by Eric Flint
But nobody misunderstood the other message contained in those tramping boots, accompanied by music. Certainly not anyone who was present in Hans Richter Square and witnessed the reaction of the army when it passed the reviewing stand spilling from the portico of Hans Richter Palace.
Princess Kristina was the centerpiece of that little drama. Her seven-year-old enthusiasm for the regiments passing below her was fully reciprocated. Whatever political opinions might exist in the minds of those soldiers, so heavily influenced as they were by the CoCs, the Vasa dynasty retained its popularity with them. Indeed, had increased its popularity over the course of the winter. Gustav Adolf might still be something of a Swedish foreigner, to those mostly-German troops. But his heir belonged to them.
They knew of the girl's frequent visits to the city's Freedom Arches. They knew that she'd spent time, as required by the rules, learning to bake in their kitchens. They knew that she'd spent still more time in the settlement house, which had come to spread its influence through more and more of the city's workingmen's quarters.
And, by now, they'd all heard the story of Thorsten Engler and Caroline Platzer. It had become something of a legend of its own, in fact-especially the part that involved their future empress demanding that a commoner from the future be allowed to pass through the gates to betroth one of their own.
The USE's noble and merchant establishment was in a vise, in short, with its lower jaw taking the form of the regiments, and its upper jaw symbolized in the person of a seven-year-old girl. The closer those jaws closed, the smaller became their room to maneuver.
Such was the general opinion of the establishment, at least. Not all of its members shared in it, however.
A bit to her surprise-certainly to her relief-Emelie discovered that her husband was one of those dissenters. "Mavericks," as the up-timers put it.
"Well, that was certainly delightful," said the count of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt as he and Emelie walked away from the square after the regiments passed.
Emelie, whose hand was tucked into his elbow, gave Ludwig Guenther a considering glance. She could detect no trace of sarcasm in his expression, nor had there been one in his tone of voice.
"You have no…"
"Reservations?" he said, chuckling softly. He stopped, placed an affectionate hand on his wife's nestled on his arm, and turned toward her. "No, dearest, I do not. Half a year ago, I probably would have. But today? After months of overseeing churchmen wrangling over doctrine?"
He chuckled again, more loudly. "Mind you, I find the theology itself and the disputes quite engrossing. But I've also come to conclude that the mentality-what's that American term-?"
"Mindset," Emelie provided.
"Yes. Splendid expression. The mindset involved in being a leading theologian stands in almost direct opposition to the mindset required for successful governance. More than once, I've found myself thinking: Thank God for the separation of church and state."
Emelie smiled, and they resumed walking. After a moment, Ludwig Guenther added, "I haven't had the time to discuss the matter with you, but you should know that Wilhelm Wettin and his Crown Loyalists have been after me a great deal lately."
She nodded. "Yes, that's to be expected. Have you come to any conclusions?"
"Oh, yes. I intend to keep it to myself for the moment-except with you, that is-but I've decided that I would far rather be a moderating influence in Mike Stearns' camp than try to be a reforming influence in the Crown Loyalists."
Emelie was surprised. Quite surprised, in fact. She was fond of her husband, no question about it. But she sometimes found him judicious to the point of sheer boredom. For someone like the count of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, this verged on outright radicalism.
"I had the impression you thought very well of Wilhelm."
"Oh, I do. Less so today than I did a year ago, however-and the problem isn't really him in the first place." He sighed. "I fear Wilhelm has been quite incautious, in his anxiety to supplant Mike Stearns. I could live with Wilhelm, well enough. Probably better than I could Stearns, really. But I simply can't stomach so many of the people Wilhelm has become attached to. They are blind men, at best."
They'd reached the end of the square. From here, they could turn one way to return to their mansion. Or, the other, to go toward the workingmen's districts.
"You've never been to the settlement house," Emelie said, a bit hesitantly. "Would you…"
"Yes, by all means. I should most enjoy a visit. Finally."
Princess Kristina arrived not long after they did. With Caroline Platzer in tow.
