Eric Flint's Blog, page 197

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 35

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 35

“I want to belong to a church again,” she said quietly. “Some people are content without being part of a denomination, but I am not. The Catholic Church…” She shook her head. “Is no longer an option for me. And I don’t care for most of the Protestant churches.”

She gave the people assembled in the room a look that fell just this side of hard. “That includes the Lutheran church, and if that offends any of you, so be it. I’ve thought about it a lot over the past year or two, and I decided I want to belong to an American church. So I chose the Episcopalians.”

Kresse’s frown was back. Could the man manage to let an hour go by without it? “The Episcopalians are an English church.”

To her surprise, Eric Krenz responded. “No, they’re not, Georg. They originated from the Anglican Church but they’ve been independent for more than two centuries.” He waved his hand. “In that other universe, I’m talking about. What you have today in our universe is a complicated situation where over there” — he waved again, more or less in the direction of the British Isles — “you’ve got a big pack of down-time English clerics and kings and Puritans and whatnot squabbling with each other, and over here” — he now gestured more or less in the direction of Grantville — “you’ve got a very small pack of up-timers who share a lot of doctrine and most emphatically do not share a lot of attitude with the English.”

By now, everyone in the room was frowning — Gretchen too — trying to follow Krenz’s convoluted explanation of religious evolution spanning two universes and twice that many centuries.

Which…

Wasn’t bad, actually.

“What he said,” stated Gretchen.

****

As she usually did, Tata remained behind after the meeting adjourned. More unusually, Eric did also.

“How do you come to know so much about the Episcopal Church?” Tata asked him.

Eric’s expression became shifty-eyed. “Well…”

“Ha!” Tata didn’t quite curl her lip. The face she made indicated that she would have except the issue was not worthy of her outright contempt. “Tried to seduce an up-timer once, did you? It went badly, I imagine.”

Eric gave her a sulky look. “Anne Penzey. I met her in Magdeburg when Thorsten and I were training in the army. She was, ah, young at the time –”

“Young?” said Gretchen. “I know the girl! She couldn’t have been more than… That was what, two years ago? She’d have been no older than sixteen!”

“Seventeen,” Eric protested. “Almost eighteen, maybe.”

“It’s not worth getting worked up over, Gretchen,” Tata said. “It’s true that Eric is a lecher but he’s terrible at it so no harm is done.” The laugh that followed was more in the way of a giggle. “Look what happened there! Seventeen years old — practically a child, still — and she fended the clumsy lout off with a lecture on ecclesiastical history.”

She now moved to the issue actually at hand. “I’m curious myself, though. Why did you pick that American church?”

“It’s a little hard to explain. Most of the American churches are… how to say it?”

“Peculiar,” Eric provided. “Downright weird, some of them — especially the ones that call themselves Pentecostal. There’s even one church in Grantville — so I was told, anyway; I didn’t investigate myself — where they speak in tongues and play with snakes.”

“I’m not sure that rumor is really true,” Gretchen said. “Although it might be. Some of the American churches seem a lot like Anabaptists.”

She shrugged. “I was raised Catholic. I like the… what to call it? The way Catholics do things. I was told the Episcopalians are much alike, that way. Some of them, at least. The ones they call ‘high church.'”

She smiled, then, a bit wickedly. “Especially Admiral Simpson.”

“Simpson?” Eric and Tata were wide-eyed now. Clearly, both of them were trying to visualize Gretchen Richter and John Chandler Simpson worshipping in the same church and…

Having a hard go of it.

“He is on the side of the angels, these days,” said Tata. Dubiously.

“I think it’s more of a loan,” Eric cautioned. “Any day — you never know — Satan might call it in and demand his interest.”

****

Three days later, Tom Simpson came to Dresden. With him, he had in tow a young woman named Ursula Gerisch.

“I’m your bishop,” he told Gretchen. “Don’t ask me any questions, though, because I’m trying to study up on the job myself. Laud just gave it to me. I think mostly out of pique — probably some spite, too.”

Gretchen stared at him. “I thought someone named Robert Herrick was the bishop in the USE.”

Tom shook his head. “He’s headquartered in Magdeburg. Originally his diocese was named as the whole USE, but now it’s being divided. Herrick will wind up with everything that’s not part of the so-called ‘Grantville Diocese,’ as Laud is calling it.”

“Which covers what part of the country?” asked Gretchen, frowning.

“I don’t know yet. I don’t think Laud himself does. But apparently it’s going to cover Saxony. I wouldn’t worry about it, though. Between you and me, Herrick doesn’t really want the job anyway so he won’t be underfoot too much. Which is a good thing, from everything I’ve heard about him.”

Gretchen had received an earful herself on the subject of Robert Herrick’s shortcomings while she’d been in Grantville.

She moved aside from the doorway to let Tom and Ursula enter her apartment. It was quite a nice apartment, as you’d expect in the Residenzschloss. “I would offer you something to drink but I’m afraid I don’t have anything at the moment except some water. Although I could heat up some broth. I’ve been very busy lately and the boys” — the sounds of two young children playing in another room were quite audible — “don’t like coffee and tea. I don’t bother keeping it around unless I know Jeff is coming for a visit.”

She was babbling a little. A bishop? Tom Simpson — huge, affable, cheerful, friendly Tom Simpson, so unlike his father — was now a bishop?

Well, why not? They lived in an age of miracles again, as witness the great cliffs created by the Ring of Fire.

“I can’t stay long anyway, Gretchen. The only reason I came to Dresden is because we need some special equipment made to get the ten-inch rifles out of the river — never mind the grisly details — and this is the best place to get it done quickly. Grantville and Magdeburg have better facilities for the purpose but they’re so backlogged with work I decided to come here instead. But I’m leaving first thing tomorrow.”

He turned to Gerisch, took her elbow and hauled her forward. “Ursula is the best proselytizer we’ve got. She’s a whiz at it. She agreed to move here and my mother agreed to subsidize her for a while. And if you want to know why a Unitarian is willing to support an Episcopalian missionary, trust me, you really don’t want to know. My mother’s schemes can confuse the ghost of Machiavelli. Just accept that she is.”

He breezed right on, not giving Gretchen a chance to say anything — which didn’t really matter since she had no idea what to say anyway.

“We need a proselytizer here in Dresden because until you get enough people to form a congregation there’s no point my sending you a priest, which is good because I still have to study up on how I’d go about ordaining one in the first place. Hey, give me a break. I’ve been a good Episcopalian all my life but it’s not as if I paid a lot of attention to how the gears turned. So to speak. I was a wannabe professional football player and then a soldier after the Ring of Fire.”

He finally broke off — for maybe two seconds. “So there we are. Can you put Ursula up for a few days until she finds a place of her own?”

Gretchen nodded.

“Great. I’m leaving, then. I’ll see you again… whenever. Probably not until we take Munich, though.”

And off he went.

Gretchen closed the door and looked at Ursula. The woman had an odd expression on her face. It seemed to consist mostly of unease combined with penance and perhaps a trace of defiance.

“I must warn you, Frau Richter, since you will no doubt hear of it soon anyway. My past is… not very reputable.”

Finally! A place to rest her anchor.

“Neither is mine,” Gretchen said, growling like a mastiff.

 

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 17

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 17

“Hmpf! Well, I admit that you are quite singularly bad at garrison duty,” Melchior removed his hat and sword and sat down across from Wolf. “But in this case I must ask you not to go stir up any action on your own. I rather strongly expect that we’ll soon have all the action even you could want.”

“Where, when, and with whom?”

“All over the place, any time, and with everyone.” Melchior accepted the beer and waited for the barmaid to move away before continuing. “Archbishop Ferdinand of Cologne has hired Irish Butler and some of the other of Wallenstein’s discards, and is up to some kind of cabal that’s bound to bring the Protestant army down on him even if Hesse stays in Berg. And the Habsburgs — Vienna as well as Spain and The Netherlands — are not going to like seeing Cologne as part of the USE. Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, whom I hoped would be willing to call his brother to order, has no interest in anything beyond his own personal concerns, which seems to center on hunting down his missing fiancée — and just about everybody else. Báner is rattling his sabre north of the Danube, and your guess is as good as mine as to whether we’ll end up fighting him or Bavaria. Wallenstein in Bohemia and Bernard in Swabia don’t appear to be making any moves we’ll need to respond to at the moment, but I’m not prepared to wager any sizable sum on that continuing. Not to mention Gustavus Adolphus, who made peace with Denmark last month, and is probably getting just as bored as you by now.”

“I think Gustavus Adolphus is actually planning to do something about Saxony at the moment.”

“Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

“The Saxony court is amusing but expensive. I’ve always rather liked it.”

“Not to my taste. But Wolf, I need to make my report in Vienna as soon as possible. There’s not much chance of the Emperor — or rather Archduke Ferdinand — doing something directly to stop the archbishop, but they still need to know as soon as possible. Young Simon is picking out my court gear, and we’ll be leaving as soon as he meets me here with fresh horses. I don’t expect us to go directly into battle any time soon, but talk with Colonel Dehn about having all scouts as well as minor training maneuvers circulating in the direction of the Bavarian border.”

“Will do. Maid! Pack up some travel food!”

Magdeburg, House of Hessen

Amalie carefully leaned forward and look down to the street without touching the draped lace-curtains, not just because lace was still expensive despite the new machines making it, but she also didn’t want her guests to realize that she was looking them over before they entered the house. There was only uncle Albrecht, two young girls and a maid descending from the fine new carriage, so Albrecht had been clever enough to leave Ehrengard at home. Amalie smiled a little. While she had been looking forward to a few skirmishes with her aunt-in-law, this showed that Albrecht was prepared to make peace and cooperate — at a price of course and probably a stiff price, but it would be fun haggling with him. Besides, with five daughters and only one yet wed, it was quite likely that he would settle for bridegrooms instead of money or political favors.

