1634: The Baltic War (assiti chards)

by Eric Flint

  It was the boredom that would slowly-no, not so slowly, not any more-drive him half-mad. Now that Thorsten had had the experience of a job that was interesting and challenging, the idea of going back to spending all day wielding a pick or a shovel was far more distasteful than it would have been a few months earlier. He'd been spoiled, really.

  "I'll have to make arrangements," he said, almost sighing the words. "Even though I hate being in debt."

  He noticed, suddenly, that Achterhof's earlier sympathetic expression had been replaced by something else. There was now a look on his face that wasn't exactly what you could call predatory. But it reminded him of the way hunting dogs fixed their gaze on something that might be prey.

  "Join the army," Gunther said. He nodded toward Krenz. "Like he's going to do."

  Surprised, Engler looked at Eric. Krenz shrugged, smiling perhaps a bit ruefully. "Hey, look, Thorsten. They didn't fire me, true enough. But there's not going to be any work for me there until they rebuild the whole factory. Which will take months-and Underwood and Hartmann are not the old-style type of masters who'll pay a man when he's not actually working."

  The young repairman looked a bit uncomfortable, for a moment. "Besides. I'd been thinking about it anyway. It's also a matter of patriotic duty."

  Patriotic. That was another up-time loan word in Amideutsch. The notions involved in the term weren't completely foreign, not by any means. Any German who had citizenship rights in a town-which many didn't, of course-understood perfectly well that the rights also carried obligations. Including the obligation to serve in the militia when and if the town was threatened. But the Americans gave a sweeping connotation to the notion that was quite different from the traditional one. Almost mystical, in a way. As if such a nebulous thing as a "nation" was as real as an actual town or village, and could make the same claims on its citizens.

  Now suspicious, Thorsten looked back and forth between Eric and Gunther. "You set this up," he accused. "The two of you."

  Achterhof snorted. "Don't be stupid. Of course we did. The minute Eric told me you were moping around-that was halfway through the morning-I told him to get you down here this afternoon and I'd recruit you into the army. Both of you. That'll solve all your practical problems at one stroke-and you can stop feeling like a worthless parasite feeding on your nation like a louse."

  "I wasn't feeling like a worthless parasite," Thorsten said stiffly.

  Gunther's eyes widened, almost histrionically. "You weren't? A man as smart as you?"

  Thorsten was starting to get a little angry, but Eric's sudden burst of laughter punctured that. His friend had a cheerful outlook on life that was often surprisingly contagious.

  "He's only smart about things that he's actually thinking about, Gunther," Krenz said, "and he concentrates his attention to the point of being oblivious about everything else. That can make him as stupid as a mule about something he hasn't really considered."

  He took a swallow of beer, then raised the half-empty mug in a saluting gesture. As if he were making an unspoken toast. "Like the war."

  A bit defensively, now, Thorsten said: "Keeping the factory going was part of that."

  Achterhof nodded. "Yes, it was. That's why nobody from the CoC came by to urge you-pester you, if you prefer-to volunteer. But the factory blew up, and even after they get it rebuilt there's no job for you there. And while I'll admit that if you squint real hard, you can claim that digging a sewer ditch is also a contribution to the war effort, it's pushing it. Not to mention being a complete waste of your skills."

  Engler made a derisive sound, just blowing air through his lips. "Ha! As opposed to carrying a musket? At least digging a ditch, I don't have to work shoulder to shoulder with some smelly Saxon like Krenz here."

  Eric grinned, and so did Gunther. But that expression on Achterhof's face was predatory now. He might as well have been a fox in human clothing, sitting at a table and drinking beer.

  "Who said anything about carrying a musket?" He issued his own derisive puff of air. "And you can forget that 'shoulder-to-shoulder' nonsense."

  Eric leaned forward. "They're forming up new units, Thorsten," he said eagerly. " 'Heavy weapons squads,' they're called. Gunther told me he could get us into one of them."

