Inside, a message read, “Will land on high hill three miles west of your location.” I told the trooper, “Get a squad together. Full armor. We’ve got visitors.” Silver was waiting for me when I left the tent. She must have also seen the plane. As I swung up in the saddle, I felt a twinge of guilt because I hadn’t curried or brushed her for three days. I had never before missed my morning rituals.
We headed west and a squad formed up around us as we approached the camp perimeter. It was slow going. Silver picked the driest, highest, firmest paths but her powerful legs still often sunk inches into the ground. It took us over an hour to reach to the relatively high and dry hill the plane was on.
Even close up, the plane still looked eerily like a DC3 until I noticed that it had huge puffy rolligon tires on it. The pilots were sitting lazily in the open cargo door but they both jumped to attention when we topped the hill. They were like twins. Both were less than six feet tall and wiry rather than muscular. Their chiseled faces and easy lithe movement showed that they were in as good a shape as any warriors. Their brown leather jackets and the gloves in their epaulets would have looked natural in World War II, except for the one inch orange crest on the leather helmets.
They saluted as I dismounted and one handed me an official envelope in royal colors, sealed with wax and tied with an official ribbon. “Lieutenant Goetz, sir! This message is the official reason that we have made this trip, and with all possible respect, I suggest that you do not open it.”
“You might want to explain that, lieutenant. I am in the habit of reading my mail.”
“Sirs Piotr and Krzysztof are sticklers for oaths and rules, sir. So, the official purpose of our trip is to deliver that message from Sir Piotr, and we can swear a holy oath to anyone without offending powers, secular or holy, as to the truth of that. The real message is still in the plane.
“And, with respect, I have recommended that you discard the official message because it is both unpleasant and irrelevant. I am privy to its contents and I know that Sir Piotr has been instructed to order, again, your immediate return now under threat of courts-martial. Your rank is to be revoked if you are not in Cracow in thirty days, your lands are subject to confiscation in that case, your titles are in jeopardy, and the pope has threatened excommunication if you do not apologize publicly for your disrespect to the papacy.
“As none of this is relevant to the Christian Army, you neither need to read nor respond to it. Sir Krzysztof recommends that you spare yourself the aggravation of communicating with fools.
“I apologize, sir, if I have spoken out-of-place. The real reason for the trip is in a locker. Have I your leave to fetch it?”
Well. I guess I didn’t need to read it after all. The kid probably had a point. I often told my staff, “If you feel an irrational need to talk sense to a fool, spend your time teaching a frog to sing or a horse to fly instead. It will have the same results and at least the frog won’t talk back.”
“Lieutenant, you have my leave, but I am anxious to inspect your craft, and I would ask your permission to board.”
It was a thoroughly modern plane. It was aluminum ribbed inside, all metal outside. “Aluminum and copper alloy,” the lieutenant pointed out, “poured and then cured at room temperature for six days to strengthen it and then covered with a thin layer of pure aluminum to stop corrosion.” In America, we called that duralumin and I was surprised the metallurgists came up with it without my help. I would have to send a message back that the addition of a small percentage of manganese would strengthen it even more.
There was a passenger door ahead of the wing and a large cargo door that swung up from behind the wing. Most of the floor was taken up with two rectangular tanks running the length of each side. We were sitting on those tanks because there was room for little else in the plane. Goetz tapped the tank he was sitting on.
“The tanks will be staying here. They were fitted for this trip because we are way out beyond our normal range. They’re empty now and we’ll drop them to save weight. Even with the tanks out, it’ll be a little close getting back.”
“Speaking of that, how the hell did you get here? We’re three thousand miles from your base. Even with these tanks, you couldn’t possibly make it that far.”
“It was an adventure, but we didn’t come from Poland. A navy flotilla prepared a rough landing field at a place called Anapa on the Black Sea. They offloaded fuel for us. There were three of us, all with extra fuel tanks, that flew down to the base in easy stages. That left us just over two thousand miles for the last leg.
“From the Black Sea we headed inland about a thousand miles. We found your trail and followed it until we found a nice flat pasture to land in. Then I refilled from their spare tanks and came on to find you.
“The other two planes are still sitting in that pasture with a couple of lances of warriors, waiting to refuel us for the trip back, if we make it.”
“That was a hell of a trip to deliver a message that you didn’t want me to read,” I said.
“There wasn’t much room left over for cargo, but the real message is still in the locker, along with a couple of boxes of cigars and some fine whiskey Sir Krzysztof threw in at the last minute.”
He leaned back and flipped open a locker bolted to the floor. He first handed me a heavy set of saddlebags. “This is from Sir Krzysztof: your cigars and whisky.” Then he retrieved a rather large leather blueprint case. “This case contains plans for your resupply mission and a new code book. This you will want to read.”
I opened the map case and glanced at the first page and then back at the pilot, “You are serious that they are going to build this?”
“Not just serious, sir, and not just planning. That ship and its three sisters are a third done already. I’m under orders from Captain Aleksander and Baron Gwidon to get your feedback on the best use of the ships.”