The two girls would be his two youngest, Elisabeth, called Litsa, and Maria Juliana, who as far as Amalie knew usually answered to Ria. Due to her feuding with their father, Amalie had never spent much time with her younger cousins, but the girl dropping her gloves as she descended from the carriage was probably Litsa, who had seemed rather coltish and shy when Amalie had last been to their home in Schwarzenfels, while the one smiling up at her father and shaking her head to make her curls dance, was pretty little Ria. According to Abbess Dorothea Litsa was actually rather intelligent, but Amalie preferred to make up her own mind about that; intelligent had different meanings to different people, and someone merely bookish would be of no interest to Amalie.

As her guests entered the main door, Amalie went to sit down on the high-back chair in the middle of the room arranging her skirts to show off the embroidery. She’d better use her pregnancy as an excuse to remain sitting while receiving them. The waddle of a walk she was reduced to was not impressive.

Ludenscheid

July, 1634

“There’s another message for you, Sir.”

Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel looked up at the young Lieutenant von Rutgert serving as his secretary, and bit back a curse. This campaign was hexed! Not by witches, but by that damned American radio. Sure it was nice being able to get information from one end of the country to the other, much, much faster than any horse could run, but it also made everybody and his uncle think they could direct an ongoing military campaign from wherever they were sitting. Hesse did not approve of vulgar language, but right now he fully understood the American concept of Rear Echelon Motherfuckers. Hesse broke the seal and read quickly.

“Rutgert! Send for von Uslar. I want to talk to him as soon as possible.”

“Yes, Sir.”

As the young man left the room Hesse went to look again at the large map covering the trestle table. Half his artillery and infantry had gone north to Hagen, before a direct order from Gustavus Adolphus had made it clear that no excuse about hunting French troops would get an attack on Essen overlooked. The other half was presently stalled in a three way death-lock in Remscheid with the troops from Essen occupying Düsseldorf, and what remained of the Jülich-Berg army holding Solingen and Remscheid. He wasn’t allowed to have any of those troops actually engage those they were facing, but he had stalled any movement, while hoping to get his hands on Duke Wolfgang’s widow and prospective heir. That would have given him a good claim on at least those areas of Mark and Berg he was now holding, and probably Düsseldorf as well. Unfortunately she was now reported to be for certain within the archbishop’s palace in Bonn, where none of his agents had been able to get to her.

Which brought him back to his original plan for taking Bonn and Cologne. Which he would probably already have done if it hadn’t been for those radio-messages sending him helter-skelter all over these damned mountains. Not to mention leaving him with his cannons more than fifty miles of bad mountain roads away from where he needed them. At least Amalie had managed to get a commitment to have some of the USE field cannons sent by boat down the rivers from Frankfurt, so he could afford to leave the artillery at Hagen where it was, but withdraw the infantry regiments south to Remscheid. Then negotiate with De Geer for access up the Rhine for both the men and artillery from Remscheid. Hesse sighed and went back to plotting.

 

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 34

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 34

Chapter 16

Dresden, capital of Saxony province

“We are all here, I think.” Gretchen’s eyes scanned the room, looking to see who might be missing from what, borrowing from her husband Jeff’s American lexicon, she thought of as a “summit meeting.”

She wasn’t using the phrase properly, but she liked it anyway. In the universe the up-timers came from, a summit meeting had been an encounter between bitter enemies who were still determined to keep their hostility from erupting into violence. Violence on the scale of direct and outright war between them, at least. From what Jeff had described to her, there had been plenty of wars-by-proxy all over the globe. In some ways, that universe and her own seemed much alike.

This meeting she had called in the Residenzschloss the day after her return to Dresden was something quite different, a meeting between allies rather than a meeting between enemies. Granted, there was some antagonism among the various elements in the alliance, but it was on a fairly modest level. Most of it derived from the prickliness of the Vogtlanders, who had what Jeff would have called a chip on their shoulder. That was especially true of their central leader, Georg Kresse.

Gretchen found their attitude irritating, because it was based entirely on unthinking resentments and suspicions — essentially, the ingrained distrust of country folk for what her husband called “city slickers.” Gretchen found the term simultaneously amusing and annoying. Amusing because it was, well, amusing. Annoying because the city slicker upon whose person the Vogtlanders’ misgivings were primarily focused was herself. That was to say, a printer’s daughter who had been born and raised in the small town of Grafenwoehr in the Oberpfalz.

True, some of her comrades and close advisers could lay claim to urban upbringing. Tata was born and raised in Mainz, and Eric Krenz in Leipzig, both of which were definitely cities and one of which — Leipzig — even had two famous universities. But their personal origins were hardly patrician: Tata’s father was a tavern-keeper and Eric had been born into a gun-maker’s family.

The Vogtlanders had no real grievances of a specific nature, whatever their vague unease about dealing with urbanites might be. Gretchen had made it a point to lean over backward to accommodate them. She’d done so from the very beginning, once Kresse brought his Vogtland irregulars down from the mountains to join the fight against the Swedish general Báner. She’d given the Vogtlanders — all the farmers and village folk living around Dresden — disproportionate representation on the Committee of Public Safety, the emergency council she’d created to organize the city’s defense against Báner and his army.

Kresse was one of the people in the room, along with his chief lieutenant Wilhelm Kuefer. Anna Piesel was with them as well. She was Kresse’s betrothed but also a leader of the Vogtlanders in her own right.

“So what was the outcome of your audience with the emperor?” asked Kresse. The question was stated abruptly, but that was simply his manner. The tone of his voice had carried no hostility and not more than a faint trace of skepticism.

Gretchen reached down into a small valise she’d brought into the room with her and pulled out a sheaf of papers. The sheaf was divided into four-page reports held together by staples. When she’d visited Veleda Riddle in Grantville she’d mentioned how much she admired the up-time stapling devices and the old lady gave her one along with a box of staples. A welcoming gift, she’d called it, to the world’s most recent convert to the Episcopal Church.

Gretchen had been amused, because it was apparent from Riddle’s demeanor that she thought Gretchen might have wanted a different sort of gift. A machine gun, perhaps — no, better still: a guillotine! At one point, Riddle had made some cautioning noises about the perhaps-inappropriate title Gretchen had chosen for her emergency organization in Dresden. Most Americans, in Gretchen’s experience — her own husband being no exception — had an abysmal grasp of history. But that did not seem to be true of Veleda Riddle. She knew French history, certainly.

Gretchen handed the sheaf to Tata, who was sitting next to her. “Start passing these around, please.” More loudly, so everyone could hear, she added: “This is a full report on what came out of the meeting.”

Kresse could refer to her session with Gustav Adolf as an audience, if he chose, but so far as Gretchen was concerned it had been a meeting between equals. Equals in the eyes of God and equals by the rights for all people she intended to spread across the Germanies, and then Europe, and then — although she probably wouldn’t live that long — across the entire world.

Not, admittedly, a meeting between equals in terms of immediate power and influence. But that was a matter of fact, not principle — and facts could be changed.

Eric Krenz was staring down at the sheaf in his hand with a look of distaste. The Saxon had an almost comical abhorrence of reading anything beyond technical manuals. “Can’t you just summarize what’s in it?” he asked.

“Quit whining,” said Tata, who was already starting to read the second page of the report. In sharp contrast to the man who shared her bed every night, the tavern-keeper’s daughter adored reading. She spent any spare money she had in one of the city’s two bookstores. Eric never complained about the habit, however. Whatever his own attitude toward reading might be, he was a firm adherent to that ancient piece of male wisdom: happy wife, happy life.

True, he and Tata were not married. But Eric would be the first to tell anyone that the principle had wide application. And Gretchen thought it was just a matter of time before he started pestering Tata to bring their relationship into greater alignment with the customs of men and the prescriptions of the Lord. For all their badinage and squabbling, the two of them did seem to get along well.

Tata flipped the page over and started on the next. “So far, it’s pretty straightforward and amazingly clear for an imperial decision. Point one. Saxony is recognized as a self-governing province of the United States of Europe. Direct imperial administration will remain in the hands of Ernst Wettin but only until the election is held and the results are tallied. Point Two. The structure of the province of Saxony shall be that of a parliamentary republic. The executive office of chancellor will be filled by whichever party or coalition of parties wins a majority of the vote. Point Three. The province of Saxony shall have a Lutheran established church supported by provincial revenues, with the understanding that all other denominations including Catholics and Jews may practice their faith openly with no penalties or restrictions and — oh, now this is fascinating! — if the chancellor of the province is of a different denomination than Lutheran then for the period the chancellor is in office that denomination will also be considered an established church and may share in the province’s revenues in proportion to its share of the population of the province.”

She looked at Gretchen. “Where did that come from? It’s sort of an upside down version of cuius regio, eius religio.”

Kresse was frowning, as he studied the page. “I don’t really see the point to it. We’re all Lutherans here.”

Anna Piesel gave him an elbow in the ribs. Startled, Kresse looked up.

“Oh,” he said. He gave Gretchen a slightly guilty look. “I forgot that…”

The frown returned. “But I thought you’d left the Catholic Church. Surely you’re not thinking –”

Gretchen’s temper was rising a bit. Sometimes Kresse really got on her nerves. “Let me make something absolutely clear to you, Georg” — her eyes swept the room with a hard gaze — “and anyone else who has any doubts about it. If I choose to return to the Catholic Church I will do so and if anyone thinks they can infringe upon my rights –” Her voice was starting to rise.

“Gui-llo-tine, gui-llo-tine,” Eric said, in a singsong voice, with a grin on his face.

Gretchen glared at him. He shrugged. “Just saying.”

Her swelling anger began to subside. She gave it a couple of seconds and then turned back to Kresse.

“No, Georg, I am not planning to return to the Catholic Church. I have every right to do so, mind you. But…”

She ran fingers through her long, blonde hair. The sensation reminded her again of her vow to get it braided so as to keep it from getting in her way. The vow was only semi-serious, though. Jeff loved her hair the way it was, and while Gretchen wouldn’t go so far as to adopt the motto happy husband, happy life, she’d allow that there was quite a bit of truth to it.

