by David Weber
Cayleb frowned—not in disapproval or disagreement but thoughtfullly. Part of him did want to ramp up rifle production as rapidly as possible, but the rest of him recognized that they were already producing rifles faster than anyone else on Safehold. And Howsmyn definitely had a point about the smaller size of the pistol shop … and the less critical nature of the demand for sidearms.
Besides, the emperor told himself, when you have a wizard who’s in the habit of producing miracles for you, you’d be a right idiot to try to tell him how to tend to his own knitting, wouldn’t you, Cayleb?
“What about the heavy industry side?” Merlin asked. Howsmyn cocked an eyebrow, and Merlin shrugged. “I’ve been a bit busy running around keeping track of armies and things,” he pointed out mildly. “And one of the really good things about the existence of the inner circle from my perspective is that I don’t have to try to keep tabs on everything myself, anymore.”
“Point taken,” Howsmyn acknowledged. He thought about the question for a few seconds, then turned his chair so that he could look at the charts on one wall of his office.
“The new ironclad program’s playing hell with Dustyn’s original plans,” he said. “Everybody understands why priorities shifted after the Canal Raid, and Dustyn’s people are just ecstatic over Bahrns’ after-action report. That doesn’t change the fact that we’ve just completely dislocated things … again.
“Engine production for the new river ironclads is going to be a pain in the arse, of course. When isn’t it?” He snorted. “Stahlman Praigyr and Nahrmahn Tidewater are pushing it hard, and I’ve diverted around forty percent of the engines I’d intended for the canal barges to the new ships, which is creating its own problems. Then there’s the armor production itself. We’re bringing the third rolling mill online here at Delthak early next month, and it’ll be able to roll up to ten-inch plate if we need it. On the supply side, Brahd’s miners are managing to keep pace—barely—with demand here at Delthak; the Halleck Mountain mines are going into production; and the coke ovens are online at the Lake Lymahn Works. Or at what’ll be the Lake Lymahn Works when we finally get them up and running, at least. It doesn’t make sense to transport the ore to the Delthak Works when the Lake Lymahn blast furnaces will be up in only another month or so, so we’re stockpiling the ore and the coke there. The hearths are running several months behind schedule thanks to all the diversions, though, so we’ll ship pigs to Delthak instead of ore until we can get the rest of the foundry operation up there. Even that’s going to be a pain, but we can do it if we put enough dragons on it, and Brahd’s making good progress with the Windhover River project. He’d really rather be putting down rails, but even if he had the ‘automotives’ and rolling stock we’d need, getting tracks through the Lizard Range would be a royal pain. Getting dragon wagons through the same route would be almost equally bad, so we’re lucky the river’s navigable for barge traffic all the way upstream from Fraidys to its junction with the White Tower. We can’t get barges as big as the ones we’re using here that far upriver, but we’re building new ones about two-thirds that size which should work fine, and the new docks at Fraidys’ll have steam power on the cranes and conveyors from the beginning. Actually, the hardest bit’s between Lake Lymahn and Opal Lake, and—”
He stopped himself and grimaced.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to take off on one of my wild-wyvern-chase conversations again. Favorite hobby horses and all that.” His grimace turned into a grin. “The real question’s whether or not we’d be able to deliver the engines and armor for the new gunboats, and the answer is that I think we’ll make delivery just about on schedule. We’re sure as hell not going to get any of them there early, though, and pressing as I know the demand is, there’s no way we can divert any more production from the power plants we’re going to need here at Delthak, at the other works, at the mine faces, and in at least a half-dozen other places I probably don’t even know about yet. I just can’t, Merlin.”
“As it happens, I agree entirely with your priorities,” Merlin said.
“I do, too,” Cayleb said, and Sharleyan was nodding firmly. “We’re fully aware we’re asking the impossible of you, Ehdwyrd. Given the merry hell we’ve played with your production plans so often already, we have no intention of trying to overrule you or second-guess you.”
“I appreciate that,” Howsmyn said and drew a deep breath. “Sometimes I feel like a one-armed slash lizard trainer, but, you know, the really remarkable thing is that my people have never let me down once. Not once, Cayleb. You think a greedy fool like Showail could say the same thing?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Should I assume Ahlfryd and Sir Dustyn are redesigning the King Haarahlds—again—in light of Captain Bahrns’ report?” Sharleyan’s smile was wry, and Howsmyn snorted as her eyes twinkled at him.
“Of course they are!” He rolled his own eyes. “When Ahlfryd can tear himself away from the proving ground, anyway. He and Ahldahs Rahzwail have the bugs out of the six-inch and eight-inch breechloaders now. In fact, we’re well ahead on barrel and breech production for both of them; it was the recoil system that was the problem, and we’re ramping up production on that side now. So now the demonic duo’re starting in on the ten-inchers. We’ve already produced the first proof barrels and breeches and test-fired them successfully from fixed mountings, but the recoil loads for a twenty-two-ton weapon are just a tad higher than anything we’ve dealt with so far. Even the eight-inch only weighs about half that much. So they’ve got plenty of toys to make loud noises with. And if one of them doesn’t blow himself up experimenting with Sahndrah’s infernal mixtures, the other one damned well will!”