"Blind men," Ludwig Guenther repeated.
Chapter 41
The mouth of the Elbe
"Here they come!"
Anatole du Bouvard looked up sharply at the lookout's shout, and his stomach tightened. Despite everything, he'd rather hoped this moment would never come. Of course, what he'd hoped and what he'd expected had been two quite different things.
He dumped the cup of hot broth he'd been drinking onto the ground beside the fire, tossed the cup to the cook, and headed for the lookout's position on the river bank.
"There," the lookout said, pointing upstream, and du Bouvard grimaced.
"I see them," he acknowledged.
He gazed at the oncoming shapes for several seconds, then inhaled deeply and looked over his shoulder.
"Get them ready, Leandre," he called gruffly.
Leandre Olier, du Bouvard's second-in-command, waved in acknowledgment and turned his attention to the two men who had "volunteered" for their part in this mission.
For several seconds, du Bouvard watched those volunteers donning the equipment from the future for which the cardinal's agents had paid so dearly. Then he turned back to the river and shook his head.
Madness, he thought. This entire idea is madness.
Not that he'd felt any particular inclination to point that out when he received his orders. The fact that they'd come directly from Richelieu himself had been more than sufficient to depress any foolish temptation in that direction. Still…
It wasn't the concept itself he objected to. That had an undeniable elegance, especially given what the Americans had done to the League of Ostend's fleet off Luebeck. And using equipment purchased from some of the arrogant "up-timers" themselves only added to the notion's appeal. But however du Bouvard might feel about that, there were certain practical objections which the cardinal appeared to have failed to consider.
More likely, he considered them and simply decided to go ahead, anyway. After all, what does he lose if we fail? The cardinal's calculations were seldom encumbered by any preoccupation with the survival of his tools. On the other hand, the rewards for those tools could be substantial when-and if-they succeeded.
He refocused his attention on his targets. The big ships, the "ironclads" and the "timberclads," moved steadily downstream towards him, following behind two much smaller vessels. Those would be the "motorboats" the spies had reported, and he frowned at the way they wove back and forth, sweeping their bigger consorts' line of advance. There were several musket-armed infantry (at least, he hoped they were musketeers and not equipped with some of the deadly up-time firearms) in each of them, and they appeared to be unpleasantly alert.
Well, there was nothing he could do about that, and he returned his attention to the rest of the American fleet.
The "ironclads" were impressive. They moved smoothly, without any fuss or bother, and despite their slab-sided appearance, they possessed a certain low-slung elegance. The three stubbier vessels following behind them-the "timberclads"-were another matter. They were much higher in proportion to their length, with massive superstructures dominating their after ends, and they looked undeniably clumsier.
That would be the "paddle wheels," he thought, looking at the high, straight-sided housings. The spies' reports had made it abundantly clear that the timberclads and ironclads had different means of movement. Personally, du Bouvard found it much easier
to visualize how the "paddle wheels" must work. After all, he'd seen plenty of waterwheels in his time, and the principle was obviously the same, even if the mechanics were reversed. This notion of ships that moved by squirting water out of their asses, though… that he found difficult to wrap his mind around.
Also unlike the ironclads, the timberclads' tall smokestacks belched dense, black smoke that was visible for miles. It should have made them look even more threatening, like some sort of smoke- and fire-breathing dragons, but it didn't work that way. Instead, the very lack of any visible, dramatic signs of what made them move only made the ironclads more ominous by comparison.
Someone stepped up beside him, and he glanced to his right.
"Well?" he said.
"They're ready," Olier told him with a grunt. The taciturn Breton's eyes were on the oncoming vessels, and he shook his head. "Not that I think it's going to do much good," he added.
"Only one way to find out," du Bouvard replied.
"They're moving faster than we expected," Olier observed, and du Bouvard chuckled sourly.
"In that case, we'd better get them started," he said.
"I'll see to it."
Olier started back, and du Bouvard returned his attention to the river.
