1634: The Baltic War (51 page)

"No, no. Mind you, it's tempting. Ha! The pleasure I'd take, staring at that drunken bastard Christian over the barrel of a ten-inch gun! But . . ."

Gustav Adolf shook his head in an almost comically lugubrious manner. "No, I shall forego the pleasure. Best, I think, not to arrive in quite so martial a manner. Besides, it would be a nuisance for Simpson to have to delay things just to wait for an emperor to come aboard one of his ships. A man after my own heart, there. He'd have made a superb cavalry commander, you know."

The emperor looked out the window, which gave him a view to the east. "No, I'll take one of Admiral Gyllenhjelm's ships. That should do for the purpose."

Ekstrom nodded. "And the other matter? Regarding Stearns?"

Still looking out the window, Gustav Adolf smiled. "Ah, Nils—so diplomatic, you are. If you were Axel, you know, you'd have been haranguing me on my folly."

"I don't feel that's my place, Your Majesty." In point of fact, Ekstrom was rather dubious about the emperor's likely decision. But . . .

That simply wasn't his place. His job, as he saw it, was to help the emperor make whatever decision the emperor felt was best. Let the chancellor try to talk him out of it, once it was made. No easy task, that, of course.

"Yes, I've decided. The equipment needed to repair the
Achates
should have arrived from Magdeburg by now. Send Stearns a message instructing him to take a force from Hamburg—a good cavalry regiment should do—down to the stranded timberclad. He's to reinforce the existing guard, of course. But, most of all, I want him to take charge of the entire operation and get the
Achates
ready for action again."

Ekstrom simply nodded. "Yes, Your Majesty."

Now, Gustav grinned. "Amazing. Not a single word informing me that I am grossly violating protocol. What, Nils? Not
one
?"

Ekstrom hesitated, before deciding at the last moment that was an invitation for him to see if he could find any fallacies in the emperor's reasoning.

"They do make a fetish, Your Majesty, of the subject of separating civil from military affairs."

"So they do. But calling it a 'fetish' misses the mark, I believe. There is a logic to the whole thing, which my extensive reading has made clear to me. The problem is not simply—not even primarily—a matter of abstractions. There is a solid core of practicality that lies beneath. I will tell you what it is."

He turned away from the window. "Organization, Nils. A society so well organized—top to bottom—that clear lines of authority
can
be defined and delineated."

He chuckled heavily. "They have their own superstitions, you know. One of the greatest being their firm belief that they are individualists—'rugged,' no less, being their favorite qualifier—and deeply opposed to anything that smacks of what they call 'red tape.' "

Ekstrom chuckled also. "True. Quite amazing, really, given that they are the world's ultimate bureaucrats. I've been told they even put up signs in their buildings, giving precise instructions as to where anyone should go to reach whatever—precisely defined—office they might be seeking."

"Oh, yes, it's true. My daughter is quite charmed by the things. She got into some trouble once, when she took it upon herself to have soldiers move some of the signs around, in the palace at Magdeburg, just to see what would happen."

"I can imagine!" But the humor of the moment led to a far more serious issue, which Ekstrom wondered if he should raise.

Gustav Adolf raised it himself, however. "Yes, yes, I know. Sooner or later, I will have to decide if I wish to heed the advice of my daughter's attendants. Seeing as how they flood me with enough missives that I use them regularly to start fires in my fireplace."

He clasped his hands behind his back and began pacing, in that heavy cavalryman's way. "But I think not. No, I think those frantic noblewomen will simply have to learn to make the same accommodations that I've decided I must make myself. Now that we've let the genie out of the lamp, putting it back in is simply hopeless. Better to make a pact with the creature. Since he is not, actually, a devil. Not that, whatever else."

Ekstrom waited patiently. Sooner or later, the emperor would come to the point.

Smiling again, Gustav Adolf tugged at his mustache. "There's a soldier somewhere in Torstensson's army. A sergeant in the volley gun batteries, by the name of Thorsten Engler. My daughter insists—instructs me, no less—that I
must
make him a count, at the very least. He has become betrothed, it seems, to her favorite American attendant."

"The Platzer woman?"

"Yes. The very one that half those frantic letters are devoted to denouncing. She is undermining my daughter's spirit, they claim. Sapping her of the necessary royal will and sense of importance."

He paused in his pacing. "Fools, the lot of them. Do you know how they proposed to solve the problem of the misplaced signs? Simply ordering the soldiers to put them back properly, and there was to be an end to it."

"I take it the Platzer woman felt otherwise?"

