Eric Flint's Blog, page 201

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 02

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 02

Melchior nodded again, not quite trusting his voice.

“Well, that should serve as a reason for your presence in any casual conversation.” Archduke Ferdinand looked directly at Melchior and sighed. “I truly am sorry, Melchior, both for you losing the one woman to break down that chaste reserve of yours, and for denying you the right to claim your child. But the child is more likely to be spoiled by doting aunts than mistreated, and the cost would simply be too high.”

“I understand.”

Melchior bowed himself out in the correct manner, and went slowly down the stairs to the entrance hall, absently nodding to colleagues and acquaintances.  His mother had always predicted than when Melchior would finally fall in love, he’d fall hard, and sweet Maria with her big dark eyes and lively manner had completely stolen his heart. He had always been a firm believer in the sanctity of marriage and total fidelity, but even the fact that she had been a newly married woman when they first met had not been enough to completely kill his interest. Maria had clearly been unhappy in her marriage, as well as too young and impulsive to hide her dislike of her husband, but Melchior had very carefully kept their relations completely platonic for almost two years, playing the role of a friend and occasional escort whenever his duties took him to Vienna. Only when her husband had died, and Melchior had found her alone — except for her Nubian slave — when paying a condolence visit after the funeral, had he lost his head and his hold on his emotions. Maria had refused to publish their relationship with a betrothal before her mourning year was over, even when she proved pregnant with a child that she assured him could only be his. Instead she had promised that as soon as the child was born, she would come back to Vienna, and marry him before the summer was over. But she had never recovered from the birth, and when he had gone to the Mansfeld estate to attend her funeral, Melchior had been denied all access to the baby. And now his last frail hope of having the crown interfere on his behalf was gone as well.

“Sir?”

Melchior look blankly at Lieutenant Simon Pettenburg, the courier who had come with him to Vienna, then pulled himself together. “We’re leaving for Linz this afternoon. I need to talk with General Piccolomini first. Go pack our belongings, and I’ll meet you at the inn.”

Magdeburg, House of Hessen

Amalie Elisabeth of Hanau-Münzenberg, wife to Wilhelm V Duke of Hesse-Kassel, was widely acknowledged as one of the most astute players on the new political scene. So it was no wonder to anyone that she was having morning tea with the equally astute Abbess Dorothea of Quedlinburg and Princess Eleonore von Anhalt-Dessau, whose husband, Wilhelm Wettin, many people expected would become the next prime minister of the USE.

That Amalie chose to hostess the small gathering in the only finished room of what was to become the new House of Hessen, rather than in her apartment in the government building, might seem a bit odd. But then all official areas were getting so overcrowded that there were no possibility for privacy. Besides, the noise of the carpenters putting up the wall panels in the next room served nicely to disguise anything being said over the tea cups.

Both Dorothea and Eleonore were quite aware that Amalie had an extra agenda, so once the official business of inviting young female relatives to visit and benefit from the abbess’s political lessons was done with, the abbess asked with a smile in her eyes. “And if no one has anything else to talk about, I believe that we are finished?”

“Very funny, Abbess Dorothea.” Amalie filled the cups again. “Have you ever known me not to want to run down the political situation as well?”

“No, but sometimes you so want to be devious, that it takes you forever to get to what you really want to talk about. And I’ve had more than enough recently of rehashing the situation with that tiresome King Christian of Denmark and the situation in the Baltic.” The abbess grinned and suddenly looked several decades younger than her actual years. “But if you’ve got the wind of something new brewing? That is of course a different matter.”

Amalie smiled and tapped a fingernail on the teacup making the fragile porcelain chime. “Cologne.”

“Wha…” Eleonore coughed and swallowed her tea. “Amalie, do you have an army of small gnomes listening at keyholes all over town?”

“No.”

“Then what do you know about Archbishop Ferdinand?”

“That the captain of his personal guard has travelled to hire some of Wallenstein’s former mercenary colonels, and that the archbishop’s personal torturer, Felix Gruyard, has been seen entering Duke Wolfgang von Neuburg’s castle in Düsseldorf late at night. Nothing conclusive.” Amalie leaned back in her chair, easing her stomach just beginning to swell in her tenth pregnancy. “Some members of the Bavarian ducal family have a tendency towards obsessions. Often religious, but not always. Archbishop Ferdinand has been obsessed with becoming a cardinal since the death of his brother Cardinal Philip. But since Ferdinand never had his brother’s intellectual and spiritual qualities, the only way he can achieve his ambition is by gathering power. The Protestant conquest of most of Bishop’s Alley along the Rhine has severely reduced his power, and with the USE looking to stabilize and consolidating their hold, it should be only a matter of time before he tries something desperate.”

“And you are waiting like a cat outside a mouse hole for him to stick out his nose?” Eleonore frowned at her friend.

“Fairly much so,” answered Amalie, quite unruffled. “My husband is going south to rattle his saber at the archbishop in the Wildenburg-Schönstein area. The branches of the Hatzfeldt family have long been divided between those looking towards Hessen and those owing alliance to Cologne or Mainz, but we hope to persuade that entire area to join the new Hesse-Kassel province.”

“The newly elected Prince-Bishop of Würzburg, who went into exile when the Protestant army conquered that town, was a Hatzfeldt.” Eleonore mused. “Would it help if he had his diocese back?”

“Could be. Prince-Bishop Franz von Hatzfeldt is the younger brother of General Melchior von Hatzfeldt, whose second-in-command is his cousin, Wolf, who is one of the Wildenburg Hatzfeldts.” Amalie smiled. “My father knew old Sebastian, the father of Franz and Melchior, quite well, and I met the boys several times as a girl. Sebastian had five sons, but was the ward of several more, and usually had the three Wildenburger boys in tow as well. He was a very caring man, who loved children. He was very bookish too, and whenever he visited Hanau, he’d sit in the evening and tell stories.”

Amalie shook her head. “I’d be hard pressed to put a name to any of the boys I remember, except for Melchior, whom I saw in uniform just before my marriage.”

“I’ve heard that he is quite handsome.” The abbess held out her cup for a fresh cup of tea. “Have you been carrying a torch, my dear?”

“Of course not,” Amalie answered, refilling their cups. “Melchior wasn’t ennobled at the time and a Catholic as well. It was just a girlish fancy.” She shrugged. “I’m quite satisfied with Wilhelm. We want the same and work well together.”

“Hm. I realize that you cannot permit small enclaves in the new province that is under control of someone else, especially not Archbishop Ferdinand. But why not try for a deal?” the abbess asked.

Amalie sighed. “I expect you have both studied the American books just as closely as I have. Do you remember what they said about Hessen?”

“Actually, not very much,” said the abbess, frowning, while Eleonore looked thoughtful.

“Exactly. A minor industrial area with Kassel as the only town with slightly more than local importance.” Amalie’s eyes suddenly glittered in anger and determination. “That is not acceptable.”

 

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 20

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 20

Then, to Stefano: “Cut the engines for a bit.” The noise made by the four lawnmower engines made talking on the radio impossible, and Tom didn’t want to fall back on laborious Morse code communication. One of the nice things about airships was that the wallowing beasts could just float for a while.

Tom’s reports were brief and to the point, and would produce very rapid results. Now that he knew the city was undefended and the two naval rifles were no longer a factor, Schmidt would march his National Guard directly into Ingolstadt. They should have the city under control within a day or two.

Meanwhile, since his maneuver had succeeded in its purpose, Mike Stearns would redirect the Third Division to the south. There was no chance he could reach Ingolstadt in time to intercept the retreating Bavarians, so he would move to invest Munich as soon as possible.

As for Tom himself, Stearns ordered him to remain behind in Ingolstadt and get the naval rifles salvaged as soon as possible.

“They’ll have spiked all four guns, General,” he told Stearns. “And if they did a competent job, we’ll need to machine them out.”

“Yes, I know. I’ll have some machinists detached to you. There would have been plenty in Ingolstadt, but… not any longer.”

The Bavarians would have either murdered them or — more likely, unless the commander was totally incompetent — taken them in captivity down to Munich. Skilled metal workers were valuable, especially in time of war.

