Eric Flint's Blog, page 313

1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies – Snippet 13

1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies – Snippet 13

Chapter 7

Off Lübeck, Baltic Sea

Eddie watched the slide and tilt of the inclinometer diminish, peripherally saw that his ship’s hull was nearing the center of a long, smooth trough between the modest Baltic swells, and shouted, “Fire!”

The second gunner pulled the lanyard; the percussion lock atop the breech of the eight-inch naval rifle snapped down.

Flame jumped out of the weapon’s muzzle. The blast shook the deck, rattled all the ship’s fixtures, and buffeted Eddie’s clothes and those of the gun crew as if, for a moment, they had been standing sideways to a hurricane. The gun leaped backward in its carriage, slamming furiously against its hydraulic recoil compensators as smoke gushed out of it in a long, lateral plume.

A moment later, water geysered up approximately half a mile off the starboard beam.

Beside Eddie, Admiral Simpson adjusted his binoculars slightly. “Thirty yards long of the target, Commander Cantrell, but you were dead-on the line. Your azimuth needs no adjustment.”

“I just wish I could adjust the waves,” Eddie muttered.

Simpson’s wooden features seemed ready to warp. Eddie knew to read that as a small, but well-suppressed smile. “Sounds like a request for the twentieth century luxury of electric ignition systems, slaved to adequate inclinometers.”

Eddie tapped the deck fitfully with his false foot. “I guess so, sir.” Chagrined that he hadn’t hit the target once in ten attempts, he was reluctant to stop this part of the gun’s first sea trial, but the protocols were set. “Swap out the ignition system,” he ordered the gun crew.

Simpson raised an eyebrow. “You look annoyed, Commander.” His tone turned ironic. “Well, don’t fret over getting a proper inclinometer. I’m sure the arbiters of our destiny, the Department of Economic Resources back in Grantville, will put it on the top of their ‘to fund’ list when they get these test results. Even though they ignored my seven page brief which predicted this outcome.”

Eddie was glad that Simpson hadn’t phrased his facetious assessment of the navy’s budgetary overseers as a request for his subordinate’s opinion of them. Because, truth be told, Eddie could see both sides of the funding argument. Grantville’s resources were pinched more tightly than ever. Despite being part of the populous and productive State of Thuringia-Franconia, the town-become-a-city had less, rather than more, wiggle room when it came to supporting cutting-edge technologies.

It hadn’t started out that way, of course. When Grantville had materialized, no one understood what it represented in terms of knowledge and advanced materials. Hell, there had been a lot of people who simply refused to believe in its existence. But then, with its decisive intervention in the Thirty Years War in support of Gustav’s Swedes, Grantville became an object of intense scrutiny. And as it was integrated into the economic and fiscal life of the United States of Europe that it had largely midwifed into existence, and the broader domain of world events, its singular features came under singular pressure. Every monarch, great and small, wanted devices from the future, yes, but that wasn’t the greatest drain. It was all the extraordinary down-time innovators who realized the potentials of steel, of rubber, of electric motors, of plastic, and then designed genius-level devices or processes based on them. All they needed was just a modest amount of x, y, and/or z, and they could usher in a bold new era of — well, whatever bold new era their invention was sure to usher in.

The crowning irony of it was that, after you filtered out the crackpots (which was usually not very difficult; they tended to be self-eliminating), the great majority of these extraordinary innovations would probably have done exactly what their inventors claimed: they would have revolutionized some aspect of life as it was in the 1630s.

But there were thousands of such innovators, and only one Grantville. Only one source for all that up-time-quality steel, and rubber, and plastic, and everything else that was both handmaiden and midwife to these new inventions. And while Mike Stearns had led Grantville in the direction of sharing out its unique wealth rather than hoarding it, there were practical limits as to how far that could go. By now, the daily influx of inventors, treasure seekers, and curio hunters into the precincts of Grantville had emerged as both a singular fiscal opportunity (inns, hotels, eateries, short-term rental properties had sprung up like weeds) and a singular civic headache (congested streets, over-burdened utilities, inflation, and a far more complicated and multi-lingual law enforcement environment). And straddling it all was the State of Thuringia-Franconia’s beleaguered Department of Economic Resources, which had to set policy on how the town’s unique resources should be meted out.

John Simpson understood their job, may have even had a species of theoretical sympathy for it, but he was a man who had been given an official mandate that had also become his personal mission: to build a navy which, with its small number of hulls, could defeat any conventional force in the world. And the primary factor in achieving that extraordinary potency was up-time technology, either in terms of design, or in terms of actual up-time machinery. Unfortunately, it was that latter desideratum over which the admiral and the Department of Economic Resources, or DER, eternally wrestled, since there could be no increase in the amount of advanced technological systems. Grantville was almost four hundred years away from the riches of the American military-industrial complex, or even Walmart. There were never going to be any more motors, tires, televisions, or computers than there were right now. Not for a century or two, at the very least. And almost everything that Admiral Simpson wanted for his Navy, a hundred other people wanted for some other project.

The electronic inclinometer and fire-control system was, Eddie had to admit, one of those resource wrestling matches about which he felt the most profound ambivalence. On the one hand, that system was not technically essential to the operation of the new ship’s guns. And there was no accomplishing it “on the cheap.” Down-time materials and technology were simply not up to the task of fabricating one that was sufficiently sensitive and reliable.

But if he had had a system that could the measure the attitudinal effects of wave action on his hull, and then send an electric pulse to fire the gun the moment that the ship was level, he would have been able to hit today’s target — a forty-foot by twenty-foot wood framework mounted on a barge — on the fourth, or maybe even the third, try. Instead, after the first three shots — which had been required to make the gun’s basic azimuth and elevation adjustments — he still kept missing the target by thirty or forty yards. But not because his targeting was off, or his crew was sloppy, or the ammunition was of irregular quality. No, it was because of these comparatively tiny three- and four-foot swells.

The roll in the deck beneath his feet was almost imperceptible. From moment to moment it rarely varied by more than one degree. But since that motion was not predictable, and since a fraction of a degree was all it took for him to drop a round short or long, it represented an irrefragable limit upon his accuracy. It was a random variable over which he had almost no control.

What little control he did have was through the combined sensory apparatuses of a down-time inclinometer and his own eyes. But the inclinometer, although the best that could be fashioned by exacting down-time experts, was simply a very well built three-axis carpenter’s level: it was not sensitive or responsive enough. And of course, the human eye was an invariably unreliable instrument — although when combined with trained human judgment, it could furnish by prediction much of what the inclinometer could not provide quickly enough.

That kind of precision was simply not important to naval weapons and tactics of this era. The contemporary down-time guns were fairly primitive smoothbore cannons which evinced all the individual idiosyncrasies of their unique, by-hand production. And so, lacking the range and uniform performance of up-time weapons, it was inevitable that they were most effective when fired at very close ranges, and in volleys. That way, some balls were sure to hit.

Obviously, such weapons would have derived much less benefit from an inclinometer-controlled firing system. As Eddie had explained to Anne Cathrine, putting an up-time inclinometer on a down-time cannon was a lot like putting four-wheel disc brakes and airbags on an ox-cart. She had simply stared at that reference, so he had tried another one: it was like putting lip-paint on a pig. She got that right away.

But with the new eight-inch, breech loading, wire-wrapped naval rifles that Admiral Simpson had designed for these steamships — the earlier generation of river monitors had been provided with ten-inch muzzleloaders — the want for truly accurate and speedy inclinometers was making itself felt. Profoundly. The extraordinary range and accuracy of these weapons made them, ironically, far more vulnerable to the inherent instability of a sea-going ship. This had not been so important a consideration during the Baltic War, where engagement ranges had been short, the waters relatively calm, and the hulls had been comparatively barge-like and stable. But now, highly responsive fire control was a paramount concern. The hulls that were the prototypes for Simpson’s blue water navy — a large one similar to a bulked-up version of the Civil War era USS Hartford; the other, a slightly shrunken equivalent of the USS Kearsarge — were ocean-going, and if they stood high, rolling seas well, it was in part because the shape of their hulls helped them stay afloat by moving as the water did. Ironically, they were far less stable firing platforms, but fitted with guns that required, and would richly reward, superior stability. Or fire control correction.

Simpson had won the fight to get the guns he needed, and their recoil carriages, but not the electronic inclinometer and fire-control system. Eddie could see the value in both sides of that latter argument, which had essentially boiled down to, “there are finite resources and the navy can’t have first pick of all of them,” versus, “why go to the expense of creating the most powerful and lethal guns ever seen on the planet only to give them the same sights you would find on a zip gun?”

As time had worn on, Eddie’s sympathies had moved increasingly toward Simpson’s own — probably, he conceded, because he would soon have to ship out in one of these new hulls and wanted to be able to reliably smack the bad guys at distances of half a mile. By way of comparison, the down-time cannons were notoriously ineffective beyond one or two hundred yards, and were laughable at four hundred. And so if that made engagements with such ships a very one-sided proposition — well, Eddie had learned personally that in war, mercilessly exploiting an advantage wasn’t “unsporting.” It was sound tactics. Indeed, anything else was the sheerest insanity.

“Commander Cantrell?”

