The Macedonian Hazard

by Eric Flint

  “Come in out of the rain, Susan!” shouted Karrel Agot, a belowdecks crewman who took the job for the same reasons that Susan had. He was about five nine, swarthy complexion, with a Vandyke beard. He was a Muslim still, in spite of The Event. He did his daily prayers facing Mecca, even though Muhammad wasn’t born yet, anymore than Christ was. Susan shook her head, but she couldn’t feel that superior. She still said grace, after all.

  She went into the tent she and Karrel shared with the twenty Persian mercenaries who had been hired to protect them from bandits. “How’s the rig?”

  “Still in the boxes.” The Queen of the Sea could manufacture radios, even tuneable, fairly powerful radios. The problem was output. Even with many of the parts manufactured in parallel and in groups, the total output of the radio factory on the Queen averaged out to one mid-range radio a day. They could produce three short-range radios in the same time frame, but a long-range radio station like the one for Babylon took a month or so to complete. It wasn’t just the radio, though making a transmitter that would reach from Babylon to Tyre was no mean feat. No, the problem was that a radio of that power needed a generator and a bank of batteries, circuitry-testing equipment, a steam engine to turn the generator and, most importantly of all, they needed to have electrical and general physical protection of the computer that ran it all, because the computer was completely irreplaceable.

  To protect this highly valuable installation and the two ship people who were accompanying it, the Queen of the Sea had hired twenty mercenaries and equipped them with ship-made crossbows. They had wanted to do rifles, but rifles take long barrels and long barrels were much harder for the equipment on the Queen to produce. They also sent a couple of crates of grenades.

  Palmyra was still a couple of days’ travel and Babylon another couple of weeks after that. Susan wondered what she would find when they finally got to Babylon.

  Antigonus’ palace, east half of Babylon

  January 12, 319 BCE

  Antigonus One-eye, seated in a chair that made a good attempt at being a throne, gritted his teeth and waved at the Greek soldier. The soldier was one of Attalus’ men and Antigonus didn’t recognize him. He was young, though, probably in his twenties. And from his clothing, probably a son of a noble house. He came under a flag of truce.

  The man stood up from his bow and asked, “Have you gotten any word on the radio?”

  Antigonus shrugged. “They were crossing the desert last I heard.” Even for dispatch riders it took a week to reach the radio at Tyre and the signal fires were disrupted by the constant skirmishes between his and Attalus’ forces. Dispatch riders could avoid the skirmishers, even if it did mean that they couldn’t change their horses.

  It had not been a good few months for Antigonus One-eye. After his initial not quite victory over Attalus, he was plagued with desertion and disease. Attalus gained troops in the first weeks after the attack and maintained his hold on the west side of Babylon. In fact, much of the infantry that Antigonus captured deserted back to Attalus.

  Word from the Queen of the Sea that a constitution had been written and that Eumenes was made strategos for the empire had hurt him badly in status and authority, and with only the Euphrates between them, defection proved easy for the troops. Instead of moving west to take on Eumenes, he was stuck here holding Babylon against Attalus. He didn’t even control the surrounding territory, not completely. Attalus had gotten a lot of his cavalry out of the city, slipping them out in the weeks after his attack, so there was regular skirmishing between Antigonus’ cavalry and Attalus’.

  “I don’t see that it matters that much. I don’t accept Eumenes’ authority any more than I accept Attalus’,” Antigonus told the envoy.

  “And the queens?”

  “I am loyal to the babe, but Philip is an idiot and now that Alexander’s son is born, he has no right to the throne. That eliminates Eurydice. And as for Roxane, she is a woman and not Macedonian. Such cannot rule Alexander’s empire.”

