by David Weber
"Yep," the diminutive armorer agreed. "Even t'eir merchies, t'ey too shallow draf' for blue-water conditions, an' as for t'eir warships—!" He rolled his eyes. "Forget it. You gets a good blow, an' t'ey goin' over, no matter what you do. An' t'ey ain't never heard o' jibs or foresails—all t'ey gots is t'ose big pock—I mean, all t'ey gots is t'ose square spritsails t'ey sets under tee bowsprit. T'ose help some beatin' to windward, but not a lot. An' t'ey gots no drivers—no fore-and-aft sails on tee stern to help t'ere, neither. Nope, t'eir sail plans, t'ey suck for blue-water. T'at's why t'is design go 'way on Eart' after t'ey learn tee jib sail."
"So we teach them." Julian shrugged.
"Mebbe," Poertena conceded. "But we gots to do it pretty quick if we gonna get t'ese ships built. An' even if we do, I been down to tee local museum and took a look at tee log from t'at one ship t'ey say crossed tee ocean from tee ot'er side. We not only gots to worry 'bout building somet'ing can handle blue-water, we gots to build somet'ing can stand up to whatever ripped up t'at ship, too."
"Ripped it up with what?" Roger asked. "Tentacles? Claws?"
"Seem like a big fish, You' Highness," Poertena said. "You gotta remember, I didn' read it direct, only tee partial translation tee locals worked out, an' tee guy writin' tee log was half outta his mind even t'en."
"Great," Julian said. "So even if we make the ships in time, we have to fight sea monsters?"
"More arguments for a fast ship," Roger said with a crooked smile. "But was this sailor sure it wasn't a submerged reef, Poertena? You can get those in what looks like open water."
"I know, You' Highness, but it real specific. `As a grea' jaw, tearin' tee craft asunder, a demon o' tee dept's,' an' like t'at."
"Bloody hell," Kosutic said mildly. "And I thought atul-grak were interesting."
"So we'll have to build," Pahner said, pulling the conversation firmly back into focus. "And that's going to take at least three months. Where does that put us in terms of rations and supplements?"
"It puts us in trouble, Captain," Matsugae replied quietly, and all eyes turned to the valet. "The apsimons are helping a lot, but we're still running shorter and shorter. Warrant Officer Dobrescu is checking everything we come across in hopes of finding additional substitutes, but if he can't, we've got about four months, four and a half at the most, before we begin facing very serious dietary deficiencies."
"Time to cross the ocean once we get the ships built?" Pahner asked, turning back to Poertena.
"Hard to say for sure," the Pinopan replied. "I t'ink we prob'ly lookin' at at least a mont', t'ough, Sir."
There was complete silence as everyone in the room digested those figures. Assuming that Poertena's estimates were as accurate as everyone there knew they were, then even if everything went perfectly, with no delays at all, their supplies would run out the moment they reached their final objective. And the one thing they'd all learned here on Marduk was that things were not going to go perfectly.
"Okay," Pahner said after a moment, "we have a look at our transportation and supplements constraints. I think the term to use is `narrow.' Rus, how do the K'Vaernians look from the point of view of large-scale weapons production?"
"There's good news and bad," the Diaspran bishop told the humans. "The good news is that the K'Vaernians are much more capable metalworkers than we of Diaspra. Much of that may be due to their worship of Krin, for just as we've learned to work with the God's water, they've learned to cast the bells which give Krin his voice. Also, their reliance upon seapower has inclined them in different directions. We of Diaspra use bombards and arquebuses mainly as defensive weapons from our fortifications, but their heavier warships rely upon artillery, and even their light galleys carry many arquebusiers and light, swivel-mounted bombards along their rails, because they use the fire from those weapons to decimate enemy crews before they board. Thus, even though the K'Vaernian Guard isn't huge, the city has great store of arquebuses aboard its ships, and great experience in the casting of naval artillery.
