The Baltic War(184)

"I imagine he is," Probst agreed with a slight smile. Then he looked around the boat and cleared his throat.



"I don't believe I recall suggesting that it was no longer necessary to keep an eye out," he remarked to the air in general, and his detachment's attention returned magically to scanning the riverbanks and the water around them.



"It's definitely the fitting, sir," Lieutenant Hafner, Commander Baumgartner's senior engineer, said as he climbed up the internal ladder to the timberclad's bridge. He shrugged in disgust. "We've got a crack clear through the casting."



"Damn," Baumgartner said, far more mildly than he felt. Then he shook his head. "And what about those burns?"



"Ugly," Hoffner said. "Gunther's arm, especially. Lothar is doing what he can, but—"



The lieutenant shrugged again, and Baumgartner nodded. They were lucky that Admiral Simpson had insisted that each of the navy's major combatants had to have at least one trained sick bay attendant from the up-timers' training classes aboard. Even though the SBAs like Chief Lothar Tümmel weren't considered full-fledged "doctors" by their up-time instructors, they were so much better than most seventeenth-century physicians that it was almost miraculous. Still, there were limits in all things.



"Repairs?" Baumgartner asked, shifting mental gears once more as he watched his deck crew making fast the towline Achilles had passed across.



"Not out of our own resources," Haffner said grimly. "A steam pipe we probably could have fixed, but this is going to have to be torched off and replaced, and we don't have the gear aboard for that. It's going to have to be sent forward to us from Magdeburg."



"The admiral isn't going to want to hear that."



"Oh, I'm well aware of that, sir. Unfortunately—"



The lieutenant shrugged yet again, and Baumgartner snorted. Haffner's apparent insouciance undoubtedly owed a great deal to who was going to actually have to tell Admiral Simpson that two-thirds of his timberclads had just become nothing more than a floating battery on a raft. On the other hand, the admiral wasn't in the habit of blaming people for things that clearly weren't their fault.



Which was quite a bit more than Baumgartner could have said for other military officers he'd served under.



"All right, Crispus," he sighed, "I'll tell him. When you go back below, ask Nikolaus to come up here. He and I are going to have to discuss port security with Rüdiger."



"Yes, Sir," Hoffner said. Nikolaus Schimmel was Achates' executive officer, and Lieutenant Rüdiger Kirsch was the timberclad's gunnery officer.



The engineer saluted and disappeared back down the ladder, and Baumgartner turned to his bridge signalman.



"Message for the admiral," he said.



* * *



John Simpson grunted as he read the new message slip. It was a sound of unhappy confirmation, not surprise.



"What I was afraid of from the beginning," he said, looking up at Captain Halberstat. "It looks like we don't have any choice but to send them into this Ritsenbuttel. I'm half-tempted to detach one of the other timberclads to help keep an eye on her, too."



Halberstat looked surprised, and Simpson grimaced.



"I'm worried about those intelligence reports about the scuba rigs that may have . . . fallen into enemy hands, let's say. I don't like the thought of leaving one of our ships all alone when we don't know where that scuba gear is. Especially when the ship in question can't move under its own power."



Halberstat's surprise disappeared, and he nodded. But he also cocked his head to one side, one eyebrow arched.



"Would leaving a second timberclad really help that much, sir? Is there anything she could do for Achates' security that Baumgartner couldn't do by keeping a couple of his cutters rowing around the ship?"



"Probably not. That's why I'm only half-tempted. And why I'm not going to do it in the end."



"What's that?" one of Leberecht Probst's Marines said suddenly.



It wasn't the most militarily correct sighting report in even the USE Marine Corps' brief history, but it got the job done. Probst followed the pointing index finger, and his eyes narrowed. The Elbe was still flowing high, wide, and muddy with springtime runoff, and there was more than a little debris still drifting down it. But all of that debris was drifting down it. Probst couldn't think of the last time he'd seen something moving against the current.



"What is that?" Halvorsen said as his eyes found the same object.



"Unless I'm mistaken," the Marine said, reaching for the up-time revolver he'd been issued when he was assigned to Constitution's Marine detachment, "it's a head."