The emperor grinned. "Not entirely. She agreed that the signs needed to be fixed—on the following day. For the rest of that day, she made Kristina stand in front of them and
personally
give directions to anyone who came into the palace and seemed confused."

Ekstrom couldn't help it. He burst into laughter and blasphemed himself. "Good God! What did she use? A whip?" To say that their princess had a reputation among Swedes for being headstrong would be much like saying Swedes thought seawater was salty.

"Amazingly, no. She seems to be the one person in the world whom my daughter will actually listen to. Even obey, most of the time. And I am supposed to have her removed? As I said, fools."

The emperor went back to his deliberate pacing. "But we're straying from the subject. Here's the point, Nils. Whatever else he may be, the one thing my prime minister is above all else is a practical man. I am quite sure that he knows just as well as I do that his beloved democracy presupposes the existence of the world's best bureaucracy."

Ekstrom frowned. As often happened, trying to follow the emperor's train of logic was not easy.

Seeing the frown, Gustav clucked his tongue. "Oh, come! It's obvious! What is the most basic principle of law-making, Nils?"

That answer, he knew by heart, since it was one of the emperor's favorite saws. Not learned from any up-timer, either, simply part of the Vasa legacy.

"Do not pass a law you can't enforce."

"Exactly. Now apply that principle to democracy."

Ekstrom was back to frowning. Gustav clucked his tongue again.

"And you're normally so smart! It's just as simple, Nils. You can't
enforce
democracy until you have the wherewithal to do so. No point in telling a man he is the equal of any other, until you have the wherewithal to make that true in fact, as well as in theory. And that means red tape.
Everyone
has to stand in line to get whatever they want or need, be that man a duke or a pauper. No special privileges. But doing that, in turn, presupposes so many other things. Just to name three—"

He lifted a thumb. "First, everybody has to be literate. And not just enough to work slowly through the Bible, either. Enough to read and comprehend, easily, instructions written by a bureaucrat—and enough literacy that you have a veritable army of bureaucrats able to write the instructions in the first place."

The forefinger came up to join the thumb. "Second, everyone has to have enough time to spare from necessary labor to exert their new privileges. Pointless to tell a farmer or blacksmith he has the same political rights as a duke, when the duke can spend every waking moment engaged in politics and the farmer and blacksmith can barely manage to lift their heads from their labors."

The middle finger came up. "And that, in turn, requires wealth. Lots of wealth, enough for everybody to live on decently enough without constant toil."

He started to raise another finger, but broke off the exercise by simply waving his head.

"Enough to make the point, I think. Be assured of it, Nils. Michael Stearns understands all of these points, just as well as I do. Probably better. And since he's not a man to mistake today for tomorrow, or tomorrow for the day after, he'll accept my command. Why? Because to get to that clear separation of powers, he has to do many other things that are not so clearly distinct. The difference between tyranny and freedom, in the end, is often nothing more than the difference between today and tomorrow. Provided, that is, that you understand the difference between the days yourself. So send him the message. It will be interesting to see his response."

Ekstrom hesitated, then braced himself with the reminder that his job
required
him to question the emperor. "I still don't understand why you want the prime minister to handle this personally, Your Majesty. Sending a cavalry regiment, certainly—but they have a commander already. And I'm quite sure the captain and crew of the
Achates
are capable of doing the repairs without oversight, once they get the needed equipment."

To his relief, Gustav Adolf simply smiled instead of responding brusquely. "For shame, Nils! Am I the only one who can think ahead?"

"Your Majesty?"

"Michael Stearns is the prime minister of the USE
today,
Nils. But he himself expects to lose the upcoming election to Wilhelm Wettin. Assume for the moment that he does. Then what?"

The colonel stared at his king. After a moment, he said, "In truth, Your Majesty, I hadn't given that matter any thought at all."

Gustav Adolf grunted. "Didn't think so. Well, I have. Quite a bit, in fact. And the conclusion that I keep coming to is that I'd be a blithering idiot to let a man with such obvious capabilities—what's that American expression? 'sit on the sidelines,' I think—while I fight another war. Not only would that be a waste, it would probably even be dangerous. So, I intend to appoint him a general and put him in the army."

"Ah . . . Your Majesty, I don't believe Stearns has had much in the way of military experience. And that, if I recall correctly, simply as an enlisted man."

"True enough. And that's why I'm sending him down to Ritsenbuttel. Let's see how he manages in a military command position, eh?"

