Worlds of Weber

by David Weber

  That one went down without even a scream, his throat and the back of his neck exploding in a grisly spray, Eddie noticed almost numbly, and the third man hesitated. It was only the briefest of pauses, and Eddie always wondered afterward exactly what the man had thought he was doing. He might even have entertained some notion of throwing down his knife and surrendering, but if that was what he had in mind, he didn't get around to it in time to do him any good.

  Simpson's point of aim shifted, and Eddie had a fraction of a second to wonder how the man could possibly see what he was doing after the blinding brilliance of the muzzle flashes. Maybe he was actually closing his eyes—or one of them, at least—as he fired. Eddie didn't have a clue about that, but it didn't really matter, either. The nine-millimeter pistol barked twice more in that same, deadly rhythm. One shot hit the third attacker perhaps an inch above the heart; the second took him squarely above the right eye and slammed him back to slither bonelessly down the alley wall behind him just as Haygood's revolver finally cleared its holster.

  Eddie Cantrell stood there, frozen in stunned disbelief. The entire attack couldn't have consumed more than five seconds. Probably less. But in those few heartbeats of time, three men had tried to kill him . . . and the stuffed shirt from Pittsburgh had killed all three of them, instead.

  "Good morning, Mr. Cantrell."

  "Uh, good morning," Eddie half-mumbled as Simpson greeted him the following day. The older man sat at the small, rickety table in the tiny "sitting room" of their shared quarters, carefully cleaning a Browning High-Power automatic.

  It was the first really good look Eddie had gotten at it, and from the way the bluing was worn away, it was obvious to him that the handgun had seen a lot of use. It was equally obvious that it had been lovingly maintained during its lengthy lifespan, and Eddie wondered how Simpson had managed to conceal it so effectively that Eddie had never even suspected he had it.

  "Are you ready for breakfast?" Simpson asked.

  "Breakfast?" Eddie repeated, then swallowed heavily, remembering.

  "Well, lunch, actually, I suppose," Simpson said thoughtfully, his face expressionless, although there might have been the faintest flicker of amusement in his eyes. If so, Eddie scarcely noticed as his mind replayed the previous night's events.

  The sound of the shots, especially so close to the United States' "embassy," had brought two different Swedish patrols at a dead run. Not only that, but the sentries outside the embassy itself had responded almost as quickly, and, unlike the Swedes, they'd brought powerful up-time hand-portable lights with them.

  Eddie rather wished they hadn't. He'd seen carnage and bloodshed enough for someone two or three times his age since arriving in Thuringia. He'd been there when Frank Jackson smashed his first Imperial army of mercenaries outside Badenburg and he and Jeff Higgins, Larry Wild, and Jimmy Andersen had faced down a second army of rapists and murderers who'd been their so-called "allies" with nothing but twelve-gauge shotguns and outrage. He'd been there at the Wartburg, too—and at the Alte Veste. Despite his brash, often bubbling exterior, there were nights when nightmares spawned by the memories of those sights and sounds kept him awake, tossing and turning.

  But whatever he'd seen, he was scarcely hardened against it, and the sight of what Simpson's shots had done to their targets on the way through had almost cost him his excellent supper.

  McDougal himself had appeared on the scene in less than ten minutes, still buttoning his shirt while he stared down at the three twisted, blood-leaking bodies and the wicked-looking knives lying beside them in the mud.

  "So, Mr. McDougal," Simpson had grated, the harsh anger in his voice the only indication he seemed prepared to allow of his own adrenaline and fear, "do you still think Mr. Schwanhausser is overreacting to the possible threat from Richelieu?"

  McDougal had flinched visibly from the bitter, biting irony of the question, but he'd only stared down at the bodies for a few more seconds, then shaken his head.

  "No," he'd said then, not that he'd had much choice about it. "No, Mr. Simpson. I don't suppose he is."

  There'd been quite a bit more after that, of course, before anyone got to bed, and it had been still longer before Eddie managed to drop off to sleep. Which was why he was so late rolling out.

