Terrible Swift Sword

by William R. Forstchen

  "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 effective 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."

  "Our patrols down through the narrows in front of Cartha show they have moved at best one umen, maybe two, across the channel," Hamilcar said through his translator.

  "Give me another year," Chuck interjected, "and they'll regret it."

  Andrew nodded and smiled. What he wouldn't give for another year, or another five years. But then it was always that way, there was never enough time.

  "We can expect at least some sort of feign run up the cast side of the Inland Sea towards Roum. Fifth corps will stay in Roum, while the 4th is positioned in Rus as our strategic reserve. When 6th and 7th Corps under Vincent are fully mobilized in Roum, we'll shift them as need be. Undoubtedly they'll feign in that direction at the very least, but I want to focus on what we do here. For the last six months we've invested all our strength in fortifying this line."

  Andrew looked back at Hans.

  "I'm merely saying it as I see it," he replied sharply. "And I'm telling you that when they hit they'll come at us with everything. They're under time pressure, just as we are. That Horde is huge--it's a vast eating machine of horses and of Merki and if they stop they'll starve to death. John, what's the quartering ability of horses for this type of land?"

  "Well, as near as we can figure," John said quietly, "it comes out to something like twenty-five acres to support one horse for a year on grassland. Now that's for year-round, mind you. In late spring you could most likely graze twenty of them on an acre for a day or two, but you'd need a good two weeks or more before you could use that again. So, doing some rough figuring, the settled area of Rus is about the size of Maine, about thirty thousand square miles or so. It could barely see the Merki through a season—and that's just for the horses, mind you, as to what they eat." He fell quiet.

  "The Tugar Horde was a third their size," Hans said quietly, "and starvation was getting to them as well by the time the siege ended, and there was a hell of a lot of Rus territory where they controlled the harvest. Jubadi is no fool, we've seen that already. He knows he'll have to strike and break us before summer even sets in, and he needs to get all the way to Roum before fall and break them as well, otherwise he's finished.

  "That's why I'm worried. I hate it when I'm fighting an enemy who might be every bit as desperate as I am, or more so. The rebs showed us that: Those bastards were kicked into the ground, and they still kept coming back for more."

  "We can't forget that we are desperate," Hans said quietly, "but never forget that Jubadi knows us—Muzta and the Tugars did not. He's desperate, and he'll not make the same mistakes."

  Andrew sat back in his chair, looking around the room, which was quiet except for the clattering of the telegraph key in the next room.

  Too much had gone into their bid to fight it out here. To pull up now would shatter months of careful planning, and perhaps shatter the morale of the Rus as well, who were faced with the prospect of lighting a third war in as many years on their own territory. If the position here failed, Merki siege guns would be on the Neiper within the week, ready to reduce Suzdal. He would have to hazard the fight on the Potomac line, and yet as he looked at his old mentor he had a gut-coiling sense that the old man was right. No matter what they did, chances were they would lose.

  "We fight it out here as planned," Andrew said quietly.

  Hans looked at him and nodded, a sad smile lighting his features, as if a sentence had been pronounced that he had known all along was inevitable.

  "Deployment will stand as before," Andrew said, and he could see a sigh of relief from John, who had based months of logistical planning on the Potomac defense. Pat shifted noisily in his chair.

  " 'Chief of Artillery' sounds mighty grand," Pat sniffed, "but bejesus, Andrew, that sticks me back in Suzdal with the reserves."

  "I need you back there, Pat. We've got Schneid commanding 1st Corps as our front line reserve, Barry in command of 2nd here on our left flank, and Tim Kindred commanding the 3rd Corps on the right flank. They're all old 35th men. Alexi Alexandrovich is in command of the 4th, back as mobile reserve. He's good, but I want you to keep an eye on him nevertheless. As Chief of Artillery you'll still hold higher rank. Fifth corps is under Marcus and back in Roum, and when 6th comes on line under Hawthorne in Roum it'll go wherever the action is, chances are to move under you."

  "We've got two full battalions, twelve batteries assigned to each corps," Hans interjected, "with six battalions, over a hundred and
fifty guns in reserve, under your direct command. What the hell more could an artilleryman ask for?"

  "To be at the front where the action will be," Pat complained.

  "The front may be in your lap soon enough," Hans said quietly.

  "Mr. Bullfinch, what's the latest from you?" Andrew asked, finally breaking the uneasy spell.

  The young admiral brightened.

  "Fifteen ironclads, ten mounting two guns, the other five with four guns, ready for action, sir, along with over a hundred galleys."

  "And the Oqunquit?"

  His bright features dimmed.

  "She might serve as a floating battery, sir, but it'll be months before you see her under steam again. Getting her side blown in and then rolling over made a mess out of her. We're still working on the boilers, but without Cromwell, or his old engineers, I'll have to admit they're damn near a mystery to me."

  "Chuck?" Andrew asked hopefully.

  "Complex pieces of machinery, sir. I'd have to spend some time on them, both of the boilers were cracked when we brought her back up. There's a lot inside that ship we just don't have the tools for yet."

  "Do what you can, Mr. Bullfinch," Andrew said quietly.

  Andrew sighed as he looked over at Emil.

  "Making chloroform as fast as I can. Andrew, on the conservative side a full-blown war with those beasts will create thirty or forty thousand casualties. We're low on silk—all of it had gone into the balloons. John's given priority to high-grade steel for instruments, but the best instruments in the world are useless in the hands of a bumbler. I've got to train a couple of hundred surgeons and a thousand nurses. Your Kathleen has the nurses' school well organized, and she's teaching the first batch of Roum surgeons herself. The trouble is, I had maybe twenty good people trained in field surgery by the end of the Tugar War. There's only so much I can do with books and lectures, but those men and women will have to learn the theory and test it out lor the first time in the field.