1636: The Devil's Opera

by Eric Flint

  “Umph.” Baldur was not a morning person.

  “We wouldn’t want to leave Gustav alone and at the tender mercies of the politicians, now would we?” Ulrik nodded to where the Magdeburg pack stood, headed by Senator Abrabanel and Mayor Gericke.

  “Umph.”

  “Too much wine last night?”

  “Umph.”

  Ulrik smiled, but he turned away from his companion and let him suffer the morning in his own way. He looked downriver, and was rewarded with a glimpse of a river barge in the distance, just having rounded the last curve on the other side of the Navy yard. He elbowed Baldur and beckoned to the car. The rear door closest to him flew open and Kristina bounced out. Caroline followed more sedately from the other side.

  “Is he here? Is Papa here?”

  Kristina clutched at his hand, a sensation that Ulrik noted that he enjoyed.

  “Not yet,” he said, “but soon. I think that may be his boat you see coming toward us.”

  * * *

  “Yuck.”

  Gotthilf looked up at Byron’s mutter. His partner was drinking a cup of the stationhouse coffee, and it obviously wasn’t any better than it ever was. In fact, judging from Byron’s expression, it might be worse than usual. He shuddered at the thought.

  “Grade four,” Byron announced as he set his empty mug on the tray set out for that purpose. “Definitely grade four.”

  “Enlighten me,” Gotthilf said as they headed for the door.

  “There’s an old joke that says that coffee comes in four grades,” Byron said. “Coffee, java, joe, and battery acid.” He held up fingers to enumerate the list as he ran down it. “That stuff,” he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, “would eat the enamel off your teeth.”

  “Ah,” Gotthilf said. “Grade four. Got it.”

  “But it’s still better than my mother’s coffee.”

  Gotthilf shuddered again, and changed the subject as they headed down the hall. “There was an interesting theft report from a couple of days ago.”

  Byron looked at him and raised one eyebrow in a query.

  “Someone stole two pistols and some caps and about five pounds of gunpowder from Farkas’ gun shop.”

  “Whoa,” Byron said. “That’s scary. Make sure that gets out to all the patrolmen. We want to find those as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll take care of it as soon as we get back.”

  “Right,” the up-timer announced as they arrived at the bottom of the steps leading up to the station’s front door. “Parade duty.”

  This time Byron shuddered.

  * * *

  As it turned out, the barge that Ulrik had seen was only the first of three, and it did not contain Emperor Gustav. What it did contain was a large contingent of his bodyguards, and they debarked first. They were Scots for the most part, and looked the type: hard-eyed, hard-bitten, no-nonsense men, each carrying an SRG rifle and with a short sword and at least one pistol hanging from a belt.

  When the first one appeared on the gangplank from the deck of the boat, the Marines present got tense and fingered their own weapons. Captain Beaton moved to the front of the guards and stood with his hands behind his back. At least some of the bodyguards must have known him, as they stopped short of the Marines and waited.

  Gustav appeared after the second boat docked. He wasn’t the first man on that gangplank, either. That was another bodyguard.

  Baldur grunted.

  “What?” Ulrik said.

  “That’s got to be Ljungberg.”

  That was a reference to Erling Ljungberg, Gustav’s new chief bodyguard, a man neither of them had met yet.

  “How can you tell?”

  “First man I’ve seen I’m not sure I could beat.”

  Ljungberg was a very large man, and even from a distance appeared as hard as seasoned oak. Ulrik didn’t even want to contemplate a physical contest with the man.

  The emperor finally appeared, striding across the gangplank in something approaching his normal manner. That was slightly belied by the fact that he was closely followed by Dr. James Nichols, and because Ljungberg waited at the end of the gangplank, one hand on his pistol and one not exactly outstretched, but definitely poised to make a grab.

  The only concession that Gustav seemed to be making to his recent infirmities was that he moved with a bit of care on the flexing gangplank. But he stood tall and straight, and once off the wood moved in something like his normal manner. Not that he had much chance to walk around.

