by Eric Flint
In the period after the Ring of Fire, Mike Stearns had leaned very heavily on the membership of his union local to provide him with a ready-made cadre. Those days were over now. Mike himself had left for Magdeburg and the man who succeeded him to serve as the province’s president, Ed Piazza, was not and had never been a coal miner.
By then, though, certain social customs had become rooted in the State of Thuringia-Franconia. The same customs didn’t hold much sway elsewhere in the United States of Europe. Being a UMWA member in Magdeburg province, for instance, was certainly respectable—even admirable—but gave a man no particular status in political terms.
In the governing circles of the SoTF and its surrounding officialdom, on the other hand, membership in the UMWA had much the same informal prestige and ability to open doors that being a Harvard or Yale graduate had provided back up-time. That hadn’t been due to the supposedly superb education one received at those Ivy League schools, no matter what people claimed. That education was certainly excellent, but so was the education a person could get at MIT or the University of California, or any number of top universities in America, public as well as private. Indeed, in many fields, the education someone could get outside of the Ivy League was quite a bit better.
No, the real cachet that having an Ivy League degree had given people back up-time was social, not educational. Being a graduate of Harvard or Yale put you in the right old boys’ networks. Being a UMWA member did much the same in the SoTF.
Thankfully, Bozarth had not taken his post to be a sinecure. Being fair, very few UMWA people did. They might not necessarily be the best person for a job, but they almost always carried out those jobs with the same blue-collar work ethic that they’d taken into coal mines.
So, as soon as Bonnie explained her needs to him, Bozarth knew exactly where, how and from whom those needs could be met. He knew Regensburg very well by now, especially that part of Regensburg that was involved in what he considered “useful work.”
Brick defined that term the way coal miners do. If you knew how to make something or fix something or grow something, you were a stout fellow. If you were a parson, you were regarded with respect but otherwise dismissed as being of no practical use. If you were a lawyer, you were automatically under a cloud of suspicion.
The third factor working in her favor was just blind luck. The first item Brick brought to her to try out as an additive to the gasoline was a tub of soap. It turned out that Regensburg had a soap manufacturer—the German term was “Seifensieder”; literally, soap-boiler—and he had plenty of his product available.
The standard soap of the time in the Germanies was a lye soap. You could also find some scented olive oil bar soaps from Italy, but they were an expensive luxury item. The lye soap came in the form of a semi-liquid soft soap, rather than being hardened into bars. In other words, absolutely perfect for Bonnie’s purposes.
The first batch of napalm she mixed up worked like a charm. Being a firm believer in the principle if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, Bonnie saw no point in going any further—to the great disappointment of the commercial factor in Regensburg who controlled the town’s sugar supply and had briefly imagined great riches were in store for him.
It was just as well. She found out later from people in Grantville who’d done the experiments back in the early days that sugar was a poor cousin to soap, in the “hey, guys, let’s make some napalm!” department.
The bomb cases were easy. The city’s cooper could provide her with barrels, but those were too big for the actual bombs. On the other hand, they made great containers to mix the batches. The result, which had the consistency of fresh-made pudding, could then be easily poured into jugs that held about three gallons. There were plenty of such jugs available in a town the size of Regensburg.
The end result was a bomb that didn’t weigh more than twenty-five pounds, something that even one man could handle easily enough.
That left the fuses. Bonnie dithered back and forth between using gunpowder fuses and the even simpler device of rags soaked in gasoline. Both methods worked—but which would work best when the bomb was dropped from a height of several hundred yards? She had no way of testing that short of the time-consuming method of taking them up in one of the airships.
In the end, Heinz solved the quandary for her, in his inimitable fashion. For a man whose great ambition was to become an historian, perhaps the world’s most impractical profession, he had a surprisingly wide pragmatic streak.
“There is no danger of an explosion, from either type of fuse?” he asked. “If you light it too soon, I mean, and it burns down into the bomb before you want it to.”
She shook her head. “No. These things aren’t really bombs. They’re basically great big Molotov cocktails. They don’t blow up, they just shatter when they hit the ground. The napalm goes flying everywhere and sticks to everything—and the lit fuse sets it on fire.”
“Then use both,” he said. “Stick one kind of fuse on one side of the sealed lid, and the other across from it. Light them both, drop the bomb. One of them has to work.”
She gave him a quick hug and set about giving the orders. So she didn’t see the look of surprise that came to Böcler’s face, followed by a look of pleasure, followed by a look of consternation.
* * *
By early afternoon, she had enough bombs to load up both the Pelican and the Albatross. The Petrel had arrived in the area also, by now, but it was flying over the Danube at the moment keeping an eye on the movements of the Bavarian troops below.
Given how easy the whole process had turned out to be, Bonnie decided it made more sense to transfer the final stages of the bomb-making from Regensburg to the field. Tom Simpson and his people were now within ten miles of Regensburg. The airships had found a suitable landing area about three miles farther down the Danube. It was on the north bank, fortunately, since the south bank was in Bavarian territory. She’d bring enough napalm there in barrels to provide the Petrel with a full load of bombs. And there’d be enough left over to fill quite a few more jugs. She figured at least one of the airships could carry out a second bombing run, if Major Simpson decided to do so.