 

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 16

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 16

Chapter 7

Bonn, The archbishop’s Palace

July 1634

Another spasm of pain racked through Charlotte’s body, but she barely flinched. The baby could come or not, live or not, kill her or not, she didn’t really have the strength to care.

In Cologne she had felt vulnerable and uncertain, but at least she had been in contact with her family, had received reports from General Merode in Berg, sent orders to the caretakers in Jülich and Berg, and generally tried to pick up the reins of the mess her husband’s death had left behind. She might have longed for her family to come help her, but she had not been considering Archbishop Ferdinand a very serious problem, after all: while he wasn’t a relative, he had been her son’s godfather, and she knew her mother considered the archbishop a friend of the family. But then he had sent Felix Gruyard into her life, and an uncertain situation went straight into the hell of cold, unwavering eyes showing no sign of human emotions, only a total concentration on his task and his duty.

After arriving at Bonn in the middle of the night she had been kept isolated for almost two days, and when she had finally met the archbishop, the slightly indulgent old man she remembered from the baptism had seemed a totally different person. She had of course asked for an explanation for what happened at the Beguine, and why she had been dragged to Bonn in the middle of the night, but he had brushed her off with a few words about the political situation being tense, and that she would be safer in Bonn. She was now to concentrate on giving birth to a healthy child, while he would take care of everything else.

Charlotte had not liked that, and she had like it even less, when he started pressing her for a letter giving him full power to act in her name. She had not received a single letter during her weeks here in Bonn, and while she kept writing her own letters and giving them to Sister Ursula to send, she became more and more certain they never left the archbishop’s palace. She — with her baby-heir-to-be — was in fact the archbishop’s prisoner.

At the end of her first week in Bonn Charlotte made the mistake of telling Sister Ursula how much Gruyard upset her. The same evening, when she once again refused to write to the archbishop’s dictate, Archbishop Ferdinand claimed her mind was obviously unsettled, and she should enter seclusion with that Loyal Servant of the Lord, Felix Gruyard, as her only contact with the world.

As the weeks dragged by, Gruyard now started haunting her nights and days as well as her nightmares. He would enter her small white-washed cell whenever she had fallen into a fitful doze, wake her and say it was time to pray. Or worse: not wake her, just stand there looking at her when she woke in a cold sweat of fear. And, as the last week of her pregnancy went by, she could feel her hold on reality slip more and more with her lack of sleep, until — when the labor had started in the early hours of the morning — she barely seemed to notice. It was just another nightmare, and she couldn’t put two thoughts together and even consider what to do.

Sister Ursula had come that morning after the water had broken. Presumably Gruyard had brought her, though Charlotte couldn’t remember having seen him — or her — enter. The grim older woman was now sitting on a stool, murmuring soothing words and prayers, but not doing any of the things the midwife had done at the birth of baby Ferdinand. Presumably she was loyal to the archbishop, and that was all that mattered. Perhaps that was the way it should be. Perhaps she would soon go away too.

It was dark again now outside the small deep-set window, and Sister Ursula had been frowning for a while when she went to the door and said: “I think we need to send for the midwife, the contractions are getting weaker.” She stepped back and Gruyard entered the room, going to the narrow cot where Charlotte lay with open, unseeing eyes, barely breathing. He reached out and shook her shoulder. “Katharina Charlotte, it is time to wake.” At his words Charlotte screamed and tried to scramble away from his touch, but only managed to fall to the floor before fainting from the pain.

* * *

When she came to herself two strange women were moving around the small room with linen and hot water, and Sister Ursula was sitting by the cot holding a steaming mug. She lifted the mug towards Charlotte and said with an attempt to smile that looked almost painful: “Drink this. Frau Eigenhaus and her sister have come. They will make your baby come out.”

“Never mind that.” The largest and most determined looking of the two women took the mug and pushed Sister Ursula aside with a swing of her hips. “You just drink this and relax.” She lifted up Charlotte and helped her hold the mug with the warm, honeyed drink. “I am Frau Benedicte Eigenhaus, and this is my sister Irmgard, who is the best midwife in Bonn. We have both been bringing children into this world since long before you were born, so you just leave everything to us.”

“Y-you’ll keep him out?”

“What my dear?”

“G-Gruyard.”

“Gruyard!” The two sisters looked at each other, then turned their heads to look at Sister Ursula, whose pale, hollow cheeks suddenly showed two bright red spots. “And pray tell, Sister Ursula, just what does the archbishop’s torturer have to do with this nice, young mother-to-be?”

Sister Ursula straightened her back and took a deep breath. “The archbishop has delegated the responsibility for this woman to Master Gruyard. She is not of sound mind.” The nun’s eyes started waving under the stern gaze of the midwife and her sister. “It is probably just temporary fancies, brought about by the pregnancy and the loss of her husband.”

“I see.” Irmgard exchanged a look with her sister. “A common occurrence, those not-sound-fancies in a pregnant woman, and usually very convenient to somebody.”

A muted scream from Charlotte interrupted. “Benedicte, you lift her up again and support her; that portion she just drank should ensure that the baby will be coming fast.”

Linz, Austria, The Scribe

“Melchior! You’re back.” Wolf von Wildenburg-Hatzfeldt jumped up from his chair and enfolded Melchior in an obviously heartfelt embrace. That his cousin was to be found in a tavern rather than in the garrison with his men, wasn’t really a surprise to Melchior — and neither was the fact that Wolf paid absolutely no attention to Melchior’s frown — but this was an unusually warm welcome. Unless of course Wolf was a lot more drunk than Melchior would expect for this time of day.

“Just passing through on my way to Vienna. But what kind of trouble are you in to make you that glad to see me?”

“None, my dear cousin.” Wolf returned to his chair and waved at the barmaid for more beer. “I’m just bored out of my scull with garrison duty, and hoped you had a new campaign for us. I could use a little action.”

 

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 08

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 08

Chapter 8.

“Boy, Tunuvun,” Wu Kung said, “This is going to be fun!” He couldn’t keep from bouncing up and down on his feet, staring out at what Ariane had pronounced in disbelief to be “a triathlon on full enhancers!”

He and Tunuvun stood at the top of a mountain — that ended abruptly at a wall behind them! — and looked out upon a racecourse that could only be possible in a place like the Arena. Or, he noted with a momentary pang of sadness, at home. The bittersweet news DuQuesne had given him resonated with that thought. Sanzo is alive, but it’s the Sanzo I first met. And my firstborn, Jing… gone. Fury started to rise, but he controlled it. Jai and Gen, at least, are still there. Sha Wujing. Cho Hakkai. Liu Yan. Not all is lost, not all are gone. And that was better news, far better, than he had feared. He looked out again, and gazed upon that wondrous course, imagined his friends with him, and finally smiled again, feeling the bounce returning to his step.

The cool, pine-scented forest below extended down the mountainside for a kilometer or two; then a sheer cliff descended — for a distance he couldn’t see on this side, but guessed it had to be several hundred meters — to a relatively level, grassy plain another couple of kilometers; without transition, there was suddenly empty space, filled with drifting rocks and moving dots that Wu’s more-than-human eyes could resolve into flying creatures he remembered from his prior adventure in the Arena. No-gravity space, then. On the other side, a vast forest, a jungle of massive and alien-looking trees, followed by a strip of gray-gold desert sands, a glittering stretch of water, another wide gap of no-gravity, shining white of polar ice with the dull green-gray of tundra interspersed, a mass of tumbled terrain like some of the worst badlands Wu had ever seen with tangled forest sandwiched in between, and finally a massive building of some sort.

He couldn’t be sure without being able to see into the building, but he thought that if everything else was the way it looked, he could probably traverse the whole thing in less than an hour if DuQuesne let him go all-out, but DuQuesne had taken him aside just before they came:

“Listen, Wu. We’re going to try to run this race — and win it — without showing off. That means you can show everything you let Orphan see, and not one bit more. That’ll be more than enough to impress the hell out of them, and it’s better than anything Tunuvun should have — right?”

“Right. I don’t think he was holding anything back that time on the docks, and I was.” He still felt a little guilty about that — not doing his best in a fight was hard.

“Okay. That means we should be able to do this straight. But if — and I mean ‘if’, Wu — I decide we do need to go all-out, then I will tell you. You understand? No matter how bad you think things are going, you wait for me to call it.”

He’d nodded. There weren’t many people he’d take that kind of talk from, but DuQuesne was one. “My word on it, DuQuesne. I’ll play the game exactly your way.”

So it looked like this course was going to take a lot longer than an hour. A lot longer. Still, it would be fun. He’d also stuffed himself last night, causing the others to stare incredulously at the amount of food he put away, which meant that the special reserves the Hyperion designers had built into him were now topped off; if DuQuesne did ask him to go all-out, he would be ready to match what he’d done the day Hyperion fell, but for a much brighter cause.

Tunuvun looked over to him; he could smell an effort to be cheerful. “Indeed, it seems to be a very entertaining course. Forgive me if I cannot quite enjoy it as I should.”

I’m so stupid sometimes. He can’t have fun with this with his people’s freedom and rights at stake. Wu bowed and extended a hand. “I am sorry, Tunuvun. Of course you can’t. But we will both do our best, and — Heavens willing — I will win for you.”

“See that you do. But …” Tunuvun took his hand and shook it in human fashion. “… enjoy the course for both of us, then.”

He laughed, showing his fangs. “I will, I promise!”

“Racers,” the quiet yet powerful voice of the Arena said, “your attention please. The rules of this race are simple, but it is important that you adhere to them.

“Your two courses will often be closely parallel; upon occasion, the courses will cross or temporarily become one. The course for each is indicated by the green sparks for Sun Wu Kung of Humanity,” a line of brilliant emerald points of light suddenly appeared and streaked away down the mountain, a dotted line of pinpoint suns, “and by red sparks for Tunuvun of the Genasi.” The second line blazed its way down the mountain, a trail of ruby fires.

