A list of current major naval projects and their status, as of December, 1923:
Battleships:
First rate powers:
US: All three ships of the Colorado class have been completed. Four battlecruisers in construction have been broken up in place, and two are being completed as aircraft carriers.
UK: The two ships of the Nelson class are still under construction.
Second rate powers:
Russia: The Ivan Grozny has been launched, though not yet commissioned (Black Sea Fleet). The other two members of the Pyotr class (Baltic Sea Fleet) are further behind.
Germany: Construction on the Prussia class has slowed considerably.
Japan: The Tosa and Amagi class ships have been canceled, with two being converted into aircraft carriers.
Third rate powers:
France: France has begun to convert the four Courbet class battleships into aircraft carriers. Very little is known about how far along this project is.
Italy: The reconstruction of the Andrea Doria class is proving complex.
Ottomans: The SMS Bayern, now Sultan Muhteşem Süleyman I, has an Ottoman crew.
Greece: The Greeks are engaged in a massive personnel shake-up in order to staff their new battleships. The predreadnoughts Kilkis and Lemnos have been sitting at dock undergoing "routine maintenance" for quite some time now.
Cruisers
First rate powers:
US: Three Omaha class cruisers are still under construction.
UK: Two Hawkins class cruisers are still under construction, along with three members of a long-delayed lighter cruiser class, the Emerald.
Second rate powers:
Russia: It is thought that the Russians will soon decide whether to follow the Austro-Hungarian route of modernizing predreadnoughts into what will legally be called cruisers, or replacing them with new construction.
Germany: The final member of the Koester class will be commissioned very soon. No replacement projects are visible.
Japan: The Japanese reportedly have somewhere between two and four cruisers under construction.
Third rate powers:
France: France is known to have a class of three cruisers that were laid down before the signing of the treaty; these are still under construction.
Italy: Older armored cruisers have been regunned. Construction has not begun on any new cruiser class as of yet.
Netherlands: The Dutch parliament is known to be debating the subject of purchasing new cruisers and is actively considering bids.
There are only so many places to hide on a train, you think to yourself as you walk sedately towards the front of the train, looking around for young men on the awkward cusp of adulthood wearing the correct color clothing to match the figure you saw.
Two cars later, you find him. He looks a little more familiar now that you're at close range and not relying on your peripheral vision.
"Simon Müller? What are you doing here?"
You diplomatically decide not to ask Birgit's younger brother why he was staring at you in the dining car.
"What are you doing here, Herr Hohenwerfer? And what's that on your jacket?" Simon clearly believes himself to have deftly evaded the subject.
You glance down at your jacket momentarily. "Sit back down, Simon. I'm on a business trip, these things happen from time to time. Now stop trying to evade the question."
"Oh, so Mutti didn't send you after-" Simon interrupts himself. "I'm on a business trip, too!"
"Aren't you a little young for that?" You search your memory. "What sort of business do you have?"
"Um..." Simon bites his lip, then squares his shoulders. "I'm going off to fight for glory and honor. I'm old enough."
"War?" You blink. "We're not at war. Are you even old enough to enlist?"
"I'm going to join the French Foreign Legion and protect the Armenians." Simon puffs his chest out.
"Do you even speak French?" you ask, switching to that language.
"Yes, I speak French," he says, in roughly accented French. It pains you to hear the German version of the letter "j" in a French phrase. Clearly Simon has been working very diligently from French books.
"Je parle français." The French use the letter "j" for a soft "zh" sound. In English, this is found in very few words (notably "Asia"). The German use of the letter "j" corresponds to the English letter "y," as in "yellow."
"Where did you get this idea?" You're genuinely curious.
"Well, people talk. And the Armenians are being really hurt, and nobody but the French are trying to protect them. And then I got this brochure," Simon tells you, pulling out a very battered and stained pamphlet, "from a friend."
You snatch it out of his hands, leafing through it. Written in French, it has a Greek phrase neatly penned on the front in one person's hand ("Want to help Armenia? Join the French Foreign Legion!"). In two other different styles of handwriting, some painstakingly crude German translations are penciled into the margins. The pamphlet itself makes no mention of Armenia, but doesn't spare glowing adjectives in describing France and the French Foreign Legion.
Sitting down next to Simon, you read through the pamphlet carefully, thinking carefully about the situation. This is going to take you all day.
[] You spend the next day helping Simon practice his French and giving him what advice you can, and try to make sure he will write you letters when he can. It would be helpful to have someone you know on the inside of things in the French military, even if a legionnaire might not know very much.
[] You won't support this, but there's no forcing him into sensibility. Simon is old enough to make his own decisions. You will make sure that his family learns about where their son has wandered off to, though, they really deserve to hear about it and it doesn't sound like Simon told them about his big plans – and then you need to scour town to see if there are a lot of these pamphlets moving around. Fiume being a port city, it should show some evidence of them if they're circulating widely.
[] You decide to put your foot down and put an end to this. You're getting off at the next stop, with Simon, and taking him right back on the next train heading towards Vienna. Then you'll hop on another train back to Fiume. This is going to be long and irritating, and you're going to give Simon an earful and a half along the way. And call his Mutti on the phone.
[] You have a devious plan for making sure Simon misses the boat to France without making him hate you. It's going to start with buying him some nicer clothes at a tailor's shop… then a bottle of rakia at a little local place you know… it'll be like the opposite of an old-fashioned press-ganging.
[] (write-in)
Sunday, December 2nd
"A duel? But are not the duels illegal?" Nicolau's eyes are wide and fearful.
"It's still customary here," you say. "They're just fighting to first blood."
Severino stalks back and forth on the grass, checking the balance on his beautiful dueling sabre, a look of dignified confidence on his face. Nearby, the pale-faced chemist is conferring with his second, a portly man with a similarly-shaped nose and three scars on his left cheek sharing the Brandstetter surname, a last minute lesson on how to handle what is clearly a borrowed blade, a worn-looking piece with a few spots of rust visible on the handle. Miss Weber hovers nearby, looking anxious. Severino's second, a distant cousin of yours that he met while visiting with your father's widow, looks bored as he waits for the match to start.
"They'll wave their swords around, one of them will get a cut on their hand and apologize to the other, and then I'll pour some of this schnapps over the hand. We can drink the rest. Then I call them both idiots and we go home." You pat Nicolau on the shoulder.
"It is a sinful activity of little use-value," Nicolau tells you glumly. "Severino or the other man could each be alienated from his life."
"For luck, Herr Doktor Brandstetter," says Miss Weber, giving the worried-looking chemist a peck on the cheek.
The two duelists salute. The white-knuckled chemist is a far cry from the righteously outraged man you saw kicking Severino in the ribs, taking a reluctant guard and lining up his point straight at Severino. Severino advances, taking quick but clearly telegraphed light attacks, pushing the chemist into alternating between tierce and quarte parries in a clear rhythm. With no riposte forthcoming, Severino backs off, taking the measure of his opponent with a smile, waving him forward. The chemist takes a tentative swipe towards Severino's chest, Severino smacking it away with an unnecessarily flashy circle-prime parry and responding with several beats to the chemist's blade.
From the sour look on the other Brandstetter's face and the wringing of Miss Weber's hands, it is quite clear that the chemist is terribly outmatched, but Severino is not done making his point as he pushes the chemist around.
"Perhaps Miss Weber has already thanked you prematurely," Severino says, waggling his eyebrows. "You do not seem much full of manly vigor now. Not like when you so rudely assaulted me in the hallways with that horrifically-smelling poison."
The Portuguese nobleman punctuates his statement with a nearly-pointless series of relentless beats, pushing a puffing purple-faced chemist backwards, into the same rhythmic sequence of parries to tierce and quarte.
He may as well be giving the man a training drill, you think to yourself, glancing over at the other Brandstetter, who looks glum.
You almost miss the action. With a sudden rake of steel on steel, Severino binds the chemist's blade, pulling it harshly into a circular motion designed to disarm, a move he follows with a swift lunge, his wrist snapping lightly for a high cut, one aimed at giving the chemist a fresh bloody facial scar to match his relative's.
Unfortunately, while Severino's plan was evident to you, the plan didn't take into account a structural failure on the other side of the field. The chemist's blade must not have been of the best quality, because in his tight grip against the binding action of Severino's sword, the blade snapped, with Severino's lunge bringing him forward into the remaining shard of the blade.
"Oh my God," the chemist gasps, releasing his grip, blood streaming down his cheek from Severino's precise cut.
Severino drops his sword, staring down at the hilt protruding from his abdomen. Nicolau rushes forward.
"I have been slain," Severino says in a numb voice, falling to his knees. "Miss Weber, I deeply apologize for the various offenses I have given you."
Severino closes his eyes, falling back into Nicolau's arms. Several seconds later, he re-opens his eyes. "Am I dead yet? This hurts a great deal."
Tears fill Herr Doktor Brandstetter's eyes. "I didn't mean to do that…"
The other Brandstetter walks over to you, whispering in your ear. "That looks bad. You should go get a surgeon. I am a medical student, but if he did not recover, I would not want to answer inquiries about if it was deliberate on my part, under the circumstances."
[] Pull out your best Uncle Franz impersonation and order Herr Brandstetter to get to work despite his misgivings.
[] Send someone off to go fetch a surgeon as quickly as possible.
-[] (write in who)
[] Take action to treat Severino's injury yourself.
-[] (write in details)
[] (write-in)
Tuesday, December 4th
"I was hoping you would be able to look at the problems of the fire control system soon," you say, "but it was good of you to start with overviewing the electrical systems," you tell Nicolau. "The turbo-electric drive represents a unique opportunity and a unique pain. The motors themselves are alternating-current motors, so the system is designed to put out alternating current. What we have been planning on so far is simple, really."
[] "We will have some separate DC generators for the rest of the ship's electrical systems operating independently from the main machinery."
[] "We will use the common electrical components present in the older ships of the fleet, we just have to install rectifiers."
[] "We will modify the system at its root. After all, the generators themselves are DC generators, we will just split off some of the output before it goes into the alternators."
[] "We will develop different components for the Alpen. This should not be too difficult, and can be used in future ships as well."
[] (write-in)
Nicolau shrugs. "If that is what you want."
"Yes. Of course, I do want you to tell me what you think about it. I know it has been a little bit overwhelming for you," you say. "It's alright if you need to take a few days to adjust."
Frankly, you're surprised that Nicolau showed up to work Monday and Tuesday after everything he's been through during the past weekend, but on the other hand, it's not as if he knows anyone in Vienna outside of your office.
"I think I will start looking at the fire control system next. The twelfths should become subordinate to such a control system to better oppress aircraft. With the special subcaliber munition for alienating the high-altitude zeppelins from their hydrogen, it will be more complicated than with the seventy-fives." Nicolau taps his finger on the diagram, gesturing at the 12cm turrets and also at the places where you have tentatively thought about locating as many as
[] (write-in number)
75mm guns.
Zero is a possible vote.
***
Today is the day that you had been invited to go to dinner and finally meet Tamás Müller. You declined politely at the time. Tonight …
[] … you will politely knock on the Müllers' door and beg belated admission to dinner.
[] … you will invite Marie over to your place for drinks.
[] … you will go out for a night on the town.
[] (write-in)
Monday, December 10th, 1923
"You cannot be serious," you say, waving the file folder in the air.
The big man shrugs. "The source is reliable."
