The Macedonian Hazard

by Eric Flint

  If they were wrong, things were going to get problematic.

  Sometimes Al wondered why he had ever taken this job, but the truth was that he didn’t know anyone else who could do it half as well as he could. And Al Wiley had a very strong sense of duty.

  214–216 12th Street, Fort Plymouth, Trinidad

  Stella Matthews listened to Marigene Morgan bitch about the new minimum wage bill that was probably going to pass over Al Wiley’s veto. “The damn locals don’t stay on the job long enough to learn the job anyway. If we have to pay them four dollars an hour, they’ll be quitting at the end of the first day. And don’t you look at me that way, Stella Matthews,” she added. “Carthalo is an indentured. He can’t quit and run off to hunt super turkeys or go fishing.”

  “Why would I want to?” Carthalo asked. “I can get a super turkey sandwich at the community center for a buck and a half anytime I want one. And I have an account in the bank.”

  “See? That’s what I mean,” Marigene said. “I have Stone Age hunter-gatherers who spend just enough time sewing hems to buy a knife or a file, and then run off into the jungle. I can’t afford to pay trainees four bucks an hour. You have a craftsman from a civilized nation. Of course you can afford to pay him more. And you take half his salary back to pay off his indenture anyway.”

  That was true. At least sort of. Carthalo was salaried, not hourly. But there were rules about how many hours you could work an indentured in a day or a week, or you had to give them comp time or overtime. And figuring it that way, Carthalo made about six bucks an hour and kept three. Well, two fifty an hour, after taxes. But Stella had very little sympathy for Marigene, especially not after Stella had to pay Marigene two hundred and eighty bucks for a pair of hemp overalls for Carthalo. Which Marigene justified by repeating “hand-sewn” ad nauseam. True or not, it was ridiculous how much clothing cost in the here and now compared to back in the world.

  Stella decided to change the subject before the temptation to smack Frieda overcame her. “So, what’s all the excitement about Philip III and Eurydice about? They’re married. Why so much noise about them having sex? And why did it take them so long?”

  Two minutes later she knew she had made a mistake. Marigene was as enamored of the USSE royal house as any Princess Di worshipper back in the world. Stella got chapter and verse on Philip’s spectrum disorder, while Carthalo, his break over, escaped back to the kiln, where this batch of glass was about ready.

  CHAPTER 18

  Exit, Lysimachus

  Reliance, off Abdera

  July 30, 319 BCE

  Commodore Adrian Scott stood on the bridge of the Reliance looking at the army surrounding Abdera and worried. New America had a treaty with the USSE, but that treaty was barely more than a trade agreement and it specifically didn’t include taking any active part in the suppression of internal rebellion. And this was looking like one heck of an internal rebellion.

  Lysimachus now had twenty thousand men investing Abdera and there was a trireme heading for the Reliance, flying the USSE signet. By now some of the ships used flags, but not this one. It had a pole with a sculpture of a griffin on the top.

  Briarus was standing in the prow of the trireme next to the staff, and Adrian just knew that he was out here to try and get New America to shoot at Lysimachus.

  The situation was complicated by the fact that Google Maps was wrong about the shape of the local coastline. Say rather, it was out of date. By about twenty-three hundred years. The coastline had moved in that time. Abdera in the fourth century BCE was on the coast, not near the coast. The coastline in the here and now circled around the city so that to the east there was a breakwater: a semi-artificial peninsula that stretched out into the Aegean Sea almost a mile. That breakwater kept the harbor quiet, but it was outside the city walls. That put the breakwater in the hands of Lysimachus. It wasn’t all that close to the docks, but still…

  * * *

  General Briarus stepped onto the deck of the Reliance and lifted an arm in a Greek salute. “Good afternoon, Commodore.”

  “Good afternoon. What brings you here? Considering the army outside your gates, I would think the royal governor of Abdera would have better things to do than pay a courtesy call on a trading partner of the empire.”

