Terrible Swift Sword (9 page)

"Is there any way to up production on our muskets?" Hans asked, bringing the conversation back to its original starting point.

John shook his head.

"We were starting a works in Roum—it might get up to maybe seventy-five a day by the end of the month. Remember that just before the Tugar War we were only doing a hundred a day. The trouble is that we've had three years to train our workers here, but we're starting from scratch with the Roum.
It's
the old problem: We could detail more men from Rus to go out to Roum to train these people, but it hurts our production here, while it will take months to up the lose and come out on the positive side."

"Can we spare some more people from our own factories?" Kal asked.

"We've already sent two hundred to train the Roum." John replied. "Take any more out, and production here will slide even further."

Andrew looked over at Kal, who sat back quietly, absently fingering a button on his jacket, a habit he had whenever he was making a decision.

"Send another fifty," Kal said quietly, raising his hand to stop any objection from John.

Julius, listening to Dimitri's translation, nodded his thanks. It was part of the alliance game, Andrew realized; they'd lose a couple of hundred weapons a week on this end, but hopefully gain it back on the other side.

"Can we take the men out of the specialized weapons areas?" John asked. He looked over at Chuck, who immediately stirred, as if ready to spring to the defense of what was another of his pet projects.

"They might seem like a waste now," Chuck said angrily, "but it's through things like that that we might get an edge."

"What progress have you to show?" Andrew asked quietly.

"I've got half a dozen of them running at the moment. General Hawthorne suggested that we make some Whitworth sniper guns. Those are already under construction. The first one finished two day ago. I brought one along if you'd like to see it."

Andrew nodded his acquiescence without comment

Chuck stepped over to a gun cabinet set agai the wall and opened it, pulling out a long leathe case. Almost lovingly, Ferguson laid the case on th table, opened the top, and drew the weapon out.

There was a whistle of approval from Pat, an Hans stirred out of his chair to come over for closer look.

"We didn't have any type of original to go on, Chuck said, almost apologetically.

"Superb piece of work," Hans whispered, extending his hand and then looking over to Chuck, who gave a smiling nod of agreement.

Hans picked the long-barreled weapon up.

"Damned heavy."

"Just over twenty-five pounds," Chuck replied.

"The gun's nearly five and a half feet long, th barrel forged out of our best steel. It's got a hexagonal bore to it."

"A what?" Kal asked, looking at the gun with certain nervous curiosity.

Chuck motioned for the gun, which Hans surrendered reluctantly. He laid the gun back down o the table, the barrel pointing down the table for Kal to see.

"The inside of the barrel is not round, it's six sided."

Going back to the gun case, he pulled out a finely crafted, oversized cartridge box of black leather Opening it up, he broke a paper seal and pulled out a single bullet, shaped like a long bolt, blunt at both ends, six-sided, the sides set at a very slight angle to the long axis of the shot.

"This was the hard part of the job. We had to cut the barrel perfectly, six sides, with a tight rotation, just over a revolution and a half down its length. The bullet, forty-five caliber and over an inch and a half long, had to be cast the same way, fitting to nearly a thousandth of an inch. It's the finest precision job we've ever done."

"Fifty skilled workers for four months to turn out just this first gun," John sniffed coldly.

"We've learned a hell of a lot in the making," Chuck replied defensively. "This taught fifty workers to become precision craftsmen and toolmakers, unlike anyone we've trained so far."

"A lot of good it'll do in the next sixty days," John retorted.

"What's the range?" Andrew asked quietly.

"We've yet to train anyone to really handle it well," Chuck replied.

He pointed at the telescope mounted down the entire length of the barrel.

This still needs adjusting—laying the silk threads in for the crosshairs has been a devil of a job. I've worked up a sighting gauge to help a man judge distance, then we've got to teach him how to adjust for wind and even for whether it's a humid day or not. It'll take time before this beauty gets matched to someone who really knows how to use it."

"Back in our old war," Hans said, "I heard of a sniper dropping a reb general at a mile with one of those things."

"Old Uncle John Sedjwick, 6th Corps commander, got hit in the head at eight hundred yards by a reb sniper using one of those," Pat said, looking at the gun with approval.

"That'll be a hell of lot of good against a charging Horde, when it takes five minutes to load the damn thing back up," John replied. "Boring out a hexagonal barrel is a bloody waste of men and time."

Andrew looked over at John.

"I told him to give it a try six months ago," Andrew said quietly. "Not everything pans out, but it's still worth the gamble."

"Do you want to continue with it?" John asked.

Andrew looked at the weapon for a long moment.

"How many do you have on the line?"