"Ten-inch guns? 200 millimeters of belt armor? Twenty eight knots? This violates the treaty terms six ways from Sunday." You wave the folder dramatically.
The big man shrugs again, leaving your office without another word.
What you have in your hands is damning. The Italians haven't laid it down – at least not yet – but they've made plans for a cruiser that will carry the banned ten-inch guns, and cheats by several thousand tons on displacement. They've also made plans to pass it off as a treaty-compliant cruiser – plans show where and how the four "triple 7.5 inch" turrets, just like the ones just put into place on the older Italian armored cruisers, will be converted to double ten inch turrets.
Plans that show the actual planned dimensions and displacement of the cruiser as well, which – if produced – would exceed the treaty weight limit. A second version of the plan showing slightly smaller dimensions, a remarkably high weight of fuel, and brightly labeled with a "standard displacement" of 10,000 tons is neatly labeled in English.
On the plus side, this sort of intelligence coup is exactly the sort of thing to push Parliament into coughing up funding for a cruiser, and the yard at Pola could start laying one down soon.
You look at your desk. Bernd's favorite knife. That wasn't there before the large man walked into your office.
Wednesday, December 12th, 1923
The cruiser group has been extremely excited. With your relatively junior status, you have limited influence directly, but with everything you've had your fingers into lately, the others suspect you of being Uncle Franz's proxy; by cooperating and coordinating with your new friend, you've managed, in two tireless days, to push your mutual top choice to the front of the queue. The choices were interesting.
The Alpen-inspired design you took note of earlier has gone through a few evolutions and remained in contention, with its eleven 19cm/55 guns in a mixture of quadruple and triple turrets, 45,000 shp turboelectric drive, and heavy armor. With a designed speed of 26 knots to escort the Alpen, it shares many design characteristics with the larger battleship, including four twin 12cm/50 gun turrets and a pair of quadruple torpedo launchers. Adopting this design would require the design and construction of a new "superheavy" updated 19cm gun similar to the 35cm/55 gun used on the Alpen.
Another of the leading proposals, one with the vigorous backing of German interests, is a slightly modified version of the Koester, with the same triple-shafted 60,000 shp engine, the same twin 21cm/45 guns in four twin turrets, and a designed speed of 28 knots. Most notably, instead of the battery of sixteen 88mm single mounts, the Austro-Hungarian version would carry a quartet of twin 120mm turrets. It also eliminates the torpedo launchers belowdecks, although it is not clear where replacement launchers might be installed on the deck. The advantage of this design is that it could be produced by German shipyards, if Uncle Franz can shake funds loose for additional cruisers beyond one to be produced at Pola.
The favored design of more conservative elements within the design bureau is the simple planned continuation of the lineage of existing cruisers, with a designed top speed of 32 knots. It shares the sleek narrow profile of the Vis and similarly has a broadside battery of six single-mount 12cm guns per side (although they are now dual-purpose mounts intended to be able to target aircraft with the new 12cm/50 gun), and carries a pair of triple 19cm/45 turrets (one fore and one aft), a reliable and tested gun powerful enough to threaten enemy cruisers, and a thick 150mm armor belt. The long open deck allows the greatest amount of space for mounting additional light guns of any of the contending designs.
The answering design from the novelty-loving set carries a battery of six centerline turrets, each superfiring over the previous. At the bottom, twin 21cm turrets aims to match any other legal cruiser gun; the design calls for new 21cm/55 guns, although such would have to be designed. The middle turrets are quadruple 15cm turrets, intended to efficiently provide a high volume of fire to destroy lighter combatants. The final pair are twin 12cm anti-aircraft turrets. Amidships, torpedo launchers are bracketed by a quartet of single-mount 75mm guns in a tight arrangement. It is more lightly armored than its counterpart, on the theory that cruiser armor will generally be inadequate; its speed is designed to match the Hawkins at 31 knots, although using a turboelectric drive system.
A fifth possibility is to rush forward with a design project meant to roughly match the Italian design by similarly cheating on displacement and using reconfigurable turrets. Based on the Alpen-like design study, it uses three quadruple 19cm turrets that are slightly larger than the ones used on the mini-Alpen design, designed to be turned into double 24cm turrets, and increases both the armor and speed of that design using the extra displacement. Preliminary optimistic plans are that the top speed might be pushed as high as 30 knots while keeping an armor belt matching the Italian design.
"That was thoroughly embarrassing. And to think I had that test plate shipped here. Quality control must have slipped up. Even the old plates could have held up against shells that size, they do in our tests at Krupp." Gregor threw himself on the hotel bed. "So much for molybdenum magic."
"Cheer up, man. They said it tested better than the old Krupp plates against that gun, even if it wasn't as good as their best, and I'm sure they weren't just lying to spare your feelings. Maybe they use better bullets than you do at Krupp." Gergely grinned. "And did you see that old man smile when you talked to him about what went into the new plate? He showed you exactly how many teeth he didn't have. Man with a mouth like that, I bet he doesn't smile like that often. There's your molybdenum magic. The Witkowitz people were really interested. They're looking forward to the metallurgists coming to visit."
"I guess so." The glum German lay back. "Ach. I still feel terrible."
"A drink will make you feel better, Gregor," the Hungarian engineer told his friend.
"I don't really feel like it, Gergely," the German engineer replied, rolling over to put his face in his pillow. "You go on and have fun without me. I'm going to think about what I should say to my boss."
"Well, you don't have to tell him anything about feeling embarrassed. You came here, you talked about molybdenum, and the Witkowitz people were really happy to have you over. They would have tested it until it broke in any case, you know." Gergely shrugged. "I will go pick up some dinner and bring it back for you. You will feel better in the morning. Come back to Vienna with me, take a few days of vacation. Not every day has to be work!"
* * *
"Well, the problem is that the belt is internal. If the belt were external, we could wait all we wanted for them to figure out new things. And perhaps with the turrets, we could be so patient, but I am not sure we should wait to see what they think is best for how to use molybdenum in armor plate, and then produce armor plate afterwards. It is a very great quantity, too, it will not be produced quickly."
Gergely looked glum. He didn't want to bring bad news to Herr Hohenwerfer. The man really wanted to make sure he had the best armor plate possible on the Alpen, but between Krupp's delays and the desire of the Witkowitz engineers to get in a good long testing session, that could mean pushing back the schedule of the ship again. Pushing back the schedule again would mean another embarrassment for Herr Hohenwerfer's undersized team.
The fact that nobody more senior had been willing to take the project over after they had gotten back from their Christmas vacations had always felt ominous to him. Perhaps the more experienced bureaucrats and engineers could smell failure, and were avoiding the stain of it on their career.
"I am afraid that if we want the best armor, it will hold us back from launching the ship on time," Gregor said.
"Ha! I wish that were a problem for us," Gregor said. "By the time we finish the Prussia, the British will be thinking about replacing their aging HMS Nelson, the way things have been going. That might be long enough to convince my boss that the Austrians have something to teach us about armor. Enough work! I am determined to begin our vacation early. Let's see what we got at the bookstore. I saw some promising books. Here's one."
"It is in English. I think I understand the title, but what does this say?" Gergely had the cover open already, reading the title page on the inside.
"It says it is a game for little boys from twelve to a hundred and fifty years of age, and smart girls who like boys' games and books. I picked it up because I recognized the author's name. He wrote War of the Worlds. I suppose that means it isn't a novel after all." Gregor flipped a few more pages. "Yes, definitely not a novel. I think it is an English version of Kriegsspiele. I suppose it may offer some insight into the British brain, but that is too much like work right now."
* * *
"Yes, I understand. But of course. Yes." Gregor hung up the phone. "Well, that's that, I am officially on vacation. Things are slow at work in any case, and all we've been doing in my office is reading Dutch newspapers all day. I am so sick of reading about Dutch politics."
"Good. You will not count this a mistake," Gergely said, grinning as he held up a pair of train tickets.
* * *
"Devil take me, that was a mistake," Gergely moaned, leaning over the railing. His body convulsed, and he gagged, though nothing came off.
"I'm sure that once she has washed it all off, she will forgive you," said Gregor philosophically, patting him on the back. "Although I think her dress will never be the same, she was much too interested in you to be put off for good by a little thing like that."
"It's not worth a kiss to a dead man," Gergely said. "Vodka should never be mixed with cream and soda water together like that."
Gregor eyed the whitish splotch shining in the moonlight on the cobblestones. "Perhaps not."
You have a captive audience here, and you decide you're going to crush Simon's dreams of glory with a lengthy talk about the details.
"Simon," you start, "I understand perfectly well that you're at an age where you want excitement and adventure, and ideas that would give your dear old Mutti a heart attack seem just grand."
"She hardly pays any attention to me," Simon interjects resentfully. "She probably hasn't noticed I'm gone."
"I'm sure she has," you say. "Look, do you really want her to worry about you?"
"Yeah, that would be great," Simon says, folding his arms. "She doesn't worry about me one bit. She worries about Martin's grades and his fencing skills, she worries about little baby Patrik getting in trouble, and she worries about finding Birgit a husband. No thanks to her being stuck on you, jerking her around like you did this spring."
"Simon, this isn't about me," you say, trying to steer the subject back on track. "Let's talk about the Foreign Legion. This is a bad idea."
"Why? Mutti insists I have to finish school. She's always wanted me to become a priest, but I want to get the girls." Simon sets his jaw. "No way am I becoming a celibate."
"Look, I'm not saying you have to become a priest. She can't make you become one if you don't want to be one," you say.
"Easy for you to say, nobody tells you what to do!" Simon glares at you. "Handsome guy like you gets the girls without trying, too!"
Several other passengers are now watching with interest. You close your eyes and take a deep breath.
"Simon, the French Foreign Legion get the most unglamorous jobs imaginable, for the most banal French interests possible," you say. "Okay, so that famous battle at Camarón fifty years ago It was all just to make sure that Mexico would pay its debts to France."
"I don't believe you," Simon says stubbornly. "And it definitely was glorious. Jean Danjou is in one of my history books at school."
"They get sent to the ugly corners of the French colonies to put down revolts," you tell him. "For every Jean Danjou, there are a thousand legionnaires that nobody remembers because they died of heat stroke in Algeria or Indochina."
"I'll make sure to keep my canteen topped off," Simon says. "No heat stroke for me. We did scouts for a few years until Martin went off to the academy. I hear that in Indochina, the girls really go for white men."
"They'll give you interesting and exciting venereal diseases," you say sourly. "Look, you want to help the Armenians, right?"
"Yeah! That's where they'll send me, I'm sure of it," Simon says confidently. "That's where they're sending the Legion next. Johann said that's what he heard, anyway."
"Johann? Who's that?" you ask.
"Um. A friend at school," Simon says evasively.
"The French aren't really helping the Armenians. They're letting the Turks force the Armenians out of their homes. That's what the Dutch and Norwegian observers say, and they're neutral," you say, leaning on every bit of authority at your disposal to make the word sound decisive.
Simon's face screws up in confusion.
"I know things, Simon. And I'll let you in on a little secret," you say, lowering your voice to a whisper. "It's very likely that in the near future, France and Austria will be at war. If you've sworn an oath of allegiance to France, that will make things very hard for you and for your family back here in Vienna."
Simon's eye grow wide. "Really? Why would we go to war with France?"
Simon did not whisper. Other passengers seem very interested in your conversation with Simon.
