Eric Flint - Ring of Fire

Ring of Fire

Table of Contents

Preface

In the Navy

To Dye For

A Lineman For the Country

Between the Armies

Biting Time

Power to the People

A Matter of Consultation

Family Faith

When the Chips are Down

American Past Time

Skeletons

A Witch to Live

The Three R's

Here Comes Santa Claus

The Wallenstein Gambit

Ring of Fire

Eric Flint

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any

resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-7175-X

Cover art by Dru Blair

First hardcover printing, January 2004

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ring of fire / edited by Eric Flint.

p. cm.

"A Baen books original"--verso t.p.

ISBN 0-7434-7175-X

1. Fantasy fiction, American. 2. Historical fiction, American. 3.

Germany--History--1618-1648--Fiction. 4. Thirty Years' War,

1618-1648--Fiction. 5. Americans--Germany--Fiction. 6. West

Virginia--Fiction. 7. Time travel--Fiction. I. Flint, Eric.

PS648.F3R55 2004

813'.0876608--dc22

2003021801

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

Also in this series:

1632by Eric Flint

1633by Eric Flint & David Weber

1634: The Galileo Affairby Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis

(forthcoming April 2004)

BAEN BOOKS by Eric Flint

Joe's World series:

The Philosophical Strangler

Forward the Mage(with Richard Roach)

Mother of Demons

The Shadow of the Lion

(with Mercedes Lackey & Dave Freer)

This Rough Magic

(with Mercedes Lackey & Dave Freer)

Rats, Bats & Vats(with Dave Freer)

Pyramid Scheme(with Dave Freer)

The Course of Empire(with K.D. Wentworth)

Crown of Slaves(with David Weber)

The Warmasters(with David Weber and David Drake)

The Belisarius series, with David Drake:

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An Oblique Approach

In the Heart of Darkness

Destiny's Shield

Fortune's Stroke

The Tide of Victory

The General series, with David Drake:

The Tyrant

Preface

Eric Flint

The stories inRing of Fire are all based in the alternate history setting I created in my novel1632, which

was further developed in the sequel I wrote with David Weber,1633.

Producing "spin-off" anthologies as part of a popular series has a long and venerable history in science

fiction, of course. But, in at least two respects, this anthology is different from most such—and the two

differences are related.

The first difference is obvious: It is very unusual to produce a shared-universe anthology when a "series"

consists, so far, of only two novels. Doing so would seem premature, since the setting really isn't all that

firmed up yet.

But that was exactly why I wanted to do it so early in the game—which leads me to the second

difference:

In most shared-universe anthologies, as a rule, the stories are tangential to the main line of the story as

developed in the creating author's own novels. They might be excellent stories, in their own right, but they

rarely have much if any direct impact on the logic of developments in the series itself. The reason is

simple. Authors are generally reluctant to have other authors shape their own setting, and the contributing

authors to an anthology respect that and design their stories to be somewhat "off to the side." The stories

arein the setting, but they do not really affect the setting very much.

That is not true ofRing of Fire . The stories in this anthology all feed directly into the development of the

series as a whole. They are not simply part of it, they activelyshape it.

Indeed, several of them have already done so. Many of these stories were written before Dave Weber

and I wrote1633, and we deliberately incorporated them into the plot of that novel. For example:

The characters of Tom Stone and his children, who appear in1633 and will be major characters in the

upcoming novel1634: The Galileo Affair , are first introduced into the series by Mercedes Lackey in

her story in this anthology, "To Dye For." (1634: The Galileo Affairis co-authored by me and Andrew

Dennis, and will be published in April of 2004. Andrew is another of the authors in this anthology.)

The interaction between the Earl of Strafford and Dr. Harvey, which occurs in1633 ,presupposes a prior

visit to the time-transplanted town of Grantville. The story of that visit is told here, in S.L. Viehl's "A

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Matter of Consultation."

Dave Weber's story "In the Navy" provides the background for the creation of the new American navy,

which was such a prominent part of1633.

The character of Gerd, who appears in1633 as one of Captain Harry Lefferts' men, is first introduced

into the 1632 universe in Greg Donahue's "Skeletons."

* * *

A number of the other stories here lay the basis for future developments in the series. That is most clearly

evident with my own story, the short novelThe Wallenstein Gambit. The events depicted in that story

will be central to most of the future volumes in the series. The story is not "on the side." It is right smack

in the middle of the series as it continues to unfold.

Furthermore, the basis forThe Wallenstein Gambit was, to a considerable degree, laid in this anthology

by three otherstories: Dave Freer's "A Lineman For the Country," Jody Dorsett's "The Three Rs," and

(most directly) by K.D. Wentworth's "Here Comes Santa Claus."

