by Eric Flint
“I concur with Major Simpson,” his subordinate Captain von Eichelberg said stoutly.
The truth was, for the moment any position was a “soft target” for airships, at least as far as ground fire was concerned. True, Mike had assigned the entire Dietrich Regiment to serve as his “ack-ack,” if and when he gave the order. At that point, a little more than a thousand men would fire a coordinated volley at whatever airship their commander, Colonel Carsten Amsel, chose for their target.
They’d be firing with SRG rifled muskets, too, which had a greater range than most muskets of the era. Still, as long as the airship kept more than three hundred yards above the ground—above four hundred, almost certainly—even a volley of one thousand Minié balls wasn’t likely to do much damage except by blind luck.
“They seem to have added some armor, sir,” said Montecuccoli. “The bottom of the gondolas—is ‘bottom’ the correct term for that?—are now V-shaped. That wasn’t true at Vienna.”
Mike brought his binoculars back up and studied the feature Montecuccoli was indicating. Sure enough, now that the airships were closer and he was looking more carefully, he could see that the hulls of the gondolas were distinctively V-shaped—more so than any boat he’d ever seen, in fact. The angle the sides of the gondola now formed was roughly ninety degrees.
“That’s got to be in order to deflect bullets from ground fire,” he said.
Montecuccoli lowered his own spyglass. “It’s odd, though. Unless I misunderstood something Major Simpson told us in his briefing yesterday, for all their immense size these airships really don’t have that much in the way of lifting capacity. With regard to their—what did he call it? cargo capacity?—even the Magdeburg can’t carry more than a few tons above the weight of the ship itself along with its crew, fuel, ballast and equipment. And these Ottoman airships are quite a bit smaller than the Magdeburg.”
Mike understood the point he was raising. An Ottoman airship probably didn’t have a net cargo capacity greater than a ton. Any armor they added would have to be subtracted from the weight of their payload. What was the point of flying a well-armored airship over a target when all it could drop once it got there were a few grenades?
“I think that new outer armor is very light, Raimondo,” he said. “That’s just a guess, but now that I think about it, that’s how I’d do it. In fact, whenever we get around to using the Magdeburg as a bombing platform—which we won’t be doing today, of course—we ought to consider doing it ourselves.”
“I’m not sure I’m following you, sir.”
Mike lowered his binoculars. “All you need to do is deflect some bullets—basically, if you fly high enough, you just need to be able to handle stray and lucky shots. So you place thin boards at an acute angle, maybe—no, probably—backed with some kind of light padding. Fabric; silk would be even better. Sure, if enough bullets hit the outer armor they’d wind up shredding it, but so what? By then the battle would be over and I’m willing to bet the Ottomans designed the new armor so they can easily jettison it when necessary.”
The Italian officer grunted. “I think you’re probably right. Clever bastards.”
“Never forget the greatest of all military principles, Raimondo.”
“Which is…?”
“The other guy’s got a brain, too.”
Lower Silesia
About ten miles southeast of Breslau
“I hate this armor,” Gretchen hissed. If her glare had actually been as hot as she imagined it to be, the whole countryside would be starting to smolder.
Which would serve that countryside right, as far as she was concerned! Stupid farmland owned by stupid Poles who managed their affairs so poorly she was forced to set everything straight while wearing this—this—this—
“Argh!” she snarled. Then, slapped her midriff.
“And I’m five months pregnant, too! You watch—I’ll miscarry because of the way this idiotic armor presses on me.”
Lukasz Opalinski, riding next to her in full hussar armor—he’d even managed to get an artisan to build him some saddle wings—was not sympathetic. “You would have surely miscarried in that attack if you hadn’t been wearing your armor. If you’d survived at all, which you probably wouldn’t have. Stop whining. Your pregnancy is barely showing even in your normal clothing. And you aren’t wearing a helmet.”
He reached up and slapped his own helmet with a steel-gauntleted glove. “As I am forced to.”