"Simon, I just want to help you make the right decision for what to do. I'll tell you what, I'll come with you and talk with your father and grandfather, and I promise we'll come up with something we can do that's more exciting than the French Foreign Legion."
"Like what?" Simon asks pointedly.
"Um," you say, stalling. "We'll think of something. Your father and grandfather have a lot more experience than I do. There are a lot of exciting things to do."
"Grandpa joined the navy when he was younger than I am, but Papa won't let me join up with the army or navy without going through military academy first," Simon says. "And academy is boring. Martin says so."
"I promise," you repeat. "Really, I do. I'm on your side here."
This begins a lengthy round of negotiations, at the end of which you have agreed to take Simon's side in helping him find glory and girls in a discussion with him, his father, and his grandfather. You feel like you're on the losing side of the negotiations, as the final conditions involve reimbursing Simon back the money he spent on tickets, treating him to a night of fun in Fiume, buying him a ticket back to Vienna, and promising not to get his hopes up.
[] promising to not get his sister's hopes up.
[] promising to get back together with his sister.
[] promising to teach him how to seduce women.
[] promising to buy him something really nice for Christmas.
Sunday, December 2nd
(continued)
Faced with a reluctant but immediately available medical student to perform surgery – Herr Brandstetter, who was Herr Doktor Brandstetter's second and presumably either his cousin or brother – you decide to pull out your best Uncle Franz impersonation and order Herr Brandstetter to get to work despite his misgivings.
"Herr Brandstetter, you are ordered to get to work. Worry about me, because I am going to be thoroughly offended if you decide to wipe your hands of the Hippocratic Oath. Recall your training, doctor, and bind the wound tightly to keep the remains of the blade steady. We need to send for an ambulance, but this requires your immediate attention," you tell the man.
You look around at the possible candidates to send off to go get the ambulance. Nicolau is distraught and probably has no idea where to go. Miss Weber might prefer him dead.
"Herr Doktor Brandstetter, go get an ambulance sent at once," you say. "It is the only thing that can prevent you from becoming a murderer at this point."
The chemist runs off down the street.
Tuesday, December 4th, 1923
(continued)
Leaving Nicolau's office, you head down the hall and are promptly ambushed by a young Krupp engineer.
"Herr Hohenwerfer! Just the man I was looking for! Gergely says you're understaffed, and that the office next to his was just emptied," Gregor says, pointing in the general direction of Severino's office.
"He's in the hospital, not dead," you say, exasperated. "I hope he will have recovered fully by the end of the holiday season."
"Working with Gergely has been such a breath of fresh air. I'm not sure what, if anything, I can teach you Austrians about armor metallurgy anymore, I've learned a lot of things from the people at Witkowitz that they don't really seem to know at Krupp, but I'm really tired of reading Dutch newspapers and hearing the old man gripe about how the Kaiser has gotten soft in the head..." Gregor begins, but is interrupted before coming to the point.
"Max!" You can hear Marie's voice calling from the office, and make a snap decision.
"I need to go deal with something, but feel free to visit a few days longer, and again later in the future. It is good to keep friends in different places."
[] "… I can see where you are going with this, and I would be happy to bring you on board here."
[] "… I wish you the best of luck in teaching what you have learned here to your co-workers back at Krupp."
[] "… feel free to visit a few days longer, and again later in the future. It is good to keep friends in different places."
[] (write-in)
"Herr Hohenwerfer, you have a personal letter from Fiume," Marie tells you, frost glittering on her voice. "Please have such correspondence sent to your apartment in the future."
In German, there are two separate second person pronouns, "du" and "Sie." "Du" is the familiar one. Marie has used "Sie" here.
You hastily take the letter from her.
It is postmarked from Friday, announces that Elizabeth will be visiting Vienna, arriving on the 14th and leaving on the 17th, and requests the pleasure of your company during some portion of her visit, as she will not be in such great haste on her way through Vienna as to be unable to make time to visit a friend. Her phrasing is a pointed echo of yours.
It is not a good time to hastily write a letter, but if you sent one tomorrow, it would surely arrive before she left Fiume. You will write her back tomorrow in the affirmative. You decide to suggest a trip to the opera with polite company, and suggest visiting a bakery that you know.
[] … write her back tomorrow in the affirmative.
-[] (write in any details)
[] … write her back tomorrow in the negative.
-[] (write in any excuses)
[] … wait until after the evening to decide what you're going to do.
[] … not write back.
* * *
With some trepidation, you knock on the door of the Müllers' apartment.
"Who's there?" you hear through the door.
"Max Hohenwerfer," you say.
The door opens, and you set eyes on Korvettenkapitan Tamás Müller in person for the first time. He has a very sour expression on his face, and looks significantly older than you thought him from his blurry picture on János's desk, his hair white rather than blond and his wrinkles more visible.
"I thought you sent word that you were not coming," he says, standing in the doorway.
"Well, I thought I would likely have to be in Fiume, but I was in town after all, and I thought I might stop by… I brought wine," you hastily add. "And there are some things that we should talk about that have come up since then."
"Birgit hasn't left her room except for mealtimes in a week," Tamás says, raising his eyebrows. "And not even all of those."
"It's about Simon. Did he tell you he left to try to join the French Foreign Legion?" you ask.
"What? No. Yes, come in," Tamás says, looking a little older and a little smaller as he steps to the side.
Coming to the dining room, you find it set with only five places, and Birgit nowhere in evidence. A thumping noise comes from upstairs.
"Max! You came!" Birgit is bouncing down the stairs at an alarming rate, aimed straight for you. You brace for impact, and thus manage (barely) to keep your feet as the short but curvaceous woman collides with you, her ample endowments fortunately padding the blow to your solar plexus a little bit.
[] Dodge.
[] Brace for impact.
[] Stop her at arm's length.
[] Get bowled over by the vigorous greeting.
While you work on getting your wind back, Tamás takes control over the situation.
"Herr Hohenwerfer, I think it is a good time for some overdue explanations on your part," says Tamás. "Birgit, go set yourself and Herr Hohenwerfer places at the table. We will be up in the smoking room for a minute."
"I'm afraid that my time with Brigit has been... interrupted. While I cannot profess a clear stance on our relationship, know I hold her in high esteem- and that there is recompense coming for the person who made her think I had disregarded her. If nothing else, I recommend that she is to avoid my office, as there seems to be no small evil set to work on my freinds in that building."
[] (write in what to tell Tamás on the subject of Birgit)
* * *
"Now, what was it you were telling me about the Dutch colonials? You had some interesting stories there," János says, gesturing with a fork to break the awkward silence.
"I think I would like to hear some more about what has happened with my second son. What is this about the French Foreign Legion?" Tamás stabs his meat with his fork, sawing at it with his knife using a little more force than necessary.
"You promised you would be on my side in this," Simon says to you, before answering his father. "Dad, I want to go do something meaningful with my life. I'm not cut out for the path I'm on. I've grown up. If you've got any idea of anything better to do than to join the Legion and ship out to Armenia, I'm ready to listen, but I'm done growing up in the shadows."
Tamás glowers. "That pack of criminals? People join the Legion because they screwed up their lives too badly to want to keep their own name."
"Simon, we are allied with Germany," you say. "Germany and France have always had hostile relations, and if war were to break out, we would surely side with Berlin against the French. Joining the Legion might force you into fighting against your family, if malaria or thirst or some native's lucky shot doesn't kill you first."
"Or one of the criminals in the ranks of the Legion. Never trust that sort, boy, they're bad blood and come to ends as ill as they tried to get away from." Tamás glowers.
"Have you considered the Luftfahrtruppen? They need bright and adventuresome young men just now," you say. "Pilots don't need to be officers, so you wouldn't need to go through academy."
A strangled sound comes from Frau Müller.
"Or at least, not right away. You could possibly pick up a commission later, they do need officers in the flying corps," you say, and wink. "Nothing quite impresses the ladies quite like being a flyer."
"My boy in one of those falling machines?" Frau Müller's eyes bulge.
"All I'm saying," you continue, "is that you should think about it. It's a lot more exciting than the Legion and a lot less stupid."
[] (write-in strategy)
[] (write-in suggestions for something Simon might find more exciting than joining the FFL.)
* * *
The three men – and Simon has pointedly not been included in that number – have gathered in the smoking room for brandy, cigars, and talk after the end of dinner. Tamás clearly doesn't want to talk further about his children until he's had time to think about it, having banished the topic explicitly as soon as he opened the brandy.
With János there to bridge the gap between active service and the design bureau, the three of you talk over the situation in the Pacific. The Japanese have the greatest concentration of force there; the British have a global cruiser fleet but keep their battleships closer to home, while the American fleet is divided between the two oceans. Tamás is quite curious about the reasoning behind your support of a heavy scout cruiser design.
"Surely a single-ship class is the time to experiment," he says. "I would have expected a man like you to support the medley. It would have let everybody know right off which of all those new technologies were a good idea or not. As it is, we still won't know until the Alpen hits the water."
"Well, I was partly driven by the idea that if we could get the Dutch on board, we might be able to make it into a class of cruisers. You don't want to sell something that novel abroad – if the technology works, you've handed away your best new edge, and if it doesn't, it's a stain on your reputation," you say. "And it really isn't a bad design."
"Hm. I must say, you're not what I expected, although I wasn't sure entirely what to expect of you."
"Well, I like you. I'd love to keep in touch - we don't get much of the perspectives of the fleet at sea, and I'd love to hear any thoughts you have about those little details of shipboard life that the new battleship might be better designed to deal with. I read that letter you sent the bureau about the cruisers, by the way, I was quite impressed."
"You flatter me."
"No more than you are due."
[] (write-in anything extra to tell Tamás)
Wednesday, December 12th, 1923
(continued)
"Good evening, Herr Hohenwerfer," Marie says, greeting you. "It is late. I have messages for you to take, and then I am going home."
She holds up several handwritten pages – the phone messages you have missed while spending the day threatening, pleading, begging, bribing, and wheedling senior employees of the naval design bureau as part of an orchestrated campaign on behalf to put the heavy scout cruiser at the front of the queue.
This has won you points among the traditionalists in the design bureau – acknowledging that they have a clear and reliable vision for a capable ship – although it has also cost you a couple of friends and admirers among those insistent on pushing ahead with innovative design.
After you take the pages, she points towards a neatly piled in-box. Six Italian newspapers. Three overstuffed folders. Mail postmarked from Munich, Venice, Trieste, Madrid, Rome, and Pilsen.
You groan.
"Thank you for helping, Marie. If you're not interested in talking, you can go home. I'll probably be staying late to catch up."
[] "Miss Koller, I appreciate your diligence. You may head home."
[] "Miss Koller, please stay until after I have at least looked over each of these."
[] "Marie, that's fine. Head home if you like."
[] "Marie, I'm sorry you had to stay late. Stick around a little longer and I will happily take you out for an apology dinner."
[] (write-in)
The Italian newspapers help provide a context for the new Italian cruiser design. Combined with Severino's past notes on the subject, you think you understand why the Triumvir violates the treaty weight limit, and is designed to carry ten inch guns even if it may not mount them immediately: Italian politics and maneuvering behind the scenes by the different Italian political parties makes the cruisers a political bargaining chip.
The socialist party currently leads a freshly-assembled shaky coalition government in Italian parliament under Ivanoe Bonomi, the fifth prime minister to hold office in the faction-riddled Italian parliamentary system since the last elections were held in 1921. Parliamentarians from the National Blocs coalition have made significant political use of the Harding treaty in forcing the last two prime ministers out of office, insisting that the treaty forced Italy into a position of permanent naval inferiority.
