by John Ringo
“Yeah,” Herzer breathed, glad that someone could explain the… feeling that was in him. “I want to be where the rubber meets the road.”
Edmund laughed at that and shook his head at the young man, who was looking embarrassed. “Don’t worry, it’s just… when you get out of basic, if you pass, I’m going to let you read a book. Hell, I’ll make you read so many you’ll hate me. Clausewitz, flawed as he is, Fusikawa, Keegan, Hanson. So you’ll be able to define the terms. Knowing the lingo is half the battle in learning. But shock infantry isn’t all that is needed. Long term I want a balanced combined arms force. Bow, ballista, legion, heavy and light cavalry.”
“You’re talking a big force,” Herzer said, shaking his head. “Raven’s Mill isn’t going to support all that.”
“Who’s talking about just Raven’s Mill?” Edmund chuckled. “That’s what’s getting me so upset with the council. They keep thinking just in terms of here and now.”
“Do you always think about ten years down the road?” Herzer asked. “That’s how long you have to be thinking. There’s no way even to raise a full legion for… two years minimum.”
“Why two?” Edmund asked, looking at him again.
“Stuff,” Herzer shrugged. “Log… logistics?”
“You know some terms already.”
“Just… I have no idea how many kilos of steel go into arming a legion of six thousand men…”
“Tons, go on.”
“Tents, food. The tents were made from leather. We don’t have enough cows to make the leather for that many tents!”
“And not enough men. Food.”
“Preserved food,” Herzer said, suddenly excited. “I mean… salt. It’s what they paid the legions with…”
“Not strictly necessary as a payment method, but I get the point. It is necessary as a preservative, which is why we’re having to eat this food so fast. It would have been better to wait until fall for a roundup, but we needed the food now. You remember what I said about ‘cadre.’ Do you know what it means?”
“The… core of a force?”
“We’re at the tools to build the tools stage. The Raven’s Mill defense force is designed to be the tools to build the tool. Can you get what that means?”
“Ouch,” he said, looking at the hammer with a grin. “You want us to be a hammer?”
“And a hammer is heavier and harder than what it bangs,” Edmund chuckled, nodding at the analogy. “You think you’re heavy enough?”
“I don’t know,” Herzer admitted. “I hope I will be by the time you’re finished. Are you the hammer that makes the hammer?”
“No,” Edmund admitted. “I have someone better at it than I am. You’ll find out. And I guarantee you’ll hate it.”
“Okay, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, I guess,” Herzer said. “I wish we had guns, though. Try to let some brigands get though a volley of rifle fire.”
“Expansion rate protocols,” Edmund said with a shrug. “Won’t work.”
“It doesn’t make any sense to me,” the younger man said, shaking his head. “I mean, first of all, why outlaw explosives and second how in the hell does it actually work? Expansion rate conversion never made any sense.”
“You want an answer?” Talbot said, setting down the steel again and then sitting on the anvil. “I’ve about got my mad worked out, we’ll let the forge cool off now that… Well, don’t worry about pumping. So you want the answer?”
“Yes, I wouldn’t have asked the question if I didn’t.”
“I know you went to day-school with Rachel,” the smith frowned. “And I know she knows this. So why do I have to explain it?”
“You don’t if you don’t want to,” Herzer replied, standing up and stretching his legs. He felt better than he had all day. He really had needed some exercise. “But I took the preindustrial technologies track. I mean, it was covered in backgrounds to history, but that’s all they said. And I never really cared before.”
“Okay, but I’m not going to take fifty thousand words and if you don’t understand it, you don’t understand it. Got it?”
“Got it,” Herzer said with a chuckle.
“The first thing is ‘why?’ ” Talbot said. “The protocol got emplaced shortly after the AI war. You’re up on that?”
“Somewhat. There was a class on it. I didn’t sleep through it.”
“So you know it was bad, bloody. Nearly as bad as this… shit we’re in. There was a twenty-five percent die off in the first year of the war, some from fighting, most of it from starvation and other extermination programs of the AI’s.”
