by Eric Flint
They brought out drawings. And it was even worse than he had feared. They would divide his ship into six sections, using wooden frames, rods, and walls, which would in turn be painted inside and out with this tar they talked about. “After you have done that, my ship will be no good for anything but shipping oil. It won’t even be able to ship wine, because the tar would affect the taste.” That was a guess, but an educated guess. Resins of all sorts, and paint likewise, often affected the taste of food and wine. “Besides,” he went on, “even if the coating didn’t, you can never get all the oil out of an amphora and these large tanks would be the same.”
Dorothy agreed with that, but said, “The idea is that the Nenet’s Dream would become a dedicated oil tanker.”
“And how often am I going to get an order like this last job?” Abial asked. “No. The risk is too great and the reward too small. And you want me to pay for it. Buy the pump, you said. Probably buy the tar too. I would be completely dependent on your schedule for my profit.”
They bargained. They even got on the radio and called Alexandria to get an assurance from Ptolemy that there would be oil waiting at Suez. And that a large fuel depot was planned for Dioscorides. Finally, Abial agreed, but not before he got the Queen of the Sea to provide the pump, and the tar, and the designs, and let him pay them off out of oil transport fees, and never more than half the fee, so that he would always be paid.
The pump was steel, made in Alexandria, and weighed the better part of a ton. But someday, they said, there would be a steam engine available and it could be used with a propeller for speed as well as to use the pump. And that would be a good thing.
Someday.
* * *
“We have a deal,” Dorothy Faubion said as she entered Eleanor Kinney’s office. “Captain Abial drove a pretty hard bargain and I had to get Cleopatra involved to help translate. But we got it. And we also have Ptolemy a bit more committed to the fueling station on Dioscorides, and I think once the Dioscorides station is full up we’ll be able to get Abial to ship down to the station at Madagascar.”
“Good. The captain wants us to get back to Europe as fast as we can. Eumenes has just been royally screwed by Lysimachus.”
Pass north of Abdera, Thrace
March 21, 319 BCE
Eumenes looked up. The pass was between two mountains and the path was hemmed in by trees, but it was the only fast way to get to Abdera and the ships. Since crossing the Bosphorus, the fighting had been sporadic. The army moved north to take the pressure off Seuthes, and it worked. Lysimachus retreated, unwilling to risk being trapped between Seuthes in his stronghold and Eumenes’ army. After that, things got worse as Lysimachus retreated, but sent his cavalry to harass Eumenes’ army. What Erica described as pinprick raids that forced Eumenes to send his cavalry out as a screen, a wide screen with attrition on both sides. After the death of his son, Seuthes wasn’t willing to go into the field against Lysimachus. “Let Macedonian fight Macedonian,” he’d said.
Eumenes was winning, but he was having his army bled white as he did it. And after Lysimachus, he had Cassander to fight. So he and Eurydice had decided to retreat to Abdera and take ship to Amphipolis. They stole the march on Lysimachus, but to do it they had to move fast. Not an easy thing for an army to do and not something you could do at all while maintaining an adequate screen of scouts. The strategy was working, but Eumenes was feeling the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. Something was…
Twaaaaang!
The sound of hundreds of bows lofting hundreds of arrows interrupted Eumenes’ thoughts and confirmed his worst fears. Somehow Lysimachus knew. Knew, and put a force in the mountains surrounding the pass.
The arrows fell and the infantry turned turtle, as they should, lifting their shields to protect them from the arrows. It helped, but there were a lot of arrows.
The cavalry was not nearly so well situated as the infantry. Their mobility was almost useless in the mountains, and there was no shield made that was big enough to protect a horse. The rain of arrows hurt the infantry, but decimated the cavalry.
Eumenes spun his horse and started shouting orders. The enemy had the height on them and if they stayed here they were going to die in a rain of arrows. Couriers rode ahead to tell the cavalry in front of the column to ride forward until they got out of range of the attack. Others rode to the cavalry in the rear to tell them to retreat back the way they’d come. More rode to tell the infantry to stay in formation. And, most important, they rode to get the rocketeers to send incendiary rockets up into the tree-covered mountainsides that hid the enemy archers.
But it all took time.
And while they were doing it, the rain of arrows continued.
* * *
Eurydice rode forward along the path, looking at the flights of arrows, and realized that the attackers weren’t Lysimachus’ whole army. Couldn’t be. There were not enough arrows and, more importantly, on the mountainside where the arrows were coming from, there wasn’t enough room. She thought as she rode, and she was sure at first that this was just the first stage of the trap. That the rest of Lysimachus’ army must be waiting up ahead to destroy the retreating cavalry.
But how?
They knew where Lysimachus was. They had scouting reports. She reached the cavalry contingent that was the army’s advance guard, and was about to shout countermands to Eumenes’ orders when she realized the truth in a flash. It wasn’t an army. It was a raiding force. A few hundred men, no more. Sent ahead.
She joined the lead elements of the army as they rode forward out of the rain of arrows. Then, as they were turning to struggle up the mountainside, she saw that the rain of arrows had become a rain of fire. The enemy bowmen were now lofting flaming arrows and they were concentrating their fire on a small group of carts being pulled along in the center of the infantry. The rocket corps.