"Their navy depends upon privately owned merchant ships to serve as auxiliaries and to support their regular warships in battle, and so many of those merchant vessels also carry artillery and arquebuses. The bombards and arquebuses of their warships, however, are all provided by the city government, and all are built to common calibers, which isn't true of the privately purchased small arms aboard the merchantmen.
"According to the figures Bistem Kar has been able to provide to us, there are some eleven thousand arquebuses between the Navy and the Guard. All of these are of the same caliber, and `rifling' them as you've shown us wouldn't be difficult. There are more than sufficient skilled craftsmen in the city to deal with that part of the problem. There's a large stock of wrought iron and steel on hand, as well, and although much of it has already been made into weapons and armor, it could be handily converted by the city's foundries.
"Spring steel for the mechanisms will be somewhat more difficult to produce, but not impossibly so. The breech mechanisms which you've described to us will present much graver difficulties, however. Producing them in quantity shouldn't be overly complicated, but it will take time to develop a design suited to our capabilities, to produce the machine tools required to manufacture them, and to turn them out in large numbers.
"I've discussed the problem with some of the local artisans, and in particular with Dell Mir, however, and I believe an alternative solution can be worked out. Manufacture of `percussion caps' will actually be much simpler than the production of a suitable breech mechanism. The city's alchemists are quite familiar with quicksilver, which is also used by some of the local physicians, and there's rather more of it in K'Vaern's Cove than I'd feared would be the case. No one here fully understands the production of the `fulminate of mercury' you've described, but Sergeant Despreaux assures us that she can teach us how to make it, and the local mint will be able to produce the caps in very large numbers, although much care will be required in actually making them.
"Frankly, the greatest problem lies in the provision of rifle ammunition. We must design new bullet dies and get them into production, but that's only a part of the problem. If we're able to put eleven thousand rifles into the true-hands of our soldiers, and if we issue sixty rounds of ammunition to each, that will require us to provide six hundred and sixty thousand rounds of ammunition, and I see no way we can produce that many `cartridges' in the time available to us. I'm considering possible ways around the problem, but so far I've been unable to think of one. Of course, we could always issue muzzle-loading rifles, which would both avoid the problems of machining breech mechanisms and alleviate much of the pressure in the area of cartridge production, but it would also cost us much of the advantage in rate of fire which we'll require to face the Boman's numbers in the field.
"There's also the question of gunpowder supplies. Because the K'Vaernian Navy uses bombards and arquebuses in such quantity, and because the shore batteries use such heavy bombards, there are much greater stores of powder in K'Vaern's Cove than there were in Diaspra. Unfortunately, no one in the known world has ever contemplated the expenditures of ammunition which would be required by an army like the one we propose to build. Bistem Kar is still inventorying the contents of the city's magazines, but it seems likely that we'll be unable to meet all of our needs out of current supplies. The powder mills stand ready, and, in fact, continue to produce small additional quantities of powder even as we speak, but the raw materials—in particular the sulfur—are all imported, and the Boman have already overrun the customary sources of supply. Alternative sources exist, but it will take time to develop them and transport the needed resources to the city.
"The best news may well be that because their metalsmiths already understand the casting of bombards—and bells—they will be able to produce your new `horse artillery' much more rapidly than I'd believed would be possible. Their gun foundries already understand the mysteries of sandcasting and other techniques you described to me, and they have muc
h more capacity than I'd dreamed, primarily because the Cove has long since become the major supplier of artillery to all of the navies of the K'Vaernian. None of them have ever considered the innovations you've suggested, however, and their master gunsmith had something very like a religious experience when my sketches demonstrated the idea of trunnions to him. That innovation by itself would have completely transformed the use of bombards, but the addition of percussion locks for the guns and the idea of mobile land artillery has thrown the entire gun casting industry of K'Vaern's Cove into a furor. My best estimate is that there is sufficient metal already here in the city to produce two hundred bronze and iron pieces to throw six to twelve-sedant shot—say three to six of your `kilos'—although doing so will require the navy to sacrifice many of its existing larger bombards to provide the required metal.