“I should be able to get two of the guns in operational condition fairly soon,” Tom said. “But the two in the river will probably take quite a bit of time.”

“I understand. Stearns out.”

Before they even got to the bridge, Tom could see the Bavarian forces passing across to the south bank of the river. Their formations seemed pretty ragged — so ragged, in some places, that they couldn’t really be called “formations” of any kind. This didn’t look like an orderly retreat so much as a semi-rout. At a guess, the Bavarian commanders had tried to organize a disciplined withdrawal but had gotten overwhelmed — at least partly — by panicking soldiers.

He was guessing again, but he was fairly sure the mercenaries in the 1st Battalion had been the ones driving that panic.

“Do we bomb the bridge, sir?” asked Captain von Eichelberg.

Tom shook his head. “No, Bruno. It’s tempting…”

Which it certainly was. The bridge was packed with enemy soldiers, who were barely moving because the bridge itself formed a bottleneck. As targets went, you couldn’t ask for anything better.

“But what if we succeeded too well and brought down the bridge? Or damaged it enough to make it impassable. We want the Bavarians out of Ingolstadt, we don’t want to pen them into it.”

“I understand that, sir.” von Eichelberg’s voice had a trace of exasperation in it. “But there’s little chance these bombs we’re carrying would be powerful enough to do that.”

He had a point. They weren’t carrying incendiaries because of the risk of starting fires in Ingolstadt. The USE and SoTF forces wanted to capture the city as intact as possible. So they were armed simply with anti-personnel ordnance — what amounted to giant grenades.

“You’re probably right, but I still don’t want to risk it. Besides, the troops strung out on the road are almost as good a target.”

He pointed further to the south, to the narrow road along which most of the Bavarian soldiers were moving. “Head there, Stefano. We’ll see if there are any artillery units we can target.”

As Stefano complied, Tom turned to von Eichelberg and said: “I suppose we ought to come up with some more military-sounding order than ‘head there.’ You’re the old pro. Do you have a suggestion?”

The captain squared his shoulders and looked very martial. “In the finest old professional soldier tradition, I hereby — what’s that American expression — pass the back?”

Tom chuckled. “Pass the buck.”

“Yes, that one. This being one of those — what do you call it? — upward technology weapons — ”

“High tech.”

“Close enough. I feel it is incumbent upon the up-time officer to develop the proper phraseology. Sir. I would just make a hopeless muddle out of the project.”

“That’s some pretty impressive buck-passing, Captain.”

“I do my best, Colonel.”

****

Once it became clear that the oncoming airship was targeting his unit, Captain von Haslang ordered his men to abandon the guns and move off the road into the neighboring fields. There was no point losing soldiers as well as equipment. The airship would pass over them too high for musket fire to be effective. His own guns, designed for the purpose of shooting at them — he’d learned that the up-time term was “anti-aircraft fire” or “ack-ack” — would have been able to reach them. Quite easily, in fact. But the guns were clumsy to deploy and effectively impossible to aim. There was no chance he could get them ready in time to fire on the airship. It would arrive overhead within a minute or two.

So, none of his men were killed. One was injured, not by enemy fire but by tripping over something and spraining his wrist in the fall.

As for the guns…

Happily, they came through mostly unharmed. The bombs dropped by the airship were rather large but had been designed as anti-personnel munitions. Shrapnel that would kill or mutilate a man did mostly cosmetic damage to cannons. Even a small two-inch gun weighed more than a quarter of a ton.

Several of them were dismounted, of course. Two of the carriages were ruined and would need to be replaced; half a dozen more would need to be repaired. But that was simple carpentry work, and there’d be plenty of carpenters in Munich.

Von Haslang finished his inspection and looked up at the sky. By now, the enemy airship was more than a mile away, headed toward Regensburg.

“Bastards,” he heard one of his artillerymen say.

“We’ll have our chance at them soon enough,” the captain said in response. “They’ll come to Munich, don’t think they won’t.”

 

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 19

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 19

Jeff and Gretchen had done the same thing — which Jeff, at least, often felt guilty about. Gretchen… not so much, possibly because her bona fides as a surrogate mother were so well established.

For the whole year they’d been out of the country before and during the Baltic War, their children had been taken care of by Gretchen’s grandmother Veronica. Then, after they got back and Veronica made it crystal clear that she was done with babysitting, they still had plenty of caregivers in the big apartment complex they moved into in Magdeburg.

The children were left entirely in the hands of caregivers after Jeff went off to war and Gretchen moved to Dresden. It hadn’t been until the crisis was over — not more than two months ago — that she’d gone back to Magdeburg to fetch their two boys and bring them back to stay with her. The adopted children had remained behind, since they were much older and all of them by now had settled into work or education situations they didn’t want to change. The only one of the original group who would have been young enough to come with her, little Johann, had been joyously reclaimed by his natural family a couple of years earlier.

From here on in, hopefully, things would settle down. Jeff and Gretchen had discussed the matter — along with a number of CoC leaders — and everyone had agreed that Gretchen would stay in Dresden rather than moving back to Magdeburg. Willi and Joe would now be raised mostly by their mother, with their father helping out whenever he wasn’t on active duty.

And now, it seemed, another child might be added to the mix. Gretchen’s reaction to the news hadn’t been quite a relaxed shrug, but pretty close. Jeff was doing his best to take his cue from her. And… having only middling success. There was a part of his brain — he thought of it as the part labeled “raised on too many up-time anxieties and touchie-feelie TV talk shows” — that kept shrilling at him: Bad parent! Bad parent! Your children will grow up to be drug addicts, derelicts, serial murderers and hedge fund managers!

To Jeff’s surprise, the same courier he’d sent out now came racing back. More time must have passed than he’d realized, while he was musing on things gone by and things still to come. Looking around, he saw that the regiment had indeed made a fair amount of forward progress. It was easy to lose track of exactly how far you’d gotten when you were in the middle of an army on the march.

“The general says we will continue toward Ingolstadt,” said the courier.

That was the answer Jeff had expected. There’d been a meeting of the Third Division staff and regimental commanders before the march began, where Stearns had explained that he intended to threaten to close on Ingolstadt from the east along the south bank of the Danube, while General Heinrich Schmidt and the SoTF’s National Guard closed in from the north. Hopefully, the maneuver would force the Bavarians to abandon the city rather than run the risk of being encircled and trapped in a siege. Both Stearns and Schmidt thought there was a good chance of success, since Duke Maximilian had to be mostly concerned now with holding Munich.

The courier reached into his coat and pulled out a letter. It was just a small sheet of paper folded twice and sealed with a blob of wax. General Stearns must have received the letter and given to the courier to bring to Jeff.

Even before he opened it, Jeff was sure it had to be from Gretchen. No military communication would be sent in this manner.

Sure enough. The message was short and to the point.

Yes. If it’s a girl, we name her Veronica. You pick a boy’s name.

Above Ingolstadt

“Head for the nearest hedgehog pit, Stefano,” Tom Simpson ordered, pointing down and a bit to the left. The sky was mostly overcast but there was plenty of light. Those didn’t look like rain clouds; they certainly didn’t indicate a storm front.

Having made two runs over Ingolstadt already, in both of which they’d been fired upon with no serious damage resulting, Stefano was a lot more relaxed than he had been before. He still wasn’t what anyone would call nerveless and steely-eyed, but he managed to keep his twitching to a minimum and he didn’t fudge on the steering — he headed straight for the nearest hedgehog pit.

Which… didn’t fire on them at all. It wasn’t until they passed almost straight overhead that the reason became apparent: the guns were gone. The rails on which the gun carriages would have rested remained in place, and something — furniture? logs? — was covered with canvas. But as an active and functioning anti-airship emplacement, the hedgehog had been gutted.

“It worked,” Tom said, his voice full of satisfaction. “They’re pulling out. Stefano, head for the bridge across the Danube.”

