Grantville
Sveta's friends came bearing gifts. She met them at the door and shepherded them along to her room.
"How's the baby? Janie asked.
Sveta patted her bump. "It's started to move." She was reminded of the first time she felt her baby move a couple of weeks ago. Until then she'd been on tenterhooks. Too many well-meaning (or maybe, just mean) people had talked about the risk of losing a baby before the second trimester. Apparently, once a baby started to move, you were less likely to miscarry. Although, having sent that reassuring signal, it would have been nice if it could stop kicking every time she managed to drop off to sleep.
"Is it moving now?" Julia asked.
Sveta reached out and pressed Julia's hand against her abdomen.
"Oh, it kicked. That's so cool. Diana, you have to feel Sveta's baby moving."
"How are you feeling, Sveta?" Diana asked, letting Julia guide her hand.
"Remarkably well, much to the disappointment of the doomsayers.
"Mom was like that," Janie said. "A bit of morning sickness early on, then nothing for months." She sent Sveta a wry grin. "But I don't think you'll be able to avoid backache as you near term."
"How did your mother cope with that?" Sveta asked.
"She had Dad to give her massages. Oh, I'm sorry, Sveta."
Sveta waved away Janie's concern. She had a husband, but would he even want to touch her? She sighed and picked at one of Diana's cookies. "John's feeling overly concerned about money again." Sveta shook her head. "So what if we can't afford our own home? Lots of children continue to live with their parents after marriage."
"Not Americans," Julia said. "They want their own space, away from their parents."
"Space? Always this need for more space. What about the support of your family?" Sveta shook her head. "And anyway, why is John so worried? With the price people are paying for up-time guns, he's got a small fortune in this room."
"You haven't suggested Puss sell some of his guns?" Julia demanded.
"Not yet." Then she noticed the horrified looks on her friends' faces. "What did I say?"
"Blasphemy!" Julia said.
"Double blasphemy," Janie agreed.
"Sveta, a West Virginian's guns are sacrosanct. Some of them are family heirlooms," Diana explained.
"There are families in Grantville where their guns are worth more than their houses, but they would never sell them," Janie said.
"So, no selling his guns?" Sveta asked.
"Not unless you want to really make Puss angry," Julia said.
"Or you're really desperate for money," Diana added.
Zielona Gora
Street fighting sucked. Puss sat with his back against the wall of a building and checked his weapons. He had a service issue Sharps carbine clone, and a pair of stainless-steel Ruger Vaquero Cowboy Action revolvers in .45 Colt he'd owned for years, a copy of a Gurkha Kukri knife one of his dad's friends had made out of an old leaf-spring, and a bag of grenades. The rest of his patrol was similarly armed, but with their own choice of fighting knife, and a pair of the service issue cap and ball revolvers in place of the Rugers.
The grenades had had proved a godsend in the battle so far. They were modeled more on the WW2 German "potato masher" than the American "pineapple" grenades, but they were miles ahead of whatever the Poles were using-probably the old spherical ball type where you had to physically light the fuse before using. At least the USE grenades could be ignited with a simple pull of a string.
Puss saw the signal from the captain of the company his patrol had been attached to as a sort of fire-support team. That meant they were ready to enter the street. He slung his carbine and raised his head to check on the target. It was less than thirty feet to the building. "Grenades."
Five men pulled grenades from the sacks each of them carried. Almost as one they checked the target, pulled the friction-igniter strings, and with covering fire from Captain Casper Havemann's rifle company, lobbed their grenades towards the target, before dropping behind cover.
Seconds later, the air full of dust and smoke, Puss and his patrol went over the wall they'd been hiding behind and, with more covering fire, ran for the building.
Puss was the first to reach the building. He dropped his shoulder to barge open the shattered door, and he was in the house. With a Ruger held before him in a two-handed grip, Puss advanced into the building. This was the part of street fighting he really didn't like. The enemy could be anywhere, and a grenade dropped from above was almost impossible to avoid.
They cleared the ground floor first, stopping only to tear down the smoldering drapes to prevent a fire. Then, with the rest of his patrol providing backup, Puss advanced up the narrow staircase. It was a bit like playing paintball back up-time, except hits were likely to hurt a heck of a lot more. At the top of the stairs he lobbed in a grenade-no sense taking risks. He followed up the blast, to find the space empty.
Puss smothered the smoking embers before they could catch anything alight while the rest of the patrol checked the other rooms. Other than the men on the ground floor, this house had been empty.
With the first house secure, a section from the infantry company flooded in and started to tear an opening in the attic space dividing wall. When they broke through Puss lobbed a grenade through the opening, and quickly followed the blast. With the top floor cleared the infantry followed a constant flow of grenades down the building until it was clear. In this way they made it to the end of the street without exposing themselves to fire from snipers.
The other side of the street had been taken out by another platoon of Captain Havemann's company, making the road in between relatively safe. Puss and his patrol sat on the steps of one of the row of houses they'd taken and took the opportunity to reload their revolvers and have a drink. They watched Captain Havemann led his headquarters section to the rubble at the end of the street, where he could plan the next step of their street clearance operation.
BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM!
All hell broke loose as the Poles fired a massive artillery barrage along most of the front. Cannon balls tore into buildings and rubble began to fall from the damaged walls. Debris from a critically damaged building fell onto the headquarters section. Two survivors of the collapse started pulling away at the rubble. One fell to sniper fire, but the other managed to pull Captain Havemann from the rubble and drag him to cover.
"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Puss could already sense the company wavering around him. Havemann was a man with a towering presence. Just having him walk along the line gave his men confidence. Unfortunately, the reverse applied if something happened to him.
"Take this and give me covering fire."
"What the hell?" Lenhard Poppler started to ask as Puss thrust his carbine at him. "You goddamned idiot!" he shouted as Puss sprinted towards the fallen officer.
Puss used a feet-first baseball slide to take cover beside Captain Havemann and the man who'd dragged him to cover. A quick glance at the size of the lumps of masonry covering the rest of the headquarters section told him that these two were likely to be the only survivors. The private was a weed of a man. How he'd managed to drag the captain, who was easily twice his weight, to cover was anybody's guess. The man was still bleeding, but he'd done his best to staunch the flow from the captain's injuries.
The Poles were intensifying their fire around where Puss was huddled, but contrary to what Corporal Poppler thought, he wasn't a complete idiot. He emptied out his bag of grenades and started lobbing them over the rubble. For a few seconds he had a screen of white smoke from the black powder grenades. "Go!" he screamed at the private, while he dragged Captain Havemann over his shoulder in a fireman's lift and sprinted back to Corporal Poppler.