hessian cavalry were across and right on their heels.”

“Any idea if that was true?” asked Melchior.

“None. The only Hessians I have seen are in the tower. But the panic spread. The mercenaries struck their camp during the night, and most moved west. Judging from what was left behind, it was not entirely an orderly maneuver. Also around midnight the archbishop packed his guards and left town. He is taking direct command of his mercenary regiments from a field headquarters until Butler and the others return. With your brother as his interim general-in-charge.”

“What! Is Hermann here?”

“Oh no, your brother Franz, the prince-bishop of Würzburg.”

“Franz? Impossible. He has only the bits of military training our father insisted on. He cannot lead an army.”

“Be as it might. The label “General von Hatzfeldt” commands quite a lot of respect.”

“Oh, God, poor Franz. The archbishop must be totally out of his mind.”

“In my opinion the archbishop still hopes to put you in charge, Herr General.” The entrance of the portly mayor had gone unnoticed by Melchior. “Of course, I rather hope to do the same. Only for my town rather than for the mercenaries. I’m not qualified to judge the archbishop’s sanity of mind, but I am definitely sure I do not want my town sacked and burned. Nor do I want its people starved to death by a siege.”

The mayor sat down carefully on the low stool and continued talking. “The Hessians appear to have come without cannons, so the archbishop claims the city is safe. But even if they don’t get siege weapons build or brought, they could still starve us out. We have stores for some months, but not for all winter.”

“The cannons are coming, probably down from Frankfurt,” said Melchior absently. “I overheard a scout last night at the Inn of the Black Goat. And I don’t think Hesse is willing to wait for Bonn if he has his sight set on Cologne. What’s the military situation inside the town, Wickradt?”

“My guard is up to three hundred men, including reserves and artillerists, all well trained and equipped. The council agreed to the expenses when Mainz fell to the Protestants. The militias all have guns, and know how to use them. The old militia also follows orders fairly well,” Commander Wickradt stopped and grinned. “But the new part has some problems. They are women.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Yes. They heard the story of the American woman shooting Wallenstein at the Alte Veste. Do you remember Frau Benedicte Eigenhaus? She trounced your stepmother, Margaretha, over that affair with the Neumarkt property in Cologne. About a year ago Frau Benedicte headed a delegation to insist that the strongest women in town should also be taught to shoot. I wouldn’t want to do anything complicated with the Little Dears, but to put them on a wall and tell them to fire at an enemy on the outside should be safe enough. They have even set up a rather efficient shooting method. Somebody told someone about the musketeer’s system of “one man fire, while one man load” in alternating rows, so the Little Dears have paired off and one sits down and loads both guns while the other stands up and fires them. Once the shooter gets a sore shoulder, they’ll change. They can actually manage a quite respectable rate of fire that way. If I had enough guns I would have dragged in some of the weaker women just as extra loaders.”

“That explain some remarks I overheard from the Palace Guard just before I left for Vienna.” Melchior kept making drawings on the table with a wet finger, now of what he remembered of the wall and fortifications around Bonn. “But how many guns do you have? And what about cannons?”

“The gun situation is good: almost one thousand new, good quality muskets. There are also a few hundred older — but working — guns in the arsenals, and some militia men prefer their own. The wall-cannons are the old ones, except for the river-wall.” Wickradt frowned. “The old ones will keep battering rams from the gates, and might take out a badly placed enemy artillery bastion, but they are far too slow in adjustment to stand any chance of hitting mounted or marching men.”

“What about balls and pikes?”

“Lots of balls and gunpowder for everything, but only my guards have much in the way of swords. The militia’s men have cudgels, pikes and staffs according to preference. The Little Dears?” Wickradt shrugged, “I haven’t tried to do anything. They might in fact be better off not looking too war-like if it comes to fighting in the streets.”

“So for all practical purpose: getting in without cannons would be very costly for the Hessians, and Duke Wilhelm is not one to spend his men unnecessarily. But once their cannons get here, only the archbishop’s cavalry can keep them from pounding this tower, while they get in through the toll-tower gate. How much have you done with barricades in the streets?”

“Nothing so far, but wagons are ready to be rolled into the area in front of the toll-tower. The slope towards the river should make them roll in place without exposing my men to fire from above. But I still want to retake that bloody toll-tower.” Wickradt banged his mug into the table. “Once the Hessians get inside the walls it’ll be a bloodbath. For us and for them. No matter how much we slow them. And to depend on the archbishop and those mercenary to keep the cannons away? Forget it. They’ll fuck up even if they try.”

“I would very much prefer not to rely on that cavalry myself,” said the mayor, “and the rest of the council agrees. We were rather hoping you would be willing to help us avoid that necessity, Herr General.”

“In what way, Mayor Oberstadt? Commander Wickradt has far more expertise in town defenses than I have, and I do not carry an army in my pocket. My own regiments are still in Linz, and getting them here could not be done in less than two month. I may decide to do what the archbishop wanted, and go take command of his regiments. But they are not well trained and the Hessians appear to outnumber them. Sooner or later the Hessians will still come to your gates.”

“We realize that, Herr General, and the council and guilds have spent the entire night debating what we should do. We were still in session when the news of your arrival came to the Town Hall, and a quick agreement was reached to place the matter fully in your hands.”

“What?”

“Yes, Herr General, according to our best lawyers, the archbishop has abandoned the town in face of an enemy, and withdrawn his soldiers and protection. He gave no orders about what we are to do before he left. And so the council — and citizens and guards — are not breaking any oaths or committing treason by choosing you to do whatever you can for us. As long as a single enemy soldier is within the area controlled by the Council of Bonn, you are empowered to use all our resources and make any negotiations you want. The papers are being written at the Hall.” The Mayor folded his hands over his velvet-glad stomach and smiled at Melchior, while Wickradt broke in to a slightly hysteric laughter.

Melchior closed his mouth. This was not expected! He wanted to find Franz and get him away from the archbishop. Melchior could then take charge of those damned mercenary regiments, and gather as many more fighters as possible to harass the Hessians until Wolf could bring his regiments to the west. But Bonn? Bonn had been where they went for fun and fairs all his childhood. If he was right about Hesse trying to conquer this entire stretch of the Rhine, Bonn didn’t stand a chance. And if they chose to trust him like that, he couldn’t just turn his back and leave. Damned!

A guard came to wave Wickradt out, and Melchior scowled at the smiling Mayor. “And what if I choose to negotiate a surrender? Or to have Bonn join the USE?”

 

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 18

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 18

Chapter 18.

“The idea is tempting, Doctor DuQuesne, but … are you certain it will work?”

“Not certain. But… say eighty percent chance it’ll work,” DuQuesne answered. “And if it does work, your firepower just went way up.”

“It will drop if you fail, however,” Orphan pointed out. DuQuesne could tell that the protest was, at least partially, purely from Orphan’s instinctive need to be cautious.

“You’ll still have the top turret that Simon modified in the first place,” Ariane said. “And from what I saw of that thing in action, you could lose a lot of turrets and still be ahead of where your ship started.”

A buzzing chuckle accompanied by a handtap was Orphan’s reply. “You indeed have a point, especially since that weapon no longer requires someone to stand in the turret reloading it. And having another such weapon… or three… yes, that is definitely a gamble worth taking.”

“Three? You wouldn’t want all of them converted?”

“Alas, I do not have nearly enough channel assembly reloads to reasonably make use of that many. But up to three, yes, I have the supplies to make useful.”

“Okay, then we’ll get to it. On one condition.”

“That is…?”

“You don’t watch. If I’m right, and I’ve got the secret, I’m not giving it away. Giving you a SAMPLE, yes, but not the technique.”

The green and black alien chuckled again. “Doctor, I have gone over the one Doctor Sandrisson created many times, and failed to find the secret. If you have that secret, then it is your Faction’s by right. The gain of such weaponry will be more than adequate to salve the complaints of my curiosity.”

DuQuesne grinned. “Okay, then. C’mon, Ariane, I’ll need your help.”

Ariane looked puzzled, but nodded. Wu turned to follow them. “Hold off, Wu.”

True to his training and promise, the Monkey King looked at Ariane. “Do you want me to come?”

“If I’m not safe with DuQuesne, I’m not safe period. If he doesn’t want you there, he’ll have a reason.”

“All right. But I will be even more bored then.”

“I have an idea, Wu Kung,” Orphan said. “While I now know you were… oh, what was that term I heard one of you humans use… sandbagging, that was it! I know you were sandbagging during our little match, I think some sparring, and perhaps discussion of combat traditions of each others’ civilizations, could reduce your boredom.”

“Ha!” said Wu, his tail coming up with more interest. “You have a good idea there! All right, while DuQuesne and Ariane waste their time with machines, we will have some fun!”

“Just don’t have too much fun, Wu,” Ariane said with the smile that often showed up when Wu Kung was around. “We need Orphan in one piece.”

“Yes, please; I like keeping my limbs intact,” agreed Orphan.

“No dismembering, agreed,” Wu said with a grin. “But a warning: I think you were sandbagging a little too.”

DuQuesne saw Ariane’s eyebrows go up. “Really?”

Orphan looked, somehow, too casually innocent as Wu Kung replied, “Not much, maybe, but he’s the tricky type. I didn’t find out until years later how much Sha Wujing was holding back, and Orphan’s like him. Only with a better sense of humor!”

“That’s not hard to manage,” DuQuesne said, remembering the grim gray river-ogre from Wu’s home Hyperion world. “Okay, guys, we’ll see you later.” DuQuesne led the way towards the main starboard battery.

“All right, Marc, can you tell me what my role in this is? I know you’re testing to see if you can do what Simon did, but –”

“Wait.” DuQuesne took out a handheld scanner and observed its responses carefully; then he set it to give an alarm if anything changed and returned it to his pocket. “Sorry, wanted to double-check that Orphan wasn’t monitoring us. Yes, I probably don’t need help to do this. But no reason to tell him that. He knows Simon did it… somehow. He also knows he can’t figure out how. So if this time it’s two of us (and it works), he’ll have even fewer good clues to go on. As far as I know, aside from the Holy Grail crew, Nyanthus, Mandallon, and Gona-Brashind are the only ones who know what happened at the ritual that sealed your powers, and thus the only ones with even a chance to guess that there’s something strange about Simon. Without that, he’ll be shooting in the dark.”