  Briarus waved a hand negligently back at the city before he walked over and reached out for the forearm grip that was the equivalent of shaking hands in the here and now. “I’m not worried about Lysimachus. He would break his teeth in the taking of Abdera and he knows it. Besides, the latest word we have is that Seuthes has come out and is moving down the Black Sea coast to link up with us at the Bosphorus. What’s going to happen to Lysimachus if he loses half his army taking my town?”

  Adrian didn’t buy it, not quite. Briarus was just a little too bluff and casual.

  “No, Commodore,” Briarus continued, “I’m mostly here to borrow your radio. Also to order a radio and radio team for Abdera. Oh, and to inform you that we have a full cargo for you and we’d like you to pull into the docks to facilitate cargo transfer.”

  “What sort of cargo can a besieged city have?” Adrian asked as he turned and led the Greek bearing cargo to the radio room. His lips twitched and he added, “I warn you, General, we already have all the wooden horses we are prepared to ship.”

  Briarus looked at Adrian in confusion for a moment, then his eyes widened. He started to laugh.

  * * *

  Adrian sat in the radio room at Briarus’ invitation and listened.

  “Yes, Strategos, the Reliance’s arrival is quite convenient. We have rather a lot of cargo that we would like to ship, first to you at Amphipolis, and to Mount Ida and Sardis. I have Commodore Scott here with me and I hope you can prevail upon him to bring the Reliance to dock to facilitate the cargo transfers both ways. Meanwhile, here is the military situation…”

  He gave a full, if rather glowing, report to Eumenes and Eurydice.

  Eumenes endorsed Briarus’ request.

  “I am concerned about two things, Strategos,” Adrian said into the mic. “First, that our docking will be seen as endorsing one side in your civil war, and second, that we will get caught in the cross fire if Lysimachus decides to attack while we are docked.”

  “As to the first, Commodore,” said Eurydice over the radio, “you’re not on the Queen of the Sea. You’re a commodore in the New America Navy and New America has a treaty of trade with the legitimate government of our empire. Far from docking being an act beyond your scope, failing to dock could be seen as a breach of the treaty your government has with us.”

  “As to the military threat,” Eumenes added, “I think it is very slight and made even less by your presence. Lysimachus will not want to commit an act of war against New America when, whatever its official policy, it’s known that the Queen of the Sea will act to punish anyone attacking the Reliance.”

  “Let me contact the government in Fort Plymouth,” Adrian said. “I know I’m a commodore, but I’m new to the rank. And besides, we have a radio. Might as well use it.”

  Everyone agreed to that, and Adrian made his call. Then everyone waited for most of a day while Al Wiley, Richard VanHouten and General Leo Holland talked it over. Eventually, word came back that the Reliance was to go ahead and dock at Abdera.

  Abdera docks

  July 31, 319 BCE

  The electric crane on the Reliance lifted the pallet of preserved fruit from the deck and carefully lowered it to the wagon sitting on the dock to carry it away. It was a jerry-rigged system, but better than the human-powered cranes that were available in places like this.

  Even so, this was going to take at least three days. Especially since Abdera really did have a cargo. Several hundred tons of smoked fish, a fair chunk of the annual output from the northeast coast of the Aegean Sea.

  Lysimachus’ camp

  August 2, 319 BCE

  It is still there, Lysimachus gloated, as he stood by his tent in the camp. It stank, as all such
camps stank and always had. He ignored the stench from long experience and because of the glowing beacon of wealth before his eyes.

  The Reliance still sat at the Abdera docks after three days. Three days while Lysimachus readied his army, terrified that the prize would escape before he was ready. Abdera was unimportant. With Eumenes and Philip gone, there was nothing in the town worth taking. It was no more than a convenient place to gather his troops while keeping some of Eumenes’ forces tied down. But the Reliance…that was an empire’s ransom.

  Lysimachus had heard the stories and he even believed them. The Reliance was a ship made of steel, that was clear. But it had been taken once, and if it was lost again, when the Queen of the Sea came to the rescue…well, the Queen of the Sea was on the other side of Africa. It was also neutral, which Lysimachus’ gut told him meant that the Queen of the Sea lacked the courage to act unless forced to it, and it had an excuse not to act now. The Reliance was owned by New America, not the Queen.

