A Band of Brothers

by William R. Forstchen

  A long column of horses passed behind him, pulling sleds loaded down with rations and ammunition, all of them heading west.

  “Like the armies of ancient times.” The words were in the tongue of his old world.

  He looked over his shoulder and saw Jurak approaching, wrapped in a heavy cloak, his staff trailing behind him. His second in command dismounted and went through the ceremony of bowing.

  “I see things like this and I think we are again living in the times of legends.”

  “We are making legends,” Ha’ark replied. “All of this,” and he gestured toward the columns weaving through the night, “this is legend come to life.”

  “You should call a halt. They’ve had a hard day. We’re losing hundreds to the frost. This damn cold.”

  “You heard about Keane?”

  Jurak motioned toward the flag Ha’ark was still holding.

  “Then it’s true?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Is he dead or just wounded?”

  “We’ll know soon enough. Either way it weakens them further.”

  “Any response to the envoy?”

  “They refused him entry through the lines, but the message was handed over. I sense the message will fester. If Keane dies, what holds the army together will die. They’ll turn on each other. He is the one link that is neither of them, not Rus nor Roum. That is why we must press the attack. I want our army, not just patrols, our entire army, at the gates of Roum in three days.”

  “Ha’ark, we have time on our side. Our railhead is thirty miles back. It’ll take ten days or more to link it just to this city,” and he motioned toward Capua. “I understand we captured most of the rail ahead intact.

  "Once we connect through Capua and repair the bridge, we’II have an open track nearly to Roum. Give us time to bring up supplies, let the warriors rest, then move forward. We’re overstretched as is.”

  “We press it,” Ha’ark snapped. “They’re off balance. Press it now and we will win.”

  “I take it you heard the news.”

  Offering a chair, Olivia Varinna Ferguson helped Vincent as he slowly walked over and sat down, groaning with relief.

  “Cold gets into the wound, and it’s hard to walk sometimes.”

  “You shouldn’t be out in weather like this,” she chided him while fetching a cup of tea.

  Vincent gratefully took it, wrapping his hands around the cup to soak in the warmth.

  Vincent saw the latest edition of Gates' Illustrated on her workbench, the headlines filling up the top half of the page: KEANE WOUNDED.

  That had been a long argument with Gates the evening before, with the editor insisting that the people of Suzdal had a right to know, with Vincent’s threats to shut down the printing shop if word was leaked. Unfortunately a telegram from the president, ordering that the truth be told, had arrived and the argument was lost.

  “Nothing new,” Vincent sighed.

  She lowered her head as if offering a silent prayer. Vincent looked around the workshop. It was not yet dawn, and already the crews were coming in, heading to their desks, most holding copies of the paper and whispering among themselves. Several looked over at Vincent, as if wanting to approach him for information, but thought better of it.

  Since Chuck’s death she had thrown herself into managing the research and ordnance office. At first he had thought the idea to be a sentimental indulgence on Andrew’s part, but Chuck had apparently thought things out well. Years ago he had taught Varinna to read and in the last year of his life had spent hours each day sharing with her every detail of his work. After his death, notebooks brimming with plans, detailed drawings, his random musings, and farfetched schemes had been brought out.Vincent looked over at the desk which had been Chuck’s and the cot beside it. It was as if his old friend had simply stepped out for a moment for a morning walk and would return shortly, eyes shining, ready with a new idea.

  “It seems like we’re all going,” Vincent sighed. “Mina, Malady, so many boys of the regiment, your Chuck. I’m half crippled, and Andrew …” His voice trailed off.

  She reached out, taking his hand, and squeezed it.

  “Chuck’s still here, Vincent.”

  He looked up into her eyes. Strange, her face was so horribly scarred from the explosion in the powder mill so many years ago, but still there was a radiant beauty, a beauty Chuck had worshipped to his dying day.

  “He was lucky to have you,” Vincent said, and he felt a momentary wave of embarrassment. When they had first met, she a servant in Marcus’s household, she had attempted to seduce him one evening while he had soaked in. the bath.