Andrew Dennis' "Between the Armies" lays much of the basis for our forthcoming novel1634: The

Galileo Affair. (As does1633 , of course—the character of Sharon Nichols who figures prominently in

1633 is a major character inThe Galileo Affair. )Some of the characters developed by Deann Allen and

Mike Turner in their story "American Past Time" will also appear inThe Galileo Affair.

Virginia DeMarce's "Biting Time" lays the basis for a novel which she and I are working on, which will

both continue the story she began as well as link it to the story line I develop inThe Wallenstein Gambit.

To one degree or another, that is true of every story in this anthology. Many of the characters you first

encounter here will reappear in later volumes of the series—and sometimes as major characters in their

own right.

* * *

I wanted to produce this kind of anthology early in the series because I wanted, as much as possible, to

capture something which is usually missing in alternate history series:

History iscomplicated. It is not the story of a few people, it is the story of an immense number of

people—each of them full individuals in their own right, each of them having their own greater or lesser

impact on developments.

In the nature of things, fictional series—like biographies—tend to give the illusion that history marches

more-or-less in lockstep with the actions of the main characters of the story. That's almost inevitable,

given the very nature of narrative. But itis an illusion, and I wanted to avoid it as much as possible in the

unfolding 1632 series.

Yes, Mike Stearns and Rebecca Abrabanel and Jeff Higgins and Gretchen Richter and the other major

characters I created in1632 will continue to be major characters in the series. But they are not Greek

gods and goddesses. They are simply people—and what happens to them will, in the end, be deeply

affected by the actions of a Jewish jeweler in Prague trying desperately to prevent one of the worst

pogroms in history, a small town Catholic priest undergoing a crisis of conscience, and a woman in late

middle age who simply decides to found a school.

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And . . . enough. Welcome to theRing of Fire.

In the Navy

David Weber

"I'm telling you, Mike, we can dothis!"

Mike Stearns inhaled deeply, counted to ten—no, better make it twenty—and reminded himself that

the President of the United States couldn't go around throttling overenthusiastic teenagers. He told himself

that rather firmly, then reopened his eyes.

"Eddie," he asked as patiently as possible, "do you have any idea how many people walk through this

office every week—every day, for that matter—with projects that absolutely, positively just haveto be

done Right This Minute?"

"But this isdifferent , Mike!" The wiry, red-haired young man on the other side of Mike's desk waved

his hands. "This isimportant !"

"That's exactly my point, Eddie. They'reall important. But important or not, we only have so many

up-timers with the sorts of skills to make them work. And this—" Mike thumped a solid, muscular palm

on the lovingly executed sketch plan Eddie had laid on his desk between two tall piles of books

"—would require skills I doubt any of us have to begin with. Besides, can you even imagine how

someone like Quentin Underwood would react if I handed whole miles of railroad track over to you for a

'crackpot scheme' like this?"

"It's not a 'crackpot scheme'!" Eddie said hotly. "This is exactly how the Confederates built their original

ironclads, with rolled railroad rails for armor back during the Civil War."

"No, it's not," Mike replied patiently. "It's how youthink they built them, and that's—"

"Itis how they built them!" Eddie interrupted. "My research is solid, Mike!"

"If you'll let me finish?" Mike's voice was noticeably cooler, and Eddie blushed with the fiery color only a

natural redhead could produce.

"Sorry," he muttered, and Mike was hard pressed not to chuckle at his expression. Eddie Cantrell,

especially in the grip of one of his effervescent enthusiasms, was prone to forget that the Mike Stearns

he'd known all his life had become President of the only United States that existed in this Year of Our

Lord Sixteen Hundred and Thirty-Two. Which was fair enough, Mike supposed. There'd been enough

times over the last year or so thathe'd thought he was living in a fever dream instead of reality.

"As I was saying," he continued after a moment, "I don't have any doubt at all that this plan of yours," he

thumped the sketch on his desk again, "represents one hell of a lot of research and hard thinking. But the

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truth is that you don't have any better idea than I do of what sorts of hardware it would take to build the

thing. Or, for that matter, who do you think is going to do the stability calculations? Or figure out its

displacement? Or design a steam plant to move a boat this size and weight? Or even have a single clue

how to take command of it when it was built?" He shook his head. "Even if we had the resources to

devote to something like this, we don't have anyone here in Grantville who has any idea how to build it.