Outside, the squad had already dismounted and broken out rations. We joined them and the copilot on the ground while I perused the other drawings. Goetz pointed out, “Those aren’t the actual engineering plans, of course. There are five hundred pages of those, but these should give you a good sense of what we’re doing and let us get your feedback.”
Between munches, I scanned the ten pages of drawings. The first five were cutaway drawings of a standard looking dirigible, but the last three were pictures of a flying wing with ridiculously small engines. “Lieutenant Goetz, I’m not clear on what this is, but I’m pretty sure that we don’t have the technology to keep a flying wing in the air.”
“I’m not sure what a ‘flying wing’ is supposed to be, but the White Dragon is a rigidible and it should at least get up in the air. After that, it might have problems.
“The official description is a compound rigidible gliding gun ship, but the workers just call it the Sea Sicker. It flies, or will fly, with a combination of hydrogen and hot air. It has enough hydrogen to maintain neutral buoyancy but the idea is that you open the gas burners and, as it rises, it glides forward then the crew cuts the burners and it slides forward again on the way down, trading height for speed. It ought to be a wild ride, and I’m not certain that even the builders really think it’ll work.”
I suddenly realized that I had the scale very wrong. This thing was going to be as big as the dirigibles! “I’ve got a hundred more questions, but we should get this back to camp before dark.” I called over the lance’s leader, “Leave half your men here to guard the plane and tell them to give the copilot any help he needs to ready. As soon as we get to camp, I’ll send another lance out with supplies for a few days. Oh, and someone needs to give the pilot a lift back to camp.”
As we left, I looked back to see the Big People were eating their lunch by clearing grass and vegetation from a runway behind the plane. No one gave them orders to do so. Someday, I’m going to figure out how they know what to do.
By the time we reached camp, night was falling. I left word that there would be a staff meeting for Sirs Wladyc
law, Eikman, and Ivanov at two the next morning, and retired to my tent. I still had to remind myself that two on the new clock was ten AM on my old clock.
I decided that since I had to waste time eating, I might as well use the chance to finish my talk with Lieutenant Goetz. We laid two of the drawings out in front of us as we sat on the floor eating bowls of rice and cooked vegetables. It was obvious that Goestz’s enthusiasm came from more than duty. He loved the airships, and never gave a simple answer.
“What’s the cargo capacity on one of these ships?”
“It depends a little on how it’s manned and how long the mission is. Gross lift is about five hundred and fifty thousand pounds. The structure is about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. The weight of the crew, fuel, food and water, and ballast varies, but for most missions it won’t be over thirty thousand pounds. That leaves a theoretical capacity of around two hundred thousand pounds. After you figure in Murphy’s Factor for unseen contingencies, you might get a hundred fifty thousand pounds fo useful cargo. Figure seventy-five tons on most trips, or a little less to be safe.”
“How fast do they cruise?”
“These first four may be a little underpowered. They’ve diverted sixteen engines from the bomber program for these four ships. We figure seventy-five or eighty miles an hour in calm air. But you gotta remember these are ships, not airplanes so they’re sensitive to wind speed. Some Eagles claim they’ve encountered high-speed trade winds at about nine thousand feet, going from west to east. If they’re right, they could get here from Gdansk in a day. If not, then three days each way. In fact, the wind resistance of a rigidible is so high I doubt they will ever get much over a gross mile an hour in calm weather.
“The White Dragon is another matter. No one has any idea how fast it’ll go. The builders say that they are stressing it for a hundred eighty miles an hour, but not many people believe their calculations.”
I pulled out the White Dragon plan and Goetz leaned over to point out features. “It looks a little different that this drawing now. The first test flight did not go all that well. They built a ten foot wide model and rigged it up with a timer that would cycle the heater on and off.
“It made one hell of a leap up and glided down according to plan, but on the top of the second cycle it flipped over. I guess that’s what you meant about keeping a flying wing in the air. Since this drawing was made, they’ve shifted a lot of the weight lower in the fuselage to give it a lower center of gravity and they’re debating whether to add a tail boom.
“If you look at the control cabin, you’ll see how fanatic they are. You see how there are only three main controls? The cables from the two ailerons, the gas valves, and the control cables for the top vents, all come into the rear of the main cockpit. Eight men could fly this thing if they had to.
“And, look at this little thing below the cockpit. That’s a small gas engine running an air pump. The entire cockpit is sealed and pressurized. This thing is designed to get to thirty thousand feet and the constant change in pressure as it went up and down would drive the crew crazy if they didn’t stabilize it.”
Later, as I reclined under the stars with a cigar in one and a glass of whiskey in the other, I reviewed the day in my mind. In truth, I had found the conversations unsettling. I had almost come to peace with the betrayals by my wife, my liege lord, and half the people who owed their lives and prosperity to me. I had decided to move on from Poland and never return, but this conversation was upsetting.
Without me, Poland would have ceased to exist in another hundred years. In my own timeline, there were centuries where an independent Poland was missing. I had done my best to raise them out of the mire of medieval ignorance. With my guidance and knowledge, they built river boats, steam engines, and guns. I had introduced paper, printing, and indoor plumbing. The entire Christian Army was my invention.
