Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread II

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Seventy-Seven


4th May 1958

Potsdam

It was an official State visit. Something that complicated everything.

Elizabeth of England was here in Potsdam, that was why Michael got dirty looks from the British security as he rode past. By contrast they were augmented by men from the 2nd Life Hussars who were happy to see him. They knew that he had just turned eighteen and would be joining them as soon as he completed his secondary education. That would be just one of the many big changes that were coming.

The other change involved Onnosel. Recently a veterinarian had told Michael that while he was in good health Onnosel was around fifteen years of age, a bit old for the active role that Michael needed him to be able to take and in a couple years Michael had a chance to compete in equestrian events in Rome. So, in the near future Onnosel would return to the Wolvogle estate and live out his years in comfort as a riding horse for the children of Oberst Knispel. While finding another horse wouldn’t be an issue, it just wouldn’t be the same for Michael. As difficult as the bay horse could be, Onnosel was as much of a friend to Michael as anyone he knew from school. Since that decision had been made Michael had made a point of riding Onnosel every afternoon weather permitting. The expansive estate in Potsdam was perfect for that.

As Michael rode into the stable he noticed the girl. Nine years old, blond with a striking resemblance to her father Philip of Greece and Denmark. “Mind telling me what you want Alberta?” Michael asked as he got off of Onnosel.

“Birdie” Alberta said in reply.

“Excuse me” Michael asked.

“I hate the name Alberta, detest it” Alberta, or was it Birdie, said, “It sounds like the name of a fat old woman who lives with a whole bunch of cats.”

With the various families whose children were regularly around Onnosel, the gluttonous horse had learned to associate girls with attention and treats. Birdie was no exception, she had a carrot for him. As Michael lifted the saddle off Onnosel’s back he could hear the horse munching contentedly on it.

“Very well Birdie” Michael said, “What can I help you with?”

“I overheard Mummy and her maids talking about how one day I would marry Prince Michael of Bohemia, how dashing and handsome he is, er… you are.”

Birdie said it very earnestly, and though Michael found the idea hilarious, he didn’t want to laugh at the girl.

“Is that what you want?” Michael asked, only to have Birdie look at him with a bewildered look on her face.

“Well, no” Birdie replied.

“There’s your answer then.”

“That can’t be it” Birdie said, “That is way too easy.”

“Life is only as complicated as you choose to make it” Michael said. He was reminded of the recent week he had spent in Prague. The Chancellor of the Bohemian Reichstag and the Head of the Regency Council had made it clear that while they eagerly awaited his twenty-first birthday when he could be crowned King of Bohemia, they had made it obvious that they wouldn’t mind if he spent most of his time somewhere else. It was cynical, self-serving and entirely predictable. The truth was that Michael had no interest in running a country, being a King however would give him the authority to tell Friedrich where he could stick it. In his mind that was far more valuable. If the Chancellor in Prague liked the idea of facing the wrath of voters, then more power to him. Michael would be there to meet with his successor who hopefully wouldn’t be such a jackass.

With that Birdie was laughing as Onnosel was sniffing at her, searching for more carrots. People could learn a lot from horses when it came to priorities.

“Want to help me with this big lug?” Michael asked.

Birdie smiled at that. It was exactly what she wanted.

----------------------------------------------------------------

It was a State visit, where Elizabeth could meet with Louis Ferdinand. Later they would go before the cameras and talk about how their nations were continuing to cooperate on a variety of issues. Just how long that cooperation would last was an open question. Relations with the United Kingdom were as good as they had been in decades, however there was always the knowledge that even if Britain was no longer considered an enemy, they had never stopped being a rival. That wasn’t however the real reason why Elizabeth had come to Potsdam, the real reason was in this room. Namely Charlotte, but the larger discussion did interest her as well.

While they were waiting until after the wedding in July to call a meeting of the Hundred, several of the most prominent members of the Order of Louise were present today as they were let in the changes in the Order’s charter that Kat had hashed out with Charlotte over the last few days. The biggest changes they had decided on were that the existence of the Order shouldn’t be dependent upon the whims of the Emperor and greater efforts towards continuity following the death of a Grand Mistress needed to be made. The idea of expanding the rolls of membership beyond one hundred was restated. Then an item on that agenda landed like a bombshell, the Order needed to be prepared for the day when the Grand Mistress wasn’t Empress Consort but the Empress outright. That day might not come within their lifetimes, but it was something that needed to be discussed so that the Order would be prepared as an institution. They had the presence of Elizabeth, Queen of England and Empress of the British Empire today as an example of what was possible.

Kat was listening to the excited chatter as they discussed the possibilities. Charlotte had said that if they played this right it could prove to be one of the most important events for the Order since its founding in 1814. The other suggestion that Charlotte had made was one of reconciliation, she had suggested that the role of Chairwoman of the Capitel go to Princess Kristina of Prussia. They didn’t know what the reaction to that would be.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Seventy-Eight


10th May 1958

Kleinberg, Silesia

Graf Manfred von Richthofen had a lot of reasons to be happy these days. In the bewildering kaleidoscope of life, things had shaken out in an almost acceptable manner for him. The work of the Space Program was placing an array of communications satellites in orbit facilitating transmissions around the globe. Among the first things transmitted was Ilse telling Albrecht that he was acting like a fucking idiot in volunteering to go back into space. He was in full agreement with his Daughter-in-Law, Albrecht had responsibilities to his wife and a child on the way. At the same time there was a part of Manfred that was happy that Albrecht seemed to be finally living up to his name. Getting launched into orbit was more dangerous than Manfred had realized at first, to do it and then volunteer to go back…

Then there was Helene coming to live in Breslau and Hans taking command of the 3rd Landwehr Division. It was obvious to Manfred that Hans was fighting a war against the culture of the Division, he had been hearing from Officers who had been in that Division who had tangled with Hans thinking that he was an easy mark. Instead, they had found that despite being a lunkhead, Hans had shown them the first rule of damn near anything. You question the man in charge at your own peril and you had better be right. Otherwise he would act accordingly and not to your liking. Helene herself was at turns frustrated and exasperated by her career. Building a political party from the ground up was certainly a challenge. There were times when anyone else would have given up, but ever since she had been a little girl Helene had seen obstacles as things to be obliterated…

Manfred’s thoughts were interrupted by the sharp crack of a rimfire rifle. In the distance there was the clank of the 5.6 mm bullet striking the steel target. His namesake grandson looked at him and smiled, he was getting better with practice. It was the same rifle that Lothar, Albrecht and Helene had learned to shoot with years earlier. With them the lessons hadn’t taken, and they had lost interest in shooting and hunting as they had gotten older. It was Manfred’s hope that his grandson would maintain his interest.


Berlin-Tempelhof

Ben could see that Zella was gone. According to Kiki her friend had been staying with the Gräfin while her friend’s parents had gone on vacation to the South Seas. When Ben had gone up onto the roof of his house on clear nights, he had seen what Zella had done. She had deliberately gotten his attention and then flipped him the bird before closing the blinds. Kiki had said that she would get Zella to stop but had never been able to do it. Ben’s father had said that Zella didn’t like him because he threatened her by diverting the attention of her best friend. He didn’t put a whole lot of stock in that, Zella behaved the way she did because she just didn’t like Ben. Clashing personalities, was the term that he had heard used. Zella wouldn’t warm to him if they were cremated together.

Tonight, it was just Kiki as she did her usual ritual of brushing out her hair before braiding it. She got up and Ben was expecting her to close her blinds. As always, he marveled at just how beautiful she was as she stood in the window. Her glasses were left on the desk so she probably couldn’t see him out here. Then she did something different, Kiki opened the window of her bedroom and blew him a kiss before walking back across her room. She took off her blue dressing gown and hung it on a hook on the back of her bedroom door. This had been Ben’s fantasy for months and it turned out to be completely anticlimactic. She was wearing a blue and white striped football jersey that hung down to her knees. Exactly what had he been expecting? That was Ben’s thought as she turned out the light. Kiki just wanted to have some fresh air as she slept, and he just happened to be out here.


11th May 1958

Paris, France

It was a quiet Sunday, it was something that made this pleasurable task easier. On a weekday the streets would be filled with tourists.

After several eventful decades spent in the Paris Metropolitan Police Jean Paul Montrose spent his evenings walking through the neighborhoods he once patrolled. Pensioned out he was just another old man living in an apartment that he had lived in since he had arrived in Paris when he had been young. Simple pleasures all he had left really. This evening’s activity was a part of that.

Jean Paul was feeding a growing number of pigeons while sitting on the stoop of the apartment building owned by Raymond Gagneux, the criminal who he had tried unsuccessfully to put away for decades.

“I will have you killed you son of a bitch!” Gagneux yelled from one of the upstairs windows. He was trying to sell the building and perspective buyers having to walk through pigeon crap was a very pleasurable thought indeed for Jean Paul. As for having him killed, better killers had attempted to do him in several times. Jean Paul was still here, and they were forgotten. Gagneux should have been smart enough to know that.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Seventy Seventy-Nine


13th May 1958

Cam Ranh, Khánh Hòa Province, Vietnam

News had just reached Cam Ranh that Virgil “Gus” Grissom had just become the first American to reach orbit. The Admiral sent a message to NASA congratulating them on the initial success of their Mercury Project. It seemed like a good thing to have done. Admiral von Schmidt was a Sailor who saw space as just another ocean and regardless of politics one would never begrudge another man’s successful voyage.

In Cam Ranh itself, things were heating up again. Dioscuri IV had been a success followed closely by the launch of the unmanned Dioscuri V, so the timetable to the program was moving forward at full speed. Back home, Linus Dunst and Radovan Cermak were the big heroes having orbited the Earth for twenty-four hours and completed the first spacewalk during Dioscuri IV. Dioscuri V had been the launch of the next segment in the array of communications satellites that they had been launching. Tens of millions of Reichsmarks spent on setting up a system that revolutionized communications and the one of the first uses it got put too was to give Ilse a chance to cuss out Albrecht for risking his neck. The Press had found out about that and had tried to follow up on the story, however they had hit the same wall that they normally did whenever Doctor Ilse Tritten’s name came up. Ilse was the sister of the Tigress of Pankow and if one didn’t respect the privacy of the tigress then bad things tended to start happening. What the Press had discovered however was that Ilse was eight-months pregnant and suddenly they had a whole new angle on the story.

Sigi personally didn’t understand how Albrecht was able to push all that out of his mind and focus on Dioscuri VI which was only a couple weeks away. She had a hard-enough time keeping focused and she only had to worry about herself. So far, Albrecht being the center of attention had kept the focus off Sigi, who had just learned that she was the assigned Pilot of Dioscuri VI. While the mission didn’t involve extravehicular activity, the mission was to be the longest that the Space Program had ever attempted. The mission planning included an advanced terrain mapping project, it was what had lured Albrecht into volunteering, dozens of experiments and for Sigi, the Raumfahrer Program wanted to know the effects of weightlessness and being in orbit upon the female body.

