1636: The Ottoman Onslaught Read online

  Even before he opened it, Jeff was sure it had to be from Gretchen. No military communication would be sent in this manner.

  Sure enough. The message was short and to the point.

  Yes. If it’s a girl, we name her Veronica. You pick a boy’s name.

  Above Ingolstadt

  “Head for the nearest hedgehog pit, Stefano,” Tom Simpson ordered, pointing down and a bit to the left. The sky was mostly overcast but there was plenty of light. Those didn’t look like rain clouds; they certainly didn’t indicate a storm front.

  Having made two runs over Ingolstadt already, in both of which they’d been fired upon with no serious damage resulting, Stefano was a lot more relaxed than he had been before. He still wasn’t what anyone would call nerveless and steely-eyed, but he managed to keep his twitching to a minimum and he didn’t fudge on the steering—he headed straight for the nearest hedgehog pit.

  Which… didn’t fire on them at all. It wasn’t until they passed almost straight overhead that the reason became apparent: the guns were gone. The rails on which the gun carriages would have rested remained in place, and something—furniture? logs?—was covered with canvas. But as an active and functioning anti-airship emplacement, the hedgehog had been gutted.

  “It worked,” Tom said, his voice full of satisfaction. “They’re pulling out. Stefano, head for the bridge across the Danube.”

  As the airship veered to the south, Tom examined the city below them through his binoculars. In particular, he was looking to see what had happened to the four ten-inch naval rifles that he, Eddie Cantrell and Heinrich Schmidt had spent a truly miserable three months hauling across Germany a year and a half earlier. The guns had been removed from the wreck of the ironclad Monitor with the purpose of using them against Maximilian of Bavaria in case a siege of Munich developed. In the event, the Bavarian issue had taken a back seat to more pressing conflicts and the guns had wound up being left in Ingolstadt for later use. They’d been there when Ingolstadt was retaken by Bavaria thanks to the treachery of the 1st Battalion. Tom had been forced to leave them behind when he led the surviving loyal troops out of the city on their four-day march to Regensburg. They hadn’t even had time to salvage the artillery unit’s 12-pounders, much less the enormous naval guns.

  But now, it seemed, they were going to get them back—or two of them, at any rate. Tom could see the two rifles that had been positioned on the north wall to face Schmidt’s SoTF forces. But when he looked for the two rifles that the Bavarians had positioned to cover the Danube…

  “Gone,” he muttered. “I was afraid of that.”

  Captain von Eichelberg was standing right next to him, close enough to hear. “They can’t possibly get those guns down to Munich,” he said, frowning.

  Tom lowered the binoculars and shook his head. “No, they wouldn’t have even tried. I’m sure they spiked them and then pitched them—well, rolled them, more likely—into the river. We should be able to salvage them, but it’ll take some time.”

  He turned to the radio operator, who was standing a few feet away. “Make contact with General Schmidt. And then I’ll want to speak to General Stearns.”

  Then, to Stefano: “Cut the engines for a bit.” The noise made by the four lawnmower engines made talking on the radio impossible, and Tom didn’t want to fall back on laborious Morse code communication. One of the nice things about airships was that the wallowing beasts could just float for a while.

  Tom’s reports were brief and to the point, and would produce very rapid results. Now that he knew the city was undefended and the two naval rifles were no longer a factor, Schmidt would march his National Guard directly into Ingolstadt. They should have the city under control within a day or two.

  Meanwhile, since his maneuver had succeeded in its purpose, Mike Stearns would redirect the Third Division to the south. There was no chance he could reach Ingolstadt in time to intercept the retreating Bavarians, so he would move to invest Munich as soon as possible.

  As for Tom himself, Stearns ordered him to remain behind in Ingolstadt and get the naval rifles salvaged as soon as possible.

  “They’ll have spiked all four guns, General,” he told Stearns. “And if they did a competent job, we’ll need to machine them out.”

  “Yes, I know. I’ll have some machinists detached to you. There would have been plenty in Ingolstadt, but… not any longer.”

  The Bavarians would have either murdered them or—more likely, unless the commander was totally incompetent—taken them in captivity down to Munich. Skilled metal workers were valuable, especially in time of war.