Eddie swam up out of his thoughts, saw blue waves and then Simpson’s blue eyes. “Uh… Yes, sir?”

“The gun crew has swapped in the new ignition system. You may commence firing at your leisure.” Simpson put the binoculars back up to his eyes.

Eddie stared unhappily at the fast-fuse that was now inserted into the aperture that had, minutes ago, been fitted with a percussion cap nipple. The hammer for that system was now secured in a cleared position.

The gun chief, a Swede, saluted. “Ready to begin firing, Commander.”

Eddie sighed. “Reacquire the target, Chief.”

“Aye, sir.” He stared through his glass, then nodded. “Reacquired, sir. Range and bearing unchanged.”

“Very well,” answered Eddie, “stand by for the order to fire.” Eddie felt for the wind, watched the pattern of the swells, looked for another long, flat trough between them — and saw one. He glanced at the inclinometer. The yaw and pitch were too small to register and the roll was subsiding, the bead floating gradually toward the balance point. Eddie saw it move into the middle band, approach dead center –

“Fire!”

The second gunner touched the glowing match at the end of the handle-like linstock to the fuse. It flashed down in a lazy eyeblink: quick, but far slower than the near-instant response of the percussion-cap ignition system. The gun discharged, sending out its sharp blast of sound and air pressure.

But that lazy eye blink had been a sliver of a second too long. The ship had rolled a fraction past the perfect level point of the inclinometer. Water jetted up almost one hundred yards beyond the target, and very slightly to the left.

“And that shot,” observed Simpson, “had the advantage of being fired at an already ranged and acquired target.”

“I may have timed the swell incorrectly, Admiral.”

“Nonsense. Your timing was as good, or better, than during the trials with the percussion lock. You know the reason for the greater inaccuracy as well as I do, Commander.”

Eddie nodded. “The fuse delay. There’s just no way to compensate for that extra interval.”

“Precisely. The comparative difference in the burn-time of powder fuses reduces the accuracy of the weapon so greatly that it’s barely worth the cost of building it. Percussion caps not only ignite much faster, but with far greater uniformity. But let’s not leave any room for argument. Since the bean counters in Grantville want concrete justification to release funding for a uniform provision of the percussion system, we shall give it to them.” He watched the second loader turn the breech handle and pull sharply; the half-threaded breech block swung open and fumes rolled out, along with a powerful sulfur smell. “Give every shot your best estimate, Commander. I don’t want any more trouble with the DER than is absolutely necessary.”

Eddie squinted, stuck a finger at the horizon two points off the port bow. “Looks like we may have some other trouble before that, Admiral.”

Simpson frowned, looked, spied the almost invisible grey-sailed skiff that Eddie had just noticed, bobbing five miles to the southeast. Grumbling, the admiral jammed the binoculars back over his eyes, was silent. Then Eddie saw his jaw work and a moment later, Simpson uttered a profanity which was, for him, so rare as to be shocking.

“What is it, sir? Pirates?”

“Worse, Commander,” Simpson muttered through clenched teeth. “Unless I am much mistaken, that is the press.”

 

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 42

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 42 

Chapter 24

“Just what I always wanted,” Yana Tretiakovna said sardonically, gazing at the detailed holograph floating before her. “My very own starship.” She paused for a moment, head cocked, then frowned. “It’s smaller than I thought it would be, though. Is this the compact version?”

Her appearance had changed radically, shifting from a Slavic to an East Asian template and becoming increasingly voluptuous. The process wasn’t complete, but it was close enough for her to begin the necessary therapy to adjust for her . . . rearranged (and considerably more top-heavy) physique, and she was not pleased by the discomfort level that her new physique imposed as she grimly jogged on the gymnasium’s treadmill every day. That was probably the real reason she’d been so enthusiastic about taking a break from that strenuous exercise routine, Anton Zilwicki thought.

Of course, the fact that she was thoroughly pissed off that he’d required so little in the way of alterations and virtually no PT or specialized exercise programs suggested it might be . . . unwise of him to twit her over her enthusiasm. On the other hand, he’d loyally spent his gym time right beside his new partner, since his own idea of a “mild workout” would have reduced half the galaxy’s professional bodybuilders to tears.

“It’s not actually your starship, you know,” he pointed out mildly. “I’m sure the BSC would like to get her back intact at the end of the day.”

“I’m not planning on breaking it,” she replied a bit snippily. “And it’s not like I’m really going to be the one in charge of this side of the operation, either. If memory serves, you’re the senior member of this team.”

“Nonsense! No Technician class worker from Hakim could possibly be senior to a Patrician like you. Your lightest whim is my command, Mistress. Within reason, of course.”

“Oh, of course!” Yana’s tone was sarcastic, but her eyes were thoughtful as she studied the lines of the sleek little starship’s image. “And speaking of handing ships back over intact, just how was the Survey Corps able to lay its hands on this one so promptly?”

“They didn’t.” Anton shrugged. “That is, they didn’t have to ‘lay hands’ on anything; they own the Brixton’s Comet outright, and have — according to Uncle Jacques — for over thirty T-years. They just didn’t get around to mentioning it to anyone.”

Yana smiled at Anton’s use of the we’re-less-than-totally-fond-of-him-but-he’s-not-all-that-bad nickname Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou had received from the small party of spies planning on sneaking onto the most dangerous planet in the galaxy. No one was quite certain how it had begun, although Yana suspected it stemmed from the conferences which both he and his formidable niece had attended in the Old Star Kingdom, but it had been Victor Cachat who’d first used it — completely deadpan — to Benton-Ramirez y Chou’s face. To his credit, the half-sized Beowulfer had simply gone right ahead with the abstruse point he’d been explaining at the time without so much as a blink. From his reaction and from what she knew about the BSC, Yana wouldn’t have been especially surprised to discover that some of his team members during his own time in Beowulf’s special forces had called him the same thing. Or something even more disrespectful, given the BSC’s informality in the field and just how well he’d performed there. It was the sort of backhanded compliment elite forces routinely paid to those they most respected. Whatever the reason, he seemed perfectly comfortable with it.

And it certainly took less time to say than his surname did.

“And just how sure are they that no one outside the BSC knows that they’ve owned her outright for years and years?” she asked.

“Fairly confident.” Anton shrugged again. “That’s about as good as it gets in this business, you know. They bought her — had her built, really, right here in the Hidalgo Yard — through about six layers of shell companies, and they’ve operated her on a lease basis ever since. And according to Uncle Jacques, she’s only been used twice in all that time for specific covert operations. They’ve actually earned back her construction costs several times over by now, all through legitimate leases, and she’s been leased so many times, by so many different lessees, that she has an absolutely ironclad history, no matter how deep anyone looks from the outside. About the only way anyone could consider her suspect would be for the ‘anyone’ in question to have someone deep enough inside the BSC to know all about her. And if they’ve got anyone that deep, we’re all screwed before we ever leave Beowulf, so I figure we might as well operate on the assumption that her identity’s at least as secure as ours are going to be.”

Yana considered that for a moment, then nodded. For all her often deliberately “lowbrow” public persona, the ex-Scrag was ferociously intelligent, and while her actual experience and skill set tended more towards focused mayhem than covert operations, she’d had enough experience operating with the duo of Cachat & Zilwicki to accept Anton’s analysis without too many qualms.

Now he manipulated the image, expanding it until they could make out the hull’s details.

“She’s a nice little ship, actually,” he pointed out with a connoisseur’s enthusiasm. “Only about forty-five thousand tons, of course, but in most ways she’s a lot like Duchess Harrington’s personal yacht, the Tankersley. She’s fitted up on a rather more luxurious scale than the Duchess ever considered necessary, and she doesn’t have accommodations for quite as many warm bodies, but the basic power plant and automation are virtually identical.”

“That’s good, considering how little I know about the guts of a starship,” Yana observed dryly. She was a skilled small craft pilot, at home behind the controls of anything from high-performance air-breathing atmospheric craft to heavy-lift cargo shuttles or an all-up armored assault shuttle, but all of that experience was strictly sub-light.

“Don’t worry,” Anton said reassuringly. “I know my way around a starship’s innards just fine, and this design incorporates so much automation — and so many multiply redundant backup systems — that the possibility of any sort of serious malfunction’s effectively nonexistent. And,” he added feelingly, “she’s not only one hell of a lot younger than Hali Sowle, but she’s been properly maintained for her entire life.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I’ve spent long enough drifting around playing cards for one lifetime, thank you very much.”

“Me, too.” Anton grinned. “And while we’re on the subject of reasons not to worry, the reason she’s got all that automation is that she was intended from the beginning to be operated by a two-person crew. It’s not like I’m going to need a lot of assistant engineers, and I’ll probably be able to find time in my arduous schedule to do any astrogating we need, as well”

“You get us there in one piece, and I’ll be happy,” Yana told him. Brixton’s Comet‘s normal-space controls were essentially little more than an upgraded and fancified version of a regular cargo shuttle. In fact, they were a bit simpler even than that, since the yacht had never been intended for atmospheric flight. Of course, there was the minor matter of the Visigoth Wormhole to consider. Which reminded her…

“You do realize that getting us there in one piece includes getting us through the damned wormhole, don’t you?” she asked.