  Thorsten eyed Achterhof skeptically. Granted, the man was one of the top organizers for the CoC in Magdeburg, and granted also the CoCs had a lot of influence in the new regiments. But one of the things that made those regiments "new" in the first place-even the most ignorant farmboy knew this much-was that recruitment wasn't based on the same who-you-know methods that were standard for most mercenary regiments. Instead, it was done-depending on who you talked to-in a manner that could be described as "fair" or "nonsensical" or "as stupid as you can imagine."

  Red tape, after all, was another up-time loan word in Amideutsch. At least the old-style mercenary recruiters could generally be depended upon to deliver on whatever promises they made. No such thing could be said about recruitment into the new regiments. Thorsten personally knew a man-he'd been working at the plant when Engler first hired on-who'd signed up for the army thinking he'd become a cavalryman because the recruiter had told him his horsemanship skills were useful and would be prized. Instead, he'd wound up in the Marines-spending all day on his feet standing at attention while guarding the navy yard, bored half to death. Not even the fancy uniform had consoled him.

  And why? Apparently because some careless clerk had jotted down something wrong in his papers. But try getting it changed, after the fact! In the real world, often enough, we play no favorites was a gleaming phrase whose immediate and tarnished successor was and we don't pay any attention to what we're doing, either, followed by the downright sullen no, that's too much of a bother to fix now that it's done.

  "It's true," Eric insisted.

  Thorsten was still squinting at Achterhof. Gunther smiled, took another drink from his beer, and then shrugged.

  "No, I can't guarantee anything. But I know General Jackson and he's an easy man to talk to. More to the point, the Swede Torstensson put Jackson in charge of the new units. And why did he do so? Because the reason they're called 'heavy weapon' squads is because they'll be using gadgets that only the Americans really understand that well yet. And the Americans-you know this to be true, Thorsten, from your own experience-prize nothing so much as a down-timer who seems to have an aptitude for mechanical things."

  He pointed at Eric with his beer stein. "That's him. And they also prize down-timers who seem to know how to manage men with mechanical skills. Which is you."

  Another flashing image of Stiteler came. And went, thank God, faster than most.

  "Oh, yes," Thorsten said gloomily. "I can just imagine how enthusiastic your Jackson fellow will be, Gunther, when you tell him that-O happy occasion!-the foreman who managed to oversee several men getting killed and the whole coal gas plant getting destroyed is now available to be a sergeant-that's the rank they use, am I correct?-in his new units."

  Eric grimaced. But Gunther's smile actually widened.

  "It'll be the easiest thing in the world, Thorsten," he said. "After I tell the general that Quentin Underwood owned the factory-which he knows already-and that he blamed you because he didn't take the time and spend the money to have you trained properly. Jackson will have you sworn in ten minutes later."

  Engler squinted at him. "Why?"

  "Ha! You don't know anything about Frank Jackson, do you? Well, he wasn't a general up-time, I can tell you that. He-and the prince himself, you know-were both coal miners. Leaders of their union. And Quentin Underwood was the mine manager. And if you think you have a low opinion of Underwood, ask Jackson about him someday. Make sure you stand back a few paces, though. Your skin will likely blister if you don't."

  Thorsten pondered the matter. He'd had so little direct contact with up-timers that he'd never really given any thought at all to what they'd done or who they'd been in the world they came from. To him, as to most Germa
ns he knew, all the Americans seemed somehow Adel. True, they didn't fit any of the existing categories of the nobility, but what difference did that make? They'd simply added another one of their own, which they enforced either by simple prestige or the still simpler method of beating naysayers into a pulp on a battlefield.

  A coal miner.

  Thorsten came from a village not far from Amberg in the Upper Palatinate. There were iron mines all over that area. For generations, men in his family had often supplemented their income by doing a stint of work in the mines. Thorsten himself had done so for a few months, when he was seventeen.

  A former miner, for a commander. That might be… pleasant. Even in a war.

  Perhaps especially in a war. Anger that had been simmering for a day and half, under the grief and the guilt, fed by the nightmares and the horrible sudden images, began to surface.

  The accident hadn't been Thorsten's fault. Being fair, it hadn't even been the fault of Underwood or the plant manager. Everyone was being pushed, by the demands of the war. Which was just another way of saying, by the aggression of Richelieu and Christian IV of Denmark and Charles of England and the Habsburg king of Spain.