“Forced to! Ha! Stupid hussar. I’ll bet you bathe wearing that helmet.”
Opalinski made no reply. By now, he’d come to know Gretchen Richter well enough to know that she’d get over her foul mood fairly soon—instantly, if any sort of problem needed to be dealt with.
And the fact was, whether the woman liked it or not, that having her wear that bright and distinctive armor—especially without a helmet—was a stroke of political genius.
Not hers, of course. It had been Tata and Eric Krenz who made the proposal—with Lukasz and Jozef immediately supporting them.
* * *
“They’re right, Gretchen,” Jozef said. “I can’t think of anything that would boost the morale of our forces more than having you lead the army out of Breslau wearing that armor. Without the helmet, so everyone can see your face and that famous hair of yours.”
“My hair is not famous,” she hissed. “That’s ridiculous!”
“Yes it is,” Tata immediately countered, “after that one surviving Holk asshole told everybody the story of what happened in the fight. Here in Lower Silesia, your blonde hair’s as famous as your tits were in Amsterdam. Well, maybe not that much.”
Gretchen glared at her.
Tata stood her ground. “They were famous. I heard about your tits all the way down in Mainz.”
Lukasz had heard that story too, by now. But he judged it would be most impolitic for him to say anything about it. Instead, he tried to get back to the real subject at hand.
“The country folk will be impressed too, Gretchen,” he said. “Especially with me riding next to you in my armor—and holding up a Polish battle flag.”
* * *
They’d been right, however much Gretchen detested her armor. Along every mile of the march since the army left Breslau, villagers had come to gawk at the spectacle. Hundreds of them—each of whom would be spreading the story across the whole countryside.
Gretchen was not exactly a beautiful woman, although she came close. She fell shy of standard notions of female beauty because her features were just that little bit too pronounced. Her nose was a bit too large and beaky, her jaw a bit too strong, her brow a bit too heavy—although it certainly matched the eagle’s gaze she so often exhibited.
But she wasn’t participating in one of those peculiar American beauty contests Lukasz had heard about. The ones up-time—they didn’t hold them here—where they apparently paraded young women around in order to bestow a prize on one of them, in a typically absurd American manner. One moment, the girls were displayed practically nude; the next, they had to display some sort of skill, usually a silly one.
No, Gretchen was leading an army to rid the country of trolls and ogres. For that, the fierce face above gleaming armor and below that long yellow hair served perfectly.
They’d still have to fight a battle, of course. That would be when Lukasz would come into his own. Protecting Gretchen Richter in a fight would be a real challenge.
Perhaps the woman would be sensible this time and stay safely in the rear. Judging from the eagle look on her face, though…
Probably not.
“I hate wearing this armor,” she hissed again.
Lukasz, however, was delighted she was wearing it, given the situation. He didn’t say so, of course. He was a bold and daring Polish hussar, not an imbecile.
Chapter 54
Vienna, former capital of Austria-Hungary, now occupied by the Ottoman Empire
To her relief, when Minnie got to the warehouse where she and Denis
e had rented a storage bin, the facility was deserted. Her biggest worry had been that she’d find the warehouse owner still present, which would have been awkward. Eddie had been the one who actually negotiated with the warehouse owner and paid him the rent; not she and Denise. It would have been seemed peculiar for two women as young as they were to have done so. But even if she had been the one to rent the bin, the owner wouldn’t have recognized her anyway, given her appearance of the moment.
If need be, Minnie had been prepared to kill the owner. She would have been very reluctant to do so, because she had no animus against the man. Not to mention that she’d never killed anyone in her life. To her knowledge, at least. It was conceivable—though certainly not likely—that one of the barrel staves she’d thrown at the rioting students in Jena when they started stoning her had struck and killed one of them. (If so, good riddance—those students had cost Minnie her eye and they were training to be theologians; which was to say, more useless than any creatures on earth.)