"Once again, however, the problem is time. Not so much for the Cove, as for your own timetable. The actual casting of the pieces could be accomplished within one and a half or two of your months, but boring and reaming them will take considerably longer. They have the technology, but they don't normally produce weapons in the caliber ranges we need, nor do they normally have to work under such tight time constraints, and boring a gun is a long, painstaking process."
"We can help there," Julian grunted. The Diaspran looked at him and wrinkled the skin above one eye, and the intel sergeant chuckled. "All we need is to set up a `Field Expedient Post Hole Cutter,'" he said, and Kosutic and Pahner startled everyone else present by bursting into laughter.
"Satan, yes!" the sergeant major chortled, and laughed even harder when Roger and O'Casey stared at her in obvious perplexity. She managed to get herself under control relatively quickly, however, and shook her head as she wiped her eyes.
"Sorry, Your Highness. It's just that Julian's absolutely right. All we need is our bayonets, and we've got plenty of those."
"Bayonets?" Roger blinked, and Kosutic nodded.
"Sure, Sir. They issue us with those nice memory plastic bayonets . . . you know, the ones with the same molecular edge they put on the boma knives."
"Oh." Roger sat back on his cushion, his eyes suddenly thoughtful, and Kosutic nodded again, harder.
"Absolutely, Sir. Those things'll cut anything, which is damned handy, since we use them a lot more for tools around camp than we do for sticking people close up and personal. But the point Julian's making is that the field manuals tell us exactly how to build `post hole cutters' that'll cut nice, perfectly circular post holes in anything from clay and dirt to polished obsidian. We can sure as Satan set them up to bore and cut anything the locals can cast, and they'll do the job in hours, not days or weeks."
"Smaj's right, Sir," Julian said. "Give us a couple of days to get set up, and we can bore out the barrels one hell of a lot faster than the foundries can cast them!"
"That would be wonderful news," From said enthusiastically. "It would allow us to build up a much heavier artillery train than I'd believed possible, and that should help enormously. But even if that's possible, we still aren't going to be able to field the sort of rifles-only army you want, Captain Pahner. Not in the time available. Because we can't supply the quantities of ammunition required in the time available, Bogess and I have discussed with Bistem Kar the necessity of raising additional pike regiments to make up the required fighting force. There are more than sufficient metalworkers here in the city to manufacture pikeheads and javelins in very large numbers. Indeed, from what Bistem Kar has told us, it seems very likely that we'll run out of able-bodied soldiers well before we run out of the ability to equip them with pikes, assegais, javelins, and the new shields.
"Taking everything together, then, I believe that given two months with which to work—and the sergeant's `post hole cutter'—the foundries and artisans of K'Vaern's Cove could equip a field army with some four to five thousand breech-loading rifles, assuming that we use Dell Mir's suggested design alternative, with sufficient ammunition, supported by two hundred pieces of artillery and ten to fifteen thousand pikemen and spearmen. Allowing for gunners, engineers, and other support troops, that would come to something on the order of thirty-six thousand troops. K'Vaern's Cove is a large and populous city, but that number probably represents the maximum force which the city can muster, even assuming that the entire manpower of the Navy is brought ashore and pressed into service with the Guard and that all of the refugees here in the city capable of military service are also placed under arms. There might be a few more able-bodied men available, but larger numbers cannot realistically be removed from the city labor force without catastrophic dislocation."
"Good God," Roger said, turning to Pahner. "Did you come up with all of that?"
"Yes," the Marine said. "If we have to stay and fight, I want to do it with the best possible equipment and the best possible field force. I'd hoped that we could put more riflemen and fewer pikemen into the field, but it sounds to me as if Rus, Bogess, and Bistem Kar have probably come up with the best practical mix of weapons and manpower numbers."
"How do you intend to train anyone on all those new weapons when none of them even exist yet?" O'Casey asked.