"This was a custom job, sir—no line yet. Just two more finished with this one, but they're not as good.

"Hold on to them for right now," he said quietly. "You did a good job, but if one of your well-trained people can train fifty Roumans to turn out musket it's going to help a lot more. That's where we'll get the people to send to Marcus."

Chuck said nothing, as if wanting to save his points for later arguments.

"What else do you have for me in your report?" Andrew asked, knowing there'd have to be a surprise someplace or it wouldn't be a typical effort by Chuck.

"We're finished making the molds from Sergeant Schuder's Sharp's carbine, and the machines to mill them. In another three months I could start turning out a small run of breech-loading carbines based upon the model."

"And what else?"

"We've got a hundred revolvers a month coming out for our officers—they're almost as good as our own Colts. Good God, sir, I'm jumping patents like mad out here!" He chuckled to himself.

"Tell him about those damn Gatlings," John snapped.

"Gatlings?" Andrew asked, raising a quizzical gaze at Chuck, who looked over angrily at John.

"Mr. Ferguson, I don't recall this in any of our conversations."

"I wanted to, sir, but you kept saying to stick to the basics, and John over here wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise any time I wanted to bring it up."

"I am your immediate superior," John replied sharply, and immediately Andrew could see that there had been some bad blood between the two regarding this issue. When they had first started the building of their army, a regiment at a time, contact had been a lot closer and far more intimate. But now the numbers had increased beyond their wildest dreams of three years ago. Well over a hundred and fifty regiments had been mobilized, with another sixty planned over the next two months, as Roum manpower finished training and came on to line units. The system was becoming far too complex for him to ever keep an eye on everything.

"Go on and explain it, Chuck," Andrew finally said quietly, looking over at John to still any complaint.

"Well, sir, I think it's a hell of an idea," Chuck said enthusiastically. "Now, I've never seen one of them, I don't think any of us has, but this damn crazy dentist out in Indiana had made the darn things, and I remember how General Butler even brought a couple to use during the Petersburg campaign. So I started to do some sketching. It's a simple enough weapon. Six barrels that are rotated by a crankshaft, just like a giant revolver. Each barrel has it's own breech, and as it turns the breech opens and receives a round from an ammunition hopper. The individual barrel and breech continue to turn, and as they do so the bullet slides into place, the breech plug closing behind it. A cam snaps off the firing pin when the barrel is at the bottom, and then as it rotates back up the breech slides open and the spent cartridge is ejected. Hand-cranked, it can put out a couple of hundred rounds a minute."

Chuck looked around the small room and was met with silence. Andrew found himself intrigued by the idea—it was something he had heard about, but never really considered.

"We've got an ammunition shortage as is—it's just a hundred and fifty rounds per man. We can burn that up in two major engagements and then we'll be out," John interjected. "We lost a hell of a lot of our stocks in last summer's campaign, a lot more when the powder mill was bombed, and you're talking about one machine burning up in ten minutes the volley power of an entire brigade."

"It's concentrated firepower," Chuck replied.

"Tell him the rest," John said sharply.

Chuck hesitated.

"Go on, Mr. Ferguson. You know I've backed you in damn near everything else."

"Well, I started to thinking, sir."

"You always do," Pat said with a smile, which sent a ripple of appreciative laughter around the table.

Chuck smiled in acknowledgment.

"Steam-powered, sir, it's a natural. Take the gun up to eight or nine barrels to stand the heat of rapid fire, hook the crank to a steam engine, and I could rip it up to a couple of thousand rounds a minute. I was thinking about it in terms of the enemy balloons. Sure we fired on them, we even put a cannon shot through one, but it was still able to get back home. With a steam-powered Gatling gun, we could tear that thing apart in a matter of seconds. Against a Horde charge it's tear them to shreds at six hundred yards."

Andrew looked back at John, who was shaking his head in disagreement.

"Pipe dreams," John replied. "I'd love to believe this one, Ferguson, but you failed to mention that you're talking about copper cartridge, rim-fired ammunition. We've got all our silver nitrate and fulminate of mercury going into percussion caps for the Springfield rifles and revolver ammunition. You're talking about hundreds of thousands of rounds of the stuff, and the horde will be at us in less than thirty days. You want to divert hundreds of workers into a project that won't even see light untill the end of this year at earliest. You've got a lot of highly skilled people needed elsewheres."

"At least let me try?"

We don't have time, Chuck," Andrew said reluctantly.

He saw a flicker of anger on Chuck's part that was directed at John. But there was no getting around the current crisis: A thousand guns now would be worth far more than all the Gatling guns in the world a year hence.

