1634: The Baltic War (assiti chards)

by Eric Flint

  What a laugh. Ripe Medieval would have been Eddie's pick. Complete with dungeons and heated tongs and outdoor sewage.

  Hearing a commotion behind him on the road, he turned his head. A carriage was pulling up and coming to stop. Prince Ulrik and his tame Norwegian half-tech-whiz and half-cutthroat had finally arrived.

  "About time!" boomed the king, once his son emerged from the vehicle. "You almost missed it!" He pointed at the water, where the diver's helmet was disappearing beneath the surface.

  Ulrik gave his father an half-apologetic wave of the hand and came to stand next to Eddie and Anne Cathrine. His Norwegian sidekick, on the other hand, climbed down the ladder to the wharf and went over to the pump. Baldur was almost as bad as the king, when it came to being obsessed with gadgetry, even gadgetry that he didn't approve of. Eddie knew that Norddahl was no more in favor of working on diving suits than Ulrik was.

  But the king had decreed, and so it would be-and Baldur wasn't about to miss the chance to fiddle with his gear.

  Hopefully, he wouldn't be fiddling much, if at all. Ever since Ulrik and Baldur had raised this project with Eddie, he'd been trying to remember what he'd read about it years earlier. There'd been a brief stretch there, back when he was fourteen, where Eddie had developed the ambition to become an oceanographer. He'd dropped the idea, soon enough, once he got a better sense of how much tedium the apparently glamorous profession actually had in practice. In that respect, it was much like being an archaeologist or an astronomer. They were all professions that looked really cool in the movies, but in the real world mostly involved tedious and repetitive work recording data. The intellectual equivalent of being a ditch-digger, it seemed to him. By then, he'd veered off into his I'll-be-a-NASCAR-race-driver phase, anyway.

  The problem was that Eddie couldn't remember much about whatever he'd read concerning this sort of diving. Or scuba diving, for that matter. Like any proper fourteen-year-old enthusiast, Eddie had been interested in deep sea diving. The sort of enterprise that you couldn't possibly do in any kind of personal diving gear. For that you needed the really nifty stuff like bathyspheres or bathyscapes-and if something went wrong at those depths, there wasn't anything to worry about.

  Poof-or maybe crunch-and it was all over.

  The only thing he did recall was that something he'd read had made him solemnly vow he'd never get into this sort of diving suit. But he couldn't for the life of him remember what it was. Just… something, that went beyond the usual perils of drowning or the bends. Something really grisly.

  The diver had now apparently reached the bottom. Eddie didn't know what sort of surface he was walking on. Nothing too rocky, he hoped. But he did know that the depth here was almost sixty feet, because the king had remarked that he'd picked this spot because it was the deepest place his workmen had been able to find in the Oresund that wouldn't require doing the test from the back of a boat. At least Christian had had enough sense not to add that complication on top of everything else-although it was typical of the man to have chosen the deepest possible place for a first test. God forbid anything should be done by halves in Denmark, the way they were in more sensible lands ruled by dullard but thankfully unimaginative kings.

  There being nothing to see beyond a hose entering the water and moving slowly about, Eddie dredged up his memory and did some calculations. Water pressure increased by one atmosphere every thirty-three feet, with sea level pressure being 14.7 pounds per square inch. Call it thirty pounds per square inch at a depth of thirty-five feet, and forty-five pounds at a depth of sixty-five feet. That meant the diver, at a depth of approximately sixty feet, had about forty pounds per square inch pressing on every square inch of his body surface.

  The suit's surface, rather. How many square inches did that suit have?

  Eddie had no idea. The only answer he could come up with was lots. He lifted his forearm and looked down on it, trying to estimate how many square inches there were just on that small part of his body alone. The coat sleeve wasn't as thick and bulky as a diving suit, of course, but…

  Close enough. He figured there were somewhere between sixteen and twenty-four square inches of surface just on the upper side of his forearm. Call it twenty square inches. Then multiply by… he figured three times would give a reasonable estimate of the total surface area of his entire forearm. Sixty square inches, then.

