Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread III
- Thread starter Peabody-Martini
- Start date
Probably cousins, not sisters, since if they were sisters she would be known as a princess, and she isn’t.
At this point, Parker would do well to make a strategic withdrawal, regroup and find an alternate route in.
"Hey, guess who I met in the chow hall sir..."
Not if she was illegitimate which he knows she is. But, now that he knows they are related it shouldn’t take long to figure out whose daughter she is given that Cecile was pretty open about her husbands infidelities following his death.
Part 108, Chapter 1759
Chapter One thousand Seven Hundred Fifty-Nine
1st October 1966
Cape Canaveral, Florida
There was finally some good news regarding the Apollo Program. The thermal issues had been ironed out only to find another dangerous phenomenon that the engineers had referred to as pogoing. This had almost resulted in the launch of Apollo IV being aborted and an alternate, less ambitious, mission profile being taken, more of a hop to prove the technology. The Administration had downplayed that story for obvious reasons. Captain Bob Truax, the Chief Engineer of the Apollo Project, had said that he had discovered in the published literature regarding the very problems that they had encountered had been solved by Wernher von Braun in the Taxidiotis Program a couple years earlier. The photograph of von Braun standing before five massive Aggregate 30 engines of his own design mounted in a Taxidiotis Rocket were very compelling. That had nearly caused a panic in NASA because many of those present had firsthand experience with what the Germans chose to publish in the past. The infamous Horton hoax where attempts to reverse engineer what was believed to have been a supersonic aircraft had failed spectacularly for example. The unconventional Navy Captain had read the articles and had sorted out what was real from what was misinformation.
The truth was that Truax had his own ideas about how to solve the problems that were in keeping with his own ideas about how it should be done. His design philosophy hewed to the KISS principle of the US Navy, as in Keep It Simple Stupid. Where von Braun had gone for complex solutions to problems, Truax had gone the other way. He had eliminated most of the moving parts by having the fuel tanks pressurized with nitrogen from feeder tanks. Many of the thermal and instability issues were solved by the addition of carefully placed baffles on the injector plates. That last one had been directly copied from von Braun’s work, but Truax had discovered that the photographs in the German publications had been altered which was hardly a surprise. Dampers on the fuel lines had been needed to prevent pogo oscillation, Truax hadn’t cared for that because he had designed Jupiter rocket engines to only be a series of valves before the fuel reached the combustion chamber, the elegance of it was somewhat ruined by that necessity.
Today, all that work came together as Apollo V lifted off the pad. The Germans may be on their way to the Moon, but Uncle Sam was catching up fast and was prepared to make a race of it.
Laupheim, Württemberg
Once the insanity of the previous days had passed, everyone had settled in and finally gotten to work doing what they had come to do. For Parker it had involved several terrifying minutes as he was introduced to Kaiser Louis Ferdinand. Learning the hard way that Sieglinde “Sigi” Grimmelshausen was the Kaiser's much younger half-sister had not been a fun experience. When he had noticed the resemblance between her and Kristina he had asked if they were sisters and she had laughed. She explained that she was no Princess, rather the illegitimate daughter of a King. So that made her Kristina’s Aunt with her biological father being Wilhelm the III. None of that was a secret, it just wasn’t talked about. It was noticeable that she emphasized who her father was as a matter of biology, nothing more.
What happened next was where Parker had really embarrassed himself had been when he had been leaving, he had asked when he could expect to hear from Sigi again. She had said she didn’t know, but it was unlikely that he would.
That was when Parker had the realization that Sigi had just considered him something fun to do while she was in Laupheim. For the first time in his life, he had found himself on the other side of that equation and it wasn’t to his liking. Sigi didn’t seem to care. In a few months she was to command Taxidiotis IV which would guarantee her future and that was all that was important to her. Anything or anyone that got in the way of that had best be prepared to get out of the way. She had then told him that she was on the pill, which she took religiously, so the answer was already no to any concerns that he might have regarding an accident resulting from the previous night’s activities.
Later, Parker had to endure the men making jokes about how it was obvious that he had engaged with a bit of “Fraternization with the enemy.” Or was that called diplomacy when an Officer did it? They all got a good laugh over that. There was also considerable speculation of exactly which woman Parker had spent the night with. Kristina hadn’t said a word about what she had seen, it seemed that she did that often. Sigi had told him that he got Kristina wrong. Was that a part of it?
Today, he was still thinking about Sigi after she had gone back to wherever she had come. A man, boy really, had come from one of the German Recon units having been on the ground in Serbia just a few weeks earlier. He had briefed the gathered Green Berets and Hellcats about what he had found there. According to him, the Serbs were killing everyone in their path. Those higher up had felt that the briefing was necessary to drive home the importance of this mission to cut off a major supplier of arms to that conflict. Unfortunately, they were still in the hurry up and wait part of the mission.