"I still don't intend to train them," Pahner said. "But the way it would be done if we ended up with no choice but to do it would be with simple wooden mock-ups until the real thing became available. Again, from the grunt's eye view, it would be primarily a matter of instilling the discipline the troops need and giving them confidence in their new equipment. For the officers, it would be a matter of a lot of sand table exercises to make them familiar with the capabilities—and weaknesses—of their new army. The real problem is that this would be a much larger battle to administer than Diaspra was, which means we'd be spread accordingly thinner and that a more comprehensive organizational infrastructure would be required."
"I'm very impressed with Kar," Rastar said. "And with Bogess, of course. But I'm not sure that they can both develop an understanding of the tactics and simultaneously manage the training, particularly in the time available. For that matter, this whole concept of a `staff' is very odd."
"All right," the captain said. "There's sufficient production to create the weaponry to equip a small field army. We don't have a fixed number on the enemy at this time. The time required to create the weapons would be approximately the same as the time to train the individuals in their use, but doing either or both of those things would narrow our window to reach the spaceport before the supplements run out. Sergeant Julian, could you give us your report on the political situation in K'Vaern's Cove?"
Julian pulled out his own pad, keyed it alive, and scratched his chin.
"It's a pretty open democracy, so the political situation is complex, Sir. There are about fourteen major positions on the matrix, and most have a party of adherents prepared to support them at the expense of their competitors. However, the majority parties are pretty well represented by Wes Til and Turl Kam. Til represents old money, shipyards, and land-based mercantile interests in general, while Kam represents the labor groups and the actual sailing community.
"Tratan," the intel NCO continued, nodding at the Mardukan, "has spent some time on the streets, feeling out the attitudes and opinions here in the city. I'll let him talk about it."
"It's amazing what people talk about around a dumb barb," Cord's nephew said. "My only problem has been keeping up with the local dialects. You humans aren't able to really hear it because of however those `toots' of yours do the translating, or so I understand from Julian, but the locals speak a very fast pidgin of several of the coastal languages. I didn't know any of them before we arrived in Diaspra, and I only speak one of them with any real fluency, even now, so talking to these people has been . . . interesting.
"In the long run, though, I think that the fact that I don't speak the local language very well probably helped, because it contributed to the `dumb barb' image and let me eavesdrop on a lot of conversations without anyone really thinking about the fact that I was there.
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"What I can tell you is that the city is very worried. In the abstract, everyone is hostile towards the notion of taking in all the refugees from the mainland, too. The reason I say in the abstract, is that most of the refugees are staying with distant relatives, acquaintances, or what have you, and everyone thinks that their refugees are just fine. It's all the other refugees they want to run out of town."
"It's a branch of Turl Kam's party that's agitating against the refugees," Julian said. "A splinter party, really; I haven't seen any sign that he personally supports the agitation."
"True, but everyone is also extremely worried about the Boman," Tratan continued. "Because of the stories from all the refugees, they have a clear picture of what having the Boman come over the wall will mean, and no one wants to see that here in K'Vaern's Cove. Most people aren't willing to admit that they don't really buy into the idea that the Cove isn't an impregnable fortress, but the nervousness is growing, and when the food begins to run out, I think it's likely to turn into panic. At the same time, though, there's a significant voice—a very quiet one, but persistent and very widespread—that wants full-scale war against the Boman as the best way to keep them away from the city walls in the first place."
"Does it have any spokespeople?" Kosutic asked intently.
"No," Julian and Tratan replied simultaneously, and the Mardukan shrugged and gestured for Julian to continue.
"None of the arguments in favor of all-out war have a spokesperson because the idea itself seems to cross party lines," the sergeant said. "It's like an undercurrent, a strong one, that keeps turning up in all discussions of the Boman crisis. `If only someone would face them . . . We can face them . . . We could use our might to destroy them, but . . .' That sort of thing. Anytime you discuss the Boman, it comes up, and the few who I've talked to who were against taking the offense were pretty defensive about their opposition."