The recent military appropriations bill of last month was passed with support from the National Blocs, following deft political maneuvering by Bonomi. Prominent nationalist parliamentarian Benito Mussolini announced his support by saying that Italy's new cruisers would be a superior show of Italian engineering, saying that if other nations had to work under the same limitations, they would be forced to make inferior cruisers thanks to their lack of superior Italian engineers.
The mail from Madrid includes a letter requesting your assistance in the apprehension and interrogation of Nicolau Costa, whom they describe as also having the name Red Naldo, a socialist leader who is known to have set up at least three different revolutionary cells active in Madrid. The letter cautions you that Red Naldo has been implicated in armed bank robberies and is a very dangerous man, having eluded apprehension on half a dozen separate occasions, leading to the deaths of would-be arresting officers on two of those occasions. It is thought that Red Naldo has knowledge of key operational details of a plot to assassinate King Alphonso XIII.
You write back a response that you have no idea who this "Red Naldo" is, but that the man Nicolau Costa employed by you could not possibly be him. If the Spanish have evidence otherwise they can request an extradition with the Austrian police authorities, you add as a flourish.
[] (write-in action or response)
Thursday, December 13th, 1923
According to the intelligence reports you have been receiving, today is most likely going to be the day that the USS Colorado starts its voyage across the Atlantic. It will soon begin a grand European tour showing off what the Americans contend is the most powerful battleship in the world, though the Japanese as the chief rivals of the Americans in the Pacific might contest that claim. It is anyone's guess whether or not it is true, and if the Americans delayed the Colorado's tour much longer, the Russians would be able to contest it as well with the Ivan Grozny.
It will not be accompanied by either of its two classmates, from what you gather; the USS Maryland will be traveling south, eventually to join the Pacific Fleet after suitably impressing the residents of Latin America, and the USS West Virginia is still shaking down. It will join a division of four "standard" type battleships currently on maneuvers along the African coast; the other division of the Atlantic fleet, consisting of older American battleships, are currently on the western side of the Atlantic and expected to stay there.
It's striking how rapidly the Americans have become one of the two first-rate naval powers, a status now cemented by treaty – but the Americans are now done with building new battleships, for at least another four years. Austria-Hungary's yards will be empty of battleships soon enough as well, if construction goes well, although there have been a few delays.
Your builders are working with a deliberate delay of three weeks between the Alpen and Karpaten, insuring that any mistakes made in the process of constructing the Alpen are identified and then efficiently avoided during the construction of the Karpaten. This has so far worked fairly well, although the mistake with the shafts was large enough to delay the Karpaten a little bit as well.
[] After ceremonially laying down the Karpaten, all resources have been directed to the Alpen. Real construction on the Karpaten has not really begun.
[] Your builders are working on the two ships in parallel, with the Alpen receiving first priority.
[] Your builders are working with a deliberate delay, insuring that any mistakes made in the process of constructing the Alpen are identified and then efficiently avoided during the construction of the Karpaten.
-[] (write-in intended delay length)
[] Your builders have been working eagerly on whichever ship is the closest to completion.
[] Your builders have been trying to make sure neither ship falls too far behind, prioritizing whichever is behind at the moment.
You aren't sure why the Americans feel it is in their interests to conduct what amounts to a dramatic patrol in force of the Mediterranean; presumably the reason is similar to the voyage of the Great White Fleet twenty years ago, a show of force intended to establish prestige. Perhaps the Americans are worried that the European powers may intervene in the unstable situation in Mexico, or meddle in South American affairs; perhaps President Coolidge has ordered this for reasons related to domestic politics. You have been receiving very good intelligence on American internal affairs, but their political system is very different from the one you are accustomed to.
The deployment and rearrangement of the American ships is not exactly part of your job, but you would like to arrange to have a look at one of the world's newest battleships, especially given how much borrowed American engineering is being built into the Alpen, and the Americans may have broadcast some sort of itinerary with their grand launch.
In spite of the use of the turboelectric drive, however, you feel the Americans are making a grand mistake by using ugly cage masts, two different specialized calibers of five inch gun, and keeping the new Colorado down to the 21 knot speed of their existing standard-type battleships. 21 knots is simply too slow.
[] In spite of the use of the turboelectric drive, however, you feel the Americans are making a grand mistake by (write-in minor feature to avoid).
[] In addition to the use of the turboelectric drive, you were inspired to imitate the Americans' use of (write-in minor feature to emulate).
Thus it is with the Americans on your mind when you stop by the newsstand on your way home to pick up an evening newspaper.
"Hasn't come in yet, sir," the news-seller tells you when you ask for your favorite. "Don't know what's wrong, I usually get them in half an hour past."
"Oh. Disappointing," you say, glancing over the headlines of the other papers. "Well, I suppose I'll be on my way."
Turning down the street, you see a boy jogging down the street, a stack of newspapers filling his arms.
"On the other hand, I could wait a minute," you say, watching the boy approach.
"Just in, sir, just in, sir, sorry," the boy tells the news-seller. "They had to stop the presses. It's Spain, sir."
The news-seller cuts the string with his pocketknife, handing you the top paper on the pile. You skim the front page.
MADRID IN FLAMES
KING ALFONSO XIII HELD CAPTIVE
QUEEN HIDES IN GIBRALTAR
SOCIALISTS ABOLISH SENATE
GENERALS DIVIDED
"Sir?" The news-seller clears his throat.
"Ah, yes," you say, digging in your pocket for your wallet. "Here you go. You should do good business tonight and tomorrow, I think."
Monday, December 17th, 1923
Today is the first day of your Christmas vacation. Last year, you worked right up to the 22nd, but this year you're taking off earlier and relaxing a little bit. You're taking a full three weeks – it's been a busy year, and you've earned a little time to spend by yourself. You're not sure if your intended travel companions will accept your invitation... but you plan to travel to Italy with Elizabeth (if you can convince her not to jump back on the train to Fiume today). Severino has airship tickets he won't be using, which he was happy to let you have after you promised to attend a party he was invited to in Rome and fill him in on everything. After your return, you will relax for a few days in Vienna, inviting Marie over for what may be your last game of chess; and then travel to France for New Year's with Simon, Birgit, and possibly some more of the Müller family. You think that you have the right itinerary to catch a look at the Colorado.
Your plans (check 1-3 options):
[] Travel to Fiume, Trieste, and Pola – it is a good time to check up on things at your leisure and get a good feel of how the navy is doing.
[] Travel to Italy – Severino has airship tickets he won't be using, which he was happy to let you have after you promised to attend a party he was invited to in Rome and fill him in on everything.
[] Travel to Germany – you should stop by Hamburg and Essen. Entirely unofficially, of course.
[] Travel to Spain – you should see what is going on there in person.
[] Spend New Year's in the south of France – you think you have the right itinerary to catch a look at the Colorado.
[] Spend time in Vienna relaxing.
[] (write-in)
Your intended companion, whom you hope will not turn down your invitation:
[] Birgit.
[] Marie.
[] Elizabeth.
[] (write-in)
I will write up a behind-the-scenes chart of 12 bad event entries and 12 good event entries. Some will be attached to the location actions, some will be tied to the person options. Write-ins will share in these risks. Rejection of your invitation is a real risk - how real depends on your other actions.
EDIT: Also, there will be a long turn next, so...
[] (write-in intelligence request)
The Armenian situation is currently static. The Russians have concentrated a military presence near the border, but have not invaded. Good information about what exactly is going on inside of Ottoman Armenia or French Armenia continues to be difficult to obtain. From what you know, it seems like the resettlement of Armenians is continuing while the French are consolidate their de facto ownership of what is now being referred to as French Armenia. The Russian battleship Ivan Grozny has been launched but is not yet officially in commission. Its Ottoman counterpart, the German-built Süleyman, continues to spend its time at or near Trebizond on the Black Sea coast.
Spanish situation
There has been a major upheaval in Spain. You are mainly aware of this through public sources, as the disruption has been massive enough to cut off the majority of traditional intelligence conduits into Spain. Severino's contacts in particular have all either fled or gone underground. Here is what you know about the Spanish situation:
There is a revolutionary council in Madrid exercising executive authority over the government.
The Senate has been dissolved. The Congress of Deputies has not, although it seems to be operating in a limited fashion; about a third of the deputies have fled, been arrested, or disappeared, including the president.
There is talk of writing a new constitution and scheduling elections.
Not all of Spain seems to recognize the new provisional government, although most regional governments seem to either be under the control of revolutionaries or loyalist elements of the military.
The queen and heirs to the throne are currently in British-controlled Gibraltar.
The Greek and British governments have issued statements in support of the restoration of order and monarchy to Spain. The Italian government has issued a statement in support of the revolutionary council, referring to it as a "legitimate provisional government."
Russia Technology event
With the official launch of the Ivan Grozny, naval analysts have been working overtime to determine its precise capabilities in detail. Russian officials have declared the official standard displacement of the design to be 35,000 tons; the office of naval intelligence does not believe this to be an underestimate, at least not an intentional one.
Dimensions: 210.0m length x 32.6m beam. Designed maximum draft 9.8m; Russian correspondence indicates maximum draft as actually built may slightly exceed 10m.
Displacement: Designed to be 33,800 long tons (standard). Estimated to be ~1000 tons overweight from intended design.
Main battery: 3x4 16"/45 guns manufactured by Vickers, non-superfiring (AQX) turret layout with a maximum elevation of +30 degrees.
Secondary battery: 24 130mm/50 guns(12x1 casemates fore and aft, 12x1 dual-purpose enclosed turrets on a lowered gun deck amidships), four 100mm/37 anti-aircraft guns, 4x8 40mm (octuple pom-pom) anti-aircraft guns.
Torpedo armament: Eighteen 450mm torpedo tubes
Armor: Belt 355mm in two layers (75mm "all over" belt, 280mm outer main belt) at slight (12 degree) tumblehome slope. Deck 35mm bomb + 75mm main + 6mm splinter. Turrets and conning tower peak at 400mm.
Propulsion: Design speed 25 kts from ~70,000 shp on four shafts. Oil-fueled.
The Ivan Grozny also features external underwater domes of some kind. These are not present in the design papers Austro-Hungarian agents have had access to, and seem to be related to some sort of recent top-secret technological development by the Russians surrounding underwater detection systems. You do not have full technical details of the new system, but it appears to require the input of more significant electrical power than an ordinary hydrophone, significant operator training, and carefully cut and polished quartz crystals.
France
Very little sensitive intelligence has emerged from France. It is known that the existing French cruiser project started before the Harding Treaty has continued towards completion, with details emerging that have been made public by the French (a "standard" displacement of 7,250 tons and a 4x2 155mm main battery). The known details suggest a cruiser similar in overall characteristics to the Omaha class.
Germany -1 xenophobia
The public mood in Germany appears to be continuing its slow shift towards increased interest in other cultures. Kaiser Wilhelm has made a very visible public gesture in offering to accept Armenian immigrants, sending some German passenger airships to Istanbul to very visibly collect Armenians. This seems to be a grand gesture of cooperation towards his Ottoman allies' effort to Turkify their territory as well as a calculated insult to the French.