“Between Visigoth’s traffic control, the ship’s computers, and my own odd few decades of naval service, I’m sure we’ll be able to limp through it somehow,” he assured her.

“Yeah, sure,” she agreed, eyes fixed on the holograph.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said in a rather more reassuring tone. “We’ll be fine at least as far as the transportation’s involved. And we’ll be a lot more comfortable than the others will.”

 

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 41

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 41 

“Give me examples,” said Steph.

Ruth was back at sea again. Examples? How do you give examples of basic –

“‘A moon is made out of green cheese,’” said Anton. “That’d get a PD rating of 0.01 — or maybe 0.02 or 0.03. Nothing is ever ranked an absolute 0 — or an absolute 1. On the opposite end, let’s take the statement ‘a moon orbits a planet’. That’d get a PD rating of .9 something.”

He looked at the screen. “What that number tells us is that the perspective of the Star Empire’s population as a whole — Ruth didn’t point to that figure but it’s on the upper left of the screen — you see it? 0.99? that means the analysis applies to the entire population within one-hundredth of a point of certainty — “

“To anybody except statisticians playing cover-your-ass that means absolute certainty,” said Victor.

Anton continued. “– is two-thirds of the way toward being rock solid that the events and statements of fact shown in the recent The Star Empire Today are correct.”

“That doesn’t make any sense at all!” protested Andrew. “Not the two-thirds part, that’s probably okay. But what’s this nonsense about 0.99 certainty of the opinion of the entire population.” Her threw up his hands. “You said the number of people who’ve seen the show so far isn’t more than half a billion, right? That’s short — way, way short — of even the Manticore System’s total population. That’s what? three billion?”

“Just about,” Anton replied. “A bit over, as I recall.”

“That’s not even twenty percent, then.”

Ruth was about to explode. How can anybody be so grossly ignorant of the simplest and most –

But this time, Berry came to her rescue. “That’s a sample of half a billion, Andrew. That’s gigantic. Most opinion samples are quite satisfied their results are accurate if they sample just one or two percent.”

“Less than that,” said Victor. “The number doesn’t mean that 99% of the Star Empire’s opinion was taken. It just means that there’s at least a 99% chance — it’s actually a 100% chance, for all practical purposes — that the opinion sample represents that of the entire population.”

He scratched his jaw. “That number’s not the surprise. It’s the density number. I’d expected something in the 0.3 range. 0.4 if we were lucky.”

“The AV number’s even more surprising,” said Cathy Montaigne. She was perched on the armrest of the couch occupied by Anton.

“AV means ‘adjustment velocity’, right?” said Steph. “The number means squat to me anyway, but why is it surprising?”

“It refers to the speed with which people’s perspective is changing,” Cathy explained, “and it’s always closely associated with perspective density. The basic rule-of-thumb — although there are exceptions — is that the more densely someone holds an opinion, the more slowly it’s likely to change. And vice versa, of course.”

Andrew grunted. “Okay, I get it. To use an example, my opinion that Victor and Anton railroaded me into getting a horde of sub-atomic golems set loose inside my body to torture and torment me for no better motive than spite is so densely held that it will only change — if it does at all — at the speed with which a proton decays. What would that number be, by the way?”

Cathy laughed. “That number would approach infinity — or eternity, I should say. Sociometricians would give it a ‘less than 0.01%.’ That’s as low as they ever go on account of” — she pointed at Victor — “what he says. Cover their ass.”

“Why do they express it as a ‘less than’ instead of just giving it a straight number?” asked Berry.

“Because they’re a bunch of cone-heads,” said Victor. He nodded toward the screen. “What that number up there means — the AV figure of >36% — is that opinions are shifting toward greater density at a rate that is thirty-six percent above the norm for perspective shifts at that density.”

“Huh?” said Andrew.

Ruth tried to come back in at that point. “What they’re trying to measure is how fast a perspective is shifting compared to how fast you’d normally expect that solidly-held an opinion to shift. If the shift is in the direction of favoring the new opinion, it’ll be expressed in the positive using the symbol for ‘more than.’ If it’s shifting against, it’ll be expressed as a negative.”

“Huh?” Andrew repeated.

“The gist of what it means in the here and now,” said Victor, “is that the impact of Yael Underwood’s broadcast about — about — “

“About you, dear,” said Thandi smiling broadly. “Just suck it up.”

“About me,” Victor said sourly, “is that the public opinion of the Star Empire is shifting in favor of our perspective on the real nature of interstellar politics a lot faster than such solidly held opinions — remember, that number was 0.67 — usually shift. When they shift at all, which usually they don’t — or shift in a negative direction.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then Steph said, “Wow. I’m right, aren’t I? It’s a ‘wow’?”

Finally, Ruth felt back on sure ground. “It’s a great big huge ‘wow.’ The only explanation I can think of is that the emotional impact of seeing a young StateSec officer risk his own life in order to save the life of an RMN officer’s daughter just blew away a lot of established pre-conceptions. And then their continuing close friendship — which it obviously is even if both of them will probably try to make light of it — added layers of density to the new perspective.”

“I think she’s right,” said Cathy. “The personal history between Anton and Victor makes their intelligence concerning Mesa plausible to people. Which it wouldn’t be at all if someone said: ‘Hey, guess what? A couple of spies — one from Manticore, one from Haven — decided to work together and look what they discovered. Imagine that!’”

“So what does that last number mean?” asked Berry. “The one labeled ‘reversal prospect’?”

“That’s sociometrician gobbledygook for ‘how likely is it that this perspective development will be reversed?’,” said Victor. “And it’s a bunch of twaddle, since all it does is say the other way around what the PD and AV numbers already established.”

Anton smiled. “Leaving aside Victor’s commentary, it is true that the RP number closely correlates to the other numbers.”

“Closely correlates,” sniffed Victor. “As in the chance for losing a game is ninety percent ‘closely correlates’ with the chance of winning being ten percent.”

While they’d been bantering, Cathy had been monitoring her watch. “It’s about time. Ruth, change to the live feed, will you?”

“Sure.” The Manticoran princess tapped her tablet a few times and the image on the big virtual screen shifted to an outside view of Mount Royal Palace. A shuttle was coming in for a landing.

A minute or so went by, while the shuttle settled in and an armed security detachment took positions near the hatch through which the passengers would be disembarking.

The hatch opened and the first passenger came down the ramp. The reporter, who’d been prattling vacuities while she waited for something to happen, immediately said: “As expected, that’s President Eloise Pritchart, arriving for her scheduled meeting with the empress and the prime minister. Following her is Haven’s Secretary of War Thomas Theisman. And now, if our private sources are accurate, we should be seeing…”

A short, very wide-shouldered man started down the ramp. “Yes, that’s him. The now-famous Captain Zilwicki, formerly an intelligence officer in the Royal Manticoran Navy and now operating on his own. Or, often, in tandem with his unlikely partner…”

Another man came down the ramp. He was dressed all in black, in garments which were very closely patterned on the former uniform of Haven’s now-defunct State Security.

“And that’s Victor Cachat, who has become just as famous as Zilwicki.” The reporter chuckled. “The more sensational news outlets have started referring to him as ‘Black Victor,’ we’re told.”

“Yes!” exclaimed Anton, pumping his fist. “Join the Notoriety Club, buddy.”

Victor was back to looking disgruntled; sour; even sullen.

“When are we leaving?” he demanded. “At least on Mesa I’ll be able to get some privacy.”

Ruth pursed her lips. “That may be the single most deranged statement I’ve ever heard in my life.” Then, with a grin: “But what else could you expect from…” Her voice lowered an octave and took on a pronounced tremor. “…Black Victor?”

 

 

1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies – Snippet 12

1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies – Snippet 12 

A concise and accurate summary of all the possibilities. But the dance of dueling intelligence portfolios was not yet over. “Even if it is true that the Spanish have no town or garrison at Pitch Lake, it does not follow that the Spanish are inherently uninterested in it. It is a relatively short sail to Cumana and even Puerto Cabello, where they have a considerable depth of power. In order to hold out against a response from those bases, one would need a small flotilla, at least, to hold Pitch Lake.”

“That presumes the Spanish are even aware you have taken possession of it.” And McCarthy almost smiled.

So here at last was the first hint of something mysterious, unprecedented: a sure sign that the conversation would soon turn toward an unforeseen up-timer capability, upon which this pair was obviously basing their proposal. “And you have a way to ensure that the Spanish would remain unaware if Pitch Lake were to be seized?”

“Not permanently, but long enough that you wouldn’t need to commit large forces to landing and initial defense. Sizable forces would only be needed once Pitch Lake was securely invested and held, to further fortify and secure it against Spanish attempts at reconquest.”

“You speak of summoning ‘sizable forces’ as if I was the French military commander of the Caribbean, Mr. McCarthy. I assure you, I have no such authority. Nor, I think, does our senior factor on St. Christopher.”

“I am aware of that, Lord Turenne. That is why our proposal for seizing Pitch Lake calls for only one ship.”

“One ship?”

“Yes, Lord Turenne. A prize hull, currently at moorings in Dunkirk. The Fleur Sable.”