Leandre had a point, he thought. Those ships were moving at least twice as rapidly as they'd anticipated, which only made this entire operation even more problematical. As du Bouvard had attempted to point out to his superiors, when the Americans attacked the League fleet in the Trave River below Luebeck, its ships had been anchored, motionless. And they'd launched the attack under cover of night. And the Trave was a much smaller river than the Elbe.
None of those conditions, unfortunately, applied at the moment.
The odds of any swimmer, even one equipped with the Americans' "scuba gear," managing to place an explosive charge on a vessel moving through the water at a substantial rate of speed, in daylight, struck du Bouvard as remote, to say the very least. Adding in the frigid temperature of the water, and its inevitable effect on those same swimmers, didn't improve them. But the cavalry forces that had accompanied the American vessels as far as Hamburg had precluded any possibility of getting close enough to attempt an attack above the city. And now that the ironclads and timberclads were past Hamburg, it was extraordinarily unlikely that they were going to obligingly anchor anywhere else in the river. So, if du Bouvard was going to attempt this lunacy at all, this was the best chance he was going to be able to arrange.
Piss-poor as it might be.
Olier and the two divers made their way down to the river bank, and du Bouvard shook his head as he watched. The cardinal's agents had been unable to acquire one of the "wetsuits" the Americans apparently used. Du Bouvard wasn't entirely clear on exactly how a "wetsuit" worked, but he knew it was designed to protect a swimmer from the numbing effect of cold water. In the absence of whatever it was and however it worked, he and Olier had done their best by coating the swimmers' bodies thickly in insulating grease. He expected it to help; he didn't expect it to help enough.
The "volunteers," who-in the event of their survival-would find their sentences commuted, in addition to receiving a substantial monetary reward, pulled on their frogfootlike flippers and slipped gingerly into the water. They adjusted their equipment carefully, moving methodically through the series of checks du Bouvard and Olier had put together from their reading of the books acquired from the same source that had provided the scuba gear itself. They'd been able to make a handful of practice dives in warmer water, but the difficulty in recharging the scuba tanks had limited the amount of time they could spend actually underwater. And, while du Bouvard had chosen not to mention it to his swimmers, the books had made it clear that there were problems using normal air to fill the tanks.
They completed their adjustments, nodded to Olier, and disappeared into the Elbe.
Someone knocked on the cabin door, and John Simpson looked up from the sandwich and glass of beer of the lunch he'd been anticipating for the last couple of hours. Especially the beer. Good seventeenth-century German beer was among the best in the world, and one difference between the USE Navy and the U.S. Navy in which he'd once served was that there'd been no point at all in attempting to enforce Gideon Welles' ban on shipboard alcohol. Simpson couldn't really say he regretted that, but however he'd felt about it, no down-time German would have stood for it. So he'd settled for truly ferocious punishments for drunkenness, instead, although, to be fair, that seemed to be no worse a common problem among seventeenth-century Germans than it had been among twentieth-century Americans.
Whoever it was knocked again, and he shook his head.
"Enter!" he called, and one of Constitution's assistant signalmen opened the door and stepped into the cabin.
"Message from Achates, sir. I'm afraid it's marked 'Urgent.' "
"Very well." Simpson sighed, pushing the beer aside, and took the radio room message slip. He unfolded it and scanned the few, terse sentences, and his jaw tightened.
"Thank you," he told the messenger, and climbed out of his chair. He started for the compartment door, then paused, scooped up the sandwich, and continued on his way.
Captain Halberstat was waiting on the port bridge wing, gazing aft through a pair of up-time binoculars, when he arrived.
The bridge lookouts came to attention as Simpson stepped out of the conning tower door, still chewing on ham and cheese, but he waved them back to their duties as he moved up beside Halberstat.
Achates was dropping out of formation, emitting a thick plume of steam as she angled towards the river's southern bank. The rest of the squadron had slowed to stay in company with her, and Simpson grunted.
"I suppose we've done better than we had any right to expect to get this far without a significant engineering casualty," he said.