  He lowered his eyes. That was something he had never told Chuck, and he prayed to God she hadn’t either.

  “Your wife?” she asked, and by her tone he sensed she was remembering as well.

  “Fine,” he said softly.

  “I should go visit her and the children. Speaking of children, do Andrew’s know?”

  “She told them last night. It was hard, very hard.”

  “Poor dears. That’s one thing I’ll always regret. Chuck and I, we never had any.”

  She had displayed remarkable strength in the months since his death, but he could sense the thinness of it, the brittle edge that could crack if she let her guard down.

  Patting his hand, she stood up.

  “I received the information about their rocket launchers.”

  “We lost seven ironclads to them.”

  “And I assume the rest were abandoned in the retreat.”

  Vincent nodded. That was information that had not been made public yet. The people of Suzdal had latched on to the machines as a talisman that could counter the dreaded mass formations of the Hordes. The news of the total loss of the ironclad regiment’s machines was too much, and even Gates had relented on that part.

  “I don’t think we’ll have time to change the tools,” she said, “to redesign our new ironclads with more armor on the flanks. The factory is turning out the new model at one a day now. If we stop to refit, we’ll lose several weeks or more.”

  The new ironclads. The design was risky. It was one of the last things Chuck had seriously worked on. The engine had nearly twice the power of the old one and burned kerosene mixed with the residue of oil it had been refined from rather than coal. Fortunately, thousands of gallons of the fuel for both the ironclads and the flyers had been moved west over the last several months from the oil wells two hundred miles southeast of the city. Now that the Bantag were cutting off the southern flank of Roum, that reserve would have to last.

  “One of the men here thinks he knows the secret of how their rockets punched through our armor, though I wish we had captured one intact,” Varinna said.

  “What’s his idea?”

  “Something about how the warhead of the rocket is a hollow cone made of high-grade steel. They must have some newer kind of explosive, more powerful than black powder. The hollow cone is packed with the powder, and when it explodes the jet of flame slices into the ironclad.”

  “Can we make something like it?”

  “I’ve put a dozen people on it, but sent word to the front that it’d help if we could capture a rocket intact. For right now we’re converting some of our rocket battery rounds for individual use. That at least was a good idea, even if we can’t use it against ironclads.”

  “What about gatling production?”

  “It’s not a question of making the guns—we can do that. It’s the ammunition. Brass is scarce. Losing the ironclads was bad enough, but there were thousands of empty shells in them, for both the gatlings and the cannons.”

  She led Chuck over to her desk, and under the glare of the lantern he saw a rough sketch of a man holding a pipe, a second one of a pipe resting on a tripod, a man lying beside it.

  “I found some old sketches in Chuck’s books. Right after the battle of Hispania he toyed with the idea of taking his rockets and issuing them out to small units as artillery. T
he rocket would be loaded with a canister round. The rockets weren’t reliable enough for accurate aim, but for up close, the way the Bantag used them, I think these will work. We just take a rocket launch tube like the ones we already have. Weld a bracket on it so it can be mounted to a tripod for better aim, though a man could balance it on his shoulder. We could have some of them at the front in a couple of weeks.”

  “Tactics will have to change,” Vincent said. “We can’t let ironclads go in alone like that again. I should have guessed that Ha’ark would come up with a counter. They’ll need these rocket teams advancing with them, along with riflemen, maybe even tow a gatling on a gun carriage to keep their rocket units back. Also mortars— what about them?”

  She motioned to one of the workers, who came over and stiffly saluted.

  “Petrov Basilovich, sir. I was with you in the old 5th Suzdal,” he announced.

  Vincent looked down and saw that Petrov had a wooden leg.

  “Ah, lost that in one of the first battles, sir, at the Ford.”

  “A long time ago.”

  “That it was. So they sent me here. Didn’t like it at first, but the work’s important, it is.”

  “Petrov’s our best tool and die maker,” Varinna announced proudly.