Greece +1 nationalism
Nationalist sentiment in Greece appears to be on the rise. Greek efforts to crew and shake down their new battleships into service seem to be continuing.
Italy -1 monarchism
The Italian public appears sympathetic towards the revolutionaries in Spain and their choice to remove the monarch from power, seating the full power in the popularly elected wing of Parliament. The socialists currently in power in Italy appear to have decided to recognize the provisional government currently in control of Madrid, passing a resolution in support of the right of the Spanish people to determine the form of their governance.
Austro-Hungarian agents have obtained design studies for the Triumvir class cruiser. With a displacement of 13,000 tons and designed to carry four twin 10" turrets with a 200mm belt at a maximum speed of 28 knots, the Triumvir is an uncompromising modernization of the older lineage of armored cruisers; you are tempted to think of it as a miniature battlecruiser, intended to thoroughly outclass any treaty-compliant cruiser. It appears to be designed to be initially launched with oversized triple 7.5" turrets. A second set of plans with improbably slightly smaller dimensions, claiming to be within the limitations of the Harding Treaty, appears intended for public consumption, clear evidence that the Italians are making plans to cheat the treaty.
The Triumvir class has not been laid down, although the Italian parliament has approved providing money to construct a new cruiser class beginning sometime in the next year.
Japan +1 democracy
Governmental liberalization of some kind appears to be continuing in Japan, although it is difficult for you to be sure exactly what is going on over there.
Netherlands +1 communism
The revolution in Spain seems to have stirred up socialists in the Netherlands, who have staged rallies in support, although the Dutch government has remained silent on the subject.
A recent surge in nationalism in the Ottoman Empire has subsided, but the effort to Turkify the areas actually controlled by the Ottoman government continue.
United Kingdom -1 xenophobia
Construction continues on the Nelson class. Although frequently compared with the Pyotr class as one of the two most dangerous potential opponents for your ship, the two classes contrast very sharply.
In sharp contrast to the Ivan Grozny, which features no superfiring turrets and a long external belt,the Nelson class features a triple-superfiring layout; construction has proceeded far enough that it is clear the "C" turret barbette is located too close to the "B" turret barbette to allow full clearance for a 16"/45 gun.
The Nelson has several other points of sharp contrast to the Ivan. It has an internal belt, sloped to deflect plunging fire; and instead of having armor distributed widely throughout the ship, armor is tightly concentrated, with a significant portion of the bow virtually unarmored. Reportedly, the thickest portion of the belt peaks at 370mm over the magazines, with 356mm over most of the machinery.
With its primary armament concentrated forwards, the British have paid special attention to insuring that the aft is well-guarded from flanking attacks with a nest of sixteen 6" guns in eight twin turrets - three of which are superfiring (3 on each flank and two pointing directly aft).
The Ivan Grozny was designed to have a standard displacement more than a thousand tons under the treaty limit, a safety margin in case of engineering errors; the Nelson is designed to hit the displacement limit with precise exactness. The Ivan Grozny was an existing design that had been previously tabled and rushed into production; the Nelson is a novel battleship that the British seem in no hurry to complete.
I did previously mention that there is no guarantee that this version of the Nelson class will align with the OT version. This is about a 10 meter increase in length and 1 meter increase in beam, with the British pushing much more aggressively towards the treaty limit. New features so far appear to include a superfiring C turret and additional 6" guns.
United States
-1 populism
The surge of populist support in the wake of the Teapot Dome scandal has begun to ebb. The stock market is doing well and President Coolidge has continued to be quietly presidential. Indications are that the former vice president will face some challenges from others within the ruling Republican Party. You're not sure why, but the experts on American affairs have prepared some impenetrable briefs on several possible future presidents.
More interesting to you is the detailed information on American strategic plans. The American plan in the long term centers around an even division of their fleet into two separate and roughly equal forces, one roughly matching the Japanese in the Pacific and the other maintaining a presence in the Atlantic. The Americans have plans for fighting everyone from the British to the Japanese, "just in case."
The Americans are on track to rival Germany in the quality of their aerial forces. While the Germans remain the clear world leader in zeppelin technology - after all, Graf von Zeppelin himself was a German - the Americans have massive helium deposits, greater wealth, and every intention of matching the Germans' aerial technology with their superior resources.
It is the fledgling airship corps that has caught the particular attention of Austro-Hungarian counterintelligence. Following the discovery of your correspondence with Mr. Tesla on the issue of radio-wave based detection, the airship corps has made the development and acquisition of so-called "Tesla beam" technology a priority, although their navy appears to have little interest thus far.
Yes, I know the OTL octuple pom-pom isn't due for a little while.
The Cyprus Crisis made the British really nervous about bomb-divers.
Your great-uncle Ludwig was a great patron of the arts. Uncle Franz, not so much – indeed, his open contempt for "Luzi-wuzi" was strong enough that Ludwig's love for theater probably ruined it for him by association. You don't believe he is likely to be in attendance tonight for any reason, although you think you might have caught a glimpse of your older half-brother Max from a distance.
Exactly what your mother was thinking by giving you the same name as one of your father's children isn't clear to you, but your older half-brother is one of the reasons your status as a bastard is a sensitive subject to Uncle Franz and not just yourself. (It isn't as if your father's reputation is of much concern anymore.) Any unfortunate rumor circulated about "Otto's son Max" might attach itself to the man standing second in line for the double crown.
For example, if "Otto's son Max" was seen with a "wanton Hungarian harlot," which you are afraid might have been whispered by one of the ladies in the lobby, that could stir up some trouble. Miss Hadik has attracted more than a few looks from her peers, for reasons that puzzle you at the moment, and you're hoping that none of those looks are attached to tongues that have the right combination of indiscretion and knowledge to give birth to the sort of gossip that could mutate into something truly dangerous.
Elizabeth is not unfashionably dressed. She is wearing a dress that you think is suitable for the opera, highly fashionable and quite modern. Perhaps it is in her mannerisms, accent, or simply her combination of height and unfamiliarity that has drawn the attention of her peers. Something about her make-up?
As you consider these factors, you study carefully your companion out of the corner of your eye as the two of you slowly filter through the crowd towards the stairs, contrasting her with the other women in the crowd.
She is more starkly pale, her clamped crimson lips making a thin line, a blood-red streak in brighter contrast to the pallor of the skin of her cheeks, which has not been so artfully adorned as most of her companions. Her arms, bared now that you have doffed your coats, make those of the ladies behind her look like limp twigs, their size and definition unique among the women present. Her Grecian-style silk gown with its metallic lace overlay is strikingly fashionable, but no less colorful than her peers and not really less modest – if she may be showing an inch or two more stockinged leg in absolute terms than some, she has three or four inches more leg to start with than most of her peers. In an array of bobs and curls, her hair has been kept long, a dark rope of a braid trailing down her back; it is not so obvious from the front with her fashionably feathered headband, but it is another thing that marks her as subtly different.
Finally – and this takes you most of the way to the stairwell to notice – she is as still and as economical in her movements as the older ladies, a marked contrast to the flouncing, giggling, and general vivaciousness of the other women her own age. The young women look a little like children at play next to her, you think to yourself. Perhaps that is why some of them are jealous.
As the two of you ascend the stairs, she grips your arm with steely firmness.
The opera is a comedy featuring a humble Chinese duck-breeder, and Elizabeth laughs openly and honestly as bored Chinese gods meddle in the duck-breeder's life for their own amusement. You spend almost as much time watching her face as you do the singers; now her face is animated and alive, even as the other ladies in the audience seem still and solemn by comparison, limiting themselves to a spectrum from a fashionable giggle to a jaded silence.
As you take to your feet to leave, the somber stillness returns to Elizabeth's face, and her grip soon tightens back to steely intensity around your arm as you navigate back out through the crowd.
Monday, December 17th, 1923
"He has said yes, provided that I avoid making a spectacle of myself and catch my return flight promptly," Elizabeth says, hanging up the telephone. "I think he wishes he could be there himself."
"Erzsébet, that is good to hear," you say, addressing her in Hungarian. "I have no intention of making a spectacle of myself at any point, although we are obligated to attend a party. Severino insisted we go in his stead."
"That horrible devil? I doubt any party to which he was invited will be any fun at all," she replies, frowning. "Well, at least there will be good food and drink at a party of his sort."
"Yes. Just take care around any pudding," you say, giggling a little bit. "Oh. Sorry, I do not think I told you about the pudding bowl story, it is why Severino came here to Vienna in the first place..."
"I don't think I want to," Elizabeth says, frowning sternly. "But the point is taken, I will avoid any puddings."
Friday, December 21st, 1923
The doorman takes your invitation card.
"Severino Luís de Alcântara O'Neill and friend," he reads aloud, visibly excited. "Your friend has been much looking forward to making your acquaintance! It is too bad that you could not bring the Maximilian you promised to bring with you, but still, he will not want to wait to meet you!"
"Sorry," you say, tugging at the doorman's sleeve to halt him before he dashes off. "I am the friend Maximilian, Severino was unfortunately injured in a duel and unable to make it. This is Elisabetta."
"I thought you were Austrian," he says, getting a little bit suspicious. "You sound Venetian."
"Well, Erzsébet, perhaps you will get your wish of skipping the party after all," you mutter to your companion in her native language as the doorman frowns. "If he doesn't let us in, I'll consider my obligations fulfilled."
* * *
The host had intended to introduce to Severino his most honored guest, an intense-looking short fellow with a receding hairline and prominent forehead. (The two features help make each other more visible, of course.) You exchange brief introductions and a little bit of small talk; he signs a card for Severino, and then the two of you arrange your excuses for keeping your conversation brief – yourself to explore the host's gallery with Miss Hadik, himself to go upstairs to help a woman figure out the correct way to wrap a toga. Your general impression is that the short man has a sense of self-importance that rivals or exceeds that of Uncle Franz, although Uncle Franz has a pretty good reason for feeling important - this fellow is merely a member of Italian parliament, and not even in the ruling party.
Some of the guests are costumed, though not all. The party has a very deliberately classical theme to it, a deliberate invocation of the ancient sybaritic imperial days when Rome was the capital of most of Europe. The two of you being visibly outsiders makes you of some interest, and your aristocratically-honed instincts lead you to suspect that you are the subject of more than a few of the whispered conversations going on in the darker corners of the room.
You think you heard someone say the name "Otto" at one point, although that might be your imagination – the Italian pronunciations of "auto" and "Otto" are not as clear to you as they could be, especially since the Roman accent is very different from the Italian you are used to speaking in Fiume.
Unexpectedly, several hours after your arrival at the party, the short man comes back, displaying a completely different attitude towards you – one of facile interest and respect. He invites you and Elizabeth to come upstairs with him and his friends (two women wearing togas in urgent danger of falling off) to check out the host's recreation of a Roman bathhouse.
You decline politely. Belatedly, it occurs to you to look over at Elizabeth to see what her opinion might be, but all you see is a polite half-smile fixed on her face, a vapid mask concealing what her true reaction might be. Perhaps there is a small flicker of curiosity or nervousness in her eyes as she meets your gaze halfway through your short list of excuses, but you are not sure.
The short man takes your rejection of his offer amiably, and you start to turn away, heading towards the buffet. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see him Elizabeth a brief querying look as the two of you turn towards the exit. She meets his gaze and shakes her head minutely, patting your arm.
