1637: No Peace Beyond the Line

by Eric Flint

  This had nothing to do with any intellectual want on Svantner’s part, but what the machinery and its application implied about the increasing reliance upon intelligence reports. And of course, research. Often mind-numbingly meticulous research, such as the kind that Eddie had conducted for the mission to the New World under the direction of Admiral John Simpson.

  Long before today’s operation could have even been envisioned, it was understood that even with balloons and radios and the improved signaling of Aldis lamps, the USE’s formations would be at pains to gather a timely and expansive knowledge of their battlespace. Fortunately, Simpson had known there was another advantage the up-timers could count on, at least for a while: precision charts. Compared to the mostly approximated shapes and distances on down-time maps, up-time cartography was nothing short of miraculous in its precision and quality of render. What that meant to a commander in terms of projecting travel times, rendezvous points, or—in the current case—patrol areas was difficult to overstate.

  Eddie smiled and glanced south. Out there, well over the horizon, was a small, swift Dutch jacht. And beyond her view of the southern horizon was yet another, similar ship. And another beyond that, and so forth. To the north, a similar but shorter daisy chain of fore-and-aft-rigged pickets waited at the same intervals. And because they were able to maintain relatively constant positions by periodically triangulating on the landmarks behind them, the actual interception net that Eddie’s recon mission had cast was almost three times the width of the observation diameter from the balloon. Or in other words, slightly more than two hundred miles. Because if their target had approached from further to the north or the south, the captains of those jachts were prepared to fire long-barreled launchers that would send magnesium-tipped flares high into the night sky. Flares which the adjacent picket ships were sure to see and relay, since—again because of the precision charts—they knew exactly what part of the sky they had to keep under constant observation.

  Eddie felt his smile grow rueful as he recalled the monotonous labor which had led to the creation of those charts. After recovering from the loss of his left foot and ankle and arriving at his new naval posting in Magdeburg, he was made Simpson’s aide and line-officer-in-training. And creating the precision navigational charts he was now relying upon had been his first job. And the only way to accomplish it was to pull the needed information from materials that had come along for the ride when the Ring of Fire swept them from twentieth-century West Virginia to seventeenth-century Germany.

  The first step was to explore and catalog every relevant source in Grantville, a tedious task compared to the one he would have much rather been embarked upon: exploring and cataloging all the characteristics of his beautiful new wife’s mind and body. Albeit not always in that order.

  However, one visit to Grantville revealed that the high school was not going to be the convenient mother lode for this particular data mining operation. It had plenty of maps of every region of the globe, but they were the kind with which you teach geography, rather than navigate. Instead, upon going to the house of a recently deceased up-time boater, Eddie discovered where he would find the actual treasure trove of nautical maps: in the personal collections of naval buffs.

  What followed next was a little detective work and a lot of socializing. Specifically, finding out which of Grantville’s citizens had known about the community’s other devotees of all things maritime, and then getting cooperation from those individuals—or, in almost half of the cases, their heirs. It seemed that a yen for the tales and technologies of the high seas was heavily correlated with older folks—not because of their advanced years, Eddie realized, but because of the topics that had inspired and sparked young imaginations back when they had been kids.

  He sent a preliminary report of his findings to Simpson. It produced two results: a request to Ed Piazza for a half-dozen individuals—drawn from the State of Thuringia and Franconia’s bureaucracy, if need be—to search for useful documents and images in the houses of those who had agreed to cooperate. Secondly, the admiral ordered Eddie to return to Magdeburg at once with the greatest treasures he had unearthed so far: books that provided not only details, but diagrams of the construction of various Civil War-era vessels. Most notably, both the Union ships Hartford and Kearsarge: the vessels that the USE’s steam cruisers and steam destroyers had been patterned upon, respectively. Eddie had telegraphed back: what was he to do about the growing pile of maps? Simpson’s response came back so quickly it was a wonder that the electrons had been able to keep up with it: “Transshipment to Magdeburg not your concern. Process as they arrive HQ.”

