Terrible Swift Sword

by William R. Forstchen

  "Within the month," Hamilcar said haltingly in Rus, "when horses can eat grass here. They will ride immediately after the next moon feast; the Moon of New Grass Riding, they call it."

  At the mention of the moon feast the group fell quiet, each now knowing the details as told by Yuri to Andrew. Andrew looked over at Hamilcar. Perhaps fifty thousand of his people would die that night.

  "They have the damn air machines to keep tabs on us, and we don't," Pat said, a note of bitterness in his voice.

  "We'll get to that later," Andrew said, aware that Chuck and Jack had been taking far more than their fair share of criticism on that score.

  They had grown complacent, expecting to have the technical edge on their opponents, and the fact that the enemy had been able to launch balloons that could not only fly, but could travel at will in any direction, had left all of them in a state of shock.

  Throughout the winter, whenever the weather was good and the wind was down, Merki air machines, ugly cigar-shaped vessels, had roamed the sky at will, keeping watch on the building of the fortifications and repeatedly bombing Suzdal. The first attack, only a day after the victory over the Oqunquit had made a shambles of the powder mill, and the repeated air assaults, though more of a nuisance than a serious threat, had wrought a stunning impact on Rus morale, the former peasants looking at the Merki machines with dread. Two raids had reached even as far as Roum, bombing the navy yard and setting a long string of precious boxcars on fire with a rain of small projectiles that burned rather than exploded.

  Andrew leaned back in his chair and looked at the map of the Potomac front spread out on the table.

  "What's the situation in your department?" Andrew asked, looking back over to John.

  "Rations are the easy part—thank god, harvest last fall was better than expected. Bob Fletcher has been working miracles as quartermaster for the armies. We've got one hundreds' days worth of salted beef, pork, and even that damned whale meat the Roum like so much, stockpiled for the army. There's enough hardtack for a year. Throughout Rus supplies are good right through to harvest time.

  "As long as we stay near a rail line we're in fairly good transport shape. As of this morning, we have sixty-eight locomotives and just under seven hundred cars. We can move two corps from here to Roum and back without much delay. Our reserve corp on this front has all trains ready, and transport for the other two corp can be moved up quickly. Our copper wire supply is good, so is the zinc for hydrogen, and lead is up—we've taking to rewrapping the iron ball cartridges we were forced to produce last fall, and replacing them with lead rounds.

  "Replacement timbers for all major bridges are in place, and we've made up a number of precut sections for emergency repairs on the lines.

  "Shortages are still plaguing us in cast iron and steel. Rails are damn near still warm when they're getting laid, precision tools, especially for building up an arms center in Roum, are scarce, the men to make them even scarcer. Saltpeter is still the bottleneck for powder; we've turned over every manure pit and outhouse in Rus. If it wasn't for Roum we'd be finished.

  "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 Hor
de, 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."