  “Papa!”

  Unable to restrain herself, Kristina burst from Caroline’s grasp and hurled herself toward her father. Gustav’s face sprouted a grin, and he opened his arms wide. She cannoned into him, wrapping her arms around his waist—or at least, around as much of it as she could reach. The emperor had lost some of his weight during his recent indisposition; but not much. His problem hadn’t stopped him from eating, so he was still a very large man, and Kristina was still only nine.

  He folded his arms around his daughter, and looked down into her upturned face. They stood thus for a long moment, drinking each other in. The silence was broken by Kristina.

  “You look tired, Papa.”

  Gustav laughed. “I am, I’m afraid. But I’ll get better now that I’m here in Magdeburg with you.”

  “You’d better,” Kristina said with a determined jerk of her head.

  Gustav laughed again, and released her from his hold. She in turn released him, but reached up and took his hand. Ignoring the other notables for the moment, he crossed to where Caroline and Ulrik stood.

  The imperial hand was first offered to Caroline. “Thank you,” was all Gustav said.

  Then he turned to Ulrik and offered the same hand to him. Ulrik took advantage of the moment of the handclasp to study Gustav’s face. There were lines there that he didn’t remember from the last time they had met. And his eyes…they were different, somehow…not pain-filled, exactly, but they definitely showed that the emperor had not had an easy time of it.

  Ulrik realized that neither of them had said anything; that Gustav had been studying him just as much as he had been studying the emperor. Now Gustav gave a firm nod, and clapped him on the shoulder. “We have much to talk about, I think, you and I.”

  “I agree,” Ulrik replied, sticking his hand behind his back and wiggling the fingers where Gustav’s grip had almost crushed them.

  “At the palace, then,” Gustav clapped him on the shoulder again, then turned toward Senator Abrabanel, Mayor Gericke, and those who waited with them.

  There were two small hiccups before they could get the procession to the palace under way. The first was a matter of protocol—of sorts. The third barge had landed the remainder of the emperor’s bodyguard company, so they now outnumbered the Marines that were present. Seriously outnumbered.

  Despite that, on one side Captain Beaton was arguing quite forcefully that since they were in Magdeburg, it was his Marines’ responsibility to guard the person of the emperor. On the other side Major Graham and Captains Stewart and Gordon of the bodyguard company were not having any such thing. And since they were all Scots, the language had moved from reasoned to impassioned in very short order; had sailed past vulgar a few moments later; and was now approaching a state of sulfurousness. Ulrik stepped closer to Kristina, aware that Baldur was now at his left and Caroline at his right.

  “Enough,” Gustav intervened. He looked down the street where most of the populace of Greater Magdeburg seemed to be standing cheek by jowl. “We are not going to move quickly through that. Army take the left, Marines take the right.” And with that particular Gordian knot cut, the emperor turned to the horses that had been brought for the officers.

  The second hiccup appeared in the form of Dr. Nichols and Erling Ljungberg standing side by side blocking his way. Ljungberg said nothing; merely crossed his arms and made an excellent representation of the Platonic ideal of an immovable object.

  The good doctor, on the other hand, appeared
to be an Aristotelian. He stepped up beside the emperor. Even though he pitched his voice low, Ulrik was still close enough to hear him.

  “Don’t even think about climbing up on a horse.”

  Gustav started to speak, and Nichols held up a peremptory hand.

  “Don’t be an idiot! You had a seizure yesterday on the boat. No way are you getting up on a horse today. Remember that conversation we had about being careful? This comes under that heading. Now get in the damn car and get to the palace, so I can finally get you to lie down and get some rest!”

  One long brown finger reinforced the order by pointing to the car. Gustav looked from the doctor to the bodyguard, who might as well have been carved from granite for all the give there was in his face. He shrugged, and turned toward the car.