Turenne frowned. The Fleur Sable was a severely damaged Dutch cromster, recently taken by the “privateers” operating out of Dunkirk. She had earned mention in his intelligence dispatches when two confidential agents in her crew — one English, one French — both attempted to negotiate with the victorious pirates in the name of their respective governments. Heads (theirs) had rolled in the confusion and the ship, a potential item of international embarrassment, remained unsold and unrepaired. As Turenne remembered her, the oversized Fleur Sable was square-rigged at both the fore- and mainmasts and lateen-rigged at the mizzenmast, meaning that she was not only capable of making an Atlantic crossing in good shape, but also had reasonable maneuverability in capricious winds.

Turenne looked at his two visitors with newfound regard. They had selected this hull carefully and well. And they obviously knew that, given his contacts and authority in the region, Turenne could acquire a single battered (and therefore under-priced) hull for “experimental purposes” easily enough. But that did not dispose him toward ready agreement. “And how do you expect me to crew this Dutch sieve?”

O’Donnell answered. “Among the ranks of the Dunkirk privateers, there are currently French sailors, and even a few officers, who were unjustly dismissed from Louis XIII’s service in disgrace. As I hear it, almost all of them wish to return to his service, and success on a mission such as this might dispose him to hear their appeals with greater favor.”

Turenne was careful to make no motion, change not one line in his face. Merde! The audacity — and elegance — of the plan! And it just might work, if this odd pair did indeed have some way of seizing Pitch Lake without being intercepted first or detected shortly afterward. “His Majesty might indeed see fit to restore such men to his favor and service, but I am of course powerless to make such a promise.”

O’Donnell smiled. “I fully understand, Lord Turenne.”

Turenne wondered whether Richelieu would want to send him a medal or send him to the headsman when this operation was finally revealed. But France needed oil, easy oil that could be reached by her neophyte drillers, and Trinidad’s accommodating seeps and shallow deposits were a matter of record, well-detailed in the books at Grantville. But there were still problems with the plan. “Of course, you have not yet discussed who will land on Trinidad itself and take control of Pitch Lake.”

The big-shouldered Irish earl nodded. “Well, let us begin by acknowledging that this force cannot be made up of French soldiers, lest you officially embroil your sovereign in an attack upon Spain.”

“Exactly. So who would serve as the landing party and foot soldiers?”

O’Donnell cleared his throat. “My men. Five dozen, hand-picked.”

I should have seen that coming. “And they will serve France because . . . ?”

“Because you will provide sustenance for the rest of my tercio while they are on this mission.”

“And so let us presume you have reached and invested Pitch Lake with your forces. In whose name do you intend to claim it, for what country? Ireland?”

“A tempting idea, but rather futile, wouldn’t you agree? No, I will take it as a private possession, for sale to the highest — or preferred — bidder. So you see, my part of this operation is to be a purely corporate venture.”

Turenne’s head was dizzy with the possibilities and pitfalls. Corporations seizing national holdings? Was the word “corporation” just a legitimizing euphemism for “free company?” Would private ownership by dint of military conquest be recognized by any other sovereign state? On the other hand, what would national recognition matter if the “corporate” forces held it firmly? And the Dutch East India company had already made several forceful rebuttals to the common monarchical contention that all the lands of the Earth rightly belonged to sovereigns, who then bestowed their use upon a descending pyramid of vassals.

However, despite the foreseeable legal wrangling, Turenne saw one other certainty clearly enough: by proposing that he take Pitch Lake as a private entity, O’Donnell was allowing France to remain blameless of overt conquest. Of course, once O’Donnell’s seizure of Pitch Lake was fait accompli, it was almost certain that Richelieu would move quickly to purchase the site. And then France would have its oil, and Turenne would be able to fuel the machines needed for the nation’s defense. But still, the most nagging problem of all was that — “Logic and precedent dictates that the operation cannot be carried out by one ship. Unless, as you claim, your single ship can arrive at Pitch Lake completely unseen and land its small force intact, having suffered no losses in chance encounters. And so I must ask: can you do this?” He looked at McCarthy, certain from O’Donnell’s expression that the answer did not lay with the Irish earl. “Can your American technology turn a small ship invisible?”

“No, but if you can see far enough ahead, you can detect and dodge opposing ships. Before they detect you.”

“And do you have some means of seeing further ahead than the lookout in a crow’s nest?”

“I don’t,” said McCarthy. “But a friend of mine does.”

“Oh? What friend? The German fellow you came with, the one downstairs?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what does he do? Build very tall masts?”

“No, sir. He builds hot air balloons.”

Turenne, despite his well-practiced self-control, couldn’t keep himself from snapping forward in his chair. “He builds what?”

“Hot air balloons, Lord Turenne. Right now, Siegfried’s got a model that carries about twelve pounds aloft.” McCarthy shrugged. “I think with a little guidance, some material support, and access to the inventories of your silk merchants — “

Turenne was on his feet, calling to the door and then the walls. “Orderlies. Please bring in the other visitor.” After nodding briefly at O’Donnell, he turned back to the up-timer. “Mr. McCarthy, did you have plans for this evening?”

“Well, yes. I — “

“Your plans have just changed.” Turenne finally smiled at the American. “And if all your hypotheses are correct, you will need to clear your itinerary for the next six months.”

 

1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies – Snippet 11

1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies – Snippet 11 

“Which is probably why that’s not the wisest choice for Lord O’Donnell. His former liege King Philip isn’t exactly a fan of ours, and vice versa. Besides there’s the matter of his mens’ Roman Catholicism.”

Turenne nodded. Of course. Many of O’Donnell’s “Wild Geese” were extremely devout Roman Catholics, and most had been driven from their lands to make room for resettled Protestants. Their religious fervor and grudges would be a poor fit for the USE, which, despite its lopsided polyglot of different faiths, was founded upon the strong military spine and current leadership of the Swedish Lutheran Gustav Adolf. “So then, Mr. McCarthy, I suppose it is your presence which is the greater mystery. As I understand it, you still retain your post as a Senior Instructor at Grantville’s Technical College. If I also understand correctly, I would be a fool not to detain you on the spot and make your future freedom contingent upon your helping us with any number of mechanical challenges that my researchers currently find insurmountable.”

McCarthy smiled. “But you won’t do that.”

Turenne kept himself from bristling at the American’s self-assured tone. “Oh? And why not?”

“Well, firstly, it’s not the kind of man you are.”

“Indeed? And just how would you know what kind of man I am?”

“I know about the letter you wrote to Mike Stearns last year, expressing regret that your men killed Quentin Underwood during their raid on the oil field at Wietze.”

Turenne suppressed any physical reaction to McCarthy’s observation, even as he thought: Interesting: that epistolary gesture has borne some diplomatic fruit, after all.

McCarthy continued. “Detaining me would also ruin any hope of accord with Lord O’Donnell, thereby permanently and personally inflaming the Irish regiments in the Low Lands against you and France. But most important, forcing me to work for you wouldn’t accomplish anything, since you obviously know that men who work against their will neither give you their best work, nor can they be trusted.”

Turenne nodded. “All true. But I find it odd that you do not include your status as an American as a further restraint upon me. After all, keeping you against your will could be inflamed into an international incident.”

McCarthy shifted. “If I were here as a representative of the USE, that would be true. But I’m not here in that capacity.”

Turenne studied McCarthy carefully. “No?”

“No, Lord Turenne. Right now, I’m a free agent.”

“You have renounced your citizenship in the USE?”

“No. But I’ve never taken a day off from my work at the College. It took me a few months to persuade my bosses, but I arranged to take all those days at once, added to a leave of absence. They didn’t like that much, but they don’t really have any one else with my skills.” He shrugged. “I can do as I please with that time.”

“And it pleases you to come here for — a visit?”

If McCarthy found the bathos amusing, he gave no sign of it. “I came here to make money, Lord Turenne.”

Who, being unaccustomed to such a frank admission of monetary need, neither expected nor knew how to respond to McCarthy’s statement. And it seemed that McCarthy himself had not been entirely comfortable uttering it. Unsure how to navigate this delicate impasse, Turenne leaned back —

– just as O’Donnell leaned forward: “Lord Turenne, Mr. McCarthy is a proud man. His father, Don McCarthy, is severely ill and requires constant and increasing care. More care than Michael can readily afford.”

Turenne experienced a moment of utter social disorientation. “But does not the American government — ?”

“With your indulgence,” interrupted the Irish earl smoothly, “neither the USE, nor Grantville itself, provide for the private needs of even its most important personages. Within reason, they are expected to see to their own expenses.”

Turenne looked at Michael and found two subtly defiant but pride-bruised eyes looking back at him. If this was an act, it was an extraordinarily good one. “I see,” said Turenne, who remembered something else connecting pride and the name “McCarthy” in the intelligence he’d read on Grantville. Specifically, the McCarthy family was noted as holding an extensive book collection, and ardent political sympathies, that were both radically pro-Irish. And here sat an up-timer named McCarthy with a displaced Irish earl. The pieces were coming together. “So now I know why you are here. But I still have no idea what it is you wish to propose.”

McCarthy’s posture did not change, but his eyes became more expressive, less defensive. “We propose to help you with some of your current ‘logistical initiatives,’ Lord Turenne.”

Turenne was not sure whether he should be amused or aghast at the blithe certainty underlying such an offer.  “And just what initiatives are those, Mr. McCarthy?”