The crowd has thinned – more than you would have expected from the departures you've observed – and you feel it seems a suitable time to leave the party. Eyeing the still-festive mood on your way out, you decide that perhaps some of the guests have either preceded the short fellow upstairs or have filtered into other parts of the mansion, part of a group effort to apply the inverse of the usual hypothesis on the decline of the Roman Empire towards the rise of a new Italian one.
You don't realize that you said that aloud until Elizabeth laughs.
"It is not the ones like little Gabriele there who are running the country, but far more sensible ones. I can hardly imagine a man like that running Fiume, much less Italy. He's too busy dreaming about imagined glories to accomplish anything real," she says.
Hell Elizabet is scandalized just by Severino's public level of behavior, does anyone think that she won't use those biceps to 'crack some nuts (ie Max's)' if Max is stupid enough to walk up stairs for an orgy and try to get her to come along?
To try to make something a little happier, I did some more work on the Alpen. Added the secondary fire control directors. Added aft superstructure and mast. Added gun shields to most of the 76mm guns. Colored open areas to differentiate between wood decking and metal decks.
You've invited Marie over to your apartment for what you suspect is your final game of chess. You invited her for dinner, as well, but she claimed to have already eaten.
She pushes her queen's bishop's pawn forward, bright blue eyes intense under her fashionably short blonde hair.
"I have been practicing my English," she says, in that tongue. Her accent is terrible, but her grammar is excellent.
You respond with your king's pawn, pushing it forward two spaces towards the center, pressing back. "Very good," you say. "It is not too hard of a language. Rather like German."
"Some of us find such things easier than others," she says bitterly, returning to proper Austrian High German as she pushes forward two more pawns, a knight, and a bishop while you continue to advance your troops towards the center of the board.
You ponder the board for a minute, pausing. "I would have been happy to help if you had asked," you say, resolutely pushing forward a fourth pawn and taking a firm hold on the center of the board.
"Well, here I am," Marie tells you, swinging the white queen out from behind her screen, her first openly aggressive move.
"I'm not going to chase after you on the side like that," you say, deploying your knights towards the center before pushing your king's pawn over to her side of the board.
She flinches, pulling her knight back towards her king defensively.
"You made a serious mistake," you say, threading your pawn diagonally forward and pulling the first casualty off the board with an audible clink.
She doesn't respond directly to either your move or your comment, and there is silence for several moves. Your pawn carves forward another rank, and she still doesn't respond to its inimical advance.
"A very curious move," you say. "Your king can take, you know."
"My king doesn't have any balls," she explains. "He's a coward and doesn't really know what he wants."
She stands up from the table. "I'm getting a drink," she explains.
"No, stay there," she adds as you rise out of your chair. "I don't need your help, I know where things are."
She stalks into your kitchenette and out of view for a minute. You can hear the pop of a cork, a glugging noise, and a slightly ladylike belch before she comes back into view, a bottle of vintage Burgundy in hand. You stand there gaping for a moment. Marie, coming from a very aspirational middle class family, is usually well-mannered with her food and drink.
"Can I offer you something to eat? A glass, perhaps?"
"No, this is fine, thank you," she replies, sitting down. "It's past time you were punished by the white queen."
As the game continues, she sweeps her queen aggressively across the board as you slowly fortify your pawns' position forward, a black dagger pointed directly at her king.
"Check," she announces, swooping the white queen forward to pick off your unprotected knight and knocking it off the board with a vigorous flick. "The white queen reigns," she says, and giggles, taking a celebratory swig of wine.
"Take it easy," you say, as the two of you exchange a series of quick and bloody moves. "I'm still ahead here."
"The white queen rides again," she says, dropping it on top of your bishop. "And check."
You interpose your own queen in front of your queen. She responds by pushing her queen slowly forward along the file.
"The black queen dies," she tells you, hostility dripping from her voice. Then her expression and tone shifts to honeyed sweetness, batting her eyelashes at you. "Oh no! Will the black king ravish the white queen?"
"He will remove her from play," you say, with a cold tone. "You're running out of pieces. Concede?"
"Never," she says, nudging her surviving bishop forward and waving the half-full bottle in your direction. "Drink?"
"Sure," you say, seizing the opportunity to take it out of her hands. "I'll go get some glasses."
"Oh, don't trouble yourself," she says, grabbing her purse and heading back towards the kitchen. "I know where they are."
You take the opportunity to discreetly wipe the lipstick off the neck of the bottle of wine with a napkin and then take a sniff, savoring the aroma of the maltreated beverage. At least she has come to her senses a little bit, you think to yourself, and then begin to wonder what is taking her so long in the kitchen. The distinctive sound of another bottle opening has you on your feet in seconds. Heading back towards the kitchen, you meet her coming the other direction with a pair of tall tumblers … filled with a cloudy whitish liquid that you are fairly certain did not come from your wine cabinet.
"I meant to pour wine in glasses," you say, words falling gracelessly from your mouth. "What is..."
"Don't worry. These are both for me. You can finish the wine," Marie says.
You resolutely continue to the kitchen and get yourself a proper wineglass, pouring carefully. There is a green bottle perched on the counter next to Marie's purse. Considering your options, you decide that even if Marie declined your offer of food, it is probably best that you and her eat something to help soak up the alcohol. Cheese and crackers, you decide, it will just take you a few minutes to slice up some cheese and grab the tin. You return with plate in hand to find the board set back up.
"Your turn to play white. Unless you're scared," Marie says, thrusting a glass of cloudy-white beverage at you.
You wave the glass away. "If you want to practice your English, you could read that," you say, pointing at the tin of American crackers. "They're really quite good with cheese, you should have some."
"Your turn," she says, sullenly.
The second game is considerably more unpleasant than the first, Marie considering each move carefully and silently. The cheese and crackers have disappeared before the surviving black knight forks your rook and king, and things go downhill from there – for you, in terms of board position; for Marie, in terms of her ability to sit up straight.
And, you think to yourself, that's with her only having gone halfway through the first glass, you think to yourself.
"Check," Marie says.
"Well, I suppose I need a drink," you say, lying through your teeth as you reach over to nonchalantly grab the second glass away from her side of the table with your left hand as you push your king out of the way.
"Too much for you? Check again," she says, pushing forward her second rook.
"I don't feel I had very much of a choice," you say, continuing your king's inexorable retreat. Mate in three, you think to yourself. "Not while playing by the rules."
"Fuck the rules," she says, tipping her king over and draining the remainder of her glass, knocking half the pieces on the floor in the process. "You played with me too many times. You going to drink that, or you change your mind? You always change your mind, you bastard. The white queen's too much for you to drink, give it back to me."
"No, it's not," you say, holding your hand up.
Marie calling you a bastard hurts. She knows you are one; but she's never called you that before. Insulted and hurt, you respond manfully by quaffing the drink. The drink hits you like a sweet licorice-flavored brick, but you continue gulping it down until there is none left in the glass.
"You've had enough. You've done enough," you add, gesturing at the mess and taking hold of her shoulder. "It's best that you rest on the couch for a while. I don't think you're in a fit state to walk the streets."
"I'm sleeping in a bed, Max. And not your damned bed. I'm leaving," she says, pulling herself away from you, stumbling a little as she heads towards the coat closet.
"Marie, you're drunk," you say.
"Max, you are an asshole as well as a bastard," she says as she buttons up her coat. "Asshole," she repeats in English as she puts on her hat.
"Marie, wait," you say, shouldering on your own coat hastily and following her out the door. "Let me walk you home," you say, grabbing her by the arm.
"I will scream," she says. "Let me go, asshole."
Glumly you watch as she stumbles out of sight.
Thursday, December 27th, 1923
You awake with a splitting headache and a sense of guilt that becomes more acute when you draw a comparison between your own behavior and your father's. You've been charming women and breaking their hearts (even if you haven't been bedding them) and you did get irresponsibly drunk last night. Your father surely had many headaches like this one.
Friday, December 28th, 1923
Today, you are scheduled to fly to France. You have neither seen nor heard from Marie since Wednesday night.
[] You will board the airship resolutely without looking back, accompanied by the Müllers.
[] You will board the aeroplane confidently, not showing any weakness to the impressionable young Simon flying with you.
[] You will send the Müllers on to France with your best wishes …
-[] … while you wait in Vienna for a chance to talk to Marie again.
-[] … while you, convinced that you will imitate your father's damage pattern whether or not you have any fun along the way, will party like it's 1924 until it is 1924.
Actual decisions on the ship coming soon. This is our new "bad stuff happens." Next: Good stuff happens.
Not only have you chosen to impress Simon with a ride aboard an aeroplane, the three-seat craft is an enclosed cockpit monoplane, an Etrich Doppeltaube – a daring machine less than a year old. While Igo Etrich failed to convince the Luftfahrtruppe that new fast aeroplane-bombers were worth purchasing in large numbers (the brief field tests were unpromising, considering the small payload carried by the aeroplane as opposed to conventional bombers), the plane is an impressive personal transport for one or two very important persons – or a pilot interested in impressing one or two persons at a time.
It certainly looks gorgeous from the outside, and the enclosed cockpit makes the prospect of making a wintertime flight in an aeroplane less daunting. Hopefully it doesn't decide to fall out of the sky, you think to yourself.
You board the aeroplane confidently and resolutely, not looking back and not showing any weakness to the impressionable young Simon flying with you. The rest of the Müller family has already boarded their airship, but if the pilot's boasts about the speed of the aeroplane are correct, you may reach France first, even with stops along the way.
"You sure you don't want to go over the Alps? Very scenic," the pilot jibes.
"Hm, maybe you're right, Heinrich," you say. "Hold on just an hour or two, I'll go get some skis for me and the boy."
"We're flying over the Alps?" Simon asks from behind.
"Well, Max and I talked about it earlier. He thought we might crash into a high-flying mountain. I told him the mountains stay on the ground where they belong, but flying in the winter does get a little tricky. Got to be careful about ice building up," Heinrich says. "And it's hard to take off again if you land somewhere in rough country."
The flight is mercifully uneventful – and as you had hoped, Simon seems to find Heinrich and the heavier-than-air falling flying machine fascinating. It is as fast as Heinrich boasts; and the flight is surprisingly stable. The view is amazing, a reminder of the invaluable role aircraft play in reconnaissance in the modern military environment. While you had earlier ruled out operating aircraft from the Alpen, it may very well be the way of the future for every battleship and cruiser to supply a spotter of its own.
[] … it would be worthwhile to fit in a mast and hydrogen generator for airships.
[] … it would be worth trying to squeeze in an aircraft catapult somewhere for launching seaplanes after all.
-[] (write in location)
[] … it would be worth making space somewhere to stow flying boats that can take off from the water.
-[] (write in where)
[] … it would be a bad idea to try to shoe-horn something in at this late stage.
Saturday, December 29th, 1923
Nice – more precisely the neighboring town of Villafranche, whose naturally deep harbor is where the American battleship is expected to make port – is significantly warmer than Vienna was, a welcome change. The Müller family is in Nice for a day of shopping and visiting museums; you are recuperating from the trip in peace and quiet, having brunch in a bar with a good view of the waterfront. Heinrich is an old enough friend to know that after hours locked in a tiny box together, the best company you can be for one another is quiet company.
The bartender, an eager up-and-coming fellow with ambitions of some day working at the famous Ritz in Paris, has served the two of you several glasses of an unfamiliar cocktail made by mixing together orange juice and champagne. It is a delightful drink, the effervescent wine enhanced rather than masked by the citrus fruit.
