The Hole

by Jaclyn Cadell

  Horse found a few noncoms he could talk to, and they worked out terms of surrender. These men were all conscripts, so they had no love for their masters. The men were controlled by threats to their families. Horse suggested that they help him get his load of copper ore and return with him to Fabton. Horse would present their case to me and hope that I could come up with some useful ideas.

  Horse explained to me what had happened and why he had brought about 250 "visitors" with him to Fabton. It turned out that this was a repeat of the attack on us, and we could expect to continue getting these attacks until we took positive measures to stop them by putting the other guys out of business. I told Horse that I would commune with the gods on this problem and would get back to him as soon as I could.

  Hannah and I talked this over and decided that we would never get a better opportunity to rid ourselves of the continued danger from these paranoid sociopaths. We decided to combine our forces with the prisoners and the merged force would march on the crazies and clean them out. If we got full cooperation from the prisoners and our people, we could be ready to leave within 4 weeks.

  We decided that we had to trust the prisoners enough to issue them crossbows. We had enough crossbows for training, and we could make up a full complement of them, along with enough bolts, by the time we were ready to go. The prisoners, now our allies, were delighted to learn that we would issue them crossbows and train them to use their new weapons. A little head-knocking was needed to get our allies to take orders and instruction from Hannah, but she finally got through to them. She started the instruction as soon as we could get organized, and she was satisfied with the results after only two weeks of training.

  We organized into 4 companies of 100 men in each. Allies and our own people were mixed within the companies, but all of the officers came from Fabton. We allocated all of the wagons and carts that were available, 26 in all, to serve as supply and logistics vehicles. Hannah did her usual superb job of organizing the supply train, and I figured that we could march all the way to our target without having to live off the land. Our trip back might be a different story, but we would worry about that when the time came.

  Actually, neither Hannah nor I expected much of a fight, once we reached the enemy stronghold. This was based on the fact that over half of their potential fighters were now our allies, and we should present such a formidable force that they would be cowed into submission. The enemy rulers were concentrated in a small locale, but the area they controlled was quite large and diffuse, so it should be easy for us to break their hold on most of their territory. And, if worse came to worst, I could always light up a cigarette and blow smoke at them!

  My main interest on this trip was simply to kill the bastards who were causing all the trouble. If they had quit pestering us after that first encounter, I probably would have let them alone, but I have always had a short fuse with bullies, which I consider these idiots to be. Anyway, they have worn out their welcome on this version of Earth, and I intended to punch their ticket. I intended to wipe out what I laughingly called their "command and control center" and mop up any details from there.

  We arrived at the cave in question after about a week of easy travel. We set out what I hoped was an impenetrable wall of troops around the cave vicinity just out of bow shot range, but inside crossbow range. Since I didn't trust the bastards as far as I could throw Mont Blanc, I sent Hannah in with my ultimatum: surrender or die! She delivered the message and was dismissed.

  As soon as she turned her back to walk away, half a dozen arrows were shot into her back. She was wearing bronze armor thick enough to stop even a crossbow bolt, so the arrows just fell off. She turned around and said, "You were warned!" Hannah then lobbed in 3 hand grenades and killed all of the high mucky-mucks and, unfortunately, some innocent slaves who were in the vicinity. The explosions were enough to convince the onlookers that we meant business, so we had no further trouble from the locals.

  Actually, I was sure that they were glad to get rid of their bosses; they sure acted like it. We were welcomed as saviors, and the families were overjoyed to be reunited with their men who had been sent off to fight us. My army stayed around for 3 weeks to make sure that the whole area knew that the old regime was gone and there were new people in charge. I learned a little bit from Napoleon and installed one of my own people as the new "advisor" to a ruling council of locals. He was going to leave them to their own devices, unless they did something really stupid. However, he did have veto power over their decisions, and I used the example of the hand grenades to emphasize that we had the muscle to back up the advisor's points of order.

  I left the allied troops at their old haunts to serve as the nucleus for an army to support the advisor if things got out of hand. They were allowed to keep their crossbows, because I planned to have something better pretty damn quick.

  Hannah made a great discovery while we were straightening out the local situation—they had contact with people who were extracting iron! The iron was a poor quality cast iron, but we could convert it into steel with a minimum of trouble. We organized a group of people to take two of the supply wagons and travel to these iron mongers to trade bronze swords for as many iron ingots as they could get. A couple of our people went along on the trip, but the trading party was made up, mostly, of people who had traded with the iron mongers before. I figured that we could do well by setting up a regular trade route of bronze items for iron ingots, because our bronze was stronger and less brittle than their cast iron. Within a year, I hoped to have steel guns which would be vastly superior to anything anyone else could produce.