  And so Eddie did. Crate upon crate of personal collections that had belonged to people who’d been fascinated by all things nautical. However, the books did not actually make the most decisive contributions to Eddie’s cartographic quest. Rather, it was what had been found slipped in amidst them, at the back of bookcases, lurking even in the pages of well-worn manuals: maps and navigation charts of places to which their starry-eyed owners would never go. Happily, the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico had been their preferred stuff of dreams, perhaps because their comparative proximity made those regions seem more accessible, more easy to imagine going to one distant day.

  A would-be mariner’s mind is a strange thing, Eddie had decided as he catalogued countless charts that had never been used. Indeed, actual boaters would not have had use for the majority of them unless they had made a project of sailing to the most obscure ports of the Greater and Lesser Antilles. And yet those charts had been pored over. Their edges were crinkled and yellowed from the lustful touch of those whose longing to set the sails and man the wheels of tall ships had never gone beyond sitting hunched on the thwart of a square-bowed skiff, motionless upon an inland Appalachian lake, fishing rod in hand and high seas in their minds’ eyes.

  Sorting through the water-stained cardboard boxes was often complicated by the age of the would-be captains, the sad chaos of encroaching dementia wreaking havoc among what were already erratic filing systems. But by the time he finished categorizing and collating and assembling, Eddie had compiled an extraordinarily detailed picture of most of the Caribbean and much of the Gulf of Mexico: the area to which he and his flotilla—Task Force X-Ray—had been dispatched not quite a year earlier.

  The ship’s bell rang once. Eddie didn’t listen for the other two he knew were coming. It was 0530. The watching and waiting was over.

  Now it was time to move.

  Chapter 2

  East of Dominica

  “Mr. Svantner!” Eddie cried, stepping forward on his ergonomically designed prosthesis.

  “Sir!” the Swede shouted in the reply, approaching at the double-quick.

  “Are all sections in readiness for next evolution?”

  “They are, sir!”

  “Very good. Pilot?”

  “Sir!” came the response from the opened steel shutters of the flying bridge.

  “We will be proceeding under sail only.”

  “Aye, sir!”

  “Flight master?”

  “Here, sir!”

  “Reel platform down to five hundred feet.” Eddie leaned toward the speaking tube. “Comms mate, send Delta Alpha Charlie to the observer.”

  “Signaling directions, sir?”

  “Observer already has them, down to the degree. He’ll want this, though: send code India Echo Zero Delta.”

  Svantner frowned. “Aye-ee-zero-dee, sir?”

  “‘Intercept envelope is zero deviation’ from plan, Svantner. As you said, they’re right where we hoped they’d be.”

  He nodded. “So the pickets will start closing search net around them?”

  “That our opponents won’t fully see for another five hours.” Eddie noticed that Svantner was looking back toward Dominica, or rather, through it. “Concerns, Arne?”

  “Sir,” the Swede murmured, keeping his voice low, “I’m still . . . unsettled about the lack of a rearguard, sir.”<
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  Eddie appreciated his XO’s attempt at discretion; ratings were already running past them, having been brought up by three bells. Intrepid’s crew was readying her for the next evolution. He leaned closer to his subordinate. “Svantner, I appreciate the reservations you had about having so many jachts on picket duty and none watching the waters behind us. But firstly, we didn’t have enough jachts on hand to do both jobs, and secondly, we wanted to see what would happen if we turned our backs.”

  Svantner frowned. “Sir? I don’t follow.”

  Eddie sighed. “I know. And I regret that we couldn’t include you in the brief. But when we outlined this plan to the civilian council back at Oranjestad two weeks ago, we didn’t do that to keep them apprised. We did it to see if there were intel leaks.”

  Svantner blinked. “Sir?”

  Eddie shrugged. “It was a test, to see if any of them were either knowing or unwitting intel sources for our enemies.”

  Svantner’s eyes widened. “So if there had been any ships behind us now . . . ”

  “ . . . it would strongly suggest that the Spanish, or more likely their pirate lackeys, had gotten word and come out here to make some mischief.”

  “And did you actually reveal our objective to them?”