As the airship veered to the south, Tom examined the city below them through his binoculars. In particular, he was looking to see what had happened to the four ten-inch naval rifles that he, Eddie Cantrell and Heinrich Schmidt had spent a truly miserable three months hauling across Germany a year and a half earlier. The guns had been removed from the wreck of the ironclad Monitor with the purpose of using them against Maximilian of Bavaria in case a siege of Munich developed. In the event, the Bavarian issue had taken a back seat to more pressing conflicts and the guns had wound up being left in Ingolstadt for later use. They’d been there when Ingolstadt was retaken by Bavaria thanks to the treachery of the 1st Battalion. Tom had been forced to leave them behind when he led the surviving loyal troops out of the city on their four-day march to Regensburg. They hadn’t even had time to salvage the artillery unit’s 12-pounders, much less the enormous naval guns.

But now, it seemed, they were going to get them back — or two of them, at any rate. Tom could see the two rifles that had been positioned on the north wall to face Schmidt’s SoTF forces. But when he looked for the two rifles that the Bavarians had positioned to cover the Danube…

“Gone,” he muttered. “I was afraid of that.”

Captain von Eichelberg was standing right next to him, close enough to hear. “They can’t possibly get those guns down to Munich,” he said, frowning.

Tom lowered the binoculars and shook his head. “No, they wouldn’t have even tried. I’m sure they spiked them and then pitched them — well, rolled them, more likely — into the river. We should be able to salvage them, but it’ll take some time.”

He turned to the radio operator, who was standing a few feet away. “Make contact with General Schmidt. And then I’ll want to speak to General Stearns.”

 

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 01

1635: The Wars For The Rhine – Snippet 01

1635: The Wars For The Rhine

Anette Pedersen

Prologue

Cologne

April 1, 1634

“Agreed.”

“D’accord.”

“Agreed.”

Two of the three men at the table stood up, bowed, and left, while the third refilled his glass with wine and took it to the east facing window. There were no lights visible on the ground. The moon was still up, turning the Rhine River into a glittering band of silver, but in the horizon the first pale traces of the false dawn were beginning to show.

Archbishop Ferdinand of Cologne sipped slowly of the wine, and looked towards the section of the Rhine once known as Bishop’s Alley. The Protestant conquest had not stopped until Mainz had fallen, and now only the archbishopric of Cologne remained. But that would change. The Rhine formed the link between central Europe and the western oceans, but Cologne sat as the gate, and Cologne was still his. Tonight he had irrevocably joined in on a desperate and dangerous gamble, but he would win. Not just what had been lost, but all of the middle Rhine, proving to the entire world his might as a statesman of the church. At whatever cost.

Chapter 1

Düsseldorf, the Castle

May, 1634

“Katharina Charlotte, you cannot desert your God-given husband!”

“I’m not going to, Elisabeth,” Charlotte replied, without turning from the window to look at her sister. “I’m simply considering making a short journey up the Rhine to Cologne to ask our mother’s old friend, Archbishop Ferdinand, to help me pray for the safety of my husband and his heir. That I also don’t trust Marshal Turenne, and think that he is making my husband attack Essen for some secret French purpose is entirely beside the point, and probably just one of those funny ideas pregnant women sometimes get.”

“You keep looking for excuses to leave your home and husband, Charlotte, but he was quite within his rights to beat you. It is your duty to obey him in all things, and you told me yourself that you had talked back to him.”

Charlotte shrugged. Three years ago at the barely nubile age of sixteen her father had married her off to his old first cousin Duke Wolfgang of Jülich-Berg. As the third of six daughters she had looked forward to having a household of her own, and all things considered it hadn’t been a bad marriage until the previous autumn, when Ferdinand Phillip, the son she had so proudly — and painfully — born, had died, and her husband had berated her for her weakness in bearing such a fragile wimp. Her answer: that bearing children before she was fully grown was not her idea, had cost her a front tooth, the most unpleasant night she had ever spent, and daily beatings until she showed pregnant again. A plea to her father for protection had resulted only in a lecture on obedience, but now her father was dead, and her husband was taking his heir and his army to try to conquer the rich industrial area of Essen just north of his own land.

Charlotte felt no grief for the death of her father, and certainly didn’t expect to feel any if her husband got himself killed. All scraps of daughterly — never mind wifely — duty and affection had long since been worn away, but if Philipp, her stepson, died she would be carrying the heir to not only some of the Neuburg lands on the Danube, but also the lands of Jülich and Berg here on the Rhine. If that happened, then the guardianship of a living son would be a windfall wanted by every German prince, and that of a living daughter only slightly less so. And if the child died — thus leaving Wolfgang without an heir — then the codicil to her marriage contract that her father had somehow talked Wolfgang into signing meant that Charlotte herself became the trophy. She would be hunted like a twelve-point stag unless she was safely within the protection of someone she could trust. Preferably that would be her young brother, Friedrich. He had been in Italy on his Grand Tour when their father had suddenly died, but he should be coming home by now. Archbishop Ferdinand of Cologne was another possibility, but if she could not reach Friedrich, it might actually be safer just to hide herself somewhere in the City of Cologne. Especially if Wolfgang didn’t do her the favor of getting himself killed. The archbishop would certainly just send her back to Wolfgang, but darling Friedrich was now Count Palatine of Zweibrücken and the new head of her family, and he had quarreled bitterly with their father, when he had agreed to the marriage in return for that mine near Saarbrucken.

Wolfgang of course expected to return in triumph with the gold of Essen at his disposal and all the lands once belonging to his mother’s family firmly within his grasp. This, he believed, would enable him to strike west and start taking the Protestant holdings within the USE. In Charlotte’s opinion that made as much sense as the mad fantasies of Wolfgang’s maternal uncle, Phillip the Insane, whose lack of an heir cost them the lands in the first place.

The campaign had been proposed by the French Marshal Turenne, who had first gotten both the archbishop’s and Wolfgang’s permission to move French troops a few at a time across their lands to gather in Düsseldorf before striking northward. Turenne had paid well for the privilege, and then talked Wolfgang into joining the undertaking of some complex maneuvers that would supposedly take the army of Essen completely by surprise. Charlotte didn’t know enough about warfare to judge whether the plan stood a chance of success, but her question about what the French would actually be gaining in return for their money and men had only resulted in yet another black eye.

As the sound of shouting reached her, Charlotte moved her eyes from the harbor to the street below her window. Cavalrymen wearing her husband’s colors were forcing what was obviously the last speed out of lathered horses. Charlotte opened the casement and leaned out.

“They are dead! They are all dead! The French betrayed us, and the army of Essen is right on our heel!”

“Elisabeth.” Charlotte turned from the window. “Send Harbel to see that the boat is ready, and Maria to attend me in my bedchamber. Then go pack your most valuable possessions, but only what you can carry yourself. We are leaving in as soon as I am ready.”

Vienna, The Palace

“I assure you, the child is mine.” Melchior von Hatzfeldt, Count and General of the Holy Roman Empire, looked with frustration at the man he expected to soon become his liege-lord and emperor.

“I do not doubt you,” Archduke Ferdinand of Austria said with a slight bow of his head, “but it was born less than ten months after old Mansfeld’s death and allowing you to claim it would create a nasty heritage squabble. And I do want their goodwill.  I’m sorry, my dear general, but it is in the best interest of the HRE that you allow your child to be reared as the heir to a quite sizable fortune, and an apparently ever growing influence within the Catholic world. And talking about the Catholic world: I have a task for you.”

Melchior swallowed his protests and rubbed his eyes before nodding. “As you wish.”

“I want you to pay a visit to your family in Cologne, look around the area and report to me when you return. My sister’s marriage to Duke Maximilian should ensure our alliance with Bavaria, but Cologne is an important link to our Spanish cousin in the Netherlands.” Archduke Ferdinand rose from his chair in the sun, and went to pick up a stack of papers on a nearby table. “The furlough, permits, etc. should all be in order. Didn’t you mention that your brother was marrying into the von Worms-Dalberg family this summer?”