  His statement was nothing new. Attalus had been making his claims in the name of Roxane and that treacherous little bitch Eurydice since the day he arrived, and Antigonus had maintained his answer for just as long. He’d also sent envoys to the satraps of the eastern empire, asking their support and making promises. He’d sent envoys to Ptolemy too, though as yet all he had gotten from Ptolemy were delays and promises to consider. Ptolemy, the coward, was sitting in Alexandria and hoping that the winner of the war would be so weakened that he could take it all, or at least keep Egypt.

  “And the wounded?” asked the envoy.

  “We will take care of our own,” Antigonus said. “As for the prisoners, they are traitors and get what a traitor deserves.”

  Attalus’ palace, west half of Babylon

  January 12, 319 BCE

  Attalus paced back and forth, glancing at the table that was filled with maps. Maps of Babylon, maps of the surrounding territory. The stalemate continued, and Attalus was increasingly frustrated. Right after the battle, every day his forces had gotten stronger as Antigonus’ got weaker. But then the defections had gradually trickled off. He’d gotten enough of his cavalry out of Babylon to relieve him of the need to find provender for their horses. But to do that, he was forced to slip them out a few at a time, and not all of them had joined his cavalry command. Some had gone to join Eumenes, and all too many had simply gone home. He had less than half the cavalry he’d started with, and only a third of the infantry.

  He looked over at Menander. Menander had surrendered as soon as it was clear that Attalus was going to hold the west side of the city, and a month later had switched sides, joining Attalus’ staff. Attalus figured the major reason Menander switched was because he didn’t want to face Antigonus One-eye after losing the half of Babylon he was responsible for. “Dareios is back and Antigonus hasn’t budged a finger width.”

  “Did you think he would?” Attalus asked.

  “No, but I’m worried about what’s going to happen when the ship people get here.” Attalus had seen the Queen of the Sea, but Menander never had. The thing that impressed Menander about the ship people wasn’t the great ship. What impressed him was the fortified wine that they had washed his wounds with after the battle. It was having his wounds sewn up and not having them fester or rot. Attalus could sympathize with Menander’s point of view. He was even more injured at the battle of Sardis.

  “I don’t know. I know I don’t want to be responsible for anything happening to one of the ship people,” Attalus said. “From what I was told, Gorgias managed to kill two and they destroyed his fleet. And I know that Metello killed only one, and they hung him and killed half his army.” That was an exaggeration, but still…pissing off the ship people wasn’t something he wanted to do, even if they were hundreds of miles from any ocean.

  “Well, when is Eumenes going to relieve us here?” Menander asked.

  “He’s up at the Bosphorus.”

  “Yes, just sitting there. While Antigonus has us trapped in this hole.”

  Attalus closed his eyes and thought. Eumenes’ messages about his attack on Babylon hadn’t been complimentary. Angry as Attalus was at the generals for the murder of his wife after Peithon lost at the Nile, he still resented the fact that Eumenes and not himself was made strategos of the empire. Eumenes was not Macedonian and it was just wrong to put him above a true Macedonian.

  But the world was what it was, and Menander harping on it wasn’t making him feel any better about it. Maybe when the radio got here Eumenes would send him better instructions. Or he could talk it out with the queens and get them to reconsider.

  CHAPTER 6

  Preparations

  Royal Lounge, Queen of the Sea, Alexandria Harbor

  January 15, 319 BCE

  Ptolemy took his usual seat in the Royal Lounge. “Are you sure that this is worthwhile?” he asked the room at large.

  Marie followed his gaze as he looked around the room. There was Roxane and Dag, who’d recovered
from the poisoning. Digitalis washed out of the system in only a few days if it didn’t kill you, which, with proper medical intervention, it usually didn’t. But Travis Siegel had a heart condition and he had apparently ingested at least three times as much of the digitalis-laced cocoamat as Dag had.

  Next to Dag were Eleanor Kinney and Amanda Miller, who by now was Al Wiley’s ambassador at large. She and her daughter traveled with the Queen of the Sea and by agreement enjoyed diplomatic immunity from Carthage to Alexandria and north to the remnants of the Etruscan League.