Sharleyan laughed. Sir Ahlfryd Hyndryk, Baron Seamount, was one of her favorite people, and he did have a veritable passion for things that exploded. Captain Ahldahs Rahzwail was less brilliant, less unorthodox, and less erratic than his superior. Aside from that, however, the two were clearly chips off the same block, and they’d pounced on Doctor Sahndrah Lywys’ accidental discovery of nitrocellulose like wyverns on an unwary rabbit. Seamount clearly realized they were at a very early stage, but he was forging ahead with all his formidable energy, and the fact that Rahzhyr Mahklyn had convinced the Brethren of Saint Zherneau to recruit Lywys for the inner circle hadn’t hurt a thing.
Of course, that also means poor Sahndrah’s discovering the same thing Ehdwyrd’s discovered more than once. Ahlfryd’s still figuring out how things go together, which is frustrating enough, but she’s finding out that it’s almost more frustrating to know exactly what we need to do and not be able to do it yet, Sharleyan admitted to herself.
Lywys had taken a sabbatical from the College for a couple of five-days to digest the truth about the Archangels, Mother Church, something called the Terran Federation, and the genocidal Gbaba. She’d spent much of those five-days conversing with Owl. In fact, Merlin had flown her to Nimue’s Cave so she could do that conversing “in person,” and she’d practically wept as she discovered centuries of the science of chemistry and witnessed the beauty and incredible elegance of processes and principles towards which she’d yearned for so many years. By the time he’d returned her to Tellesberg, she and Owl had worked out exactly what they needed to do to reproduce Poudre B, the original smokeless powder of Old Earth, and also the more stable cordite which had followed it.
Picric acid was also a possibility, especially as a high-explosive shell filling, given the enormous quantities of coal tar being produced by Howsmyn’s coking ovens, but its tendency towards long-term instability made Lywys—and the rest of the circle—less than eager to charge full speed in that direction. Producing it would be relatively straightforward, however, and could probably be accomplished on a useful scale more rapidly than Poudre B or cordite.
“More rapidly,” however, was a purely relative term. Whichever way they went in the end, the problem would be coming up with the required materials in the quantities they needed, and that would require—a
mong other things—the creation of at least a primitive petrochemical industry. Doctor Zhansyn Wyllys, although not a member of the inner circle, was already headed in that direction, and Lywys and Mahklyn had gotten behind him to push for all they were worth, but they weren’t going to have what they needed next month, no matter how hard they pushed.
“In the meantime, Ahldahs has the ‘brown powder’ ready to go,” Howsmyn continued. Back on Old Earth, the same propellant would have been called “cocoa powder,” because of the clouds of brown smoke it emitted. “It’s even smokier than black powder, but it is giving them better muzzle velocities. And they’ve converted the Helen Island powder mill to produce prismatic powder, which is providing much more reliable velocities from lot to lot. They’ll be extending the same processes to all the other mills over the next several months, but they want to be damned sure of their quality control when they do. And despite Ahlfryd’s sheer frustration at the fact that he can’t have genuine high-explosive shells by sometime next Tuesday, what he already had was better than anything the Group of Four’s been able to come up with. What he’s producing now is probably a thirty percent improvement on that, and he knows he’ll have to settle for that until Sahndrah gets the new powders into production in something like a stable form. In the meantime, she figures she’s ready to start providing dynamite—basically Nobel’s original formulation, with diatomaceous earth as a stabilizer—for Brahd’s miners and work crews. We’re building an entire new factory up in the Southern Hanths for her. It’ll be close enough to be handy to Delthak but isolated enough to hold down the casualties in case of accidents. It still won’t be suitable for firing out of guns, though.”
“So we’re stuck with black powder small arms for the foreseeable future,” Cayleb mused. Then he waved his pretzel hand in a brushing away gesture. “I’m not complaining, Ehdwyrd! Or, maybe I am, but that’s only because I’m so well aware of all of the advantages smokeless powder would offer. Trust me, if you and Taigys Mahldyn come up with black powder cartridges with the performance you’re talking about, that’ll be plenty for me for right now!”
“Absolutely,” Merlin agreed, and Sharleyan nodded firmly.
“I’m glad you think so,” Howsmyn sighed, then glanced at the clock on his desk. “I really need to get home to Zhain,” he said. “I know there’re dozens of other points we could discuss, but have we covered the major ones?”
“I think so,” Cayleb said after a moment. “Or at least we’ve covered all the ones that’re currently on the horizon. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of opportunities to worry about more ‘major ones’ in the fullness of time.”