Any qualms that Sigi might have had about being the experiment were overshadowed by more mundane concerns. The prospect of spending three days crammed into a space roughly the size of a telephone kiosk was daunting enough. Even with Albrecht, who had never given Sigi cause for concern regarding his conduct, it seemed like a very cozy arrangement. There were also the Doctors who wanted a complete baseline for Sigi’s current health and after what had happened with Ilse, they were leaving no stone unturned. It was ironic because Sigi had not been involved personally with anyone since she had entered the Raumfahrer Program, there simply had not been the time. The Doctors didn’t care, they wanted samples of everything.


Berlin

For appearances sake, Charlotte was living in a hotel suite as preparations were made for her impending marriage. Right up until she had met Louis, she had assumed that it was something that would never happen to her. Then the series of events that had led her to work closely with the German Emperor and how they had found themselves where they were now. When Louis had proposed, she had tried to talk him out of it. The international reaction was exactly what Charlotte had feared it would be. The political cartoon that had run in a London newspaper and had been reprinted around the world told the story exactly how it seemed to be. Charlotte and Louis at the wedding ceremony representing their respective nations of Austria and Germany, the other nations of Europe behind them as guests. The minister is asking if anyone has any objections… Plenty apparently. Louis had said that it was all just hot air.

Then there were the considerations to be had if Charlotte was to be Empress. Louis’ children were a mixed bag. She had only met Friedrich once years earlier and he was overseas, so she didn’t have a read on him. Michael seemed like a good man, Charlotte had seen how kind he had been to Princess Alberta of England. The girl had come away from the experience thinking that Michael was a nice friend and she was absolutely in love with his horse, much to her mother’s chagrin. Kristina seemed to enjoy playing the sullen teenaged girl entirely too much. Louis junior was a bit reckless and mostly fearless. Victoria and Marie were difficult. Them being nearly identical made them disconcerting and Charlotte had been told that they disagreed about her. The thing was that they apparently were accustomed to presenting a united front to the world, so it was difficult to tell.

The official and social aspects were just as daunting. Louis had said that winning over Katherine von Mischner would a big help in that regard because she would do nearly anything for the people that she loved and respected. Charlotte discovered that was another side to her, the Gräfin was completely unforgiving once trust was lost and Katherine had been on the verge shutting Louis’ late wife out of her life at the time of her death. That made her warry of getting too involved with Charlotte. Another added difficulty.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Eighty


28th May 1958

Cam Ranh, Khánh Hòa Province, Vietnam

Pulling the laminated photograph of Ilse out of the pocket, Albrecht looked at it. He would be home in a few days if all went well.

“Can’t wait?” Sigi asked from the seat where she was being strapped in. The Medical Director had put her through the wringer in recent days. They wanted to know every single detail of her health and as the head of the program Albrecht had been kept appraised. All they had discovered was that she didn’t get enough sleep, was under a great deal of pressure and was in otherwise perfect health. Those things could be used to describe every single member of the team.

“Just getting through the hardest part” Albrecht replied as he put the photograph back into his pocket, “Once the countdown really starts and we do the status check there won’t be time to worry until we reach orbit.”

Sigi was silent after that for several minutes.

“Your heartrate is elevated Lieutenant Grimmelshausen” Albrecht heard the Head of the Medical team say over the radio, “Everything alright?”

It was all Albrecht could not to tell him “No shit” in reply. Both Albrecht and Sigi were wired up with so much monitoring equipment that the Doctors in Mission Control could probably tell what they had for dinner last week.

“We’re just sitting here waiting to find out if this bird will fly or go boom” Albrecht replied, “Nerves are to be expected with a rookie.”

In the corner of Albrecht’s eye, he saw Sigi signal him with her left hand. Turning his head as much as he could in the helmet. He saw her mouth the words “Thank you” to him.

There was a round of laughter through Mission Control. One of the things that had been discovered with the Dioscuri project was that having an experienced pilot in a command position was a great relief to the pilot. It was one of those things that should have been obvious, but they had reinvented the wheel on several different occasions so far in this program and there had been incidents where things had not gone so well. Unfortunately, Dunst had discovered that the gallows humor that was common in the program didn’t go over very well with Oberlieutenant Cermak. The Bohemian pilot was deeply religious and thought that it was just plain bad luck to joke about such things. It had been Albrecht who had to keep the two from coming to blows on a few different occasions and get them to work as a team. Radovan Cermak had been the first man to complete a spacewalk, so Albrecht must have done something right.

As Albrecht listened, he heard the Launch Status checklist began. As the various stations called in, he waited for the words “No go” which would signal that the launch was being aborted. With the communications network in place the entire world would be paying attention to this launch. That meant that this would either be the greatest triumph or disaster of the entire Space Program. This time, the message that had appeared on the chalkboard; Come back with your shield, or on it. Someone had been looking into the story behind the origins of the term Dioscuri and it had taken a bit of a dark turn.


Berlin

The air in the room felt like a thunderstorm right before the storm cut loose. As much as Doug liked Albrecht as a person, some of the things he did were extremely questionable. He had known what Ilse would probably be going through and had volunteered for this insanity anyway. Presently he was sitting in the chair in the parlor watching the television and every single television channel had the launch of Dioscuri VI live. He couldn’t help but notice that Isa Grünberg, the midwife who had attended the birth of all three of Doug’s children and Doctor Nora Berg had made excuses to hover around Ilse as if the potential disaster in Cam Ranh wasn’t the only one that was in the offing. Doug didn’t need much imagination to know might happen if that rocket went up like a Roman candle on International television. Ilse was sitting on the couch with Kat, pale and biting her lip, completely petrified. Doug was strongly tempted to tell Kat that she needed to get her sister out of here, but Kat had made it clear that Ilse was an adult capable of making her own decisions. Doug wasn’t sure what was to be gained by having her watch this. Tat, Kol, Marie and Jo were on the couch keeping as close to Ilse and Kat as they could. Doug was reminded of ducklings crowding around the feet of their mother when threatened.

Kiki was watching from a chair that she and the other girls had brought in from the library. Recently, her father had offered her a chance to come home and resume her old life. She had told her father that she would think about it, but she had said something completely different to Kat later. She had said that her life as Princess Kristina was something that she could never go back to, that simply was not who she was anymore, if she ever had been. Zella and Aurora had been joined by Suga, the Japanese girl was enjoying the relative freedom of attending University in Berlin. Being a guest in Kat and Doug’s house occasionally was a perk in that. Kat insisted on allowing all of those she considered friends at her table, a tradition that she had picked up from her Aunt.

As they watched, the rocket lifted off the pad on a column of fire, steam and smoke. To everyone’s relief the cameras followed it as it soared into the sky over the South China Sea. After several extremely long minutes, the ESA Spokesman announced that Dioscuri VI had successfully achieved orbit, Korvettenkapitän von Richthofen and Lieutenant Grimmelshausen were in good health and were starting a three-day mission to better the human understanding of outer space and the Earth.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Eighty-One


30th May 1958

Berlin

The stunt of having Albrecht call Ilse from orbit had backfired when it had been Kat who had picked up the phone. She had made several choice comments that were of a nature not normally considered suitable for broadcast when she had given him a piece of her mind. She had then handed off the phone to Ilse who was all too ready to forgive Albrecht even after what he had put her through having yelled at him herself weeks earlier. It was clear to her the toll that pregnancy was taking on her and Albrecht was putting additional stress on her that she didn’t need with his stupid actions. Doctor Berg was closely monitoring Ilse. While Berg was too much of a professional to let on a whole lot, Kat could see that she had been concerned for some time. The issues surrounding the childhood malnutrition and abuse that Ilse had endured, mixed with various other problems were starting to emerge in increasingly problematic ways.

It was over what Kat had said to Albrecht that she assumed had resulted in her being summoned to speak with the Emperor.

“I had no idea that what I said was going out live on television and radio Sir” Kat said as entered Louis’ office.

“You mean when you told your Brother-in-Law that he was acting like a complete fuckwit and asked how he was able to fit his fat head into the capsule or up his arse?” Louis asked mildly.

Kat stood silently for a few minutes of awkward silence.

“It would seem that you were speaking for a lot of women when you said that Katherine” Louis said, “And that is not why I called you here.”

Kat was relieved to hear that Louis wasn’t taking her to task over what had happened. Still, that did leave the question as to what he wanted.

“You recently implied some threats to the Headmistress of Kristina’s gymnasia” Louis said, “Would you care to tell me why?”

“She was taking bribes” Kat replied, “It would seem that someone had paid her to keep Kiki is school for an extra term last winter and they tried to do it again this year until I put a stop to it.”

“That someone would be me and I wouldn’t call them bribes” Louis said, “I was making the appropriate donations to the gymnasia, after all the trouble that the twins have caused it seemed like the least that I could do.”

“Whatever you want to call them. You speak, and the Headmistress obeys like a trained poodle” Kat said, “If Kiki ever learns what you’ve done, she’ll never trust you again and by stopping her last winter you’ve made her start to doubt her own abilities. To do that to her again will just make that worse.”

“Do you honestly think that having her go off to join the Medical Service at this point is a good idea?” Louis asked, “You’ve said plenty of times that she is slightly immature for her age, despite how she tries to present herself.”

“She is not going very far despite whatever aspirations she has” Kat replied, “The Medical Service does a brief field training course, then it’s at the University for the next two years. Kiki will be strongly encouraged to continue at University until she earns her Doctorate in Medicine. She’ll probably be far too busy for the next decade to get into too much trouble.”

“That still doesn’t answer the question about if it is a good idea.”

“Having her continue to hide from the world will not help matters” Kat replied.

“It is that world that worries me” Louis said, “Is Kristina ready for the sort of things that she might find herself subjected to?”

The Emperor had the concerns that any father would have, and he was perfectly aware of who he was talking to. The world was frequently an unfair, unforgiving place for young women. At the same time Kat was aware that trying to protect Kiki at any cost was not doing her very many favors.


Low Earth Orbit

Albrecht was sleeping while strapped into his seat. Sigi had no idea how he was able to do that. Yesterday, the ESA had thought it would be fun to have them call their families. Albrecht had gotten chewed out by the Gräfin. Later Sigi had overheard the brief call between him and his wife’s Doctor that the public had not been privy to. It had been clear from that one exactly why the Gräfin had been so ticked off. The call to Sigi’s mother had been if anything, worse. She was completely unaware of what Sigi had been doing for the last few years. When told that Sigi was calling from Orbit, she had asked if that was in the South of France. Nothing had changed from when Sigi had been a girl. Her mother had to be compelled to send Sigi to school because she had been unaware that it was required. Living in a decaying house on the edge of Potsdam her mother’s life was basically frozen in time since the 1930s, it was a miracle that she even had a phone.

Sigi had hardly been able to sleep over the last two days. Mostly, she had found herself looking out the window during her down time. It was hypnotic to watch the world pass beneath. Oddly that made it hard to stay awake during the hours when she monitored the experiments Albrecht slept. The photovoltaic panels that had been deployed for the last two days had given them plenty of power to run the cameras, radios and other equipment, however they were as much of an experiment as anything else they were working on. The result was that every time they completed an orbit, they had to pencil in just how much the panels where recharging the batteries.