“Well, to start with, I think we have a way to help you achieve some of your long-term objectives in the Caribbean.”

Turenne frowned. “Mr. McCarthy, I am rather busy, but out of deference to your background, I made time for this meeting. However, I hardly think that France needs to consult with you — or, respectfully, the Earl of Tyrconnell — on its strategic posture in the Caribbean.”

McCarthy shrugged. “I don’t propose to advise you on general regional strategy, Lord Turenne. I have a very specific objective in mind.”

“Oh? And that would be?”

“Trinidad.”

Turenne leaned back a little, narrowed his eyes. With every passing second, the conversation was becoming more interesting and also more dangerous. Michael McCarthy Jr., and perhaps higher ranking Americans, had been doing their homework, evidently. And now began the delicate dance — for which Turenne had little taste — of learning how much the Americans knew and conjectured, even as McCarthy might now be trying to determine the same thing about him and France’s own speculations. Turenne studied the expressionless up-timer and thought: he is a mechanic, a man who works with wheels. And he himself may be filled by wheels within wheels. A spy? Perhaps. But perhaps an emissary, as well. And both roles would require extreme discretion at this point.

“Trinidad,” echoed Turenne eventually. “An interesting location to focus upon. Why there?”

“The petroleum deposits at Pitch Lake. They’re right on the surface.”

“True. But why would I want to travel across the Atlantic for oil?”

“For the same reason you took all the engineering plans from the oilfield at Wietze before you disabled the facility. You wouldn’t have been interested in those plans if you didn’t realize that France needs its own aircraft, vehicles and other systems dependent upon internal combustion engines. And that, in turn, means France must have oil. And getting oil quickly necessitates owning surface deposits that you can access with only minimal improvement to your current drilling capabilities.”

Turenne acknowledged the truth of the deductions with a wave of his hand. Denying something so obvious would only make him seem childish. “So, even if we accept your conjecture, I am still no closer to getting oil, even if I am willing to cross the Atlantic. Pitch Lake is held by the Spanish.”

“It is on a Spanish island. That’s not quite the same thing.”

So they also had access to tactical intelligence on Trinidad. That was interesting.”You seem unusually familiar with, and sure about, the disposition of Spanish forces on Trinidad,” he said.

McCarthy nodded. “A young American visited the island not too long ago, on board a Dutch ship. They landed near Pitch Lake and there were no Spanish to be seen, just a few of their native allies. So as regards Pitch Lake, either the Spanish don’t know what they’re sitting on, don’t know what to do with it, or don’t care about it.”

 

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 40

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 40 

JULY 1922 Post Diaspora

“You’re all under arrest. It turns out I have a long-suppressed megalomaniacal personality. Who knew?”

Hugh Arai, consort to Queen Berry of Torch

Chapter 23

“Talk about a stroke of genius,” Ruth said, shaking her head with admiration as she studied the data on her tablet. “Which one of you wants to take the credit? Or are you willing to split it, in the spirit of” — she waved her hand airily — “whatever. Take your pick. Collectivism, cooperation, humility, whatever rings your bell.”

Victor looked disgusted. “Let Anton have it — or better yet, Yana.”       

Who, for her part, was looking at her own body in the same wall mirror Victor was using — and didn’t look any happier than he did.

“I look like a cow. What possible use are udders this size? I’ve got enough production capacity for quadruplets — but there are still only two nipples. So what’s the point?”

She glared at Victor. “Do men really like this nonsense?”

Victor didn’t look at her. He was still examining his own body and looking no happier than she did. “Ask someone else,” he said. “I was socially deprived as a youth. My opinion on these matters is not to be trusted.”

Thandi Palane had left off examining her new body ten minutes earlier and was now relaxing in an armchair. Her cheerful equanimity concerning her new physique was due to the simple fact that it wasn’t much different from her old one. Given that Thandi’s ability to commit mayhem was a large part of the reason she’d been included in the mission, it would have been counter-productive to change her body so much that all of her muscle memory would have gotten skewed. So, the gene-engineers had settled for adding a little weight and height.

The main change had been to her face. They’d eliminated the distinctive Ndebele facial features. They’d left her very pale skin tone as it was, but she now looked like someone from a heavy gravity planet whose ancestry had been mostly northern European instead of African. She was also a lot less good-looking.

Yana, on the other hand, now had a physique that looked like a teenage boy’s notion of the perfect female figure. A particularly callow boy, at that.

The engineers had given her a face to go with it, too. The former attractive blonde was now a gorgeous brunette whose ancestry seemed to be East Asian rather than Slavic. About the only thing they hadn’t changed very much was her height. Nanobots could do a lot, but the only way to drastically shorten someone was to remove bone or cartilage, both of which carried health risks if taken too far. So, they’d shortened her, but only by two centimeters. That would be enough to throw off any automatic body gauge software that Mesa‘s security forces might be using.

The precaution was probably unnecessary, but changing a person’s height by a few centimeters was not significantly risky — so why not do it? Anton, Victor and Thandi had all had their heights changed as well, but in their cases they’d been made a little taller.

“Take credit for what, Ruth?” asked Andrew Artlett. He was sitting next to Steph Turner on a sofa against the wall opposite the big mirror. His physical appearance had been modified only slightly, because there was no need to do more than that. The one time Mesan inspectors had come aboard the Hali Sowle, Andrew had stayed in his cabin. The Mesans might still have his genetic record — or rather, that of the Parmley clan members to whom he was closely related — but they hadn’t made any physical images of him. The only reason nanobots had been used on him at all — his nose and brow ridge had been thickened, his cheekbones made more prominent and his eye and hair color changed — was to protect against the remote chance that the Mesans had somehow gotten their hands on old holopics of him. That chance was so remote it was well-nigh astronomical, but since a minor body adaptation was easy they’d decided to do it.

More precisely, Anton and Victor had decided to have it done — over Andrew’s protests. He’d accused them of being motivated by nothing more than a determination to spread the misery around.

There was… possibly a bit of truth to the charge. Nanobot body engineering was a thoroughly unpleasant experience.

“Take a look at this,” Ruth said. She keyed in some commands and her virtual screen was enlarged tenfold and projected far enough away so Andrew and Steph could see it easily.

“You see this and this? And this?” She manipulated the cursor to highlight three figures on the screen. The figures were labeled Perspective Density, Adjustment Velocity and Reversal Prospect.

Andrew’s frown was enhanced by his modified brow ridge. Steph’s frown looked about the same as it always did, because her features had been modified to make her face a bit more slender. As with Andrew, her body modification had been minimal and mostly confined to her face. The likelihood that Mesa had good holopics of someone who’d owned a small restaurant in the seccie quarters was small. They might have a few images, but they wouldn’t be precise enough for body identification software.

The real danger for her was that the Mesans certainly had her DNA on record, for the good and simple reason that Mesa obtained DNA samples at birth from every resident of the planet. And even if Victor and Anton’s hypothesis that Jack McBryde had badly damaged Mesa’s security files was correct, it was unlikely that McBryde had gone so far as to destroy all DNA records. He would have targeted the records of Mesa‘s enemies — which, ironically, would not have included Steph Turner at the time.

So, she’d gotten a genetic sheathe, as had Andrew. Steph’s was more subtle than that given to everyone else, though. There was no need to disguise her origins as a Mesa seccie. To the contrary, that would be an integral part of her cover. They’d only needed to put a few changes in the sheathe that would obscure her individual identity.

“Ruth, I haven’t got the faintest idea what any of those numbers mean,” said Steph.

“Same here,” said Andrew. “And I’ll add to that — hey, I’m a dummy, okay? — that I don’t even understand what the terms mean. I know what each one of those words means, taken by itself. But what the hell is the ‘density’ of a perspective?”

Berry piped up. “I’m a dummy too.” She was perched on the edge of her seat and leaning over in order to get a better view of the screen. “How about an explanation?”

Ruth looked at each of them in turn, her expression a mix of puzzlement, mild consternation, and uncertainty. Those sentiments could be translated — quite easily, by her best friend Berry — into the following phrases:

How can anyone be this ignorant of basic sociometric attitude assessments?

Am I supposed to explain what this all means?

I’m really not the best person to do that since my explanation is likely to be harder to understand by people who don’t know anything to begin with.

Anton came to her rescue. “Translated a bit roughly, the terms mean the following. ‘Perspective density’ refers to the sureness of the opinion. They call it density because — “

“– they’re a pack of cone-headed sociometricians and they’d rather die than use clear terminology,” said Victor.

“Well, yes, that too. But as I was saying before I was interrupted by Secret Agent Sourpuss, they use the term ‘density’ because the firmness with which someone holds an opinion is usually the product of multiple cross-associations. To give an example, a person believes a planet is a sphere because they know many things which all reinforce that opinion. Whereas if their opinion on a given subject is established by only one or two inputs, that opinion’s density will be thin.”

“Except the term they actually use for a thinly-sustained opinion is ‘disagglutinated,’” said Victor. “It’s got six syllables instead of one. This is why Anton and I are spies instead of sociometrician cone-heads.”

Anton shook his head sadly. “He’s always had a bitter streak. Mind you, he’s also right. They are a lot of cone-heads.”

