Grantville Gazette - Volume X, page 7
part #10 of Grantville Gazette Series
Total silence followed his words. There was an unmistakable air of despair in the air at our inability to bring the bastard to justice and avenge our own.
Admiral Simpson looked at each of us. "Agent Spitzer, gentlemen, is your consensus that there is nothing we can do to bring this man to justice?" The silence in the room was deafening as he continued to stare at each of us. He let us steam for a while before continuing. "I tend to agree. However, is there anything else we could do to prevent another attack?"
We looked at each other and slowly shook our heads, all of us except for Brunei. She looked at the admiral with a cold feral smile. "Sir, I think that we can all agree that we're out of legal options." I thought that was a strange way to state the problem, until I realized that she was looking directly at me, the same way that the admiral and the rest were.
I hate when they do that.
Base Chapel
Magdeburg Navy yard
Magdeburg, USE 1000 Hours Local
A month later
I ignored the restrictive feeling of my new clothes and plastered a smile on my face as ordered. Brunei, having decided that my position required clothing that reflected our professional image, had dragged me to the tailor and ordered them. Truth be told, I like my new garments very much, as they were cut in the simple and subdued style popularized by Prime Minister Stearns. Brunei herself looked really nice in her new business dress with the now notorious skort. It did a good job of covering her growing tummy—at least for the present. Now that her morning sickness had subsided, the atmosphere had improved in Casa Schlosser and I was glad.
Glad enough that I consented to be dragged to the wedding and I'm not even popish . . . err . . . Catholic. In fact, the Catholics present were outnumbered by those who were not. But women consider such ceremonies important and tend to support each other in these endeavors. At least, I could commiserate with fellow sufferers: Dorrman, Schwanhausser and Hudson, who, like other male guests sat stoically through the ceremony while the more numerous female guests beamed teary smiles at the happy couple, the bridal party and the chaplain. Thanks to her condition, Brunei sat in the front row, after being entrusted with the safekeeping of the youngest Rainaldi. I had already ascertained that she had the proper number of fingers and toes, together with the cutest toothless smile on this side of the river, so my interest had waned somewhat. Of course, I expect our littlest Schlosser would have her beat, but this was her and her parents' day; ours would come soon enough.
Carlo made a striking figure in his navy officer's uniform, the newest ensign on the Naval Corps of Engineers. Although recovered, his body was still gaunt due to his ordeal and his eye patch gave him a decidedly piratical look. Alas, I have also been ordered to stop suggesting that he needs to acquire a parrot to complete the image. Angelina was doing much better now that her own ordeal was no longer a secret. She and Susan had made great progress and I was told that she would like to do the same for other women. There's an iron core behind that pretty face.
Meanwhile, basic training finished, she's been assigned to Commander Kratman's office as a legal clerk. He has already confirmed his suspicions about her language abilities and also discovered that she was more advanced in the study of the law than anyone suspected. So, there are plans afoot for her to continue to read law. We need more JAG officers, and what better than to grow our own? Angelina also has a good eye for finances and has been investing some of the funds that she brought out of Bologna. Not all of them, of course, but enough that she and Carlo have moved to their own home in the growing naval housing area. Since that is patrolled by our own guards and not the city watch, it simplified our security problem immensely.
Warrants were issued for her uncle. A paper exercise, more or less, given the current circumstances in Italy, although copies had been sent to our embassies, the temporary Holy See, and the cardinal-protector's office. I have made arrangements for her uncle's personal copy to be delivered, together with a message.
The form of that message had taken a while to formulate. Regardless of the naval leadership's faith in my abilities, I couldn't pull an idea out of my hat that fast even if my life was at stake. The answer finally came to me one evening when I escorted Brunei to movie night at the Eagle, Globe and Anchor. We had a standing date—you know, to keep the romance going. Of course, she accuses me of using the opportunity to expand my up-time slang. I'd say we're both right.
Anyway, they were showing a classic crime drama with an Italian connection and I couldn't resist it. Still, it took a while to make the proper arrangements.
Meanwhile, the copy of the letter sent to the cardinal-protector's office had some unintended consequences in the form of our newest chaplain, Father Jose Manuel de Alvarado, SJ. The admiral made a request for another Catholic chaplain a long time ago. No one expected a Jesuit Spaniard who, as a young man, had served as an officer in the Spanish Tercio de la Infantería de Marina and seen heavy action against pirates, Moors and others on the Mediterranean. We all assume that was the cardinal-protector's way of keeping an eye on us, although Father Jose is definitely the kind of clergyman that our organization could use.