  Each and every one of which, for that diver down there, had an extra twenty-five pounds squeezing down on them. That was three-quarters of a ton's worth of pressure just on one forearm alone. For his whole body, who knew? Ten tons, at least. Maybe fifteen.

  To be sure, he wouldn't be feeling it, since the pump was maintaining a higher air pressure in the suit to compensate. But if anything went wrong…

  Eddie suddenly remembered what he'd forgotten.

  No wonder he'd forgotten it!

  "Eddie, you should go inside," Anne Cathrine said forcefully. "You're looking more pale than ever."

  He ignored her, turning to Ulrik. "Do you have a-a-? Ah! I can't remember what they're called. A safety valve. On the hose, near the pump."

  He made vague, groping gestures with his hands, trying to delineate something he could only vaguely describe. "It's like a check-valve. What it does, if the pump suddenly fails, is automatically lock-so the higher air pressure in the suit can't escape."

  Ulrik frowned. "I don't know. I don't believe so. But I'd have to ask Baldur."

  As always, they'd been speaking the German which served the royal Danes and Eddie alike as a common tongue. The prince raised his voice and started jabbering some Danish at the Norwegian standing next to the king below. Eddie could now understand some of the language, but these quickly shouted words he could only guess at.

  Baldur looked up. After a moment, he shook his head and jabbered something back. It was clear enough to Eddie from the expression on Baldur's face that the answer wasn't even no, we don't. It was more along the lines of what are you talking about?

  "Get him out of there, Ulrik," Eddie hissed. "The diver, I mean. Pull him out. Now."

  Ulrik frowned. That would require overriding-trying to, anyway-his father. Which was no small chore, to put it mildly, whenever Christian IV had his heart set on something.

  He shrugged. "I'll try."

  But before he could even speak a word, there was a sudden hubbub among the men working the pump.

  One of them jabbered something at the king. Eddie had gotten familiar enough with Danish to grasp that the gist of what he was saying was that something seemed to be wrong.

  Eddie looked at the hose. Sure enough. There were so many ways to get killed doing this. The hose was now thrashing about, in a sluggish sort of way. Eddie was sure it had ruptured somewhere along the line.

  "Pull him out! Now!" Ulrik shouted. Those simple Danish terms, at least, Eddie understood.

  The king didn't seem inclined to argue the matter. The diver had two ropes attached to him as well as the hose. The workmen standing by started hauling on them. Meanwhile, the men at the pump continued their useless labor.

  Baldur took off his boots and his coat and jumped into the water, disappearing below the surface.

  "What's wrong, Eddie?" asked Anne Cathrine. "And you look really sick, now. You should go inside."

  He grasped at that straw. He knew what was coming up out of the water-he remembered it all, now, too late for it to do any good-and he had no desire to let the king's daughter see it. She was only fifteen years old.

  For that matter, Eddie didn't want to see it himself. He could remember being sick to his stomach, just reading about it.

  "You're right, I'm not feeling well. Perhaps I should return."

  "Into my brother's carriage, at least. We'll have to wait for Ulrik before we can go back to Rosenborg Castle. But it'll be warmer in the carriage than it is out here, with the wind. Here, let me help you."

  She took him around the waist with her right arm and began propelling him toward the carriage some twe
nty yards away. Then, not satisfied with the arrangement, pulled his left arm over her shoulder so she could carry more of his weight, while he used his cane with his other arm. By now, Eddie was getting around well enough on his wooden leg that he'd been able to dispense with the crutches.

  The contact was intimate enough to distract Eddie quite nicely from more unpleasant matters. Of course, it also made him very nervous. Even after the months he'd spent in Danish captivity, he still hadn't been able to figure out the social parameters involved. Christian IV seemed oddly oblivious to the relationship that was developing-so to speak, since Eddie didn't really know what it was himself-between his American captive and his oldest surviving daughter.