“I feel kind of guilty for working so hard to hide things from him,” Ariane said.

DuQuesne reached the door, unsealed it, let Ariane enter first and then closed and dogged the hatch down again. “So do I — a little. But friend or not, that joker’s always got his own agenda in mind, and he’s got us in trouble before. So I don’t feel that guilty.”

Ariane looked up and an expression of momentary awe flickered across her face. “Wow. That’s a big gun.”

“It is that. Even without these mods, it’s nothing you would want to mess with. Shooting hundreds of kilometers through sea-level thick atmosphere, that’s not a popgun by anyone’s standards.”

“So — being a devil’s advocate here — why are we going to just give Orphan these super-guns?”

DuQuesne nodded in appreciation. “That is the question. And I’ll bet you can answer it yourself, Captain.”

The blue-haired woman nodded, watching as he started to take the cover plates off the energy cannon. “Well, first, we’re on board and could end up in a fight, so it’s just covering our own bets to make sure he’s got the best equipment.”

“Sure a good point,” DuQuesne agreed. He concentrated, thinking back. Me and Richard… working on the Dauntless before launch… “Go on.”

“Hmmm… well, he’ll owe us something. Something pretty big, since he couldn’t get this anywhere else. And keeping an ace in the hole like this is something that’s second nature to him; he’s not going to blow the secret for us.”

“You’ve got it. Most of it, anyway.” Simon routed these power leads here, then… oh, yeah, now I see it! The modifications suddenly made sense to DuQuesne, were clear and straightforward. He began working faster, feeling himself getting into the flow.

With an abrupt shock, he realized Ariane had been addressing him, with increasing concern. “DuQuesne! Can you even hear me?”

“What? Sorry, Ariane, I got really immersed there.”

“Scared me a little; your hands were flying, and before you looked like you weren’t even quite sure what you were doing.”

“I wasn’t,” he admitted. “Then all of a sudden it just clicked. What’d I miss?”

“Not much, really. I just asked you what the rest of it was.”

“It? Oh, why we’re giving these to Orphan.” He adjusted another setting, tested the connections. “Simple: I want to keep him in debt to us. The one thing he’s scrupulous about is keeping his word and paying his debts; that’s something everyone in the Arena cares about. So as long as he knows he owes us, we’re not just relying on his sense of friendship, but on his sense of … well, honor, I guess.”

“I wish I could let my idealistic side argue, but I remember the way he helped Amas-Garao get me in the ring. Good work, ‘Blackie‘.”

He chuckled. Somehow, having someone use that old, old nickname while he was there with his arms buried in a starship’s guts… somehow it felt like home. Is there an afterlife for AIs? I hope so, Rich, because I really feel like you’re watching me, somehow. “Thank you, Captain.”

“No problem. On the subject of ‘he’s gotten us in trouble before’… what do you think about the condition he couldn’t tell us?”

“You mean the other part of his bargain with this Vindatri?” He frowned, arranging his thoughts. “Well, first, no point in trying to pry it out of him. Obviously he gave his word not to tell, and we’re relying on that characteristic of Orphan’s nature.”

“Agreed. Any guesses?”

Hmm. Yeah, these go… here. “A few. You know I can read even alien body language pretty well — which fits with our other deductions. And… you’re right. I think it’s potential trouble. No hostile vibes from him, but he showed just a touch too much tension in his stance. Not as bad as the time before he set Gabrielle up, but not good.”

Ariane was silent for a few moments as he worked. Then, “So… is there anything we should be doing to prepare for … whatever it is?”

“Damned if I know. I know there’s something he didn’t say, that he knows we’d really want to know. What, exactly? Not even a guess. On the other hand, we’ve got a massive trump card that — even if he somehow figured it out — he’d have a hell of a time countering.”

“Orphan might have a hard time countering it, but what about Vindatri?”

“That is the question of the hour, and I hate to say it but I haven’t got a clue. Orphan doesn’t know who or what Vindatri is, he’s in debt to the guy, and he’s scared to death of him, too.”

He could see her stiffen. “He is?”

“Not a doubt about it. He wasn’t just creeped out from the meeting; he was still scared to this day. Not all that surprising — Orphan’s the kind of guy who wants to have a handle on everything, and Vindatri obviously was out of his league in pretty much every direction.” DuQuesne thought about it a while, inserting new circuitry into the control ring. “But honestly? Unless this guy’s one of the Voidbuilders themselves, and I kinda doubt it, I think our ace is still good insurance.”

Ariane paced slowly around the turret, her path marked by the clicking of her boots on the deck. “But that story still creeped you out, too. Why?”

He paused, looked up. For a moment he couldn’t speak; habits of silence decades old still had a hold on him, even in Ariane’s presence.

Finally he sighed and sat back. “Hyperion again.”

“I guessed that much. It echoed something that happened to you there?”

“Yeah. Our first encounter with Mentor, actually. Not your Mentor, of course.”

Not for the first time, a tiny voice in the back of his head asked Are you sure? Ariane’s AISage sure sounded like the one DuQuesne had known. He could have escaped, somehow. It’d explain why he was able to track down other escaped Hyperion AIs once the possibility was raised. Crippled, of course — he’s in a T-5 housing now, not a T-10+ like the … well, the original Mentor.

Aloud, he continued, “We needed support for the fledgling interstellar community we were setting up, and we already knew we were up against some kind of hostile interstellar power, one that already had agents on Earth even before we got the Skylark off the ground. One of those agents was the one that hurt the original Oasis so bad that K had to transfer her consciousness gestalt into her own body.”

“Fairchild, right?”

“Doctor Alexander Fairchild, yes. And I hope to God he isn’t the AI that escaped… not that any of the major bad guy AIs would be a picnic. Anyway, the way we ended up meeting Mentor was by following clues to a particular location in space and, well, getting drawn in just like that. And met Mentor in pretty much the same way, him choosing to manifest an appearance appropriate to each of us.”

Ariane — who had actually read the originals he was based on, unlike about ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent of humanity — nodded slowly. There was a faint smile on her face. “So you weren’t just a sort of Seaton-Crane cross. You were… what, Virgil Samms, too?”

He blushed. “Sort of. Kimball Kinnison, too. Not quite the model of perfection Samms was. Put me and Rich together for that. And yeah, put both series in a Mixmaster and fast-forward for the plot. Anyway, that’s why it creeped me out; sounded waaaay too familiar, and I know this is the real world.”

She took his hand and squeezed it. “I can’t blame you, Marc. It creeped me out too, and I sure wasn’t in Hyperion.”

He nodded, squeezed back, and then straightened up, started working on the next section.

“Marc,” she said after a moment, “that subject reminds me of our ‘trump card’.”

“Not surprised. What’s on your mind?”

“Well… speaking as the Captain and Leader, I’d like to know… how sure are you of it working, and to what extent?”

Wondered when she’d ask those questions. And when I’d have to let myself think about them again. I’d shoved them way to the back for damn good reason. But she’s also got a damned good reason for asking. “Given what we saw with Wu, I think we’ve got a hundred percent guarantee of something. As to the extent… that’s the sixty-four dollar question.” He checked his sensor again, then sighed. “Okay. Ariane, you’ve pretty much backed me into a corner here, so we’ve got a mini-crisis on our hands.”

She blinked. “A crisis? Of what?”

“Of secrets and leverage, basically. See, this Vindatri — he could make something that trumped the Shadeweavers’ powers, do other things that creeped out even our favorite opportunist Orphan. So I have to assume he could do a lot of the same things the Shadeweavers could.”

She nodded after a moment. “Okay, I follow, and I think you’re right. He told Orphan that device would work to protect him against either Faction, so we can take it as a give that he understands their powers very well, and can probably use at least some of them. What’s the crisis?”

“Once I really started to think we Hyperions might be able to use our Hyperion-world capabilities, I did a few quick tests. And the answer was yes. They worked. The powers of the mind that I got from my Smithian mash-up Hyperion-verse? Working. Telepathy, perception, the whole nine yards.” He gestured to the energy cannon. “This is just another demonstration — the wonky physics and technology tricks that shouldn’t work, do. For me, anyway. And apparently for Simon, maybe for a different reason though.”

She was staring at him in awe. “They really work?”

“Yeah. Don’t know their limits — how much can the Arena give me? How much does it want to give me? What can people like this Vindatri do? Not a clue. But that’s not the key point here. The point is that with those abilities I of course got the capability to wall off that knowledge. I know it’s there, but even that is shielded. A Shadeweaver — or this Vindatri, or the Faith if they ever tried — would have to force his way in. It’s not like that trick the Hyperion designers came up with; I’m pretty sure that once they recognize that trick exists, the Shadeweavers could find a way around what amounts to a mental checksum, and Amas-Garao sure thought so too. But these things… they’re genuine mental shields, complete with surface thoughts that hide what’s there.”

Ariane suddenly closed her eyes and smacked herself on the forehead. “Duh! Pushing you like this, and getting the information from you, means I am now going to be thinking about it. And that makes me a potential security risk.”

“Basically, yeah. Problem is that while the Shadeweavers promised not to mess with our heads, this Vindatri sure didn’t. A trump card isn’t much of a trump card if the other people can see it.”

“And,” Ariane went on, “if you weren’t hiding it from yourself most of the time, you might give it away in your behavior. Right?”

“You can bet those legendary ninety-seven rows of little green apple trees on it, especially when you’re dealing with Big Time Operators like Orphan or this Vindatri.”

Ariane stood there for a few moments, obviously thinking, and he saw her grow a shade paler. Her eyes met his again. “And now that I know the potential extent of your — and Wu Kung’s — abilities, I am the big security risk. It was bad enough before that I had suspicions, but with you confirming it –”

“About the size of it. Yes.”

