The Saxon Uprising-ARC

PART IV


February 1636

Among these barren crags





Chapter 31


Dresden, capital of Saxony

The take-off was even worse than Eddie had feared it would be. Partly that was because the headwind wasn’t what he’d wanted. He hadn’t felt he had any choice but to take off, though. The weather had been bad for a week and, this time of year, was likely to be bad again very soon. Today, the sky was clear and almost cloudless not only here in Dresden but also in Magdeburg and whatever his final destination was. So he was told over the radio, anyway. He still had no idea of the nature of his mission, other than it was apparently of supreme importance.

Whatever that final goal was, he had to get to Magdeburg first—and he almost didn’t make it out of Dresden. At the very end of the impromptu runway created by the feverish demolition work of the past week, the wingtips cleared the rooftops while most of the fuselage was still inside the street once the widened part ended. If there’d been a chimney there, on either side, he’d have gone down with a wing torn off—and any unexpected gust would have done the same.

Had there been anyone sitting in the cockpit next to him, they’d have been struck by the young pilot’s icy demeanor. Inside his brain, monkeys were gibbering with terror—he could hear the damn things—but there was no expression at all on his face. Nor were his hands sweaty, nor was he shivering anywhere. Eddie Junker was one of those people who somehow managed to stay completely calm in the face of danger. Noelle had once told him the French called it sang-froid, which she said was the only French term she knew except ones not fit for mixed company—which were the ones he’d have been interested in, but she’d refused to tell him.

He could only, at the end, as the wingtips emerged out of the street-canyon, thank God for giving him the courage and the tenacity and the fortitude and the pluck and the resolution and the perseverance and the valor to tell Denise no! and make it stick after a battle that cast any mere trifle involving huge armies into the shade.

“It’s a good thing your boyfriend had big enough balls to make you stay behind,” said Minnie Hugelmair, as she and Denise watched the plane fly out of Dresden, “or you’d both be dead.”

“Well…”

“Admit it. He was right and you were wrong.”

“Well…”

“Crash, boom, a burst of flame, they’d have to identify your body by the teeth or something.”

“Well…”

“Maybe not, since he’s barely got enough gas to make it to Magdeburg. Still, pieces of you would be scattered all over the place. Little bitty pieces.”

“Well…”

“The rats would declare it a holiday. St. Denise’s Day. Well, no, just St. Crispy’s Day. It’s not like they know your name. Or would care anyway.”

“Well…”

The sight of the plane flying over his lines put General Johan Banér in a fouler mood than usual. And he was usually in a foul mood, these days. Who would have thought CoC riffraff could have held Dresden against him for an entire month? He’d been sure he’d break his way into the city within two or three days.

Noelle Stull hadn’t watched the takeoff. She was half-sure Eddie was going to die in the attempt, and just couldn’t bear the idea of watching it happen. She and Eddie were very close friends and had been through a lot together.

When the triumphant roar went up from the crowd in the square, though, she knew her fears had been groundless. Well, not groundless, exactly. There’d been good reason to be worried, even after Eddie stripped every spare ounce of weight out of the plane. That so-called “runway” was a travesty, even after it was lengthened by demolishing part of the street that served as the final stretch.

Almost every spare ounce, rather. He had agreed to carry out her latest letter to Janos Drugeth.

“That’s silly,” she’d said. “I don’t even have it addressed.”

“Says right here: ‘Janos Drugeth, Hofburg, Vienna, Austria.’ ”

“As if that’s going to do any good!”

Eddie shrugged. “You never know. He’s the emperor’s friend as well as one of his chief aides. They’d know where to find him, I think.”

She’d still been dubious. “You said you needed to remove every unnecessary ounce. That letter weighs at least an ounce. Maybe two.”

“I was exaggerating. Had to, on account of Denise. I should have said ‘every unnecessary pound.’ ”

“So I can’t sent him a box of chocolates, huh?”

“You’ve got chocolates?”

“I was exaggerating. On account of myself. God, I wish I could fly out of here with you.”

“No.”

“But I’m skinny. I only weigh—”

“No!”

“Especially now, the rations we’ve been on, I probably don’t even weigh—”

“You and Denise both!”

Luebeck, USE naval base

“He’s off,” said Admiral Simpson, as soon as he entered the set of rooms in the naval base that had been transformed into a royal suite of sorts. (Emphasis on “of sorts”—the royal beds were cots. On the other hand, the plumbing was superb.) “We just got word over the radio.”