So, off they went. By now, Bonnie was starting to take flying by dirigible almost for granted. She was even enjoying it.
Except for the incredible racket. Having four un-muffled lawnmower engines yammering at close range was enough to drive you crazy after a while. The noise was so bad that whenever they needed to use the radio or the walkie-talkie they had to shut off the engines and just let the ship drift for a while.
But Heinz had thought of that, too. He’d found linen and had it soaked in some kind of wax. Little strips of it rolled up and stuffed in your ears made pretty decent ear plugs.
The airship crews clapped him on the back. Bonnie gave him another hug. Not a quick one, either.
* * *
It did not occur to Johann Heinrich Böcler, then or ever, that it was peculiar for a man headed back to a war zone to spend the entire time worrying about anything else.
But, such was his nature. His background, training and personal inclination led him to be fatalistic on the subject of death and dismemberment. Not so at all, on the subject of right and proper conduct.
What was he to do? By now, his attraction to the American woman was undeniable. Indeed, it was getting feverish. He was having thoughts—images, even—that he was quite sure his father would declare unseemly. His grandfather, should he discover, would be furious.
They were unseemly thoughts. But he could not stop having them.
If the woman in question had been uninterested, Heinz was sure he could have brought himself under control. Unfortunately—well, also delightfully—she very clearly was not. That last hug, especially, had born no resemblance at all to the sort of hugs one occasionally got from a particularly affectionate and free-spirited sister, aunt or cousin.
The fact remained that he was still too young to consider marriage. These past day
s had been eventful and stimulating; certainly. He would even allow that they had been exciting. But soon enough, the real world would intrude—say better, return to normal. And he would go back to being a modestly paid secretary who was still some years away from having accumulated enough in the way of assets and income to sustain a household.
What was he to do?
Chapter 15
Tom decided to launch the bombing raid just before sundown. By then, the cavalrymen staying in the targeted village would be settling in for the night. Most of them, anyway. But there would still be enough light for the airship’s bombardiers to see the targets easily. Even with a clear sky and moonlight, he didn’t think they could do so very well after nightfall.
So, he stopped the march an hour earlier in the day than he’d stopped the previous two days, and spent the extra time setting up fieldworks to guard the camp. He wasn’t sure how the Bavarians would react to the bombing. He didn’t think they’d retaliate with an attack, because the infantry were the only ones really in position to launch such an attack and they weren’t going to be the target of the bombing.
But you never knew. Relying too much on your own assessment of an enemy’s intentions was a military error that probably dated back to Cro-Magnon times. Naw, those guys won’t do nothing tonight so we may as well get some sleep. And so perishes another little band of hunter-gatherers...
He didn’t use all of his men for that purpose, though. Earlier in the day, once Bonnie explained her plans to him over the radio, he sent Bruno von Eichelberg and his mercenary company on a forced march down the river. Their assignment was to meet up with the Pelican and the Albatross at the landing area the airship crews had selected and provide them with a guard unit. Tom didn’t know yet if he would want to carry out a second bombing run, but he might. So he’d approved Bonnie’s plan to set up an impromptu combination airfield and bomb-making facility.
And, again, you never knew. There was certainly no way that the Bavarian infantry could get down there tonight or tomorrow morning. And he didn’t think it was likely at all that a cavalry unit would either. There had always been at least one airship in the sky above them since early morning. They could keep an eye out for any enemy troop movements within miles, and they’d reported no cavalry any closer than half a mile upstream. But you couldn’t rule out the possibility that some stray cavalry had gone unspotted and were now well down the river. If even a small number of cavalrymen came across the airships on the ground and unprotected, there’d be an outright slaughter.
And now, there was nothing left to do but wait.
* * *
“What do you think, Heinrich?” asked Colonel von Schnetter. He passed the telescope he’d been using to Captain von Haslang. The two of them were sitting on their horses atop a small rise near the river bank, studying the fieldworks the Danube Regiment was putting up a half mile or so downstream. From here, they had a good view.
“Can you think of any reason they made camp earlier today, and are taking the time to create fieldworks?”
Von Haslang didn’t reply for a few seconds, while he studied the enemy’s activity through the glass. Then, passing it back to his commander, he got a slight smile on his face. He and von Schnetter had known each other for years and this was not the first time they’d worked together. The colonel’s use of his given name was a subtle indicator that his friend wanted a frank and private discussion.
“Not really, Caspar. It’s not as if you’ve given them any reason to expect an assault.”
Von Schnetter took the eyeglass and slid it back into the case he kept attached to his saddle. He had the same slight smile also.
“No, I haven’t. And as I’m sure you’re figured out by now, I have no intention of attacking them. That American major—and it’s him, for a certainty; did you see the size of the bastard?—has shown himself to be altogether too competent for my taste. Any attack we launched with no cavalry to work at their flanks would be a bloodbath. We’d probably win, in the end, because we outnumber them three-to-one. But that’s more of a butcher’s bill than I’m willing to pay with good troops who’ve been left in the lurch by swine and...”