The great discoveries of the Space Program, Sigi thought to herself. Among other things, pens needed gravity to work. That was why they used pencils.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Eighty-Two


31st May 1958

Peenemünde

News that Brotherhood II, the capsule from Dioscuri VI, had safely splashed down in the Atlantic off the Azores was greeted with a great deal of relief here and in Cam Ranh. The day might come when these things became routine, but the program was still far from getting to that point.

Jacob had read the riot act to the Public Affairs Division when he found out what had happened. He was used to the Kaiserliche Marine running like a well-oiled machine. The ESA was so new that they were still trying to work out their procedures and policies. Today the ESA had need of a new Information Officer because the last one had been reassigned to the Public Affairs Division of the KM’s Antarctic Mission. The last Jacob had seen of the information Officer he was being shoved onto an airplane bound for Marie Byrd Land. Perhaps a winter or two spent in that frozen slice of Hell would make him a bit more thoughtful.

No one checked to see if they had the right Mischner sister on the phone and that she might have an axe to grind with Albrecht? Everyone knew that Katherine von Mischner was a force of nature when angry and giving her an opportunity to express her wrath towards the source of that aggravation was a bad idea. They were just lucky that public opinion was evenly divided on this matter, between those who felt that Albrecht had it coming and those who didn’t. Then there was Frau von Grimmelshausen, her daughter might have been in orbit, but that woman was definitely living on a different planet. Why had no one bothered to learn the details of Sigi Grimmelshausen’s past before they had released a public statement? Jacob had delved into her records to avoid any more surprises.

It had turned out that Sigi and her mother were among the last members of an old aristocratic family that had dwindled down to just them, heirs of the fortune made by Rheinmetall. Who knew what the reaction that the press would have when it came out that public records didn’t say who Sigi’s father was? All they said was that she was born in 1937 and that her father was deceased according to school records. Jacob had taken a deeper dive through the records that wouldn’t normally be available to most people and learned the date that Sigi’s father had died in 1940. It didn’t take an intuitive leap to figure out the man’s identity after that, the family resemblance also made it incredibly obvious. While Sigi obviously had no clue, the truth would only serve to upend her life for no reason and cheapen her own accomplishments. It was something that Jacob filed away mentally, one of many things that he would take to the grave. The first woman in space would stand on her own according to her merit. Jacob just hoped that it wouldn’t be too obvious when Sigi was inevitably photographed standing next to a member of her father’s family.


Tempelhof, Berlin

Ilse was under orders to stay in bed and not exert herself in any way. She had however found her way down to the couch as she watched live television of Albrecht’s spaceship landing in the Ocean. That meant that he would be home in a matter of hours, the poor romantic fool had seen it as a way for him to be home in June and July. Just he had not thought things through.

Just sitting in one place was not like her, so the inactivity was yet one more insult that Ilse’s condition had inflicted upon her. A few weeks earlier she had started to feel faint while doing basic tasks and had told Doctor Berg. Next thing she knew Ilse had found herself in the Cardiology Department at the University Clinic. They had determined that early childhood malnutrition had caused her heart not to develop properly. The added strain of pregnancy had put her at risk of a heart attack, she was also showing worrying signs of gestational diabetes. That meant that she was supposed to not leave her bed and everything she ate or drank had to be approved by a doctor first. Ilse remembered how aggravated Kat and Hellene had been during this part of their own pregnancies, so she knew that her own experience wasn’t exactly unique. Just that with her there were complications. For Ilse there were always complications, it was the story of her life.

News that Albrecht had safely landed in the Atlantic was a great relief to had come as a great relief to her. Kat was equal turns amusing and terrifying when she went full Momma Tigress as she had done when Albrecht had called. Afterwards, Kat had been embarrassed by what had happened, but Ilse was starting to understand why her sister reacted to things the way she did sometimes.


Atlantic Ocean, North East of the Azores

Bobbing in the Ocean after three days in space was quite a change in motion. No sooner than they had gotten the flotation deployed and the hatches open then they had heard the helicopters circling. Unlike the earlier Atgeir project where Huginn I had landed a couple hundred kilometers off course and Albrecht had spent the evening celebrating with the crew of one of the KM’s Armed Trawlers, Brotherhood had landed exactly where it was supposed to have.

Over the prior three days Albrecht had spent a great deal of time talking with Sigi and that had been informative. When she had talked to her mother, Albrecht had seen the frustration on her face. Later they had talked about what had happened. Albrecht had spoken about the difficulties that he had with his father. Sigi had said that at least he knew who his father even was. Apparently, her mother had an affair with an older, married man. He’d died after the affair had ended and even while he was alive, he had shown no interest in Sigi. That was all Sigi’s mother had ever told her.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Eighty-Three


4th June 1958

Potsdam

Albrecht had not wanted Ilse here at all, but she had insisted that she should come. Isa said that the baby could come at any second and that driving across town was risky for her. Doctor Berg had been gently suggesting that Ilse should probably already be in the hospital. Still, she wanted to be here for the awarding ceremony. Doctor Berg figured that she would wait until after the baby came to talk to Ilse, but she had told Albrecht that she figured that while she figured that Ilse would recover this time, she probably wouldn’t if there was a next time. Then Berg had told Albrecht that she could refer him to a specialist.

Every time he saw Ilse, Albrecht felt guilty. He had been in Vietnam and had not been there for her the way that she was insisting on be present for him. He had just received another round of medals, that was what happened when someone made it back from orbit. The Admiral had said that it was still regarded as an extremely dangerous undertaking and it was rewarded as such. Perhaps the day would come when going into orbit or even outer space was regarded the same way as taking an airplane across the Atlantic or the Far East. When Admiral Mark Kerr had first crossed the Atlantic in 1918 in a modified Handley Page bomber it had been regarded the same way that Albrecht’s flights were now. He had received a star device for his Polaris Medal denoting that he had gone on a second mission into space and an Oak Leaf for his Merit Cross in Gold. The final medal awarded to him had been the Order of Red Eagle, 3rd Class. It was the first Red Eagle awarded since Otto Kretschmer had sunk the IJN Musashi thirteen years earlier. They joined the Maximilian Order for Science and Art that the Bavarian King had insisted on awarding him. He accepted all of this, but he was starting to think it was a bit overblown.

Sigi seemed awestruck, the Heer was pleased as punch that one of their people had played a role in the Space Program, so they had gone all out. Albrecht knew he stood out because he was wearing the white summer uniform of the Kaiserliche Marine and most of those attending today were wearing the Heer’s blue dress uniforms. When Sigi had been called up, she had been given quite the ovation. The polite applause that Albrecht had received was about what he had expected from this crowd. This was the first noteworthy thing that Sigi had done, even so there had been a number of groups that had tried to lay claim to her. In addition to the Polaris Medal, the House Order of Hohenzollern was expected. The woman’s chivalrous Orders should have been expected as well. It was the Hanseatic Cities that were the big surprise. It seemed that because Sigi’s maternal grandfather was from Cologne, the City Parliament of Hamburg had voted to give her the Hanseatic Cross. Albrecht had told her to take advantage of any opportunity given to her, he doubted that she would ever get a chance for an EK1 so getting the equivalent from Hamburg would serve to advance her career in the future.

Now, Albrecht had to survive the reception that had followed the presentation. He had found a chair and was sitting next to Ilse who was dozing in the warm late spring sunlight. At the moment her agoraphobia was not presenting itself, Albrecht wasn’t sure why that was. He was just happy that it was something that was currently not on her plate, Ilse had enough troubles.

“She looks peaceful” The Admiral Schmidt said as he sat down to Albrecht’s left, “Enjoy that while it lasts. I’ve two daughters and three grandchildren, so I know that peace will be a rare commodity for you in the years ahead.”

The Admiral was enjoying retirement, there were rumors that he still scratched his itch when it came to snooping in on everyone’s business. The communications satellites that the European Space Agency was putting up had extended his reach far beyond what most people imagined it was while he was still the Commander in Chief of the Kaiserliche Marine. These days the Admiral wore a black suit with a white fedora and had a neatly trimmed goatee. Many joked that he looked like either a Mafia Don or the villain from a James Bond Movie. Albrecht knew the real score; the Admiral was the monster that a Mafia Don checked under his bed for at night and Ian Fleming’s imagination couldn’t quite encompass the likes of him.

“I was considering taking some time off for exactly that reason” Albrecht replied, “Even with the help that my parents will insist on giving us, Ilse will be grateful if I put her and the baby first.”

“That is laudable” The Admiral said, “I might be able to keep your position open for you for a few months anyway. I also think that you need to start thinking beyond leading the Raumfahrer program.”

“How so?”

“This pretty bauble will allow you to go as far as you want in the Fleet” The Admiral replied pointing to the Red Eagle that was pinned to Albrecht’s tunic, “Head of the Fleet Air Command for certain, higher if you are ambitious enough.”

“I don’t know who would be less pleased with that” Albrecht said, “Ilse or my father.”

“Your father, if I had to guess” The Admiral answered, though Albrecht could tell that his attention was diverted elsewhere.

“Your thoughts Sir?” Albrecht asked.

“I’ve been thinking” The Admiral replied, “All of us get a leg up, have someone do us a favor, so that we could reach our potential. What do you see there?”

Albrecht saw Sigi chatting with the Emperor, it was clear with how her hands were fidgeting that she was nervous. Yet the Emperor seemed very familiar with her and was relaxed.

“How much do you know about your Co-Pilot?” The Admiral asked, “I’m aware that you already know about her unknown paternity. How she secured an appointment to the Heer’s Berlin War Academy and as Aide to Gräfin von Mischner, later the Raumfahrer Training Center.”

“Her family has money” Albrecht replied, “And I assume that you had a great deal to do with a lot of that.”

“I didn’t” The Admiral said, “Sigi’s Grandfather was partial owner of a company that made mining equipment, eventually that became a component on Rheinmetall. The money is held in trust and she didn’t have access to it until very recently.”

“If it wasn’t you, then who was it?” Albrecht asked.

“Sigi’s father was an extremely powerful man” The Admiral said, “His son has helped his half-sister out from a distance for the last several years.”

“I see” Albrecht replied as he watched Sigi be led to where she was to be photographed with the Emperor. She had an awkward smile on her face.

“You’ll have a son or daughter within a couple of weeks” The Admiral said, “Take as a lesson that children always know more than you think.”

Albrecht heard that and wondered who Sigi’s half-brother was in order to have so much pull.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Eighty-Four


9th June 1958

Berlin

It had been a very long day as Kiki sat at the table in the hospital cafeteria with Doctor Berg though she didn’t feel like talking. Mostly in the past she had been able to keep a distance from hard medical cases because Kiki had not been close to the person involved. Despite being a bit underweight the baby was fine, it was Ilse who was the problem.

“There were complications, but your friend will eventually recover” Doctor Berg said trying to cheer Kiki up, “She’s an incredibly tough woman.”

