Battle Hymn

by William R. Forstchen

  "Trains do it better," Pat sniffed, "and a damn sight safer."

  "Trains don't go south or east yet," Ferguson replied. "Sir, even with the older engines we could fly this damn near all the way down into Bantag country. If it was stripped down to just a pilot, an engineer, and one gunner and all the rest of the weight was fuel, I guarantee you it'd get there and back. We'd have photographs sitting on your desk of what they were doing in their camp less than forty-eight hours after they were taken. It could solve once and for all the question of whether they were heading east and leaving us alone or stopped and preparing to turn north. And another thing, sir. We can't send a boat up any of them rivers without maybe triggering a fight. If we fly this thing and keep it at ten thousand feet, hell, sir, there's nothing they can do. No shots are exchanged and those worrywarts back in Congress won't have a fit."

  Ferguson leaned forward.

  "Sir, it'll end the questioning once and for all about what's going on down there. With luck, maybe we'll find nothing and that will end it. That will mean their patrols are just trying to make sure we stay at a distance. Hell, it might even mean they're afraid we're coming after them. But if we do find something, it will end this deadlock with Congress and we can be ready for whatever comes."

  "You're talking one hell of a distance, Chuck."

  Ferguson nodded toward the back of the room, where Jack Petracci, chief pilot of the air corps, stood expectantly.

  "Colonel Petracci, get over here!" Pat shouted, and Jack came over with a grin.

  Pat slapped him hard on the back. "I keep betting you're dead," Pat laughed, "and losing my money."

  Andrew shook Jack's hand and then motioned toward the drawing. "What do you think?"

  "I'd be scared to death to fly it," Jack said quietly, "but then again I've always been afraid of flying."

  Andrew grinned, but he could see the truth in Jack's eyes. By an odd set of circumstances, Jack, having once worked for a circus that had a balloon, had wound up being the planet's first pilot, handling an observation balloon. From there the balloon evolved into airships. Though he admitted to his fear, there was no denying that when need be Jack consistently tempted the fates and came out ahead.

  “The four engines suit me just fine. I like the backup, especially when flying downwind. That'd be the problem with going for a look at the Bantag. Heaven knows what the weather and winds would be like. We could get down there and never get back if the weather was against us. Always been a problem on this world. Prevailing winds come from the west. It's the return trip that makes you worry, since you're bucking the wind all the way."

  “What about the range?"

  "Nearly sixteen hundred miles round trip. That'd be nearly two days in the air. There's that rough air station started down on the defensive line. If we could at least get some fuel stockpiled down there, along with a hydrogen gas generator, I'd feel a bit more secure. That would cut the run down to less than four hundred miles southeasterly across the sea before fetching up on that river we're curious about."

  “Hauling all that equipment down there without the railroad would be devilish," Pat interjected.

  "You're forgetting the Petersburg, Bullfinch's new boat," Jack replied. “It's going down that way anyhow."

  “Well, that point is moot right now," Andrew replied. “Though maybe it would a good idea to have that equipment there for our light airships."

  He saw an exchange of significant glances between Jack and Chuck, which set off a bit of an alarm bell for him.

  "How much?" Andrew asked.

  “Sir?"

  "How much will this cost?"

  "Well, sir, it's like this."

  "Remember Chuck, it's not the old days, when we just built what we damn well pleased. The Cartha control the silk trade to the south and the bamboo you've been using for framing."

  "I'm trying out some ideas using canvas painted with this mixture we've been getting out of the oil we're refining. As for the bamboo, there's something like it growing up in the north woods. It's like nothing we've got back on Earth. Cut it into thin strips, soak it and bend it to shape, then laminate it several layers thick, and you've got something dam near as strong as steel but as light as bamboo."

  He hesitated.

  "Problem is, not many have been trained how to work it yet."

  "The cost, Mr. Ferguson."

  "Fifty thousand."

  Andrew exhaled noisily.