Kristina and Baldur looked up from the card game they were playing at the mess bench that passed for a royal dining table. For his part, Ulrik took the time to place a bookmark in the text he was reading before doing the same. He was seated on the bench next to the princess.

“How soon will he arrive?” Kristina asked eagerly. The girl adored flying—anywhere, anytime, for any reason.

Simpson waggled his hand in a gesture indicating some uncertainty. “By late afternoon, Your Highness, assuming the weather holds. He needs to fuel up in Magdeburg first. Apparently there wasn’t much petrol left in the plane. So you won’t be able to make the flight back to Magdeburg until tomorrow morning.”

As he had been before, Ulrik was a bit intrigued by the admiral’s use of the term “petrol.” The Danish prince had discovered from his research that the term was English, not American. Most up-timers would have called it “gas” or “fuel.” He had not yet discovered the reason for the admiral’s quirk of terminology. Was it just personal idiosyncrasy? A trace, perhaps, of the Anglophilism that Ulrik thought to detect in upper crust Americans?

Strange, really. In his day and age, England was considered an uncouth backwater. What up-timers would have called “the sticks.”

Ulrik could have simply asked the admiral, of course. But where was the fun in that?

“If he makes it there in the first place,” said Baldur skeptically. “By all accounts I’ve heard, the pilot is a novice.”

“ ‘By all accounts’ would refer to me,” said Simpson, “since I believe I’m the only one you’ve talked to on the subject. I did not say he was a ‘novice.’ What I said was that while Egidius Junker has not been flying for very long, he is apparently good enough that Francisco Nasi—whom no one has ever accused of lacking anything in the brains department—was willing to make him his own personal pilot.”

The admiral’s tone was mild, not reproving. He sounded slightly amused, in fact.

Why? Ulrik decided to chew on that puzzle for a moment. He really did not take well to weeks of idleness. At one point, he’d made a game out of tracing the tile patterns in the floor of the communal toilet in the barracks. Alas, the game had been brief—the pattern was fully evident within two minutes.

“I don’t see why they can’t switch pilots in Magdeburg,” Baldur grumbled. “Surely there has to be some…some…”

“Up-timer available?” Simpson seemed to be fighting down a smile.

Of course! Norddahl was made nervous by the thought of a down-time pilot—and the American was amused by the fact.

Unfortunately, now that he thought about it, Ulrik himself wasn’t entirely pleased at the thought of being flown through the air by a down-timer. But he let none of his anxiety show, lest the admiral transfer that sly little not-smile onto him. Royalty had obligations as well as privileges.

Simpson shook his head. “Even if there were, you wouldn’t want him. Junker’s flying a Dauntless, and Nasi has the only civilian one in service. The military won’t give you a pilot for the same political reasons we’ve talked about at length. So your choice is between a pilot who has experience with that particular plane and one who’d be coming to it cold—and would probably be another down-timer anyway.”

His smile widened and became genial rather than sly. “Besides, if Germans can’t fly airplanes, that would certainly come as news back where we came from. Have you ever heard of Manfred von Richtofen?”

Seeing three heads shaking, the admiral clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Well, then! Gather ‘round while I tell you the tale of the Red Baron.”

Magdeburg air field

There was a small crowd waiting for Eddie when he arrived in Magdeburg. Not surprisingly, once Eddie finally discovered the nature of his mission.

No wonder they’d been willing to demolish part of Dresden!

As he listened to what mostly amounted to reassuring babble, once Rebecca Abrabanel explained the heart of the matter, Eddie pondered the political ramifications. Francesco Nasi hadn’t hired Junker simply for his piloting skills. His experience working with Noelle Stull as an investigator for the SoTF’s Department of Economic Resources had given him a wider and more subtle grasp of the USE’s politics than most people possessed.

So it didn’t take him more than a few seconds to grasp what lay at the core of this bold maneuver on the part of Kristina and Ulrik. In essence, a deal was being made. Unspoken, perhaps, but a deal nonetheless. The two royals would throw their prestige and status—which was what they possessed, given Kristina’s age, rather than any recognized “legitimacy”—on the side of Fourth of July Party and the Committees of Correspondence. In return, the FoJP and the CoCs would agree to maintain the USE as a constitutional monarchy rather than pressing for a full republic in the course of an open and full-scale civil war.