The response came back within two hours. The extreme—some might say, highly disrespectful—informality of the words being the prime minister's way of indicating he understood the game. So the emperor claimed, at least.

Sure, Gustav. I'll get back in touch when I get there. You want that warship plain, or with fries?

"What are 'fries'?" Ekstrom wondered.

"A ghastly American way of cooking potatoes, boiled in grease. My daughter says she's become quite fond of them, though, and thinks we should import them to Sweden."

"Ah." The colonel made a silent decision to give Chancellor Oxenstierna a private warning. "And the other matter your daughter raised?"

"The Engler fellow? I was thinking we could borrow the Habsburg practice. We'll make him the first imperial count of the United States of Europe. For meritorious services rendered, that sort of thing. Since the rank stands outside of the local German landholdings, the Adel shouldn't object too much."

Ekstrom had his doubts about the last. The German nobility could manage to find a way to complain about almost anything. Still, it was a rather charming idea.

"Very good, Your Majesty. How soon do you want to make the announcement?"

"Let's wait until after the big battle. Who knows? He might get killed in it, which would make the whole issue moot. Or he might run away, which would do the same, although judging from what my daughter says, that's unlikely. Best of all, he might distinguish himself a bit—at something other than courting a woman, I mean."

"What if he doesn't?"

"Oh, come, Nils! A man of your imagination? Surely you can think of something."

Ekstrom spent the rest of the day, off and on, trying to think of that "something." As a help, the emperor let him read the relevant letters from the princess.

Alas, the best he could come up with was
discovered Narnia.
A claim which, he suspected, an up-timer would surely challenge. Or anyone, for that matter, with access to one of the pestiferous encyclopedias.

The Elbe

Mike Stearns' entire military experience had been a three year stint in the army during peacetime, as a grunt, and over fifteen years ago at that. So he really had no idea how to organize and manage a large expedition down a major river like the Elbe to reinforce the units guarding the
Achates
at the small port of Ritsenbuttel at the mouth of the Elbe. But he didn't worry about it, because what he
did
know how to do was organize people. And since he had a plentiful supply of experts in Hamburg, why in the world should he try to substitute his own amateurism for their professional knowledge and experience?

It was pretty much a piece of cake, from his point of view.

Needed
: A commander for the military forces on the expedition. Since Colonel Christopher Fey had been left behind at Hamburg as part of the new garrison, and since he had plenty of experience working with what they called combined arms, he was the obvious choice. Mike had him appointed to his new position less than twenty minutes after he sent his radio reply to Gustav Adolf.

The first thing Fey told Mike was that they'd do well to transport as many of the troops and their horses as possible by boat.

Needed
: A naval officer to command the flotilla. That was a no-brainer, because by the time Mike got the message from the emperor, five more of Simpson's timberclads had arrived in Hamburg. Their commander—the term was "commodore," apparently—was a certain Captain Richard Henderson. He was one of the many Scotsmen serving under Swedish colors, whom Admiral Simpson had persuaded to join the USE Navy.

"We canna carry those great stupid horses on t'woodclads," he'd promptly informed Mike. "Most of the soldiers, yes. Nae the ugly brutes."

Needed
: Someone who could enlist—impress, to be honest about it—a large number of merchant ships from Hamburg's harbor which could be used to transport the mounts for the cavalrymen and the dragoons.

That took a bit of time, but not much. Mike immediately enlisted the assistance of the many members of Hamburg's CoC who were either sailors or stevedores. It didn't take them more than five minutes to agree that the best choice was Captain Juan Hamers. The man's credentials were three:

First, he was an experienced and able ship captain.

Second, he claimed to be from a Scots family that had settled in Seville, thereby explaining the last name and the heavy Iberian accent. Not a single person Mike talked to believed the story for a minute. Hamers was obviously a
marrano
, a Sephardic "secret Jew," of whom there were many in the merchant shipping trade. Hamers was unusual only in having risen to the post of captain and claiming to be Spanish instead of the usual "Portuguese." For the CoCs, being Sephardic was a plus mark. Not much chance he'd betray them to the Ostenders, after all.

Third, he was the meanest son of a bitch among the merchant captains currently residing in the city.

Hamers resisted the notion, for a few minutes. First, he tried to claim he couldn't understand Mike's German, and his English was worse. No problem. Mike switched to Spanish. He'd studied the language in college and, better still, had gotten a thorough seventeenth century brush-up from his wife and father-in-law; for whom, as was true of most Sephardim, it was their native tongue.