We could field an army of a quarter of a million men if we only had the weapons."

"And we don't," he said quietly, looking out the window, where the storm had gone over completely to rain.

It's closed, Chuck," Andrew said softly. "But do you have anything else?"

"Just the rocket idea, but John's not too wild about that one either."

"He's only doing his job, Chuck," Kal said soothingly. "We're running a race, and General Mina is responsible for logistical support. If I don't have the supplies that we need, especially weapons, it'll be his neck—it'll be all our necks. You've worked a lot of miracles, and after we win this one I'll look for some more. Now tell me of this rocket thing."

"It's just that I started thinking. We know they're making artillery, and lots of it. We'll have somewhere around four hundred guns when this war gets started; if anything, the problem is not the guns but getting enough horses to move them and their ammunition limbers. A battery of six of the four pound guns needs eighteen horses, a battery of twelve-pound Napoleons or the new three-inch rifles needs over one hundred horses—that's where the big shortage is. Rockets could give us an edge.

"They're terrible things," Pat interjected. "Back early in the war some of the boys from the 24th New York Battery were given 'em. They had a devil of a time: The damn things couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, and every once in a while the demon things would turn around and come straight back at our own lines."

"I know that," Chuck responded hurriedly. "But we won't be shooting at a barn, it'll be the entire damn Horde. I was figuring we'd make them about three feet long and six inches in diameter. They'll weigh out at around twenty pounds each; with a ten-pound exploding spherical-case round, it should have a range of nearly three thousand yards.

"The advantage is tremendous when it comes to weight. A Napoleon with its limber weighs over a ton. We could load one hundred rockets on to a wagon for the same weight. Fire that into an umen and you're bound to hit something."

"And the ones that come back?" Pat asked.

"We duck," Chuck said quietly.

Pat shook his head. Andrew looked over at his artillery chief, deferring to him for a decision.

"Easy to say, but you've never had one come back at you." Chuck bristled slightly.

"I was in the charge at Fredericksburg and Cold Harbor, sir," he said quietly, "I know what it's like to face enemy artillery fire. Even if one in ten come backs at us, the other ninety per cent will play hell with the enemy."

"You know, laddie, you might have something," Pat said reluctantly.

Chuck looked expectantly at Andrew.

"Have you tried any yet?" Hans asked.

Chuck nodded.

"And?"

"Well, sir, it kind of got away from us."

"Blew up an outhouse five hundred yards behind us--a beautiful shot," Jack Petracci interjected.

"Thanks for the help, Jack," Chuck mumbled quietly.

Andrew shook his head, laughing softly.

"Go ahead then, see what you can come up with. But I want something that can at least hit the broad side of a barn—and the one you're aiming at."

"That's fifteen pounds of powder per shot," John replied. "That's worth seven Napoleon rounds."

I think we can spare a couple of hundred pounds for starters," Andrew said. "Concentrate on that, keep the revolvers coming, but the carbines, sniper guns, and Gatling guns are on hold."

"Now, to the airships?" Kal asked.

Andrew nodded in agreement. Chuck cleared his throat nervously.

"We've built three large sheds in the forest north of Roum to house them. So far the Merki haven't flown near that area. If they catch us on the ground at this stage, one torch dropped from the air will finish us. We've got three bags done, and another four under way in Roum. It's still the engine."

"What about theirs?" Kal asked.

Chuck shook his head.

"It's buried where it fell."

"And you haven't gone poking around?" Andrew asked.

"I'm curious, but not that crazy, Chuck said quietly.

"There had to be some poison in it," Emil interjected. "We got that one report that several of the Merki who had been flying that ship earlier
have
died horribly, their hair falling out first. Those two Merki that crawled away from the wreck were vomiting blood, and everyone of our people who went up to the machine after it crashed got sick, with six of them now dead. Same as the Merki—hair falling out, vomiting blood. The poor fellows that buried some of them are still in the hospital, or in their graves."

"The damned thing is in the ground, and let it stay there!" Father Casmar said sharply. "It's a cursed devil tool."

"I'll not argue that one," Chuck replied.

It was just lucky, Andrew realized, that the ship had come down far out in the countryside, and that the effects of whatever was inside had become known before Ferguson had gotten to it—though the deaths of the peasants were tragic nevertheless. Emil had theorized that it might be some sort of arsenic poisoning, explaining the hair falling out and the vomiting, but why would arsenic be locked up inside a machine that without any visible source of fuel could power the Merki balloons about the sky? The power they utilized was tremendous, and coming out of an engine that reportedly could be lifted by one person.

"How soon will we be flying?"

Chuck looked over at Jack, as if searching for support.