 

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 18

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 18

Chapter 9

The Scots cavalryman came racing toward Jeff Higgins at a speed which he considered utterly reckless given that the horseman was galloping across an open field rather than a well-groomed racetrack. He’d ascribe the man’s deranged behavior to his Celtic genes; these were the same people, after all, who saw no problem in walking through wild vegetation in kilts and thought bagpipes were an instrument of musical entertainment. But Jeff had seen plenty of German, Spanish and French cavalrymen do the same thing — and Polish hussars would do it wearing heavy armor, which made them certifiably insane.

The Scotsman arrived at Jeff’s side, pulled up his horse, pointed in the direction from which he’d come and said something which Jeff interpreted — more or less — as: “the bastards are over there! Bavarian cavalry! A mile away!” Linguists would probably insist that the man was speaking a dialect of English, whereas Jeff considered it the equivalent of a foreign tongue altogether. By now, though, he’d had enough experience with Mackay’s troops to be able to make some sense out of it.

“Which way are they headed?” he asked.

The Highlander understood real English much better than Jeff understood his language — his “dialect,” rather. He rattled off something in reply which Jeff interpreted as the cowardly bastards are running away from us.

Translating that derisive remark into coherent military tactics meant that the enemy scouts were probably doing what they were supposed to do once they made contact with the enemy, which was to report back to their commanders. Just as this Highlander had done himself, no doubt ordered to do so by Alex Mackay.

Jeff turned toward one of the two men riding just behind him who served as his couriers. The man was close enough to have heard the Scotsman’s words himself, but Jeff wasn’t sure how well he’d have understood them. “Report to General Stearns that Colonel Mackay has encountered Bavarian cavalry. They’re apparently engaged in reconnaissance since they retreated as soon as contact was made.”

The man raced off — galloping his horse just about as recklessly as the Scotsman had done. And yet he seemed to all appearances to be a sober and level-headed Westphalian. Jeff sometimes wondered if there was an unknown characteristic of horses — a parasite, perhaps, or maybe a virus — that infected people who spent too much time in close proximity and caused them to lose their minds. He determined — again — to spend as little time on horseback as he could manage.

In a civilized historical period, he’d have been able to send a report to his commanding general using a radio while seated in a natural form of transport like a Humvee — hell, he’d settle for a World War II era Jeep, for that matter. In this day and age, though, officers were expected to ride horses. And while the army did have radios at its disposal, there still weren’t enough yet — or enough qualified radio operators, which was often more of a problem — to make them a widespread form of communication. Every infantry Jeff’s Hangman regiment did have its own radio operators, as did every regiment and artillery battery. Unfortunately, the operator Jeff regularly used, Jimmy Andersen, was somewhere a few hundred yards back — where he’d been ordered to stay so as not to risk the regiment’s one and only headquarters radio. Jeff would have had to send a courier to the radio operator in order to relay the message, and if the courier had any trouble finding Jimmy — which he almost certainly would since an army of more than ten thousand men on a march through a seventeenth century countryside on seventeenth century so-called “roads” was anything but neat and orderly — it would take the message longer to get to General Stearns than just having the courier do the whole thing himself.

Such were the realities of “combined technology” as the basis for military operations. Sometimes it worked. More often than not, it was a muddle. Sometimes, a sorry joke.

As he did whenever he found himself sliding into what he called early modern angst, Jeff pulled himself out with a memory of Gretchen. In this instance — o happy remembrance — with an image of the way she’d looked the morning after they re-encountered each other when the Third Division relieved the siege of Dresden. She was smiling up at him while lying in their bed wearing absolutely nothing, which — o happy coincidence — was exactly the costume he’d been wearing himself at the time.

They’d been a little reckless the night before. Gretchen was normally as disciplined as a Prussian martinet when it came to maintaining the rhythm method of so-called birth control. But… It wasn’t every day, after all, that husband and wife were reunited right after escaping death and destruction, which they’d both faced the day before.

Another memory came to him now, of the way Gretchen had looked just a few weeks ago on the morning he’d left with the Third Division to march to Regensburg. Looking at him — fully clothed, this time — with a smile on her face that was a perhaps a tad rueful but mostly just what Jeff thought of as Gretchen Richter taking life as it comes.

“I think I’m pregnant again,” she’d said. “Won’t be sure for a while, but I think so.”

By now, she’d probably know one way or the other. But how she’d get the word to him while he was on campaign was uncertain.

Jeff could remember a time — though it was a bit vaguely, now, because it was back up-time — when the possibility that a wife might have another child would be a source of either great joy and anticipation or anxiety and doubt. Leaving aside the pack of children whom Gretchen had adopted, she and Jeff already had two kids of their own. Jeff wasn’t the natural father of the older boy, Wilhelm. But he’d been an infant, less than a year old, when Jeff and Gretchen had gotten married so the issue was irrelevant. Jeff was the only father Willi had ever known.

But in this as in so many ways, the attitude of people born and raised in the seventeenth century was rather different. In an era of haphazard birth control methods and high infant mortality, people had a much more pragmatic attitude toward bearing and raising children. It could sometimes seem downright cold-blooded to up-timers.

Down-timers were less reliant on the nuclear family than up-timers were accustomed to. It was taken for granted that children would spend much of their time growing up with other relatives and even, for well-to-do people, with nursemaids, governesses and tutors. In some of the more extreme cases, parents might see very little of a child of theirs from the time it was weaned until it finished his or her education.

 

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 62

This book should be available now so this is the last snippet.

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 62

“Positive,” Tully said. “Get back to your squads. Life in general may be about to get ‘interesting’ again.”

The two guards both gave a brief rendition of obedience-to-orders, and headed back up the corridor.

Tully shook his head. “‘Goes Oppuk’, huh? I haven’t heard that one before.” The meaning was obvious, though, and he started to grin.

“Oh, yeah, Colonel,” Boyes said with a matching grin. “That’s been making the rounds for a while. Came out of Terra taif, of course. It’s got human written all over it.”

Tully laughed. “Too right, Boyes, too right. Only a human would think of something like that.” He laughed again, then said, “Come on, Sergeant. Let’s go see what kind of trouble we can get into on the Lex.”

****

Caitlin turned as the command deck door to the main lifts irised open again. The last time it had been Vaughan returning from grabbing a fast meal, accompanied by Caewithe Miller. That had saved Caitlin from having to summon her bodyguard captain, who was on her off-shift but would have wanted to be here for this.

This time the door opened to admit Gabe Tully, Lim, a jinau that she assumed was Sergeant Boyes, and a Khûrûsh-an who could only be the captive officer Kamozh entered the command deck. Gabe started toward her, but her eyes were drawn to the sight of Kamozh seeing the main view screen. He froze, eyes narrowed and fixed on the recording. After watching a few loops of it, he raised up on his hind feet, turned to Lim and spoke loudly and rapidly, all four hands moving in the air. He stopped, waited a long moment, then something in a low tone as he dropped down to his mid-hands and settled his hindquarters on the deck.

“So what did he say?” Caitlin asked. “He looked pretty excited.”

“Rhan Kamozh says that the view screen is lying to you.”

“Oooo-kay,” Caitlin responded. “How does he get that out of that little bit of picture and that message?”

“First, the . . . person . . . in the recording is wearing the robes and crest of a clan that died out close to two hundred Terran years ago, with the markings of the clan-heir at that. Second, the person is female, and very very few of them are allowed off-planet farther than the orbit of Khûr-liyo.”

Lim’s voice almost sounded dry at that point. Caitlyn thought for a moment that there was a disapproving note in her voice. Lim went on, and Caitlyn dropped that train of thought.

“Third, the very fact that she is calling you is treason, for the Khûr-melkh Sheshahng–think of him as an emperor–decreed long generations ago that there was to be no contact between our people and the devils from the outer dark. It is treason, and an affront to re-heshyt,” here Lim used a Khûrûshil word that she didn’t bother to translate right then. “Such would be unthinkable to any right-living Khûrûsh-an. So therefore, he says, it is obvious that the view screen is lying to you.”

The door had irised open in the middle of Lim’s translation. Yaut and Wrot had entered the command deck, followed by Aille and Pleniary-superior Tura. The four Jao had stood to listen to the rest of the translation.

When Lim finished, she placed both hands on the staff she had entered with. Caitlin decided she would ask about that later. Kamozh folded his upper arms and leaned back a bit.