Hamers then fell back on being a mean son of a bitch. But Mike's mean son-of-a-bitch routine was way better than his—especially with half a dozen armed CoC members to back him up.

"Okay! Okay!" Hamers exclaimed, throwing up his hands. "I do it. But I make no promises about the horses. They die like flies, on boats."

The rest went smoothly. Having been thwarted by Mike in the mean-son-of-a-bitch department, Hamers proceeded to restore his reputation by bullying several other merchant captains in the city's portside taverns. In this case, with him having the advantage of half a dozen armed CoC members at his side—who did a pretty good mean-sons-of-bitches act themselves.

That left the curlicues, where Mike was on more familiar ground. The first thing he did, seeing as how they'd already provided yeoman service, was impress the half dozen CoC members who'd been serving as his enforcers. They'd come along on the expedition also, to see to the necessary political tasks.

Those same tasks, however, required a printing press and experienced printers, which none of them were.

Not a problem. If there was one single trade in Europe that the CoCs had penetrated thoroughly, it was that of the printers—already notorious in the seventeenth century for being a radical lot, even before the Ring of Fire.

Soon enough, the printers arrived. Dismantling the printing equipment and getting it loaded on one of the timberclads took more time than anything. Mostly because the work itself was time consuming, but partly because Commodore Henderson put up a fuss. The ink would spill and ruin his deck, he claimed.

There being no feasible way to just bully a commodore in the USE Navy, Mike assured him the government would finance whatever repairs might be needed—and what did he care, anyway, seeing as how it was the government's ship, not his?

It took half an hour to bring Henderson around to an understanding of that point, proving to Mike's satisfaction as well as that of his CoC sidekicks that Henderson, at least, was a genuine Scotsman.

They left Hamburg the next morning. A flotilla of five timberclads and seven merchant ships, carrying a full regiment of foot soldiers and one company each of cavalry and dragoons. Mike had even corralled a battery of four guns; only six-pounders, but every little bit helped.

At the last minute, remembering an overlooked detail, Mike ordered the flotilla to remain at the docks until he and his sidekicks rounded up whatever soldiers in the garrison could play a musical instrument. That didn't take too long, since it was still before dawn and the troops were mostly asleep. Finding the instruments themselves took quite a bit longer.

So, after stressing the imperative necessity to sail at first light, Mike delayed the whole expedition until ten o'clock in the morning. Thereby proving to both the real Scots captain and the phony one that he was a confirmed lunatic.

Most of the soldiers probably thought the same, although they were more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. The CoC members accompanying the expedition, however, were sure that this was just another example of the prince of Germany's canny ways.

Exactly how, they had no idea. Mike wasn't talking. Partly because he thought silence helped keep what few scraps of dignity he still had left; but, mostly, because he wasn't sure himself if he was a lunatic or not.

Jesse Wood kicked a loose clod into the dirt-filled hole and stomped on it. He looked across the field at the teams of farmers from the village still filling similar holes and depressions in the new airfield at Ochsen Werder, an island between the Elbe and one of its tributaries just southeast of Hamburg. By dint of back-breaking effort with their farm tools and wagons, the men, women, and children of the village were smoothing the ground of what had been a field of winter wheat only weeks before. The field had been hurriedly prepared by the army for their first flight over Hamburg. It was now approaching something close to an installation suitable for real flying operations and was already being called, inevitably, "The Ox."

Normally, this time of year, the farmers would have been right in the middle of the spring planting. But Jesse had promised relatively lavish wages for all and sundry, including the kids, to work on the airfield. He didn't mind the expense—in his experience, the mission came first—and it wasn't his money, anyhow. He even felt a slight guilty pleasure; half gratitude at having what amounted to an unlimited budget and half satisfaction at the thought of giving Stearns the tab for this. He imagined Mike would have a hell of a fight on some future supplemental military appropriations bill, but that wasn't his problem.

His problem was to make the field ready to provide air support to the war effort in the North German and Baltic areas. The weather was finally beginning to turn and, despite spring rains, was now okay for flying nearly two out of every three days. Once the aircraft returned from Grantville, the air force could get back in the war in earnest.

Provided he hadn't forgotten something. As he walked toward the nearly finished wooden building that was to serve as base operations, he once again mentally ticked off the essentials.

Airfield. Check.
Nearly three thousand feet long, because he knew that eventually some ham-fisted or tired pilot would land halfway down the landing zone. The perimeter fence was done, so they wouldn't have to worry about cows wandering about. He'd spent more money paying for the removal of half an orchard just beyond one end of the field. The mature orchard had looked like it had been there since the time of Adam and the freehold farmer who owned it had initially refused to sell it. He had only agreed after the local Committee of Correspondence had spoken to him, rather emphatically. Jesse had ignored the sullen farmer's black eye, shaken his hand, and given him a signed voucher for payment.