1st October 1966
Cape Canaveral, Florida
There was finally some good news regarding the Apollo Program. The thermal issues had been ironed out only to find another dangerous phenomenon that the engineers had referred to as pogoing. This had almost resulted in the launch of Apollo IV being aborted and an alternate, less ambitious, mission profile being taken, more of a hop to prove the technology. The Administration had downplayed that story for obvious reasons. Captain Bob Truax, the Chief Engineer of the Apollo Project, had said that he had discovered in the published literature regarding the very problems that they had encountered had been solved by Wernher von Braun in the Taxidiotis Program a couple years earlier. The photograph of von Braun standing before five massive Aggregate 30 engines of his own design mounted in a Taxidiotis Rocket were very compelling. That had nearly caused a panic in NASA because many of those present had firsthand experience with what the Germans chose to publish in the past. The infamous Horton hoax where attempts to reverse engineer what was believed to have been a supersonic aircraft had failed spectacularly for example. The unconventional Navy Captain had read the articles and had sorted out what was real from what was misinformation.
The truth was that Truax had his own ideas about how to solve the problems that were in keeping with his own ideas about how it should be done. His design philosophy hewed to the KISS principle of the US Navy, as in Keep It Simple Stupid. Where von Braun had gone for complex solutions to problems, Truax had gone the other way. He had eliminated most of the moving parts by having the fuel tanks pressurized with nitrogen from feeder tanks. Many of the thermal and instability issues were solved by the addition of carefully placed baffles on the injector plates. That last one had been directly copied from von Braun’s work, but Truax had discovered that the photographs in the German publications had been altered which was hardly a surprise. Dampers on the fuel lines had been needed to prevent pogo oscillation, Truax hadn’t cared for that because he had designed Jupiter rocket engines to only be a series of valves before the fuel reached the combustion chamber, the elegance of it was somewhat ruined by that necessity.
Today, all that work came together as Apollo V lifted off the pad. The Germans may be on their way to the Moon, but Uncle Sam was catching up fast and was prepared to make a race of it.
Laupheim, Württemberg
Once the insanity of the previous days had passed, everyone had settled in and finally gotten to work doing what they had come to do. For Parker it had involved several terrifying minutes as he was introduced to Kaiser Louis Ferdinand. Learning the hard way that Sieglinde “Sigi” Grimmelshausen was the Kaiser's much younger half-sister had not been a fun experience. When he had noticed the resemblance between her and Kristina he had asked if they were sisters and she had laughed. She explained that she was no Princess, rather the illegitimate daughter of a King. So that made her Kristina’s Aunt with her biological father being Wilhelm the III. None of that was a secret, it just wasn’t talked about. It was noticeable that she emphasized who her father was as a matter of biology, nothing more.
What happened next was where Parker had really embarrassed himself had been when he had been leaving, he had asked when he could expect to hear from Sigi again. She had said she didn’t know, but it was unlikely that he would.
That was when Parker had the realization that Sigi had just considered him something fun to do while she was in Laupheim. For the first time in his life, he had found himself on the other side of that equation and it wasn’t to his liking. Sigi didn’t seem to care. In a few months she was to command Taxidiotis IV which would guarantee her future and that was all that was important to her. Anything or anyone that got in the way of that had best be prepared to get out of the way. She had then told him that she was on the pill, which she took religiously, so the answer was already no to any concerns that he might have regarding an accident resulting from the previous night’s activities.
Later, Parker had to endure the men making jokes about how it was obvious that he had engaged with a bit of “Fraternization with the enemy.” Or was that called diplomacy when an Officer did it? They all got a good laugh over that. There was also considerable speculation of exactly which woman Parker had spent the night with. Kristina hadn’t said a word about what she had seen, it seemed that she did that often. Sigi had told him that he got Kristina wrong. Was that a part of it?
Today, he was still thinking about Sigi after she had gone back to wherever she had come. A man, boy really, had come from one of the German Recon units having been on the ground in Serbia just a few weeks earlier. He had briefed the gathered Green Berets and Hellcats about what he had found there. According to him, the Serbs were killing everyone in their path. Those higher up had felt that the briefing was necessary to drive home the importance of this mission to cut off a major supplier of arms to that conflict. Unfortunately, they were still in the hurry up and wait part of the mission.
Last edited:
Stuff like this is why I love this story so much.
Take heart, Parker, it took Nancy/Tilo years to work. You may yet have a chance.