  "So fuck them," Thorsten growled softly. He liked the way things were happening in Magdeburg, and everywhere else that he knew of in the Germanies that the up-timers had an effect upon. One of his uncles and three of his cousins had moved to Bamberg after their village had been destroyed. Thorsten had gotten some letters from them since. Part of what they talked about in those letters was their good opinion of the new up-timer administration of Franconia. And part of the letters seemed very veiled, which meant that something explosive was brewing down there. Something which the Americans might not be leading or even really know about, but also something that his uncle and cousins didn't expect the up-timers to oppose, either.

  A prince of Germany-the only prince that all Germans had, commoners for sure; that much Thorsten had already concluded-who had once been a coal miner. That was also… pleasant to think about.

  "Okay," he said, unthinkingly using the one American loan word that had swept over Germany faster than any plague and bid fair to do the same across all of Europe. "Where do I sign up?"

  Achterhof hoisted his stein in another half-salute. "Right here. In about"-he glanced at the big clock hanging over the bar-"forty-five minutes. I told Frank to meet us here."

  Both Engler and Krenz stared at him.

  That vulpine smile that fit so easily came back to Gunther's face. "I told you. I know him. Quite well, in fact. And he's partial to the beer in this tavern, and doesn't mind getting his general's hands dirty doing lowly recruitment work. He's very enthusiastic about the new squads, too."

  He looked down at his stein, which he'd set back on the table. It was almost empty. "Speaking of which-another round? Oh, stop looking like a fretful housewife, Thorsten. I'll buy."

  Achterhof did know Jackson quite well, as it turned out. The first sentences out of the American general's mouth after Gunther finished his summary of the way Thorsten had been singled out for blame with regard to the accident was:

  "Quentin Underwood is the biggest fuckwad asshole who ever disgraced the state of West Virginia. Yeah, fine, he's a competent mine manager. He's also a complete prick and a miserable shithead and if the cocksucker was lying in the gutter dying of thirst the only thing I'd do is walk over there to piss all over the worthless motherfucker."

  He took a long pull on his beer. "So forget that bullshit. What matters is that after Gunther raised this with me, I went and talked to Mike about it. He was right there next to the two of you all the way through that nightmare. He told me if I didn't sign you up, assuming you volunteered, I'd be an idiot. Not to mention a bigger asshole than Underwood, which probably isn't possible anyway given the laws of nature."

  Another long pull. "So. Thorsten, I can start you right off as a sergeant. We promote from the ranks, so anything after that is up to you. Eric, you'll be what in my old army we would have called-ah, never mind-but what it amounts to is a technical specialist. The thing is, these volley guns aren't that complicated all by themselves. They're really just a fancier version of organ guns. But what I'm looking toward is replacing them as soon as we can with real machine guns. That'll most likely be Gatlings, first off, but who knows? So I need as many men as I can get who've got the knack for this stuff. Especially someone like you-this is what Gunther tells me-who comes from a gunsmith's background."

  When Engler and Krenz reported to the army headquarters the next morning, so it proved. The papers were already prepared and ready for their signatures, enlisting both of them in one of the new heavy weapons units. As promised, Engler with the rank of sergeant and Krenz with a specialist rating.

  No clerk had made an error.

  Given Jackson's command of the more salient features of Amideutsch, Thorsten was not surprised. Paper was flammable, after all. So were clerks, when you got right down to it.

  Chapter 7

  Luebeck

  Two hours later that same morning, Jesse Wood and Mike Stearns were at eight thousand feet, flying toward Wismar. The air was cold and clear, albeit choppy and turbulent. Jesse noted the course as best he could on the bouncing compass, confirmed it with familiar ground references, and put in a large chunk of drift correction. The wintry earth below appeared lifeless, blotched with large white patches of snow-covered fields and some dark woods here and there. The aircraft bucked, pitched, and shuddered in the uneven bottom edge of the low winter jet stream. Jesse looked at an obviously uncomfortable Mike Stearns in the right seat and chuckled.