“What does the number mean, then?” asked Andrew. “Perspective density: 0.67.“

Ruth decided she could answer that one easily enough. “It’s a scale of 0 to 1, in which ’0′ means the perspective is so disagglutinated — and for the record, I think the term is quite appropriate — that it might as well not exist, and ’1′ is a perspective so heavily and completely buttressed by a multitude of other opinions that it is accepted as pure and simple fact.”

 

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 39

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 39 

“Any comment, Charlene?”

Soulliere sniffed. “One has to wonder if there is anyone in that crowd whose first recourse when faced with a problem isn’t to resort to violence — and the most brutal sort of violence at that. Do I need to remind the panel that the father of this fourteen-year-old homicidal maniac is the man who littered the grounds of the Tor estate with corpses not all that long ago?”

Cathy almost sprang out of her seat with excitement. “Yes! Go for it, Mack! Gut the fucking asshole!”

Cathy proceeded to issue several more sentences which, though grammatically impeccable, transgressed the bounds of propriety. Pretty much the way piranhas transgress the bounds of dining etiquette.

The “Mack” in question was Macauley Sinclair, the panelist sitting just to the left of the moderator. He was a short fellow with a round, cheery face, who represented the Liberal Party on the panel in the same informal way that Soulliere spoke for the Progressives.

He’d taken the place of Florence Hu on the panel. Cathy had pulled a lot of strings to make sure of that. For this show, she wanted a Liberal voice that didn’t quaver and whine. There was a reason politicians and (especially) their staffs called Sinclair “Mack the Knife” in private.

Yael Underwood, being an expert at the business, immediately saw to it that Sinclair got the floor.

“Homicidal maniac, is it?” he jeered. Then, he broke the normal rules of Talking Headship and looked directly at the viewing audience. “For reasons that are understandable, Lars Zilwicki didn’t go into the details of the incident. I happen to know them, however — as should Ms. Sanctimonious over here, if she’d done her homework.”

He gave her a skeptical glance. “At least, one has to hope that Soulliere’s comment was the product of ignorance.”

She tried to angrily interrupt but Sinclair drove right over her. Looking back at the viewing audience he continued.

“Here are the details — the very grim details. The three men in question — rightly called ‘thugs’ by Lars Zilwicki — had kidnapped the boy and his sister Berry and were holding them captive in Chicago‘s infamous underground warrens. Lars was eleven years old at the time; Berry, thirteen. Both of them were badly beaten, especially the girl — who was also repeatedly gang-raped. These were the three unfortunate gentlemen whom the small fourteen-year-old girl that –”

He had a truly magnificent sneer. “– Sanctimonious Soulliere calls a ‘homicidal maniac’ killed in self-defense when they tried to visit the same atrocities upon her.”

The whole panel erupted. But Mack the Knife’s voice rose above the babble — largely because he kept speaking directly at the viewers.

“– no mistake what this is really all about. The same Progressives who proved themselves completely incapable of leading a war against the Republic of Haven when such a war was needed, are now trying to sabotage a peace treaty with the Republic when that is needed and finally available. And they’re doing so for no better reason — assuming there’s any coherent thought at all involved — than political maneuvering.”

A subscriber to Theory #3, clearly, although he was leaving the door open for Theory #2. In line with Cathy’s own position, in other words.

That was hardly surprising, since he more-or-less worked for her. Informally, true, and without remuneration. But there was a reason that Sinclair’s other nickname was Montaigne’s Mugger.

Anton brought his attention back to the talk show. Sinclair was still going strong. For all that he was barely over five feet tall and was wearing a very expensive suit, it wasn’t hard at all to imagine him wielding a claymore like his ancestors had.

Whack. “– ignore what she says. The real reason for Soulliere’s hostility to Cachat is purely because the man is walking, breathing, living, tried and tested proof — tried and tested three times over — that there is no better ally for us in a fight than the same Havenites we’ve been fighting for what sometimes seems like a lifetime. I ask you –”

Babble, babble, babble. Soulliere was trying desperately to make herself heard, but the panel was now clearly swinging in Sinclair’s direction. Who was back to looking straight at the audience.

“– really simple question, as simple as it gets. You’re attacked by thugs in a dark alley. Who do you want coming to your defense?”

A truly magnificent sneer.

Whack. “Soulliere and her back room cronies? Or Victor Cachat and Anton Zilwicki? Or — better yet, because we’re talking a war here, folks, one that’s going to make our fight with Haven look like a playground spat — would you prefer a bunch of young homicidal maniacs in uniform? Such as –”

He turned to Underwood. Something indefinable in the talk show host’s posture made Anton realize that he and Sinclair had set this up in advance.

“I believe you have some relevant footage, Yael, am I correct?”

“Well… yes. As it happens, we do.”

The back screen lit up with an image of Anton’s daughter Helen. She was wearing her dress uniform and posed somewhat formally with four other young naval officers. Anton recognized all but one of them. They were friends of Helen’s as well as comrades; people she’d gone through the naval academy with at Saganami Island.

She looked…

Good. Really good. She would never be a beauty, but — thank God — she took after her mother more than her father in that department. And while she might be a tad on the stocky, well-muscled side, she stood with the obvious grace of more than ten years training in Neue-Stil Handgemenge, one of the most lethal martial arts in galactic history. But what she looked like most of all was a young woman proud of her uniform, committed to her star nation, confident in herself, and prepared to spit in the entire galaxy’s eye if that was what duty and that uniform demanded of her.

Sinclair spoke again. “That’s the young woman Soulliere called a ‘homicidal maniac.’ Not just the girl who escaped her Manpower kidnapers on Old Earth when she was only fourteen T-years old, but also the young woman who served as Sir Aivars Terekov’s assistant tactical officer throughout the Battle of Monica. And never mind that when the wolves come baying at our door again, Soulliere and her Progressive pack of curs will be the first ones screaming for exactly this young homicidal maniac — and her friends — to come to their rescue.

“Again.”

Soulliere went ballistic at that point. Anton thought that “pack of curs” was probably over the top for what was, after all, an evening talk show program.

Not that he gave a damn. He started softly singing a tune.

“Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear

And he shows ‘em, pearly white…”

He was pretty sure the same lyrics were being sung by people all over the Star Empire, at that moment. It was a very old song, after all.

“This is going splendidly!” Cathy exclaimed. She took Anton’s hand and gave it a squeeze.

I am so getting laid tonight.

He managed to keep a solemn face, though.

 

1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies – Snippet 10

1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies – Snippet 10 

PART II

May-June, 1635

The ladder to all high design

Chapter 6

Amiens, France

“Lord Turenne, we have finished searching their gear. Nothing suspicious, sir.”

Turenne nodded and dismissed his orderly with a wave. He had watched from a narrow casement window when, hours ago, the strange trio had first approached the portcullis of his “testing facility.” They had surrendered their arms as though they expected to do no less, submitted to the further indignity of a close personal search, and were then led into the courtyard to await a more thorough check of their rucksacks and gear.

While waiting on that process, Turenne had compared their self-written letters of introduction with the fragmentary dossiers he already possessed on two of the three men. The French intelligence was patchy at best, but confirmed that such persons did exist, that the individuals in the courtyard answered to their general descriptions, and that the positions and abilities they claimed in their letters certainly conformed to those attributed to them by the analysts in Paris. But neither source provided any clue as to why the group’s two persons of note might be traveling together or why they desired an audience with Turenne himself. However, they had both been clear and politely specific regarding that latter point: they were not interested in speaking with the senior military authorities in Paris, nor Turenne’s chief of staff Robert du Barry. They required an audience with Turenne. Otherwise, they explained — again politely — they would take their leave, and take their proposal elsewhere. Given his busy schedule, Turenne would normally have dictated a brief note, wishing them bon chance and pleasant travels to whomever was the next influential person on their list.

But one of the two credentialed strangers was an American technical expert. The other was the storied son of an exiled Irish earl, and had played a pivotal role in repulsing Frederik Hendrik’s drive on Bruges just four years ago. If Turenne had ever encountered a more peculiar pair of traveling companions, he could not recall it.

There was the anticipated knock on the door. Turenne elected to stand. “Enter.”

Du Barry, along with two guards armed with Cardinal breech-loading carbines, brought the unlikely duo into Turenne’s office. Du Barry looked to Turenne, who waved a desultory hand at him. “I am safe here, Robert. You may go.”

With a backward bow, du Barry and the two guards departed — and headed to join two other guards secreted in small rooms adjacent to this one, the entrances concealed behind bookcases and mirrors. The code “I am safe here” had sent them to these secret stations to oversee their Viscount’s protection.

However, as the door closed behind Turenne’s security entourage, the land-displaced Irish earl and the time-displaced American looked at the walls, and then exchanged glances. Then they looked at Turenne. And smiled faintly.

So much for preserving the impression of trust and a private meeting.Turenne surprised himself by returning their smiles. “Please understand, gentlemen, in my position, to be contemptuous of possible risk is to be contemptuous of one’s own life.”

The taller and younger of the two spoke. “We understand completely, Lord de la Tour d’Auverge.”

Who waved away that title like cobwebs. “My dear Comte, er, Earl of Tyrconnell, let us dispense with these titles. They are so cumbersome, particularly mine. I am simply Turenne.”

“And by that usage, I am simply O’Donnell.”  