Caitlin looked at where Fleet Commander Dannet had joined the group around Aille. Tura and Dannet both had flawless neutral angles that nonetheless were distinctive to each. Wrot and Yaut were displaying something on the order of simple-curiosity, although Yaut’s had a definite flavor of impatient from the tilt of his head.

Aille, on the other hand, was displaying a posture that was so rare Caitlin had only seen it recorded, never in action: concession-to-oudh. Her mouth twisted. Aille was making it very clear without a single word that the decision to be made was hers alone.

Caitlin didn’t look at Ed. She felt him stir just a bit, though, and turn to face her at a slight angle. He said nothing–he didn’t have to. She knew he would support her in anything she decided, as would Gabe Tully. She drew a great deal of comfort and strength from that, as she faced what might be the most important decision ever made by Jao or humans alike.

She took a deep breath, and held it for just a moment. Caitlin could feel the eyes of everyone on the command deck resting on her–humans, Jao, Lleix, and Khûrûsh alike–waiting to see what she would do.

“Fleet Commander Dannet,” she finally said, “Return a signal, please.”

“As you direct, Director Kralik,” Dannet replied. “And the message?”

Caitlin considered that for a moment, then gave another wry grin and said, “We hear you. What do you want?”

Dannet’s angles flowed from neutral into obedience-to-instructions. But then, without a pause, they flowed into gratified-respect, which was more than Caitlin had ever thought she would ever receive from the fleet commander.

As Dannet turned away to give orders and Pyr, Lim and Kamozh moved to a nearby workstation, Caitlin looked over at the rest of what she thought of as her command group. Tully was grinning the biggest grin she had ever seen on his face. Ed had moved to stand behind her. She couldn’t see his face, but she could feel the bedrock of his presence. Aille and the others, even Tura, all slipped into an echo of gratified-respect, which just for a moment caused her vision to blur.

“Well done, Caitlin,” Aille said. “Well done.”

 

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 17

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 17

As soon as she was seated, the emperor went straight to the point.

“I have a proposal to make,” he said. “Not to you alone — not by any means — but I am starting with you because if you are not willing to accept the proposal the rest will be pointless.”

She braced herself. The most likely proposal she could imagine would be something on the lines of: You, Frau Richter, must go into exile, preferably to someplace in the New World. In exchange, I will make this or that concession to your band of radical malcontents.

“The proposal is this. I will agree to remove imperial administration from Saxony, Mecklenburg, the Oberpfalz and Württemberg. I will also allow Württemberg to form its own province separate from the rest of Swabia. And, finally, I will allow all four provinces to become self-governing with a republican structure of some sort.”

For an instant, a look of exasperation came and went on his face. “One of the reasons I’m agreeing to this is to save myself the grief of trying to referee the claims of far too many Hochadel to these areas. But the main reason is to see if you and I can reach… what to call it? A modus vivendi, let us say.”

Gretchen’s knowledge of Latin ranged from poor to dismal. Some of her uncertainty must have shown because Ernst Wettin spoke up, for the first time. “His Majesty is using the Latin phrase the way the up-timers do. It refers to an arrangement — something of an informal agreement, if you will, but still binding — that enables parties with conflicting interests or goals to nonetheless coexist peacefully and without resort to violence on either side. This arrangement may be temporary — it usually is — but it can also last indefinitely.”

Gretchen looked back at Gustav Adolf. “I see. And what would you want from me in exchange? By ‘me,’ of course, we’re referring to the Committees of Correspondence.”

“Actually, no — or at least, not entirely.” The emperor leaned forward and fixed her with an intent gaze. “Much of this is specific to you. What I want in exchange — will insist upon, in fact — is that you must agree to run for election as the governor of Saxony.”

Of all the things Gretchen had foreseen as possibilities, that one had never occurred to her even once.

“Me? Governor?” She almost gasped the words. “But — whatever for?”

Gustav Adolf nodded at Ernst Wettin. “I will let him explain. Since it was his proposal to begin with.” He grinned and barked out a laugh. “Ha! And be sure I was just as astonished then as you are now. What a mad idea!”

He leaned back in his chair, still chuckling. “But… one with great merit, once he explained.”

Gretchen looked back at Wettin.

“It’s quite simple, really. I’ve spent months with you in Saxony now. Me as the official administrator of the province — and you as the person who really wields the power.” Wettin shook his head. “The arrangement is simply untenable, Gretchen. It must be settled — whichever way. The formal power must coincide with the real power, or government itself becomes impossible. Certainly in the long run.”

“But… but… I have been assuming all along, Ernst, that if Saxony became a republic that you yourself would run for governor.”

Ernst nodded. “And so I will. I would say ‘with the emperor’s permission’ but he’s already given it to me.”

“More precisely, I insisted on it.” Gustav Adolf pointed at Wettin with a large forefinger. “Make no mistake about it. Ernst Wettin has my confidence and I will certainly be urging all Saxons to vote for him instead of you.”

He grinned again. “Ernst tells me, though — I find this quite shocking! — that the pigheaded and surly Saxons are likely to ignore me and vote for you instead. If you run, that is.”

“And if you don’t,” said Wettin, now leaning forward himself, “here is what will happen. The Fourth of July Party will certainly run a candidate, but they won’t garner more votes that I will. They don’t have much of an organization in Saxony, as you know. I estimate we would each wind up with about thirty percent of the vote. The rest…”

He shrugged. “The Vogtlanders will probably pick up fifteen percent or so. The reactionaries — assuming they manage to form a common front — could pick up perhaps ten percent. If they run as squabbling individuals, which is more likely, they’d wind up with less.”

Gretchen’s Latin might be wretched but her grasp of arithmetic was excellent. She’d had no trouble following the calculations. “That leaves fifteen to twenty percent.”

“The church, I think. In one form or another.”

She followed that logic also. Saxony had a solidly Lutheran population and the clergy commanded a great deal of respect. Everyone who was uncertain would tend to listen to their pastors — would seek them out for advice, in fact.

“A mess, in other words,” Wettin concluded. “No one would have a majority. I’d probably have a plurality, so if we adopted an American-style governor structure — what they call the presidential system — I’d become the new executive outright. If we adopted the more common German system wherein a republican province’s executive is not separate from the legislature — the parliamentary system, in the up-time lexicon — then I’d have to negotiate with others to form a cabinet.”

He threw up his hands. “And wouldn’t that be a delight! Assuming the Fourth of July Party is the opposition and the Vogtlanders bloc with them — which they generally would — I’d have to form a coalition with pastors and reactionaries. The first of whom tend to be impractical when it comes to world affairs and the others…”

He smiled now, albeit thinly. “There’s an American quip I’m fond of — which they stole from a Frenchman, I think. ‘They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.’ That summarizes perfectly, I think, the state of mind of the nation’s reactionaries. What would really happen, of course, is that effective power would continue to be in your hands. It’s just not workable, Gretchen. Either I rule or you rule — one or the other. Straightforward and visible to all.”

Gretchen had already seen the flaw in the logic. “Then why not simply ask — insist, if you will — that I leave Saxony altogether?”

She looked away from Wettin to Gustav Adolf. “There’d be a great deal of unrest if you did, but it wouldn’t rise to the level of violence. Not unless I called for it, and I’m not that stupid. That would be –”

She managed to cut herself off before saying: would be playing into your hands.

The emperor nodded, as if with satisfaction. “It’s nice to be negotiating with someone who’s not a fool. You’re right, of course. You could rouse the people to rebellion against a brute like Báner, who was threatening a massacre. But against Ernst? Or even worse, against me? When all we asked was for one person to please leave the province?”

But she’d already left all that behind because she’d finally realized the true nature of the proposal.

She was quite startled. She wouldn’t have thought that an emperor — first among nobles — would be that shrewd and astute.

He probably wouldn’t have come up with the idea on his own, of course. But he’d been shrewd enough and astute enough to be persuaded by Ernst Wettin.

“You don’t want me to leave Saxony,” she said. “You want me to stay.”

She gave Wettin a look that was almost accusatory. “Because you think I’d win the election.”