  Stearns shot him a look. "Something funny?"

  Jesse realized that Stearns had misunderstood his attitude and held up a placating palm.

  "No, well, yeah, a little. Do you remember last summer when that group wanted us to concentrate on ultralights? 'They're cheaper, they burn less fuel, they're easier to fly.' All that horsepucky? Well, every time I get up here where it's a little bumpy or cloudy, I remember how Hal Smith stood up in front of the resource board and said, 'I build aircraft, not toys.' He reminded me of that German engineer in that old movie, Flight of the Phoenix." Jesse grinned.

  Stearns mustered a small smile of his own. "I remember. You don't look much like Jimmy Stewart, though."

  Wood was about to reply when a stiff gust swatted the aircraft, forcing him to take a moment to wrestle the plane roughly back on course.

  "Well, anyway, don't worry about this bird. She flies just fine. I would've liked to use a Gustav, but I'm still learning about them myself." He passed Stearns a thermos full of tea. "Here, warm up a bit. But take it easy, we've got maybe three hours to go with this headwind. We're lucky Hal figured out a way to get a little heat in this version of the Belle. It's probably twenty below out there."

  Stearns took the thermos and nodded his thanks. Jesse let him alone and concentrated on flying. The cold and the constant juddering of the aircraft discouraged talk as they flew over the seventeenth-century landscape.

  When they finally reached Wismar, Jesse flew low over the town, which looked almost deserted on this cold December day, save for the curls of smoke from nearly every chimney. The few townsfolk in the streets looked up at the sound of the aircraft and watched it for a bit, but there were none of the gawking little crowds there would have been just a few weeks earlier. Jesse reflected again on how quickly the people of this time became used to the wondrous American machines. He turned towards the airfield as Stearns took in the sights.

  Jesse flew over Richter Field, checking the wind and surveying the light snow covering on the grass. He noted many improvements made since his last visit, over a month ago. No need for a tower, as yet, but already there was a shed big enough for two aircraft and the shack that had been the sole building in October had been replaced by a big, solid-looking structure with new plank walls. He reckoned that another low building, surrounded by a berm near the field, must be the armory cum fuel storage. The new constructi
on showed the importance placed on this small spot of turf near the frigid Baltic.

  As he took in the scene, it was as if Stearns read his mind.

  "Shame it takes a war to get things done quickly, eh, Jesse?"

  Jesse glanced over at his passenger and nodded. Looking down again, he noticed two figures, hands jammed in coat pockets, standing next to the wind sock, faces turned upward. He hooked a thumb towards his window.

  "It's also those boys down there. Nothing very important gets done without the 'Sons of Martha.' "

  After he spoke, Jesse realized that Mike might not understand the reference. The man had had something of a haphazard education, with just three years of college. But you never knew. He also read extensively and had a wife who was a genuine intellectual.

  So, Jesse wasn't really surprised by Mike's nodding reply. "Yeah. Kipling knew a thing or two, didn't he?"

  "Yes, he did. Or will. Or something."

  Jesse checked the windsock again and turned downwind for landing.

  "Might as well get this beast on the ground."

  Later that afternoon, two aircraft moved through the North German sky at five thousand feet, headed toward Luebeck. "Snarled through the sky," Jesse often thought of it. There was that one advantage to propeller aircraft compared to the jets that he'd mostly flown up-time. Damnation, they sounded like warplanes.

  Jesse flew as wingman, in a rather loose formation off Lieutenant Woodsill's left wing. He'd decided to let Woody lead, since he knew the way. In any case, he realized that Woody and his copilot Ernst Weissenbach had not had any recent formation practice.

  Best keep 'em where I can see 'em, Jesse thought.

  Otherwise, he had absolutely no complaints about the two young officers. Having been left in charge of the airfield at Wismar and with the original Belle, once a third had been built, the two young pilots had performed superbly. They'd made good use of the shipments of fuel and rockets sent to them overland. According to accounts from Luebeck, their observation and harassment of the League of Ostend's armies besieging the city had been instrumental in holding off several assaults.