  Fine, she wasn't technically a "princess" because her mother, Kirsten Munk, hadn't been highly enough ranked in the nobility for anything but a morganatic marriage. Big deal. The oldest daughter was still the oldest daughter-and the father was a no-fooling seventeenth-century goddamit king. One hell of a lot closer in time and spirit to Henry VIII than he was to the harmless royals that Eddie had grown up with. Queen Elizabeth II waving at crowds from an open car, looking sweet and just a bit insipid; Princess Diana, who couldn't harm anything except the reputation of the British royal family and who cared anyway; and a whole passel of silly idiots losing money in the casinos in Monte Carlo.

  Eddie never quite knew what might or might not get him hauled to the chopping block. What made it all the more odd was that Anne Cathrine seemed just as oblivious to the matter as her father. From one day to the next, Eddie couldn't tell if she was in any way attracted to him as a man. One day, he'd swear she was. The next…

  Who ordered this?

  Granted, Eddie had never been what anyone in their right mind would call a ladies' man, bowling over the girls right and left. But at least in his comfortable and familiar world back up time, he'd known when he was pining away hopelessly.

  Okay, pretty much all of the time, that had been. But he'd known.

  "Will that man be all right?" Anne Cathrine asked, as they came up to the carriage. A coachman held the door open for them.

  There was no point in lying. "No, he won't," Eddie said harshly. "He's already dead. He was dead before Baldur went down after him."

  Frowning, the king's daughter more or less hoisted him up into the carriage without waiting for the coachman's assistance. The combination of that pretty teenage frown and the Valkyrie strength almost made Eddie laugh, despite the circumstances. His new world seemed full of contradictions.

  "That can't be right," she said firmly, climbing in after him. "Drowning isn't that quick."

  Eddie eased himself into the bench, and the king's daughter sat next to him. He was about to say, "He didn't drown, Anne Cathrine," but caught himself in time. The girl was nothing if not inquisitive. She'd want an explanation, and that was the last thing Eddie wanted to provide her. He didn't even want to think about it himself.

  Especially not after, thirty seconds later, she gave him a mischievous smile. "You are too much the gentleman," she proclaimed. "I've given up."

  Then, kissed him. Then, did it again, for a lot longer.

  So, at least one question was answered. There remained only the petty details of which form of execution the king would select, once he got wind of the situation. But Eddie, in the middle of the hottest necking session he'd ever had in his life, gave that piddly problem no thought at all.

  Some time later, they heard people approaching the carriage and resumed more decorous positions. Anne Cathrine looked a bit flushed, immensely pleased, and fifteen going on thirty. Eddie had no idea what he looked like. Twenty going on thirteen, he suspected. Not that he cared. Bring on the headsman; he'd greet him with a sneer. The world has no greater armor than a flood of hormones.

  Ulrik came in first, with his sidekick right behind. As he clambered in, Norddahl called out something to the coachmen. As soon as he closed the door, the coach set off for Copenhagen.

  "Ghastly," the prince proclaimed. "Never seen anything like it."

  He was sitting on the bench opposite Eddie and Anne Cathrine. Norddahl slid onto the same bench. "You, Baldur?" the prince asked. "Have you?"

  The Norwegian shook his head. "No, Your Highness. And I'd have thought by now I'd seen just about any way a man could get killed."

  Alas, Anne Cathrine was now intrigued. "What happened? I thought he drowned."

  "Oh, no. Lucky for him, I suppose," said her half-brother. "Drowning's slow. People say it's a good way to go, though I have my doubts. But this one died instantly."

  "Couldn't have even known it was happening," Baldur said, "it had to have been so quick. Judging from the results."

  The king's daughter's eyes were wide. She didn't look fifteen-going-on-thirty, any more. She looked fifteen-and-no-kitten-is-more-curious.

  "What happened?"

  Ulrik grimaced and held up his hands, as if holding a big globe. "Most of his body was in the helmet. All mashed up like you wouldn't believe. Every bone in pieces, all crushed together with flesh and blood. You couldn't really recognize most of the organs."

  "Never seen anything like it," Baldur repeated. "The first fifteen feet of the hose attached to the helmet were full of him, too. Like a bloody meat paste."

  The king's daughter clapped her hand over her mouth. "Oh! That's horrible!"

  Norddahl shrugged. "He died a lot quicker than he would have, a week from now, in the executioner's hands. But it was the most gruesome thing I've ever seen."