  "Laddie, you can build locomotives for five thousand Rus dollars each," Pat reminded him, shaking his head. "Last year's budget for the entire air corps was damn near sixty thousand. And half your ships were lost or crashed and turned into junk."

  "Not to mention twelve pilots and crew dead," Emil interjected.

  "We need it, sir. If it gives us early warning, we'll have months to get ready, instead of only weeks or days, as it now stands."

  Andrew nodded, saying nothing, and walked out of the room, heading into the adjacent workshop. The room was humming with activity. Leather belts attached between the lathes and drive shaft whirred, metal and wood shavings were deep around the machines. The workers paused to see the distinguished visitor. Andrew, feeling almost like a politician, worked his way through the room, shaking hands, looking into the eyes of old veterans who gazed at him proudly as they named the regiments they had served with. Again there was the mix of Rus and Roum workers here, something Andrew was proud of.

  Ferguson came to his side. "This is the new machine shop for the airships. Right now we're turning out a new set of engines for all the ships, based on the improved design tested last month."

  "And I take it this was in the budget?"

  Ferguson smiled and nodded his head. "It's all fair and square, sir."

  "But you do have a couple of things up your sleeve, Chuck. I know you better than that. If old John Mina was still alive, he'd have ferreted it out by now."

  Chuck lowered his head and started to cough, covering his mouth with a handkerchief that Andrew noticed had a few flecks of blood on it.

  "You're worse off then you're letting on."

  "A lot of work to get done, sir. There's something brewing out there, and I want us to have the edge."

  "You think we don't?"

  "You've heard the rumors, sir. Even the name of this new Qar Qarth."

  "The Redeemer," Andrew said. "I've heard them all. Remember, Chuck, I do have access to intelligence reports, something you're not supposed to have."

  "Well, sir, it adds up that there'll be trouble sooner or later. I want to push things."

  "While there's still time, is that it?"

  Chuck nodded and coughed again. Andrew realized that Ferguson had not understood the context of what he had just said.

  "While there's still time for you," Andrew said quietly.

  The thought frightened Andrew. Almost every major invention or reinvention on this world had come from Chuck—the railroad, telegraphs, standardized mass production, ironclads, airships, and even photography. If he should die now, the world could go dark.

  He looked carefully at Ferguson.

  “You're going home with us. You need some rest, and there's that teaching position at the new college."

  Chuck laughed. "Me? A professor? Hell, sir, I never finished my degree back home."

  "Well, we've got to start somewhere and you're it. Someone's got to train the younger ones around here to think the way you do. So amongst the other powers I have, I'm going to call you Doctor of Engineering and you can settle on being a professor."

  "Before I'm gone, is that it?"

  "I didn't say that, son, but you are going home."

  Chuck looked at him imploringly. "Just a couple of things first."

  "All right. Let's see them."

  Chuck led him to a room adjacent to the machine shop. Andrew stopped at the sight of the artillery piece pointed toward the door. He looked at the gun carriage, which came only up to his knees, and bent over to examine it.

  "It's
quarter scale, sir"—Chuck hesitated—"so I'd save on cost."

  "Breechloading artillery?" Andrew asked.

  "Yes, sir. When the idea hit me, it was so damn simple. It's an interrupted screw breech. Turn the handle a quarter turn, it unlocks, shove a shell in, turn it back a quarter turn and it's sealed."

  "What about the problem of gas escape?"

  "The shell does it, sir," and Chuck went over to a wooden case, opened it up, and lifted out a brass cartridge.

  "It's like the cartridge for a Spencer rifle, only bigger. The rim of the cartridge is locked in between the breech and the barrel, making it airtight. It's simple, it works, and it can fire up to ten rounds a minute with a trained crew."

  Andrew took the shell and hefted it.

  "Brilliant. Ten rounds a minute, you say?"