“These markers are not visible to any creatures who might be on the course, only to the participants and those observing this Challenge,” the Arena continued. “The racers may not directly interfere in each other’s performance: that is, there may be no physical contact between the racers, they may not throw, kick, or otherwise propel any materials, objects, or other interfering phenomena directly at their opponent.

“Racers may, however, indirectly interfere in the performance of their opponents, by creating obstacles ahead of them or otherwise causing something to indirectly interfere in the racer’s performance.”

So I can’t throw sticks at Tunuvun, but I could drop a tree on the path in front of him.

“If an obstacle causes a racer to leave the path, they must return to the path as near as practically possible to the point of departure. This return shall not cause a racer to have to repeat a given obstacle; for example, if a racer falls into a river and is swept downstream, they may return to their path on the opposite side of the river so that they do not need to cross the river again.”

A line of white dots appeared next to each racer’s path. “These white sparks will appear if a racer is significantly off their course, and will lead them back to the appropriate point to rejoin the race. The other racer cannot see these sparks.

“From the racers’ points of view, the race — and the Challenge — is completed when either one racer crosses the finish line, housed in the building visible to the west, or one racer is unable to continue the race for any reason. Are these rules understood, racers?”

“Yes, Arena,” he responded, hearing the words echoed by Tunuvun. “Unable to continue” covers the fact that some of the obstacles could break legs… or necks. This isn’t a safe little game. He smiled to himself. Which is what makes it really fun!

“We proceed to the rules pertaining to the Players. Players of Chance, please verify that you can communicate with your racers.”

Seemingly from right next to his ear, DuQuesne’s voice spoke. “You hearing me, Wu?”

“Loud and clear, DuQuesne!” Nearby, he heard a muttered response from Tunuvun to his unseen handler.

“The Players are allowed to communicate with their racers at will. They may give encouragement, and general guidance, but may make no specific suggestions — for example, they could suggest ‘You are ahead, try to slow the other person down’, but not ‘See that tree ahead? The branch is rotten, drop it down behind you.’ They may, however, give specific warning of an obstacle that they are deploying, to allow their racer to avoid it while the competitor does not.”

“Got it,” DuQuesne said; Byto Kalan, the Dujuin player for the Vengeance, said something similar.

“You will each begin with ten Obstacle points to be used for wagering or for placing obstacles in the way of the other side’s racer. The use of Obstacle Points is only allowed on the player’s turn. Additional Obstacle points will accrue from random chance of the Draw die, for particular combinations of cards, and of course from winning a play, which gives the winner all points bet on that play. Prices for specific Obstacles will be instantly provided to the Player upon consideration of the Obstacle; neither the other Player nor any spectators will be able to see the contemplated Obstacle or the price.

“If at any time a Player has no Obstacle Points, they may request a Stake; there are three Stakes available to each player, each for ten Obstacle Points. If a Player has no Obstacle points, no bets can be made on a given play; if that Player has no remaining Stake opportunities, they will forfeit the game regardless of the condition of the race at that time.”

Wu did not like that one. Sure, DuQuesne wasn’t likely to have luck that bad, but bad luck could strike anyone, and the idea that Wu could run the best race ever and still lose the Challenge… sucked.

“Each Player also has three Freezes — the ability to put the race on hold while they think about an option, plan a strategy, and so on. Each Freeze lasts one minute and fourteen seconds of Player time; the Racers will not notice anything.”

It was hard to imagine being frozen in time like that, but it wasn’t his problem. He just had to race.

“Do both Players understand the selected version of Arena Chance, or should the rules be reviewed?”

Please don’t do that now, I will end up going to sleep.

“I’m good,” DuQuesne said.

“I am thoroughly familiar with this variant of Arena Chance,” Byto Kalan said.

Wu couldn’t have said he was entirely familiar with it, even though he’d played a bit. It really was rather like one of the variants of poker that DuQuesne and Giles had taught him, with the various unusual combinations of cards being ranked mainly due to how rare they were, and two chances to add or discard cards in between betting, but there was also the Draw die, which could have a lot of random effects on play, and he had no idea how that changed proper play. But as long as DuQuesne had it firmly in mind, that was another thing that didn’t matter.

“Racers, ready yourselves. This Challenge will begin in ten minutes.”

Wu Kung settled into a long-familiar stretching routine. Slowly prepare the body for the race or the war. Stretch the muscles in careful sequence, to the right degree, a carefully building progression…

As he stretched, a green comm-ball materialized. “Good luck, Wu,” said Maria-Susanna’s voice.

Just the voice hurt. He had read what she had done since the Fall of Hyperion, and Wu just could not understand it. She had been so kind, so gentle. She still sounded as kind and gentle. Yet she had killed so many. “You are with the Vengeance. Why wish me luck?”

The laugh was sad. “Oh, Wu. I don’t have anything against these poor people trying to get recognition — I applaud them. That’s really why I refused to take the Vengeance’s side — though the reason I told them was that I thought DuQuesne’s familiarity with me would give him an advantage, and that I was — honestly! — too fond of you to really want to go all out to defeat you. So good luck.”

“Thank you,” he said after a moment. It still hurt to talk to her, but it would hurt more to ignore her. Maybe she can still be saved. DuQuesne doesn’t think so, but… he’s been wrong before. Not often… but he has.

A few more comm-balls and well-wishers, the most emphatic being Ariane herself. “Run Tunuvun into the ground, Wu,” she said.

“Do the best I’m allowed,” he said, grinning widely. He stood up slowly. A few seconds more.

The Arena’s voice spoke again. “Racers, take your places. Players, prepare for first cards. The Challenge between the Genasi and the Vengeance begins in five… four… three… two… one… GO!”

Sun Wu Kung leapt from the starting line, a flying jump that would have cleared two meters in height on the level. Tunuvun, seized by the same impulse, gave a matching jump, and the two landed at the same moment, more than thirty meters downhill from the start point, and practically flew down the hill, Wu Kung’s longer legs moving just slightly less quickly than Tunuvun’s shorter strides, so the two racers remained neck-and-neck.

Match him for a while, make sure I know where I stand with him. I don’t think he was holding back in that fight, but I could be wrong. He might have wanted to hide some of what he could do from me.

Faintly, in his ear, he could hear, “First cards dealt. Dealing outer show cards.” Their game’s begun. Obstacles could start showing up at any time.

The pine woods were getting thicker, so Wu Kung took to the trees directly, bounding from one to the next, running along branches as though they were level ground. He heard and, from the corner of his eye, saw Tunuvun making similar maneuvers. He’s maybe not quite as good as me, or as the ‘me’ I’m being now, in the trees, but I’ll bet that’s because he evolved for no gravity. Those two null-g parts of the course will be his best.

Without warning, one of the branches beneath Tunuvun gave way, sending him dropping towards the forest floor. A grunt of distant satisfaction told him that had been DuQuesne’s doing. Time to start opening up a little distance. While he might have wanted to keep it closer for the sake of making the race look more exciting, Tunuvun wouldn’t thank him for the added worry.

The Hyperion Monkey King kicked off his current tree and practically flew through the next three, now moving at a speed that only his friends — and Orphan — had ever seen before. From all around he heard indrawn breaths and murmurs. Ha! They are letting us hear something of the crowd’s reactions! That is fun too!

He broke out of the woods, saw the edge of the cliff a hundred meters ahead. Behind him, Tunuvun’s swift movement was audible, trailing by several dozen meters. Wu Kung turned, back to the cliff, dug in his claws, and felt the ground disappear from under his feet just as he was stopping, letting his clawed hands drop securely to the edge.

The cliff below was solid basalt, rough but still vertical — a quite noticeable challenge for anyone. But with ring-carbon reinforced claws he rammed ten anchors home into the stone and began swiftly clambering down, a cat descending a four hundred meter scratching post.

Wow! Tunuvun’s just about keeping up! His claws must be like mine! He remembered the battle in the sky. Natural ring-carbon must be in a lot of Arena native species. No wonder he’s so tough!

Still, Tunuvun was behind; he had to do more than just “keep up”, and since they both knew that the luck of obstacles could turn at any time, and that — at least as far as Tunuvun was concerned — they were nearly evenly matched, neither could afford to play too much of a long game. He’s probably not going to push it here on the cliff, but at the bottom…

As he thought that, a hundred meters from the bottom, an entire section of the cliff face suddenly cracked, and Wu Kung found himself flailing in midair, plummeting towards the ground below. Well, at least I’ll get there faster, he thought, even as he kicked off from one of the fragments, bouncing back towards the cliff face. His claws dug in, ripped free; he spun in midair, tried to reach the cliff again, I need to slow down —

WHAM!

To Wu’s groggy astonishment, he’d actually lost a second or two; he could hear Tunuvun’s feet dashing madly away across the plain. “Wu! Wu, you okay?”

“That hurt, DuQuesne. But I am all right,” he said, hearing murmurs of astonishment from the audience as he rose and sprinted after Tunuvun.

“Thank our Dujuin friend for that one.”

“I like Tunuvun, but could you drop him in a pit for me?”

“As soon as I get the points, I’ll slow him down, I guarantee it.” The plains were streaming by now, the green-gold waving grasslike plants hissing like a waterfall of sand as he tore through them.

It suddenly dawned on Wu that they were actually more handicapped than their opposition. We don’t want to hurt Tunuvun. Certainly don’t want to take a chance on crippling or killing him. But that obstacle showed that Byto and the Vengeance don’t have that problem with me.

Halfway across the plains now, and he’d closed the distance so that Tunuvun and he were once more even, racing up their lines of airborne sparks in arrow-straight paths.

It was then that a pack of scale-armored, fanged creatures like a cross between a small dragon, a lion, and an eagle erupted from the underbrush and attacked.

Even as he dodged, blocked, and flipped, he realized that Tunuvun was speeding away, unimpeded. Another obstacle!

There were only twelve of the creatures, so it didn’t take too long to deal with them, but even so, Tunuvun was a hundred and fifty meters ahead now.

Wu Kung gave vent to multiple curses and sprinted forward hard. He was very, very tempted to start letting himself really go, but he remembered DuQuesne’s emphatic instructions. I gave him my word. I can’t do that unless he gives permission.