“Then…” she hesitated, and he wasn’t surprised. I’d damn well hesitate before suggesting what I think she’s going to. “Then could you… do something to either make me forget, or shield any thoughts I might have?”

“If I’m right? Yes, I can do that. If you –”

“Do it,” she said sharply. “Until I know how to use the power the Faith and Shadeweavers locked up in me, I’ve got no defenses against beings like that messing with, or reading, my mind. We can’t take the chance of someone finding out key information because I pulled it out of you and can’t keep from thinking about it.”

DuQuesne could see that she was absolutely certain. “Yes, Captain,” he said. Arena, you damn well better be picture-perfect in making these powers work, because I am about to mess with someone else’s mind.

He put down the tools, seated himself comfortably, gestured for Ariane to sit as well. “Main thing is for you to be as relaxed as possible,” he said. “Had to do something like this for some of our allies like Dorothy — Rich couldn’t quite bring himself to touch her head but he knew it had to be done.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’ll try. What’s it … like? Will it hurt?”

He concentrated. Shouldn’t hurt at all, he thought, projecting towards her.

“YOW! Oh my GOD that’s weird! I mean… I’ve had stuff sort of like that in the simgames, but it’s been a long time, and that’s real.”

“Think of it as a simgame effect, if it makes it easier,” DuQuesne said. “This may be physically real, but the Arena’s running the show. The show’s just really convincing.”

He closed his eyes and entered the surface of her mind. Ariane? I’m here again.

A sensation of nervous excitement. Yeah, I can hear that. Or think that? Vocabulary for telepathy isn’t really there, you know?

He grinned, knew she “saw” a mental representation of the smile. Yeah, I know. Now, I don’t want you to forget what you knew, so I’m going to do something a little trickier; build a sort of mental camouflage around that part of your knowledge. I can’t really build in a mind-barrier that’ll protect you from a direct push by someone with any kind of mental power, but if he or she doesn’t suspect there’s something to look for, they’re not going to see it.

So how will that work? If I think about our trump card –

It will use your own knowledge of the surroundings and situation to emphasize whatever other thoughts you might have. People’s minds flicker from one thing to another pretty quick, and they’re usually thinking at least two or three things in fast succession even when they’re only conscious of thinking about one. It’ll be a little disconcerting for you at first, because it’ll be a little like hearing yourself talking about two things at once, but you’ll get used to it. That’s what I’ve got up around my own mind.

He started constructing the mind-block. It was something like a mirror, something like a blind, something like a false-front, but really not like any of them because it was a mental construct.

It was not, of course, possible to ignore everything about Ariane’s mind while he was there — though he tried very hard to keep focused only on the task at hand. A person’s mind is the only place they should be guaranteed to have privacy, and telepathy violates that. Even with permission… and dammit, I shouldn’t even be getting hints of what she thinks about me or anyone else!

But he kept on, weaving a cloak of thoughts that he could implant and layer over particular concepts and knowledge in Ariane’s consciousness. Got to be careful as hell here. The idea is to hide stuff, not to touch anything else.

He felt, distantly, a bead of sweat going down his back. Now I know why Rich didn’t want to do this for Dorothy; too much riding on it for me, personally. And doing it here in the real world, in a world where I haven’t spent years mastering these powers, where I’m just starting to think about it again — I could really mess it –

Relax, Marc. A flash of a confident smile, a warmth and absolute trust.

He was startled. You heard that.

Another flicker of humor despite tension. Marc, I almost didn’t need to. I know what you’re like by now, don’t I? I could guess what you’d be thinking. A sensation as though she had laid a hand on his shoulder, even though neither of them had moved. You’ve never failed me yet, and I don’t think you ever will. Trust yourself. You know what you’re doing, and you’re not going to mess anything up.

Her absolute confidence startled him… yet at the same time it was something he realized he had known all along. All right, Ariane. Hold on and this’ll be over in a few minutes.

A weave of thought and intention, anchored to her will and the conditions around her. Connections to the secrets, connections that shielded, deflected, turned away; it was as though a part of her mind was becoming blurred, shadowed, harder and harder to see, and he placed another layer on it, and another.

Finally he sat back. “Done!” He wiped his forehead and reached into the toolbox for the bottle of water he’d brought along, drained half of it.

She rubbed her head thoughtfully. “I don’t feel much different.”

“That’s the whole idea. Just try not to think on the subject too much; don’t want to put strain on the coverup.”

She looked askance at him. “You do know that’s like telling someone to not think about pink elephants, right? Suddenly they’re thinking about nothing but pink elephants!”

“Yeah, but better that I get to see how it acts under stress right now than find out it’s falling apart the moment we meet up with Vindatri.”

“A test run under stress? Okay, I get it.” She blinked. “You’re right, that is strange. It’s… it’s like being in a big empty room with one other person talking at the same time you are, the echoes bouncing around each other. I can hear… or see, or whatever… the thoughts that the people outside would get, and my hidden thoughts, too.”

After a few minutes he nodded. “Seems to hold up pretty well. I can see it by scanning, but I know it’s there and I know exactly what to look for. If I think about it from a surface-scan point of view I don’t think anyone short of the real Mentor or another Stage Three mind — as we used to call them — would catch it unless they were already suspicious and poking hard. It’s not going to protect you from a direct forceful scan, but it’s good enough for now.”

Ariane nodded thoughtfully but said nothing right away. He turned back to the gun and started working again.

After a while, DuQuesne became aware that she wasn’t saying anything, just watching him; it was distracting for a moment, but then the silence became… companionable. She was just there watching, not intruding nor impatient. He smiled again, and let himself focus completely on the work, hearing ghosts of old conversations and banter from the lab and the ships he and Rich had shared.

Finally she did speak, and the question was an echo of questions fifty years old and more. “So, do you think that gun’s going to work?”

“I’ll bet on it. Ariane, I can feel it. I can see how to rework this thing to fire the way that Simon did, and how to improve on it — since Simon wasn’t an engineer. Difference between a guy who had the world’s best instruction manual, and another guy who knows when to ignore the manual.”

“But what you’re doing… really wouldn’t work, right?”

“Not by the normal rules of the Arena — or back home — no. But it will work by the rules I grew up with — and we just proved that my other abilities are working here.  Which means that Orphan’s ship just got a lot more dangerous.”

She grinned up at him. “You look happy, Marc.”

Do I? I guess I do… Yeah, I do. DuQuesne looked down and smiled. “I am. This… brought back the good part of the memories, and having you here…”

Her smile faded but did not go away, her eyes were serious, no longer laughing. “There’s a conversation I’ve always avoided with you,” she said finally.

He could have misinterpreted that, but he wasn’t going to let the invitation pass. “But not now?”

She shook her head. “Not this time. The two people I’m actually interested in are both my closest advisors. I’m not going to escape that problem either way.”

No, I guess she won’t. Technically she’s designated me second in command, Simon not really in the chain of command near that level, but we’ve been the two she relied on most. “Does that mean you’ll always have to keep a distance, or not?”

She rolled her eyes, then without warning reached up, pulled herself up by his shoulders and kissed him, open-mouthed and eager.

DuQuesne was caught completely off-guard, but he knew how to respond to that. The kiss lasted for something like forty-three years, but oddly the clock said it was only about thirty or forty seconds when she dropped her feet back to the deck. “Wow,” he said, which was utterly trite, and completely inadequate, and he found at the same time there was no better word. Haven’t done that since K and I separated. And for someone fifty years my junior, she’s good.

She laughed and gave him another quick kiss. “No, Marc, I’m not keeping my distance. I’m betting that our friendship — yours and mine, and ours with Simon — is strong enough that we can work this through without disaster.”

“And what about Simon?”

Ariane shook her head and laughed again. “Honestly, Marc, I don’t know. You’re both incredibly brilliant, capable, and courageous, Simon’s beautiful and charming and debonair, and you’re tall, dark, brooding, and angsty. And now both of you have awesome and mysterious powers, too.”

“I’m not angsty!” It was surprising how much of him rebelled at the characterization. Which might just be proving her point, dammit.

“Sometimes, my favorite Hyperion, you are. You can’t help it and I don’t blame you. And it’s kind of cute in someone as massively omnicompetent as you.” Ariane kissed him again before he could recover from being called ‘cute’, which — as far as he could recall — was a word no one had ever used to describe him before. “But like I said, I don’t know, Marc. I thought I would be a one-man woman eventually — I wasn’t comfortable thinking about my parents’ multi-relationship arrangement. But… maybe not. At least not when I’m presented with two such awesome people who think I am awesome, too.”

He managed to finally catch up and laugh himself. “Well, you are, Ariane. If you weren’t, do you think you could boss me around? And you do, no mistake.”

“I do, don’t I? And that’s always a shock, you know. Anyway… I know you are a one-woman kind of guy, if you were raised to be a Doc Smith hero.”

“Sure the way I always thought of it. But… well, I’ll have to think about the whole situation.” He slammed the panels shut. “But… I do love you, Ariane. I think I have since…” he grinned, “since the time you shut us all down and told us that if we called you ‘Captain’ you were going to be the Captain, by ninety-seven rows of the proverbial apple trees, and we had better just sit down and suck it up.”

She returned the grin with a startled guffaw. “What? Well, that’s not the romantic memory I would have expected.”

“Oh, I liked you a hell of a lot before, but that was the point where I realized just how much you meant to me. It’s only gotten worse since.” He looked along the energy cannon. “Well, I think we’re done here. Better tell Orphan he can do a test firing once he gets his automation rigged.”

She hooked her arm into his, and he felt a weight lifting from his heart, even with all the complications he knew this would bring. “Oh, yeah, speaking of complications, which we sort of were, Captain, I should warn you, you have one other problem.”

She looked up as they stepped through the hatch. “And what exactly is that?”

“Sun Wu Kung. He’s kind of prone to developing attachments to the one holding his leash, and like I told you a while back, you look a lot like Sanzo.”

“What? You mean… Sun Wu Kung might be — oh, for God’s sake, no!”

He could not keep from laughing as the door swung shut behind them.