And I've got too many other projects that people do have a clue about to justify diverting our limited—

verylimited, Eddie—resources to building some kind of Civil War navy."

Eddie looked away, staring out the office window for several seconds. Then he looked back at Mike,

and his expression was more serious than any Mike recalled ever having seen from him before.

"All right," the young man said. "I understand what you're saying. And I guess I do get carried away

sometimes. But there was a reason they built these things back home, Mike, and Gustav Adolf is going to

need them a hell of a lot worse than Sherman or Grant ever did."

Mike started a quick reply, then stopped. Just as Eddie had trouble remembering Mike as anything more

impressive than the leader of the United Mine Workers local, Mike had trouble thinking of Eddie as

anything but one of the local kids. Not quite as geekish as his friend Jeff had been before the Ring of Fire

deposited their hometown in seventeenth-century Germany, but still something of an oddball in rural West

Virginia. A computer nerd and a wargamer who was passionately devoted to both pastimes.

Yeah, Mike thought. A geek. But a wargaming geek. He may be short on experience in the real world,

but he's spent one hell of a lot more time than I have studying wars and armies and . . . navies.

"All right, Eddie," he sighed. "I'm sure I'm going to regret this, but why is 'Captain General Gars' going to

need ironclads so badly?"

"Because he doesn't have railroads," Eddie replied. "That's why rivers and canals are so important to his

logistics, Mike. You know that."

Mike nodded slowly. Eddie was certainly right about that, although the youngster hadn't been present for

the meetings at which he and Gustavus Adolphus had discussed that very point.

"Without railroads," Eddie continued, "the only way to move really large quantities of supplies is by

water. That's why successful seventeenth-century military campaigns usually stuck so close to the lines of

navigable rivers. I know we're talking about building steamboats and steam-powered tugs for that very

reason, and that should help a lot. But the bad guys are just as well aware of how important rivers are as

Gustav Adolf is. When they figure out how much more efficiently he's going to be able to use them with

our help, they're going to start trying really hard to stop him. And the best way for them to do that is to

attack his shipping on the water, or else build forts or redoubts armed with artillery to try and close off

the critical rivers." The teenager shrugged. "Either way, seems to me that something like an ironclad

would be the best way to . . . convince them to stay as far away from the river bank as they can get."

The kid had a point, Mike realized. In fact, he might have an even better one than he realized. The major

cities of most of Gustavus Adolphus' so-called "vassals" and "allies" also happened to lie on navigable

rivers, and altogether too many of those vassals were among the slimiest, most treacherous batch of

so-called noblemen in history. Which meant that in a pinch, an armored vessel, heavily armed and

immune to said cities' defensive artillery might prove a powerful incentive when it came to honoring their

obligations to the Confederated Principalities of Europe and their Emperor.

None of which changed a single thing where the incredible difficulties of Eddie's proposal were

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concerned.

Eddie started to say something else, then closed his mouth with an almost audible click as he realized

Mike was gazing frowningly down at the sketch.

The vessel it depicted would never be called graceful. It was an uncompromising, slab-sided, boxy thing

which sat low in the water, and its gun ports and a thick, squat funnel were its only visible external

features.

"You're right about how important river traffic is going to be," Mike admitted as he ran one blunt

fingertip across the drawing. "But this thing would be an incredible resource hog."

"I know that," Eddie acknowledged. "That's why I'm only suggesting building three of them. God knows

we could use as many as we could get, but I knew going in that there was no way you were going to give

up enough rails to armor more than that."

"No way in the world," Mike agreed with a grin which held very little humor. "Quentin would scream

bloody murder if I gave you enough rails forone of these things, much less three! And he wouldn't be

alone, either. It's going to take years and years for us to develop an iron industry that can produce steel

that good. But that part I could handle . . . if I thought we'd be able to build the damned things in the

end."

"Look," Eddie said, "I admit that a lot of that plan is based on the best guesstimates I could come up

with from my reference books. At the same time, some of those books are pretty darned good, Mike. I

spent a lot of time researching this period when Jeff and Larry decided we just had to do a Civil War

ironclads game." He chuckled. "I always was the navy specialist when it came to game design.

"But that's not important. What matters is that it's a starting point. If you can find someone else, someone

better qualified to take my notes and my reference books and turn them into something we canbuild, I'll

be delighted to turn them over. You're right. I don't have the least idea how to figure displacements or

allow for stability requirements, and I know the designers screwed up the displacement calculations big

time for a lot of the real ironclads built during the Civil War. There was one class of monitor that

would've sunk outright if they'd ever tried to mount their turrets! So maybe my enthusiasm did run away

with me. But it's more important that this gets done and that it work than that it gets donemy way."