Complications? That was an understatement, the medical procedures that had saved Ilse’s life had only been in existence for the last few years. Before that it was believed that once the heart stopped then it was final. Still, for the last two days it had been difficult watching what was happening with Ilse. Kiki had also had a rather harsh wake up call in the form of the behavior of Albrecht’s family. Ilse spoke in glowing terms about them, but when it came down to brass tacks Albrecht’s father seemed more concerned that the family line would continue than the survival of his daughter-in-law. It was the very privilege that Kiki had been unable to see for most of her life playing out before her. Kiki had seen that Albrecht had also picked up on what she had when he had given his father a look that suggested that he would have strangled his father.

“It just isn’t fair” Kiki said, “We get to take all the risks and what do we get out of it?”

“If by we, you mean what I think you are Kiki then you are not the first young woman to ask that question” Berg replied, “And human biology is an iron bitch, frequently driving us to do questionable things.”

“Oh” Kiki replied. She hadn’t anticipated as frank an answer as that.

“I think that the last couple years have given you an education of the sort that you never would have gotten in school” Berg said, “You should probably look to the relationship of the woman whose house you are living in has with her husband as an example to aspire to. When you are old enough, of course.”

Kiki understood that well enough, though that seemed extremely remote to her. She just knew that trying to get Ben to kiss her had been a frustrating experience that she would rather forget. Just for some odd reason there was a part of her that would not stop thinking about how he might have kissed her. That seemed totally absurd and anything more seemed impossible.

----------------------------------------------------------------

As much as Albrecht might have wanted to kick the Graf’s face in, he had settled on something that would send a stronger message. When he had discussed with Ilse possible names, Kristina for a girl was for certain after all the help that Kiki had given Ilse. A boy’s name was a bit more complicated. Ilse had suggested name Nikolaus though she said she knew it would never fly, but he had seen how it was what Ilse wanted. When he had seen Ilse in the Intensive Care Ward so weak that she couldn’t breath on her own after suffering from cardiac arrest just following the delivery, he had realized that the name was actually symbolic of Ilse’s own hopes for their son and he had added to what he hoped would be the right theme. Nikolaus Oswald Jacob Louis von Richthofen was what Albrecht had told the Registrar, much to his parent’s confusion. Katherine and Marcella had been delighted, Nikolaus had been the given name of Marcella’s late husband Klaus Böhler. Albrecht’s parents had just been confused.

Now, with everyone else having been removed from the ward, Albrecht thought about minutes earlier while looking at Nikolaus. A confused little bundle who belonged with his mother though that wasn’t happening yet. The Doctors had said that Ilse needed time to recover and was already showing improvement. Doctor Berg had bluntly told him that Ilse wouldn’t survive if this happened again. He had been prepared last year to disappoint his parents when they had believed that Ilse couldn’t have children. They would probably be disappointed anyway for different reasons.

As he looked at Ilse as she slept, she was hooked up to machinery that was almost identical to that used in the Space Program that pushed air into her lungs and monitored her heart. This was something that he couldn’t allow to happen again.


Wunsdorf-Zossen

All his life Christoph had been advised to not go borrowing trouble. The report on his desk struck him as being exactly that. When word had reached Wunsdorf about the Emperor’s impending nuptials someone had the bright idea of conducting a study of the implications of union between the German Empire and Austria. It was all detailed in the report. As a Naval Officer Christoph saw the merit in having Triste as a logistics port even if the KM didn’t want to risk having a squadron bottled up in the Adriatic Sea.

It was the big picture though, the thing that General von Holz had been encouraging Christoph to look at which was worrying. The Eastern Mediterranean could potentially be a bigger mess than it already was. There was already an HSF squadron in Constantinople that the British were looking at warily from Alexandria and Malta. Additional HSF resources in the Eastern Mediterranean mixed with the British continue to lose ground in the Far East and Africa might cause them to abandon the Suez Canal. That would mean that the primary means of water transport for them to Australia would be through Panama. Which happened to be controlled by the Americans. That had the potential to disrupt the strategic balance like few other things that Christoph had looked at.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Eighty-Five


25th June 1958

Tempelhof, Berlin

It was a pleasant afternoon when the hospital finally released Ilse to come home. Kiki was helping with the baby as Ilse was still weak. Having Albrecht on hand to help quite literally carry her up the stairs was a big help. The plan was that they would share Ilse’s room and Nikolaus would share the nursery with Kat’s two-year-old daughter Marie until a more permanent solution might be found. Having additional people around all the time was something that Kat didn’t seem to mind. As Kiki had learned, the Gräfin seemed to like being at the center of a big, chaotic household. There were however a few things that were not to be discussed around Graf von Richthofen and his wife, something that Albrecht had quietly done while Ilse was still in the hospital for example. Kiki had overheard Kat and Ilse discussing it, Ilse was cross that Albrecht had done it without talking to her. At the same time, she was happy that he cared so much about her that he would do such a thing. When they had noticed that Kiki was in the room, they had changed the subject.

“It seems to me that being an adult means endless discussions about unpleasant things” Kiki told Ben as they were standing around in the back garden because the house was so crowded, “And then having to do those things.”

“I don’t know” Ben replied, “There’ve got to be tradeoffs. Right? All the things that adults get to do?”

“Perhaps” Kiki said as she looked as the house and noticed that no one was looking out any of the windows.

Perhaps this was finally an opportunity to get that…

Someone a lot stronger than she was, grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides and she forgot everything that Kat had taught her to do in such a situation. “Got you” A low voice said in her ear. Ben was staring in shock, too surprised to do anything. “Teach you not to be a skinny little whippet.”

Only a few people called her that and Kiki absolutely hated it when they did. That was why she didn’t hesitate when she drove the heel of her shoe into Freddy’s instep. He deserved it. He let her go, which was good because Kat had taught her that if a man won’t let her go, then to go for his eyes and balls. Most men would cringe at the thought and consider that a low blow. However, Kat had told Kiki since she had started teaching her several years earlier that rules were a luxury for those already in a position of strength.

“That was a horrible thing to do!” Kiki yelled at Freddy as she spun around to face him.

“So was stomping on my foot” Freddy replied back as he winced in pain.

“Who is this?” Ben asked.

“My dope of a brother” Kiki said, “Ben, this is Freddy, Freddy this is Ben. Got that?”

Ben just stared wide eyed at Freddy, he had been aware of who she was for months but had never reacted this way.

“What are you two doing out here anyway?” Freddy asked.

“Nothing” Kiki replied, only to hear Ben say “Just talking” a bit too quickly. Freddy responded with a knowing smirk, completely misreading the situation and Kiki wished that she really had kicked him in the balls.

“I thought you were in Vietnam?” Kiki asked. She wanted to change the subject, if Freddy had waited a few minutes then Kiki might have gotten Ben to kiss her. Recently Kiki had spoken to Doctor Berg about her frustrations regarding Ben only to have her mentor point out to her that Ben was just as clueless about romance as she was. Freddy was the last person on Earth she wanted to discuss that with.

“I came back for Poppa getting hitched” Freddy said, “You’ve not forgotten that with everything else going on?”

“No” Kiki replied. She had been sitting for the exams that would determine if she would get her abitur at last or waiting until the end of the next school term. Now, she was impatiently waiting for the results. Between that and Ilse’s baby, her father’s impending marriage to that Austrian woman had mostly been on the back burner. With Freddy back that was obviously about to change.

“No matter” Freddy replied, “We get to attend that and then I guess you are off to the training depot.”

That caught Kiki short, her future plans had always seemed like they were just that. In the future. Now, they were her present and she saw Ben’s reaction to learning that. Why did everything always have to be such a complete mess?

----------------------------------------------------------------

Kat stood in the window in her bedroom holding Marie and watching. Marie was not taking no longer being the baby in the household very well and she had been particularly needy this afternoon. Kat had made a point in spending as much time with her as she could.

From the bedroom window Kat had seen how Kiki and Ben had been gravitating towards each other when they thought that no one was looking. She had also seen Freddy sneaking up on his sister. Few things were quite as effective at quelling teenage lust than the mere presence of an older, much bigger, brother. Kat had been debating whether or not she would have to go down into the back garden with a bucket of water.

Kiki didn’t know it yet, but she had passed the exams with flying colors, so there were no longer any obstacles between her and her professional aspirations. In another week Kiki would be off for the portion of her training where she would learn how to survive in the field. It would also be the first time in her life that Kiki had ever truly been on her own. In a couple weeks she would be back, but the training program for Field Medics was intense and went on for two years. After that, Kat knew that Kiki would probably be asked to continue her education and the workload would probably increase. It would be keeping her busy for the next several years. It was very likely that Ben would simply be forgotten because of that. Kat wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Eighty-Six


6th July 1958

Potsdam

To see the Sanssouci Palace today, one would hardly think that it was where the Emperor had mourned his late wife Kira in a bit of an uncharacteristic drunken episode. Kat had described how he had been depressed and it had taken Louis some time to get out of it. Now, on a warm summer evening it was decorated in full splendor as the Summer Residence was intended to be as the hours grew late and the party was wrapping up.

It was a small wedding by how these things were reckoned. It was Louis’ second marriage and Charlotte didn’t want a big production. The result was that it was only immediate family, close friends and people who Louis couldn’t afford to alienate politically. No more than a few hundred guests and the Press was strictly limited. There were rumors that the First Foot had been issued live ammunition for the event that had made sure that all but the most obnoxious photographers stayed very far away. Gräfin Katherine said that those rumors were garbage because the First Foot was always issued with live ammunition when guarding the Emperor and his family. Charlotte did however insist on having the religious ceremony a few days after civil portion of the marriage was concluded.

For the ceremony and the reception that followed, Douglas had gotten one of the few official Press passes for the event. It was something that couldn’t be had for love or money and the result was that he had taken hundreds of photographs over the course of the day. Which ones that got released to the public was entirely at the discretion of the Emperor and Imperial Court’s Press Liaison, Nancy Jensen. Certain things needed to be kept in mind, like photographs of Friedrich, Kristina and Michael not necessarily being for public consumption because of their various aspirations. There was also the fact that unless they asked him directly, he was not to take any pictures with Kristina and Benjamin. The same went for Friedrich and Suga-no-miya. All because they didn’t want to drive speculation about the love lives of the Royal children.

Benjamin had been reluctant to be Kiki’s escort to the wedding because he knew that tomorrow morning she was leaving, and it seemed like none of Kiki’s future plans included him. The result was that Ben already seemed to be drawing away to try to avoid getting hurt. Doug would have told him that doing that was a waste of time, though he doubted that Ben would listen. For Freddy and Suga it was different, the two of them had been friends since they were both children and probably knew each other as few others did. However, Freddy didn’t see it but every time the very proper Princess Suga looked at him one could practically see the words NEEDS IMPROVEMENT blinking over his head in bright red letters. Considering that Kat had once told Doug that she had a similar reaction to him, it was hardly a surprise.

There was Kiki and Ben that Kat told Doug to keep an eye out for tonight. Especially because Kat knew that Kiki would probably be so dramatic and naïve to think that tonight represented a sort of now or never opportunity. While Kat didn’t feel that Kiki would be so foolhardy as to do anything particularly stupid, Kat felt that he still needed to keep a close eye on her. Once the Court formally crowned Charlotte as the Empress Consort, Kat would be the new Obersthofmeisterin and Asia Lawniczak would replace her as the Mistress of the Keys. So, she was expected to be with Charlotte this evening. It was a task that he hardly felt up to, if there was anyone knew every nook and cranny of the Sanssouci Palace better than Kat herself it was Kiki.