But I wonder what the good chaplain is going to think when he finds out about the message and warning I arranged to be delivered directly to His Grace's bedroom. I don't think Father Jose will make much fuss. He was a soldier and a Spanish hidalgo, after all. And it isn't like Haas' murderer has any other use for his head, pickled or not.
I like to think that Don Corleone would be proud of me.
Twenty-eight Men
by Mark Huston
January, 1635
The cold wind cut through to the very core of the men as they walked to the entrance of the mine. It was dark, well before dawn, in the dead time of the night. The cold was complete, a January cold, dry, harsh and sharp. Soon they would be down in the dark and warmth of the mine. Deitrich, the shift foreman, still smiled at the incongruity of the whole thing. They were going into a mine that had been started over three hundred years in the future, and abandoned because it wasn't profitable enough. Abandoned with a large amount of the equipment in place. The power, phones, ventilation equipment, even some of the low electric carts were still there. It was almost if they were placed there for the men to pick up and start the operation again. Of course, many things were missing, or so the up-timers said. But there was much that they could use. So they did.
The mine was a dangerous place, but Deitrich always felt safe there. Even after the up-timer training about the dangers, it seemed a much safer place than the front of a tercio. There he could take a musket ball or a pike at almost any time, and it was far beyond his control. "No," he often said, "the mine is a much safer place." There he had some control over what happened. There were procedures for safety and rescue techniques, and equipment that was designed to provide them with the ability to survive in the worst of conditions. He spent ten days in a special mine safety school before he was even allowed to be on the jobsite. Deitrich often said that his job under the ground was a warm and safe place to be. It was secure. Snug somehow. That confidence, many said, had made him a natural foreman in the mine. Some said that he was too confident.
Twenty-eight men went down in the mine that late January night.
As part of their training, the new miners had visited a local park and the "Memorial." The memorial was an imposing black granite pillar, twenty feet high, and was inscribed with the names of seventy-eight men who had died in the "Consolidated Coal Number Nine Mine Disaster." The incident had happened back up-time. The trainees were brought to the natural glen that nestled in a small valley, a short distance out of town. There were many carefully planted trees in a small meadow that was now groomed by a flock of sheep. The monument itself was imposing, almost frightening from some angles. From others, it was gentle, stepping back in two places as it reached for the sky. It was most gentle at the top, where there was a cross carved into the face, in a style that looked strange to most down-timer eyes. The clean outlines and the perfectly formed hole in the center of the cross drew their eyes skyward to the top of the monument, away from the seventy-eight names carved into the face. The hole represented loss, a black hole, aching to be filled by those no longer there. Along with the names carved into the front face, there were words calling the ground beneath their feet a cemetery. It was considered hallowed ground.
The miner who trained them spoke of unity and brotherhood. He sounded like a priest as far as Deitrich was concerned. They were told that many famous up-time leaders had been to this place to pay homage, and that it was still used even today as a memorial by families who had lost a father or a grandfather in the explosion. The down-timers brought there became hushed, picking up on the somber mood of their usually jovial up-time partners. This was a holy place for the up-timers, and the rare display of public and universal piety surprised many of the old-hand down-timers. It had struck Deitrich as an unusual mood for the up-timers, especially in public.
It was shift change at the mine, and Deitrich met briefly with his counterpart, the afternoon shift foreman, Johan Gruber. The previous shift had noticed slightly elevated levels of methane near the working face. It was well below the danger level but Johann had duly noted it on his safety report. This wasn't unusual. The Ring of Fire had lifted a three-mile sphere of twentieth-century West Virginia back in time, and its active geology of coal and gas along with it. Methane is common, and there were clear procedures for dealing with it. As well, on a night when the weather was cold and the atmospheric pressure was low, methane tended to outgas at a higher rate.
"Not something to worry about," thought Deitrich. "We have training to deal with an increase in elevated methane. Simply clear the area and wait for the ventilation system to do its job."
The ventilation system was a giant fan. Deitrich had seen it as part of his training. An up-timer and several down-timers were assigned to keep it running day and night. Without the fan operating, the methane would seep out of the surrounding coal and rock and could build up to dangerous levels and cause an explosion. The fan drew fresh air into the mine through the same shaft where the lift moved men and equipment in and out. It was expelled at another shaft, where the coal was hoisted out. The fan was driven by an electric motor that was five hundred horsepower. Deitrich had seen five hundred live horses at once before. When the fan was turned on, he believed that every one of them had been somehow harnessed in the large metal housing. That fan pulled air through the mine with a tremendous amount of volume and pressure, turning the passageways into large pathways for the air. Concrete block barriers were installed through the mine to guide the air to the areas where men were working and along escape routes. Behind the barriers didn't matter, since nobody was working there. As long as those barriers were in good condition and the fan kept running, the methane wasn't something to seriously worry about.