  “I should be able to get two of the guns in operational condition fairly soon,” Tom said. “But the two in the river will probably take quite a bit of time.”

  “I understand. Stearns out.”

  Before they even got to the bridge, Tom could see the Bavarian forces passing across to the south bank of the river. Their formations seemed pretty ragged—so ragged, in some places, that they couldn’t really be called “formations” of any kind. This didn’t look like an orderly retreat so much as a semi-rout. At a guess, the Bavarian commanders had tried to organize a disciplined withdrawal but had gotten overwhelmed—at least partly—by panicking soldiers.

  He was guessing again, but he was fairly sure the mercenaries in the 1st Battalion had been the ones driving that panic.

  “Do we bomb the bridge, sir?” asked Captain von Eichelberg.

  Tom shook his head. “No, Bruno. It’s tempting…”

  Which it certainly was. The bridge was packed with enemy soldiers, who were barely moving because the bridge itself formed a bottleneck. As targets went, you couldn’t ask for anything better.

  “But what if we succeeded too well and brought down the bridge? Or damaged it enough to make it impassable. We want the Bavarians out of Ingolstadt, we don’t want to pen them into it.”

  “I understand that, sir. But there’s little chance these bombs we’re carrying would be powerful enough to do that.”

  He had a point. They weren’t carrying incendiaries because of the risk of starting fires in Ingolstadt. The USE and SoTF forces wanted to capture the city as intact as possible. So they were armed simply with anti-personnel ordnance—what amounted to giant grenades.

  “You’re probably right, Bruno, but I still don’t want to risk it. Besides, the troops strung out on the road are almost as good a target.”

  He pointed further to the south, to the narrow road along which most of the Bavarian soldiers were moving. “Head there, Stefano. We’ll see if there are any artillery units we can target.”

  As Stefano complied, Tom turned to von Eichelberg and said: “I suppose we ought to come up with some more military-sounding order than ‘head there.’ You’re the old pro. Do you have a suggestion?”

  The captain squared his shoulders and looked very martial. “In the finest old professional soldier tradition, I hereby—what’s that American expression—pass the back?”

  Tom chuckled. “Pass the buck.”

  “Yes, that one. This being one of those—what do you call it?—upward technology weapons—”

  “High tech.”

  “Close enough. I feel it is incumbent upon the up-time officer to develop the proper phraseology. Sir. I would just make a hopeless muddle out of the project.”

  “That’s some pretty impressive buck-passing, Captain.”

  “I do my best, Colonel.”

  * * *

  Once it became clear that the oncoming airship was targeting his unit, Captain von Haslang ordered his men to abandon the guns and move off the road into the neighboring fields. There was no point losing soldiers as well as equipment. The airship would pass over them too high for musket fire to be effective. His own guns, designed for the purpose of shooting at them—he’d learned that the up-time term was “anti-aircraft fire” or “ack-ack”—would have been able to reach them. Quite easily, in fact. But the guns were clumsy to deploy and effectively impossible
to aim. There was no chance he could get them ready in time to fire on the airship. It would arrive overhead within a minute or two.

  So, none of his men were killed. One was injured, not by enemy fire but by tripping over something and spraining his wrist in the fall.

  As for the guns…

  Happily, they came through mostly unharmed. The bombs dropped by the airship were rather large but had been designed as anti-personnel munitions. Shrapnel that would kill or mutilate a man did mostly cosmetic damage to cannons. Even a small two-inch gun weighed more than a quarter of a ton.

  Several of them were dismounted, of course. Two of the carriages were ruined and would need to be replaced; half a dozen more would need to be repaired. But that was simple carpentry work, and there’d be plenty of carpenters in Munich.

  Von Haslang finished his inspection and looked up at the sky. By now, the enemy airship was more than a mile away, headed toward Regensburg.

  “Bastards,” he heard one of his artillerymen say.

  “We’ll have our chance at them soon enough,” the captain said in response. “They’ll come to Munich, don’t think they won’t.”