  Eddie shrugged. “We had to give them some warning regarding the amount of work that will be returning back to home port with us, if we are successful. So we gave them the bare-bone basics.”

  Arne’s frown was back. “But we still can’t be sure that there aren’t ships lying in wait further behind us.”

  Eddie smiled. “Well, they’d have appeared behind Admiral Tromp. Granted, he’s been underway since we first telegraphed our sighting of the enemy an hour and a half ago. But he did leave one jacht behind, tucked near Dominica’s southern headland to watch for any unwelcome company. But frankly, we already had a dedicated force patrolling to leeward of these islands.”

  Svantner didn’t even try to conceal his perplexity. “And what force would that be, sir?”

  “Our own, well, ‘pirates.’”

  The Swede’s face rapidly transformed into an ugly combination of surprise and disgust. “Our pirates? So we are resorting to the same tactics as the Spanish?”

  Eddie frowned. “Watch your tone—and your volume—XO. Our pirates remain so because we don’t have authority to give most of them letters of marque. Most are affiliated with Moses Cohen Henriques Eanes, who’s been coordinating with Cornelis Jol for years now.”

  The confusion had left Svantner’s face, but the disapproval remained, darker than before. “As you said, sir: our own pirates.”

  “Mr. Svantner, if you cannot set aside your compunctions enough to remain fully committed to the operation and respectful to your superiors, then you may consider yourself relieved for the duration of this operation.”

  The dark expression—and all color—bled out of the Swede’s face. “I simply regret that we are compelled to employ such . . . expedients, sir. It caught me by surprise.”

  Of course it did. Another reason why you’ll never make more than post captain. “I understand, Arne. But they were the perfect rear pickets in that even our adversaries would not suspect them of helping us that way. And oddly, they were far less likely to be a source of intelligence leaks. Moses and Jol were contacted over a month ago and have been cruising these waters since, watching for intruders and without putting into port. All coordinated through scheduled meetings at uninhabited locales. And the one or two times pirates thought they’d have a go at our convoys to and from Trinidad, they broke off as soon as they saw the escorts coming after them.”

  “And so Jol and Moses have not reported any contacts?”

  “None, although if they had an encounter in the past two days, we might not have heard about it, yet. They operate independently and they are outside the intelligence loop on this operation.”

  Svantner lowered his head, frowning. “I see, sir.”

  Eddie thought it possible that he did, in fact. “As soon as the comms mate reports that the observer has finished signaling to the pickets, complete recovery of the balloon.”

  The Swede nodded sharply at someone well beyond Eddie’s shoulder. “Those orders are being executed now, Commodore. Anything else?”

  “It’s time to send our final message to Tromp.”

  He nodded. “I’ll send up the runner, sir.” Svantner saluted and darted away, seeming a bit relieved to go.

  His departure gave Eddie an unobstructed view over the taffrail, where the outline of Dominica was growing clearer against the brightening sky. Although the sun was only half an hour away from rising above the opposite horizon, the stars were still faintly visible over the dark landmass astern. He recognized the early-morning constellations—and suddenly found himself recollecting a similar sky he’d seen on an early-morning astronomy outing for his senior year science class. That had been six years ago—or, from another perspective, three hundred sixty-four years in the future. A future that could now never occur, given all the changes wrought by the appearance of Grantville and its inhabitants.

  “Commodore Cantrell, sir?” asked a young voice at his elbow. Eddie’s runner—a skinny eleven-year-old with a stubbornly unruly thatch of dirty blond hair—was waiting with pad in hand. Eddie smiled. “Ready, Cas?”

  “As always, sir!”

  “Okay. From E. Cantrell, CO Intrepid to M. Tromp, aboard Resolve, D. Simonszoon CO. Message follows.

  “Confirming all prior reports. Stop. Detected OPFOR lights 0400, appx thirty-seven NM due east Baraisiri Pointe, Dominica. Stop. Heading was west southwest, making four knots with stern wind and following seas. Stop. Observations at 0430 and 0500 show course and speed unchanged. Stop. As per OPORD, am commencing evolution Bravo. Stop. Balloon secured and Intrepid under sail to Guadeloupe, Petit Cul-de-Sac Marin. Stop. Wind over starboard quarter. Stop. ETA 1300. Stop.”