But even at the level he was allowed, he was still faster. A hundred fifty meters was a long lead in a short race, but this was not a short race and most of it was still ahead.

First no-gravity section coming up, though. I’ll have to push what I’m allowed to make up distance there; that’s where Tunuvun’s got to be at his best.

They leapt from the plains into the void, Tunuvun first and Wu trailing by eighty-seven meters, and immediately Wu could tell he’d been right. The tiny white-and-purple Genasi bounded from one floating rock to the next, spun and smacked aside an encroaching zikki, and skittered around a hundred-meter-wide boulder at lightning speed, as effortlessly as ordinary people might walk through a light crowd.

Still, I am the Monkey King, and this is the kind of thing I do, too!

He laughed as he bounded weightlessly through space, ricocheting from stones and outraged inhabitants with reckless abandon. Have to keep closing the distance! He was only fifteen meters, more or less, behind Tunuvun now, three-quarters of the way across this weightless space, and –

He saw it out of the corner of his eye, rapid movement all down relative to the fixed parts of the course, and there it was, a waterfall of dust and rocks incalculably high, driving down to unguessable depths. “Hells of Boiling Souls!” he cursed, as the Skyfall roared towards him. “DuQuesne!”

“Hang on, Wu — it’s about four hundred meters thick!”

Even as the Skyfall reached Wu, he heard the Arena’s distant, dispassionate voice: “Warning to Player DuQuesne: do not provide precise guidance. First of three allowed warnings.”

Wu found himself scrambling for dear life, jumping from one tumbling fragment to the next, evading randomly crashing boulders, knowing that he was caught in the associated gravity field and thus dropping down, down, down even though he fought desperately to stay at least somewhat level.

He burst from the Skyfall finally, blood trickling from a dozen small wounds. “What in the name of… of Hyperion is going on?” he demanded plaintively. Tunuvun had disappeared over the edge into the forest, and with all the speed he dared muster Wu knew he was going to be at least three hundred fifty meters behind, maybe as much as five hundred — half a kilometer down.

Tunuvun was far in the lead of a race he must not win… and dared not lose.

 

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 33

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 33

There weren’t many people who enjoyed that privilege, of course. His wife, Isabella Katharina von Harrach. The commander of his army, General Gottfried Heinrich Graf zu Pappenheim. And a handful of close advisers, which included Morris Roth.

(Not Judith, though. As she’d said to Noelle, smiling wryly: “You can’t expect miracles from a man born in the last century — by which I mean the sixteenth century. You can’t even call Wallenstein a male chauvinist because he’d be mystified by the term. What does a man have to be ‘chauvinistic’ about? He’d ask. Nature’s way is what it is, that’s all.”)

Without waiting for an answer to his rhetorical question, Wallenstein moved right to the subject on his mind. The man was courteous, yes; but he was not given to casual conversation. His mind was always on his affairs.

“What have we reached agreement on, and what still remains to be settled?” he asked.

The question was posed to Janos. Wallenstein didn’t ignore Noelle in these discussions. He listened to what she had to say — even carefully, so far as she could tell. But whenever the discussion became focused, began to come to a conclusion of some sort, Noelle could tell that Wallenstein was excluding her from his thoughts. It was as if she no longer existed in the room. His attention was entirely on Janos.

She found that annoying, to say the least. But… push came to shove, it was just a fact that it was Janos Drugeth and not she who could speak authoritatively for Austria-Hungary. Wallenstein could have been as polite and attentive toward her as possible and it would remain the case that in the end he’d still have to get the answer — or even the question — from Janos.

Before answering, Janos took the time to draw up a chair from the ones against the back wall and sit down close to Wallenstein’s side. Noelle drew up one of the other chairs but she didn’t bother to move it very far from the wall. Wallenstein wouldn’t notice where she sat one way or the other, and this way she could enjoy the breeze coming in through the open window. It was a beautiful spring day.

Edith insisted on keeping that window open all year round except for winter and whenever it rained. That was in direct defiance of the established wisdom of the doctors of the time, of course, but by now Edith had the full and complete confidence of Katherina Isabella. Wallenstein’s wife was a rather quiet and retiring sort of person — except where the health and well-being of her husband and children were concerned. At such times she could turn into a fair imitation of a dragon and send the doctors scurrying off lest their learned beards get burned away.

“What we have reached clear agreement on is the following,” Janos said. “First, Austria will recognize the independence of Bohemia and yourself as its rightful king. Second, no claims for damages will be made by either party, nor will either party sanction or in any way assist any such claims from third parties. That includes –”

Noelle ignored the next stretch of the discussion and just enjoyed the breeze and the sight of the Hradcany rising above the city. Prague Castle, as it was also known, was a sprawling edifice on top of a hill — collection of edifices enclosed by a more-or-less continuous wall, it might be better to say — that dated back to the founding of the city in the ninth century. It had been built up over time, century after century, as one architectural style succeeded another. Noelle’s personal favorite of the many structures in the Hradcany was the Gothic cathedral of St. Vitus, whose spires she could see from where she was now sitting. She’d spent many hours in that cathedral since they arrived; some of them praying; some of them in the confession booth; but, mostly, just enjoying the peace and serenity of the great cathedral’s quiet interior.

Her contemplations were broken when a phrase from Janos made clear that they’d finally moved beyond the — necessary, necessary, yes, certainly, but still incredibly boring — establishment of the limits of post-settlement legal proceedings.

” — regard to military affairs, Bohemia agrees to come to the aid of Austria if” — he might as well have said when, in light of the news report coming from Vienna but Janos was a diplomat, after all — “it comes under attack from the Ottoman Empire. For its part, Austria-Hungary agrees to come to the aid of Bohemia should Bohemia be attacked by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. For these purposes, ‘attack’ shall include any movement of Polish forces into Upper Silesia but not Lower Silesia.”

They’d spent a full day arguing over that distinction. Having Morris Roth as a close confidant to both sides brought advantages either way. One of the benefits Janos and Noelle had gotten was that they knew from Morris that while Wallenstein laid claim to all of Silesia it was really only Upper Silesia that he cared about. There was the additional problem for him that depending on how the war between the USE and the PLC unfolded, the USE might very well claim Lower Silesia and he had no desire at all to come into conflict with Gustav Adolf.

No, Wallenstein’s ambitions lay to the east, not the north. If he could take Upper Silesia from the Poles — including the city of Katowice — then he could encroach still further on the PLC’s southern lands. He could take — or try, at least — parts of Lesser Poland and Galicia, and if he could hold those then he could move still further into Ruthenia. Starting from his Bohemian and Moravian base, Wallenstein planned to create a new empire in Eastern Europe, most of it in the area her universe had known as Ukraine.

Morris Roth called it “the Anaconda project.” He supported it because it was his hope that in the course of that expansion eastward Wallenstein could undermine the conditions that, in the universe the Americans came from, produced the Cossack rebellion of 1648 led by Bogdan Chmielnicki.

The rebellion had several names in the history books. In those devoted to the history of Judaism it was sometimes called the Chmielnicki Pogroms, and it was probably the worst mass slaughter of Jews between the Roman-Jewish War of the first century and the Nazi Holocaust of the twentieth.

Could Wallenstein do it? Noelle had no idea. But it was not something she or Janos had to deal with right now.

Janos now arrived at today’s bone of contention. “That brings us to the issue of Royal Hungary and Bohemia’s claims to it.”

“To part of it,” Wallenstein countered. “Only those portions of Royal Hungary which would eventually — “:

“In a universe that will now never exist,” interrupted Janos.

“– become part of Slovakia, which properly belongs to Bohemia and Moravia, as is implied in the very name ‘Czechoslovakia’ — ”

“Another country that would exist only in that other universe and even in that universe” — Janos’ voice had a lilt of triumph in it — “would soon cease to exist anyway.”

Wallenstein glared at him. But then, looked away. And then, cleared his throat.

“I would be prepared to pay compensation — some reasonable amount — to whatever Austrian or Hungarian notables might lose some estates as a result.”

Janos grinned at him. “‘Nice try,’ as the Americans would say. Yes, my family’s lands are mostly in and around the town of Homonna which is indeed inconveniently located in that portion of Royal Hungary that you wish to claim as your own.”

His grin went away. “You can’t bribe me, Your Majesty. It may be that Austria-Hungary will eventually cede parts of Royal Hungary to Bohemia — in exchange for other considerations, be sure of it. But one of those considerations will not be paying me and my family what would amount to a bribe.”

Wallenstein might have look a bit abashed, for a moment. A very little bit and a moment that lasted less than a second, to be sure.

He cleared his throat again. “I do not propose to dispossess you or your family, Janos. You would always be welcome to remain as landowners within Bohemia.”

“Yes, I understand. But that would create the sort of problems for me that Prince Karl Eusebius von Liechtenstein has to dance upon, like hot coals. On Monday he’s a taxpayer owing allegiance to you and on Tuesday he owes it to Ferdinand of Austria. Then back to you on Wednesday and Thursday, and back again to Austria for the weekend. Awkward, that is — ten times as much for me, who is one of Ferdinand’s closest advisers and military commanders.”

He glanced out the window to gauge the time of day. Noelle had given him a good watch; not an up-time device but still one that could keep the time accurately within ten minutes each day. But Janos still didn’t really trust the thing.

“We’ve accomplished enough for today, I think.” He rose and looked down at Wallenstein. Then, in a considerably softer voice, he added: “You look tired. Get some sleep. We will continue this on the morrow.”

Wearily, Wallenstein nodded his head — a movement that only covered perhaps an inch or so.

“Tomorrow,” he agreed. His eyes were already closed.