  "Uh, yeah," he said, shaking himself out of his thoughts. "I guess I am sorta hungry, at that."

  He sounded a bit surprised, even to himself, and Simpson snorted. There was amusement in that snort, but not the harsh, dismissive sort of humor Eddie might once have expected. Indeed, in its own way, it was almost gentle.

  "Well, give me a few minutes to finish up here, and I'll treat you to lunch at The Crown and Eagle," the older man said while his hands briskly broke down his cleaning rod and packed it and the other cleaning supplies away, then reassembled the Browning quickly and expertly. Eddie watched him, noting the smoothness of the practiced movements, and dismissed any lingering suspicion that Simpson had borrowed the handgun from someone for the trip.

  "You had that all along, didn't you?" he asked after a moment.

  "Yes, I did," Simpson agreed, not looking up as he finished reassembling the pistol and slid a freshly loaded magazine into the grip. "The Browning is an excellent weapon," he observed, "although the nine-millimeter round is a little short on stopping power, compared to something like the .45. On the other hand, with a hundred and forty-seven-grain hollowpoint and about four-point-six grains of HS-6, it will do the job quite adequately."

  "I . . . see." Eddie cleared his throat. "How long have you been carrying it?" he asked.

  "For considerably longer than you've been alive," Simpson replied, and looked up at last with a slight smile. "There are times, Mr. Cantrell, when one should be a little cautious about leaping to conclusions, don't you think?"

  "Yeah," Eddie said slowly, "there are." He paused, meeting Simpson's eyes levelly, then added, "I guess everybody should bear that in mind, shouldn't they?"

  "I imagine they should," Simpson agreed after a moment, and something passed between them as the older man met the youngster's gaze equally levelly. Eddie wasn't certain what that "something" was, but he knew both of them had felt it.

  Then the moment passed, and Simpson stood. He tucked the Browning away into the worn holster at the small of his back, which Eddie had never noticed before, then nodded towards the door.

  Eddie nodded back, and the two of them headed off towards The Crown and Eagle. Quite a few people looked at them—and especially Simpson—oddly as they passed, but the older man paid the curious no attention.

  "By the way, Mr. Cantrell," he said casually as they approached the restaurant, "while you were sleeping in this morning, I went over to check with Mr. Franklin to see if President Stearns had responded to my message from yesterday."

  "Oh?" Eddie glanced at him. Something about Simpson's tone sounded warning signals. "Had he?"

  "Yes, he had," Simpson replied. "In fact, he informed me that he's accepted my recommendations and that he and his cabinet have authorized me to call upon Mr. McDougal for assistance in formally acquiring title to the land for our navy yard."

  "Our navy yard?" Eddie repeated, and Simpson nodded.

  "Yes. We're going to have to return to Grantville, of course. I'll need to spend some time with you and your original plan if we're going to work out a practical design for the ironclads. And we need to discuss with the President how many timberclads we'll need to add to the mix. And, for that matter, exactly what sort of priorities for resources—other than the railroad rails, of course—and manpower the navy is going to require. And how we're going to organize that manpower and set up training programs."

  "Why do you keep saying 'we'?" Eddie asked. Simpson cocked an eyebrow at him, and the youngster shrugged irritably. "I know you're going to tear my design completely apart and put it together all over again," he said. "I accepted that when I first proposed it to Mike—I mean, the President. So, okay, it wasn't a perfect design. I never claimed it w
as."

  "No, it wasn't," Simpson agreed in a coolly judicious tone. "On the other hand, I'm sure we'll have time to work the bugs out of it. After all, it's going to take weeks—probably at least a couple of months—of organizational work before we can get back to Magdeburg and really start setting things up here."

  "Dammit, there you go again with that 'we' stuff! Just because Mike sent me along on this first trip doesn't mean I want to spend my time sitting around in this mudhole while they build the city around us!"

  "That's unfortunate," Simpson observed. "On the other hand, I'm sure there are a great many people who find themselves compelled to do things they didn't want to."