 

DRAGON AWARD NOMINATION

I would like to ask for a personal favor. The Dragon awards are now open for nominations and I would appreciate it if as many of you as are so inclined would nominate THE SPAN OF EMPIRE, by Eric Flint and David Carrico, in the category of “Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel.” I will stress that you should only do so if you actually liked the novel, but most of the people I know who’ve read the novel liked it a lot.

The nominating process for the Dragon award is very easy. Just go to this web site:

http://application.dragoncon.org/dc_fan_awards_nominations.php

…and follow the instructions. It won’t take you more than a minute or two.

Thanks, Eric

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 25

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 25

Chapter 13

Outside Bonn

September 2, 1634

In the early morning foggy drizzle Melchior had no chance of getting a good view of the situation from the road following the top of the river bank. The old toll-tower, where the town wall reached the Rhine, rose squat and solid out of the mist. Hesse’s attempt to take Bonn with a surprise attack not supported by artillery had been a daring maneuver — quite in the style of Duke Wilhelm’s mentor, Gustavus Adolphus — and one with a fair chance of succeeding even now after the first rush had been stopped. Presumably the town’s cannons had now been moved along the walls to cover the occupied tower, but reducing it to rubble would be impossible without damaging the wall too.

Melchior stopped to consider his options. No one seemed to be around outside the walls at the moment, but using the gate by the toll-tower would expose him to fire from above, so he turned the horse inland towards the next gate. It was sure to be occupied with defenders ready to fire along the walls to keep more Hessians from reaching the toll-tower gate, but if he came slowly and openly they were unlikely to fire on sight.

“Ho, the gate!” Melchior called as soon as he could see the second tower.

“Yeah, who goes?”

“General Melchior von Hatzfeldt returning from Vienna. My cousin-in-law, Commander Wickradt, can vouch for me. But hurry, please, I’m feeling a bit exposed.”

* * *

In the white-washed guards-room at the base of the gate-tower, Melchior was offered a breakfast of hot beer, rye-bread and cheese by the distant relative of his sister Lucie’s late husband. Commander Wickradt had been a siege specialist in the Dutch army before returning to his hometown to take command of Bonn’s defenses. Bonn had always played second fiddle to Cologne, but when the archbishops of Cologne near the end of the thirteenth century had been thrown out of Cologne and forbidden to enter except to fulfill their clerical duties, they had settled in Bonn. Here they had built the walls and fortifications, and generally given the small provincial backwater town some importance. Where Cologne was an important free city in its own right ,and ruled entirely by its council, Bonn belonged to and depended on the archbishops — and the town’s council usually did what they were told.

The archbishops had always maintained their own guards. Sometimes just the Palace Guard and an escort for their travels, sometimes an actual private army, but always something separate from the town’s defenses and taking their orders directly from the archbishop. During the last few years, as the war had come closer and closer, Commander Wickradt had taken personal control of the town’s militias, and started training as many of the town’s citizens as he could. The archbishop — and his guards — had sneered at that: bumpkins waving around cutlery, pretending to be soldiers. But when the archbishop’s mercenary regiments had tried to bully their surroundings, it had been the men trained by Wickradt, who had stepped in and beaten up the worst offenders; proving that being lofty cavalry was no protection against cudgels in a dark alley.

In the flickering torch-light on this particular morning Commander Wickradt looked every one of his sixty-some years, and despite keeping the mood light while Melchior was eating with humorous tales about “his” people’s ability to defend themselves against their rough mercenary “guests,” the old man was obviously deeply worried.

“My thanks for your hospitality, Wickradt, “said Melchior, refusing the offer for another serving, “but I think we better move on to more serious matter. Or are you waiting for someone?”

“The mayor, Herr Oberstadt, should be along shortly, but there’s no reason to wait with the military information. A few people have crossed the river in fishing boats and one of them, Karl Mittelfeld, is an old friend of mine. He used to be a musketeer until an infected wound gave him a limp. From what he and the other fishermen told me, the Hessians have brought four or five regiments of cavalry and at least a few companies of mounted infantry with muskets; say two or three thousand in all. It could be more, but people don’t tend to underestimate the size of an attacking force. No sign of their artillery.”

“The cannons are coming later.” Melchior looked blankly at the wall trying to recall what information he had on the Hessian army. “A few years ago, Hesse could field ten to twelve thousand soldiers including around three thousand cavalry. So it’s not the entire Hessian army — at least not yet or at least not around Beuel — but it could be most or all of his cavalry.”

“Cavalry are not my specialty, Herr General, but if Hesse had been hiring heavily I would have heard. And I haven’t.” Wickradt kept his eyes at the younger man. The Hatzfeldts were one of the most prominent families in the area, and while Melchior wasn’t as famous a general as Wallenstein and Tilly, he was by far the most reputable military leader presently west of Bavaria. “Any ideas about the bigger picture? Should we expect the Swedes too?”

“I am almost completely certain that the main armies of the USE are fully occupied northeast and southeast of here.” Melchior dipped a finger in his beer and started drawing a map of wet lines on the table. “Ingolstadt has fallen, and the USE border with Bavaria now follows the Danube. I passed close enough to be certain that General Horn has not moved in this direction. Nor have any major units left Frankfurt to travel down the Rhine. Gustavus Adolphus must still need most of his army in the northeast, but might have been able to spare a few units or even some American specialists. When I left Cologne, Hesse was stuck around Remscheid with the Bergian forces between him and Cologne, and the army of Essen between him and the Rhine. Are there any news from that area?”

“No. As of the day before yesterday there were no movements along the Rhine, and no reports of attacks on the Bergian fortifications. With De Geer and Essen firmly in possession of Düsseldorf, I suppose it would make sense for Hesse to try expanding westward and take Cologne. And I’m quite aware that he could easily have moved his cavalry. But he cannot hope to take Cologne or even Bonn without artillery to break the walls. And where would that be coming from?”

“My guess would be down the Rhine from Frankfurt.” Melchior continued drawing wet lines on the table. “There really are three routes Hesse could take. The first is up the Fulda River from Kassel, and down the Rhine from Frankfurt, thus hitting Bonn on the way to Cologne. Number two is west through Berg or Mark to the Rhine and going upstream to hit Cologne first. And the third is up the Eder valley and down the Sieg to take Bonn. Which we know he used for at least some of the cavalry now on this side of the river. Option number one make sense for any cannons he might have left behind when moving into Berg. That would be much easier than dragging them across the mountains. Option number two would need a deal with De Geer, but when I left for Vienna the rumors in Cologne were quite insistent that Archbishop Ferdinand played a role in that mess with Duke Wolfgang and the French raid this spring, so such an alliance is far from unlikely. That reminds me: has Wolfgang’s widow been found?”

“It is known that Felix Gruyard brought her to the archbishop’s palace here in Bonn, and that she gave birth to a living son, but no one has seen either her or the baby since the birth. The archbishop’s people searched for her into Berg, but found nothing. I have my own ideas about what happened, and think she is safe and with friends.”

“Hm, poor girl. I took a cousin of hers prisoner at Augsburg a couple of years ago — nice young man and an excellent card player. The Zweibrücken family is heavily inter-married with the royal family of Sweden, and I suppose she could be part of the reason Hesse is here. Somebody in Vienna mentioned him trying to become the baby’s guardian.” Melchior frowned. “Do you think you could find her if necessary?”

“Probably, but you might have to swear to her your personal protection from the archbishop as well as from Hesse. Your cousin, Dame Anna is here in Bonn. She is a friend of Irmgard Eigenhaus, the midwife. Paying a visit to the dames might be a good place to start.”

“I see. I’ve got a letter to Anna from her brother, Wolf, who is now my second-in-command. I had planned to visit her anyway. And Archduke Ferdinand told me to do what I could to keep Jülich-Berg as well as the Archdiocese of Cologne under Catholic control.” Melchior frowned and re-drew the drying lines on the table. “But back to the military situation: Hesse used the Eder-Sieg route for his cavalry, but their presence here might be mainly to ensure that the cannons can get down safely from Frankfurt to Cologne. Bonn isn’t that important in the overall picture. I haven’t seen any signs of infantry coming from Frankfurt, but they could be following the cavalry on the Eder-Sieg route or coming via Essen. Do you know who is actually leading the Hessian cavalry?”

“It’s said to be Wilhelm of Hesse in person, but that’s not verified. Could be one of his generals, probably von Uslar.” Wickradt frowned at the wet lines on the table. “You don’t think Hesse is just trying to remove Archbishop Ferdinand before the archbishop does whatever he hired those mercenaries for? We had mail from Cologne yesterday, and they are not expecting an attack. You cannot move infantry around in complete secrecy.”

“Stopping the archbishop is probably a part of it. And if Hesse isn’t bringing his infantry, he might settle for that and a tribute. But taking Cologne is his most likely goal. What do you have to oppose him with here in Bonn?”

“If you are right about the cannons coming from Frankfurt, then our cannons on the river-walls could sink any boat trying to pass in the daytime. Sailing the Rhine at night is extremely dangerous, but can be done with a local pilot.” Wickradt smiled. “I’m fairly certain Karl and his friends don’t live entirely on what they catch fishing.”

 

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 17

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 17

Chapter 17.

I am completely exhausted, Simon thought. Refitting an entire ship with the ‘primary beam’ weapons was not easy.

That wasn’t entirely true, either. It had become easier and easier to perform the changes as he moved from turret to turret; his body moved almost of its own accord, the Arena-born knowledge and inspiration guiding his fingers as they flew across the complex interior of the energy cannons and readjusted, shifted, added, changed.

And that still frightened him; he could feel how simple it was to access that godlike knowledge, how many other things he could know, could do, that perhaps even the Shadeweavers and Faith could not.

And he was, as far as he knew, the only person with this power. With great power comes great temptation. I do not wish to prove the old saying about power corrupting, but I can understand how easily it can corrupt.

Still, he was exhausted. Superhuman understanding driving his body was still draining his physical stamina. The Embassy of Humanity loomed up before him, and with relief he stepped through the doors.

With a start, he saw that Laila Canning was already walking towards him.

“You have excellent timing, Simon,” Laila said without even so much as a greeting. “We have an emergency, and both Carl and I very much want you present.”