 

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 15

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 15

Father Johannes turned his head to kiss her hand and sat holding it, absently rubbing an ink spot. “I had planned to settle in Magdeburg once I’d found out what had happened to Paul. You know I’m a major shareholder in the porcelain factory being build there. It’s well under way, and I want to work with the production too. There’s no reason I should not come to sell our products in Cologne from time to time; unless of course the situation here gets really bad. And in that case you and the Peters should certainly come to me instead. Have you thought about moving to the USE? Your family has plenty of land on both sides of the border, and you’ll probably be safer there. I know your brothers, Heinrich and Hermann, talked with your Fleckenbuehl cousins about the Crottorf branch’s estates in the occupied areas. It would be easier for you to keep them if more of you lived in the USE. Heinrich does his best, but he is needed by his church in Mainz, and could use your help.”

“I’ve thought, yes, and discussed it with Maxie. And Heinrich, Melchior and Hermann. Melchior is in favor of coming to an agreement with the USE, both for the family and for what remains of Catholic western Germany. This is largely due to you, but also because Bavaria is the last full-strength Catholic area in Germany, and Bavaria has been paralyzed since the Duchess died. France, Spain or even the Habsburgs might someday overcome the USE, but we cannot wait for that to happen. Everybody here needs some stability to get on with their lives.” She sighed. “Hermann too is in favor of negotiating with the USE. He’s the most pragmatic of my brothers, and he has been studying those laws, etc. you got for him, as well as talking to Heinrich. The way the Americans do things is not what Hermann would prefer, but he claim he can work with them. And land behind an enemy border is no use at all. Heinrich don’t think we have any realistic alternative. But Franz … Franz is the problem. I think it would kill him if the rest of the family just disregarded his loss and accepted the USE’s authority.”

“He is an adult, Lucie. If he chooses to throw in his lot with the archbishop…” Father Johannes shrugged. “Hope for their failure or hope for their success, but in any case be there for him when it’s over. Family is important no matter what happens.” Father Johannes smiled and kissed her hand again. “But how about Maxie?”

Lucie removed her hand, leaned back and smiled, “Maxie need things to do, challenges, battles to fight, people to manage. She is so bitter about her failures in Münich and the lack of support from her family; she doesn’t want to go back. And considering the temper she is in combined with what we hear about Duke Maximilian, I seriously think she’ll get killed if she does. The American way of doing things would suit Maxie just perfect. She would so love to battle this bureaucracy you have told us about. Maria know just as much about law as Hermann, and while she isn’t as good at splitting hairs and debating sub-clauses, she is very, very good at kicking arse until she get things her way. Magdeburg or Cologne? She’ll be the same anywhere.” Lucie tipped her head a little and grinned. “With a little address you could probably talk her into going with you.”

“Lucie …” Father Johannes stopped. “Lady Lucie, I am most grateful for your information about Paul’s possible whereabouts. If you’ll excuse me.” Father Johannes exit was followed by a gentle chuckle behind him.

* * *

The installation of a stained glass window in Trinket’s private parlor, “to complete the illusion of a Rose Garden,” had been Father Johannes’ last work on the Hatzfeldt House. It had nearly also been That Last Straw Which Broke the Donkey’s Back. Perhaps he should try talking with Martin about a series of articles about taste for the Simplicissimus Magazine. Still, everything was now in order: all work done, accounts settled, bags packed, and the miniature paintings he had made for Maxie and Lucie were finished. Lucie had cried when he gave her the chain with five medallions each with a portrait of a Peter, and Father Johannes had ended up promising — on his faith — to write at least every fortnight, and come back to her as soon as possible.

Maxie had gone to the Archbishop’s Palace to bully one of her many contacts — a secretary — for news about the trouble around Fulda. The trouble appeared to concern either land for railroads or the structuring of the new province proposed, but just who was protesting what — and why — wasn’t clear, so Father Johannes sat waiting for her in what had been his work room for more than six months. It had been a good time: Trinket aside, the work had been artistically satisfying, and economically sound, and the cut he’d get from the porcelain-shares and wares he had sold, would ensure that he’d never lack money again. And while he didn’t think his rapports to Don Francisco had changed the world, he was finally doing what he felt was right. But the best of all had been the ladies and Melchior. Lucie’s suggestion that Maxie might be more interested in Father Johannes than was strictly proper had taken him by surprise. Since his late teens sexual urges had just been something that was there; they popped up when he met an attractive woman; that was acceptable, and just ignored. That he found Maxie — and Lucie — very attractive had just added a bit of spice to how very much he liked them, but that either — or possibly even both — might be attracted to him!

Marriage was impossible for Father Johannes unless he was either excommunicated or secularized by papal edict, and an illicit affair with either lady just felt too odd. Sure, lots of priests had more or less formal arrangements with women, some — for all practical purpose — a marriage and a family. But while Father Johannes had always felt such to be his fellow priest’s private affairs — and not really that much of a sin — it simply was not an arrangement he could imagine. Not with Lucie, and certainly not with Maxie.

The other way around where a man became the cicisbeo — or lapdog — to a powerful woman as it was the fashion in Italy? He had seen a few such affairs during his work as a painter, and had no problem imagining that for Maxie, but…

When Maxie came into the room Father Johannes jumped to his feet and felt blushes color him from neck to hair.

“There were no news about a rebellion, Father Johannes, and Frau Vollsig’s son, she’s my brother’s friend’s landlady’s neighbor, came from Fulda less than a week ago. Travelling is probably as safe now as it ever is.”

“Thank you, Maxie, you have been most kind to me” Father Johannes bowed and held out a small, oval, framed picture, no bigger than the palm of his hand. “If you would show me the honor of accepting this with all my gratitude.”

“A Heavenly Madonna!”

“Yes. You did whatever you could for Paul, and I really think you should hang his picture on your wall again, but if you do not want to, then perhaps this may please you in its place.”

“It is beautiful, Father Johannes, and I’ll gladly hang it by my bed when I’m not wearing it.” Maxie smiled and placed the picture carefully on a table, before putting her arms around Father Johannes’ neck and rising to her toes to kiss him.

Father Johannes co-operated to the best of his abilities and it was a while before she broke off the kiss and rested her head on his shoulders. “I finally find a man I want, and he is not just the wrong rank, which I had expected, but a priest as well. This must be the final proof that God is a man.”

“Maxie!”

“Yes, yes, I know. It still stinks.”

“Perhaps we could convince ourselves this is a platonic love.”

Maxie kissed him throat and gave him a squeeze. “I don’t think so. Don’t you want me, my dear Johannes?” She looked up at him and smiled.

“Of course I do. Darling Maxie. There’s nothing I want more than having you manage me for the rest of my life — except that is for having Lucie and the Peters around too. But Maxie,” Father Johannes placed his hands around Maxie’s face and gave her a quick kiss, “We cannot marry. And reducing you to a priest’s concubine is something I refuse to even suggest.”

Maxie grinned, “My dear, I’m perfectly capable of making any suggestions I want on my own, and what wows I keep or break is a matter between me and God. At my age a child is unlikely, and I have no estates to tie me to a liege lord. What fortune I can lay my hands on is my own, and while my family would not approve of us living together, they also haven’t approved of a lot of other things I’ve done over the years. Duke Maximilian would once have tried to interfere, but at the moment he has so many problems of his own that he doesn’t even keep Ferdinand in line. And Albrecht — even before Mechthilde’s death — would not have done anything. Especially if we are living in Magdeburg.”

“Do you want that?”

“I think so. It sounds like a place where something is happening. But first thing first: you go to Fulda and see if you can find your friend, while Lucie, Melchior and I see what we can do about Ferdinand and Franz. And don’t forget to kiss me properly before you go.”

 

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 07

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 07

Chapter 7.

“I yield the play, Dr. DuQuesne; once more you have outmatched me.” Orphan tipped his remaining cards into the dump-bucket. “Anyone else still in?” he asked the others, looking around the conference-room-turned-simulated Arena. A shadowy holographic display showed several simulated runners speeding along a course, overcoming various obstacles.

“Not me,” Oasis said promptly. “I know Marc too well to keep going on a losing streak.”

“I yield too,” Carl said, throwing his cards after the others’.

Ariane’s blue eyes regarded DuQuesne coolly. “I’m still in play. I think you are bluffing, Marc. I’m taking ten Obstacle points and throwing a block in front of your simulated runner in the form of a patch of swamp. The rest I’m betting on my hand.”

DuQuesne grinned darkly. Yeah, that’s the way she plays. “All the rest? You sure about that, Ariane?”

“She said it, that’s how she’s playing it,” Carl said. “In the real thing, you’re not going to give your opponent a chance to reconsider, are you?”

“He might. It’s a classic bluff tactic. Or a non-bluff that you’re hoping the other guy thinks is a bluff,” Ariane said. “But yes, I’m sticking with that decision. All in, no draws.”

“Show ’em,” DuQuesne said, doing so himself. “Then read these and weep, Captain; Three Spheres, Two Gates, two Shadeweaver Faction Cards, and one that doesn’t matter.”

“What? But with your outer cards that’s –”

“Triple Triples, Shadeweaver Controlled,” he finished, grinning at her stunned look. “You had a Triple with two Doubles — good, but my Shadeweavers dominate your single Malacari Faction and negate one of the Doubles anyway.”

“Extraordinary,” Orphan murmured. “I have seen a startling number of improbable plays during this round of Arena Chance.”

DuQuesne shrugged. “Not that improbable. There’s several of most cards and their interactions are fairly predictable, though the circulation of the cards through the dump and exclusion of shown cards for a few rounds can complicate the odds. Not to mention the Draw die to add a really random element. It’s similar to a mashup of several card games I’m familiar with, in any case. I made a lot of money in college from teaching people odds, so to speak.” He raked in his winnings. “And I’ll put three swamp areas on your simulated runner, a bargain at twenty-five points. Time for another play?”

“I’m up for another few,” Ariane said. “Our simulated runners still have a ways to go.”

“Perhaps,” Orphan said, “we can just leave it to the two of you. In the real Challenge it will be a two-person contest, after all.”

A green com-ball popped up in front of Ariane as the triangular cards were distributed in front of them by an automated device. “Ariane, I am back,” came the voice of Simon Sandrisson. “I would very much like to speak with you as soon as I reach the Embassy.”