“And your companion?”

The American stepped forward, hand half-extended, but then he glanced at the room’s bookcases and mirrors. Mon Dieu, is it so obvious? Turenne came around his desk, extended his hand in the American fashion, imagined a nervous du Barry whelping kittens in his sally port. “I welcome your hand, Monsieur — ?”

“McCarthy, Michael McCarthy. Junior. A pleasure, Lord Turenne.”

Plain manners and plain spoken, but forthright, honest, and unbowed. Turenne had heard this about most of the Americans. To many of his aristocratic peers, it made the up-timers intolerable abominations, like ogres who had learned enough of the ancient virtues of Athens and Pericles to become both supremely ridiculous and dangerous at the same time. But Turenne found the effect refreshing. He could already anticipate how, with a man of this demeanor, one could get to ideas, could get to agreements, and could get down to work, very quickly. And without the interminable folderol of titles, and protocols, and curtsies. “I welcome both of you to my, well, you might call them ‘experimental laboratories.’” And with that greeting, Turenne resumed his seat. And waited.

O’Donnell heard the unasked question in the silence. “We apologize for taking the liberty of seeking you at your place of work, and with no proper application for an audience. But our circumstances, and the import of our proposal, are both such that this direct approach seemed best, if regrettably brusque.”

“I see. Which explains much, Lord O’Donnell, since you could certainly have asked one of your correspondents for a thoroughly adequate introduction.” Or could have used them to bypass me altogether, Turenne observed silently. “Unless I am misinformed, your seal is wellknown to the Pope and Philip of Spain.”

Hugh nodded. “It is.”

“Yet here you are, on my doorstep, without any of the letters of introduction which would have assured you of immediate audience, and spared you the distasteful experience of being searched and examined like a common highwayman.”

The American answered. “Had Lord O’Donnell secured those letters, he would also have alerted those same persons to our meeting with you.”

Turenne nodded, looked at the displaced earl. “Lord O’Donnell, if I am not mistaken, you have been in the court, and then direct service, of the Archduchess Infanta Isabella of the Spanish Lowlands, since you were two years of age. Have you now chosen to seek service elsewhere?”

The Irishman’s face took on a melancholy expression. “I had little enough ‘choice’ in the matter, given what the histories of Grantville have shown me.”

“I can sympathize, sir. My own career was changed as a result of those documents. Cardinal Richelieu advanced me on the strength of deeds I had not yet performed, and now, never can, for that history has been irreversibly changed. Is it the same with you?”

“According to their books, I am a dead man in seven years.”

Turenne felt his stomach contract, suddenly cold. “Mon Dieu — Lord O’Donnell, my apologies. I had no idea, or I would not have spoken with such insouciance.”

O’Donnell waved aside the apology. “We all have different fates. And that was mine if I remained in Spanish service. And probably the fate of many hundreds of my countrymen, as well. And all for naught.”

Turenne had read a precis of the European histories that had arrived with Grantville. “Sir, again you have my sympathies, but I must also be frank. I see no promise that the new history we are now embarked upon will make France any more ardent a supporter of Irish interests. Given the recent combination of our fleet and England’s to defeat the Dutch, I must sadly project that there might even be less reason for hope.”

“I do not place my hope in France, Lord Turenne. I place it in you.”

The surprise of those words left Turenne both baffled and a bit wary. “Me? Why me?”

But it was McCarthy who answered. “Because, Lord Turenne, your nationality isn’t what’s important in this case. What’s important is that you obviously understand, really understand, the kind of changes my town has brought to your world.”

“Your opinion flatters me, Monsieur McCarthy. But then why is the Earl of Tyrconnell not joining his banner to that of your USE, and Grantville in particular? It is the very embodiment of those changes.”

 

1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies – Snippet 09

1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies – Snippet 09 

Always Earnest Eddie. “Protocol be damned, Commander, we just wanted to see her again.”

“‘See her,’ sir?”

Really? You still don’t get the ribbing? “See her, Commander. Perceive her form. Appreciate her beauty. Feast upon her feminine pulchritude with our own, envious eyes. You get the picture?” And he grinned.

Before Eddie could get the surprised look off his face, George Chehab rasped, “How could you not know what we meant, son? She’s a class-A knockout, that Danish Ann Margaret of yours.”

“Uh, Mr. Chehab, her name is actually Anne Cathrine.”

“Trust me son, she is a young Ann Margret. But more curvaceous.”

“Now George,” warned Vince Marcantonio, “let’s not get too blatant in our admiration of the young lady.”

Chehab smiled and shrugged. “Okay, but damn, I confess to disappointment that she didn’t come down with you, Commander: severe, genuine, personal disappointment. She’s as charming as she is beautiful, and we’d have liked to show her more of Grantville last year.”

Eddie nodded. “Yes, sir. A return visit tops our list of things to do. When time permits.”

And the room became quiet again, the jocularity chased out by the shadow of things to come. Serious things. Time to get back to and conclude the matters at hand, Piazza admitted. “Well, Commander, we are very glad to have seen you and presented you with your long overdue medal — and gift. I take it you will be returning to your duties immediately?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not even time to sneak a quick visit to Copenhagen?”

Eddie shook his head. “No, sir. Much as I’d like to. What with being a new husband and all.”

“Amen to that,” breathed Warner Barnes sympathetically, who knew because Piazza had briefed them months ago, that Anne Cathrine was “inexplicably” not with her husband in Lübeck. Of course, there was a simple, if unpleasant explanation for her absence: she had been purposely kept away from Lübeck at the behest of a group of Swedish officers. Anne Cathrine, they correctly asserted, was inquisitive, clever, enthusiastic, and probably could have deduced military secrets from fragments of conversations overheard in Eddie’s quarters. Of course, the great majority of the command staff also held that she’d have been even more likely to die rather than give up those secrets. But there had been concerns among some ultranationalist Swedes that a new bride — and a Danish one, at that — should not be in close proximity to secret projects and documents. Nonsense of course, and driven by their distrust of Copenhagen’s loyalty to Stockholm in the forcibly reforged Union of Kalmar. But those officers wielded enough political power that some concessions had to be made, and this one was consented to because it imposed politically-inconsequential costs upon only two persons: a love-lorn and sex-starved new husband named Eddie Cantrell and his pining bride.

“That’s hard, lonely duty you’ve pulled up north, Commander,” nodded Piazza.

Eddie either misunderstood or was trying to change the topic. “Well, I do like learning how to sail and command a ship, but much of the Baltic is iced over and all of it is cold and stormy as hell in February and March. Every time a training tour is up, I’m grateful to be back in HQ for another few weeks. Suddenly, sorting through an endless stack of papers doesn’t seem so bad, when you’re doing it in a nice, warm office.”

“Well, I’m sure a lot more papers have accumulated in your absence. You certainly have done quite a job of depositing a hefty new pile here with us.” Piazza gestured to the leather folios upon the table.

Eddie glanced at the “folders” and nodded, taking the President’s hand. “It’s been a pleasure to see you again, sir.”

“And you, Commander. Safe travels. And by the way, how are construction schedules holding up in the shipyards, Commander?”

“They’re passable, Mr. President,” an answer which Eddie punctuated by one moment of extended eye contact, a moment that was, again, probably lost on everyone except Nasi. Sagging a little, Eddie leaned on the table for support. “But everything will come together eventually.” And with that, his finger grazed across the exposed corner of the bottom-most folio.

Which was all code for: construction is on schedule and the new technologies have reached production phase, details of which are in this folder I just touched. And the delivery of that message, and the coded details scattered as harmless phrases throughout the papers in that folio, were the only reasons that the young commander had actually been sent down to Grantville.

The new prosthetic had been a great cover-story — flawless, actually — but the coded reports on Simpson’s classified projects, and his actual completion and readiness dates, could not be entrusted to airwaves or routine couriers. Even secure couriers were problematic because there was always the chance that their role was already known and that they would be waylaid at a most inopportune moment.

No, the best means of sending secret data — for which the codes were the second, not the first line of defense — was to send them in plain sight, so to speak. And that meant using a routine contact, such as Admiral Simpson’s staff expert on technology initiatives and fellow up-timer, to convey a single secure communiqué as part of a perfectly plausible trip that had been planned upon months ahead of time. And it meant that there were only three people who had known the identity of the courier in advance: Simpson, Piazza, and the courier himself — Eddie Cantrell.

Who had now reached the door. He turned, saluted, received their returns, and with one boyish smile — like a parting endearment from his rapidly disappearing former self — he was gone.

Anton Roedel finished his scribbling. “Mr. President, shall I read back the –?”

There was a knock at the door. Anton speared it with a glance sharp enough to gut a fish. “Sir, are we expecting another — ?”

Nasi interrupted smoothly, with a friendly smile. “That will be all, Mr. Roedel. Please drop off the evening’s secure communiqués at the encryption office, will you?”

Roedel’s eyes went back to the door briefly. “Yes, but — “

“We need those messages to go out as soon as possible, Mr. Roedel. So please, waste no time delivering them to the encryptionist on duty.”

Roedel glanced at Piazza who nodded faintly at the secretary and added a placating smile. “On your way, now, Anton.”