Bugger, as one of my father’s friends used to say. No rest yet. “Why didn’t you call me, if there was an emergency?”

Laila smiled briefly, but the smile did at least touch her eyes, light them momentarily. “Because the emergency literally just walked in the door a few minutes ago. I was going to call you if you weren’t on your way down the street.”

Simon sighed. “I presume it cannot wait?”

“The Leader of the Tantimorcan Faction is here, and he’s already very distressed that our Leader isn’t available. Took a few minutes to convince him that we were completely empowered to act — we had to play that recording of Ariane’s delegating that authority to us before he would.”

“All right. I guess we… wait. He’s here?”

“Yes. In the second conference room. I told him we would be with him as soon as possible.”

“Right.” Simon sighed. “Would you by chance know what the subject of this emergency is? I would prefer not to be entirely caught unawares.”

“He insisted it was something appropriate to discuss only with the Faction Leader, and judging by the way his manipulators vibrated, he wasn’t exaggerating.”

“Definitely wasn’t,” Carl said, joining them. “Glad you made it, Simon.”

“I suppose I should be also. Very well, let us not keep the Leader of our fine shipwrights waiting.”

The three of them reached the conference room and the door opened to admit them. Sangrey Vayhen, the Leader of the Tantimorcan Faction, immediately raised himself as a gesture of respect. He was a squat creature, something like a giant toad with a multi-eyed head and twin manipulator tendrils that split into many individual fingers sprouting from near the corners of a wide mouth.

“Leader Vayhen,” Laila said, “our apologies for making you wait on what is obviously urgent business; I felt it was important to have Doctor Sandrisson here as an additional representative of the Captain’s will, since you impressed on us the urgency of your problem.”

“No apology needed,” Sangrey answered. “Indeed, I must thank you all for seeing me so promptly.” Behind the formal wording Simon could sense a huge amount of nervousness. That subliminal over-sense allowed him to read the alien’s posture, scent, and motions. He’s actually afraid of something.

“Now, please, tell us the problem, Leader Vayhen,” Carl said.

“Ah, yes. Of course.” There was a thud-click from inside the creature — a sound that he knew had to do with the way they breathed, and one that sounded very much like a nervous swallow in context. “First… I must inquire as to whether I am correct in understanding that the name ‘Austin’ is a line or clan designation?”

What in the world…? “It is what we would call a family name, so yes, in a way,” Simon answered. “That is, in general, someone with that last name had at least one parent with that name, and will probably have other relations with that name — although not all of them will.”

If anything, Vayhen looked more tense; his manipulator tendrils were stiff and moved in a jerky fashion. “Oh, dear. You see, I have to come here to both demand an apology from your faction, and possibly to present an apology as well.”

Well, that is certainly a most… interesting way to present one’s situation. “Sangrey,” Laila said, “if the Faction of Humanity, or any of us, owe you an apology we will most certainly give you one, but we must ask you to please clarify what is going on! None of us have any idea what either of us would have to apologize for!”

“Ahh. May the mud rise above me, I am too nervous!” A vibration of color rippled up Sangrey’s flanks. “It may seem strange to you, Doctor Canning, Doctor Edlund, Doctor Sandrisson… but your faction has been most terrifyingly spectacular in your arrival and success, and the thought of confronting you is most daunting to one such as myself.” He raised a manipulator. “Display relevant events at Docking 5.”

An image formed in midair, of a group of people — people of multiple species — on one of the docking platforms of Nexus Arena. The group was following a lone human being, and was clearly agitated, shouting angry imprecations at the human, who was retorting in multiple human languages, wearing a broad grin all the while.

“This… individual had entered into discussions with several of our people over various political events, but…” Sangrey seemed at a loss. “… but he did not discuss. That is, he seemed… intent on finding opportunities to insult people, to twist their words in dialogue, not arguing in good faith. And he continued this in a manner that was quite maddening, causing a number of our people and others to follow him, trying to shout him down or force him to be reasonable. Yet he continued.”

Simon winced. Oh, Good Lord. “Sangrey, as a member of Humanity I do apologize. And I believe that all three of us apologize fully in Ariane’s place.”

Laila rolled her eyes. “I knew we’d get some of his type in sooner or later, but I had thought the screening that was being done would be… but no, I suspect this was not included in the original specifications. Our laws don’t stop you from being deliberately rude, at least not reliably.”

Simon caught a clearer fragment of dialogue and blinked in disbelief. Did he… he did. He actually said “I know you are but what am I” while taunting an alien mob! How is that even being translated?

“But I am afraid it is not over,” Sangrey said, and his eyes were positively wincing.

Abruptly, the mob lunged forward. Simon remembered: on the docks, many of the Arena’s usual protections against violence were relaxed or ignored entirely. There was a short struggle, and suddenly a single figure — a bipedal, human figure — fell, or was pushed, and plummeted away into the endless void below.

“We were informed, alas, that his last name was Austin, and so I was afraid that…”

Simon found himself suddenly laughing. “Oh, heavens, Sangrey, I understand. You thought your mob might have just killed off a relative of our Leader!”

Despite the nonhuman appearance, Simon could see Sangrey starting to relax. “Then we did not?”

Carl shook his head. “Ariane doesn’t have that many relatives, and I know most of them. I didn’t recognize that guy. See, while last names can indicate family, in most cases there’s a lot of different families with the same last name. And ‘Austin’ is a pretty common last name in the area of the world Ariane came from. I’ll check up just to be sure, but I’d bet money on that troll not being related to Ariane in any way.”

The Leader of the Tantimorcan Faction relaxed even more visibly. “Troll?”

Not translated, or translated too literally? Really, the Arena seems almost arbitrary in its translation. “A term that can mean a certain sort of monster,” Simon said, “but in this context means a person who derives amusement by bothering others in exactly the manner you describe, harassing them to get a response. Unfortunately our civilization doesn’t do much to stop such people; at home, you can just block people from contacting you. I am afraid that does not work so well here.”

While it was in the abstract sad to see anyone die, Simon found he could not summon much sorrow for the man who’d brought the violence of the mob down upon him. In truth, Simon simply found it incomprehensible that some people would take joy in making others angry and upset. And now someone had died at the hands of a mob, and the late Mr. Austin’s habits had now caused a serious issue that had to be dealt with at the highest level.

“You wouldn’t know this guy’s first name, would you?” Carl asked.

The large toadlike creature was sagging down slightly; Simon thought this indicated relief, a relaxation after facing something terrifying. It was bemusing to think of humans as something terrifying, though. “The other name was Terry, I believe.”

“I thought so!” Carl said. “This guy was notorious for this kind of stuff back home; I’ve actually heard of him before from Ariane, who was pissed that they shared the same last name. And you’re in real luck, Sangrey; according to a quick check of the records, he didn’t have any family of his own, doesn’t even have anyone in the ‘in case of emergency, contact’ slot of the form. So there probably won’t be too many people terribly broken up by the news. Maybe quite a few celebrating.”

I would dearly love to leave it at that, Simon thought, but he knew he couldn’t — and a glance at Laila confirmed that she was already on it. “While that is something of a relief,” Laila said briskly, “your people did take the law into their own hands. I can’t just ignore that.”

“This is most certainly understood, Doctor Canning. It is not entirely clear what happened at the end — it may have been at least partially an accident, but it may also have been as deliberate as it seems. We do not wish this to lie between us; what can we do as recompense?”

“I presume there was an attempt to recover him?” Simon asked.

“An alarm was given and some fliers dispatched by us and others, but … there were only some zikki found.”

Simon could not keep from wincing himself. Zikki were fast-moving Arena predators, something like armored flying squid. If Mr. Austin had fallen into a group of those, well…

He took a deep breath of his own. “Leader Vayhen, would you give us a moment to confer?”

The manipulator tendrils spread wide. “Oh, certainly; do you wish me to leave?”

“No, no, just give us a few moments.” The other two followed him out.

Once the door closed, he looked at them. “Technically, it’s your decision, not mine.”

Laila gave a dismissive sniff. “Legally perhaps, but we all know that you and DuQuesne are the ones she leans on, and she left you to give us the same backup.” She flicked a glance to Carl, who nodded.

“What do you think, Simon?” Carl was clearly uncertain. “This is a sticky situation any way I look at it. I mean, that guy may have been a total asshole, but even being a world-class asshole doesn’t mean you should get killed.”

Simon closed his eyes and frowned. “That rather depends on location and time, Carl. In many past civilizations, being an… asshole could, and often did, carry a penalty up to and including death. I am not entirely sure that in the setting of the Arena — where offending the wrong person could lead to a war — it is not in fact completely appropriate that we look at things in that light.”

“Still,” Laila said thoughtfully, “we don’t want to set a precedent that our people can be disposed of by mobs.”

“No. But Leader Vayhen has already accepted that there is wrongdoing on his side.” Simon was suddenly certain what Ariane would have done. “Laila, Carl, what do you think of this…”

After he’d explained, he saw both Carl and Laila nodding. “Works for me,” Carl said. “I think it’s probably the best compromise.”

“I concur,” Laila said. “I was thinking along similar lines; this confirms it.”

“Then shall we?” The other two followed him in.

Sangrey raised himself slightly as they entered. “You have come to a decision?”

“We have, Leader Vayhen. The fact is that we, as Humanity, must accept a large part of the blame. It is imperative that we start screening all our people for such tendencies and keep those sorts at home where they won’t cause trouble. We should have done so already, and this event is a result of that oversight. Laila, we can have people start on that right away, yes?”

Laila nodded. “Not a problem.”

“And,” Carl said, “The fact is… Showing that vid to people back home just might get through to some of those types that there’s limits on what they can do. The Arena’s filled with consequences, and there’s nothing wrong with hammering that home.”

He did work for someone who raced in a potentially lethal sport; I suppose that gives you an appreciation for the less forgiving aspects of reality. “Obviously, Sangrey, we expect you will mete out appropriate punishment to the perpetrators, by your own standards, but insofar as our official reaction? The Faction of Humanity is willing to simply let it pass, as long as the Faction of Tantimorcan is also willing to let this pass.”