Mike tipped back in his chair and considered the face across his desk. It was the same face it had

always been, and yet, it wasn't. It hadn't changed as much as Jeff Higgins' face had, perhaps, but like

every face in Grantville, it had thinned down over the course of the last winter and its sometimes short

and always monotonous rations. Eddie had always been wiry; now he'd lost every ounce of excess

weight, yet his frame was well muscled from hard physical labor. More to the point, perhaps, that face

was no longer as young, as . . . innocent as it had been, and Mike felt a pang of deep, intense pain for the

loss of Eddie's last years of childhood.

But a lot of people had lost a lot of things, he reminded himself, and it looked as if Eddie was doing a

better job of growing into the reality he faced than Mike had realized when he came bursting into the

office. His pride in the concept he'd come up with was obvious, yet it was equally obvious that his offer

to turn it over to someone else who might be better qualified to make it work was genuine. Unfortunately,

there was no one in Grantville whowas better qualified. The skills a project like this would call for weren't

the sort that were in much demand in a West Virginia coal mining town. To make it work, they would

have needed someone with some real expertise in mechanical engineering and heavy fabrication, not to

mention running complicated industrial projects. Better yet, someone with some genuine experience with

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boats and ships. Best of all, someone with some idea about how a real navy worked.

Someone like—

Mike's thoughts broke off in a sudden mental hiccup, and he sat abruptly upright.

"What?" Eddie asked, and Mike shook his head the way he'd shaken off the effect of a particularly good

left jab during his days in the ring.

"I'm still not convinced that any of this is doable," he said slowly, contemplating Eddie through half-slitted

eyes. "But if—if, I say—it is, then it's possible that there's someone right here in town who'd be

perfect—" He broke off and grimaced. "Let me rephrase that. It's possible that there's someone right

here in town who could actually make it work."

"There is?" Eddie looked puzzled. "Who?"

"The only person who has any experience at all with this kind of building project," Mike replied, and

grinned sourly as Eddie's eyes widened in dawning disbelief.

"That's right," the President of the United States said in a tone which matched his grin's sourness

perfectly. "I think we need to consult with my sister's esteemed father-in-law."

* * *

"Let me get this straight." John Chandler Simpson sat on the other side of a slightly battered-looking

table in an Appalachian kitchen and regarded Mike through narrow eyes. "You'reofferingme a job."

"I guess you could put it that way," Mike replied in a voice he tried to keep entirely free of any emotion.

His years of experience as a union negotiator helped, but it was still difficult. He'd seldom felt as much

antipathy for another human being as Simpson evoked, apparently effortlessly, from him.

He sat back in his own chair, letting his eyes rest on the framed prints which brightened Jessica

Wendell's friendly kitchen. He could think of very few settings which would have seemed less

appropriate for a meeting with the one-time president and CEO of the Simpson Industrial Group, but at

least Jessica's willingness to surrender her kitchen as an impromptu conference room had let him keep

this meeting out of the public eye.

Not that the present confidentiality would help much when Mike's cabinet found out what they were

discussing. He shuddered at the thought of how Melissa Mailey, for example, would react when she

discovered that her President had been negotiating anything at all with their archenemy.

"I must confess," Simpson said after a moment in a poisonously dry tone, "that I find a certain degree of

irony in this."

"I doubt you find it any more ironic than I do," Mike told him levelly.

"Maybe not, but after the way you turned me into some sort of Antichrist in the elections, I have to

admire the sheer gall it must have taken for you to suggest anything of the sort."

"Gall doesn't come into it," Mike shot back, then shrugged his broad, powerful shoulders. "Look,

Simpson, I don't like you very much. And God knows you've made it plain enough that you like me even

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less. But the simple fact is that there's no one else in Grantville who'd even know where to begin with a

project like this one."

"Well, that's certainly a refreshing admission." Simpson's lips twitched in what, in another man, might

have been called a ghost of a smile, but there was very little humor in his eyes. "I suppose I should be

flattered that you're willing to grant my expertise in any field."

Mike felt his temper try to flare. He was, by nature, a passionate man, and learning the self-discipline

required to control those passions—and his temper—had not come easily to him. But it was a lesson

he'd mastered long ago, and although Simpson made it more difficult than most, he wasn't about to forget

it now.

"We can sit here pissing in each other's soup all afternoon, if you like," he said instead, throwing the

crudity deliberately into the midst of the conversation. "Or we can deal with the reason I came over.

Which would you prefer?"

Something flickered in Simpson's eyes. For a moment, Mike thought it was the other man's temper.