Marc A
Part 108, Chapter 1760
Chapter One Thousand Seven Hundred Sixty
2nd October 1966
Trieste, Austria
It being Sunday morning the Chaplain for the KM Naval Personnel based in Trieste finished his service for the men who were gathered on the deck of the Barracks Ship. As soon as he was done, Louis would read the week’s announcements and then the crews would either return to their assigned duties or else go enjoy a day off. He figured that most of those getting the day off would go back to bed for a few hours. As the Flotilla Captain it seemed like Louis never got any time off, or much sleep for that matter. Thanking the Chaplain, Louis made his way to the lectern.
“Because most of you want to get on with your day, I’ll keep this brief” Louis said, and that got him a round of applause that was a bit overly enthusiastic. It was fortunate that there were not very many announcements this week.
“The Fleet has ordered us to continue neutrality patrols” Louis read from his notes, “There is now an embargo of shipments of weapons across the Adriatic Sea into the conflict zone as dictated by the League of Nations and our regional partners.”
That resulted in a bit of grumbling among the men. Louis hadn’t been thrilled when he had been informed of that either.
Louis recalled an essay by Augustus Lang that he had read once about how in Verdun most of the bullets and munitions fired at Lang had been manufactured in then neutral America. To Louis, it was starting to feel like they were playing a similar role to the Americans in this current conflict. The Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks were being supplied by Russia through ports on the Black Sea. The Croats were allied with Italy and Trieste itself was the transshipment point the Italians used. Trieste itself remained a possession of Austria though it was more of an autonomous City-State sitting on the Adriatic Sea between Italy and Slovenia these days. The result was that the embargo only effected Albania at a time when that country was being invaded. At the same time, word had reached them that the Serbs and Croats were doing their best to finish the job they had started a decade earlier and once again it was open season on Bosniaks. It was rumored that the dead were spilling out of the interior. The feeling was that by not taking a side, they were very much taking a side in this conflict. There were also those around who bought into the notion that it was a war against the heathen Turks, they were annoyed that they were not actively allied with the Greeks.
“The preliminary findings for the recent actions of the Trieste flotilla are back” Louis read aloud, “The boats and their respective crews are to be mentioned in dispatches to the Reichstag, all men are to be presented with a merit cross in silver or oak leaf device if they have already received the merit cross in silver for bravery under fire.”
That resulted in a bit of polite applause. Decorations like that were good when it came time for promotion and additions to the ribbon bar were always welcome. That was business though. The investigation into Louis’ conduct during that incident was ongoing with the video tapes that Zella and Yuri had recorded further complicating matters. Apparently, everyone back home who had seen the presentation of the video thought that he was a hero. The question that the pencil pushers in Berlin, Wunsdorf, and Kiel had was just how much of that came down to the editing. They wanted to see the raw footage in its entirety and Zella being Zella, she had dug in her heels the instant they got heavy handed. He had called her and asked her to play nice just this once, only to get told by her that there were principles at stake. All Louis knew was that what was on those videos could make the difference between whether he was ultimately going to be burned at the stake because one of the boats under his command had been sunk and several members of its crew had been injured.
“I have also received word that SMS T35 is being sent from the Baltic to bolster our efforts here” Louis said, which got him more than a few dirty looks. T35 was a Fleet Torpedo Boat, what most of the world’s other Navies referred to as a Corvette or Destroyer Escort. They had desperately needed the amount of fire power of such a ship when they had taken on those two Q-Ships. Now that they no longer needed it, that was what they were getting. It also meant that Louis would no longer be the Flotilla Captain as soon as someone senior to him was posted here. It was a welcome change because he knew he could use a break from the stresses of being in charge now that the initial threat had been dealt with, only having to consider the Windhund would be a relief. Not that he would ever say that out loud.
“Tonight’s movie is Witness for the State, a legal thriller set in Berlin starring Jan Andersen” Louis read from his notes, most of the men had seen it two or three times already, so they didn’t seem too thrilled. “Supposedly we are getting some new films from Babelsberg, soon. For those of you who intend to spend the day in Trieste, you are advised to avoid the following establishments…”
2nd October 1966
Trieste, Austria
It being Sunday morning the Chaplain for the KM Naval Personnel based in Trieste finished his service for the men who were gathered on the deck of the Barracks Ship. As soon as he was done, Louis would read the week’s announcements and then the crews would either return to their assigned duties or else go enjoy a day off. He figured that most of those getting the day off would go back to bed for a few hours. As the Flotilla Captain it seemed like Louis never got any time off, or much sleep for that matter. Thanking the Chaplain, Louis made his way to the lectern.
“Because most of you want to get on with your day, I’ll keep this brief” Louis said, and that got him a round of applause that was a bit overly enthusiastic. It was fortunate that there were not very many announcements this week.