“In a landslide, if we have a presidential system.” Wettin shrugged. “More complicated, with a parliamentary one, since you’d have to run officially as a member of a party rather than as an individual. But that would just add a minor curlicue. The Fourth of July people would be delighted to have you take up their banner. But if you chose to you could simply run as the candidate of the Gretchen Richter Party.”

She looked back at the emperor. And, for the first time in her life, had a sense of what a wild lion or tiger felt when they confronted a tamer.

Gustav Adolf apparently sensed her thoughts because his expression became quite sympathetic. “Don’t think of it as being housebroken, Frau Richter — or may I call you Gretchen, in private?”

Mutely, she nodded.

“This is something that Michael Stearns has always understood, you know. Eventually, a revolutionary must either” — he looked at Wettin — “what’s that crude but charming expression he likes?”

“Shit or get off the pot.”

“Yes, that one.” He turned back to Gretchen. “Once you become powerful enough — which you are, today, certainly in Saxony — then you must decide. Either try to overthrow the existing power or claim it for your own. But what you cannot do — not for long — is try to straddle those two options.”

“You want me to become respectable.” The word came out like an accusation.

She could see that Gustav Adolf was doing his best to suppress another grin. “Ah… Gretchen. I am told there exists a painting of you done by no less an artist than Rubens that hangs in the royal palace in Brussels. Apparently the King in the Netherlands, as he likes to style himself, thinks it makes a useful cautionary reminder.”

She sniffed. “Yes, I’ve heard about that.”

“And in that painting –”

“My tits are bare. Yes, I know. I remember quite well. It was a cold day and I maintained that pose for hours. What is your point?” A bit belatedly, she remembered to add: “Your Majesty.”

“My point is that I think no matter how long you live you will never have to fear the horrid fate of slumping into dull and undistinguished respectability.”

“I will need to think about this,” she said.

The emperor nodded. “Yes, of course.”

“And I will need to discuss it with other members of the Committees of Correspondence here in Magdeburg. That will include, you understand, Spartacus and Gunther Achterhof.”

“Yes, of course. May I also suggest you discuss it with Rebecca Abrabanel. And Herr Piazza also, if you choose. He’s resident here.”

“Yes, of course,” she said.

The emperor rose. “That’s it, then. When may I expect an answer, Gretchen?”

She came to her feet as well. “Soon.”

He smiled. “Just as I thought.”

 

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 16

1636: The Ottoman Onslaught – Snippet 16

Chapter 8

Magdeburg, capital of the United States of Europe

This time, the plane landed with only a couple of slight bumps and came to a halt where and when and in the manner it was supposed to. Gretchen was still relieved when the plane finally came to a stop. Even the short period when it was driving across the tarmac on wheels under its own power made her nervous. For some reason, Eddie called it “taxiing” even though the exercise had no relationship Gretchen could determine with the famous postal service of Thurn and Taxis.

She hadn’t like flying the first time she did it, she hadn’t liked it this time, and she didn’t imagine she ever would.

That said, they had gotten from Dresden to Magdeburg in about an hour. It would have taken her several days on horseback and longer if she’d walked.

“Thank you,” she said politely, after Junker helped her to the ground. “The trip was very… uneventful.”

Eddie grinned. “Not pleasant, though, I take it.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think I will ever…” She broke off, seeing what looked like a small mob headed in their direction.

“What’s this?” she wondered.

“Your greeting, I imagine.”

Gretchen frowned. “Why are this many people coming to meet me?”

Eddie studied her for a moment, with a quizzical expression on his face. Then he grinned again. “I will say this, Gretchen Richter. It is perhaps the most reassuring thing about you that you really don’t know the answer to that question.”

Her frown deepened. “That makes no sense at all.”

Eddie left off any reply. By then, the lead elements in the procession had come within greeting distance and they’d sorted themselves out as a separate group from the rest. Tentatively, Gretchen classified the four coming forward as the actual delegation, while the others were simply servants or assistants of some sort.

“Frau Richter,” said the worthy at the head of the column. “Welcome to Magdeburg. I am General Lars Kagg. The emperor asked me to provide you with an escort to the royal palace.”

The general was wearing the sort of apparel you’d expect from a court official, not anything that resembled a military uniform. But that was no cause for surprise. The Swedes — this was true of most German rulers as well — made no sharp distinction between military and civilian posts. Officials of either sort were expected to be at the disposal of the state and prepared to assume whatever responsibilities were given them, in whatever location they were instructed to place themselves.

Kagg had a booming way of speaking, but he seemed courteous enough. Gretchen tentatively ascribed the loudness of his voice to nature rather than to any attempt on the general’s part at intimidation.

Kagg turned partway around and gestured to the men just behind him. “If you would allow me to make some introductions…”

The first man he brought forward was, like Kagg himself, somewhere in early middle age.

“This is Colonel Johan Botvidsson. He’s serving me at the moment as my aide-de-camp.”

The name was familiar. Tata had mentioned the man to Gretchen a few times. He’d been one of the Swedish general Nils Brahe’s aides when Brahe had been administering the Province of the Main. As Gretchen recalled, Tata’s impression of him had been favorable.

“And this is his aide, Captain Erik Stenbock.” As had the colonel before him, Captain Stenbock acknowledged her with a stiff little bow. The stiffness was simply the Swedish court style, not an indication of any particular attitude.

Stenbock was quite a bit younger than either Kagg or Botvidsson. He seemed to be in his early twenties.

General Kagg now gestured at the fourth man in the group. “And this is Erik Gabrielsson Emporagrius.”

Kagg assigned Emporagrius no specific post, rank, title or position, which Gretchen found interesting in itself. From subtleties in the general’s demeanor that she would have found it impossible to specify, she got the sense that — unlike the two military figures he’d introduced, to whom he seemed quite favorably inclined — he had no great liking for this fourth fellow.

At first glance, Gretchen had assumed Emporagrius to be close in age to Kagg and Botvidsson. But looking at him more closely she realized that was due to the severe expression on his face, a sort of facial acidity that made him seem older than he really was. She didn’t think he was actually much older than thirty or so.

Emporagrius returned her gaze with an unblinking stare. He made no gesture with his head that bore even the slightest suggestion of a nod.

The introductions completed, Kagg now gestured at the gaggle of servants standing a short distance away.

“And now, Frau Richter, we have carriages ready to transport you to the palace.”

There were plenty of towns in Europe where riding in a carriage was likely to result in bruises — sometimes even broken bones. In such places, people would choose to ride in litters suspended between two horses rather than risk direct contact with the ground transmitted by unforgiving wheels. Most of Magdeburg’s streets were hard-packed dirt, but the main streets of the capital were superb, compared to those of any town or city in the continent except those of Grantville.

****

Another surprise awaited Gretchen once they arrived at the palace. The chambers that Kagg ushered her into amounted to a suite. She’d been expecting something more closely akin to a room that a servant might occupy.

Why were they doing this? Gretchen’s ingrained hostility toward the aristocracy — and kings and emperors were just top shelf nobility — made her suspicious.

They were trying to soften her up! Fool her into… into…

At that point, her sense of humor came to her rescue. Yes, no doubt all these courtesies were designed for the purpose of softening her up. But she remembered Mike Stearns once making the quip: “If I was scared to death of being softened up, I’d never bathe. Is it really better to stink?”

She turned to Kagg and said: “Thank you. This is very nice. When am I supposed to talk to the emperor? And where?”

“The ‘when’ depends on you, Frau Richter. The emperor thought you might want to rest for a bit after the — ah — ardors of your travels.”

Gretchen made a little snorting sound. “What ardors? I admit that flying makes me very nervous, but it’s about as physically strenuous as sitting in a rocking chair. I am ready to meet with the emperor whenever…”

She’d been on the verge of competing the sentence with “whenever it suits His Majesty.” But that seemed excessively subservient.

“Now, if he wants,” she concluded.

Kagg nodded. “In that case, please follow me.”