“Yes,” Herzer said grimly. The Norau rump of the Council hadn’t passed around current casualty estimates, but he’d seen the bodies by the tracks with his own eyes. If the human race had as little as a twenty-five percent die-off rate from this Dying Time he’d be very surprised.
“Anyway, the die-off and the war produced a great deal of pacifism in its wake. But at the same time it produced a lot of people who were pretty extreme. One group of them ambushed one of the members of the Council and wiped him and his bodyguards out. It wasn’t easy. The ‘assassins’ — for want of a better word for a group of six hundred battle-armored infantry backed by AI tanks — were nearly wiped out by the bodyguards and the Council member, who for all his pacifism had gained it in the frontlines of the war.
“That really shook the Council. If Hollingsworth could be taken out, anyone could. The only thing that could prevent that was Mother.”
“Ah.”
“Now, no group of Council members had ever gotten large enough and unanimous enough to have Mother control crime or anything like that. That was so intrusive that they all recognized it would lead eventually to a revolt of one form or another. And most of them were against it in principle. On one level you know that Mother is always watching. But as long as you know, it doesn’t matter… So, anyway, they decided that they could either violate that long-held prohibition against using Mother for surveillance purposes, or they could find some other way around it.”
“Weapons controls?” Herzer asked. “But… But, I guess it sort of makes sense…”
“Sure, if you have no understanding of history,” Talbot snarled. “Anything resembling universal suffrage is a postindustrial, postgunpowder concept. Gunpowder gave the Everyman a way to kill the Lord on his horse. Industry, by which I mean steam and internal combustion, removed the need for day-in, day-out muscle use! As long as their comfortable replication- and information-based society was stable and stagnant, everything was fine. But take that away and what do you have?”
“This,” Herzer whispered, noticing how Edmund referred to the pre-Fall society as “theirs.” “Okay. So, no internal combustion, but why no steam?”
“Low power steam works,” Talbot said. “But when you build up really useable pressures it passes the point that Mother is programmed to find dangerous and… the heat just… goes away. Into the damned Net for Sheida to use, I suppose. It even interferes with high temperature forges; forming steel is a balancing act.”
“Oh. Okay, that’s the why. What’s the ‘how’?”
“Next you have to understand Mother.”
“It’s the central computer that runs the Web. So?”
“Oh, child,” Edmund said with a grim chuckle. “Mother is not a computer. Mother is a program. Actually, an OS/P, an operating system/protocol. But Mother has become much more than that. Mother is connected to every single outlet of the Web. She sees through every nannite. She hears through every ear. Her sensors detect every shift of the wind, every change in kinetic energy, the potential of every raindrop, and have a very good idea where the individual molecules are going to end up. Have you ever heard that one about ‘see every sparrow fall’?”
“Yeah,” Herzer said, caught in the odd spell of words that Edmund seemed to be casting.
“Mother knows it before it starts to drop.”
“So…” Herzer looked at the smith and s
hrugged. “Why doesn’t she stop this war?”
“Because Mother doesn’t care,” Edmund replied with a grin. “She’s not here to stop wars or start wars — wars are human things and it’s not her job to tell humans how to be human. She just runs the Web and the various things that are attached to it. As long as the combatants don’t do anything stupid to the actual information transfer architecture, Mother won’t do anything to them.”
“That is… weird.”
“Mother was written by a guy who in retrospect turned out to be pretty damned weird. Name of Arthur King. Ever heard of him?”
“The name and that he was the founder of the Web.”
“Not quite, he just wrote Mother. The Web existed before him, the only thing he really did was make the last major modification to its internal structure. And that was the last thing he did on this earth, apparently. Because he disappeared right afterwards. Vanished, without a trace.”
“And this has what to do with the explosive protocols?”