That was why Doug was watching Kiki and Ben when they left the Hall that the reception was taking place in. Doug followed only a minute behind them. Fortunately, they didn’t try to hide. Instead they were standing just outside one of the palace’s many side entrances and were talking. Doug overheard Kiki talking with Ben about the woman who was now her step-mother, how she knew that she needed to give Charlotte a chance and was finding it difficult. Kiki also expressed her concern that she was making a series of poor decisions in leaving school early and pursuing a medical career.

After a few minutes, the two of them felt silent. Kat had said that Kiki had been trying to contrive a way to get Ben to kiss her for months. Doug saw that she had finally succeeded with only a few minutes to spare. Checking his watch, Doug cleared his throat, both Ben and Kiki jumped apart. It was all he could do not to laugh at how silly a response that was.

“It’s time to go home” Doug said, “If you could get Kiki’s coat Benjamin?”

Ben sheepishly walked off and Kiki fell into step with Doug as they walked towards the hall where they would give their farewells to the bride and groom.

“Why did you have to interrupt?” Kiki asked.

“Did I interrupt anything?” Doug asked in reply.

“I know you saw… what we were doing” Kiki said.

Doug just shrugged.

“It wasn’t a big deal” Kiki said defensively, “I personally don’t see what all the fuss is.”

Doug didn’t respond, he just watched Kiki as she put her fingers to her lips and had a vague smile on her face as they waited in line with the other well-wishers. Whatever you say, Doug thought to himself.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Eighty-Seven


4th August 1958

Stettin, Pomerania

“Time to wake up Princess” The ironic pejorative was hurdled at her with a great deal of disdain. Their Instructors seemed to delight in exploiting divisions within the cadre and calling any pretty girl “Princess” was like waving a red flag to a bull. There was the implication that she wasn’t pulling her own weight and relying on looks alone to get her through in making comments like that. It all wasn’t helped by the information in Kiki’s personnel file leaking out. It inadvertently revealing that she came from a background of wealth, privilege and because of her education, Kiki would be someone that the others in the cadre would have to take orders from in a few years. Word had also spread fast that she was Russian Orthodox, meaning that the baggage of being perceived as the descendant of an exile family as something else she had to contend with.

Kiki was already awake, but she didn’t want to open her eyes and face the day. Kat had done her best to prepare her for what had greeted her when she had arrived in this place. However, as Kiki had discovered over the last few weeks, she didn’t really have an understanding about what many of the things that Kat had told her had really meant. Always get cash up front, don’t depend on anyone else to follow through on anything, and most of all she had tried to impress upon Kiki that Kristina Fischer was basically nobody. Which meant that no one would care about any minor problems she might have. Kiki also wasn’t under constant protection for the first time in her life and she needed to be wary, particularly around male Officers and Senior Enlisted. She might have been able to discount that as Kat’s paranoia, except there were other women in the cadre who whispered that there were some men that they needed to avoid being alone with under any circumstances.

Prying her eyes open took considerable effort and it was to look at Vera, the woman who had just spoken to Kiki. Vera slept in the bunk below hers. A few years older than Kiki, Vera had been the somewhat harsh heap of reality that had been dumped on her head. She was completely unimpressed with anything that Kiki had done with her life up to this point and for her, just because they shared an accommodation that did not mean that they were friends.

All of that was perfectly in keeping with the lonely situation that she found herself in. Kiki was starting to understand how lucky she had been to have met Zella and Aurora when she had. As Kiki started the Monday morning ritual of stripping her bunk so that the sheets could be washed, she remembered the letter that she had received the week before from Aurora. Her and Zella were having a wonderful summer. They wished that Kiki was there and found it unfortunate that she wouldn’t be back before school started again. They were going back to the gymnasia. University, or this mess that Kiki had gotten herself, into wouldn’t be something that they would have to think about for a couple years.

Folding up the sheets and putting the woolen blanket in her locker. Kiki threw that onto her bed before getting dressed for the day. She fully expected that it would be as difficult as the days that had preceded it. While she was already going into the Medical Service, there were basic things that every Soldat was expected to be trained in. The problem for Kiki was that she was struggling to do the training in those things.

Gathering her the sheets and stuffing them in the cloth bag with the rest of her laundry, Kiki ran to catch up with the others who were on their way across the parade ground. They would turn in their laundry and get fresh clothes to wear for the week. As she joined the line, Kiki could hear some of the male recruits making catcalls at them. She really wished that they would shut up. The women’s barracks had to be kept isolated because of the attitudes that those cretins were expressing.

“Lighten up Princess” Vera said with her usual smirk, probably reading Kiki’s thoughts from looking at her face. “They are just joking around.”

“Was it a joke for Elke?” Kiki asked flatly. She wasn’t in the mood to hear excuses.

“That was different” Vera said, the tone of her voice suggesting that she knew that what she said was particularly lame. “She knew that she needed to be careful.”

Behind those catcalls was a suggestion that they were sexually available despite the rules against fraternization. Elke had broken those rules and had paid a heavy price for it. She had been removed from the barracks a week earlier. It was very noticeable that no effort had been made to figure out who she had broken those rules with.

“It’s always the same” Kiki replied as she handed her laundry bag to the man at the window.

The man handed her the fresh bag with a bland expression on his face. She knew that he was the Stabsgefreiter who supervised the depot’s laundry operation. Apparently, he had been where he was since just after the Soviet war ended. Every time that Kiki had exchanged the bags with him, he had been completely indifferent.

“What’s always the same?” Vera asked.

“The way we get treated and how we are expected to conduct ourselves” Kiki replied, “My mother told me that I needed to learn to conform to that garbage during the last argument we had.”

Vera seemed surprised by Kiki’s anger. Over the previous weeks she had done her best not to draw attention to herself.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Eighty-Eight


24th August 1958

Stettin, Pomerania

The night before had ended badly for Reiner Blum, he had gotten into an altercation with one of the Soldaten in one of the bars just outside the gates of the Training Depot. The exact details were a little fuzzy, but he knew that if he kept to a consistent story it would work out for him the way it had in the past.

Sitting in the infirmary with a dislocated, possibly broken arm and under observation because of testicular trauma gave Reiner time to think about the charges that he was pressing on that little skank. Assaulting a superior Officer for certain. He knew that it would come down to his word against hers. However, he was obviously the injured party here, so it would look worse for her.

She was a pretty girl with an obviously made up name, implying that she had enlisted under false pretenses. Only a generation removed from Russian exiles if the rumors were correct. Not the most popular one in her group either. Normally that would have made her easy for Reiner to seduce and she should have been happy that he was even interested in her. Instead she was one of those city girls who tried to come across as worldly and jaded, instead they just acted like they considered themselves better than everyone else. She had seen right through him when he had introduced himself and had avoided him after that. It was shortly after that when Reiner’s father-in-law, the Oberst who was the Commandant of the Stettin Training Depot had told him that he needed to turn his attention elsewhere. The Commandant knew that Fischer was a fake name but that was irrelevant because Reiner was going to avoid the girl.

He had listened and had shifted his attention to a different girl. Elke had been fun, but she had needed to be transferred elsewhere when the Commandant had found out about her. The result was Reiner once again getting an earful about how his lack of discretion and inability to keep it in his pants came a hair’s breadth away from causing a scandal. His father-in-law said that he made it go away for the sake of his daughter, as if Reiner needed to be reminded of his wife, a woman who could have had her picture next to the dictionary definition of boring.

He had tried his usual come-ons with Kristina, but it was only a couple weeks from the completion of the current training cycle. When he had promised to help ease her way through training, she had asked him to leave her alone. Admittedly, he had not taken her spurning him well but that didn’t give her the right to fold his arm in a direction it wasn’t meant to go and kicking him in the balls so hard that the Doctors were waiting to see if he needed surgery to fix the swelling. They were waiting to see the X-Ray to let them know how much damage had been done to his arm.

“Hauptmann Blum” One of the nurses said, “Someone to see you.”

He had nothing else to do, so he just shrugged.

“Good afternoon, Herr Blum, you can call me Frau von Mischner” The woman said as she entered the room, “I was sent by the High Command to investigate this unfortunate matter and to let you know that we are taking it very seriously.”

She was far older than Reiner was attracted to, he much preferred the teenaged recruits who were far less self-assured. Instead, she was in her late thirties, red hair and he had a nagging feeling of familiarity, like if he should know who she was.

“Glad to hear it” Reiner said trying to be as charming as possible. He had been subjected to investigations before and knew that he only needed to wait until contradictory information and official impatience caused the problem to go away. Reiner wasn’t stupid, he knew that almost all the girls who came here were doing so because they were otherwise had nowhere else to go and often had far more to hide from an official enquiry than he did. They were always lying about something.

“Before I came here, I did speak with Soldat Fischer” Frau von Mischner said as she removed a notebook from the satchel bag that she was carrying. “Her version of events is different from yours. Are you still saying you were attacked?”

“You do know that she enlisted under a false name and in my experience is not creditable” Reiner said. Frau von Mischner didn’t react to that, instead she flipped through the notebook.

“What about the two witnesses who back up her story?” Frau von Mischner asked in reply, “Who both said that after she rebuffed your advances, you tried to shove your hand up her shirt and that is how you ended up with the injury to your arm?”

“You’ll find that there is a certain sort of low cunning among these young women” Reiner answered, “You’ll need to be careful now that they’ve had time to get their stories straight. I’ve experience in these matters.”

That detail came back to him, she had her shirt tucked in and it had been impossible to get out of the way before she had assaulted him. It was all in good fun, if she wasn’t into it then that was on her.

“I see” Frau von Mischner said writing down something in the notebook, “Tell me more about this experience of yours.”

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Eighty-Nine


5th September 1958

Stettin, Pomerania

“Your… father is here” Vera said nervously.

Kiki winced whenever Vera spoke to her these days. That jackass Reiner Blum had caused her real name to be exposed on top of the rest of the things that he was getting nailed to the wall over. Oddly, no one dared to call her “Princess” anymore. Kat had said that she wished that there could have been another way, but Kat would not have allowed Kiki’s career to be destroyed because she had protected herself. There was also the aspect of there being two of Kat’s agents being in the room, two of the infamous Russian Sisters who were personally loyal to Kat herself and were seemingly everywhere at that. It was ironic to think that she had inadvertently saved his life after Blum had cornered her in the bar, but that was exactly what Kiki had done. The Russian Sisters would have dragged Blum into the alley, cut his throat and thrown him down the nearest storm drain. Kiki hadn’t been aware that they were even there, but she realized that there was no way that Kat would have allowed her to go out into the world without protection of some kind.

As it was, Kat had come through the Stettin Training Depot like a hurricane full of razor blades. It was logical that it would encompass larger circles as time went on. Few things angered Kat more than men took advantage or mistreated women that they were in a position of power over. These days however, she had learned to play the very system that might have protected them to destroy those deserving.