"I'm not sure, it all depends on the engine. Weight is everything."

"Maybe you should have stuck to a proven design," Andrew asked.

"Sir, we never would have gotten anything effec
tive
into the air. A steam engine weighs a hell of a lot, and not just the engine but the water and coal along with it. A caloric engine is the way. Ericsson built one nearly thirty years ago. Rather than water it runs on superheated air—that cuts a lot of weight right there. We've figured out how to boil the oil we found out in the Caprium province and convert it into a form of coal oil—I think it's like kerosene. It'll weight a fraction of the coal and with as much power locked up; it's a hell of a fuel."

"And the last two engines exploded," John replied wryly.

"Look, John, just whose side are you on?" Chuck snapped peevishly.

"I'm the one allocating the resources and labor!" John retorted heatedly. "You've got at last count over a dozen projects going, God knows you've most likely got more hidden away I'm not even aware of, and it's tying up thousands of workers. I need the basics: guns, guns, and more guns, and the ammunition to feed them!"

"Do you want powered aerosteamers, or don't you?'" Chuck snapped, looking straight at Andrew.

The tension was rippling through all of them, the unrelenting stress of repairing the damage from the naval war and preparing for the next attack. Just the replacing of the lost locomotives and the damaged rail line had set them back two months. It was wearing them all down.

"We need something to counter the Merki machine," Kal replied soothingly.

"It's got to be caloric," Chuck announced, as if the debate were closed, "otherwise we'll have to make balloons twice as big just to lift one man and machine. It'll be too damn big, and with so little power it'll barely move. In fact, it'll be downright dangerous in anything other than a dead calm."

"Lift is the key thing," Jack Petracci said quietly speaking up at last. "My last balloon, the one we lost in the Tugar War, could raise just over two hundred and sixty pounds on a cold day. Ferguson and I did a little experimenting and found that gravity here's about eighty-five percent of home's, so we have a little advantage there.

"We've floated two aerosteamers so far, neither one with engines. On a cold day, with the engine running, we figure the lift is nearly eight hundred pounds, enough for an engineer to steer it, another engineer to run the engine, drop some small bombs or operate a telegraph if tethered."

"How fast will it go, and what's the range?" Hans asked.

Chuck shrugged his shoulders.

"It'll be a mystery to me until we actually fly one. This is a whole new field for all of us. I did change one part of the design, which I think will help."

"And that is?" John asked.

"We'll still use the hydrogen for lift, in two bags one forward and the other aft. But in the middle i'm putting another bag hooked into the exhaust smokestack of the engine. We start the engine, the hot air goes into the bag and up we go. Cut the engine and back down. We've got the hot already, so why not use it?"

John looked over to Jack for a response.

"It's dangerous," Jack said quietly. "If a spark ever gets into tbe bag and starts a fire, it's good-bye."

"The kerosene isn't like coal or wood, it'll be spark-free," Chuck said. "We've heard the Merki are having problems getting up and down, and more often than not they're venting a lot of gas, forcing them to keep refilling the bags after every flight. We'll have some leakage, to be sure, but nothing gets vented unless it's an emergency. Once we seal up our bags and inflate them, they'll stay that way."

"We'll have to trust your judgment on this," Andrew replied.

"You mean / will," Jack interjected, trying to force a smile. "I'm the damn test engineer for the thing."

Just make sure it stays that way, Chuck," Andrew said forcefully. He knew Ferguson had a penchant for being the first one to play with his new toys, but this entire venture was far too risky to hazard the world's best inventor and engineer.

Chuck gave an almost wistful smile, but he knew better than to argue. His own staff of young aspiring engineers had received strict orders from Andrew to protect their precious leader, an action that Ferguson bridled against but knew there was no hope of resisting.

"To other things now," Andrew said, looking over to Hans.

"The fortification lines are almost complete," Hans said, rising from his seat to point out the positions outlined on the map.

"From the Inland Sea to the Great Forest we've laid out a hundred and ten miles of fortifications along the banks of the Potomac. In sections around the fords the lines are three deep. An outer line halfway down the bluffs, then the main line atop the bluffs, and then a reserve line to the rear protecting our rail tracks.

"Granted, in some areas it's a bit thin, especially where sections of the river, at least through the end of the spring flood, will be impassable. But every mile there's an earthen fort which can be held as a strong point. The ones facing the fords are bigger, usually holding a couple of batteries, projecting bastions, and interlocking fire fields. If they should come that way, the Potomac will turn red."

"
If
," Kal said emphatically. "What is your current assessment?"

Hans leaned back and looked over to Andrew.