As with all bargains, everyone got something and everyone lost something at the same time. The dynasty would insure its position—but, inevitably, the actual power it wielded would diminish somewhat. Direct power, at least. The dynasty could still retain a tremendous amount of influence, depending on the personal characteristics of the specific monarch involved.

Or monarchs, in this case. Eddie wasn’t sure yet, because he’d never met Prince Ulrik at all and he’d only seen Princess Kristina at a distance. But the very logic of what he was hearing led him to the tentative belief that the USE could wind up with what amounted to a dual monarchy, under the surface of a reigning queen and her prince consort. Something like the reign of Archduchess Isabella and Archduke Albert in the Netherlands, before Albert died in 1621.

After all, how likely was it that a queen who’d been relying on the advice and counsel of her husband since she was eight years old—the same man who’d protected her from assassins while being wounded himself in the deed—would treat him as a mere consort?

From the viewpoint of the FoJP and the CoCs, the bargain also had its advantages and disadvantages. On the positive side, gaining the allegiance of the dynasty would strengthen their position in the current civil war. Probably a great deal, given that it was really a semi-civil war in which a lot of people were still standing on the sidelines. Many of those people would be swayed by the actions of Kristina and Ulrik. And their actions would further undermine Oxenstierna’s prestige, which had already been badly shaken by his arrest of Wettin and was being continually undermined every day that Dresden withstood the Swedish siege.

On the negative side, most members of the FoJP and just about every member of the CoCs was a committed republican. They had never been very happy with the existence of the dynasty. Not in theory, certainly. Gustav II Adolf’s own character had defused that antagonism while he’d been active and in command of his wits. He was a dynamic and charismatic figure, after all, the man often called “the Lion of the North” and “the Golden King.” Perhaps more importantly, the Swedish king had always been shrewd in his dealings with Mike Stearns. The fact was, for all the many times they had clashed, the two men had always managed to reach agreement when necessary. It was clear to just about anyone in the Germanies that they respected each other and quite possibly even liked each other.

Still, the nation’s more radically-inclined citizens chafed at the idea of being under a monarchy, and the recent developments since Gustav Adolf’s injury at Lake Bledno simply drove home many of the reasons for their unhappiness with the situation. Monarchies are fine and dandy if you have a good king, but what if you have a bad one? Or, what was often even worse, faced a succession crisis?

No, best to be rid of the whole antiquated nonsense.

They wouldn’t be able to do that now, though. Not once Kristina and Ulrik landed at this very same airport tomorrow morning. There’d be a huge crowd to greet them, Eddie was quite sure. Then, a huge crowd lining the road leading into Magdeburg, and another huge crowd to greet them when they arrived in Hans Richter Square. Some firm hand was guiding this odd government-in-exile, obviously, and would see to it.

(Very odd exile, given that they were located in the actual capital of the nation. But it was an odd civil war, when you got right down to it.)

Eddie wondered who that firm hand was. His own guess was Rebecca Abrabanel. But if he was right, no one except a handful would ever really know. It would be in the nature of the woman to maintain a collegial appearance at all times. Despite her striking physical appearance, she was in many ways the opposite of her husband.

Mike Stearns, like his monarch, was one of those people who strode about the stage of history. Very dramatic, very visible to all. The Prince of Germany to match the Golden King.

Rebecca Abrabanel? She would have no nicknames, carry no monicker. Or if she did, it would be something referring to her beauty rather than her brains and political skill. Yet in her own way, Eddie was coming to think, she was as important a player as almost any on that stage. More important than most, for a certainty.

The refueling was done. The plane was ready to fly again. Eddie clambered back into the cockpit.

As he settled into his seat, he caught sight of Gunther Achterhof. The leader of the capital city’s Committee of Correspondence was one of a handful of people still standing near the plane.

He had what almost looked like a scowl on his face. Moved by a sudden impulse, Eddie leaned out of the still-open window.

“Cheer up, Gunther! Look at this way. If I crash and burn, you get a republic after all.”

He followed that with a thumbs up and went back to checking his gauges.

Time to go. The weather was still superb.

He gave Achterhof a last glance. The man now had a peculiar sort of vulpine smile on his face. And he returned Eddie’s gesture with a thumbs-up of his own.

That gesture could be interpreted in two different ways, of course. Good luck or I hope you crash and burn, you f*cking jackass.

Either way, Eddie was cheered up. He took off with a grin on his face.