  It took a moment to get everyone settled. Gustav, Kristina and Ulrik took the back seat, and Caroline rode in the front seat with the driver. Ljungberg and Baldur walked on opposite sides of the car beside the doors.

  When the last door shut, Gustav looked over Kristina’s head to Ulrik. “I must take more care. Help me remember that.” At that moment, the emperor’s face was very drawn. “It is hard.”

  Ulrik said nothing; merely nodded.

  The car jerked into motion, and the people along the street began cheering and waving flags and banners as the procession got into motion.

  Chapter 48

  Water under pressure in a boiler has an interesting property. If the pressure is suddenly released, the water converts to steam as close to instantaneously as makes no difference, and almost as quickly expands to occupy a volume a thousand times as great. And the actual steam in the boiler, when the pressure is released, expands by a factor of thirteen.

  If Ciclope and Pietro had understood any of this, it wouldn’t have stopped them from setting the bombs—but they would have run a little faster and a lot farther before they stopped.

  * * *

  Steam plants are usually constructed along simple designs. That was definitely true with the design of this system. The boiler tank in the wagon was a wrought iron cylinder about one and one-half feet in diameter and a bit over eight feet long, with iron plates riveted on the ends to close the cylinder, and pressure pipes feeding from the end opposite the firebox to the actual steam engine in the crane assembly. It held about three hundred gallons of water, by up-time standards.

  Feasible with the down-timer level of technology. And if operated with care, not inordinately dangerous.

  But the placing of four gunpowder bombs in the firebox as the boiler was getting into operating pressure range had just turned the steam plant into a looming disaster.

  The wax on the ends of the bombs melted immediately and flamed. The wax sealing the plugs in their holes didn’t last much longer, but melted and leaked out very soon thereafter, increasing the flame for moments. It was inevitable that the flames would start trying to follow the path of the wax. After that, it was a race to see which bomb the fire would detonate first. All in all, Pietro had created an interesting fuze for his bombs, without even realizing what he was doing.

  It took longer than one might have expected. And in the end, it wasn’t the first bomb placed that detonated, but the third. But it didn’t really matter, for its detonation caused two of the other three to detonate immediately.

  In that instant, the metal door blew off the firebox and through the door at the end of the wagon. The bricks of the firebox shattered and blew out the sides. And the unfortunate Nils, whom Pietro had callously dismissed as dead one way or the other, had indeed expired before they left the wagon. But if he hadn’t been, he definitely would have been dead now as his broken corpse followed the firebox door through the now gaping doorway.

  That was bad enough. There was worse to come.

  The bulk of the construction laborers were in the process of gathering to get their day’s orders from the work gang bosses. The splinters from the door and the sides of the wagon scythed out through the area by the main gate to the site, downing several of them in screaming agony.

  Most of the men the splinters didn’t get were dropped by the shrapnel of the broken bricks. And the unfortunate boss of the masons caught the firebox door in the neck. It didn’t decapitate him—quite—but he was the first person to die as a direct result of the explosion.

  In the same instant that the firebox was shattered into debris, the force of the explosion blew the end of the boiler tank up, torquing the metal until something gave way. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the pipe fittings at the other end of the tank. Instead, it was one of the rivets holding the end cap on the tank that failed. And with all that pressure in the tank, one was all it took.

  The end cap started to bend under the pressure where the rivet failed, and a jet of steam forced its way out. The pressure began to drop. One hundred and eighty gallons of water flashed to steam, and the disaster now became a cataclysm. In the next moment, the end cap and a volley of broken rivets headed west at high velocities. Two of the rivets connected with workers standing on the outer fringe of the workers. One of them was Pietro.

  The boiler tank itself, sans end cap, headed east in what later science historians would describe with gruesome glee as the launch of the first down-time built steam rocket engine. It crashed out the east end of the wagon and into the steam engine housing on the crane deck, smashed the engine to junk, and carried it forward as it burst out the other end of the housing.