And now they didn’t need me. I had always passed on my knowledge to others and I had formed and worked with engineering teams for years, but I was always the real leader; the spark of invention. Now they didn’t need me.
Even the last drawing, which Goetz and I had not discussed, showed how far my pupils had come. They needed a larger plane than the DC3 type that they had, and the designer had not wanted to wait for new engines to be designed and tested and a new airframe tested, so he just scaled up the exiting twin-engine plane by fifty percent and added a third engine. Need more power, just add one more engine just like the ones already in production. It worked for Junkers and Ford. Whoever the designer was, he came up with it without any advice from me.
The dirigible projects were well thought out and well planned. I was certain they would work and the only input I might have is to tell the aluminum foundry that adding a little magnesium and zinc could improve the strength of the duralumin.
My students, my children, had grown up and were surpassing their parent. In truth, what more could a parent wish for than that his children would grow up, be successful, and surpass even the parent in competence and success? Indeed, what more, except maybe a little more damned gratitude!
I was going to save their sorry butts one more time. One last time I would go into battle and relieve them forever of the Mongol threat, and then I’m out of here. The ungrateful bastards will never hear from me again.
The staff meeting was a large one, but at least we didn’t need to sit on the ground. I had the quartermaster set up a canopy well away from the camp with folding chairs and two large folding tables that we liberated from Sarai. Lieutenant Goetz sat on my right. I opened the meeting as if everyone already knew what we were going to do.
“We came out here to kill Mongols. We got a nice batch of them in Sarai, but a lot of them are left. Like you, I thought we would have run into their main force by now, but I have no intention of speculating on why they are absent.
“However, we are less than a thousand miles from their heartland with a trained force of almost forty thousand warriors and well over forty thousand Big People. Our men are fired up about the glory and considerable wealth that would come from ending the Mongol terror for good.
“We can do that by destroying Karakorum. That won’t end all Mongols everywhere, and we cannot expect to attack the Chinese Mongols. They now control single cities with populations as large as our county and manufacturing resources that are antiquated, but massive. If threatened, they could field several million man armies, but there is little love lost between the various Mongol families, and it is unlikely that the Chinese Mongols would spend a lot of time avenging their poor cousins. They might even see it too their advantage if their troublesome cousins ceased to exist on their flanks, and frankly, if the Mongols and Chinese want to keep killing each other, it’s none of our business.
“Karakorum is an old and well defended city. From what we have learned on this campaign, we believe that it has high stone walls and other good defenses. Up until yesterday, I was uncertain of how we would take it.
“We have the best trained and best armed warriors in the world, but as Captain Ivanov will tell you, we are painfully short of artillery and siege equipment. The solution to that problem has come to us. The man to my right is Lieutenant Goetz. He flew here in one of our new long-range aircraft to show us the plans you see before you.”
Of course, Goetz and the plans were just there to raise morale and impress the troops.
“These are drawings of new air ships that we are told will be in operation within six to eight weeks. If plans go well, we should start receiving about two deliveries a week of about seventy-five tons of supplies.
“Among those supplies, I plan to request a large number of artillery shells and the biggest damned artillery piece they can fly in one of these. This time, we’ll stand back and blast the walls down the old fashioned way. We’ll stand off, kill most of them with high explosive, incendiary, and gas artillery shells and then mop up the rest.
“Obviously, this will take time to arrange, so we will be spending winter
out here and attacking as soon as the weather clears.
“Some things we have to do are obvious. Captain Ivanov, you will spend the day prioritizing the supplies that you need shipped in. While we have a pressing need for ammunition, it works best when fired by a healthy and well fed warrior and that’s your field.
“Sir Wladyclaw and Kolomel Eikman will work with the guides to determine the best place to hole up. We need a place that is isolated, lightly populated, or, even better, deserted so we don’t have to fight with current residents and near our line to Karakorum.
“We could stay right here on the steppes, but it’s short of water and there will be a damned cold wind blowing through here next month.
“Lieutenant Goetz needs to get back in the air no later than tomorrow morning so Ivanov’s crew will need their lists ready by the end of the day.
“That’s the obvious. What am I missing, gentlemen?”
Of course, the main reason for the isolated location is as long as we are more than walking distance from civilization, we won’t have any desertions. You simply cannot desert on a Big Person. As soon as she realizes what you are doing, she will turn around and dump you in front of your commanding officer. Big People are smart and loyal.
By the next morning, the pilot was on his way back to his plane, and we were well on our way to making decisions. The guides had pointed out that we were probably less than fifty files from the river Ortz. It was directly on our line of march and eventually flowed down to the Cuman Sultanate.
We were in the middle of nowhere, but the sultanate’s borders were only about three hundred miles south, beyond a low mountain range. I decided that we would march east-northeast until we met the river and then follow it to within a hundred miles of the sultanate. We would make camp there for the winter.
We didn’t know if the Mongols had taken the sultanate, but my guess was that gold and greed were a powerful combination. Once we were established, Captain Ivanov would send a crew dressed as civilians into the south to buy a herd of cattle and whatever other supplies were available. Even if there were Mongol overlords, my bet was that the cattle and wheat merchants needed cash and wouldn’t care who had it.
Conrad's Last Campaign Page 18