“Of course, Simon.” She looked up. “Oasis, Orphan, Carl — would one of you take over for me?”

DuQuesne raised an eyebrow, but he knew that she and Simon had a secret already. I’ll trust her to know when to tell it. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t kept secrets — and sometimes kept them too long. “Okay, who’s up?”

The three conferred in a corner of the room, then all three came and sat across from him. “We shall all play against you,” Orphan said cheerfully. At that statement, three of the phantom runners stopped and vanished from the course, leaving only two — DuQuesne’s, already considerably in the lead, and Ariane’s former runner, the only one in striking distance.

“All of you on one play?” He grinned, and by Orphan’s expression he knew they all could see the challenge in that smile. “Fine. All the helpers in the world won’t change luck.”

As play progressed, he proved himself right; for every play they won, he won three, and by the end of the simulated Challenge his racer had crossed the finish line fully fifteen minutes ahead of his competitor.

Orphan rose and gave a push-bow. “A most instructive game, Doctor DuQuesne. If you play so well tomorrow, I have little fear of you losing. I will say, however, that Byto Kalan is an excellent player — better than I at this variant of Arena Chance, I am certain — so you should be very wary.”

“Believe me, with this much at stake I am not going to just give it a lick and a prayer,” DuQuesne said.

As he said that, another comm-ball sparked emerald before him. “Marc?”

“Who — Saul! You’ve made it over?”

An image of Saul Maginot appeared, hair if anything a little whiter but otherwise looking well — if he disregarded the tight lines on his face. “For the nonce, yes. This is really just a short jaunt, to accustom me to the novel and, I must admit, most disquieting sensation of Elizabeth being gone.”

“No surprise there; even those of us who don’t have our AISages in our heads had a hell of a time getting used to being without them.” He noted the others had already started clearing the room; they knew there had to be something more. Once the door closed, he nodded. “Okay, Saul, let’s have it. You didn’t ring me up just to say hello.”

He saw the flash of a smile at the antiquated expression “ring me up” — like his occasional fits of colorful and unique swearing, a legacy of Hyperion — before Saul’s face went serious again. “We completed our analysis of the remains of the attack, including Wu Kung’s station.”

Damn. I almost wished it would take longer. “And…?”

“We were able to recover some of the world. Not, I am afraid, nearly all of it. Many of the… people inhabiting it are gone. But not all of them. Several of his friends remain.”

“What about his family?”

He saw the steady gaze drop for a moment. “The two youngest boys were recoverable. Sanzo… according to Sha Wujing, who we were able to partially interface with, she was reinitialized by the destruction of the main system.”

Reinitialized? Damnation. “She doesn’t remember a thing.”

Saul sighed. “Nothing past her upbringing in the temple. Apparently she doesn’t even remember being sent out on the Journey to the West, and her physical parameters are back to those of the girl who started the journey. And before you ask, no, there’s nothing left to check for a backup. We’ve taken the structure apart down to the atomic level and probed for quantum storage. Nothing.”

“Dammit. I mean… that’s better news than we were prepared for, but still… Damn them. Whoever they were. Did we get any clues?”

“None. Whatever happened was abrupt and provided no input from the outside; from Sha’s point of view it was a sudden racing wave of destruction that he was barely able to outrace, carrying the two boys with him.”

“Blast it. Whoever this is, he’s a real Big-Time Operator, that’s for sure. No surprise there — if Mentor’s on the beam, we’re up against one of our worst adversaries.” And the worst part is that it’s really likely that our enemy’s nemesis died fifty years ago. “Thanks, Saul. I’ll break the news to Wu myself.”

“Good luck on that, Marc. And on your Challenge, that I was just briefed on.”

“Thanks. I’m going to need it, I think.”

The door opened just as the comm-ball disappeared, and Ariane stuck her head in. “Marc? Could you join us, please?”

One thing after another. “Be right there.”

He followed Ariane to one of the smaller conference rooms, where Simon was waiting. “All right, I’m here. But before we get into whatever you’ve got on the stove…” He quickly went over his conversation with Saul Maginot.

Ariane and Simon wore expressions that probably mirrored his own. “Oh, poor Wu. I mean… it is better than we thought, but…”

“Yeah. And we didn’t get a single damn clue. Unless the fact we didn’t get a clue is a clue. Anyway, I’ll let Wu know in private. You didn’t call me here for this, so what’s up?”

Ariane hesitated, clearly still thinking about the tragedy to Wu Kung’s world, but then shook it off. “Simon came to me with a very… interesting piece of information from Orphan.” She summarized the discussion she had previously had with Simon. “So that’s why Simon’s been away a few days; testing our theories.”

He looked over to the tall, white-haired scientist. “And? What’s the results?”

“It appears that I — and only I — can replicate the weapon you called a ‘primary beam’,” Simon said after a moment. “I was able to duplicate the changes to the weapon on board Paksenarrion, but another person present, performing the exact same modifications, created a completely inactive, nonfunctional weapon that required a fair amount of work to repair.”

Well, well. I kinda suspected this, after what happened in that battle. Still a bit of a surprise to get it confirmed. “And the primary worked just the same?”

“Yes. Extremely powerful and coherent beam, with both energy and range vastly increased. I left the modified unit installed — I hope that meets with your approval?” Simon turned to Ariane with an air of contrition. “I know I did not check with you –”

“It’s fine, Simon. Don’t make excuses for something like that. Actually, I think we’d very much like you to go around our little fleet and improve everyone’s firepower. Yes? No?” She looked at Marc.

DuQuesne thought a moment. “Yeah, I think so. Fact is that we’ll need every edge we can get when — not if — the Molothos get here.”

Simon winced. “I really wish I didn’t have to think about that. But no point in evading it. Yes, if you authorize it, Ariane, I will spend time while you’re gone upgrading the weapons.”

“I wonder if I might be able to do it too,” DuQuesne said slowly.

Simon looked uncertain, then suddenly nodded, white hair shifting like a curtain. “You know, I hadn’t thought about that, but yes, you have shown some odd capabilities — and around the same time. The way you handled the weapons?”

“Cross-connecting them in a way that even Orphan hadn’t figured out how to do? That’s sure one of the things on my mind.”

“Well, you’ll have a chance to find out. Take a look at the one on Zounin Ginjou and see if you can replicate it.”

Ariane frowned. “Won’t that be revealing something?”

DuQuesne thought a moment. “Not much. He knows I talk to Simon a lot, and so for all he knows, together we figured out what makes ours work and his fail. To an extent, he’d be right, too. And since we’re heading out into the dark Deeps, making sure there’s more firepower on our transport probably isn’t a bad idea.”

Another thought occurred to him. “You know, Ariane, Simon — Orphan clearly has some kind of theory about us. He’s made some damn cryptic comments from time to time, and the way he looks at us –”

“You’re right, Marc,” Simon said. “I remember during the battle, he said something to the effect that he had become used to being surprised by us, and that the recent events confirmed a hypothesis he had formed.”

Ariane nodded, thoughtfully. “He’s said a few similar things to me. Maybe this is one of the things he will discuss with us when we’re in the Deeps.”

“Maybe,” DuQuesne conceded. “Though that joker keeps his cards close to his vest. And he doesn’t wear a vest. Still, if he’s got an idea about us that could be useful, he’ll have to tell it to us sooner or later if we’re going to exploit it.”

“Try nudging him about it,” suggested Simon. “His reaction might at least tell us whether he intends to tell us. I would like to at least know that much.”

“Why me?”

Ariane’s lips quirked upward. “I should think that was obvious, Marc; he sees you as by far the most kindred spirit in the crew. He likes me, and respects me. He seems to feel the same way about Simon, and have a decent regard for the rest of our crew. But I think he finds that you and he have the most in common.”

“Klono’s… heh, never mind. All I can say is I hope I’m not that devious.”

“For this next Challenge?” Ariane looked at him seriously. “I hope you’re more devious. Because the Vengeance are one of the Great Factions, and they didn’t get there by accident. So we can use all the ‘devious’ we can get.”

True enough. “I’ll admit I’ve been a little worried about that myself. They’ve got the resources and experience to basically get the absolute best for this Challenge, and Hyperion or no, gambling experience or no, that’s gonna be hard to make up for when the other guy’s probably been playing this game for years. This version of Arena Chance is actually harder for someone like me than a completely unfamiliar game would be, honestly.”

Simon’s eyebrows rose. “In what way? It would seem that any familiarity would be an advantage.”

“Sure would. And that’s the trap.” He saw Ariane nodding. “She gets it. Thing is, any time it’s close to something you know real, real well, it’s blasted easy to find yourself thinking that it is that same thing, and then you make some choice that makes perfect sense for the game you know well, but is the wrong choice for the one you’re playing now.”

“Oh. Yes, I see. Rather like playing or humming a tune that is very much like one you have known from childhood; it is too easy to find yourself suddenly humming the childhood tune rather than the newer one.”

“You got it.” DuQuesne couldn’t keep a grim tone from his own words. “Except that then, you just sound stupid. In this, I could end up giving away a world for a song.”

 

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – eARC

Is available at http://www.baen.com/1636-the-ottoman-...

First, if you purchase it, please don’t “spoil it” for others by commenting about in the Snippets Comments.

Second, while this isn’t the final version, there will be differences in it from what I’ve posted.  Eric has stated that the version he gave for snippeting was not what he was going to submit to Baen.

Have Fun!

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 06

Challenges Of The Deeps – Chapter 06

Chapter 6.

Simon stood on the bridge of Paksenarrion and gazed outward. I do not think I will ever grow fully accustomed, let alone jaded, to this.