****

There were enough servants of various sorts in the palace that at least some of them rushed ahead to warn the emperor that she was coming. So, by the time Kagg ushered her into an even more palatial suite — this one a meeting chamber, though, not a sleeping one — Gustav Adolf was awaiting her in a chair, alertly observant as she came in.

They’d never actually met, in the sense of being introduced, although on three previous occasions they’d been in the same room together. On the first of those occasions, Gustav Adolf had been standing over the corpse of the Croat cavalryman whose skull he’d split open with the sword in his hand. And the sword had been dripping blood, unnoticed by the Swedish king, onto the trouser leg of Gretchen’s husband, who was lying on his back with a wound in his shoulder.

That memory brought Gretchen up short, for an instant. She’d come into the chamber braced for a fight, but now she found herself disarmed. Whatever else — whatever divided them, whatever disputes they might have — she owed this man her husband’s life. And, probably, the lives of dozens and possibly hundreds of children who’d also been in the high school that day. It was not likely that, on their own, Gretchen and Dan Frost and a busload of police cadets could have driven off the thousand or so Croats who were assaulting the school. Not without Gustav Adolf and the hundreds of cavalrymen he’d brought in time.

She cleared her throat. “Your Majesty, I do not believe I ever thanked you for saving my husband’s life. That day at the school in Grantville.”

The emperor’s eyes widened. “I wasn’t aware that I had, Frau Richter.” Then, as the memory came to him, he snapped his fingers. “Yes, now I recall! You were the young lady who was clutching the fellow that Croat was about to cut down. Ha! I never realized until this moment that you and she were the — ah… the same Gretchen Richter.”

Gretchen couldn’t help but smile. “The notorious Gretchen Richter, you meant to say.”

Gustav Adolf made a little dismissive gesture. “Notorious, yes — but notorious to whom, exactly? I am not unaware that you were the central figure in holding together the population of Amsterdam when they successfully resisted the Spanish besieging the city. Today, of course, we are on quite good terms with those same Spaniards — not allied, no, but still on good terms. But would we have had that outcome without you? Probably not, I suspect.”

He seemed to sit a bit straighter. “And I am certainly not unaware that you were — no one doubts this at all, certainly not Ernst –” He nodded toward a figure sitting in another chair off to the side. Gretchen was a bit startled to see that it was Ernst Wettin. She’d been so pre-occupied with the emperor that she hadn’t noticed him at all.

“– the central figure in holding Dresden firm against the threat of Báner.” The imperial jaw tightened. “Who followed Axel into treason.”

His momentary dark mood vanished almost at once. He gestured toward a third chair, which was positioned approximately equidistant from his own and that occupied by Wettin. “But please, take a seat. We have much to discuss.”

As she sat down, Gretchen glanced over her shoulder and saw that Kagg had left the room. Except for two servants standing by a doorway — not the one she’d come in but one that was too distant for the servants to overhear their conversation — the three of them were alone in the room.

So. Apparently this was to be a genuinely private and informal discussion. That had been one of the possibilities, but the one she’d least expected.

 

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 61

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 61

Chapter 35

Caitlin turned as Ed stirred while Vaughan tapped controls and spoke into his mic. “Lleix?” he muttered.

“Yeah, they’re the only ones who speak Khûrûsh,” Caitlin said quietly.

“Oh, yeah,” Ed said. “I forgot about the prisoners.”

Vaughan finished talking, and Caitlin looked at him. “Are Aille and Tura still on Lexington?”

Vaughan tapped pads on his workstation. “No, Director. They appear to be back on Footloose.”

Before Caitlin could respond to that, the door irised open and Pyr emerged. “Garhet will be here soon,” he said as soon as he stepped onto the deck. “He was asleep when the directive reached us.”

Dannet waved at the cycling message on the main view screen. “What is that saying?”

Pyr listened to three iterations of the message. “The message is three short statements,” he said after that. “‘We know you have Khûrûsh prisoners. We want to talk. Respond on a reciprocal bearing.”

“Do we have any idea where they are?” Caitlin asked in a tone that was much calmer that she felt.

Dannet waved to Terra-Captain Uldra.

“No, Director. And there is no guarantee that we would locate them by following the signal path. There are too many ways to re-direct a signal.”

“But,” Dannet added, “they cannot be very far away. They do know that we took prisoners from that Khûrûshil ship. Light speed signals of the event and any Khûrûshil communications about it will limit how far out they can be and still be able to contact us with a laser.”

“We have no idea who they are, where they are, or how many of them there are.” Caitlin’s statement was not a question.

“Correct, Director.” From Terra-Captain Uldra.

Caitlin looked at Vaughan. “Send a request to Footloose advising Aille and Tura that something new has come up and requesting them to join us on the Lex. Send an order to Ban Chao. I want Colonel Tully, Lim, the Khûrûsh officer and the sergeant that captured him on this deck ten minutes ago.”

“Yes, Director.”

Vaughan started tapping pads as Caitlin turned away. After a moment, she looked back over her shoulder. “And have somebody locate Wrot and wake up Captain Miller. I want them up here as well.”

****

Vaughan almost slammed his meal tray down on the table next to Caewithe’s. “Sorry,” he said, “but I’ve got to eat and run.”

Caewithe’s mouth twisted. “I thought you were supposed to be going off shift. What about a swim and some fun?”

“Sorry,” Vaughan mumbled through a mouthful of sandwich. “We just got a new contact, and Dannet wants me back on the command deck in ten.”

“A new contact?” Caewithe sat up straight. “Does Caitlin know about this yet?”

“Oh, yeah.” Crumbs shot out of Vaughan’s mouth as he tried to speak. He swallowed manfully. It almost hurt to watch the mouthful go down. “Yeah, she’s on the command deck, with Tamt and some of the bodyguards.”

“Figures.” Caewithe grabbed her fork and started shoveling food in her mouth. “I’ll come with you,” she said. “If I can’t see you off-shift, I’ll have to settle for on.”

The two inhaled their dinners, and stood to carry their trays to disposal. Before Vaughan could get his hands on his tray, Caewithe grabbed the front of his shirt and planted a hard kiss on his mouth. “Not that I’m complaining,” he said when they came up for air, “but what was that for.”

“A promise to each other,” Caewithe said with a grin. “Next chance we get, we’re going swimming. I’ve got another new swimsuit.”

Vaughan groaned as he gathered his tray. “You’re killing me, woman. Where do you find new swimsuits in the middle of alien space light years from any human store?”

“I have my ways,” she said smugly, leading the way to the tray disposal chute.

****

Tully grabbed his go-bag from the hands of his orderly, Corporal Swift, and turned back to Major Liang and First Sergeant Luff. “No, I don’t know what’s going on. I just got orders to get Lim, Boyes, Kamozh, and myself over to the Lex sometime yesterday.”

“Something’s up,” Liang said.

“Ya think?” Tully gave a short bark of a laugh. “Whatever it is has apparently got Caitlin really up in the air, or she wouldn’t have ordered it that way. So, being the sneaky, underhanded, pessimistic sort that I am, put the troops on first stage alert. I have no idea what’s going on, but let’s get prepped for it anyway. I want them ready for action at fifteen minutes notice.”

“Got it, Colonel,” the XO said, buttressed by a firm nod from the first sergeant.

“See to it,” Tully said, and headed out the compartment door. “Sergeant Boyes, where are you?” he said through his communications bud.

“Just handed off to my assistant squad leader, Colonel,” came the reply. “Running for the shuttle bay now.”

“Right. I’d better not beat you there.” Tully paused a beat, then said, “Command.”

“Yes, Colonel Tully?” was the response from a command deck com tech.

“Where are Lim and the Khûrûsh prisoner?”

“Waiting at the shuttle bay, with guards.”

“Right. Tully out.”

A few minutes later, after going around three corners and down one deck, Tully arrived at the door to the shuttle bay. Lim and Kamozh were indeed waiting for him, as was Sergeant Boyes and two jinau serving as guards.

“Lead the way, Lim.” Tully waved a hand in the direction of the waiting shuttle.

The Lleix looked down at the Khûrûsh-an at her side, and said something in the language. He made a movement with his left middle hand, and they stepped off through the door.