Jesse had been carefully absent during the conversation, partly because the CoC in Hamburg reminded him too much of what he imagined Mao's fanatic minions must have been like. They had all the vices of Magdeburg's CoC, without the discipline and tight organization that people like Spartacus and Gunther Achterhof provided. That was a common enough problem in outlying areas where new CoCs had sprung up. If the rumors were accurate, it was even worse in parts of Franconia.

Hangars, repair shop, fuel storage, munitions bunker. Check.
Other work gangs, carpenters from Hamburg, had thrown up the buildings in jig time and one of Simpson's motorized barges had delivered precious uncut gasoline and enough methanol to last until local production could begin. The same barge had also brought scores of rockets, ample black powder, mass-produced iron nose cones, and percussion cap fuses. Jesse had employed the best of the carpenters in producing the thin wooden slats and tail assemblies which, when fitted into the slots in the tapering nose cones and sealed with pitch, formed the fifty- and hundred-pound bomb bodies for the Gustavs. The stout munitions bunker, surrounded by an earthen berm, already stored dozens of inert bomb bodies. Jesse wanted his own people to fill them with powder, which could also be produced locally.

Operations, communications. Check.
Once the tower was built next to the operations building, the radios would be served by a methanol-powered generator in a separate and well-ventilated shed under the tower.

Billeting, water, food, hygiene. Check.
The barracks could wait. Since they'd be shorthanded at first, the hangars and operations building would do as sleeping quarters for now. They already had two cooks, a man and his wife who, despite having been CoC members, or maybe because of it, had run afoul of the local authorities in Hamburg. There was even a crew working on a brick, stone, and mortar communal bath, to be heated Roman-style, with a hypocaust floor. The island was cold and damp. Jesse reckoned they'd have enough problems without the men coming down sick from lack of some place to get clean. Women in the village would take care of the laundry.

Equipment, spares, personnel.
He'd sent word to Hal Smith for everything he could think of that might be needed to keep the aircraft operating. Crew chiefs, mechanics, munitions specialists, a trained carpenter, spare propellers, oil and filters, wiring, tires, tools, a spare engine or two, the list was near endless. Most of it would be delivered by barge and Jesse fretted about all the things that could happen to the literally irreplaceable stuff from the future. He'd kept two pilots with him, Enterprise and Endeavor Martin, who were supervising work elsewhere on the field. Initially, Ent and Dev had reacted to the non-flying duty with ill grace, but Jesse knew they would benefit from the experience. The air force needed leaders who understood that there was more to being an officer than sitting in a cockpit. More pilots would arrive today with the aircraft. Hopefully.

Security.
There wasn't much. Most of the USE contingents had moved on toward the borders and Luebeck. Those that remained seemed mostly interested in securing the future cooperation of Hamburg. Which meant, of course, staying in the city, where the beer was available, the beds were soft, and one could find women who were both. Jesse was armed with his personal Smith & Wesson Model 15 and the Martin brothers carried two of their moonshining daddy's pistols, left in the family farmhouse that had made the trip through the Ring of Fire. That was it. Luckily, there wasn't much need for security just yet. Being on an island cut down on casual traffic considerably. Still, Jesse would feel better when Sergeant Krueger showed up to take the situation in hand.

"
Mein Herr! Mein Herr! Das
Radio!"

Jesse looked toward the operations shack. Alois, the young man he'd left on radio watch was standing in the door, waving frantically. He broke into a run, clumping over the damp earth, and in seconds was inside the shack, grabbing the microphone from the youth. The instrument had been converted from the public address system in the Grantville grade school gymnasium, while the speakers had come from some teenager's bedroom, but the Americans were used to such jury-rigging by now. It still must have seemed like magic to the German boy who watched from the side. Jesse waited for the next incoming transmission.

"Ox, Ox, this is Eagle Leader with a flight of four. Do you read, Ox? Over."

The sound was faint and full of static. Jesse uselessly fiddled with the receiver volume and squelch switch before answering.

"Ah, Eagle Leader, this is Ox. We have you about three by three. Over."

"Roger, Ox, I have you five by five. Eagle Flight is ten minutes out. Three Gustavs and one Belle. Over."

Jesse could recognize Eagle Leader's voice now. It was Captain Woodsill.