The problem for Kiki was that Kat had been looking for someone to make an example of for a long time and Reiner Blum was perfect. The man was a rake who had left a trail of destruction behind him. Kiki had heard the lengthy list of charges that were suddenly being substantiated. The extensive allegations of adultery, coercion and nonsupport had been seized upon by the solicitor that Blum’s wife had hired, so he was now looking at divorce on top of court-martial. According to Kat, Blum was busily incriminating himself further while selling out anyone he could in an effort to save himself. While nothing he had done quite merited a firing squad, Blum was facing loss of rank, an extremely long prison sentence and finally getting cashiered at the end of it. Kiki had realized that Kat was enjoying playing with Blum as she saw to it that he buried himself further. Kat also mentioned that she had given the story to her friend Maria at the Berliner Tageblatt. That had been when Kiki realized too late that Kat had found another one of her crusades. Every few years Kat felt the need to figuratively blow up some major institution. This time it was the dark-side of the hypermasculine culture that the military fostered. Of course, Kat had to contend with that her entire career. So, she would have been looking for an opportunity like this for ages, Kiki had given it to her all nice and gift wrapped.

For Kiki herself, she had needed to stay in the barracks as she watched as word had rapidly spread about who she really was over the last week and a half. The odd stares and whispered words when she passed by. The only time that anyone had said anything directly to her on the subject had been when Vera had asked her “Why did you choose to be here, to go through this?” Kiki didn’t have an answer to that question, not one that Vera would except anyway. She had wanted to feel like she had earned her place in the world. Kiki knew full well that she could have used her name to snooze her way through the last two years at the gymnasia and several years at university. She could still have gotten exactly what she wanted and that would have been much easier. Only it would have taken longer. Kiki certainly wouldn’t have had some womanizing twit daring to paw at her if she was playing the role of Imperial Princess.

Looking in the full-length mirror, that was on one end of her bay in the barracks, Kiki smoothed out the grey-blue uniform tunic that she was wearing. Today she wasn’t wearing the generic camouflage field uniform as she had for several weeks prior but the dress uniform of the Medical Service. It something that she had earned the right to wear. One last inspection and review, then it would be home to spend two years training to be a field medic. The unexpected presence of Emperor Louis Ferdinand would probably have the commanding officers in a frenzy after the events of the prior weeks.

Walking out of the barracks, Kiki saw several men from the first foot keeping a loose perimeter around her father and Charlotte. Ben had told her that she needed to give her stepmother a chance, it was something that was proving a bit difficult for her. Kiki had seen in the newspapers that her father and his new bride had taken an extended honeymoon around the world. A combination of lover’s journey and diplomatic trip. Seeing photographs of them on a tropical beach after spending an entire day out in the weather that the Baltic Coast was known for made it hard not to feel resentful.

“What you are doing is wonderful” Charlotte said as Kiki approached. She made it hard to hate her when she said things like that.

However, it was when her father hugged her that he whispered, “Your mother would have hated this, but I’ve a different perspective. I think it’s something you needed to do.”

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Ninety


18th September 1958

Kleinberg, Silesia

It was a warm autumn afternoon as Bernhard Grzimek walked up the trail through the dense forest. Working as the Director of the Berlin Zoo, living and working in the city made actual nature seem very remote. Escaping to the region that was his childhood home a few times a year was exactly what he needed. As much as he enjoyed a walk in the woods, today he had a task to complete that made it somewhat less enjoyable. He was reminded of that as he heard the sharp crack of a rifle shot in the distance.

Having originally come from Neisse practically made them neighbors in people’s minds. The truth was that Bernhard had avoided Graf von Richthofen because their personal philosophies were very different, and he didn’t want to get into a pointless argument. While the Graf’s desire to preserve nature was laudable from Bernhard’s perspective, the detail that the Graf did it because he always wanted a place to go hunting was not. The Graf’s daughter, Helene was a bit different. She was always willing to listen and had even gone so far as to secure extra funding for the International Zoological Society’s work within Germany.

However, some things could not be avoided. The von Richthofen family was one of the leading proponents of preserving the forests of Silesia, Slovakia, Bohemia and Poland. The Zoological Society wanted to coordinate those efforts and because Bernhard lived less than an hour’s drive from the Richthofen estate he got to be the one to meet with the Graf. Anyone paying attention would have noticed that the conservation efforts that the Graf engaged in served to massively expand the acreage of the family estate. Rumor was that the Graf had done extremely well with his investments in Daimler Benz, Focke-Wulf and Junkers. Buying land when flush was one of the mechanisms that that wealthy families used to remain wealthy. That the land in question had been depopulated by the Second World War and they had been able to acquire it at substantially depressed prices shouldn’t have been lost on anyone either.

The joke went that to find the Graf one only needed to go onto his property and follow the sound of gunfire. That was a slight exaggeration, but there was a bit of truth in that today. At the age of sixty-six the Graf was still vigorous man as evidenced by him taking the time to track down and shoot a feral hog that was on his property.

“Escaped farm stock” The Graf said, “They’re dangerous and we’ve been having problems with them for years. Think we need to save them for your zoo?”

With that the Graf stalked off, leaving Bernhard with a small group of the foresters he employed as well as a woman and an eleven year-old-boy. He recognized the woman as Ilse, the Graf’s daughter-in-law. The boy was unfamiliar.

Bernhard could see that the Graf had placed a single shot just behind the shoulder of the hog. He wasn’t a hunter but knew enough about anatomy to see that the shot that had taken the animal down had been a good one.

“Never mind him” Ilse said, “He’s been it a bit of a mood since Bert got notified that he had received a promotion yesterday.”

Bernhard was hardly surprised. The Graf was known to be the fiercely competitive sort. Getting exceeded by his son would put him off. Anyone who hadn’t been living under a rock for the last few years knew what Albrecht von Richthofen had been doing. The Graf might have been the most famous pilot to emerge from the First World War, his son was shaping to be the most famous pilot, period.

“What are you doing out here?” Bernhard asked Ilse.

“For the necropsy” Ilse said, “Finding out what they have been eating is useful if we are going to control their numbers. I worked on this for a while a few years ago, but now have time again.”

Bernhard remembered seeing the birth announcement of Ilse having a son with Albrecht. “You’re on maternity leave?” He asked.

“Yes” Ilse replied, “The University doesn’t expect me back until January at the earliest.”

“Aren’t you the man on the television?” The boy asked, “The one with the animals?”

Bernhard turned his attention to the boy. He was not quite to adolescence, however the boy’s hands and feet suggested that he would be a tall man in a few years. Something about the shape of his face and jawline also suggested who he was.

“Yes, yes” Bernhard replied to the boy, “And you must be one of the Graf’s grandsons.”

“He is Helene’s boy Manfred” Ilse said, “His Opa has been teaching him about this forest over the last several months.”

Bernhard almost burst out laughing at that. Graf Manfred von Richthofen, who had spent a lifetime as a paragon of the Prussian Officer Class, being someone’s Opa was logical enough. It was just difficult to picture.

“Nikolaus is back at the house with his Poppa and Oma” Ilse said with a great deal of relish, “I needed a bit of quiet for a few hours, out here the only noise is the wind in the trees and the Graf shooting.”

Bernhard remembered what it was like to have a newborn in the house. Ilse probably agreed to come out here because she had desperately needed a break. Digging through pig guts was probably a step up.

“How would you recommend approaching the Graf?” Bernhard asked, “I was asked to see if I could get his plans for regional preservation.”

“Just don’t pick a fight today” Ilse replied, “He would probably be more than willing to debate your differences on any other day. He does respect your perspective, even if he doesn’t share it. He’ll be more than happy to brag about his plans for the coming year once he’s blown off some steam.”

So, the Graf’s daughter-in-law knew him well. While it was expected that the Graf would probably live another thirty years out of spite, it was figured that the duties of minding the family lands would fall onto the younger generation. Albrecht was a career Naval Officer, that meant that it would probably be Ilse who would be the primary manager after the Graf was no longer able to do it himself. Bernhard figured that he would need to suggest to the Zoological Society develop a closer relationship with her.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Ninety-One


4th October 1958

Mitte, Berlin

Riding through the center of Berlin in the middle of the night at reckless speeds on her motorcycle was something that Zella had often told herself that she needed to do far less of. She also told herself that she needed to keep better track of time so she wouldn’t need to be so reckless to get home before curfew at midnight. Her mother had said that if she broke curfew then she would be not allowed to go out at all. Being allowed to stay out until midnight Saturdays was only because the headlining bands seldom took to the stage before nine, Zella had been told that she would only be allowed that privilege because she had proven she could handle it. The instant she proved she couldn’t she would lose it.

Zella had gone to see a favorite band of hers at the V8 Club and had been enjoying herself right up until she had noticed the clock over the bar, and it was later than she had thought. Hopefully, the police wouldn’t stop her again. The last time that had happened, Zella’s mother had said that her motorcycle would go away forever, she needed to grow up and stop acting like her father. It wasn’t like if the Ducati was one of her father’s BMW motorcycles, those could top a 160 Km/h, something that her father did with some regularity. The speeds just creep up, he said.

The nightclub was her preferred hangout, mostly because of the deal she had with John Elis. No matter what drinks men ordered on her behalf, John or any of his bartenders would only give her club soda with a lime twist, the bouncers would also swiftly happen to anyone who gave her trouble. It enabled her to see her favorite bands in relative safety, which was something she was grateful for. She suspected that John was reporting back to her father but couldn’t prove it. The American had been a fixture in Berlin for decades, someone like that couldn’t operate in the manner that he did without friends in both high and low places.

Taking a corner with practiced ease, Zella entered one of the long straightaways and opened up the throttle. The one-cylinder engine was somewhat anemic, but it was still capable of half-way decent acceleration.

She wished that she had been able to have Kiki or Aurora with her tonight. They had no trouble keeping track of time. Besides the issues that Kiki had being out in public, both her friends had reached the same conclusions for differing reasons and didn’t have time for something as frivolous as music these days. Aurora figured that no one was going to hand her anything in her life because of who she was. Kiki thought that everyone would assume that she had been handed everything on a silver platter for the same reason. The result was that both of them were completely focused on schoolwork, Kiki had even found a way to have already gotten into University. Hell, when Kiki had returned from Stettin it had been like if she was on a completely different wavelength…

Tonight, she had talked to one of the lead guitarist and bass player from one of the bands that had played at the V8 Club. Surprisingly, the members of the Moondogs were Zella’s age. It had been fun. The guitarist had been shy while the bass player was gregarious. They had talked about how this was the first time they had left England and the Graphic Arts program they were attending when they were in school. They had taken a couple days off school to play in Berlin, one of those easier to ask forgiveness than permission deals. Zella knew exactly how that worked. That Arts program they were taking sounded interesting, very different from the Classical Arts program that she had been taking. Just talking to them had been fun, so Zella had lost track of time like she always did…

With that Zella snapped her focus back to the road ahead of her. How many times had her father warned her that allowing her attention to drift was a potentially fatal mistake? It was good advice. Though these streets were empty at this hour, there were still plenty of dangers lurking around. Taking another corner, Zella knew that she was only a kilometer from home. If Zella was lucky her mother would have fallen asleep already. However, it being a Saturday night the odds were heavily in favor that her mother would be working on one of her own personal projects, so Zella’s mother would be up until one or two o’clock in the morning. Well after Zella’s midnight curfew. One minute after midnight and she would get an earful. Her mother hearing the racing engine approaching would also get her an earful, so Zella eased back on the throttle, dropping her speed.