Tully looked at the two guards, both Jao. “We’ll take it from here, guys.”

“Are you sure, Colonel?” one of them replied. “If that one goes Oppuk on you, he’s equipped with a lot of natural blades to make your life ‘interesting’, as you humans say.”

 

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 60

The Span Of Empire – Snippet 60

Chapter 34

“Ship 15497 reports that the framepoint has been placed and tested and is now working properly. They confirm that they have activated the firewall so that no Ekhat can access it.”

Lieutenant Vaughan delivered the report to Fleet Commander Dannet as soon as she entered the command deck. He had to suppress a chuckle, though. “Firewall” was one of the human words that had become almost ubiquitous among the Jao in the fleet, for some reason. The Jao had a perfectly good equivalent term for the security concept, but it was four syllables long, and for some reason the fleet techs had latched onto the human word instead, to the amusement of the humans in the crews.

Dannet, pelt still damp from a good hard swim, spoke to the communications tech on duty. “Tell all ships to add it to their files.”

Flue leaned back in his workstation seat. The last five days since they had crossed the cometary ring and moved into the deepest space outside the Khûr system had been good for the fleet, he thought. Everyone had been so tensed up from the long jumps, and then the combative situation they had jumped into here, that they had all been super-keyed up. Even most of the Jao, who could have served as dictionary definitions of ‘phlegmatic’, had been jumpy.

Getting out of the combat zone and letting the crews stand down had been a good start, he thought. Taking the time to transfer some crew and supplies from the newly arrived ships to the rest of the fleet had also helped lower the stress levels a bit. And just several days of regular activity had been good.

All in all, he decided, things were calmer now than they had been for some time. He almost wished something would happen.

An alert went up on the main view screen, echoed on Flue’s workstation panel. I was kidding! he almost yelled as he jerked straight and sent his hands dancing across his control pads. I was kidding!

“Targeted by a laser!” one of the human techs yelled.

“Gamma-ray frequencies,” a Jao tech elaborated.

“Very narrow dispersion,” the first tech continued in a calmer voice, “low amplitude.”

Communications laser, Flue thought.

“Source?” Terra-Captain Uldra snapped.

There was a momentary silence as the techs queried their instruments. “Five degrees above ecliptic,” the human tech responded at last. “Uh . . . and it’s hitting our shields at a location and angle that places the source outside our orbit.”

“Fleet to alert status,” Dannet ordered. She looked to Flue. “Inform Director Kralik.”

Before Flue could do so, the Jao tech spoke loudly over the increased noise of the command deck, “Signal is modulated.”

Oh, boy.

****

Third-Mordent responded to a summons from Ninth-Minor-Sustained, finding her ancestress in the harmony master’s main performance hall, where Third-Mordent had first met her. There were no choirs today; no performances; no dance. There was, however, a male standing near the harmony master. She froze after two steps past the entry, forehand blades beginning to emerge.

“Stand,” Ninth-Minor-Sustained fluted. There was no command in the tone, no imperative. Only calm certainty.

Third-Mordent eased her forehand blades back into their sheathes and stepped carefully farther out into the hall, all the while examining the male. He looked familiar. His posture was tense, but he was not in or near predator mode–his head was held up and his manipulators were held high, digits folded away.

Just as Third-Mordent recognized the male as the last one with which she had blade-danced, he began to croon, stepping away from Ninth-Minor-Sustained. It was a simple sound, almost an arietta, though not quite, high-pitched, slow-moving, resonating within her.

Third-Mordent fell into synchrony with the male, dancing with him slowly. She unsheathed her forehand blades.

The male did not respond in kind, instead dancing in a circle around Third-Mordent, still crooning. Third-Mordent felt herself responding to the dance and the song, mirroring his steps while moving her forehand blades between them, beginning to echo his song. It disturbed her that she was responding rather than rejecting. It further disturbed her that Ninth-Minor-Sustained was not intervening.

The male extended a manipulator as he danced, pointing it at Third-Mordent. The digits unfolded, revealing one of them to be unnaturally long, with a bulbous bioluminescent tip literally glowing a sharp green color. Her eyes locked to that light instantly, and her voice strengthened as it sang the male’s song.

They danced together now, step matching step, note matching note, circling around a common center, narrowing the span with each completed orbit. Third-Mordent found that she could not unsynchronize with the male now. As he stepped, she stepped. If he dipped his head, her head dipped. She could feel his mind close to hers, his thoughts . . .

Suddenly the male stood directly before Third-Mordent, green-glowing digit raised before her eyes, his song flowing through the channels of her mind. Her steps slowed to a bare movement. Her forehand blades drooped as the glowing digit approached her. Her head raised to full extension, and her contribution to the song ceased as her mouth dropped open and the physiognomy of the interior of her mouth shifted. Cartilaginous flaps moved, sealing off both the primary trachea and the esophageal channel. She could feel them move, feel the changes happening in her body as a previously closed channel was opened.

The digit with its green bulb entered her mouth. Third-Mordent could feel it pass her outer teeth. It moved deeper, and suddenly she gave a violent twitch as her secondary masticators snapped shut and severed the digit behind the green glow.

The male whipped his manipulator out of her mouth. Third-Mordent’s primary teeth grazed the manipulator’s tegument as they reflexively closed.

Her entire body locked in place as she felt the severed digit with its packet of genetic codes being moved by the musculature of her mouth toward the newly opened channel. Slowly it moved, until it tipped over the edge and was moved down the channel by peristalsis until it arrived in the fertilization chamber.

The flaps moved back to their normal positions, sealing off the fertilization channel and opening back up the primary trachea and esophageal channel. Third-Mordent felt her head release and drop. Her forehand blades returned to their sheathes. She noted that the male’s manipulator had retreated close to his body, digits all folded away.

Ninth-Minor-Sustained stepped closer, halting when the male’s song took on a warning note and he stepped between them.

“You are now mated to Fourth-Tone-Quaver,” Ninth-Minor-Sustained sang to Third-Mordent in a panegyric form. “He is the best of your generation. Your progeny will be strong.”

****

The door to the command deck irised open. Caitlin restrained herself–with difficulty–from pushing ahead of everyone else in the car, and let the others exit ahead of her in proper Jao fashion. Tamt and the night-shift guards led the way, followed by her husband, which at last allowed her to move.

The guards peeled off to either side of the door, which irised shut behind Caitlin. She reached out and grabbed Ed by the arm, making him drop back beside her. Tamt had moved to stand by Lieutenant Vaughan’s workstation. Caitlin towed Ed in that direction.

“You say we’ve got another contact?” Caitlin asked.

“Yes, Director Kralik,” Vaughan answered, eyes on his readouts and fingers moving like spiders on amphetamines.

“Where from? The inner system?”

“No, Director.”

Caitlin turned to look at the main viewer. “From . . . outside the system?” Vaughan said nothing, but an orbit schematic flashed up on the viewer, with a line tagged to the Terra taif fleet moving out toward the dark between the stars. “So where are they? Do we know which star?”

Vaughan looked up. “It’s not a general pickup, like we did when we found the Khûrûsh. They found us. It’s a focused com laser.”

Caitlin heard Ed inhale sharply. She felt as if she had just taken a good jolt to the head. “What did you say?”

“I said they found us.”

“You mean . . .”

Vaughan nodded, his hands stilled for a moment. “Yes, Director. There is at least one other ship out here, and it appears they want to talk with us.”

“Ohmigod.” That slipped out of Caitlin’s mouth.

“I agree,” Ed said. “Do we have actual communication with them yet? Can we tell anything about them?”

“No communication with them yet, General,” Vaughan looked back down at his readouts, and his fingers started moving again. “But they do appear to be using Khûrûsh protocols with much higher com technology than the system has displayed before now. Ah, it looks like we have finally linked up to it.”

The main viewer flashed a couple of times, then a picture of a Khûrûsh-an materialized on it. The alien said about three short sentences, the picture froze for a moment, then it seemed to repeat.

“That’s a recording,” Vaughan said at the same time as one of the human techs on the command deck.

Dannet looked over at Vaughan. “Summon Pyr and Garhet to the command deck.”