Sangrey squished himself low to the floor, apparently his equivalent of a bow. “The Faction of Tantimorcan accepts. May this incident be forgotten.”

“May it be forgotten,” the three of them chorused.

Once Sangrey had left, Simon turned to the other two. “We do have to make sure this sort of thing cannot happen again.”

“No argument there,” Carl said. “I found this guy’s file and I can see why he was let in — he’s really good at inventory management, creative, good at leading people in the right circumstances. But he is… was also really good at finding weak places in people’s mental armor and pushing; it was more than a habit, it was an avocation with him.”

Laila smiled — a cold smile that Simon was rather glad was not directed at him. “Then I suppose he achieved his life’s goal. I would presume that we could get the AIs working on sorting out these people before they come through.”

“Naturally,” Simon said. “It might be as simple as looking at how many blocking lists an applicant is on. However, I think that will require some more CSF/SSC work. Restricting where people go is not normally permitted when it’s not conflicting with another individual’s rights. I am afraid a lot of our laws are going to have to be revised.”

“I will send a summary to Thomas Cussler,” Laila said. “It’s really the sort of thing he should be watching for. As you say, we will have to adjust our screening, and perhaps our laws, to deal with this.”

“And fast,” Carl said, looking more serious. “Trolls are usually just nuisances, but there’s other people who have more sinister motives, especially now. But you’re right, that’s Tom’s and the SSC’s problem; we’ll send ’em our recommendation and let them figure it out. The fact someone’s gotten killed should give them a good kick in the pants to move forward.”

Simon stretched. “Well, now that that’s settled, I want to get myself some dinner and go to sleep. I feel, as DuQuesne might say, like I have been pulled through a knothole.” The others waved as he left.

However, now that he’d had to deal with another crisis, he found he wasn’t yet ready to relax. Blast. Well, then, I’ll go out and eat. That should work off the extra nervous energy.

The Grand Arcade was — as at almost any time — a whirl of scents, sights, and sounds uplifting, dizzying, and, in a way, comforting; here there might be a thousand different species, enemies and victims and allies, and yet they were all here to do things so very much the same — shop, haggle, eat, entertain, gamble. It was here that you could see that in many ways we really were all very much the same.

Simon found a restaurant that he’d seen before, run by a Daelmokhan. Despite their rather inhuman appearance, the Daelmokhan had biochemistries quite close to that of humans and their restaurants tended to have a large variety of edible, and even quite tasty, selections. Armed with his headware references to make sure he didn’t choose unwisely, he quickly made some selections and sat down.

Yes, this was the right call, he thought, as he cracked the shell on a creature that looked like an almost spherical crab with circular frondlike appendages on two sides. I can feel myself relaxing. Once I’m done, I know I’ll be able to go to sleep by the time I’m back at the Embassy.

“Hello, Simon. Would you mind terribly if I could sit down?” said a light, musical voice, a voice with just the perfect undertone of huskiness to make it completely arresting.

Startled, he glanced up.

Hair gleaming like spun gold, eyes like pure sapphires, Maria-Susanna looked down at him, smiling, with just a hint of uncertainty that made her look startlingly vulnerable. “Honestly… I need to talk to someone.”

 

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 43

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 43

Under a different commander, Ulbrecht Duerr would probably have been reduced to a gibbering fit by now. But one thing he’d learned as the months went by was that Stearns’ aggressiveness worked in large part because he’d forged his army in that same mold. Simply put, the Third Division of the army of the United States of Europe had the best morale of any army Duerr had ever served in. It was a fighting morale, too, not just the good cheer of a unit whose officers did well by them in garrison duty.

What it all came down to were two things:

Could Derfflinger and Schuster, with the flying artillery to shield them against cavalry, make it across the Isar and back across a few miles downstream before the Bavarians clearly understood what was happening?

Duerr thought the answer was…. Probably, yes.

The Third Division was a marching army. They’d been able to outmarch every enemy force they’d faced. They couldn’t outpace cavalry, of course, but they didn’t fear cavalry. Not with the flying artillery to shield them — and, by now, after Ahrensbök and Ostra, the soldiers of the Third Division considered Colonel Engler something of a modern day reincarnation of the medieval heroes in the Dietrich von Bern legends. Dragon? Coming up, roasted on a platter. Enemy cavalry? You want that parboiled or fried?

Second question: Could von Taupadel and the Hangman hold Piccolomini’s army on the north bank of the Amper? For long enough — which Duerr estimated would take the rest of today, all of tomorrow and at least part of Friday. Call it two days. That was a long time for a battle to continue. On the positive side, they could slowly withdraw to Moosburg — in fact, that was no doubt what von Taupadel was already doing. It was hard for an army to break off contact with an enemy that seemed to be in retreat. Of course, on the negative side, it was also hard for an army trying to pull back not to disintegrate and begin a full-scale rout.

Which was no doubt the reason — Duerr was guessing, but he was sure he was right — that von Taupadel would move his three regiments forward and let the Hangman fall back into a reserve position. They needed the rest — and very few soldiers in the Third Division would be willing to risk annoying the Hangman by trying to scamper away from the fighting. That was likely to be lot riskier than dealing with sorry Bavarians.

The answer to that question wasn’t even probably. Ulbrecht was quite sure that part of Stearns’ plan would work. Especially with Higgins as the anchor. In a very different sort of way than Thorsten Engler, the Hangman’s commander had developed a potent reputation as well, among the soldiers of the Third Division.

Thorsten Engler’s reputation was flashy and dramatic. The man himself would have been astonished to learn that he had that reputation, but indeed he did. And why not? He’d wooed and won one of the fabled Americanesses, captured not one but two top enemy commanders at Ahrensbök, been made an imperial count by the emperor himself — and had personally decapitated the Swedish troll Báner at Ostra. (Using the term “personally” with some poetic license. The head-removal had actually been done by some of his volley guns — but he had given the order to fire.)

There was nothing flashy and dramatic about Higgins. He was a big man, true — quite a bit bigger than Thorsten Engler — but he was the sort of large fellow who was always running to fat, especially when he wasn’t on campaign. His belly tended to hang over his belt, his heels tended to wear out the cuffs of his trousers, and without his spectacles he was half-blind. He was in fact as well as in his appearance a studious man; more likely when he was relaxing to have his nose in a book than in a stein of beer.

But he had that one critical quality, in a commander. The worse the fighting became, the more desperate the battle, the calmer he grew. He was a steady man at all times; steadier, the less steady everything around him became. A rock in rapids; a calm place in a storm.

His men rather adored him, actually. “The DM,” they called him behind his back, referring to an obscure Americanism that Duerr had never been able to make any sense of. But it didn’t matter, because he understood the humor — and more importantly, the superb morale — when they said that “when the DM smiles, it’s already too late.” That was always good for a round of chuckles; sometimes, outright laughter.

And there was this, too. Higgins had one other critical quality, for the commander of a regiment that considered itself the elite regiment in the whole of the Third Division — which, by now, considered itself the elite division of the whole USE army.

He was Gretchen Richter’s husband. The Hangman had an even higher percentage of CoC recruits than the Third Division as a whole — which had a third again as many CoC recruits than the army’s average. Prestige, indeed.

New CoC recruits to the Hangman, after their first encounter with the regiment’s commander, were prone to say: What does Gretchen see in him, anyway? To which the response was invariably: Stick around and you’ll find out.

With Higgins anchoring the Hangman and the Hangman anchoring the 1st Brigade and the 1st Brigade anchoring the entire plan…

Ulbrecht Duerr was in a very good mood, he realized. Amazingly good, given that the morning had begun with a near-disaster brought on by an overly-confident and too-aggressive commander who now proposed to correct his error by being even more confident and aggressive.

Ulbrecht Duerr had been born in Münster, the son of a baker. As a boy he’d been somewhat awed by the nobility’s august status. As an old professional soldier who’d encountered dozens of noblemen professionally, he didn’t have much use for dukes either. There were some exceptions — Duerr was quite partial to Duke George of Brunswick — but Maximilian of Bavaria was not one of them.

Bavaria, the Isar river

About two miles northeast of Moosburg

For the last stretch of the work, Thorsten Engler had relented and used some of his own flying artillerymen to finish the corduroy road, allowing Mackay’s cavalry to get some rest. He hadn’t done that from the goodness of his heart, though. He wanted cavalry — rested, alert cavalry — to be scouting ahead for him when he and his squadron moved toward their next fording place.

The term “flying artillery” that was generally used to refer to his squadron was another piece of poetic license. It was true that because the volley guns were so light, they didn’t need many horses to haul them around. Two was enough, four was plenty, and the six that were normally used were simply so that replacements would be available if — no, when; it was inevitable on a campaign — some of the horses were killed or lamed.

 

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 24

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 24

When the archbishop — and Franz — had tried to talk Melchior into leading an attempt to take back Mainz, Würzburg and the other conquered bishoprics, he had repeatedly pointed out that those towns were defended by garrisons behind solid fortifications and walls, and that the archbishop had no artillery worth mentioning. Without artillery the gates would have to be opened by tricks or treason, and while the archbishop expected the populations to rise against the occupying USE garrisons, Melchior was firmly convinced that the prelate was deceiving himself. From what Father Johannes had told him about the Americans and their ways, some of the leaders of the occupied towns might prefer the return of the ruling bishops, but the main population would probably be quite satisfied with the new rules and freedoms.

Still, with some luck — and especially if the archbishop had succeeded in talking Melchior into leading his forces — it might have been possible to regain Koblenz and Wiesbaden, and perhaps even Mainz. But the next town up the rivers was Frankfurt am Main, filled with Protestant troops and supplies, ideally posed for a quick trip down the Rhine to kick the archbishop’s regiments all the way to the Dutch border. Not a good plan. There could be situations where it made sense to conquer a town that you could hold only briefly, but as far as Melchior could see, nothing would be gained here to make it worth the cost.