  “We took that Bantag mortar captured at the Rocky Hill apart and used it as a pattern. The first unit’s training with it now. Changed the caliber so it’ll fire our standard three-inch shell. Really very simple. Percussion cap at the back end, small powder charge—once you get the hang of it, you can drop it down a chimney at five hundred yards.”

  The way they got Andrew, he thought. All of this was changing far too fast, and he found himself longing for a time, not so long ago, when volley lines still stood shoulder to shoulder. Artillery, cavalry on the flanks, and masses of infantry in the center. Now there were land ironclads, rocket batteries, mortar batteries, engineering units, flying machines. All of them with their own demands, the need for logistical support, all of it flowing out of the factories here at Suzdal and the new production centers at Murom, Kev, and even in the heart of Roum.

  “With the strong engines on the ironclads, could we make a trailing wagon, lightly armored, or a sled even?” Vincent mused. “A mortar crew could ride on it, or infantry support. It could even carry extra fuel.”

  “The fuel would be dangerous,” Petrov interjected. “That’s one of the reasons I didn’t like the new engine design anyhow. In the old ones the coal bunkers acted like additional armor, same as aboard our steamships. Now, if they get hit, a couple hundred gallons of kerosene will splash around the inside. No one will get out. Hauling a sled with more fuel on board is just asking for trouble.”

  “Like all things, it was a trade-off to increase range and engine power. The same with this,” Vincent said absently. “I want you to work something up. Have a couple of wagons with detachable wheels so they can be converted to sleds made up for each ironclad.”

  “All right then,” Petrov said reluctantly.

  “What do you have in mind?” Varinna asked.

  “I’m not sure yet. The problem with the ironclads is they break down so damn easy. We’ve lost more to that than battle. Their range is so limited right now they almost have to be transported right to the very edge of the battlefield before deploying out. With the newer engines, and kerosene, they might range farther out.”

  “How far are you actually thinking about, Vincent? The longest run we’ve gotten out of the newer design so far is fifty miles before it needed an overhaul.”

  “I’ll need longer, a lot longer, than that.”

  “Just how far?”

  Vincent said nothing, and she smiled.

  “You always were one for secrets.”

  “Habit.”

  “A good one to have,” and he felt himself flushing, wondering if she was alluding to their near affair.

  “So, you’re up and about early.”

  Vincent smiled as Jack Petracci came into the office, moving quickly to the woodstove, pulling off his mittens and rubbing his hands. Behind him was his copilot Feyodor, the twin brother of Varinna’s assistant Theodor.

  Theodor, coming out of the adjoining workshop, slapped his brother on the back, and the two immediately fell into a heated conversation about flying, Feyodor waving his hands about.

  “You ready to inspect the new machines?” Feyodor asked.

  “One of the reasons I came here.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  Putting his greatcoat back on, Vincent gripped his cane and followed Jack out the back door. Varinna pulled on a heavy wool poncho and followed them. Plumes of dark smoke wreathed the factory town along the Vina River, the ancient city of Suzdal looking like a fairy-tale dream rising upon the hills beyond.

  The New City, as it was now called, was almost as big as the ancient capital of the Rus. The biggest factory, the one dwarfing all the others, was the foundry. Rail lines snaked out from it, bringing in iron ore, coal, limestone flux. Iron and steel came out the other end, to be loaded on yet more cars, which were pushed by small switcher engines. Rails, crossplates, and spikes were all manufactured right in the foundry, as were the barrels of cannons, artillery projectiles, wheels for rail cars, and armor plating for ocean and land ironclads.

  Carloads of iron and the precious steel seemed to pour out of the smoke-clad foundry in endless procession, pushed by small shuttle engines, the sinew of war then shifting into the locomotive and rail car works, the rifle works, the gun carriage works, the new land ironclad foundry, and even the foundry that turned out mechanical reapers and horse-drawn cultivators and plows, for without the mechanization of farming it would be impossible to take so many young men and put them in uniform.