  Eddie considered a moment. He was averse to speculation, but he should convey some impression of the enemy’s numbers. He added:

  “OPFOR estimated at fifty primary hulls. Stop. Two to four smaller craft, probably packets. Stop. Formation consistent with descriptions of OPFOR’s prior Dominica landfalls. Stop. Message ends.” He nodded at Cas. “Read it back, please.”

  Cas did so, ending with: “Revisions or additions, sir?”

  Eddie shook his head. “No. Send it and advise when receipt is confirmed.”

  “Aye, sir,” and Cas was off with a light-footed scampering.

  As that sound faded, the creaking of the balloon’s lines became louder and sharper as it neared the poop deck, the mizzen boom having been cleared to provide enough room for its operations off the quarterdeck.

  “XO!” Eddie shouted.

  Svantner appeared as swiftly as a summoned spirit. “Yes, sir?”

  Cantrell nodded toward the just-landed balloon, bulging and swaying like a distressed gaseous amoeba. “As soon as the envelope is clear, bring the boom inboard, and smartly. Sail handlers to stand ready.”

  “They’ll be hopping to the task, sir. Wouldn’t do to be around when La Flota arrives and finds Admiral Tromp waiting for them, would it, sir?”

  “No,” Eddie affirmed, glancing east to where this year’s treasure fleet from Spain was approaching in the distant dark. “It wouldn’t do at all.”

  Chapter 3

  East of Dominica

  Admiral Maarten Tromp lowered the spyglass, which he still preferred to the binoculars being made in Amsterdam. “The leading galleons are within two nautical miles.” He leaned toward the runner. “Tell the captain that he will want to beat to quart—” He checked himself with a small smile. “He will want to sound general quarters.”

  He gestured for the waiting signalman. “Send the word to the fleet: prepare to engage the enemy.” As the comms rating disappeared down the companionway to the various control compartments under the cruiser’s armored pilothouse, drums and coronets arose in contending staccato alerts. Deckhands began
clearing for action. The weather shrouds were lifted and borne away from both the fore and aft eight-inch wire-wrapped breechloaders.

  The sea was just choppy enough that its sibilant rise and rush drowned out most of the similar flourishes and tattoos that followed a moment later on the two closest ships: Salamander and Tromp’s own fifty-four-gun Amelia.

  Except that today, it was not his ship. In keeping with one of the few parallels between both seventeenth-century and up-time naval practice, admirals were not also the captains of their own vessel. Managing an entire battle while simultaneously directing the operations of a warship were deemed beyond the ability of any human to perform without severely undercutting both. Each role involved too many wholly disparate activities, all of which were infamous for how quickly they could go wrong without warning—and potentially, at the same time. In short, Maarten Tromp acknowledged that there was good reason not to be the captain of a ship today.

  But that didn’t mean he was comfortable with it. He glanced over at Amelia, three hundred yards to starboard, and thought he saw a single curt hand wave from the back near the stern. Probably not the current captain, but his own first mate—no, “executive officer”—who he had left behind there: Adriaen Banckert. Almost as accomplished a mariner as his father the admiral, the twenty-year-old had not taken it as a slight, but rather, as a point of pride that Tromp had left him on Amelia: as the admiral had explained, aside from himself, no one knew the ship better than young Banckert.

  Well, Tromp reflected, perhaps Amelia’s prior XO, Cornelis “Kees” Evertsen, could lay claim to equal knowledge. But young Kees had one of the most rare and important aptitudes among all the Dutch officers: an innate knack for working with both the complexities and strange synergies of the up-time technologies that predominated upon Resolve. Because of that, Tromp had apologetically called him away from his first independent command, the swift thirty-eight-gun Wappen van Rotterdam, to serve as his personal aide and staff officer while aboard the USE steam cruiser. An admiral’s assistant has to be at least as conversant with the new realities of the war as the commander himself, and Kees was one of the few who met that criterion.