“Oh, you’re so right about that!” Howsmyn climbed out of his chair and stretched hugely. “I’ve got a conference with Brahd about his ‘steam automotive’ project tomorrow. The day after that, Pahrsahn Sylz and I are supposed to discuss his provision of wrought-iron deck beams for the new ironclads. Then, Thursday, Ahlfryd and I get to talk priorities for breech-loading artillery, Ahldahs wants to discuss a new and improved howitzer with a proper recoil system, and Colonel Hynrykai’s going to be in here to discuss how we can increase production of landmines now that we’re actually using them in combat. Oh, and Commander Malkaihy’s coming up with designs for naval mines, which would fill me with greater happiness if they weren’t something other people will find a hell of a lot more useful than we will. Then there’s the conference with Taigys and the pattern makers working on the revolvers, the trip upriver to the mines to inspect the new gallery, the detour home by way of that dynamite plant I mentioned, and no more than five or six more five-days’ worth of backed-up paperwork to get cleared away in the next two or three five-days.”
“Enough!” Cayleb laughed. “Go home. Hug your wife. Get some sleep! The world’ll still be here tomorrow, and so will your problems. That’s a lesson Merlin taught me. Well, that and that no matter how well you deal with today’s problems, you can always count on tomorrow’s to be at least equally interesting.”
“‘Interesting.’” Howsmyn snorted. “I suppose that’s one word for it!”
“Of course it is,” Merlin agreed with a smile. “Which is why some cultures back on Old Earth considered ‘May you live in interesting times’ to be one of the nastiest curses around.”
“I see they knew a thing or two, those Old Earth cultures,” Howsmyn murmured with a crooked smile of his own as he turned down the gaslights and opened his office door.
“Yes, they did. But they didn’t know everything, Ehdwyrd, and one of the things they didn’t know about was the way you Safeholdians would grab ‘interesting’ by the scruff of the neck and shake it till it squeals.”
.VI.
Sylmahn Gap, Old Province, Republic of Siddarmark
“That semaphore message you’ve been waiting for is here, My Lord.”
Kynt Clareyk looked up from the report he’d been reading with exactly the right mix of anticipation, surprise, and gratification. After his military career was over, he reflected, he obviously had a promising second career on the stage.
He held out his hand and Bryahn Slokym handed him the folded, sealed slip of paper. When he unfolded it, he discovered—not to his surprise—that this dispatch had been sent in his personal code. Because he didn’t officially know what was in it, he pulled out his codebook, opened it on his field desk, and began the laborious task of personally deciphering it.
The greatest drawback of semaphore communications was that it was impossible to hide the messages being sent. Anyone with eyes could tell when a tower was sending, and because those towers had to be within visual range of one another, any chain a few hundred miles long was bound to provide an ample number of spots where spies could hide and covertly record any message which passed through. So it was routine practice to send such messages in coded ciphers, but over the centuries, Safeholdians had become rather adept at code cracking. Secular codebreakers trifled with the Church’s message traffic at their peril, but it was well known that Mother Church’s own semaphore clerks were skilled at breaking even complex ciphers. For that matter, there were rumors (and the more Baron Green Valley learned about the “archangels,” the less convinced he became that they were inaccurate) that mystic devices within the Temple could crack any cipher ever used. Whether or not that was so, it was true that—for a price, of course—some of those semaphore clerks were willing to decode the system’s lay users’ messages for their competitors.
That was why critically important messages were routinely sent using what codebreakers on Old Earth had called “onetime pads”—substitution ciphers which would be used only once, for a single message, and then discarded. The fact that this one had been sent in Green Valley’s personal cipher indicated just how important it was, and he could almost taste Slokym’s burning curiosity. The young lieutenant was outwardly composed, but he radiated the impression of a little boy dancing from one foot to the other.
Green Valley worked slowly and carefully, although Owl (who’d long since scanned every page of Green Valley’s codebook) was perfectly capable of simply projecting the message onto his contact lenses without further ado. Lieutenant Slokym might find it a bit difficult to take his general’s ability to simply read off the message in stride, however, and it would never do to upset young Bryahn.
He came to the end of the message, tore the used page out of his codebook, carefully ripped the page into small pieces, deposited them in his ashtray, and struck a Shan-wei’s candle. He used the stem of the candle to stir the scraps of paper until they were thoroughly reduced to ash, then leaned back and looked up at Slokym … whose impatience had risen to near disrespectful levels as he watched his general systematically deal with the housekeeping details.
“Oh, you’re still here, Bryahn!” the baron observed in artful surprise.
“Yes, My Lord, I am.” Slokym’s tone could have been just a tad less … overly patient, Green Valley thought, and his lips twitched in amusement.
“Very well,” he
said, sitting back in his chair. “We have permission.”
Slokym’s eyes flared like those of a hunting hound who’d just scented the rabbit in the wire vine, and Green Valley allowed himself a matching smile.
“In addition,” he continued, “Lord Protector Greyghor informs us that we’ll shortly be reinforced by a complete new model division. When they reach us, they’ll take over security in the Gap, which will free the rest of the Brigade for … use elsewhere. In the meantime, we’ll leave Brigadier Traigair to watch the front door while we go sneaking around the back.”
“Yes, My Lord!” Slokym’s eyes were glowing now, Green Valley noted, and he made a shooing motion with one hand.
“Go tell Brigadier Mylz I need to see him. And get me Colonel Powairs, Colonel Graingyr, and Colonel Mkwartyr, as well.”