  "Absolutely, sir. And range, sir. We can get a tighter fit between shell and barrel than with a muzzle loader. There's a lot more pressure as a result, but I think we've licked the problem we had with brittle steel by injecting oxygen straight into the crucible to burn off the impurities, then adding a trace of nickel. I think a full-scale gun would shoot three to four miles. I've been fooling around with some improved fuses as well, and for close range a new type of canister round. Actually it's a tin packed with hundreds of nails mounted in resin."

  "There's a problem, though," Andrew replied.

  "Yes, sir. Brass. I already thought about that. A battery of six guns could fire off a couple of thousand rounds in an hour. They'd burn their barrels out, but they could pump out the firepower of a full battalion of Parrott guns. If we had had fifty of these at Hispania the Merki would never have gotten across the river."

  "And we would have needed a stockpile of a hundred thousand shells."

  Vincent nodded. "That's what I was hoping for."

  Pat came into the room and whistled softly when he saw the gun. Going to the breech, he tried out the screw mechanism and smiled sadly at Vincent. "I guess me old beauties are destined for the scrap heap."

  "Not yet," Andrew replied. "We're talking more brass here than exists in all of Rus and Roum together. The supply of zinc for brass just isn't there."

  "Another reason to push for Nippon. The survey team I sent out there said their territory has a lot of metals we need," Vincent interjected.

  Andrew smiled at his engineer. "Subtle, Mr. Ferguson. I'll keep the argument in mind. All right, what else?"

  Vincent walked him through the shed, and Andrew marveled at the destructive ingenuity Chuck displayed. It was as if the boy was obsessively compelled to think up as many engines of destruction as possible. He knew Chuck's motive: fear of his own mortality and rage, locked deep within, over the agony that the Merki had inflicted upon his once lovely wife.

  Andrew examined the improvements on the rockets that had been so crucial in breaking the final Merki attack and shook his head sympathetically as Chuck reviewed his problems with perfecting a steam-powered Gatling.

  "And this thing here—it's got me beat for the moment."

  Andrew picked up the model and looked at the cylinder curiously. "What the hell is it?"

  "Well, sir, I remember reading in Scientific American how Ericsson's monitor was based on a design he once submitted to Napoleon III during the Crimean War. The original design had a built-in infernal machine."

  Pat looked at him in confusion. "You mean like the Rebs made? Barrels packed with powder and a percussion fuse?"

  "Not exactly. Those kind of infernal machines, or torpedoes, were anchored in place and if a ship hit one it blew up. This idea is different. Ericsson was trying to make one that moved. The weapon was launched out of an underwater tube attached to the bow of your own ship. It would then move at your target, hit it below the waterline, and sink it."

  "Devilish," Pat muttered.

  "Precisely. I can't remember exactly, but I think the Ericsson design had a vulcanized hose attached to the torpedo. The hose would unwind from a reel as the torpedo moved forward. Jets of air would go from the ship through the hose and blow out the back of the torpedo to power it and steer it. It struck me that if we could put a cylinder of pressurized air inside the torpedo and figure out a way to steer it automatically, the thing could travel on its own, maybe half a mile or more."

  "Cost?" Andrew asked.

  "We could go to Bullfinch, maybe take something from the Navy Department’s budget."

  "Cost?"

  "Very fine tolerances on this one, sir, a lot of research to be done and testing at sea. I figure thirty or forty thousand at least for development, testing, and fitting our ships out with it."

  Andrew shook his head.

  "We've got full control of the Inland Sea with our monitors right now. The Cartha ships are falling into disrepair and there's no threat from that quarter. And the cost of building the new naval station on the Great Sea and launching the first monitors here is eating up the rest of the budget. Shelve it for now."

  Chuck shook his head in disappointment.

  "For the artillery, I'll see if we can shake some money loose at least to get one battery and a couple of thousand rounds of ammunition."

  "I'd like to adapt the guns for airship use. A one-and-a-half-inch bore firing a two-pound shell. It'd give our gunner a hell of an advantage in range, sir, and up there range is everything."

  "All right on that. Now, anything else?"