“Remember, Mother knows all, Mother sees all. But the only time that Mother does things about it is if the Council tells her to. She’s controlled by the Council members. They vote on what actions she should take outside of directly securing the Web. If enough of them told her to destroy the Earth, she would.”
“What? How?” Herzer said.
“There are various ways that come to mind. It depends on if they just wanted the biosphere wiped out or really destroy the Earth. If they wanted the biosphere destroyed, she could probably just dump an enormous amount of power into the mantle and cause every volcano on Earth to erupt and keep erupting. That would wipe out everything but bacteria in time. She could wipe out any particular species simply by causing its chemical processes to stop. Are you feeling happier now?”
“That’s crazy!” the boy said, shaking his head. “Since when?”
“Since looong before you were born, boy. Nobody talks about it and most people don’t even think about it. Mother owns us, but we, in turn, own Mother, through the Council. There is a reason that I hate the Council, hated it long before this damned war, and thought that it needed far more oversight than it was getting.”
“So you’re saying that Mother stops explosions by knowing they are going to happen?”
“Partially. She also can sense that they have occurred. And while explosions propagate fast, they don’t propagate faster than light or Mother’s reactions. When one occurs, it gets surrounded by a force-field and ‘damped’ with the kinetic energy converted to electrical power then drained off into the power net. All you get is a sort of wet ‘thump’ and a lump of ash. I tried it with homemade gunpowder one time and got a nasty note from the Council for my troubles.”
“But… there are explosions that occur in nature all the time. Lightning, volcanoes…”
“Like she can’t tell the difference between a deliberately detonated chemical explosive and lightning?” Edmund laughed. “And chemical explosions don’t happen in nature, at least not much. There are a few species that come damned near to having them, including plants. But Mother can filter for that. Chemical explosions have a very distinct signature. As to volcanoes, what makes you think she doesn’t damp them?”
“Well, I’ve seen pictures…”
“Sure, plenty of pretty eruptions. Ever heard of Krakatoa?”
“No.”
“Used to be an island. Then some salt water dropped into a magma chamber and blew it up. Big explosion, killed a lot of people, inundated islands, all the usual problems. With me?”
“Yeah.”
“I mean big explosion. Ever heard of the Stone Lands?”
“I went there one time, it’s… interesting. Geysers and hot vents and stuff.”
“Yeah. Did you know it once blew the hell up?”
“What?”
“Heh. Shortly after the AI war. Caused a hell of a stink because there was a lot of suspicion that it had been done deliberately; there are ways if you have access to power fields and enough power. Anyway, it had always been really unstable and the explosion had been sort of a background worry for geologists for a long, long time, as long as they knew what was going on down there. Similar to Krakatoa in that there was a big hot spot and a lot of water in close proximity. If it went, though, it was estimated that it would blow out not only the Stone Lands but the area for several hundred kilometers in every direction. And I do mean ‘blow out,’ as in blow it into the stratosphere.”
“Wow.”
“The hot spot had been heating the water for a few hundred thousand years and it was hoped that it would never break down. Well, it did. Big time. Magma/steam explosion estimated at something like one hundred megatons, that’s a really old expression to measure explosives.”
“Okay.”
“And what happened? Nada. Ground shook a bit, minor earthquake. That’s exactly how powerful Mother is. So forget making up a bunch of gunpowder and turning this into the New Model Army.”
“Okay,” Herzer said. “Damn. But one other thing?”
“Sure.”
“Why longbows, crossbows are easier to train on and…”
“Oh not you too!”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Kane was checking one of the horse’s shoes when Edmund entered the barn and he looked up in surprise at the mayor.
“When did they let you out of the cage?” he asked with a chuckle.
“I told my keepers to screw off and die,” Talbot replied with a grin. “I was thinking about taking a ride if you’d loan me a horse and gear. And I thought you might like to ride along.”
“Okay,” Kane said, dropping the horse’s hoof. “I don’t suppose you remember much hot shoeing? I’ve been cold farriering these beasts but I’m about out of decent shoes.”