“Follow me!” she shouted, and rode up the hill with no regard for safety or survival. She had to get to those archers before they ignited the powder train. She barely noticed whether the leading cavalry was following her, but it was. At least, most of it was. More slowly, perhaps, but following. Some of them were racing up the mountainside as fast as she was.
She saw a horse pass her, then trip, and go tumbling down the mountainside. Another kept with her, and then another. They rode over rocks and around the trees that clawed their roots into the rocky ground on the mountainside.
And the army bled while they did it.
* * *
“Rockets!” Sakis shouted as he grabbed the wooden rocket launcher out of the wagon and tried to set it up next to the wagon. That was against the rules, but fuck the rules. They were going to die if they didn’t stop those archers.
“Here it comes!” Hristos shouted back. Sakis turned barely in time to grab the rocket before it hit him in the chest.
“Slow match!” he shouted as he prepared to drop the rocket into the tube.
Hristos pulled a flint and steel out to try and light the sulfur-drenched cord they used to light the rockets.
Then the flaming arrows arrived.
Most of them missed or were stopped by the roofs of the wagons. Almost all, in fact.
It would have been all, because the heavy wooden chests in the wagons would stop a flaming arrow cold. But they were trying to set up the rockets in the open and the chests were opened to get the rockets out. An arrow, one of several hundred shot, came down on a rocket.
The rocket, as it happened, that Sakis had in his hands. The bronze arrow tip, coated in olive oil and wool, slammed right through the thin wooden wall of the rocket, and the wood of the rocket body scraped away most of the burning olive oil and wool.
Most. But not quite all. The explosive-grade corned powder, the powder in the warhead of the incendiary rocket that Sakis hadn’t had time to fire, ignited and exploded, sending burning shrapnel in all directions, killing Sakis, and igniting a barrel of corned powder. Which ignited another barrel. A wagon went up in a massive
explosion.
That wagon ignited the wagons next to it, and a series of explosions like a giant string of firecrackers went off.
In less than five seconds, Eumenes and Eurydice lost every rocket they had.
And most of their rocketeers.
* * *
Erica Mirzadeh held her hands over her ears and prayed. She was in the radio wagon, just behind the rocket carts. The explosions killed both her horses and deafened. A piece of burning shrapnel ignited the roof of her wagon.
Tacaran grabbed her arm and pointed. It was still a small fire, just a piece of fabric soaked in a mixture of naphtha and sulfur from one of the incendiary rockets. The force of the cart in front of them exploding had plastered it against the wall of their wagon.
Tacaran pointed at one of the barrels of water that their wagon carried. Erica blinked and nodded. Then Tacaran went for the other barrel of water and together they filled buckets and managed to douse the fire.
* * *
Eurydice rode through the sounds of the explosions, and finally reached the archers. It was too late, but the Greek cavalry, equipped with ship people–designed stirrups, solid-treed saddles and the heavier lances that they allowed, rode over the archers.
* * *
An hour later Eumenes, Eurydice, Philip, and Erica examined the carnage. They had been counting on the rockets to persuade the city of Abdera to open their gates. It wasn’t that Abdera was on Lysimachus’ side, at least not the populace. But Lysimachus had a contingent of his army stationed in the city. A garrison that would have surrendered if they’d still had the rockets, but now would likely resist.
Pass north of Abdera, Thrace
March 21, 319 BCE
It was dark by the time Erica Mirzadeh and Tacaran got the radio set up, and Erica’s hearing had yet to return. The world still whispered through the echoes of explosions in her head. The stars were hidden by clouds, and the trees at the highest point they could reach near the pass made it even darker.
Tacaran set the last wire and Erica turned on the desktop computer that had come out of one of the Queen of the Sea’s computer rooms. The screen came up, lighting the inside of the wagon with an incongruous glow. Erica called up the program that controlled the tuning of the ham-style radio.
The computer ran the scan and reported five radios in range. Two of them, the one at Athens and the one at Alexandria, were active. The others had alarms set up. The radios were separate from the computers and made after The Event. They had set listening-frequency ranges, response ranges, and automated mechanical-response routines. The devices were a cross between Edison’s telegraph repeater and the old Jacquard looms. But they worked. If it was an emergency, she could ring a bell in Rome, Pella, or Tyre. It wasn’t necessary. The full system was up at Athens, so she used Athens as the repeater station. Athens’ radio tower had been built on top of the Parthenon, after getting Athena’s permission. Or at least the permission of her priesthood. It was appropriate enough, and the temple received a fee for every message that was transmitted through the station there.
“What has you up at this time, Walter?” Erica Mirzadeh typed. Walter Palmer was one of the passengers on the Queen. He was forty-three and was an air-conditioner repairman before The Event. He, his wife, and their fifteen-year-old son were the radio crew for the city of Athens. They had taken the job because Walter’s wife Peggy Jane insisted that their daughter Caroline would benefit from spending a year or two in the Athens of Aristotle.
“Negotiations and trade agreements. Word that the local’s ships are getting to New America has put the cat among the canaries and everyone is negotiating their deals. What about you, Erica?” appeared on her screen.