  The powder factory, safely located to the north of town, was barely visible out in a vast open field, connected by a single rail line which hauled in the barrels of sulfur from the hot springs north of the ford, saltpeter refined from every barn and privy throughout Rus and Suzdal and from a fortunate discovery in caves near Kev, and charcoal cooked down from stands of ash trees on the western banks of the Neiper. Yet other factories scattered throughout Rus turned lead into bullets, smelted zinc copper, and tin, drew wire for the telegraphs. The slaughter yards built downriver near old Fort Lincoln processed the cattle and pigs brought in each day, salting the meat down with the precious salt produced from mines nearly two hundred miles away near the old Tugar Road to the west. The hides went straight to the tannery, where they were turned into leather for shoes, cartridge boxes, saddles, harnesses, and belts for the army.

  Water-powered looms, up near the ancient city of Vazima, turned out the thousands of yards of fabric, heavy wool for greatcoats, trousers, and uniform jackets, canvas for tents, and fine tight-weave canvas, shrunk after weaving and then coated with glue, for the airships.

  Every time he took pause to gaze upon it, the sight of all they had wrought filled Vincent with wonder. Ten years ago this land had been pasture for the horses of Boyar Ivor. The dam they had built to power the first foundry and gun works was dwarfed now by the sprawling complex and rough-built row homes of the workers.

  The dam, the memory of the slaughter he had created the night he had blown it up—how it had filled him with horror. But now, after all that had happened since, there was nothing but numbness.

  Much of this had sprung from Ferguson’s mind, though it came in different ways from all of them. Jack came up with the idea of the balloon from his childhood days traveling with a circus. Gates had designed the first printing press, having worked at the newspaper in Augusta as an apprentice. A dozen railroad workers had trained the Rus in how to lay a line, and two engineers with the regiment helped design and build the first engines. Iron forge workers from O’Donald’s battery of New Yorkers had designed the first foundry, and the few precious tool and die makers, lathe operators, telegraphers, men from all the different crafts back in Maine and New York, had pooled their knowledge, taught the Rus and the Rou
m, and spawned the defensive works that had defied the Hordes.

  None of them had ever dreamed that it would go this far, that such wonders could be created, some, like the flying machines and land ironclads, not yet built on Earth.

  He remembered visiting with Ferguson in the winter before his death. His friend had talked of a dream he had for after the wars were finished. The diagrams were a mass of interlocking gears, wheels, and drive belts. At first he had thought it was an elaborate clock, something that appealed to Vincent, since tinkering with clocks had been a boyhood hobby, but Ferguson had told him it was a steam-powered machine that could do calculations. Use of so much mechanical effort to do what any ten-year-old child could do with pencil and paper had seemed an impractical eccentricity, but Ferguson had promised that someday he’d build the machine so that it could work the most complex of calculations. The diagrams were now a cherished heirloom. Perhaps, if we survive, it might come to pass, Vincent mused.

  That dream, along with machines that would make electricity that could travel through wires to power arc lights, strange-looking gun carriages with steam pistons to absorb the recoil, even flying machines so powerful they wouldn’t need the dangerous hydrogen bags to keep them aloft were now but random sketches and pages of notes from a dead hand,

  The whistle of the foundry shrieked, its cry picked up by all the other works signaling the end of the night shift. From out of the crowded hovels thousands of workers were emerging into the early-morning light, wending their way in long streaming columns to yet another twelve hours of backbreaking drudgery.

  Emil had told him that lung diseases were on the rise with them … galloping consumption, asthma, the blackened air and fumes they breathed slowly killing them as certainly as a Bantag arrow. Emil was expressing special concern for the women who worked in the factory that made percussion caps out of fulminate of mercury, wondering if the air was causing a strange wasting disease. For a lingering moment Vincent could understand their confusion, frustration. Ten years ago, he thought, they were peasants, ignorant, living under the dread of the boyars and the Tugars. We offered them freedom, and now they labor in stygian darkness with no end in sight.