  Eddie stopped dead in the street and turned to face the older man squarely.

  "Just go ahead and tell me what you're so pleased about!" he snapped irritably.

  "That's 'Tell me what you're so pleased about, sir,' " Simpson told him, and Eddie's eyes began to widen in sudden, dreadful surmise.

  "I'm afraid so, Lieutenant Cantrell," Simpson informed him. "Still, I suppose it's only appropriate that the individual responsible for inspiring his country to build a navy in the first place should find himself drafted for duty as its very first commissioned officer. Well, second, actually, I suppose," he amended judiciously.

  "B-b-but I—I mean, I never—You can't be serious!" Eddie blurted out.

  "Oh, but I can, Lieutenant," Simpson said coolly, and showed his teeth in the edge of a smile. "Don't worry," he advised, taking Eddie by the elbow and getting him moving once more, "you'll adjust quickly enough, Lieutenant. Oh, and by the way, I imagine you'll adjust even more quickly if you remember to call me 'Admiral' or 'sir' from now on."

  The Captain

  From Kirkbean

  Captain Sir John Paul stood on the quarterdeck of His Majesty's seventy-four-gun ship-of-the-line Torbay, shading his eyes against the Caribbean's brilliant August sunlight. Torbay, the seventy-four Triumph, and the sixty-four Prince William, were four days out of Antigua with a Jamaica-bound convoy, and he lowered his hand from his eyes to rub thoughtfully at the buttons on his blue coat's lapel—twelve golden buttons, in groups of three, indicating a captain with more than three years' seniority—as he watched the sloop Lark's cutter pull strongly towards his ship.

  The cutter swept around, coming up under Torbay's lee as the seventy-four lay hove to. The bow man neatly speared the big ship's main chains with his boathook, and the officer in the stern leapt for the battens on her tall side. A lazy swell licked up after him, soaking him to the waist, but he climbed quickly to the entry port, nodded to the lieutenant who raised his hat in salute, and then hurried aft.

  "Well, Commander Westman," Captain Paul said dryly. "I trust whatever brings you here was worth a wetting?"

  "I believe so, sir." Lark's captain touched his hat—no junior dared omit any proper courtesy to Sir John—then reached inside his coat. "Lark sighted a drifting ship's boat yesterday evening, sir. When I investigated, I discovered three Frenchmen—one dead officer and two seamen in but little better shape—from the naval brig Alecto. She foundered in a squall last week . . . but the officer had this on his person."

  He held out a thick packet of papers. Paul took it, glanced at it, then looked up quickly.

  "I, ah, felt it best to deliver it to you as soon as possible, sir," Westman said.

  "You felt correctly, Commander," Paul replied almost curtly, then beckoned to the officer of the watch. "Lieutenant Chessman, make a signal. All captains are to repair aboard Torbay immediately!"

  It was sweltering in Sir John's day cabin, despite the open windows, as Captain Forest was shown in. Prince William's commander had had the furthest to come, and he was acutely aware that he was the last captain to arrive . . . and that Captain Paul did not tolerate tardiness. But Sir John said nothing. He didn't even turn. He stood gazing out into the sun dazzle, hands clasped behind him and lost in memory, while his steward offered Forest wine. His fixed gaze saw not the Caribbean's eye-hurting brightness but the seething gray waste of the Channel and surf spouting white on a rocky shore as Sir Edward Hawke's squadron pursued Admiral Conflans into Quiberon Bay.

  By most officers' standards, Hawke had been mad to follow an enemy into shoal water in a rising November gale when that enemy had local pilots and he did not. But Hawke had recognized his duty to keep the invasion army gathered round nearby Vannes in Brittany, not England. Confident of his captains and crews, he had driven Conflans' more powerful squadron onto the rocks or up the Vilaine River in an action which had cost the French seven ships of the line and almost three thousand men in return for only two of his own ships.