The connection was quite capable of sending voice or even imagery, but text used up much less bandwidth.
“We just got buggered by Lysimachus.”
“Buggered? LOL.”
“Not LOL, at all,” Erica typed, thinking about the exploding ammo carts and flying body parts of the afternoon. “He had a small, I’m told, contingent of archers in the hills and…” Erica stopped typing and took a deep breath, then she started typing again. “Look, Walter, I need to talk to New America. People died today. They may be locals, but they are people, and people I have come to know.”
“Sorry, Erica,” appeared on her screen. “I sometimes type without thinking. I’ll get you a link.”
The Congressional Club, Fort Plymouth
March 21, 319 BCE
The Congressional Club was a small room in the community center, reserved for congress and guests. Well, reserved part of the time. It was set up sort of like the Royal Lounge on the Queen, but smaller and made of wood. Still, it had a waitstaff that mostly came from the crew of the Queen. Yolanda Davis followed the maître d’ to the table and after shaking the hand of the head of the delegation from the Yaki tribe, took her seat. The Yaki lived in what on another world would someday be called Panama. He was looking around in wonder at the room. The tablecloths were white linen from Egypt. There were brass lamps with glass chimneys.
“Now, Kabkid, you will want to try the lamb stew. It will be a new experience and it’s one of Chef Vincent Bashaw’s signature dishes.” The translator, one of Lacula’s friends and an early immigrant to New America, spoke and she got the nod from Kabkid that she had wanted. Yolanda was on the committee for foreign trade in the congress of New America.
The food hadn’t been served when a local dressed in a loincloth, latex sandals, and nothing else except a painted-on red, white, and blue New American signet came in the door, looked around, and headed directly for them. He was one of the congressional pages. She took the message. It was from the radio complex.
New America now had two radio stations, one for communications and one for broadcasting, but they were located in the same complex and shared a lot of equipment. It turned out that the same antennas could be used for multiple signals at multiple frequencies.
To: Congresswoman Yolanda Davis.
From: Erica Mirzadeh with Eumenes’ army
Need to speak to you urgently.
Erica Mirzadeh
It took Yolanda a few minutes to extricate herself. Yolanda had been the steward for Erica’s stateroom before The Event, and Erica was nice even back then. After The Event, in the pressure cooker that followed, they got very close for a while. Erica had introduced her to George Davis, the man she eventually married.
Radio computer room, Fort Plymouth
“What’s happened?” Yolanda typed.
Then a whole report appeared on the screen. Apparently, Erica Mirzadeh had typed it out while she waited for Yolanda to get here. It described the battle and the effect on Eumenes’ army. And it asked for help.
The Queen of the Sea was studiously neutral in the internal workings of the United Satrapies and States of the Empire. The government of New America had until now been officially neutral too. But its neutrality was like the neutrality of America before they entered the second world war, a neutrality that leaned heavily on the side of England. New America’s neutrality leaned on the side of the queens and Eumenes.
As Yolanda read through the report, she decided that it was time for New America to lean a bit more. Lend-lease seemed like a pretty good idea right about now.
“I’ll do what I can,” she typed. “Hang in there.”
Then she got up and left the radio computer room. She had to talk to President Wiley.
President’s office
Two hours later
Yolanda looked at the president; the secretary of the navy, Richard VanHouten; and the commander of the army, Leo Holland, Jr.
President Wiley looked haggard. “I asked Richard and Leo here to see if we can determine whether the histories are wrong. Was Eumenes good or just lucky in our history?”
Leo Holland looked up and grimaced. “That’s hard to say, Mr. President. The truth is that it’s always hard to say, even with generals like Patton, Montgomery, Custer, and even Alexander the
Great.”
“Now I’m totally confused,” Yolanda said.
“I understand how you feel, Congresswoman Davis. But do you want to know the true biggest difference between war and war games? It’s the number of games you get to play. In chess, for instance, it’s thousands. Or if you’re a real aficionado, even more thousands. In war, for a given general, it can be one or two. And rarely breaks fifty. In war games, you can tell who’s better because the same people play again and again. In war, skill or its lack, often get swamped by luck.” He held up the description of the battle and the strategy that led to it. “Eumenes’ strategy was risky, but not bad. A calculated risk, we like to call it. A roll of the dice. But the trouble with calculated risks is that sometimes you roll snake eyes and get screwed right through your pants. And that’s what happened here.”
CHAPTER 11
Reactions
Queen of the Sea, off the Cape of Good Hope
March 29, 319 BCE
The conference room was subtly changed by now, with paintings from Alexandria and South American face masks on some of the walls, but the big-screen TV that could show anything they wanted was still there. Though, at the moment, shut off.
Lars Floden carefully placed his hand flat on the table, not slamming it down as he clearly wanted to. “Al Wiley can do whatever he wants, but the Queen of the Sea is neutral.” He was clearly angry, but to Marie Easley it was clear that he was angry at the situation, not the President of New America.
“That may be true,” Anders Dahl said. “But if New America, and through them the Reliance, takes the side of the legitimate government, our neutrality is going to be pretty frayed in the eyes of the world whatever we say.”