“See Suwisa,” Edmund said, pulling down a saddle and tack. “I’m pretty much out of the blacksmith business these days.”
“I did,” Kane said, following him out and whistling up a horse. “Hanarah or Arab?”
“Arab if Alyssa won’t mind,” Talbot replied. When the horse was called forward he caught it up and saddled it with ease. “We’ll have to see if I remember how to ride.”
“It’s like sex,” Kane replied, lifting himself into the saddle. “Once you’ve done it once you never forget.”
“And, like sex,” Talbot replied with a grunt as he hoisted himself upwards, “if you haven’t done it for a while, the muscles lose their tone.”
Despite his protests they trotted out of the corral and up towards Massan Mountain, taking a narrow trail up its woods covered sides. The day was clear and just turning to the summer heat but under the trees it was still cool from the morning and the horses were frisky. Suddenly, Edmund kicked his mount into a canter, then a full gallop, charging up the winding trail in a series of hair-raising turns.
Kane tried to keep up but the Hanarahs for all their speed were designed for the flats; the more nimble Arab easily left the larger horse behind.
Finally he debouched into a clearing on a shoulder of the mountain where Edmund was settling his prancing mount. As the Hanarah charged into the clearing the Arab reared, flailing its hooves at the apparent challenger.
Talbot easily kept his seat, grinning from the exhilarating ride and the antics of his mount. “I guess I haven’t lost my touch,” he said as the Arab got all four feet back on the ground.
“You were always a fine knight, King Edmund,” Kane grinned.
“But no more,” Edmund replied with a frown. “Mayor I am and mayor I’ll stay if I have my way.”
“What’s that mean?” Kane said with a raised eyebrow.
“Those damned idiots in the constitutional committee…” Talbot said then shrugged. “We’re going from a nice, clean constitution to something… They want to reinstitute an aristocracy and I can’t stop the momentum.”
“Well…” Kane temporized then shrugged. “I guess it depends on whether you’re going to be the aristocrat or not. How are they goin
g to ‘choose’ them?”
“They’re going for a bicameral legislature; I got them that far,” Edmund replied. “The lower house will be straight population representative, although broken up geographically. The ‘upper’ house, though, they want to be an aristocratic body. I think I’m going to get it to be partially representative. Probably with members chosen by district governments. But some of the representatives are insisting on an aristocratic addition. Give them their due, it’s not all hereditary. But they also want ‘notable persons’ who will have lifetime appointments. I don’t like lifetime appointments in general and I especially don’t like the idea of hereditary appointees having a say in government.”
“What’s their argument?” Kane asked.
“Basically that there are some areas that already determined to have hereditary power transfer,” Edmund sighed. “And we can’t get them to join us unless we factor for it. There’s also the fact that some of the members of the committee recognize that they are likely to be included. Their argument is that it gives a solid means of power transfer that people can identify with.”
“Edmund, bear with me,” Kane said carefully. “But… they have a point. As a society we have had one hell of a shock. People… people are looking for security as much as anything right now. Hereditary aristocracy… has a very secure feeling to it.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Edmund replied. “But it’s also a bad idea in the long term. You know how hard I’ve been working to avoid even de facto feudalism here. There are ‘allies’ that we’re going to be forced to include that have actual feudalism brewing. And that is getting included as well, the permission for feudalistic society. Now, right now that is going to fly. But in time there are going to be areas that have serfs and areas that abhor the concept. That’s a recipe for civil war if I’ve ever seen one.”
“Ouch,” Kane replied. “Good point.”
In the meantime, I’ve a town to defend and that’s what I really wanted to talk about.”
“Oh?”
“I need two things and I think that you’re the right person to handle both. The first is that we need some cavalry scouts and eventually we’ll need some heavy cavalry. Good cavalry is as hard to come by as good archers and good legionnaires. In fact, I don’t think you’ll find it possible; it’s the one arm I’m willing to admit will need at least a few generations to develop.”