"I don't imagine Commander Baumgartner feels that way at the moment, Admiral," Halberstat replied, and Simpson chuckled harshly.
"No, I don't imagine he does," he agreed. Commander C.H. Baumgartner was a dour fellow even in his sunniest moments-which this certainly was not. Simpson himself was one of the few people who even knew what the initials stood for. Most of the sailors in the navy who'd dealt with the officer just used the monicker an up-timer had given him: "Clod Hopper." Not to his face, of course.
Simpson looked at Halberstat. "Any more details on his problem?"
"He did send a follow-up message, sir." Halberstat extracted another folded message slip from the breast pocket of his uniform tunic and passed it across. "According to his engineer, it's a fractured steampipe. And he's got at least three badly injured men."
"Wonderful."
Simpson unfolded the second message and scanned it quickly. Actually, it wasn't a steampipe, he saw; it was the fitting where the steampipe in question joined the boiler itself, which made the injury reports understandable enough. Indeed, they were lucky the sailors in question appeared to have escaped with relatively minor burns, given the amount of live steam that must have escaped. He didn't feel especially lucky, however, and he suppressed a sudden temptation to swear out loud and turned to the signalman who had followed him out onto the bridge wing, instead.
"Message to Achilles, copied to Achates," he said. The signalman's pencil poised itself above his message pad, and he continued. "Stand by to assist Achates. Prepare to pass a tow, if required."
"Aye, sir." The signalman read back the message, and then headed for the radio room voice pipe when Simpson nodded.
"May I ask what you intend to do, sir?" Halberstat asked.
"Unless Commander Baumgartner's initial assessment is wrong, it's going to take at least thirty-six to forty-eight hours for him to make repairs-assuming he can make them out of shipboard resources," Simpson replied. "We can't afford to wait that long. The emperor is expecting us at Luebeck and General Torstensson's already moving. What's the closest town?"
"That would be Ritsenbuttel, I believe," Halberstat said, pointing downstrea
m and to the southern bank.
"All right." Simpson nodded. "In that case, let's get a message sent back to Hamburg. We're going to need some sort of security force down here, if it turns out Baumgartner's estimate is overly optimistic. Until they can get here, I think his own Marines should be able to provide any base security he requires."
Du Bouvard swore inventively and with feeling as the Americans' steady approach suddenly slowed. He had no idea why it had happened. One of the timberclads was turning out of line, and as he watched, a second timberclad moved towards it, as if to render assistance. There was also a lot of white smoke-or possibly steam-streaming up.
Why the devil couldn't they have had whatever problem they're having fifteen minutes earlier? he demanded.
No one answered, and he shook his head in disgust. If he'd only known this was coming, he would never have put his swimmers into the water so soon! And if the Americans were having mechanical problems, it was entirely possible they would have no choice but to anchor somewhere after all while they made repairs. An anchored warship would have been far more vulnerable.
Lieutenant Leberecht Probst, USE Marine Corps, stood beside the bass boat's wheel and shaded his eyes with one hand as he looked philosophically back upriver.
Probst was better educated than the majority of his fellow Marines. Like Hans and Gretchen Richter, he was the son of a small printer. Unlike the Richters' father, however, Anton Probst was alive and well… and an enthusiastic supporter of the Committees of Correspondence whose political tracts had brought him so much business of late. Young Leberecht had read those same tracts while helping to set type, and one thing had led to another.
Now he watched the ironclads reducing their speed to little more than a crawl while Achilles went alongside Achates.
"What do you think, Leberecht?" Ensign Kjell Halvorsen asked, and he shrugged.
"I think somebody broke down. From the looks of things, it was Achates."
"Commander Baumgartner's going to be pissed," Halvorsen said with a certain satisfaction. The tall young Swede wasn't especially fond of Commander Baumgartner, since Commander Baumgartner's attractive younger daughter was quite fond of Ensign Halvorsen and the commander did not approve. Of course, Baumgartner didn't approve of much of anything.