  Chapter 10

  Vienna, capital of Austria-Hungary

  “So we are in agreement, then?” Janos nodded toward Noelle. “She and I will serve as your envoys to—” He hesitated, but only for a second. However much Ferdinand might detest the necessity, Wallenstein’s new status now had to be formally acknowledged.

  “To King Albrecht of Bohemia,” he continued. “I, as your official envoy to the Bohemian monarch; Noelle, as your unofficial envoy to elements in his court.”

  That was a roundabout way of saying to the very rich American Jewish couple Morris and Judith Roth, who have a lot of influence over that bastard Wallenstein and—perhaps more to the point—largely determine the way Americans everywhere look on the bastard at the present time.

  There was a valuable reminder there, if—no, when; the emperor was an intelligent man when he wasn’t in a surly mood—Ferdinand had the sense to consider it. Whatever grievances he or Austria had against Wallenstein were miniscule compared to the grudge Americans could hold against him if they chose to do so. The bastard had once tried to slaughter all of their children, after all—yet the Americans had had the wisdom and forbearance to make peace with Wallenstein later, when the circumstances changed.

  Ferdinand had been holding his breath long enough that his face was starting to turn red. Now, he exhaled mightily.

  “Ah! I almost choke on the thought!”

  Janos smiled. “If it eases your soul, Ferdinand, I will be glad to keep calling him Wallenstein when we’re speaking privately.”

  “Please do.” The young emperor’s hands tightened on the armrest of his chair. “’The bastard’ will do nicely, as well. So will—” He gave Noelle a somewhat wary glance.

  She grinned at him. “The asshole, perhaps?” They were speaking in German, not Amideutsch, so the term she used was Das Arschloch. “Or perhaps I might introduce Your Majesty to one of our American expressions”—here she slipped into Amideutsch—“the dirty rotten motherfucker.”

  Ferdinand burst into laughter. Like most members of the Habsburg dynasty he had an earthy sense of humor. That was something which often surprised Americans who’d never had personal contact with Habsburgs. They tended to view Europe’s premier dynasty as a pack of inbred and sickly hyper-aristocrats—as if such a feeble family could have dominated the continent’s politics for so many centuries, since Rudolf of Habsburg became Rudolf I, King of Germany, in 1273.

  Janos was very pleased by the emperor’s reaction—and learning, yet again, that his American betrothed’s somewhat prim physical appearance disguised a spirit that was bold and decisive. This was a woman who had once slain a torturer who was threatening the life of her partner by shoving her pistol barrel under his jaw and blowing his brains out. She’d done that, not because she was bloodthirsty but because she was a terrible shot with any sort of firearm and hadn’t wanted to risk missing.

  What had struck Janos the most, when she’d told him that story not long after they’d first met, was the incredible presence of mind that had taken—for anyone, much less a woman with little experience with violence. Drugeth knew many veteran soldiers who, placed in that same situation, would have blasted away wildly.

  Of course, none of them would have been as terrible a marksman as Noelle. Her inability to hit anything more than two feet away with a pistol was quite remarkable.

  After the emperor’s laughter died away, Ferdinand gave Noelle a very approving look and said: “I like that. So, yes, in private—just among the three of us—I’d enjoy calling Wallenstein the asshole or the motherfucker. Better still! The motherfucking asshole.”

  He looked back at Janos. “Are you still sure it’s wise to fly to Prague?”

  “The danger is minimal, Your Majesty,” Noelle said. “I’ve flown with Eddie a number of times. He’s a very good pilot and his plane is well-built and—by now—quite well tested. It even survived a crash in Dresden with no harm done to anyone.”

  Ferdinand waved his hand dismissively. “I’m not concerned about the physical danger. I’m thinking of the diplomatic risk. Herr Junker is Francisco Nasi’s pilot, and while Don Francisco is not formally connected with the asshole’s court, he is—second only to Don Morris—the most prominent Jew in Prague. Which is the most prominent Jewish city in Europe. The world, for that matter. And everyone knows that the Jews and Wallenstein are closely allied.”