The archbishop had claimed to have some kind of secret plan involving Fulda to break up the USE and presumably make them need their troops elsewhere. But he wouldn’t give Melchior the details, and Melchior frankly didn’t trust the old man to know what he was doing. In fact, if it had not been for Melchior’s younger brother, Franz, Prince-Bishop of Würzburg — who hoped the archbishop’s plan would eventually regain him his lost bishopric — Melchior would just have washed his hands of the entire mess. Then, when the USE came in response to the archbishop’s trouble-making, the Hatzfeldt family could have concentrated on negotiating a deal with the occupying forces. The Schönstein Hatzfeldts with their long history of serving Hessen as administrators would have helped. Sometimes, with no way to win the battle, you just had to save as much as you could.

Heinrich and Hermann, the oldest and the youngest of the four brothers, completely agreed with Melchior. Heinrich, a canon at St. Alban in Mainz, had stayed during and after the Protestant conquest, while all his superiors fled to Cologne. As a result he had spent two years dealing and negotiating on behalf of his church, first with the army, then with the American NUS administration. He had told the family that the Americans followed different rules, but once you knew those, it was entirely possible to function and even prosper.

Hermann had recently sold his commission as a colonel to concentrate on handling the family estates on both sides of the border, and very badly wanted to join the new industries starting in Essen and around Magdeburg, so he wanted firm treaties all around.

But Franz, Melchior’s third brother, would not accept the logic of this. He had only been bishop of Würzburg for little more than a year when he had fled from the Protestant army sweeping down from the north. Franz had made so many plans for his bishopric: new schools, agricultural improvements, helping all those Catholic refugees from the north resettle and build new lives. Now, it was breaking his heart to be reduced to a powerless refugee, forced to depend on either the support of his family or the charity of the archbishop.

In Melchior’s opinion, Franz needed to make a deal with the USE, so he could go back to Würzburg and start working. True, a bishop under American rule had little earthly power compared to a ruler of a bishopric, but the people would be there to care for and help. And Franz had spent eight years as a diplomat in the service of the two previous prince-bishops of Bamberg. Surely he could negotiate something better for himself than Abbot Schweinsberg had in Fulda. But first of all Franz had to stop chasing the archbishop’s rainbows and settle for what was possible.

When all else failed, Melchior had gone to Munich hoping to persuade Duke Maximilian to put an end to Archbishop Ferdinand’s wild schemes. Unfortunately Bavaria had been in total chaos after the disappearance of the duke’s fiancée, Archduchess Maria Anna, and in Melchior’s opinion the duke had been even more unbalanced than the archbishop. Melchior had done what he could, but nobody had seemed to both care about the danger to Cologne, and have the power to call the archbishop to order.

In the end Melchior had given up in Bavaria, and instead tried to get permission from the emperor in Vienna to take his own regiments west to Cologne and take command of the area. The old Emperor Ferdinand had been too ill to make any decisions, but his heir, Archduke Ferdinand, had told Melchior to return to Cologne and try to hold things together until reinforcements could arrive. A bit vague, but then everything was quite unsettled at the moment, and the archduke had supplied Melchior with some unusually potent papers and writs.

Old Nic had been heating a pot of water while Melchior sat musing, and now silently gave him a mug of hot brandy. “All four of the archbishop’s regiments were billeted within or around the walls of Bonn when I left,” said Melchior frowning. “Do you know how many were moved across the Rhine to the Beuel and how big the Hessian army is?”

“Some moved to Beuel and some to that camp outside t’west gate. Them colonels had left; no discipline and rioting in town.” The old man harked and spat again. “Old Pegleg from Beuel came across today. He’d seen the attack. Looked like them Hessians have about half real cavalry and half them mounted infantry. Don’t know how many. Everybody in Bonn who can’s fled west t’Cologne or t’Aachen. There’s a few Hessians this side already. Prob’ly scouts crossing before the attack. One group’s at t’Goat.”

“I know. Are your family well?”

“Yeah, nobby wanna fight armed soldiers, but there’s only a handful. They can stop travelers if they want to, but they make much trouble and me girls gonna bash their balls. Big fine girls.”

Melchior, remembering a surprising intimate encounter with one of the old man’s granddaughters some years ago, didn’t really doubt that. “Have you heard anything about my brother, Franz, or the archbishop?”

“Nope. Somebody just mentioned them mercenary colonels not being around, and wondered where you’d gone.”

 

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 16

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 16

Chapter 16.

“To use a human expression that’s probably going to be interesting in translation, Orphan, we’re all ears,” Ariane said.

Orphan tilted his head. “That… was an interesting expression indeed. But I get the gist of the meaning.” He stood, leaning back against a railing in front of the actual viewport, silhouetted against the planet-sized whirlpool of cloud and storm ahead.

“It begins many, many years ago, when I signed on for an expedition to the Deeps headed by a consortium comprised mainly of members of the Vengeance and the Analytic. As I am sure you recall from our prior conversations, the Deeps are of vast interest because they may hide almost anything; in particular, they may conceal remnants of the Voidbuilders, or some of the earliest residents of the Arena, information of great interest to both of those Great Factions.

“Now, one of the things one looks for in these explorations is unknown Sky Gates. While we know that Sky Gates will appear around Spheres of worlds owned by any faction, it is also known that sometimes there are Sky Gates associated with other locations, but not predictably so. Thus, such exploration expeditions will have sensors for the disturbances of Sky Gates and hope to pass close enough to one to detect it. This is naturally a very rare event; even if such Sky Gates are quite common, the Arena is vast beyond easy grasping and the range of detection makes detecting them a random affair indeed.”

He turned and looked out of the port; Ariane could see the tightening of the wingcases. “But on this trip we found one, an unknown Sky Gate far from any Sphere. The captains conferred and decided to venture through — not that there was much chance they would decide otherwise, in truth.

“Alas, we emerged in the very center of one of the great storms, a massive tempest that seized our vessels, assaulted them with lightning large enough to span a world, sent us spinning out of control. I managed to reach one of the emergency launches, just as a veritable wave of rocky debris hurtled from the depths of the storm and battered both vessels furiously. A shard of metal embedded itself in the base of my right wing, nearly shearing it off, and piercing deep into my back, but I made it inside. The launch fired thrusters automatically and shot me from the doomed ships; I watched with horror as they began to break up, and then the storm sent me hurtling beyond sight of the disaster.

“Such a small vessel has some advantages in surviving storms, even if there are many others where size would be a great comfort. I could not control the launch, but though I was sent hurtling hither and yon, and occasionally rapped violently by a careening boulder or random zikki, the launch survived reasonably intact; I was somewhat less than well, but my wound would not be swiftly fatal. I could not remove the shard, but there were field dressings in the emergency launch which would prevent infection.”

Orphan began pacing slowly back and forth, not even apparently aware of his motion as he continued to speak. “At last, I broke out into clear air, a space where I could get some idea of my bearings and no longer be out of control within the storm.

“To my immense surprise, there was … something already there. Not a Sphere (although I later discovered a Sphere sat very nearby) but an immense and complex structure, many thousands of kilometers in extent.” He glanced to them and tilted his head, a gesture that made her think of a wry grin. “I was, as you might imagine, somewhat reluctant to approach this unknown installation; a Faction that constructs something so large in an isolated portion of the Arena is almost certainly hiding something, and if they were one of the more… intolerant Factions –”

“Like the Molothos,” Wu Kung put in.

“Precisely, yes, if they were of that sort of Faction, they would be likely to do something extremely rude and final to me.” Orphan seemed to look up through the hull of Zounin-Ginjou. “Still, I had no idea of where I might be, how far away the Sky Gate we had entered by was, nor very many provisions to keep me alive. And it is a general rule of the Arena that stranded people are to be assisted; is this true on your world?”

Ariane nodded emphatically. “Yes. Whether on sea, land, air, or space, a distress signal is expected to be heeded and anyone capable of effecting a rescue in the indicated region is expected to render assistance immediately, regardless of the nationality or associations of the distressed vessel or people. There are some exceptions — it’s not a legal requirement for most people — but there’s a very strong tradition.”

“Excellent; this is of course true with most civilized groups. So, I decided that I had little to lose and headed for this structure as best I could, transmitting one of the standard Arena beacon signals for help.” The wingcases drew in even more, and Ariane saw a vibration of the tail that gave her the impression of a shudder.

“Without the slightest warning, my ship was seized by some… unknown force. There was no sign of another vessel or any activity near the huge structure, but my ship was suddenly borne towards it with remarkable rapidity and complete precision; we travelled, as near as I can tell, in an absolutely straight line from my location to a bay at one side of the structure. I attempted to use my ship’s thrusters to affect the motion, but to no avail; it seemed to have no more effect than if I had pitted my own wings against the power of Zounin-Ginjou‘s engines.

“My little vessel landed in the bay, and immediately shut down — again without the slightest act on my part. Seeing that my choices were minimal, I exited the launch. I will not deny that I was not merely mystified, but frightened. There had been no communications of any sort, and in this landing bay was no sign of any other ship, or even any living thing. It was a grand and chilling isolation, a place absolutely devoid of living presences… and yet I knew I was watched, that my slightest move was being noted by whatever force had chosen to bring me thence.”

Orphan’s entire body swelled and shrank, with a whistling sound from his spiracles — clearly the equivalent of drawing a long, uncertain breath. “My friends, I still find myself shaken merely recalling those moments.”

“Can’t blame you, Orphan,” DuQuesne said. “Sounds like some of our experiences when we first got into the Arena. As Ariane used to say, ‘creepy’ was the word that came first to mind.”

“‘Creepy’? Yes, most precisely, creepy is the right description, if the translation holds true.” He expanded and rattled his wings, then closed them tightly. “So, I stepped out, and a door across the bay opened. With no little trepidation I made my way across the polished and utterly empty floor to the corridor thus revealed, and was directed in similarly … creepy… silence through several other twists and turns, until I found myself before a set of immense doors; tired and injured as I was, I waited immobile a moment, trying to decide whether to move forward or not, when the decision was taken from me. The doors parted, folding up and away, and I knew I had no choice. I stepped into a room nearly complete in its darkness. Then, slowly, the darkness began to lift, and there was a figure standing there.”