  Quiberon had been the final triumph of what was still called the "Year of Victories," and Midshipman John Paul of Kirkbean, Scotland, serving in the very ship Captain Sir John Paul now commanded, had seen it all. Torbay had been the second ship in Hawke's line, under Captain Augustus Keppel, and young Paul had watched—twelve years old and terrified for his very life—as broadsides roared and a sudden squall sent the sea crashing in through the lee gunports of the French seventy-four Thésée and drove her to the bottom in minutes.

  Paul would never forget her crew's screams, or his own ship's desperate efforts to save even a few of them from drowning, but more even than that, he remembered the lesson Hawke had taught him that day as he turned to face the captains seated around his table with their wine. Every one of them was better born than he, but John Paul, the son of a Scottish gardener—the boy who'd found a midshipman's berth only because his father had aided the wife of one of Keppel's cousins after a coach accident—was senior to them all.

  Which means, he thought wryly, that it is I who have the honor of placing my entire career in jeopardy by whatever I do or do not decide this day.

  It was ironic that twenty years of other officers' reminders of their superior birth should bring him here. Under other circumstances, I might well have been on the other side, he mused. Traitors or no, at least the rebels believe the measure of a man should be himself, not whom he chose as his father!

  But no sign of that thought showed on his face, and his voice was crisp, with no trace of the lowland brogue he'd spent two decades eradicating, as he tapped the papers Westman had brought him and spoke briskly.

  "Gentlemen, thanks to Commander Westman"—he nodded to Lark's captain— "we have intercepted copies of correspondence from de Grasse to Washington." The others stiffened, and he smiled thinly. "This copy is numbered '2' and addressed to Commodore de Barras at Newport for his information, and I believe it to be genuine. Which means, gentlemen, that I've decided to revise our present orders somewhat."

  "Toss oars!" the coxswain barked, and Captain Paul watched with carefully hidden approval as the dripping blades rose in perfect unison and the bow man hooked onto Torbay's chains. The captain stood, brushing at the dirt stains on his breeches, and then climbed briskly up his ship's side. Pipes wailed, pipeclay drifted from white crossbelts as Marines slapped their muskets, and his first lieutenant removed his hat in salute.

  Paul acknowledged the greeting curtly. In point of fact, he approved of Mathias Gaither, Torbay's senior lieutenant, but he had no intention of telling Gaither so. He knew he was widely regarded as a tyrant—a man whose prickly disposition and insatiable desire for glory more than made up for his small stature. And, he admitted, there was justice in that view of him.

  The motley human material which crewed any King's ship demanded stern discipline, yet unlike many captains, Paul's discipline was absolutely impartial, and he loathed bullies and officers who played favorites. He was also sparing with the lash, given his belief that flogging could not make a bad man into a good one but could certainly perform the reverse transformation. Yet he had no mercy on anyone, officer or seaman, who failed to meet his harshly demanding standards, for he knew the sea and the enemy were even less forgiving than he. And if he sought glory, what of it? For a man of neither birth nor wealth, success in battle was not simply a duty but the o
nly path to advancement, and Paul had seized renown by the throat two years before, off Flamborough Head in HMS Serapis, when he sank the American "frigate" Bonhomme Richard. The old, converted East Indiaman had fought gallantly, but her ancient guns, rotten hull, and wretched maneuverability had been no match for his own well-found vessel. Her consort, the thirty-six-gun Alliance, could have been much more dangerous, but Alliance's captain—a Frenchman named Landais—had been an outright Bedlamite, and Paul had entered port with Alliance under British colors.

  His knighthood—and Torbay—had been his reward for that . . . and now he was risking it all.

  He grimaced at the thought and headed aft to pace his scorching quarterdeck. If anything befell the convoy, his decision to order it back to Antigua escorted by a single sloop would ruin him, and he knew it. Worse, the orders he had elected to ignore had come from Sir George Rodney, who was even less noted for tolerating disobedience than Paul himself. But at least he also understood the value of initiative. If events justified Paul's decision, Rodney would forgive him; if they didn't, the admiral would destroy him.