  "Oh, just the things you already know about, sir. Improvements on the Sharps carbine, a far better design for the trapdoor breech-loading conversion I was thinking about for our Springfield rifles, some other things I was fooling around with concerning railroad engine designs for trapping the steam exhaust and reusing it, and a couple of by-product ideas for the oil we're throwing away after we refine out the kerosene."

  "No surprises?"

  He stared straight at Ferguson and saw his eyes flicker.

  "Well, sir."

  "Mr. Ferguson, there's been a couple of rumors floating around. There's no sense in hiding whatever it is you're up to."

  "Well, there is one," Chuck finally said, and he led the way out of the workshop onto the landing field for the airships. Chuck walked down the row of hangars and Andrew paused at each of them to look inside. One was empty, the hangar for the airship that had disappeared the week before. As they approached the last hangar in the row, Andrew slowed down when he saw a crew at the far end of the building working on a roof over a recently added extension.

  Chuck stopped by the open doors to the building and waited nervously as Andrew approached. The massive doors were wide open and Andrew looked up in awe when he entered the building. The wickerwork frame of a new airship towered above him and stretched the length of the building. Dozens of workers were scurrying over the basketlike framework, and the air was heavy with a pungent scent that made him feel light-headed.

  "Damn it, Chuck," Andrew whispered, "you're building the big one, aren't you?"

  "Well, sir, we had appropriations for replacements for the ships we lost last year. I just thought I'd sort of throw them all together."

  "This is that four-engine design I looked at."

  "Yes, sir, it is."

  Andrew glared at Ferguson. "You know the spot this puts me in, don't you? Congress will have my hide over this."

  “Well, sir, Congress is sort of a thousand miles away at the moment. We could say that we just tried hooking the ships together."

  "We had appropriations for eleven airships in our fleet. Now we'll only have six and someone will want to know why."

  "Sir. You can see they're starting to hang the skin on it now. It's that new canvas treatment I was telling you about. The smell is from a lacquer we cooked up to make it airtight and help to shrink the fabric onto the frame. It's a whole new design."

  "I told you once before," Andrew snapped angrily, "that you're a loose cannon, Mr. Ferguson."

  Chuck started to cough again, and Andrew waited patiently for him to recover.

  "Sir, you can fire me at an
y time. I was right during the last war, and frankly, sir, I've got a gut feeling that we're heading into another one. This ship can give us the answer. It'll be ready to fly in a month. I think, sir, that in about four weeks, the day after this ship flies on its first mission, the issue of budgets simply won't matter."

  Andrew turned toward Pat, who was grinning.

  "No comment from you," Andrew snarled and stalked into the hangar.

  Looking up at the airship, he silently cursed Ferguson for being so damned unexpendable and also so damnably right. Politically, he knew this ship would be the last straw for some, another argument that the military was out of control and Andrew was at fault. When the trainload of congressional delegates arrived later today to meet with the Nippon representatives, there was no way in hell that he could hide this thing. That was one of the reasons he had come out early, to see if Chuck had come up with follies that could somehow be concealed until after the elections. This—this was an elephant they couldn't drag out and bury someplace.

  But if they stopped work on it, then what? It would just sit in the hangar and rot.

  Frustrated, Andrew turned back to Ferguson. “Finish the damn thing. But Mr. Ferguson, as of today, right now, you are fired as chief of ordnance."

  Chuck's face fell, and Andrew looked at him coldly until he suddenly doubled over with another spasm of coughing.

  Andrew put his hand on Chuck's shoulder. “Come on, son, you're going home with me. I need you elsewhere now."

  He saw Emil, Vincent, and Varinia approaching. Varinia broke away and ran up to Chuck's side. Though his face was pale, he forced a smile for her.

  "Guess we're going home," he said, and she looked at Emil, who put his arm around Chuck's shoulder and led him away.

  As the group left, Andrew turned on Vincent. “You knew he was building this, didn't you?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "I should can you, too."