  Lysimachus knew how the world worked. He knew there were those, like Alexander and Lysimachus himself, who took what they wanted. And there were others who were afraid. He knew that those who were afraid could be forced to fight by backing them into a corner or challenging their pride. He’d seen Alexander do it often enough. He knew that was what happened when the Queen retook the Reliance. And he knew how to arrange things so that Lars Floden wasn’t forced to act. He had it all worked out.

  He called over his lieutenant, Dexios. “Do it. At dawn, or as close to it as you can, so the sun will be in their eyes when you launch the boats. We’ll make a general attack on Abdera’s walls, but I doubt it will succeed. And I will pull the men back once we have their attention. It won’t matter. Once we have the Reliance, Abdera is ours for the taking, anyway.”

  Abdera breakwater

  August 3, 319 BCE

  The boats were small, what a later age would call jolly boats or dinghies. These had no sails, but places for six to eight oarsmen, and rope ladders rolled up in the bow. They were a mismatched conglomeration of whatever Lysimachus’ army could find in the surrounding fishing villages. And they moved out moderately quietly just as the sun lipped over the hills to the east.

  * * *

  Pedro Baca was born in a village about two hundred miles south of Panama, or what would be Panama in a couple of thousand years. And his name wasn’t Pedro when he was born. Pedro was the name of the Queen of the Sea’s passenger who had hired him when he got to Trinidad six months before. Now he was a deckhand on the Reliance. Enjoying a pipe of tobacco on the morning watch, he glanced in the direction of the sunrise. But the light was blinding, and he shaded his eyes with the hand holding the pipe. He saw shadows on the water but didn’t recognize them. But he was conscientious and curious, so he looked again. Those were boats. And the ones in the lead were halfway from the breakwater.

  “Captain!” he shouted, then he turned and ran for the tug. The Articulated Tug Barge that was the Reliance had a large oil tanker barge which had a slot in its stern into which fitted the tug portion, which had the engines and most of the crew quarters. By now, two years after The Event, the barge portion of the ATB Reliance had a small town built of wood on its deck. And it was in that town where Pedro Baca lived. It took him almost three minutes to get around the containers and workspaces to the barge, but he was shouting the whole way.

  * * *

  Commodore Adrian Scott heard the commotion. In fact, he was awakened by the commotion and more than a bit irritated at the idiot yelling nonsense outside his door. Adrian came out of his door in his undershorts and a ragged robe from before The Event to see Pedro shouting and pointing. Pedro was a good worker and working his way to a seaman first rank. Which, for a moment, Adrian thought was about to retreat to seaman third.

  Then his eyes followed the hand holding the pipe and saw the bright morning sun and dark shapes on the water. He looked harder, even as the heavily accented “boats!” Pedro was shouting finally penetrated his sleep-fogged brain.

  As it turned out, Adrian’s lack of early morning sharpness didn’t matter at all. He wasn’t the only one on the Reliance, and Commander Heiron, late of Athens, had the watch and was already giving orders.

  Lines were being cast off, and the engine was started. Adrian, still in his robe and undershorts, went down the ladder, feet in slippers. On the deck of the tug, he ran for the command deck and his mind started to catch up with events. As they did, he remembered the last time the Reliance had been captured, and he remembered that the reason they were captured was because they were running away from a night attack and ran right into pirates. Adrian hadn’t been on the Reliance when that happened. The captain of the Reliance at the time had died at the hands of the pirates. The situation wasn’t parallel, not even close, but that wasn’t the only factor.

  There was also the reputation of New America to consider. Adrian wasn’t a fan of gunboat diplomacy. At least, he hadn’t been back in the world. In the here and now, he knew that the Reliance couldn’t run. Not more than a few hundred yards to get some sea room. Adrian wasn’t American. He was English, and if he didn’t have Nimitz or John Paul Jones as his spiritual ancestors, he did have Horatio Nelson. Suddenly “Rule, Britannia!” was playing in the back of his mind, complete with bagpipes. Adrian hated bagpipes.