It was then that the man stepped into light of the headlight, too close for Zella to even process that he was there before she struck him. An instant later she was on the ground skidding. It was ironic that the clothes that she wore while riding the motorcycle took the brunt of the impact, she liked wearing the leather jacket because it made her feel powerful, the heavy cloth of her trousers and boots were useful for different reasons. Bruised but not very scraped up, Zella supposed that dropping the speed had been the right call. She could see that the Ducati was a mess, something that she would never be able to explain. Taking her helmet off she saw the body of the man was lying face down in the road.

He wasn’t moving, suddenly the consequences of breaking curfew seemed trite. Limping up to the man, looked at him unsure what to do. A car turned onto the street and Zella saw a horrific injury that could not have been inflicted by being hit by her…

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Ninety-Two


5th October 1958

Mitte, Berlin

The flashing lights of the emergency vehicles were more than enough to let Kat know that something out of the ordinary was going on. She saw a battered Zella sitting in the open door of an ambulance with Maria. Kat couldn’t help but notice that even in the state that she currently was in, Zella was looking at the motorcycles of the Traffic Police with envy. Kat hoped that she never changed. Emil was talking to Sven Werth, they had been the ones who had sent for her.

“Glad you came” Emil said, “We need your opinion on this.”

“I don’t see what I can do regarding traffic accidents” Kat replied, “Or why Sven is here. How is this a Federal matter?”

“I don’t know what you might have heard” Werth replied, “But this wasn’t just a traffic accident and you’ll see why I’m here. Show her.”

With that one of the uniformed Traffic Officers lifted the tarp that was covering the body. Kat saw in the light from the portable floodlights that it was Henning Krause, her father’s lackey, and that someone had cut his throat.

“We think that he managed to stagger out into the street after someone did that to him” Sven said, “There was a report of a fight on the sidewalk in front of a house on this block in the minutes before he got hit.”

“I’m not surprised that this is where Henning ended up” Kat replied, “He was a minor player. After my father died, the rail workers cleaned house and he wasn’t regarded as enough of a threat to give the boot to. Still though, he had his thumb in several pies.”

Kat could now see why Sven was here, it also explained her presence. Anytime one of her father’s people turned up dead, there was a good chance that a power struggle was happening in the shadows. She might have been tempted to say that the animals were eating each other, but ordinary people tended to get hurt if they got caught in it. This time it was Zella who had blundered into what could turn out to be a massive can of worms.

“Ordinarily we might have declared this a service to the community and not exactly have made it a priority” Sven said, “But this time Markgraf von Holz’s daughter is involved.”

Kat nodded. That meant that the powers that be inside the Federal and State Police would be kicking over every rock they could until someone paid a price for this. Even without Zella’s personal connections, she was exactly the sort of person that they were supposed to protect.


Paris, France

“Now that you’ve made it into orbit, I think that you’ll find it is only a matter of time until Jackie finds a way to top that, somehow” Jacqueline Auriol said, “Though I don’t see how she’ll do it this time, not yet anyway.”

The rivalry between the French Aviatrix and her American counterpart, Jackie Cochran, was famous. The two of them had been beating each other’s speed and altitude records again and again over the last decade. Sigi had been sent to France as part of the publicity surrounding the mission of the European Space Agency. Drumming up support from the governments involved. Sitting around the hotel room all day Sunday had not appealed to Sigi, so she had accepted the breakfast invitation from Jacqueline Auriol. Once there Sigi had learned that she was currently the toast of the small world of women in aviation, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing as she was discovering. There were many who saw her accomplishment as a direct challenge.

“Of course, Amelia is trying to figure out how to convince you to come to New York” Jacqueline said, “I told that she just ought to send you an invitation.”

“Did she send it?” Sigi asked.

“She said that she had” Jacqueline replied, “But you aren’t the easiest one to get a hold of these days.”

That was fair enough. Sigi had been catapulted into international fame by being the first woman in space. Any invitation that Amelia Earhart may have sent would have been lost in a blizzard of similar correspondence that she had simply lacked the resources to sort through.

“I’ll need to get back to her then” Sigi said, a bit awkwardly.

“I think she’ll like that” Jacqueline said, then she looked at Sigi with a wistful smile. “What was it like?”

“What exactly?” Sigi asked in reply.

“All of it” Jacqueline replied, “Being launched into outer space, looking down on the world.”

“It was incredible” Sigi said, “For the first couple days, then Bert started fretting over his wife. Getting her sister chewing him out over radio put a bit of a pall over things.”

“Men and their theatrics” Jacquelin said, “And they say we’re the emotional ones.”

“I hear that sometimes” Sigi said, “But usually they fall all over themselves to be polite whenever I enter the room.”

“You have no idea how lucky you are. I don’t know if you heard but there is a group of women that have been trying to get in on the Mercury program in America. The administration at NASA showed them the door a few days before you launched from Vietnam. It really is egg on those chauvinist’s faces.”

Sigi had been unaware of that. It seemed odd to her, the results from her foray into space had been considered extremely encouraging. There were a few promising female candidates in the Raumfahrer program who seemed like a natural fit. Sigi couldn’t imagine what it would look like without them. Going back to how it had been before Sigi had gotten through the program. The Admiral, von Braun and the rest of the them in Cam Ranh, total unchecked id. Who would be crazy enough to want that?

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Ninety-Three


7th October 1958

Mitte, Berlin

Looking at the photographs, Emil saw that Zella was laughing and smiling as she flirted with a couple of the boys in the in the Rock & Roll band that she had gone to see the previous Saturday night. The troubling aspect was that Zella looked a lot happier in the photographs than she had in a long time, at home anyway.

While the investigation had uncovered no connection between Zella and the man who had stumbled in front of her on her motorcycle, it had uncovered a thing or three about Zella herself.

The reason why the police had been on the scene so fast was because one patrol car was responding to the fight that had been reported and the other had been about to pull Zella over for reckless driving. While the motorcycle could be repaired, Maria was not inclined to pay for it. And she had told Emil that he wasn’t going to give her the money either or help Zella make those repairs in the garage. If Zella wanted her motorcycle back, she would have to come up with the money on her own. As a student with no real skillset, even if Zella found a place that would give her a job it would take her a long time to raise that sort of money. Emil knew that Maria was doing that on purpose, every time Zella walked past the garage, she saw the Ducati scraped up, missing parts and the broken chain on the floor. It was supposed to remind her of the consequences of being irresponsible.

The investigation had also backtracked Zella’s movements to the V8 Club. Aside from a few people in the BND and obviously Emil himself, no one knew that John Elis kept careful tabs on who entered his nightclub, the mirror that ran the length of the back of the room was one-way glass. If someone pinged John’s well-honed instinct for self-preservation he would step into the back room and make further plans. The camera was just one of his tools. Because Emil was one of only three people in Germany who knew John’s real name, the American was more than happy to keep tabs on who Zella spoke with in order to stay in Emil’s good graces. Admiral von Schmidt had told Emil that explosive little secret when he retired, the other person was the Admiral’s daughter Sarah. She basically managed the day to day operations of the club these days and apparently had secrets of her own that she didn’t want out in circulation.

“Their names are Paul and George, both are relatively harmless” John said, “The other guitarist in the band is a bit of a bastard. He fancies himself the brooding artist type. If your girl had been talking to him, I would have had sorted that out. The drummer has a girlfriend and they were all over each other in one of the booths, I did have to sort that out.”

Emil did find that amusing. John did have rules, a big one was that the only show was the one on the stage.

“What else do you know about these people?” Emil asked.

“Up and coming band out of England, which is a nice way of saying they were playing in a garage last week. Johnny and the Moondogs originally, now just the Moondogs” John replied, “They are still perfecting their sound. They keep trying to sound like Elvis Presley’s band and it comes off like a parody act.”

“I take it that their singer doesn’t have that sort of voice?” Emil asked.

“Singers, plural and no” John answered, “When they try to sing in harmony in more of a Pop based sound, they aren’t half bad.”

“Any idea what they were talking about after the show?”

“Art and themselves, mostly” John replied, “Young men far from home, and a pretty girl willing to listen to them. They were just lucky that Zella wasn’t running a con on them, because she could have cleaned them out and they would have thanked her for it.”

John just shrugged as if to say; What can you do?

Emil wasn’t exactly thrilled to hear that. All of Maria’s complaints lately about Zella seemed to revolve around the idea that she was too much like Emil for comfort. He remembered his own behavior towards women before he had met Maria. While he had never “Had a girl in every port” the way that Lang had used to joke before Emil would remind him that he wasn’t in the Navy. Emil didn’t want to think about what might happen if Zella ever moved in that direction.

“How is Zella doing?” John asked, “I heard about what happened, that’s a rough thing to have happen to anyone and she’s a good kid.”

“She’ll be fine” Emil said, knowing that currently Zella was more upset by her current predicament at home as opposed to what had happened a few days earlier.

“Glad to hear” John replied.

Something that had happened before the present mess was that Zella had mentioned that she had felt isolated from her friends because they were moving ahead with their lives. Perhaps it would be a good idea if Zella followed her friends' example. Though exactly how to get her to do that was something he wasn’t sure how to accomplish.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Ninety-Four


20th October 1958

Fort Drum, New York

Jonny had to wonder what the Hell they were smoking in the Pentagon. It had taken them six years to finally get around to acknowledging what the entire Army had known since Mexico. The M-9 that had never really replaced the M-1 Garand was ill suited for any conflict that the Army might find itself in in the future. The proposed replacement, the Stoner rifle that they were evaluating was what had Jonny wondering about the inebriated state the Brass were currently in. The name of the rifle certainly was in keeping with that theme. He might have thought that it was a joke except Eugene Stoner had called the CO’s office when Jonny had been there. Stoner had been extremely enthusiastic about the rifle and had wanted to know what the opinion of a real Green Beret regarding it. The concern was that Congressional Committees and the Army itself would find a way to wreck the thing now that they had a prototype.

In the wake of the Mexican War, reports of what the Mauser G44 could do had circulated widely. Many had been skeptical of the German rifle with the odd metric caliber as well as the grey synthetic stock and handguard. The damned thing had outperformed the M-9s and Jonny didn’t even want to think about the weight of fire that the Krauts had poured onto anything stupid enough to get in their way. By the end of the campaign Jonny had found himself envying them. Everyone had been expecting that bureaucratic inertia would result in an updated M-9. Instead the SR-12, the Stoner prototypes had been delivered. The new rifle made liberal use of aluminum and plastic, causing many to wonder if it was really a toy or a prop stolen from the set of a Buck Rogers movie. The internal workings, with a gas piston and a rotating bolt were almost familiar once one got past how different they looked. Supposedly the cartridge was derived from one that was popular with target shooters Remington triple duce necked up to .243. Jonny wasn’t exactly sure if that was true, but he was more than happy to let those who were far more interested than he was in matters like that argue about it.