"From the mouth of the Inland Sea, up to a good forty miles inland, is safe. The flood plain is two miles wide for a good part of that. It means they'll have to cross open ground, and cross the river under fire the entire time from the bluffs, which we command."

"The threat from the sea?"

"Our spy reports"—he looked over emphatically at Hamilcar—"indicate that we'll have the edge at sea. If they try and do an end run, our fleet will be there to meet them."

"But their air power," John said sharply.

"That's why we need our own aerosteamers," Hans replied, looking over at Chuck. "Their bombing of land targets is more a nuisance then anything else, but they are taking a toll of galleys and they'll know where we are, and we won't. They'll be able to see how we've positioned our troops, have maps made of our fortifications, and when they hit they'll know far more of us than we do of them."

Hans walked down the length of the table and stabbed the northwest flank with his stubby finger tracing the line where the fortifications went into the forest for ten miles to finally end atop a steep-sided ridge, the line then turning back east at a right angle for several miles.

"They'll come against us up here."

"That's where our fortifications are strongest," Andrew said, almost as if to reassure himself. "The entire section is reinforced with log blockhouses, ditched and faced with abatis as well."

"Yet
this
is where they'll hit," Hans said emphatically. "We have to have a flank somewhere, and that's where the blow will land."

Into the forest?" Kal interjected, "Hans, we've been going over this since last fall. It would mean the Merki would have to backtrack in an arc of several hundred miles. The woods are pathless, except for our own line of fortifications. That flank is secure
."

"A flank is still a flank," Hans replied. "We've built these defenses almost too well. But we had to. We're nearly a hundred miles out into the steppe down here. If they break through anywhere along our front, their mobility would destroy us. So we fortified to the teeth, and now they'll go for the flank. If they take it, two days of hard riding would get them up to the ford where we first met the Tugars, and from there they're bound to jump the Neiper further up river."

"You still want us to abandon our forward position and fight on the Neiper, don't you?" Pat asked.

"Our gunboats can hold the line up to the ford," Hans said. "Beyond that we can hold the river line with two corps for fifty miles into the forest beyond."

"It's fighting on our home territory," Andrew said quietly. "Lose anywhere, and the enemy is inside our land. If they flank Suzdal, we'll be cut off from Roum and the rest of our country."

"We might be fighting that way anyhow," Hans replied, his voice full of warning.

"The amount of rail construction we've done down here, if the same effort had been applied to running a line along the Neiper for a hundred miles north of the ford, we'd be secure."

"We went over that a year and a half ago," John replied sharply. "That terrain is murderous for rail construction, nothing but hills and marshy gullies, It's a wilderness, worse than the one in Virginia. The Merki will get tangled in it if they ever get that far."

"And besides," he added quietly, "what's done is done."

Andrew felt the old sense of exhaustion seeping in. Since the end of the naval war every moment had been consumed with preparing for this next conflict. He had decided over two years ago that their defense against the Merki, if they should move against Rus, would be a forward one, attempting to block the enemy before he got anywhere near home territory. All of his thinking had been predicated upon this basic principle of avoiding war on one's own land at all cost. Hans had been in full agreement at the beginning, but starting in mid-winter he had begun to grow cautious, and now he was finally coming down on the other side.

Andrew knew that the typhoid had sapped his strength, leaving him feeling weak psychologically
as
well as physically. But beyond that was the deep seated fear that had been gnawing at him all along that no matter how much they did, the Merki, now armed with modern weapons, would be too much for them, and that everything attempted would in the end result in ruin.

"What you're saying here is that we can't hold them on this front," Andrew said quietly.

Hans looked around the room and nodded.

"Then where the hell
will
we hold them?" Pat asked. "If they gain the Neiper, sooner or later they'll flank us above the ford and jump between us and the Roum, wilderness or not, no matter what John says."

He looked over at Julius, who was intently listening to the debate, nodding in understanding as a translator explained the rapid-fire conversation.

"We must stand together," Julius said. "It is like our facies: one stick alone and we are broken, three united and we will stand."

"Suppose they don't strike here at all, but move on Roum instead?" Kal asked rhetorically, knowing that that question had been debated endlessly and was still up in the air.

"Difficult. If they send everything, we could always move against Cartha and liberate what is left," Andrew replied. "Beyond that it'll double their distance of march, and we'll still be in their rear. Going through us and then on to Roum is the direct route, otherwise it'll be a campaign of over fifteen hundred miles.

"Sherman did it on foot," Andrew continued. "But we've already laid that plan to rest. From what we've heard the Merki are afraid to give us another year, so the campaign will come straight at us."