Then he realized it had been something else. A moment of . . . recognition, perhaps. Or possibly simply

an awareness that Mike had no intention of rising to his jibes and giving him the satisfaction of losing his

temper.

"Tell me exactly what you have in mind," the ex-CEO said after only the briefest pause.

"It's simple enough." Mike leaned forward in his chair, planting his forearms on the table. "Eddie Cantrell

came to see me with the initial proposal. He brought along a stack of reference books, and it turns out

that he's got an entire stash of other books we never guessed he had. I should've made a point of going

over there and going through the Four Musketeers' library myself. Everybody in town's known for years

that the four of them were absolutely buggy where military history and war games were concerned."

He shook his head, eyes momentarily unfocused as he considered the treasure trove he and Frank

Jackson had discovered in Eddie and Larry Wild's bookshelves.

"Anyway," he continued briskly, "Eddie has decided that we need a U.S. Navy, and he set out

single-handedly to do something about it. Which is how he came up with this."

Mike took a sheet of paper from his shirt pocket, unfolded it, and slid it across the table. Simpson's eyes

flicked to it in a casual, almost dismissive glance. Then they snapped back, and he smoothed the sketch's

creases as he frowned down at it.

"Cantrell did this?"

"Yeah. He took a course in drafting over at the high school a couple of years ago. Not," Mike added

dryly, "that it really prepared him for a career as a maritime engineer."

"I'd say that's a bit of an understatement." Simpson's attention was on the figures listed in the data block

in the upper left corner of Eddie's sketch, and he seemed momentarily to have forgotten his obvious

dislike for the man across the table from him. He studied the numbers for several seconds, then snorted in

something very like amusement.

"This displacement estimate of his has got to be way low," he said. "And even if it weren't, there's no

way he's going to get by with a six-foot draft!" He shook his head. "I'd have to do some volume

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calculations to be certain, but even at his estimated tonnage, this thing is going to draw ten or twelve feet,

minimum, and that's too deep for riverine conditions."

Mike chuckled, and Simpson looked quickly up from the sketch.

"I said something funny?" he inquired in a voice which had suddenly remembered its frost.

"No, not really. But you did just demonstrate exactly why I'm sitting here this morning. Do you really

think that anyone else in Grantville—or anywhere else in seventeenth-century Europe, for that

matter!—could rattle off what you just did?"

"I suppose not," Simpson said after a moment. "Of course, you realize that it's been the better part of

twenty years since I did any hands-on hardware work at all."

"Maybe so, but at least you did some once upon a time. And didn't your company have a piece of the

Navy's shipbuilding program?"

"Not really. Oh, our electronics division was one of the second-tier contractors on theArleigh Burke

-class destroyers' radar systems," Simpson acknowledged. He didn't seem to wonder how it was that

Mike had acquired that particular bit of information, and Mike was just as happy he didn't. The breach

between John Simpson and his son Tom was a deep and apparently permanent one, and Mike had no

intention of admitting that he'd discussed this offer with his brother-in-law at some length before

approaching Tom's father.

"But that whole division was really outside our core petro-chemical business," the elder Simpson

continued, "and we didn't have anything to do with the hull or the engineering plant. And I damned sure

wasn't handling any of the engineering myself! I don't want there to be any misunderstanding on that.

Translating this—" he tapped the sketch lightly "—into anything remotely resembling a practical warship

would require skills I haven't used since before I ever left the Navy."

"There's been a lot of that going around lately," Mike replied without cracking a smile, and Simpson

acknowledged the point with a grunt of sour amusement. He looked down at the sketch for several more

moments, lips pursed, then returned his gaze to Mike's face.

"How much authority and support would I have?" he asked.

"As much as I can give you." Mike shrugged. "I'm going to have problems with my own people if I

decide to push this one. Quentin Underwood is going to have three kinds of fits the instant he hears about

it, and some of the others aren't going to be far behind. Especially not when they find out how many

railroad rails we're going to be asking for! But that's not really the worst of it. What's really going to stick

in their craws is the impact this kind of diversion of effort will have on all our other projects."

"They'd better get used to it," Simpson said, and his dark eyes sharpened as if to impale Mike. "And so

had you."

"What does that mean?" Mike demanded, not quite able to prevent himself from bristling.

"I may not have the library your young Mr. Cantrell does, 'Mr. President,' but I've been something of a

student of military history in my time, myself." Simpson's smile was cold. "Do you know what ultimately

brought about the downfall of the Swedish Empire?"

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Eric Flint - Ring of Fire

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