After a couple of hours, you are joined in waiting for the arrival of the world's most heavily armored battleship by an attractive young British woman (one Miss Alice Clayton), who is accompanied by an elderly maiden aunt (Miss Florence Clayton). This relieves the eager bartender's focus on you. Unfortunately, as the elderly maiden aunt seems uninterested in curbing her charge's relentless interest in flirtatious conversation with strange men, and Heinrich combines an excess of champagne consumption with deficit of English proficiency. This has placed the burden of making polite conversation to entertain the lady on you and the bartender.
Unfortunately, Heinrich told the bartender you were an expert on battleships, and the bartender passed this information to the young lady after she started asking him questions about the approaching fleet. Due to your combination of fluency and unfamiliar accent, Alice seems to presume you to be an American expert on battleships, and has become quite eager in her questioning, hanging on your every word breathlessly.
[] Why, yes, you have arrived here by way of New York. (Lie.)
[] Fill her head with outrageous fabrications about the capabilities of the Colorado.
[] Admit to being Austrian rather than American.
[] Admit to being Australian rather than American. (Lie.)
[] A gentleman neither talks about himself nor lies needlessly. Keep the conversation on the Colorado and trot out an endless array of opinions and knowledge.
[] (write-in)
* * *
The five battleships of the American fleet sent to tour the Mediterranean gleam in the soft light of the setting sun, the massive new Colorado at a position of honor befitting her novelty, flanked by the Nevada, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and Arizona. The crowds of out-of-town visitors and interested locals thronging the streets show no concern about their proximity to fifty two of the most powerful guns in the world, although their excitement and enthusiasm are in proportion to the visiting presence of a "squadron" fit to match the entire capital fleet of any of the Mediterranean countries.
The fleet had earlier sailed past Gibraltar peacefully, even while at the same time the Spanish revolutionaries mounted an assault on the British territory in an attempt to capture the missing queen (who has since fled to England). The Americans have maintained a position of neutrality with respect to the conflict thus far. Rumor has it that the Americans originally planned to stop at Gibraltar as part of their tour; perhaps they will do so on their way back out of the Mediterranean.
"You don't think it's silly to carry two different kinds of five-inch guns on the Colorado?" says Alice attentively, simpering at the American.
"Well, we don't have two different kinds of guns on the Colorado yet," he replies. "The new five inch gun is still in development, so..."
The American stops himself, looking at his drink, eyeballing the glass before he continues. "I didn't know that was public knowledge. Where did you hear that?"
Alices's eyes flicker towards you briefly, full of speculation. You wisely ignore the look, keeping a detached but polite expression on your face as you pretend to pay close attention to Florence's rant about the cruelty of fox hunting.
"A lady has her secrets!" she coos, batting her eyelashes at the American. "In truth, it's hard to remember who said that to me, it's been such an exciting day."
* * *
"Max?" Birgit's voice coming from behind you suggests that the Müller family has returned from their outing to Nice. Glancing around, you can spot the rest of the family in the crowd by the docks.
[] "Birgit! Lovely to see you," you say, sweeping her up into an affectionate hug. "I missed you!" She responds with a pleased squeak.
[] "Birgit! You're looking healthful. This is Mademoiselle Alice Clayton," you say in French, deploying the surprised young British lady as a social shield to prevent any attempts by Birgit to become inappropriately affectionate. "Alice, this is Madamoiselle Birgit Müller ," you add, completing the introduction. Birgit blinks. Alice takes your arm in a show of steadying herself as the two women stiffly complete the ritual of introduction. Their French is in both cases more passable than Simon's.
[] "Heinrich is completely sloshed, would you help me get him back up to his hotel room?" you say. Helping to take care of a very drunk pilot will keep her occupied and keep her mind off of romantic thoughts. Who knows, she might even take a shine to the fellow, though he is hardly in his most charming state at the moment.
[] "Birgit! This handsome gentleman here is Thomas Schuler from New York. He speaks more than half-decent German. Just the fellow to answer any questions you and your family might have about those great big monsters out in the bay," you say, clapping the American that you've been talking with on the shoulder. "I'm afraid I should go chat with your father a bit privately," you add, lowering your voice. It would be a good time to get his first impressions on the American fleet.
[] (write-in)
After all, you did promise her brother you would refrain from breaking her heart.
Monday, December 31st, 1923
A collection of French and American pilots have put on an air show together over the bay – many more French than American. Simon is enthusiastic – all the more so because early in the morning, you and Heinrich paid a visit to the airfield, negotiating for a ride for Simon on a test flight one of the French military scout planes here to participate in the show.
Heinrich was puzzled by the presence of metal wedges on the back of the propeller. You're not quite sure of their purpose, either – it is interesting that the French seem to be designing their military scouts with an eye towards high degrees of maneuverability, perhaps to allow them to more easily escape destroyer-planes.
The threat of Simon joining the Foreign Legion is safely dead, especially since his French has improved enough for him to start conversing with French girls – at least one of whom seems to think very poorly of the Legion. She and several of her friends are perched on a blanket along with Simon on the hill as the older Müllers pretend not to be watching.
"So, what do you think?" you ask János and Tamás, gesturing at the harbor. "The way of the future?"
"Far more advanced than ours. In both cases," János grouses. "The French are far ahead of us in aviation, and the least of those ships outclasses SMS Franz Josef. The only way the Alpen can try to outmatch the Colorado is by running away."
"That's their biggest mistake, I think, making it so slow," you say, retreading well-trod ground from discussions at the office.
"Maybe. Perhaps the Japanese and the British will run rings around them out in the great oceans with those battlecruisers of theirs. Speed is armor, Lord Fisher says, and I would hate to claim to know more than him," the old man says. "I can only hope that it is the British who will test that dictum against the American line of battle, rather than us."
"They seem solid ships now. Aside from the cage masts, you're right about those. Very ugly. They seem like the sort of ships that will stay the course – they'll see the war whether it comes next year or in another fifteen." Tamás rubs his hands together in thought. "The captain of the Alpen or Karpaten will be working from a new tactical book unlike the Tegetthoff or Franz Joseph, and the admiral of the fleet will need to learn its abilities separate from all other ships in our arsenal. The American captain needs only to read the same playbook as seen in a dozen other American battleships, and the American admiral needs only to know the one playbook to put together his fleet maneuvers."
Tamás shrugs his shoulders. "It looks smaller than the Bali. I know they are supposed to displace nearly the same, and the Bali drafts shallowly for its size, but it is certainly much more compact, and the guns take up so much more of its length that it makes the ship itself look even stubbier."
You nod, waiting patiently. Once the two of you had gotten off of the subject of his daughter, and the appropriateness of you trying to foist her attention onto an American, Tamás had warmed up to the subject of his observations of the ships.
"The Bali has its secondary guns in casemates level with the aftmost main turret, much like the Franz Josef, or for that matter the Kongo and Fuso the Bali was meant to respond to. The Americans have put them high and dry up, and the clipper bow is also helping with that whole issue of the casemate deck being awash. They may not be as well protected from enemy fire, but they will not be awash. The deck is surprisingly uncluttered, considering how short it is. The older two ships out of the five, they are much more like ours."
"The cage masts are hideous," you say.
"Well, they are very different-looking. Perhaps they will grow on me," Tamás replies. "The Americans have made very good mooring masts out of them. You see the tanks there? Helium, I suspect. They may look terribly exposed, but it is not hydrogen in those. There is no risk of explosion, and the non-rigid blimps they use could even be stowed aboard in a deflated state – see, they have a gondola stored on the boat deck."
Tuesday, January 1st, 1924
You sit on your balcony, sipping coffee and watching the sun rise as you reflect on the good and bad choices you have made this year. You have, you must admit, made a few serious mistakes it would be wiser not to repeat – and some shockingly keen decisions.
The decision to commit to a fully enclosed uniform battery of turreted secondary batteries was a good one. This is the way of the future. The Alpen's launch schedule was delayed by the fiasco with the drive shaft mismatch, an unfortunate oversight on your part but not really a conscious decision. In that light, your biggest mistake this year was deck crowding and growth potential. The Alpen will never be a true titan of the waves, but she will pave the way for the next class.
[] (write-in mistake)
Wednesday, January 2nd, 1924
"And that's what we call a stall," Heinrich says. "So now we start falling. We bend the wings like so to aim for the ground better."
You manfully avoid screaming as the falling machine tilts alarmingly back forwards, clenching your eyes shut and resolving to give Heinrich a stern talking-to if you survive this flight.
"In the dive, one can regain control," Heinrich says. You can hear him doing something to the controls. "It can seem a little backwards that if we want to avoid crashing down to the ground, we need to try to fall faster first rather than trying to keep fighting upwards. We have traded a little altitude for enough speed to get things back the way they should have been. If we did not have that altitude in the first place, we might have crashed."
"Nifty," Simon says, still peering over Heinrich's shoulder. "Have you ever crashed?"
"Yes," Heinrich says. "But not in this lovely Doppeltaube."
You silently reconsider the wisdom of getting Simon interested in flying. Heinrich, you think to yourself, is insane, as are most of the falling-machine enthusiasts you know.
Monday, January 7th, 1924
It is your first day back at the office, and you have spent half your morning interviewing secretaries. You haven't seen Marie since that fateful night, and as your boss pointed out to you, relying on secretaries from the pool is less efficient than arranging for a permanent replacement. You've reached a decision. Your new secretary is Katja, a dourly pessimistic Slovenian woman who has relatives involved with civilian shipbuilding and recently quit her previous job as a nurse.
[] Anna, an ambitious Viennese local who has been working as a pool secretary for the last year and seems very eager to make your personal and professional acquaintance.
[] Katja, a dourly pessimistic Slovenian woman who has relatives involved with civilian shipbuilding and recently quit her previous job as a nurse.
[] Johanna, a recent immigrant from Germany who (oddly enough) used Gergely as her reference.
[] Celestine, a third cousin through your mother's side of the family who has just moved to town.
[] You'll leave the spot unfilled in case Marie comes back, relying on the secretarial pool for now.
The good news is that the deck armor problem has been fixed. Or at least, a major problem with the plate specifications was fixed. Armor plate production is a little behind schedule, as it seems that Witkowitz is investing in research and development projects thanks to Gregor's visit.
Friday, January 11th, 1924
Tired from a long and busy week catching up on everything that has happened since you began your vacation (and a stressful argument with someone from another department over the French 75mm guns that recently entered full-scale production), you find yourself standing outside of the door to Marie's apartment, a paper bag full of pastries clutched in your gloved hand as the snow blows through the air. You shake your head.
After a day like today, you might have liked to talk with Marie, when she had been your friend, and in your exhaustion, your subconscious must have taken over the job of steering you through the city streets and put you at her doorstep. Where she is now, neither you nor her landlord know (much to the irritation of her landlord), and her mother hung up on you when you called her parents to ask.
Maybe you should see a psychoanalyst and get your subconscious up to speed, you think to yourself. Marie's disappearance bothers you, even if the breach between the two of you had broken your friendship beyond repair. You stare at the door glumly, and it opens to reveal a pair of figures bundled up in heavy winter clothing.
"Oh! Hello, Mr. Hohenwerfer," says the chipper voice of Miss Alice Clayton.
You stand there, mouth hanging open in surprise, the mental gears of your brain stalling as your thought processes go nose-up. Heinrich's voice echoes through your head: In a dive, one can regain control.