  Marie looked over at Lars, who looked at Eleanor Kinney. Eleanor was the ship’s purser who was now the main architect of the monetary and banking system on the Queen of the Sea and in New America. She hadn’t done it alone. She’d had the help of Amanda Miller, and a few other passengers with banking and money-management experience.

  “I’m surprised,” Eleanor said. “Eumenes seemed quite anxious to have us circle the Horn of Africa.”

  “Eumenes is acting as strategos for the empire,” said Ptolemy. “His goal is to use the Queen as a threat against Antigonus’ rear so that Antigonus can’t bring the armies of his allies to the war that is going to be fought along the Euphrates. My concerns are more pragmatic. There is more trade between Egypt and New America than the Queen of the Sea can truly support. If you go exploring around the Horn of Africa, that will take the Queen out of service for months. And to stockpile the fuel you will need will require taking the Reliance out of the trade lanes as well. The market for super turkeys and llama, not to mention jade and gold decorative art, are helping our economy.”

  Marie looked at Ptolemy in surprise, but she got over the surprise quickly. Thaïs, his mistress—for lack of a better word—traveled on the Queen of the Sea for months and she was a very smart woman who studied intently. And apparently shared her thoughts with Ptolemy. She looked around the table and saw Dag’s expression. Roxane, seated beside Dag, was showing nothing but polite interest, but Dag’s face was easier to read. There was a cynical twist to his lips; not a very severe one, but it was enough. Marie looked back at Ptolemy and realized that the satrap of Egypt wasn’t in any great hurry to see Eumenes defeat Cassander and Antigonus. As long as Eumenes was busy in Macedonia or Babylon, Ptolemy would be able to strengthen Egypt and the other territories he had gobbled up since Alexander’s death.

  With good planning—and just a little luck on Ptolemy’s part—Egypt would be too powerful for the United Satrapies and States of the Empire to fight by the time they got around to trying to reimpose imperial control and make him give back Syria, the Palatine, the kingdoms of Nabataean and Judea.

  “Surely,” Marie said, “the goods that might be found in southern Africa or shipped by the Queen from India to the Port of Suez will add more to the empire’s economy.”

  “Perhaps, but the—” Ptolemy held up a hand. “What is that expression that my daughter picked up from you ship people…? Something about birds and hands?”

  “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” Marie lifted an eyebrow.

  “Yes, that’s it. The transatlantic trade and the Mediterranean trade are birds in the hand. This trip to the south of the great desert is very much birds in the bush.”

  “That’s not the only factor,” said Eleanor Kinney. “There are going to be new trade ships. In fact, we hear that there are sailing, or at least primarily sailing, ships that are attempting the transatlantic crossing already. From Rome and Carthage, even from here. Exploration and establishing trade routes and weather stations will help the whole world.”

  “And,” added Amanda Miller, “the sooner those trade routes are established, the sooner ships from New America and the Mediterranean powers can follow in relative safety. Don’t forget, Satrap, that the weather predictions that our computer models can provide are very dependent on the number and spread of our weather stations. The weather stations dotted around the Mediterranean help, but a storm front from the Atlantic might send a hurricane to Trinidad with almost no warning. Storms and rain, high winds, all these things could destroy your crops in the field if you are not warned.”

  Marie watched Ptolemy’s expression as Mrs. Miller went through this list of advantages. He didn’t seem convinced, but Dag was smiling and so was Lars.

  Royal Palace, Alexandria

  January 15, 319 BCE

  “Did you get them to delay?” Thaïs asked.

  “Not for a day, and I couldn’t use the oil depot at Suez, because they know we’re building it anyway. I’d like to know how they learned that.”

  Thaïs laughed. “Come, now! You know that the radio team is here as much to spy as to provide communications. Bruce Lofdahl is a nice man and TinTin Wai is charming, if her accent is sometimes hard to follow. But they are collecting information on Alexandria and the rest of Egypt and reporting it back to the Queen of the Sea.”