He let the end of the sentence trail off. The “swine,” of course, referred to von Troiberz. Von Haslang was quite sure that if his colonel had completed the thought, the “and” would have been followed by a very unfavorable reference to General von Lintelo.
He had gotten a good look at the commander of the enemy force. Just now, and also the day before when he and von Schnetter had studied their opponent making camp from another rise in the landscape. The colonel’s eyepiece was superb. He’d only been able to afford it because he came from a wealthy family.
It was conceivable, of course, that the Danube Regiment had two officers as huge as the one they’d been looking at. But it was not likely. The Simpson fellow was rather famous, all across the Germanies. So was his admiral father, but in the case of the son the fame came entirely from his physique, not his accomplishments. That would begin to change, of course, as a result of his exploits over the past few days.
It was said that the young American major had engaged in an up-time sport that required immense men. “Feetball,” it was called, if von Haslang remembered right. He was not clear with regard to the details of the game. His image of it, had he laid it before an up-timer, would have resulted in smiles, perhaps even laughter. Von Haslang’s conception of “feetball” bore a much closer resemblance to mass sumo wrestling than the actual American sport.
But the details were irrelevant. Von Haslang would hate to confront that man in a physical clash, armed with anything but a gun. And now that he’d experienced three days of maneuvering against him, he’d want to fire the gun at a distance.
He and von Schnetter went back to looking at the distant enemy fieldworks.
“Make camp for the night, sir?” von Haslang asked, figuring that the moment for informality had passed.
“Yes, please see to it, Captain. We’ll not be launching any attacks.”
* * *
Colonel Johann von Troiberz was planning no attacks of his own that night, either. Not even an attack on the virtue of the woman sharing his bed, since that virtue had fallen many years earlier. Not to him, but to a different officer.
He thought he was the second Bavarian officer for whom she’d become a concubine. In actual fact, he was the fifth, but the woman in question had never seen any need to enlighten the colonel on the matter. Men were always bothered by such details.
After von Troiberz fell asleep, Ursula Gerisch stared at the ceiling. It was the sort of ceiling that she’d become familiar with, since she’d cast her lot with von Troiberz.
The ceiling belonged to one of the rooms in the sort of inn you ran across in large German villages. “Large,” in this instance, was a term partly defined by the mere fact that the village had an inn, that was more than just a front room in a villager’s house that provided drink and food purely for the locals.
Needless to say, the room was neither large nor well-furnished. It was certainly not luxurious. There was a bed—not large; not comfortable—and a nightstand, one chair, and a chamber pot.
The chamber pot had not been washed lately. So much was obvious.
She tried to remember how she’d wound up in this state of affairs. She was still well short of thirty years old. She couldn’t even claim the excuse of desperately poor origins. Her father had been a tanner in a small town in Swabia—a trade that paid rather well, although you had to put up with the terrible stench.
It had begun with excitement, she recalled. Soldiers passing through town, a handsome young lieutenant. Ursula herself, bored. And she truly hated the stink of the tannery.
To this day, she liked to imagine that first liaison would have worked out well in the end. But the unfortunate young lieutenant had been serving under Ernst von Mansfeld at the disastrous battle of the Dessau Bridge, where the Protestants were crushed by Wallenstein. He’d vanished i
n the course of that battle. Presumably killed, but you never really knew. He might have just run off and decided to keep running. Whatever had happened, she’d never seen him again.
The second officer had not been exciting at all. A fat colonel in late middle-age, whose wife had died and whose career had stalled out. But he’d been a decent enough man, and she’d been desperate. Then, a year later, the colonel’s heart had failed. He’d left no provision for her in his will, despite his promises. Everything had gone to his own children.
Back on the streets again. She’d worked those just long enough to find another officer. Another lieutenant. Also, alas, another unfortunate. In this case, not a casualty of bullet and sword but a casualty of the still deadlier combination of getting stinking drunk and climbing onto a horse.
Then, finally, a stroke of luck. Not much, but some. A captain this time, in his mid-thirties and in good enough health that she could expect some considerable years with him. As a concubine, to be sure, not a wife. The hopes Ursula had once had of eventually getting married and raising a family had died of neglect and malnutrition, somewhere along the way. But the captain was faithful enough that she didn’t really fear he’d desert her for another woman or give her some sort of horrid disease.
He was something of a mean bastard, though, with a hot temper. He beat her from time to time. Life was far from perfect.
Worse than the beatings was the temper itself. The day came when he mistook the ease of beating a concubine with beating another officer. Unlike the concubine, the officer had a sword—and, as it turned out, was considerably more proficient in its use than the man who’d struck him.
They buried the captain’s arm in the same coffin that held the rest of his body. The cut had taken it right off, after which he’d bled to death.
Luckily for Ursula—well, it had seemed lucky at the time—Colonel von Troiberz had attended the funeral and took it upon himself to comfort the not-exactly-a-widow after the ceremony concluded.