  The tank was finally stopped when it ran into the bottom of the crane derrick assembly. This was also smashed, breaking the derrick itself free of the assembly and its various cables. All of the remaining impetus of the tank was transferred to the derrick, and it was launched like a missile. All accompanied by the sound of grinding, crushing, tearing, tortured metal.

  The last bomb didn’t explode. The gunpowder inside it has been a bit damp, so when the flame reached it, only the part nearest the wooden plug had exploded; just enough to blow the plug out. That in turn allowed the flames inside the firebox much better access to the gunpowder. This created the second rocket engine of the disaster.

  The log shot out of the disintegrating firebox and through a hole blown in the wagon side by a firebox brick only a fragment of an instant before. Not being in the slightest bit aerodynamic, it looped crazily through the air until it hit the ground—not once but twice—hard enough to skip. Its flight ended as it jammed into the side of the existing hospital building, sputtering flames issuing from the hole in one end until the gunpowder at last was exhausted.

  It might have been a subject of humor, if anyone had known about it, and if the collateral damage had not been so high.

  But the steam—the steam was worst of all.

  In the instant that the boiler end cap separated from the rest of the tank, one hundred eighty gallons of water under pressure expanded to almost two hundred thousand gallons of live steam at 327 degrees Fahrenheit and burst out into the construction site. The sudden release of the steam under pressure demolished the wagon, which sent more splinters and spears sailing.

  The coals of fire from the firebox splashed out. Many of them sailed quite a distance, some as far as a quarter of a mile.

  The walls and roof of the wagon survived long enough to channel most of the steam to the west. It instantly engulfed the screaming and moaning wounded, and those survivors who were trying to help them. They all experienced very short but very intense moments of additional pain, as their skin was scalded, as their eyes began to boil in their sockets, and as their lungs were seared from the inside when they uniformly took a gasp to scream in torment.

  The few men standing dropped to the ground among their fellows, to writhe as every nerve under their exposed skin fired in excruciating pain. One very strong individual remained standing a few moments longer, raising his hands to clasp his throat as his vocal cords and trachea spasmed in shock and agony, blisters already forming in the delicate internal tissues. But within a very few heartbeats, he joined the rest of the
victims in their fallen ranks.

  From the perspective of the sufferers, the agony lasted forever. In reality, seared and blistered lungs quit functioning very quickly, and the injured men’s hearts ceased laboring moments later. In just a matter of a couple of short minutes, they were dead. Motionless. All of them. Without exception.

  The bodies lay there, under the cloud of deadly steam, as the first few dazed outlying survivors and neighbors began appearing in the nearby streets.

  Chapter 49

  Ciclope and Pietro had slunk around the side of the work site and slipped out the main gate just as most of the workmen began arriving. It was easy to then turn and stand on the outskirts at the rear of the crowd, for all the world as if they had just arrived.

  So far things had gone well, Ciclope thought. He was awaiting the explosion with evil anticipation.

  BOOOOOOOM-BOOM!

  * * *

  Gustav, Kristina and Ulrik had mounted to the top of the western steps of the palace when it happened.

  BOOOOOOOM-BOOM!

  The sound echoed from the shadow to the west. Every head in sight jerked that direction. Something long and dark rose and pinwheeled across the sky toward them, to fall with an audible crash.

  The Marine guards jumped up the steps en masse to surround the emperor’s party. Ljungberg and Captain Beaton were both urging the emperor to enter the palace, but he resisted them as he stared to the west to see a plume starting to rise over the city.

  Moments later, pieces of wood, ash, and live coals started to fall among the crowd. The antiphonal “My God/Mein Gott” that had been sounding in the square was replaced with shrieks as the people were pelted by debris, and as live coals landed in hair, hats and scarves.

  Byron took it all in for a stunned moment, cold wrapped around his heart, then snapped to and spun to Police Captain Bill Reilly, who was standing nearby.

  “Bill, that’s got to be from the construction site. Let me take our guys and run there. You get the fire team on the way. We’ll meet you there, okay?”