But, happily, the warehouse was completely deserted. So, she left the dagger in its sheath, hidden on her right thigh, and went to work. They’d never intended for anyone but Eddie to retrieve anything from the storage bin, since neither she nor Denise had foreseen the Turks seizing Vienna so rapidly. But they’d kept a copy of the key in their own belongings.
The lock on the bin appeared to be a simple Slavic-style screw key padlock, only marginally superior to the English-designed “smokehouse” lock. Up-time inspired padlocks were beginning to appear in Europe, but the use of one would have drawn automatic attention in a place like Vienna. This lock had been provided to them by their employer, however, and was quite a bit better than it looked. Nasi had had it made by a Jewish metalworker in Prague, based on a design provided by Morris Roth.
Within a minute, Minnie had the lock open and the chain removed. It took only a bit longer to retrieve the items they’d stored there, one of which was a small two-barreled caplock pistol modeled on an up-time .41-caliber Derringer pistol.
The first thing Minnie did was load the pistol from the contents of a pouch holding powder, bullets, and a short ramrod, and tuck it away in her left sleeve. That done, she felt only marginally safer than she had before, but a lot more sanguine as to her prospects. Minnie did not lack self-confidence. If it came to it, she was fairly confident she could down a single opponent with the pistol and make her escape. If there were two opponents…
Not so much.
Then, making sure the radio equipment was still well-covered with the oilcloth they’d wrapped it in, she began the nasty work. Using a small trowel they’d found among the stored supplies in the cellars, she cleared out enough of the night soil from the cart to make room for the radio equipment and other things she’d retrieved from the bin.
That done, she scooped the night soil back into the cart, covering everything in such a way that it was very unlikely anyone would ever want to poke around in there to see if there were anything hidden.
The trowel, she discarded in a corner of the warehouse. It stank, but the whole warehouse stank a bit. There were plenty of small animals using it for a combined residence and toilet. She didn’t think the smell would draw any attention.
And then, off she went, hauling the cart back toward the distant Hofburg. Things were going quite well, she thought. It was still rather early in the morning. The sun hadn’t been up for more than two hours. If her luck held out, she’d be back in the cellars before noon.
The confluence of the Danube and the Traun
A few miles southeast of Linz
“I thought they’d begin with this.” Gustav Adolf lowered the up-time binoculars he’d been using to observe the Ottoman flotilla advancing up the Danube toward the confluence with the Traun.
“Risky on their part,” said General von Colloredo. “I wouldn’t have done it, myself.”
I am sure you wouldn’t, thought Gustav Adolf. But then, you’re not the most capable sultan the world has seen in a century, are you?
But he left all that unsaid. Von Colloredo wasn’t of much use for anything except routine military matters, but there was no point in offending the man.
“If there’s one thing Murad has plenty of,” Gustav Adolf pointed out, “it’s soldiers. And he’s already shown that he’s willing to take bold risks if there’s a chance of winning a quick victory.”
With the binoculars now hanging from their straps, he pointed his finger at the end of the tributary and then swept his hand to the right, indicating the whole reach of the Traun as it neared the Danube. “If Murad can get past the confluence and seize the left bank of the Traun, he’ll be in far better position to launch direct assaults on Linz. If he can’t, then even if—even after, I should say, since there’s no way I can stop him for very long—he seizes the north bank of the Danube, we’ll wind up with a long siege. And not one that favors him, since he won’t be able to interdict all of the waterways down which we can bring supplies.”
“I can see the logic, Your Majesty, but the casualties…”
“Will be high, even if he succeeds. Yes, I know—and you can be sure Sultan Murad knows as well.”
For a moment, Gustav Adolf’s thoughts veered aside. He wondered if Janos Drugeth was correct in his speculation that Murad was deliberately bleeding his janissaries in order to reduce their power in Turkish affairs.
He might be. That was not something Gustav Adolf would ever consider doing himself, but there was really no analog in Europe to the role played by the janissaries in the Ottoman Empire. It was not hard to believe that a sultan, if he was ruthless enough, might follow that course of action.