Who evidently was still miffed at being sent out when, clearly, there was yet another unexpected visitor waiting beyond the door. Chin slightly higher than usual, Anton Roedel gathered his papers and notes, squared them off, put them carefully in his own leather folio, and exited like a spurned ex-girlfriend.

It was Nasi who, three seconds after the door closed behind Roedel, called out “Come in.”

The person who entered through the door Eddie had exited was small, slightly stooped, and dressed indifferently, a hint of seediness in the worn seams of his coat and his britches. He looked around the room’s lower periphery, not raising his eyes to meet any of those looking at him. Pressed to categorize him, Piazza would have guessed him to be a vagrant who had somehow, impossibly, strayed off the street, past the guards, and into the highest offices of the State of Thuringia-Franconia.

Nasi nodded at the man, who exited far more swiftly and eagerly than he had entered.

Warner frowned, looked at Nasi and then around the table. “What, no message? Was the guy — lost?”

Nasi shook his head. “No, he was not lost. He was the message.”

“What?”

Chehab leaned forward. “The messenger coming through that door could have been one of three persons. Each one meant something different, so their face was their message, you might say.”

“And this one means — what?”

Nasi looked at Piazza. “It means that a pair of mechanics who were reported in town four days ago have just now departed.”

Warner blinked. “Mechanics?”

Chehab shrugged, looked away. “Fixers. Freelance wiseguys.”

Warner blinked harder. “What? You mean hit men, assassins?”

Nasi smoothed the front of his shirt. “Not necessarily.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means it depends who hired them and what for.” Piazza looked over at Warner with what he hoped was a small, reassuring smile. Warner Barnes was a relatively new and infrequent member of the group and wasn’t familiar with how, or what kind of, things were done in this ‘sleepy subcommittee’ — which also functioned, unadvertised, as the State of Thuringia-Franconia’s intelligence directorate.

Warner still hadn’t read between the lines. “And we just stood by while these two murderers were walking our streets?”

Piazza shrugged. “What would you have had me do? We don’t have any outstanding warrants on them.”

Nasi added, “They do not even stand accused of any crime.”

Warner sputtered. “Then how do we know they’re assassins, mechanics, or whatever?”

“Via the good offices of our preeminent international banker, Balthazar Abrabanel. His discreet connections with the Jewish ‘gray market’ frequently provide him with information about persons like these. They are often called upon to aid in, er, ‘collections’. “

Piazza leaned in. “And we have confirming reports of their identities and reputations from the Committees of Correspondence. These two aren’t political activists, but are well-known to the, um, action arms of the Committees.”

“And Abrabanel and the Committees — they actually hire thugs like these?”

“Not often. And never these two in particular.”

“Why not these two?”

Nasi shrugged. “Well, as has already been implied, this pair has a reputation for preferring to resolve matters…too kinetically.”

Warner goggled. “So they’re rougher than the average brute and we let them walk around our town, unwatched? All because some of our shadier contacts know who they are? Listen, Ed — “

Piazza shook his head. “Warner, they’re not a concern of ours”

Warner gaped, tried another approach. “Okay, if you say so, but maybe we should put a tail on them while we make a quick inquiry into their whereabouts while they were here, make sure they didn’t use their visit to harm any of our — “

Piazza looked at Nasi, who in turn looked at Warner, and interrupted him sharply. “Mr. Barnes. Allow me to be quite clear about this: those two men are gone. And being gone, they are to be left alone. Entirely alone. That is this committee’s official policy on the matter. Is that understood?”

Warner blinked in surprise, probably more at the tone than the instructions, Piazza suspected. “Okay, yes, Don Francisco. Although I just wish I understood why –”

Piazza stood, making sure that his chair made a loud scraping noise as he did, which momentarily silenced Barnes. The President rubbed tired eyes and then stared straight at Warner before he could resume his objections. “It’s been a long day, everyone. Let’s go home.”

 

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 38

Cauldron of Ghosts – Snippet 38 

****

Anton Zilwicki’s thoughts were elsewhere. He’d been associated with Victor for so long that he took the man’s somewhat peculiar nature as a matter of course. Watching the recording hadn’t bothered him in the least. He’d seen it before, for one thing. For another, although he hadn’t been there when the killings took place, he’d arrived immediately thereafter — soon enough that when his daughter Helen burst out of the shadows where she’d been hiding and raced toward him, she’d had to practically dance to get through the carpet of bodies littering the cavern floor. She’d stepped directly on two of the bodies and had gotten so much blood on her shoes that they’d thrown them away afterward.

She’d just turned fourteen at the time. And just a short time earlier, had herself…

“Oh, hell and damnation,” Anton said. “I made sure the news reporters couldn’t get to Helen — the Navy was very cooperative about that — and we’ve got Berry trained to a T, of course. But since Lars never met Victor and never saw the mayhem, I didn’t think we needed to do much preparation with him. I completely forgot –”

Underwood had shifted the focus of The Star Empire Today. Again, the Talking Heads were swiveled in the chairs, watching the footage recorded earlier of an interview with Lars Zilwicki. The campus grounds of the New University of Landing formed the backdrop. Lars had just started his third year there.

“– never saw it, not even the… leftovers, I guess you’d say. They made sure to take me and Berry out by a different route. I heard a lot about it later, of course. But I didn’t meet Victor Cachat then, and I’ve never met him since.”

The young man on the screen shrugged. “Being honest, it didn’t have much of an impact on me. I was still way too shaken up by what Helen did the day before to think much about what happened in the cavern next to the ruins of the Artinstute where me and Berry were hiding.”

Lars made a face. “Well, I guess not so much what Helen did as what I did to the bodies afterward. Those bastards had… hurt Berry. Really badly. I sort of lost it.”

The image shifted to the interviewer, who was frowning slightly. “Ah… exactly what are you referring to, Mr. Zilwicki?”

Shut up, Lars, Anton silently willed at the figure on the screen. Shut up, shut up, shut…

“Oh, hell and damnation,” he repeated aloud.

Cathy smiled. “We’re talking about Lars. Being interviewed by a very attractive and sophisticated-looking young woman. You really think he’s not going to keep talking?”

“She’s ten years older than he is,” Anton growled. “At least.”

Across from him, Berry smiled also. “And that has stopped my brother… when, exactly?”

“– thought you already knew about that,” Lars was saying. “After Helen made her escape from the Scrags working for Durkheim — well, indirectly, I guess; you do know about that, right? — she ran across three thugs in the underground passageways. They attacked her, figuring… well, we’ll never know but I’m guessing they were planning to do the same… that, Berry — never mind all that.”

A little apprehensively, Anton glanced at Berry. But his daughter was watching with what seemed to be a very serene expression. Knowing her, it probably was. The incident Lars was fumbling around had been a hideous one for her, but between her innate sanity and the best therapists Cathy could hire — which meant the best therapists anywhere in the galaxy — Berry had put it all behind her quite some time ago.

“– same three who’d imprisoned me and Berry. What the shi — ah, bad men — didn’t know was that even though Helen was only fourteen at the time — she was small for her age then, too, which isn’t true these days, heh — she’d been training for years in martial arts by Robert Tye. Yeah, that Robert Tye, if you’re at all familiar with martial arts.”

“So she was able to successfully defend herself?” said the interviewer.

Lars grinned, a lot more coldly that any young man his age should have been able to. “That’s one way to put it, I guess. She killed all three of the bastards.”

The interview was cut short there. Underwood had other fish to fry. He swiveled in his chair, which took less time than it took his panel guests because he’d been half-facing the wall screen, and gave the audience a meaningful look.

Underwood was a something of a genius at his trade. He was a master of the meaningful look that… actually had no clear meaning at all but imparted the sort of gravitas to him that was invaluable for successful talk show hosts.

He broke off the look when he saw that his Talking Heads had resumed their normal position and turned to face them.

“Interesting, that last item, wouldn’t you say? Charlene?”

Charlene Soulliere, the female guest who represented the Progressive Party — unofficially, not in any formal sense — had a sour expression on her face, as she’d had from the beginning of the show. For reasons that made no sense in ideological terms — in the past, if anything, they’d tended in the direction of being Havenite apologists — the Progressives were now taking a stance of sharp opposition to the rapprochement between Manticore and Haven.

Why? Nobody outside the Progressives’ own leadership really knew, but theories abounded.

One school of thought believed that the PP was on the Mesan Alignment’s payroll. Anton thought that was unlikely, although he didn’t rule it out completely. He leaned more toward the second school of thought, which was that –

The Progressives were a pack of fumble-witted loons whose incompetence at politics seemed to have no bottom.

 

Cathy Montaigne didn’t rule that out entirely — which she did with the Mesan-Alignment-stooges theory, on the grounds that the Mesan Alignment would have to be incompetent themselves to pay good money for Progressive Party stoogery, and there was no evidence that was true — but was more inclined toward the third school of thought, which contended that –

The Progressives were angling to get back into power as part of a coalition government with the Conservative Association. That was a truly ridiculous proposition in any sane and sensible programmatic terms but couldn’t be ruled out since the only difference between the Conservative Association and the PP when it came to political scruples was that the Conservative Association did have one fixed and invariant principle — what’s ours is ours and don’t you even THINK about mucking around with it in any way whatsoever — and the Progressives had none at all beyond the craving for political power.