  Ptolemy did indeed know that. He was just blowing off steam, another one of the ship people sayings. This one hadn’t made much sense to Ptolemy until he had seen one of the new steam engines in operation. “I know, but Menelaus says that the ship people are cooperating with Roxane. Even if they don’t do anything so overt as dropping troops or shelling coastal cities, just sailing along the coast in sight of land will scare the crap out of Tlepolemus.” That, at least, wasn’t one of the ship people’s catchy phrases.

  “What’s the word from Eumenes?”

  “He’s still at the Bosphorus and, according to Claudius, building pontoons.”

  “They should be getting close, shouldn’t they?”

  “Yes, but the Bosphorus is wide even at its narrowest point. It’s going to take them a while.”

  “How long?”

  “Figure fifteen feet between two pontoons, including the width of one of the pontoons. That’s a hundred and fifty pontoons or close to it. There are the bridge sections that fit over the pontoons. But there will be different groups working on pontoons and bridge sections.” He snorted. “From what Claudius said, they are even using a group to make railings for the sides of the bridge, but that won’t take any more time. Just more hands working on it. It will take several days for each pontoon, but again they will be making several pontoons at the same time. A month and a half, maybe two months from when they started. Add two weeks for the time it took them to build the factory and arrange to have the wood and fabric brought in. Not today or tomorrow, but I would be surprised if it takes Eumenes more than another month.

  “Then they have to tie them together. That’s a week right there, and they will be doing it under the arrows of Lysimachus.”

  “Will they?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They have the ship people rockets.”

  Ptolemy stood suddenly and strode across the room, then back. “I’ve seen the steam cannon, but not their rockets.” Frustration was clear in his voice. “I don’t have any idea how effective they will be. They might do very little, or they might wipe Lysimachus’ army from the western shore of the Bosphorus as though they were a mighty broom.”

  “I saw a couple of examples while we were in New America, but it was only a few rockets, fired one at a time.” Thaïs reached up and tugged on a curl of her dark brown hair. “They have the range to reach across the Bosphorus, I’m almost certain. But how accurate they will be at that range, I’m not sure. What I do know is that they often explode either just before or just after they hit the ground. It is like a grenade, but larger.”

  Now Ptolemy sat back down. Egypt had grenades. Gunpowder was one of the first bits of ship people knowledge the locals gained. Dinocrates started using black powder in construction months ago, and Ptolemy had a unit of grenadiers training with the small, throwable bombs. They were fused, not contact, explosives, and there had been two very demonstrative accidents, where a grenade was lit, then dropped.

  A total of seven dead, five the first time and two the second. Against a phalanx, grenades would be pure murder.

  “Accuracy w
ouldn’t have to be that great if the grenades in the rockets are large enough. Then there is the shock value. I’ve had to pull quite a few of my soldiers out of the grenadiers. Veterans who I would have called fearless are sometimes terrified of the things. It’s the indiscriminate nature of the weapons. Not even that, exactly. With a flight of arrows, you can hold up your shield and if you hold it right, you have a good chance. With grenades, there is nothing you can do. You die, or don’t. In the second accident, a man standing not five feet from the grenade was barely scratched, but a man almost fifteen feet away had a piece of shrapnel go right through his breastplate.”

  “The ship people’s way of war,” Thaïs said, “lacks in honor, I think.” Thaïs followed Alexander the Great’s army from Macedonia to India and back. She’d seen many battles and had been forced to wield a sword in defense of the baggage train in two of them. She respected war as a contest of skill, strength and courage. But the way the ship people did it.…She shook her head. It wasn’t the better man who won when ship people fought. It was the man with the better tools.

  And that meant that Eumenes was almost certain to cross the Bosphorus successfully. What would happen after that was less certain, because Eumenes only had so many of the critical venturi for the rockets.