This mine had started as a "room and pillar" mine, Deitrich recalled. That style of mining was practiced back up-time, with up-time technology. Over the past two years the up-time equipment had begun to fail, and old techniques had to be rediscovered. Instead of a conveyer belt, they now used mining carts pulled by mules. Instead of the roof bolts that had supported the up-time mine roof, they now used timber for support, and carpenters and timber men to put in the supports. It was a hybrid operation, but always it was tested so that it would be safe, always safe.
As Deitrich was turning away, Johann called to him. "One more thing, Deitrich. Do you know where your crew is working tonight?"
Deitrich looked at Johann and shrugged. "Of course I do. I inspected it yesterday."
Johann smiled. "You are near the old mine, the one with the monument we visited. Some of the bodies of the men are still in it. Also, it's near the Ring of Fire border. This will be the last shift working in that section. We don't want to get too close to either of those things. The seams and roof are unstable, the engineer tells us, and the old mine may be flooded."
Deitrich shrugged again. "How close are we supposed to be to the other mine? Wasn't that mine massive and went on for miles?"
Johann counted off the hazards on his fingers. "Yeah. Watch out for methane, unstable ribs and roof, and be on the lookout for ghosts under the ground. There were bodies left in that mine up-time, don't forget. They just sealed it up." He was holding up three fingers.
Deitrich also held up three fingers. "I always watch the roof and the ribs—" He dropped one finger, leaving two. "I always watch for methane—" He dropped the second finger, leaving the middle one extended to Johann. "And that's what I think of your ghosts!" Both men grinned, and moved away with a wave, one going home, and the other to work underground.
* * *
Their up-time hard hats were now fitted with the old-time carbide acetylene flame lamps. The warm light shone off of the black walls. They were in the Pittsburgh seam, a ten-foot thick layer of coal. That seam had been mined back up-time for a hundred years, and the up-timers had developed amazing ways of bringing it out of the ground, in quantities that were astounding to Deitrich. With the mining machines, conveyors, and the automated processes, the up-time miners could move more coal in a day than Deitrich and his crews could move in a week.
As he walked, Deitrich kept scanning the ceiling, what the miners called the "roof," and the walls, which they called the "ribs." In the older, up-time part of the mine, he didn't worry about the ceiling coming down. They used technology to drive long bolts into the rock to hold it together above their heads. The bolts worked well. When he got to the part of the mine that had been worked since 1631, he always paid more attention. There the roof and, occasionally, the ribs were supported by wood beams and planks, the same way a down-time mine would be, with wooden beams and supports overhead. It had worked for them well in the last couple of years, and they had only lost three men to falls of the roof.
He was always listening to the mine. Deitrich joked that he could almost hear her talking to him. As their mining activity expanded, they eventually reached the edge of the Ring of Fire. The closer to the edge of the ring, the more unstable the rock became. They could hear the rock above them "working" more and more the closer to the border they mined.
The men soon reached the point where they were to part for their different tasks.
"Ernst. Take your crew to the end wall at the far east end. Pay attention to your methane monitor. Get the machinery up and running. I'll be back to check on you when I'm done with these guys. You know where you are going?"
"Ya. West face, cuts twenty-two and twenty-three. Build stopping, remove tracks, secure equipment, get ready to stop operations. Close to Ring Wall. Test for the methane and make sure the ventilation is good. Okay." Ernst nodded and smiled. He was nearly fifty, one of the oldest men on the crew, but strong and steady. He had been one of Deitrich's men when they were with Wallenstein back in '31. He knew Ernst, and knew that he understood.
"The rest of you guys are with me. Ernst, give me your carpenters, you won't need 'em for a while."
"Okay, Deitrich. See you later."
The men began to move to their assigned areas. By the time they started to work, they would be more than a mile apart. Deitrich's crew was mostly apprentices. Young electricians, carpenters, general maintenance men ,and miners who still wore the red hard hat that signified that they had been in the mine for less than six months. They began their short hike to the east side of the mine. The west side of the mine, where Ernst and his crew would be working, had initially been mined before it was abandoned back up-time. The east side had not been developed as much. As mining activity ended at the edge of the Ring of Fire, they were stopping mining in that direction, and turning the mine around to the east. Deitrich and his crew were going to begin preliminary work to prepare the area: pull power lines, prepare the floors to accept the relocated rail lines, and general preparation and safety inspections. Good work for the apprentices to learn, and he could check nearly everything they did before it would be put into critical service. Ernst and his crew were shutting own the mining operation at the west end, and preparing to relocate the operations to the east side. There would be no actual mining this shift, only maintenance and prepratory work.