From the tone of Orphan’s voice, and the slow-rising tension of his narration, Ariane felt a tingling, cold thrill edging down her spine.

“All at once the light came up… and I found that I was face-to-face with… myself.”

Ariane glanced at the others; DuQuesne was staring, riveted, and to her surprise she saw gooseflesh standing out on the former Hyperion’s arms. Son Wu Kung’s posture was taut, his eyes narrow, but his mouth curled up in a smile, as though the unknown were just one more challenge to assault.

“Holy Mother,” DuQuesne muttered. “Creepy doesn’t get the half of that.” She recognized a particular tone in his voice and realized that Orphan’s story must touch on something else, something in DuQuesne’s Hyperion past. “Wasn’t a mirror, was it?”

The buzzing, low laugh was filled with Orphan’s own apprehension. “Ahhh, Doctor DuQuesne, that might almost have been comforting. No. My other self gave me the tiniest of bows, and welcomed me to his home. I asked him, of course, who he was, and he said he was Vindatri. Did you hear that in your language or mine?”

“Yours,” Wu Kung answered.

“Hm. Yes, because it was used as a name. But it is also a word, and the word itself was suggestive.” He said the word again; this time Ariane heard what seemed half a dozen words or more, all said indistinguishably together. “You do not understand? Perhaps the exact concept is not easily translated. It means something like Watcher, Observer, Monitor, but with hints of ‘Guardian’, ‘Protector’, and also ‘Judge’.”

“Sentinel, maybe?”

“Perhaps, although that loses some nuance.” Orphan flicked his hands absently outward, then continued. “Vindatri then bade me stand still, and walked behind me to look at my wound. I felt a shock as the fragment of metal simply tore its way back out of my wing, and I saw my right wing and case drop to the ground; I collapsed myself, and lost consciousness.”

Orphan, clearly still nervous, seated himself, though that seemed almost useless as he almost vibrated in the seat. “When I awoke, I sat up — and realized I was no longer in pain. I reached back with my tail… and found that both wingcases were there, intact. The room I found myself in — provided with furniture and other accoutrements perfectly appropriate to our species — had a mirror, and — as you can see now,” he turned in his chair slightly, “my back was utterly unmarred; no sign of a scar, no sense of injury, only my memories to tell me that I had ever been injured.”

“Damn. So this Vindatri pulled you in, yanked the metal out of you, and fixed you up perfectly?”

“Yes. Rather than draw the remainder of the story out — for it would be long indeed — Vindatri kept me there for some time, discussing what I knew of the Arena and its people. He seemed particularly interested in the Faith and the Shadeweavers, but in my own story as well. Finally, he said to me, ‘I have rescued you and healed you. Would you agree that you owe me a debt, Orphan?’

“A very great one, Vindatri, if you can also return me to my home; else my gratitude and debt will mean little, I fear.”

“He laughed, and tapped his assent, and said, ‘True enough. And there is little you could do directly for me, even then. You have already done me a service by telling me of the Factions I have myself not seen in a very long time. So I will return you, in my own way. You have spoken of the strange powers of the Shadeweavers and Faith, and how you fear their abilities; I shall give you something to protect you from them. For this, I will ask only two things: first, that if ever truly new factions appear, you come, and tell me of them.'”

Orphan stopped, tilted his head. “The second condition, alas, is a secret. Perhaps one day I may tell you. I hope so.” He spread his wings. “But now, I think, you understand.”

“No doubt,” DuQuesne said. “You promised to tell him of new factions, and here we were. And as it turns out, you’ve got two to talk to him about.”

“Exactly,” Orphan said. “The fact that you are members of one of the new Factions, I believe, will directly interest Vindatri, and perhaps give you some chance of asking him some very interesting questions.”

“Such as,” Ariane said, “How he can make a gadget that stops the powers of the Shadeweavers cold, and if that means he can tell me what I can do with mine.”

A quick handtap and bob-bow. “Precisely, Captain Ariane Austin.” That tilt-headed smile. “I believe you will find this… a most educational trip!”

 

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 42

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 42

Chapter 20

Moosburg

Six miles east of Zolling

“It’s clear, Colonel Engler,” said Alex Mackay, getting down from his horse in front of Moosburg’s Rathaus. The city hall, as was the case in almost all German towns, was located on a square. Quite a small square, in the case of Moosburg. As if to make up for it, the Rathaus was a rather imposing edifice, three stories tall with a square tower rising up another fifteen feet or so in the middle.

“The whole town is clear.” Mackay pointed to the east with a gauntleted hand. “I’m not certain, but I think the Bavarian cavalry the Pelican spotted came from across the river and have now returned to the south bank of the Isar. It’s wetlands below the confluence with the Amper, but from the looks of it, I think if you went a mile or so above the confluence, maybe even half a mile, you’d find a decent place to ford the Isar.”

“You’re right,” said Thorsten. “We just got word over the radio. That special Marine unit that scouted the area said there’s a ford right above the confluence where cavalry and flying artillery can cross without any aid. They think infantry and artillery would be better if we laid down a corduroy road, though.”

Alex had removed his hat in order to wipe his brow with a sleeve. Thorsten’s last words arrested the motion, however.

“We?’ he said, sounding a bit alarmed.

Thorsten grinned at him. “I hate to be the one who has to pass this on, Colonel Mackay, but our instructions come directly from General Stearns. Major General Stearns, you may recall.”

Mackay jammed the hat back on his head without ever wiping his forehead. That minor discomfort had clearly been quite forgotten, in light of this new and profoundly horrid forecast.

“Don’t tell me. We have to secure the ford — and then we have to build that wretched corduroy road.”

Engler’s grin felt as if it was locked in place. “And it’s gets better — for us, not you. General Stearns’ orders were for the flying artillery squadron to set up in position to repel any possible cavalry attack while –”

“The puir downtrodden cavalrymen have to get off their horses and engage in manual labor.” Mackay’s Scot brogue, normally just a trace after so long on the continent, was easing back into his voice along with his disgruntled mood.

“Indeed so.” Thorsten spread his hands, in a placating gesture that would have placated absolutely no one, forget a professional cavalry officer.

“Fuck you and the horse you get to keep riding on, Thorsten,” said Mackay. “A profound injustice is being committed here.”

Bavaria, Third Division field headquarters

Village of Haag an der Amper

The radio operator looked up from his notes. “Colonel Engler reports that the ford has been seized and that his squadron is setting up a defensive perimeter while the cavalry prepares the crossing for infantry and artillery.”

“And in such good cheer they’ll be doing it, too,” said Christopher Long. The smile on his face fell short of outright evil, but by a hair so thin that only a theologian could have split it.

Duerr chuckled. “Cavalry hate being impressed as combat engineers.”

“Speaking of which…” He turned toward Mike Stearns, who was pointing out something on the map to Brigadier Ludwig Schuster, who commanded the division’s 2nd Brigade.

“General Stearns, pardon me for interrupting, but where do you want our combat engineers to be and doing what?”

Stearns glanced up and then pointed at Schuster. “I want them — all of them; Mackay’s cavalry can lay down a simple corduroy road and screw ’em if they can’t take a joke — to go with Ludwig. He and his whole brigade should get to the ford above Moosburg and be able to cross it by nightfall.”

Duerr hesitated — but challenging his commander was his job, when he thought a mistake was being made. Thankfully, Stearns didn’t react as badly as some generals did to being questioned. Not badly at all, being honest about it.

“Is that wise, sir? If von Taupadel and the Hangman — which is already pretty bloodied — can’t hold back Piccolomini, you’ll have no reserve at all.”

He nodded toward the entrance of the tavern. The door had been propped open — more precisely, had been smashed open and was now hanging by one hinge — partly to let in some air and partly so the staff officers inside the headquarters could monitor the fighting that was starting to rage further up the Amper as more and more of Piccolomini’s troops crossed the river.

“I have to say I agree with him, General Stearns,” said Schuster. “Let me leave the Lynx Regiment behind.”

Stearns’ brow was creased with thought. Duerr had no difficulty understanding the issues he was weighing in his mind. On the one hand, the Lynx was a solid regiment and its commander, Colonel Erasmo Attendolo, was a very experienced professional soldier. If Derfflinger did wind up needing reinforcement, they’d be good for the purpose.

On the other hand, the Lynx also had something of a reputation for being fast and agile — at least as infantry regiments went. They weren’t what anyone would call “foot cavalry,” but they could move faster than any other regiment in the division except Carsten Amsel’s Dietrich Regiment.

Which, by no coincidence, Mike had already ordered to be the first infantry regiment to cross the Isar above Moosburg, as soon as Mackay’s cavalry had the corduroy road in place.

Ulbrecht Duerr had now served under General Stearns for almost a year — and it had been a year in which Duerr had seen more combat than in any of the previous years of his long career as a professional soldier. That was partly because his new commanding general was without a doubt the most aggressive commander he’d ever served under.

That aggressiveness could be a problem, sometimes. Stearns would always tend — to use an American idiom — to “push the envelope.” He’d take risks that skirted outright recklessness, as he had at the Battle of Ostra, when he ordered the Third Division to attack the army commanded by the much more experienced General Báner in the middle of a snowstorm.

He’d won the Battle of Ostra — and decisively. That same aggressiveness had now got him into trouble, though, when he’d advanced on Piccolomini without having adequate reconnaissance. But he proposed to turn the tables on the Bavarians by continuing to be aggressive, not by pulling back. He’d hold them in place with one of his brigades and the wounded but still fighting Hangman regiment, while he crossed the rest of his army to the south bank of the Isar — and would then march them downstream a few miles and cross back onto the north bank somewhere above Freising.

If it worked, the Bavarians would find themselves in a very difficult place. Stearns would now have most of his army between Piccolomini and Munich. He could go on the defensive and force Piccolomini to take the risks involved with offensive operations. And Piccolomini would have very little time to make his decision because he had more than enough cavalry units to know that Heinrich Schmidt’s National Guard of the State of Thuringia-Franconia had crossed the Danube from Ingolstadt and was coming south as well.