  He reached the command deck and looked around. By now, and from this angle, it was easier to see the boats. They were tiny little things, but there were a lot of them. Fifty or so, each packed with half a dozen soldiers in Greek armor. Not the fancy bronze breastplates that the rich guys wore, but the cloth-and-plate stuff that the ordinary soldiers wore.

  The Reliance was backing away from the docks, doing perhaps five knots. The jolly boats were struggling to keep up, much less catch them. He tapped a switch and looked at the open sea behind him. Then, almost to his own surprise, he quite calmly said, “Stop all engines. Prepare the guns.” He paused just a moment, then added, “Oh, yes. Battle stations.”

  The claxon started blaring in the battle station sequence. They had drilled it. And drilled it more since the Reliance had been acquired by New America, but they honestly weren’t up to the standard of the movie navies. Well, maybe comedies, but not serious movies.

  By the time the crew were reporting ready, the flotilla of jolly boats were getting close and Adrian gave the order to fire.

  * * *

  The jolly boat didn’t have a name. And the seven men aboard it, six soldiers rowing and one in the stern with a steering oar, might as well not have had names either. The black powder cannon filled with grapeshot didn’t care at all. And the men pointing it at them didn’t care much either.

  All the men on the jolly boat saw was a metal tube pointing in their direction. The bore of that tube didn’t look big to them, not at all. They had never seen anyone killed by a gun of any sort, and there were no cultural references to psychologically adjust the size. It was just a tube pointing at them.

  A tube…then a lightning bolt and thunder all at once, and the six rowers were so much tenderized meat.

  The commander of the boat, at the stern, was still alive for the moment. His legs were gone and he was bleeding out, but he was still aware and saw the puff of smoke from that little hole in the metal stick that was still pointing at what was left of the boat.

  What was left of him.

  Not much of either, as it turned out.

  He lived long enough to see the stick shift, turn to point at another boat.

  But he was underwater, sinking and drowning, by the time it was reloaded.

  * * *

  In the boat that the cannon turned to—a boat full of men who had seen the effect of that first shot—panic reigned. But only for a moment. The commander of the boat was a quick-thinking man. Not a good man by even the standards of the time, but a brave one who kept his head in a crisis. He started shouting orders so soon after the first blast that he couldn’t hear himself because his ears were still ringing. What he shouted,
again and again, was, “Back oars! Back oars! Back oars! Row, you bastards, row!”

  And it worked. By the third repetition, the men were rowing away from that hell ship just as fast as their backs could manage.

  * * *

  The gun captain noted that their first shot was a bit low, and he also took note of the fact that the next boat was backing away just as fast as it could go. Perhaps if he were thinking a bit more clearly, he might have decided to let it go. It was no danger to them now that it was running, and there were other targets. But this was combat, and his brain was focused on just one thing.

  Killing the enemy before they could kill him.

  He shifted the aim, then waited a moment, and shouted, “Fire!”

  The lanyard was pulled and the cap went off.

  The cannon sprayed death again, and another boat was turned into raw meat and driftwood.

  * * *

  Adrian Scott looked around. The enemy was in retreat. Two of the boats had gotten up to the hull and tossed up ladders. At which point, crewmen tossed down grenades.

  And that was that.

  Adrian had been on the bridge back in 321 when the Queen ran over Gorgias’ fleet, but he hadn’t been in command. Somehow that made things different. Adrian was both colder and hotter. In fact, he was personally furious, more furious than he ever remembered being in his entire life. “Take us out, Commander Heiron. I want you to put us on the other side of the breakwater.”

  It took a few minutes. The Reliance was a fuel ship, not a battleship. She backed away from the piers, turned using a combination of rudders and electric motors in the bow of the barge, and went around the breakwater in about fifteen minutes.