Alice, undeterred by the lack of a reply, continues. "What a pleasant surprise to run into you here! I suppose you did say you were from Vienna, so I shouldn't be too surprised, but it did look like a big city, and we hadn't called you to say we were in town. Aunt Flo and I were about to go exploring for dinner."
"I know just the place, Miss Clayton," you say, the courtesy instilled in you from a young age taking over, giving her directions and privately resolving to ask Severino to keep an eye on the English ladies if they stay in town longer than a week. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence... and three times is enemy action.
[] "I know just the place, Miss Clayton," you say, the courtesy instilled in you from a young age taking over.
-[] Give directions.
-[] Accompany them to dinner.
[] "Well, I have something that could take the edge off," you say, shaking the bag. "How about we go inside and have tea while the weather settles down a little?"
-[] You want to investigate the apartment for clues.
-[] You want to put them at ease and converse with them in a relaxed and private setting.
[] "Ich spreche kein Englisch, Fräulein. Sie halten mich für jemand anderen," you reply, pulling your scarf back up to cover your face.
-[] Briskly walk away.
-[] Throw the bag of pastries at the British ladies and run.
[] (write-in)
Tuesday, January 15th, 1923
"I know what this is!" Nicolau says, waving a sheaf of papers in the air as he rushes into your office. "This is for locating things underwater! It's all about how to read echoes! They exploit the crystals to transform sound vibrations into electrical signals.
"Nicolau, what are you talking about?" you ask.
Nicolau had been working on troubleshooting the process of trying to reverse-engineer the fire control systems recently installed on the French Bretagne class battleships, a project which he approached by trying to solve everything at once and getting sidetracked on the subject of how something like a Tesla beam device might interface with an electromechanical calculator. When you came back on Monday from your vacation, you told him to concentrate on just getting the Vickers director for the 75mm anti-aircraft guns for now.
"The Russian domes!" Nicolau says.
"What about the Vickers?" you ask gently. "Have you made progress on that?"
Nicolau stares at you blankly for a minute. "Oh, that. I figured out the problem they were having last week. You haven't asked me about it since then. I was starting to work out how to improve it from the original Vickers system, but then there was that report about the 75 millimeter aircraft oppression guns not working, so I thought you might have stopped the dialectic on the aircraft oppression systems for a little while."
You look at the disorganized pile of reports on the left-hand side of your desk, a recently discovered backlog of reports that you were supposed to read some time last week. With Marie gone, your filing system has become markedly less efficient, but you do remember having an argument on Friday with someone in another department who thought you had been mistaken to push for quick production on the reverse-engineered French 75mm guns.
"I must have missed that," you say, starting to shuffle through the folders.
"That one," says Nicolau, pointing at a folder marked ŠKODA 75MM MUNITIONSZUFUHRSYSTEM.
A quick skim tells you that the gun has a heat-related jamming problem, limiting the effective sustained firing rate. A defensively-worded report from Škoda says that their initial field tests didn't catch the problem and that the French probably have the same problem with their version of the gun.
You decide that you should invest in getting the 75mm gun problems fixed. You have too much capital invested into it already - both in terms of budget and in terms of bureaucratic politics. It's time to invest more into the 75mm gun project so that it works really well
[] Tell Nicolau that he may need to adapt the Vickers anti-aircraft director for use with a different gun, and brace for the metaphorical flak that you will get headed your way for the waste of precious Navy budget krone represented by the failed weapon system project.
-[] (write in replacement gun to use)
[] You should invest in getting the 75mm gun problems fixed. It's time to invest more into the 75mm gun project so that it works really well.
[] Accept that the 75mm gun system might not work ideally, but that switching would cost you more budget and bureaucratic capital than is worthwhile.
[] (write-in)
"Nicolau, I want to have that report from you by the end of the week. Now, this thing about the domes… I can give you two to at the most three weeks to work this dome issue out. You're right that this is very exciting stuff, and it has pretty serious implications, but Alpen will be launching sometime next month. After the launch, I need you to concentrate on the main fire control system first and when that's done then you can explore the Tesla beam interface with the electromechanical computer."
[] "… I want you to work this out. You're right that this is very exciting stuff, and it has pretty serious implications."
[] "… drop it, I need all of your focus on figuring out how to get the main fire control systems working."
[] (write-in)
Friday, January 18th, 1924
"Look, I'm sorry about yelling at you the other week, I was in the wrong. I found out something interesting for you, though" you say. "Here's what we're up against if we want to get the Dutch on board. Heinz?"
"The basic outline is that the Dutch parliament has called for something that can match the latest Japanese cruiser," Heinz says. "The sticky point for us is that the newest Japanese cruiser carries 20 centimeter guns, whereas our cruiser only carries 19 centimeter guns."
"First, Germaniawerft. If that looks familiar, it's because it's basically the Koester with very minor modifications. They're pushing hard because of the delays with the Preußen projects and the general cut-down of German naval appropriations." Heinz passes over his first folder.
"Where the original falls short is speed and fueling, which means a hefty redesign of the machinery. Their projections of a thirty knot top speed are overly optimistic. We could hit them hard there, especially if we leak some of the Krupp internals we have to key Dutch MPs."
Heinz pulls out his second folder, holding it up in the air. "Second, Blohm & Voss have put in a bid with three twin turrets and a 31 knot designed top speed. Eight 10.5 centimeter guns, which they are saying is powerful enough to threaten thinly-armored Japanese cruisers at close range, given some fairly strained assumptions about the quality of Japanese armor steel. We could use that claim to our advantage, given the 12 centimeter guns on our new scout cruiser."
Heinz passes over the second folder. "Third, a joint bid between Bethlehem Steel and AG Weser. Needle-narrow profile with triple turrets superfiring over twin turrets. It has two shafts of turboelectric drive with boilers and generators squeezed into odd places in order to get everything to fit. The armor is very selectively placed, and the secondary guns top out at 76mm anti-aircraft guns, but this is supposed to be a 32 knot design."
Heinz pulls out the third and fourth folders, handing both of them over. "Finally, Armstrong has a serious bid that looks very much like the Japanese cruisers currently under construction. A little longer. Six single 8" turrets, 34 knot top speed. Their argument – which is tough to beat – is that you can't outclass a cruiser you can't keep up with."
"I do have one additional suggestion to make about how we could sell our new cruiser to the Dutch," you say. "We're cheap. Our design is economical to start with, and without colonial possessions and global trade buttressing our currency value, our shipyard labor is cheap by international standards. They're fighting about how to fund these - they could save big here, or possibly squeeze out an extra unit."
[] (write-in bonus strategy)
Saturday, January 26th, 1924
"Really, you should visit more often. The sea air is good for you, and the winter weather is milder here on the coast," Elizabeth says.
"You should come visit me in Vienna more often," you counter. "Although you have a point about the sea air. It's just that it does get hard to get away from Vienna sometimes. Especially after taking vacation, and with all the changes in the office… Marie's gone, Severino is back again but quite changed, and Nicolau is starting to settle in."
"A leopard won't change his spots," grumbles Elizabeth. "You really should have gotten rid of him."
"I don't know if it was the near-death experience or the revolution in Spain, but he really has changed. He barely even perked up when I told him about the party he missed in Rome, just said that he was sorry he missed it and asked if I would make sure his newspaper subscriptions were paid up," you say.
"Well, he should be sobering up. Spain is a sign of things to come. Royalty is a relic," she says. "Sorry, but it's true."
Monday, January 28th, 1924
The original ambitious schedule called for launching the Alpen earlier than now. Launching a ship doesn't mean it is complete, of course, but it is a major milestone.
Every week, you've updated your planner to estimate the earliest possible day that the battleship could be launched. Adding a necessary three days of padding in case of disaster – rescheduling the reception and ball certain to accompany the elaborate ceremony is troublesome and things do come up – you arrive at a date.
"The 14th," you say. "That means we should probably set the date of the launch at the 14th. I'll have to ask for approval."
"Valentine's Day?" your secretary asks. "And who would be your date for the occasion?"
"I suppose I know who to ask," you say to yourself. Elizabeth.
[] "No, I meant March 14th, really. There's plenty more work that could be done in dry dock, we don't need to rush this."
[] "You will be with me and taking down notes as appropriate. Call it a 'date' if you want, but put it on your calendar."
[] "I suppose I know who to ask," you say to yourself.
-[] Alice
-[] Birgit
-[] Elizabeth
-[] You will ask Uncle Franz's social coordinator, who will arrange for an escort with the appropriate political qualities. If you're lucky, she might turn out to be someone pleasant to spend several hours with.
[] (write-in)
Adhoc vote count started by tomwritestuff on Mar 4, 2018 at 8:26 PM, finished with 26 posts and 16 votes.
[X] "I know just the place, Miss Clayton," you say, the courtesy instilled in you from a young age taking over.
[X] Stress affordability of the cruiser relative to other options, raising the possibilities of cost savings or squeezing an additional unit out of available funds.
[X] You feel the biggest mistake may very well be deck crowding and growth potential. The Alpen will never be a true titan of the waves, but she will pave the way for the next class.
[X] Inform the Dutch that your ship has the most advanced fire control and directing equipment, as well as armor to withstand Japanese shells in case of an unavoidable battle. In addition, she also bears the best firepower against light craft and scout assets the Japanese have; something crucial for them to maintain if they wish to avoid the devastation of their rear areas and sneak attacks.
-[X] Once is coincidence, twice is happenstance, three times is enemy action. Talk to Servino about getting Miss Clayton a tail if she stays in Vienna past the end of the week.
[X] Nikolas, you were hired for your electronic abilities. Right now, we need the director as soon as possible; and hopefully one whom we can apply principles to other guns as well. As interesting as this hearing underwater thing is, it will be useless in a fleet engagement with dozens of ships polluting with the noise of their screws. As such, you might pursue it- after the flak director works and if nothing else in your department happens.
[X] Anna, an ambitious Viennese local who has been working as a pool secretary for the last year and seems very eager to make your personal and professional acquaintance.
[X] "Nicolau, I can give you two to at the most three weeks to work this dome issue out. You're right that this is very exciting stuff, and it has pretty serious implications, but Alpen will be launching sometime next month. After the launch, I need you to concentrate on the main fire control system first and when that's done then you can explore the Tesla beam interface with the electromechanical computer."
-[X] Once is coincidence, twice is happenstance, three times is enemy action. Talk to Severino about getting Miss Clayton a tail if she stays in Vienna past the end of the week.
[X] Stress affordability of the cruiser relative to other options, raising the possibilities of cost savings, or squeezing an additional unit out of available funds.
[X] "Nicolau, I can give you two to at the most three weeks to work this dome issue out. You're right that this is very exciting stuff, and it has pretty serious implications, but
Alpen
will be launching sometime next month. After the launch, I need you to concentrate on the main fire control system first and when that's done then you can explore the Tesla beam interface with the electromechanical computer."
[X] You feel the biggest mistake may very well be deck crowding and growth potential. The Alpen will never be a true titan of the waves, but she will pave the way for the next class.
-[X] You will ask Uncle Franz's social coordinator, who will arrange for an escort with the appropriate political qualities. If you're lucky, she might turn out to be someone pleasant to spend several hours with.
-[X] Once is coincidence, twice is happenstance, three times is enemy action. Talk to Severino about getting Miss Clayton a tail if she stays in Vienna past the end of the week.