But there was no point in pursuing that speculation here and now. The battle was about to begin.
He turned his head and called out to the commander of the battery, Captain von Eichelberg. “Are they in range?”
“For the two naval rifles, Your Majesty. Not the rest of the battery.”
“Fire on them, then.”
Von Eichelberg passed along the order. The artillerymen manning the ten-inch guns had been tracking the Ottoman flotilla since it first came into sight around a bend in the Danube four miles downstream. So it was not more than a few seconds before the first of the guns fired. Followed, three seconds later, by the other.
Gustav Adolf wasn’t using his binoculars now, just the sports glasses the Americans had provided him with years earlier. He wanted to see how far off these first shots would be.
Both shots struck their targets. Or at least, one of them did. That shell passed right through the bow of the barge and exploded a split-second later, producing a horrible slaughter among the janissaries packed into the vessel. The other shell had much the same result, even though Gustav Adolf thought it might have struck the bow of its target just below the waterline. The immediate butchery was much less than the first shell produced, but the final death toll might be as bad or worse. The bow of that barge was blown wide open and the waters of the Danube surged in. Within seconds, the barge was sinking.
Some of the janissaries aboard would escape, but most wouldn’t. The barge had been travelling down the middle of the river, and in this stretch the Danube was easily a thousand feet wide. Swimming four or five hundred feet was within the capability of a good swimmer, but not encumbered the way these were. Janissaries didn’t usually wear armor, but their heavy woolen underclothes and pants were covered by a thick, full-sleeved and knee-length overcoat. Within seconds of being immersed in the river, that clothing would be soaked with water. Short of wearing mail or plate armor, it was hard to imagine something as difficult to stay afloat in. The quick-thinking and more agile janissaries would save themselves—assuming they could swim at all, which many couldn’t. The others would surely drown.
The naval rifles were muzzle-loaders and they didn’t have the advantage of the hydraulic recoil systems they would have been provided with aboard the ironclads they were originally designed for. So, it took a while to reload them—considera
bly longer than Gustav Adolf was happy with. General von Colloredo was practically dancing with anxiety by the time they were reloaded and back in position.
Fortunately, river barges packed with heavy infantry and moving upstream didn’t move quickly either. They’d only gotten a hundred yards closer when the rifles fired again.
This time, one shot missed completely, sending up a spectacular plume of water which did nothing more than drench part of the complement of soldiers in the barge it had been fired at. But the other one made up for it by striking a blow on the adjacent barge that was every bit as deadly as the first shell fired. By now, wide stretches of the Danube were becoming blood-colored.
“Reload!” shouted von Eichelberg.
North bank of the Danube
About a mile west of the village of Langenstein
Atop the wooden tower he’d had erected as an observation platform in his headquarters camp, Sultan Murad stepped back from the telescope on its tripod and straightened up. “Call them back,” he said. “I can’t afford to lose this many men, even if we could reach the confluence at all, which we might not.”
He turned to his aides. “Begin the assault against Steyregg.”
Steyregg, on the north bank of the Danube across from Linz
“Get your men ready,” said Jeff, to the officers clustered in the Hangman regiment’s command bunker. “I just got word over the radio. The river assault’s been driven off. That means the bastards will be coming at us next.”
He stepped up to the observation slit and studied the enemy in the distance. Not the ones on the ground—he wasn’t worried about them; at least, not yet—but the ones he could see floating in the sky.
“Do your thing, Julie,” he said, almost whispering.
Aboard the airship Magdeburg
Two thousand feet above Linz
“Okay, they’re coming forward,” said Tom Simpson. “If they follow the Vienna pattern, that first line will be laying down smoke.”
“So we ignore them?” asked Julie.
“I figure. The smoke’ll cover the advance of the ground troops, but that’s not our problem. We need to take out the airships which will be doing the bombing.”