  Noelle had a frown on her face. Ferdinand would see in that frown nothing more than thoughtful concern. By now, though, Janos knew her well enough to understand that the expression was disapproving as well. Like most Americans he’d met, she had firm opinions on what they called “anti-Semitism” and she was interpreting the emperor’s remarks as an expression of that attitude, at least in part.

  And… At least in part, it probably was. Dealing with Noelle had forced Janos to consider his own attitude toward Judaism. Eventually, he’d concluded that some of his views of the religion and its practitioners were no better than unthinking prejudices. Leaving moral issues aside, Drugeth disapproved of prejudice of any kind for practical reasons. A prejudiced man was likely to behave stupidly.

  He understood, however, something that Noelle didn’t. Her grasp of the complexities of European diplomacy was still largely that of a novice, at least at this royal level. What Ferdinand was really expressing was not a bias against Jews but a distaste for appearing dependent in any way on someone whom most people would perceive as a close ally of Wallenstein.

  “I don’t think it’s really a problem, Ferdinand,” he said. “Or, if it is a problem, it’s one that speaks to our relationship to the USE. Regardless of who owns the airplane and who flies it, almost anyone in Europe who looks up and sees an airplane passing overhead immediately and automatically thinks: Americans. That is just as true of Bohemians as anyone else, and the fact that when the plane lands one of the disembarking passengers”—he nodded toward Noelle—“is an American will reinforce the impression.”

  Noelle issued a peculiar sound, something of a cross between a choke and a laugh.

  In response to the emperor’s quizzically cocked eyebrow, she said: “I don’t believe you’ve ever seen the airplane in question, Your Majesty.”

  He shook his head. “In the sky, once—at least, I believe it was that particular aircraft. But not up close, no.”

  “Well, you will soon, after Eddie gets done with his current shuttle diplomacy with the—ah—Saxons and Gustav Adolf.” Janos was amused to see the deft way she avoided mentioning the specific Saxon being shuttled about. For the emperor of Austria as for most members of the continent’s royalty, the name “Gretchen Richter” was what Noelle called a scandal and a hissing. Best to leave it unspoken in their presence.

  “Anyway, when you do,” Noelle went on, “you’ll see that another American is very prominently portrayed on the plane i
tself. It’s what we call ‘nose art’ because the painting is placed somewhere on the nose of the aircraft. There’s often—usually, in fact—a title that goes with it.”

  “Ah.” Ferdinand leaned forward in his chair. “There’s something here you find amusing. I can tell—I’m learning to interpret your expressions. You’ll make quite a good diplomat, by the way. So what is this portrait and this title?”

  “The title is Steady Girl—that’s an expression that refers to a sort of betrothal—and the portrait is of Denise Beasley. She is one of my junior associates and Eddie Junker’s betrothed. Well… ‘steady girl,’ I suppose I should say. They’re not betrothed—yet—in the legal German sense of the term.”

  The emperor’s head was slightly cocked, and he had a half-smile on his face. “You’re still not telling me everything. Why is this so amusing? Ah, I have it! This portrait is not what you’d call a formal one.”

  “Uh… no.” Noelle fluttered her hands. “Nothing like—like... ah…”

  Janos had never seen the aircraft up close himself, but he had enough sense of what Noelle was groping for to provide some assistance.

  “Nothing like Titian’s Venus of Urbino or Cranach’s Judgment of Paris,” he provided.

  “Oh, no, nothing like that! Just, ah… well. Denise is very beautiful and, ah… the American expression is ‘leggy’. We’d call the portrait an example of pin-up art. That refers to… ah…”

  She was floundering again. Ferdinand smiled and made another dismissive gesture with his hand. “Never mind the details. What you’re saying, I take it, is that no Bohemian—or anyone else—who sees that plane landing at Prague’s airfield is going to associate the craft with an alliance between cunning Wallenstein and even more cunning Jews.”

  “Ah… No. They won’t. Between me and the picture of Denise—mostly the portrait—they’ll be thinking ‘Americans.’ Well, Americanesses.”

  Ferdinand leaned back, his expression now thoughtful. “That will be good enough, I think. I simply cannot afford to look as if I am in any way relying on Wallen—the motherfucking asshole—for anything.”