The great warship — one of several gifted to Humanity by the Liberated — was cruising now many thousands of kilometers away from the Sphere of Humanity, so far out that the Sphere itself was but a shadow in the gloom, its Luminaire a fuzzy circle of dimmed brightness. On every side flowed and eddied incredible banks of cloud — white and gray, green, pink touched with lavender. The darker clouds flickered, internal lightning discharging, sometimes arcing across unguessable distances to strike a neighboring cloud or to shatter some drifting rock or other debris. There was nothing to give a clear scale to the scene, nothing on which the ordinary human mind could seize and use to build a model of the incomprehensible. But Simon could — just barely — grasp it, partially with that vast, though currently tenuous, connection to the Arena itself, and that vista stunned him with its majesty and grandeur, storms large enough to lose even an entire world within.

He shook himself. “This should be far enough. Even the best remote sensors, operating in an atmosphere so extensive, will not easily tell one sudden discharge of energy from another.”

“As you wish, Doctor Sandrisson,” Commander Joani Cleary said. The trim young woman — no older than Simon himself, he was sure, with moderately long red hair on one side of her head and polished baldness on the other, suddenly smiled at him. “It’s good to see even you veterans get caught by the Arena. I was wondering if I’d ever get used to it.”

“I certainly haven’t yet, Commander. Although calling us veterans is somewhat misleading; only a year or so ago even we didn’t know the Arena existed. When did you come through?”

“About five months back. They were looking for people with experience in warship command and who met the other Arena qualifications. That… cut way down on the candidates.”

“It would, yes. We have to discourage embedded AISages, and any extreme biomods; we know that there are some limits the Arena enforces in the latter case, and in the former, well, a sudden shutdown of AISages nearly got us all killed when we first journeyed here.”

“Upshot was only me and five others from the SSC got cleared through all the requirements, and one of them couldn’t hack it when his AISage got shut down. So since we have a lot more than five of these babies,” she patted her control chair fondly, “all of us got a ship of our own. Thanks for choosing Paks for this test of yours; the more we get to do, the more experience we get for whenever the real trouble starts.”

“You’re welcome, Commander Cleary. But I hope you won’t take it amiss if I say that I hope the real trouble never starts.”

Joani Cleary shook her head. “Someone wishing that we don’t get shot at is never taken amiss. Now let me get to work here.” She nodded to the others of her bridge crew. “All engines stop; hold position.”

Simon braced himself by gripping one of the seatbacks as Paksenarrion slowed to a (relative) halt. “Thank you, Commander. Now, I’d better get to the lab.”

“Good luck. Will you need us to do anything else? You did say this had to do with weapons development, yes?”

“Well, yes. When I am ready, I will be asking you to activate various weapon emplacements in a sequence I will supply. Even if a weapon fails to function, simply continue the sequence; any damaged or malfunctioning weapons will be repaired before we leave.”

“Understood, Doctor.” She gave him a respectful nod, which Simon returned before leaving for the weapons emplacements.

“Been waiting for you, Simon,” Robert Hampson said. The somewhat older-looking man had the slightly-wrinkled look of someone who had lost a lot of weight and whose nanos hadn’t quite caught up with cutting down on the extra skin. “I’m still not clear why you chose me for this test. I’m not an engineer.”

“That was quite deliberate, Robert,” he answered, as he walked over to the massive cylindrical form of the Liberated energy cannon. “I chose you because you aren’t going to even try to second-guess what I’m doing here. I don’t want someone who’s trying to analyze the work, just follow it and copy it.”

“All right. It’s for sure a biochemist isn’t qualified to critique your weapons design. Though I thought you were mostly a theoretician?”

“Mostly, yes. But… well, it would be a long story, and some of it I cannot discuss. I am glad you were able to make the transition here.”

“So am I. Wasn’t so easy to give up Vanney, but he’ll keep things going back home, anyway. Now, what do you need me to do?”

“First, just observe what I do to this weapon. In detail — I want you to commit every single thing I do to headware, because what you’re going to do later is try to duplicate everything I do.”

He raised one gray-shot brown eyebrow. “Okay. I don’t quite get the point, but I guess that is part of the point.”

“Exactly. Now, let me concentrate a moment.”

Simon closed his eyes, reached deep within himself to that alien sensation.

The vision of complete and total clarity came far more easily this time, as though it had been merely awaiting his call. Simon could perceive, as though they were laid out before him and labeled, every element of the energy cannon, the control and power runs; he could see the entirety of the vessel that Commander Cleary had named Paksenarrion; he could perceive Robert Hampson’s heartbeat and the operation of his brain. Farther, he could envision the slow twining of the surrounding storms, evaluate the probability and vectors of lightning bolts…

Focus. One thing at a time. With difficulty, he pushed away the nigh unlimited vision and comprehension, focused directly on the cannon. Remember.

Suddenly it was there, the sense of desperation, the memory of a heart beating, hammering, hands wrenching the cover plates away. He found his body responding, following those long-ago actions in an eerie replication of fear and determination and inspiration. He removed power and control elements, modified circuits, replaced components with others, ran a new feed outward, to a loading and firecontrol subsystem.

As with the first time, it did not take long at all before he slapped the cover shut. He slowly forced his mind to clear, the detached, Olympian perspective to fade away. As always, he felt a momentary depression at returning to himself — to a mind he had once thought incisive, quick, brilliant, but now felt dull, slow, almost empty compared to the grandeur and scope of the vision of the Arena. “Did you get all of that?” he asked, consciously keeping a light, unaffected tone to his voice.

“Got it in the can, yeah,” Robert said. “Have no idea exactly what you were supposed to accomplish, though.”

“Good. You can duplicate it, can’t you?”

“Sure I can! That’s why you hired me, right?”

“One of the reasons. You aren’t a military pro, but you’ve tinkered with all sorts of things, including pretty much every type of weapon. That should allow you to do this reliably.”

“Should, yeah.” Hampson hesitated. “But, um… it’ll take me a little longer than you did. You were flying there, Dr. Sandrisson. Never seen anyone working like that.”

I suppose I must have. I did that fast enough to make a difference in a battle, and therefore could not have taken much time. “No time limit, Rob. I was trying to duplicate something I had to do very fast. Now, I don’t want to have any additional chance to bias how you do this. Go to Turret 2 Starboard and perform the exact same modifications on that gun.”

“Got it.”

Simon sat down on one of the storage bins at the side of the turret and waited. There wasn’t, after all, much else to do; Paksenarrion was doing a deep patrol, and he devoutly hoped nothing would happen that would require the supercargo scientist to lend a hand.

And he did have a lot to think about. The use of that power was clearly seductive. He didn’t think it was, inherently, sinister or a trap. But for anyone with an inquisitive mind and an interest in grasping the truth of the universe, it was a temptation of almost unbearable intensity. Perhaps it wouldn’t — quite — allow him to see the actual origin of the Arena, the power behind it, the “Voidbuilders” — but it certainly seemed capable of almost anything else.

The thought countered the elation with caution — no, Simon, be honest: fear. Sometimes almost terror. Information was power, and this… connection to the Arena was a source of information literally beyond his dreams.

In a way, I suppose this confirms that this peculiar power was an accident. Any Faction that had and used this power regularly… it could dominate the Arena easily.

And for that very reason, Simon knew, he had to minimize his use of that connection. Addiction takes many forms, and this would be the one that could destroy me.

The dull ache in his heart at the loss of that omniscient vision just emphasized how very true that fear was.

His headcomm pinged, startling Simon enough to make him jump. Good lord, I was in a brown study there. “Sandrisson here.”

“Doc, I think I’ve got it finished — but I have to tell you, I have no idea how you did some of those things with the tools you had on hand. I had to go fetch a much more diverse and capable toolkit to get this job done.”

Really? The expert tinkerer couldn’t do it with the same tools? Simon shook his head. Think about that later. “You have compared it carefully with the original, correct?”

“Three times. All checks out as exactly the same.”

“Good. Then it’s time for the field test. Please evacuate the turret immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”

He pinged Commander Cleary. “Commander, are you ready?”

“Nothing showing on any of our instruments, none of our observers report anything. We’re clear. So yes, go ahead, Doctor; you’re in charge.”

“Thank you. First, I’d like you to fire a volley from Turret 1 Port.” That was an unmodified energy cannon. “Make sure all firing is done in a direction that will not, I repeat, not even possibly intersect with any of the Spheres equivalent to our nearby stars.”

“Yes, sir.” Her voice became slightly more distant, as she was speaking to someone else. “Spriggs, unlock turrets and prepare to fire. Greenwood, I want you to find an appropriate firing solution as far from any likely Sphere as possible.”

Simon stepped outside of the turret and locked down the door. No need for a repeat of my most unpleasant experiences on Orphan’s ship.

“All turrets unlocked and ready to fire, Commander,” Lieutenant Spriggs reported.

“Firing solution complete, Commander,” Lieutenant Greenwood said immediately after. “Coded and locked in.”

“Thank you, gentlemen,” the Commander said. “Turret 1, portside — fire when ready.”

“Firing,” Lieutenant Spriggs answered.

Simon felt a very faint vibration through the ship, thought he could hear a distant whine. “Firing of Turret 1, port, complete, Doctor,” Cleary said.

“All functions normal?”

“All green.”

“Very well. Now, please fire Topside 1.” That was the one he had modified.

“Topside 1, roger.”

Even through the shielded, sound-proofed door the blare of sound was almost deafening, the concussion enough to jolt him.

“Holy Jesus!” Commander Cleary said, and her other bridge crew echoed the expression. “What the hell did you do?”

“At the moment that’s need-to-know, Commander, and per Captain Austin, you do not need to know.”

“Understood.”

“Now, please fire Starboard Turret 2,” Simon said. He felt his gut tensing. This will be the real test.

“Roger, Starboard Turret 2. Lieutenant Spriggs, you may fire when ready.”

Silence followed the command. “Commander, Starboard 2 does not respond; telltales show it is inoperative.”

“You heard that, Doctor?”

“Yes,” Simon said, feeling a chill go down his spine like a slow-moving drop of liquid nitrogen. “Yes, Commander, I heard.”

Ariane was right. It wasn’t favoring her. It isn’t something just favoring humanity, either.

It’s me. I — and only I — can do this.

But how — and most importantly, why — I have no idea.