The rifle was only the most visible example of how someone had finally lit a fire under the Procurement Officers butts. When Jonny had discussed it with Gloria, she had been pleased as can be to remind him that it was a girl with a tongue-twister of a name who had done it. That was true enough. It was also a reminder to Jonny just how she saw the world, she was happy about the accomplishments of a particular half of the population regardless of what they happened to come from. Jonny had replied that it was all well and good, but it missed the more important story. The events that Gloria had been referring to had happened the previous spring. The story that had come to light in more recent weeks was a bit more important from Jonny’s perspective. The photographs of a bespectacled girl with unruly hair wearing white surgical scrubs that seemed to be the big human-interest story around the world.

In Jonny’s humble opinion, Kaiser Lou was probably the most conniving, low-down, slippery son-of-a-bitch ever to occupy the office he held and that was an extremely high bar to get over. Jonny had once met the man himself. Lou liked to come across as a nice guy, talking about cars and beer, but Jonny could tell that it was really wheels within wheels with him.

Now the three eldest of the Kaiser’s children had joined the military. The Crown Prince to the Engineers, the next youngest to the Panzer Corps and the oldest daughter to the Medical Service that Germany had. As if Jonny needed more proof of what he thought. Gloria had just laughed at that. Heaven forbid that people born into wealth and privilege give back to society, is what she had said. Clearly, she hadn’t gotten what Jonny was getting at. The whole notion of having a King, Princes and Princesses seemed like something from a Disney fantasy. It was ironic that they showed with their behavior that they didn’t fall into the clichés about out of touch, clueless royalty, while the people who surrounded Parker’s parents seemed to fit it to a T. There had to be a larger game afoot, and Jonny figured that he probably wouldn't like it when the big picture became visible.

The sound of another volley of rifle fire interrupted Jonny’s thoughts. The new rifle sounded different than the old 30-06 Garand, sharper and perhaps tinnier. It was hard to describe exactly how, just different.

“What do you think?” Parker asked as Jonny walked into the shed on the edge of the shooting range. The only furniture was a table and a few chairs. Sitting on the table was the B.A.R. that had been modified to shoot the new cartridge.

“I think that is a waste of time” Jonny replied, “They told us that it is only for a feasibility study. We’re supposed to get a new machine gun sometime in the future.”

Parker just smirked at that. The rapid pace which 1st SFG needed to conduct operations often resulted in improvised equipment and field expedient temporary solutions had a way of becoming doctrine. Jonny knew even as he said it that this would probably be true until someone started to manufacture a version of what he was looking at.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

.
Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Ninety-Five


26th October 1958

Tempelhof, Berlin

Kiki wasn’t interested in even learning the name of the latest Aide that had been appointed to help out Kat. He didn’t seem very interested in the work that Kat was doing, instead he was just going through the motions of what was expected of him. Doctor Berg had said that in her career Kiki would encounter many who seemed destined for mediocre obscurity at best and to make sure she wasn’t one of them. Kat’s present Aide fit that description. For her though, the really amusing part was that he had moved into Kiki’s old room after it was decided that she would live in one of the University’s dormitories. Her first thought was that it had probably come as a rude shock to Ben and he probably spent a whole lot less time on the roof of his parent’s house these days. Kiki wondered if it was wrong that she found it funny imagining how that must have played out.

Working directly for Kiki’s father, Kat had been put in charge of rooting out the sort of men who might commit sexual assault in the military. Personally, Kiki thought that was bit of a mistake on her father’s part. This was one of the few issues where no one in their right mind thought for an instant that she could be objective. At the same time as Kiki had found with Reiner Blum, Kat didn’t just happen to someone. Kat had explained to her that she did have a process and she didn’t just randomly appear on someone’s doorstep, they did something to bring her there. The truly shocking detail for Kiki wasn’t the number of complaints, but who was making them. Kiki would have assumed that it would have been an issue for those like her, except they lacked the knowledge and ability to effectively fight back. Kat had said that she was wrong about that and while she hadn’t said that Kiki was still rather naïve in these matters, Kiki had realized that she probably was. Instead, Kat had pointed out that it largely had to do with power. Sex and gender were secondary considerations for the sort of abusers she was presently hunting.

All of that was of secondary concern to Kiki. It was Sunday afternoon and she had found herself with a large amount of material to study. She had made the mistake of complaining to Kat about it and Kat had been perfectly understanding, just not in a way that Kiki would have liked. As Kat saw it, if she still had enough time to complain then she needed some additional responsibilities. The one of the nannies, Noella had the day off and the other one, Jaslyn had needed to handle something of an emergency. Kat was going out with Helene, Gerta, Ilse and Nancy to have lunch. The men couldn’t exactly be expected, or depended on, to mind the children so Kiki had been dragooned into that role. It just turned out to be far more involved than she had first realized.

The older children were down in the back garden playing, Manny, Jo and Suse, the three oldest, were happy to lead them in whatever game they were playing. Mostly just running around and yelling at each other. Kiki had however been stuck with what Petia referred as the best sort of contraception that a foolish girl like her could get. While the men watched Football on television in the parlor, Kiki was minding the three youngest of the children in the library. Niko was relatively easy. He had just been fed, so he was sleeping but Kiki was dreading what would happen when he woke up. Marie and Sebastian were both toddlers, so keeping them out of trouble was proving to be particularly difficult.

Marie, Kat’s youngest daughter and closest in appearance to Kat herself could hear the men in the parlor, she obviously wanted to be in there. Unfortunately, from her perspective, a wooden gate was across the doorway to keep her out of the hallway so Marie wouldn’t go into the parlor, office or the particular danger of the stairs down to the kitchen and dining room. Kiki had to stop her from trying to climb over the gate. While Kiki was doing that Sabastian started pulling books off the shelves. Suddenly she was glad that the cabinet that the record player/radio was in closed up and most of the more fragile objects in the room were high up and out of reach.

“No” Kiki said sharply to Sabastian. He just stared at her as if she were speaking a foreign language.

It took a few minutes, but Kiki managed to get Marie and Sebastian focused on their toys again. Only to have the sound of cheering come from the parlor which started the whole cycle over again, except Nikolaus woke up and started crying this time. As Kiki picked up Niko and tried to get him to calm down, she looked forlornly at the stack of books sitting on the table that she was never going to get a chance to get to at this rate. Kiki caught a whiff of an odor that revealed that Niko needed to be changed and Petia’s cynical joke came back to her.

“Is everything well in here?” Kiki heard a voice ask tentatively. She looked and saw that it was Jaslyn, at that moment she was one of the most beautiful things that Kiki had ever seen. She was a child care specialist who had been hired by Albrecht’s parents when Niko had been born. Kiki was more than happy to let her deal with this.

“Better now” Kiki replied.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Ninety-Six


4th November 1958

Posen, Germany

The builders of the Luftpanzer V “Skunk” had finally done what they had been promising to do for the last four years, giving them a model with a 30mm autocannon. It had only taken those like Olli asking every single time someone from the factory had come around and they had done what they should have done from the beginning, but only after a lot of work had been done to make the original Skunks effective in the field. They had balanced out the Panzer Recon Regiment with an equal number of the new cannon Skunks with older models that had the 84mm recoilless rifle. The anti-armor capabilities of the 84mm wasn’t something that they wanted to dispense with. As a part of their treaty obligations and because MAN AG was hoping to sell vehicles to other nations, they had a number of Australian and Kiwi observers watching todays exercise. The Australian Army had been using the old Luftpanzer I for the last couple decades and were looking at the Luftpanzer V as a possible replacement. Today it was Olli’s job to act as a guide to the men who would be advising those back in their respective countries as to whether or not to license the vehicles.

Even by Olli’s jaded standards, the 30mm with the electrically driven revolving chamber was a rather spectacular with its ability to throw a large number of explosive shells onto a target.

“Impressive” Brigadier Smyth said as he looked through his binoculars. He was the Commanding Officer of the Australian 3rd Cavalry Brigade. Olli had heard stories about the Australian Light Horse Regiments in the Near East, how they had conducted what would probably be the last massed cavalry charge at Beersheba. These days they used tracked and four-wheel drive vehicles far more than horses, but they were still considered the same units in spirit. It had never occurred to Olli that he was a part of an equivalent unit, but he was. With that, two of the Skunks with the 84mm launched a volley of shells to cover the Platoon’s retreat. A dozen 84mm shells tore up the ground, throwing a large amount of mud and dirt clods into the air.

“That seems like a lot of firepower to cram into such a small vehicle” Smyth observed.

“We do our best, Sir” Olli said, not telling him that if things went bad with the 84mm then it didn’t work at all. Which was more often than he cared to think about.

“Very well, Chief Warrant Officer Bauer” Smyth said with a smile that suggested that he knew a rigged demonstration when he saw one. As always, the way that Commonwealth Forces described his rank sounded better to him than the awkward rank that the OKW had given him. Recently in their infinite wisdom they had created three ranks of “Warrant Officers” with Olli’s present rank of Oberfeldwebel-Lieutenant having roughly the same authority as an Oberlieutenant.

With that the Skunks faded back into the woodland that had covered their advance. The speed of the withdrawal was something that few vehicles could match. Getting out of trouble as fast as they got into it was the one strength that the Skunk had that few argued about.


Berlin

Sitting in Maria’s office, Zella radiated anger. She didn’t want to be here, at the same time she was here because she didn’t know what she wanted. When Emil had pointed out that Zella’s problems seemed to be because she lacked focus and direction, Maria had almost burst out laughing. When Emil was Zella’s age he had been ordered to go out and get himself killed, on two separate occasions. It had taken a couple wars, a revolution and University for Emil to figure out what he wanted to do with his life in his thirties by accident. Unfortunately for them, Zella had turned out to be a lot like Emil. Maria knew that while the world tolerated the likes of a young Emil Holz running wild, it would not withhold withering judgement if Zella acted the same way.

As Editor-in-Chief of the Berliner, Maria didn’t make decisions about who was hired for the day to day operations of the newspaper. She could however make recommendations to the Personnel Department and she had asked if Zella could be brought on as an Assistant of the Editor of the Arts & Entertainment desk. Zella had not been happy to be informed by Maria about her new afterschool job. While Maria knew that Zella could be pigheaded, she couldn’t think of a better place for her daughter to be right now. Zella knew the current Berlin music scene like few others, that included those who were already in the A&E desk. It was amusing, Zella being angry because Maria found her a job where she would basically be paid to do what she was already doing anyway. Eventually, she would figure it out.

There was a commotion out in the reporter’s pool. Maria knew that they were following the elections in the United States and that those elections would affect the direction of that country for the next two years. While it was widely considered to be a status quo election, the real battle was between the Northern and Southern wings of the Democratic Party. According to the International desk, speculation was that this election might mark an anticipated split with both wings of the party going separate directions. Trying to figure out how a system that could only accommodate two political parties was difficult. It seemed designed to encourage black & white thinking and cynicism.