  Ulrik was peering at Eddie. "Can you explain what happened?"

  Since Eddie's attempt to shield the girl was now pointless, he heaved a little sigh. "Yeah. There was probably something like twelve tons of pressure on his body, that all caved in at once. Like a giant squeezing a toothpaste tube. His body had nowhere to go except into the helmet and the hose. I think they call it 'excarnation.' "

  He had to say the last word in English, of course. But what everyone really wanted was an explanation of the other American term. And once he explained what a toothpaste tube was, even Norddahl grimaced.

  "Oh, that's icky!" said Anne Cathrine. She frowned at her half-brother. "Ulrik, you have to promise you won't try that yourself. You either, Baldur."

  "No fear of that!" Ulrik exclaimed. "Even our sainted father is now persuaded that it's a hopeless way to wage war."

  The Norwegian wasn't looking as cheerful, though. "He'll still want me to keep working on it. Not much, of course, since I've already provided him with what he needs."

  Eddie squinted at him. "Huh? I thought you said-"

  "Hopeless for war," explained Ulrik. "On the other hand, it struck my father that it would make a splendid form of execution. Too expensive, of course, for common crimes. But for high treason-gross outrages against the monarchy-that sort of thing-the king thinks it would serve nicely."

  That sort of thing. Eddie wondered if necking with the king's daughter fell into that category. It might. You never really knew until it was too late. Fucking goddam seventeenth century.

  Anne Cathrine's hand slid into his and seemed bound and determined to stay there. Her half-brother gave the clasp a glance, then smiled slightly, but said nothing.

  On the other hand, you really didn't know. It might all work out very nicely, too.

  Who the hell ordered this, anyway? I'm just a West Virginia country boy.

  Chapter 36

  Magdeburg

  "But no bombing?" Jesse asked.

  Mike Stearns shook his head. "No. John's got his ironclads parked-moored, anchored, whatever the right term is for boats on a river-not more than three miles from Hamburg. If he has to make the run, he tells me that any bombs you could drop would just be a drop in the bucket." Mike grinned. "He also added that you shouldn't take offense at any implied sneer coming from a squid."

  Jesse sniffed. "Give it a few more years and let's hear him say that." But he didn't argue the point. Right now-probably for a fair number of years-the destruction Simpson could bring
down on Hamburg with four ironclads and their ten-inch main guns simply dwarfed anything Jesse could do with two airplanes. Even the Gustavs were still small warcraft. While they could carry far more weight than a Belle, they weren't exactly B-17s. They were armed with a mixture of rockets and bombs, though the rockets were still inaccurate and the few bombs no more than one-hundred-pounders.

  Not that they didn't pack a punch. Unlike the Belle, the Gustav had been designed from the start with hardpoints under its low wings and fuselage and had the power to lift a solid war load. Up to eight twenty-five-pound rockets could be carried under the wings, plus either two fifty-pound bombs or one hundred-pounder under the fuselage. At need, two rockets could be replaced with an additional fifty-pounder on each wing.

  But the bombs were black powder packed into aerodynamic wooden casings. An inner lining of rifle balls made them deadly against soft targets, but they couldn't penetrate squat all. Hal Smith was working on an incendiary version, but they hadn't tested it, yet.

  "Besides," Mike continued, "I want to avoid that anyway. I know you don't want to hear this from a politician covered in muck, but the fact is that I want to avoid as much as possible anything that neither you nor I likes to call 'collateral damage' but there it is. Meaning no offense, again, but you're also a long ways away from what anyone would call precision bombing. And you don't have a so-called 'smart bomb' to your name."

  Jesse sniffed again. "I always thought those terms were oxymorons, anyway. A bomb's only as smart as the person aiming it. War's war. People get killed, and plenty of them are noncombatants. Way it is."

  He gave the prime minister a skeptical look. "Although why you think that Simpson's guns are going to do any better is a mystery to me. Dive-bombing, I can pretty much promise a circular error probable of one hundred feet. That can't be any worse than his ten-inch guns will do, firing into Hamburg from the river."