  Hannah had already come up with a design for a revolver in .40 caliber which could be produced either as a rifle or a pistol. It wasn't a true breach loader, but functioned as one, since the cylinders had 6 chambers, as was traditional, and could be swapped out in about 15 seconds. All you had to do was carry extra cylinders with you, already loaded. We could load all 6 chambers without needing to keep an empty one under the hammer, because Hannah had come up with a design using a cigarette lighter flint instead of a fulminate of mercury cap. The gun would only fire if the trigger was pulled; no amount of banging on the hammer could fire the gun without a pulled trigger. The design was a bit more complex than I would have liked, but, hell, I took what I could get!

  When we returned home, we took as much of the iron as we could coax (swindle?) from our hosts, so that we could get started on our refining and steel-making experiments. By tapping Hannah's vast knowledge base, we were soon producing steel of excellent quality. We had already built a lathe from bronze, so we had the basic machine tool. The first thing we did was make some hardened steel cutting tools for the lathe, and the second thing we did was make a milling machine. I say "we" did all this work, but it was really done by Hannah at night while everybody else was sleeping. Of course, we attributed the work to the gods, but nobody made much of the miracle, they had come to expect that sort of miracle by now.

  The traders had returned with more iron than we could immediately use, and the iron mongers wanted them to return as soon as they could for more trading. Those people were fascinated by the quality of the bronze ware we could produce. The traders went right back with 6 wagons of trade goods and expected to be very successful with their trading. The traders had discovered that buying and selling were fun, and they wanted to do as much of it as they could before the weather got too bad to travel. I suspected that the traders were making a profit at both ends of their run, but I didn't care; if that was what it took to keep them interested in the game, so be it. We soon had a backlog of iron ingots, which suited me fine. I expected to get it converted to steel over the winter.

  Now, we needed lead for bullets. Nobody near us was working lead, so I sent an expedition toward Italy to see what could be found. They returned just before the snow with a couple of wagon loads of what turned out to be a poor quality, but usable, lead ingots. In fact, for bullets, the lead was usable as it was supplied to us, but
some other uses for the lead required a bit of purification. However, that could wait.

  We now had what we needed to produce a working gun using black powder and lead bullets. Hannah and I used nearly every available minute that winter to make a prototype pistol and to train enough people as machinists to start a production line. By spring, we could manufacture one finished pistol per day. We had not yet started work on the rifle version, but that would only involve a new barrel and a shoulder stock. We would do that this coming summer.

  The adults were very frightened, at first, by the noise the pistol made when it was fired, but the children loved it. I practiced shooting the prototype pistol; of course, Hannah didn't need to practice. Her shooting was like firing from a bench rest; her groups were so close together that I was very proud of the quality of the gun we had made. On occasion, her groups would show less than 6 holes because she had put more than one bullet in the same place as a previous one. Of course, this was at a range of 30 feet; anything farther showed the natural spread of the bullets. I had to admit some jealousy, but there was no way I was going to be able to shoot as well as Hannah. Oh, well, I was sure that I would get over it!

  As a new pistol was produced, Hannah would proof test it. Some pistols were slightly better than others, but there was no significant variation among them. Our people were proud of their craftsmanship and took care to maintain it. Hannah started to teach people to shoot, and she trained people, both men and women, as fast as we could make the guns.

  Meanwhile, I worked on the rifle. At first, I had thought to change barrels to convert the same mechanism from rifle to pistol and back again, but that turned out to be an impractical change to make in the field, so I settled on having separate rifles and pistols, but with the same basic parts to simplify the maintenance and manufacture of the weapons.

  I didn't expect that the women would be able to do much with the rifles. I wanted them to become skilled with the pistols for self defense, but I wanted the men to learn to use the rifles for when we needed them for military service. I still had no plans for conquest, but I wanted to be absolutely sure that we could defend ourselves if and when we were attacked again.

  ***

  Hannah and I have been in Fabton for 27 years, now, and we've seen a lot of changes. We have a community of nearly 1,000 people living inside the mountain. There were more chambers than Hannah had originally expected. We even have "suburbs" in nearby caves, where some of our people have moved to get away from the pressures of urban living.

  The Fabton brand of civilization has spread all over Europe. I have been amazed at how fast people have accepted our ideas and run with them. We have contacts and disciples from Spain and Portugal to western Russia, from Denmark to Palestine. We still haven't made any inroads into northern Africa, yet, but I have hopes. The British Isles have resisted our influence, I haven't been able to figure out why, but I have hopes for them, too.

  We have established a very loose confederation of like-minded peoples, and it looks stable enough that Hannah and I can let go of it without it falling apart. Frankly, a problem is developing. Namely, Hannah and I don't age! It is becoming obvious to my children and grandchildren that I don't look any older than I did when I first showed up around here. All of my wives look like old women, and some of my early acquaintances have already died of old age. Hannah and I will have to move on, soon. We are thinking about moving to Italy or Greece, the climate is cool enough, still, to be enjoyable without air conditioning. We have decided to leave within the week. I have already thought up an excuse. We'll take one of the 4-wheel enclosed wagons and a couple of horses. We are looking forward to another grand adventure, but that is another story for another time.