“The Fleet has ordered us to continue neutrality patrols” Louis read from his notes, “There is now an embargo of shipments of weapons across the Adriatic Sea into the conflict zone as dictated by the League of Nations and our regional partners.”
That resulted in a bit of grumbling among the men. Louis hadn’t been thrilled when he had been informed of that either.
Louis recalled an essay by Augustus Lang that he had read once about how in Verdun most of the bullets and munitions fired at Lang had been manufactured in then neutral America. To Louis, it was starting to feel like they were playing a similar role to the Americans in this current conflict. The Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks were being supplied by Russia through ports on the Black Sea. The Croats were allied with Italy and Trieste itself was the transshipment point the Italians used. Trieste itself remained a possession of Austria though it was more of an autonomous City-State sitting on the Adriatic Sea between Italy and Slovenia these days. The result was that the embargo only effected Albania at a time when that country was being invaded. At the same time, word had reached them that the Serbs and Croats were doing their best to finish the job they had started a decade earlier and once again it was open season on Bosniaks. It was rumored that the dead were spilling out of the interior. The feeling was that by not taking a side, they were very much taking a side in this conflict. There were also those around who bought into the notion that it was a war against the heathen Turks, they were annoyed that they were not actively allied with the Greeks.
“The preliminary findings for the recent actions of the Trieste flotilla are back” Louis read aloud, “The boats and their respective crews are to be mentioned in dispatches to the Reichstag, all men are to be presented with a merit cross in silver or oak leaf device if they have already received the merit cross in silver for bravery under fire.”
That resulted in a bit of polite applause. Decorations like that were good when it came time for promotion and additions to the ribbon bar were always welcome. That was business though. The investigation into Louis’ conduct during that incident was ongoing with the video tapes that Zella and Yuri had recorded further complicating matters. Apparently, everyone back home who had seen the presentation of the video thought that he was a hero. The question that the pencil pushers in Berlin, Wunsdorf, and Kiel had was just how much of that came down to the editing. They wanted to see the raw footage in its entirety and Zella being Zella, she had dug in her heels the instant they got heavy handed. He had called her and asked her to play nice just this once, only to get told by her that there were principles at stake. All Louis knew was that what was on those videos could make the difference between whether he was ultimately going to be burned at the stake because one of the boats under his command had been sunk and several members of its crew had been injured.
“I have also received word that SMS T35 is being sent from the Baltic to bolster our efforts here” Louis said, which got him more than a few dirty looks. T35 was a Fleet Torpedo Boat, what most of the world’s other Navies referred to as a Corvette or Destroyer Escort. They had desperately needed the amount of fire power of such a ship when they had taken on those two Q-Ships. Now that they no longer needed it, that was what they were getting. It also meant that Louis would no longer be the Flotilla Captain as soon as someone senior to him was posted here. It was a welcome change because he knew he could use a break from the stresses of being in charge now that the initial threat had been dealt with, only having to consider the Windhund would be a relief. Not that he would ever say that out loud.
“Tonight’s movie is Witness for the State, a legal thriller set in Berlin starring Jan Andersen” Louis read from his notes, most of the men had seen it two or three times already, so they didn’t seem too thrilled. “Supposedly we are getting some new films from Babelsberg, soon. For those of you who intend to spend the day in Trieste, you are advised to avoid the following establishments…”
Last edited:
You know, I always wondered what it would be like to be a soldier so most of the military works here are a good indicator on whether I would make it or not.
All that the KLM Brass really needs to do is ask ARD for the raw footage because it is in the best interest of both sides to cooperate with each other, of course ARD should make a token stand for "Journalist Independence" but since they own the tapes themselves there should be no trouble in letting the KLM reviewing the tapes at the ARD studios.
Having Young Manfred von Mischner briefing the KSK and the Green Berets must have been a bit jarring to Parker as I am sure that the Military Attaché from the U.S. Embassy has given him extensive background information on the people he would be dealing with.
Having Young Manfred von Mischner briefing the KSK and the Green Berets must have been a bit jarring to Parker as I am sure that the Military Attaché from the U.S. Embassy has given him extensive background information on the people he would be dealing with.
Young Manfred is not a Person of Interest by himself, only by virtue of having some pretty illustrious relatives.
As such, he's probably a sidenote on Kat's (and his dad's) file.
It's pretty unrealistic, even for an intelligence operative, to know all possible 'people of interest'. He/She'd probably be briefed if the presence of one is expected, or given a file at request, if a briefing is not possible (which atm would be a poor decision, seeing as the Germans would have full control over what's going in or out of the base).
As far as Parker knows, he's probabably just another grunt (which, honestly, pretty much sums him up - well, a talented grunt, at least). And he probably has enough on his plate as it is.
Last edited: