Chapter Seven – Total War
The young men shall fight; the married men shall forge arms and transport provisions; the women shall make tents and clothes and shall serve in the hospitals; the children shall turn linen into lint; the old men shall betake themselves to the public squares in order to arouse the courage of the warriors and preach hatred of kings and the unity of the republic.
Proclamation of the French republic, 1793.
The first task of the newly enrolled musketeers was to go through the remains of the encampment left by the Midis, much as Viet Cong use to pick over the remains of American military dumps, looking for anything usable. The Midi dead were dumped in a hole dug by the androids, using spades discovered at the back of the visitor’s centre, and poor Colin put in a separate grave in an open field by the visitor’s centre. A rock was found as a head stone and Monster scratched the man’s name on it with a Midi knife. Honey remembered Colin’s last name as Jennings which they much later found to be wrong. It was Jenner. She waved that away, saying that their relationship hadn’t been about words.
Gideon had The Witches interface make some more of the concrete blocks and got the androids, who were proving handy to have do the heavy work, to stack them across the bridge as a makeshift barrier against Midi interruption. Two more young men arrived to undergo the musketeers newly invented swearing in ceremony.
“We left in the middle of a lecture on the non-violent obligations of citizenship,” said one.
Two girls turned up, keen for revenge for murdered family members, and were promptly taken by Honey to see the grave of her dead lover. They listened to her tale of passion and violence, expressed sympathy and then took the oath. Gideon gave his growing band a brief lesson in patrol craft – don’t wander around in the open discussing your personal lives in loud voices, stick to cover, keep your eyes open and keep track of the direction in which you are going. He sent out two groups of three armed with captured knives, one up river and one down river, to see if they could see any Midis and report on possible ways to cross the gorge. If they kept the river in sight then they would not get lost, Gideon hoped.
Others were sent to patrol around the camp and see if any Midis had wandered back but were told not to lose sight of the structure. Instruction in basic navigation would start tomorrow. Did anyone have a compass? Their phones had one. Sorry, what? Gideon was shown the standard issue settlement phone, the network for which, despite everything, still worked. No one had told the Midis about it. In any case the invading creatures had yet to grasp the concept of electricity, let alone that of mobile phones. William and Thomas had been making calls to friends, which explained the trickle of musketeer volunteers. There were more on the way.
“Hold on, don’t the network and the phones need power.”
“Power’s still up,” said William. “System is automated. The Midis also haven’t messed with the wind generators or PV farms and the nuclear reactor is sealed. All cables are underground. We’re told when a human turns on a light, the Midis think its magic and want it turned off.”
“And those guys over-ran us with ease,” said Thomas.
“But there’s no power in the visitor’s centre,” protested Gideon.
“Probably the power’s just in stand-by mode,” said William. “Easy enough to switch it back.”
Gideon who had been fumbling around the centre in the dark was not impressed, but there were other matters to think about. His tiny but growing band needed supplies, equipment, a training schedule and designated sleeping areas. There should be a guard on the bridge and maybe an observation post on that small hill well beyond the bridge.
“What does the observation post do?” his recruits asked.
“Watch out for the enemy, as the name suggest. They stay out of sight somewhere handy, maybe with one up a tree.”
“Okay, so what do they do when they see an enemy?”
“One comes and tells the main body, including their harassed commander, that there are Midis out there. The rest watch to see how many Midis there are, what armaments they have and, importantly, what direction they are going in – towards the bridge, away from the bridge, and so on. Those details also should be relayed to said harassed commander.”
“Right – but what is the person up the tree meant to be doing?”
Gideon thought to himself then that it was going to be a long day, and so it proved. By the end of it, Gideon fell asleep on a Midi mat in one corner of the visitor’s centre, as a few of the new musketeers took it upon themselves to teach Sam how to play chess, using a set they had found in one of the store rooms. Fred had little to say for himself, even after the Witches changed his programming so that he could speak, and showed little interest in doing anything else aside from slavishly following orders, which was no bad thing. On the other hand, Sam showed some interest in interaction.
“Pawns, these pieces,” Gideon heard one of the musketeers say as he fell asleep, “just move one space, but the first time they are used they can move one or two spaces.”
“First move, two spaces,” said Sam.
When Gideon opened his eyes again it was daylight and everyone else was asleep. Alarmed, he got up immediately to see whether his strict instructions concerning guards had been followed. The visitor centre guard he found asleep and snoring on the veranda and was resentful about being kicked awake.
“Hey, wow, what’s the big deal,” said that gentleman. He was a tall, lanky, long-haired youth with the dopy expression Gideon associated with sheep or active drug use.
“The deal is you fell asleep on sentry duty. The penalty for that use to be a court martial and a firing squad. Now get up and look alert!”
“Okay, sheesh, I just lay down for a moment.”
The guard on the bridge was awake, to Gideon’s relief, but leaning with his back to a tree, pointing the wrong way, and listening to music through headphones. He pulled one headphone away from his right ear when the soldier stepped in front of him and smiled politely.
“You’re not watching the bridge.”
“But I am it’s right there,” said the would-be sentry, pointing at the bridge.
“I know it’s there,” snapped the soldier, thinking of what his sergeant would have said in basic training. “I’m not worried about the bridge being stolen. I’m worried about Midis using it. The idea is that you turn around so that you keep it in view at all times, and take those head phones off. Put them in your pocket!”
“Okay.”
“You say ‘Yes, sergeant!’”
“Yes, sergeant.”
“With the bridge in sight you can see whether ill-intentioned creatures are walking up to it. Without the head phones you might even be able to hear them before they arrive. You may also hear, shots or cries of alarm in the distance – the sort of things that alert sentries will want to tell their commanders about.”
“Yes, sergeant.”
Gideon went back to the visitors centre to find the first sentry lying down again on the veranda, this time with earphones on. Before Gideon had tapped him awake with his foot, now he thumped him hard in the ribs.
“Ow! Hey man what’s your problem?”
“What’s yours? I told you to stay alert and you go straight back to lying on the veranda. The idea behind being alert is that you stay upright and stay awake!”
“Alright, alright, Mr Grumpy!”
“You say, yes sergeant, and stand up straight when speaking to me.”
“Um, yes sergeant.” The musketeer assumed when he imagined to be an at attention pose. “And look straight ahead, not at me.”
“Yes sergeant.”
One of the female musketeers chose that moment to appear on the veranda.
“Hey, can you guys keep it down, we’re trying to sleep.”
“And why is everyone still in bed?” yelled Gideon, ignoring her. “Everyone up, now! Mr Toms, where are you?”
“Here sergeant.”
William Toms appeared on the veranda fully dressed and looking fresh. At least someone was getting the idea.
“Get everyone up, now! Do not shake them politely awake. You yell, and if they do not respond, or ask for breakfast in bed, kick them soundly in the ribs. Am I clear?”
“Yes, sergeant.”
“You, get out on the parade ground?” he told the female musketeer.
She looked around, in bewilderment. “Parade ground?” she asked, as William began yelling inside the visitor’s centre.
“The car park as you were told yesterday. Now move!”
“Oh okay, I’ll just go and..”
“I said, move and that means now! Go and line up!”
The girl vanished. Gideon checked again on the sentry by the bridge to find that he was pointing the right way and did not have his headphones on.
“Anything to report?”
“No sergeant.”
“Very well, line up with the others in the carpark.”
He walked back to his new command to find fourteen, dishevelled specimens of humanity in a line and two androids behind them. Fred and Sam had seen everyone line up and had walked over to see if they were required. Monster and Honey had also lined up, for which Gideon was grateful. But how did he already have fourteen? Of more immediate concern was that three were listing to music on headphones. He went up to the nearest, who seemed to be in a trance induced by the music. The music lover took one ear phone out and smiled vaguely as Gideon loomed in front of him.
“Are we disturbing you in your enjoyment of music?” he asked with deceptive sweetness.
“Oh no, sergeant, Brahms, is really morning music..”
“Take those ear phones off and put them away!” yelled Gideon. Startled, the classical music lover did so, as did the other two.
“I do not care what music you might be listening to – I don’t care whether its classical, dance, folk, rock, rap, hip hop, techno pop, swing, death metal, or whatever other label has been dreamed up. You do not listen to music while on guard duties. You do not listen to music while on patrol. You do not, in fact, listen to music at any time while you are undertaking your duties as musketeers. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sergeant,” was the muted response.
“Louder! I said is that clear?”
“Yes sergeant!”
“Excuse me sergeant?” asked one of the girls.
“What?”
“Can we still text?”
It was going to be another long day.
That first morning parade was in fact the start of Gideon’s long battle with discipline and his musketeer’s free use of the settlement phone units for entertainment and communication, when they should be paying attention to their surroundings. But then he had long battles over almost every other issue concerning his small, but fast growing military command. The machinery inside the structure produced a barrel closed at one end and studded with a small tube, a nipple (his musketeers always sniggered when he said that word), over which a percussion cap could be fitted. The percussion cap had been a saga in itself. It was a thin metal cup with a small explosive charge in a pocket at the top. That small charge exploded when stuck.
The idea was to put the percussion cap over the nipple (snigger) then bash it with something, as Gideon explained to his excited musketeers who wanted their muskets. The cap then exploded and that small explosion reached the main barrel, detonating the powder in the tube. This was not gunpowder but something The Witches’ interface had conjured up from local materials, after an exhausting to and fro on what he wanted. The explosion in the barrel would shoot out a bullet, if Gideon had remembered to specify the manufacture of bullets. He had remembered the percussion caps but forgotten about the bullets
On the first try, after tying the barrel to a piece of timber they found in one of the store rooms and thumping the percussion cap with a hammer at arms length, the explosive powder, whatever it was, did well indeed. They knew this because it blew the barrel apart. Gideon went back to the Witch’s interface and worked on the strength of the barrel. They also needed a stock, and a trigger mechanism linked to a proper hammer of a size suited to the musket. That would include a spring – Gideon did not look forward to getting the interface to produce a useable spring. Bullets would be good.
In the meantime, with some help from Monster, Gideon set his band of Musketeers, he now had twenty-five, to practising knife fighting with bits of wood in place of knives when they were facing one another. There were disciplinary issues.
“Who is that lunatic with earphones on while he’s knife fighting?” Gideon would scream. “He’s meant to be fighting to the death not listening to gangsta rap. Give him additional guard duty.”
The second attempt at a musket fired a bullet into a tree but the barrel cracked. Gideon started the musketeers on patrolling and navigating in the wild. At this they did well. There had been nothing in their passivist education to prevent them hiking or finding their way by a map. He added exercises to get individual patrols to co-ordinate with one another, but individual musketeers were easily distracted.
“I’ve seen musketeers on patrol texting one another and even talking on their phones,” thundered Gideon. “This has to stop. The only people who will communicate with other patrols or anyone else will be the patrol leader, or someone he or she tells to communicate. You’re meant to be out there looking for enemy, while prepared to fight, not to engage in idle chatter with those back at base.”
Gideon devised the punishment of one lap around the structure, at the double, for minor infractions. They really needed a hill for musketeers to labor up and down, to make the point, but there wasn’t one to hand. Lapping the structure would have to do. Musketeers who fell asleep on guard duty got dunked in the river (with a rope attached to make sure they were not swept away) in front of everyone, then made to lap the structure to warm up.
Despite these disciplinary issues, the raw material that walked into the musketeer’s camp asking to take the oath were the sort of stuff about which recruiting sergeant’s dream. They were volunteers, willing, able, intelligent (for the most part), interested in learning military skills and in taking the fight to the enemy. A few asked for “passivist roles”. They could go into kitchen, stores, transport (when they had the means to transport anything) and medical, but they still had to take the oath and train and, above all, they were to keep their hands off their phones while on duty.
One of the new arrivals was an older man, maybe graduate age, who the others called Padre. This man promptly demonstrated why he was called that by quoting the first commandment to Gideon.
“Thou shalt not kill,” he said.
“You want a non-combat role?” Gideon asked.
“The abomination of slavery is in the land,” said Padre, then he sighed. “Show me one of these muskets.” In the tradition of religious Americans who take up war with a vengeance, such Sergeant Alvin York (on being drafted York initially claimed conscientious objector status) and paratrooper Major Richard Winters (influenced by the Amish and Mennonite faiths), Padre became a highly skilled musketeer.
Another recruit who stuck in Gideon’s mind was Dean. He was dressed in much the same clothes that William and Thomas had been wearing, that of jeans, Tee shirt and a blazer, but with a pack on his back and a ready smile, which he used on Sam.
“Sam, huh? You’re a big one. Do you play games, Sam?”
“Games?” said Sam. “Chess.”
“Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam,” said Dean putting down his pack and rummaging through it, “any fool hunk of silicon can play chess.” He produced a deck of cards and expertly riffled them from one hand to another. “Real intellects play cards.”
“Cards?” said Sam.
“Sure. I’ve just got to get some formalities out of the way” he was referring to the oath, “and I’ll show you what a real intellect does.”
Later, Gideon saw Dean showing Sam card combinations. “This is a pair,” he said, holding up a two of hearts and a two of clubs.
“A pair,” said Sam. Gideon got the impression the android was bewildered.
Another recruit was Diane, the most beautiful girl Gideon had seen. Blond, tanned, lean, with a fine-boned exquisitely symmetrical face, she glowed, Gideon thought, when she took the oath. On the spot he suggested a non-combat role.
“No,” said Diane, smiling. Her smile could melt winters. “I came to fight like the others, and that’s what I’ll do, and I want to be in the same squad as Gustav.”
This was her boyfriend whom Gideon had not really noticed up to that point although he had been standing right next to her and was one of the largest recruits to date. This raised the delicate issue of allowing romantically involved couples to serve in the same unit. Couples were not allowed in fighting units or certain units of the police, say, for very good reasons. When the bullets started to fly, romantic involvements and tensions could cause problems. In practice, there were too many existing relationships among the recruits, including one gay couple, for the rule to be fully enforced. Gideon handed the matter over to a committee of mainly girls, including Honey, and told them to arrange matters to minimise the problem. Oh yes and let’s not have pregnancies if it can be helped, he told them. Life was hard enough without pregnancies.
And life was hard for Gideon, with plenty problems to distract his thoughts from Diane. When armies expanded, they usually had a reservoir of trained personnel to draw from. In two world wars the US army had regulars and national guards as a pool of trained personnel who could be promoted to sergeants and junior officers, so that they could then train up the rank and file. Gideon had nobody. Colin had been the only other trained soldier on the whole planet, as far as he knew, and he was in a grave which Honey visited regularly, with female musketeers in tow, to exclaim dramatically.
He selected older recruits, in consultation with William, as squad leaders and platoon leaders. William, who Gideon now referred to as Mr Toms, was given the rank of captain (he asked what that meant), and Gideon promoted himself to colonel – why not? – so he was Colonel Swift. Recruits continued to trickle in. How many more were there? Lots, he was told, but the summer cap supervisors were cracking down. A man called Bishop, the head honcho and a mad passivist had somehow managed to keep the other potential recruits under lock and key.
There was a training schedule for new recruits, which included route marches, knife fighting, unarmed combat, patrolling and navigation. He used the Midi interface to design a short spade able to bear the wear and tear of soldiering and the structure’s machines started churning the out. Gideon handed out these out, telling his recruits that it was a very important implement, often more important than any firearm.
“How so, sir,” said one of the female recruits. “I mean what are we meant to do with it?”
“I’m glad you asked that,” said the newly promoted Colonel.
He set them to work building walls of sandbags – the bags also came from The Witches – one on each side of their end of the bridge. Once they were in place he realised he had set them wrong. They should be at a shallow angle to the bridge, rather than a right angle so that they formed a V shape. Then everyone would be able to fire at the bridge. The musketeers reset the walls, grumbling. More sandbags connected the walls with the original concrete blocks set across the bridge. Where the walls met he had the musketeers build a redoubt which would tower above any Midi foolish enough to get across the concrete blocks. Now all they needed was some weapons with which to defend these fortifications.
While working on designs for a musket, Gideon thought to make a hand grenade. This was a small, round ball made of the same material as the barrels but much thinner, filled with the explosive power they had been using and bullets, with a wick stuck in it. This worked well in the first tests but Gideon was reluctant to issue them to his recruits for fear that they might do more damage to themselves by misuse then to any enemy they might meet. Eventually he gave way. The musketeers were determined to take the fight to the enemy and wanted something better than knives. They worked out a drill with two person teams, one to light the wick the other to throw it. Soon there were almost constant explosions as musketeers (if they threw grenades technically they were grenadiers, but they still called themselves musketeers) experimented with the length of fuse and throwing times. Gustave and Diane made a good grenadier team. Thankfully there were no casualties.
“What about a mortar, man?” said Chief, while they were pouring over designs for the musket.
“You call me sir, or colonel.”
“What about a mortar, Colonel?”
Chief, real name Chifley, was a long haired, narrow faced man somewhat older than the rest of the musketeers, who had been an assistant teacher in the summer camp. He had quickly become a key part of Gideon’s tiny design team as he had an engineering mind and knew something about firearms.
“I’m listening.”
“It’s a grenade thrower. A tube. Stick some powder in it. Have one of the nipples so that we can detonate it from the bottom then throw a grenade in at the top. It’ll still be smooth bore but if we’ve got a battery of the things that can throw grenades maybe 250 metres then it’ll be a nasty surprise for Midis on the other end, especially if they oblige us by grouping up, medieval style. Those grenades are lethal man, er, sir.”
“I dunno. For what we’ll be doing a cannon like Napoleonic-era 12 pounders firing solid shells, or maybe explosive ones, on a shallow trajectory will be an even nastier surprise for groups of Midis. Remember these guys stand up when they’re attacking – mortars were of more use when they fought from trenches.”
“We might have to do both, sir. Use the mortars as a step towards cannons. Getting the musket barrels to stop splitting after three rounds has not been super fun, a cannon barrel is going to be another level of non-fun. Maybe we could make mortars to work real quick by throwing mass at the bottom of the barrel so it doesn’t split and putting it on wheels to move it. Then we’d have something to impress the Midis with while we work out how to scale up.
“Hmmm – well, give us some idea of what it’ll look like. Now we’ve almost done the musket, how quickly can we do a mortar prototype?”
“No problems, just one thing..”
“What?”
“Can I command?”
“Command what?”
“I wanna command artillery, sir. You offered me the officer thing when I turned up.” As Chief was older than the others he had been offered rank. “You gotta have a smart dude for the artillery and I’m a smart dude, and it’s my thing.”
“Okay, it’s your thing. Go on the Officers course and we’ll see.”
The officers course was another of Gideon’s innovations. He had never been an officer and had only a vague notion of what the course content should be, but felt he should do something. He recalled reading somewhere that the Viet Minh, the Vietnamese insurgency force that fought the French, faced with a similar problem of unskilled personnel, had instituted two week courses for officers. Luxury. In the end the course was a few lectures backed by a quiz. It would have to do. His newly commissioned officers had as much trouble as he did with the fine points of discipline.
“I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again,” thundered Gideon at morning parade. “Keep your hands off your phones while at your duties. You may soon be in life or death situations. You cannot text or listen to music if you’re dead.”
That morning he found half of the squad manning the observation post on the other side of the river using their phones. The squad leader pointed out, with a smile, that one half had been keeping a look out while the other half used their phones. That had seemed like a fair arrangement. Gideon sacked him on the spot and sent the squad on endless laps of the structure. Still the message did not get through. The worst and most consistent offender was a musketeer Turnbull, called Turns or Turnie by the others. This was the musketeer Gideon had found lying down twice and had booted in the ribs. The man was keen enough to have been among the first few to take the oath, but just could not keep his earphones away from his ears or keep his attention on the job at hand. Sentry duty was too boring; patrolling was dull. He had to put on his ear phones and sit down for “just a moment” only to wake up with Gideon standing over him. Turns lapped the structure so often that the other musketeers joked he had his own track
Gideon tried taking the man’s phone away from him. Someone he got another. Monster offered to take him somewhere quiet and show him how bikers enforced discipline. Gideon was tempted by this, as he was by a firing squad, but rejected the idea. It was not the way to real discipline. When Turns was found, using headphones yet again and was brought into the colonel’s presence Gideon handed him a backpack.
“What’s this?”
“You’re out of the musketeers. I want you out of the camp. There’s two days of food and a water bottle. Should be enough for you to walk back to the summer camp.”
This was the same treatment he had given Boothroyd. He couldn’t put people in jail, or execute them, but he could send them away.
“But what’s the problem, man?” said Turns.
“You say Colonel or sir,” said William who was present for all disciplinary hearings.
“What’s the problem, sir?”
“You don’t have to call me sir, any more. You’re out. No longer a musketeer. The problem is that you just don’t pay any attention to me and think discipline is a joke, and others are beginning to copy you. You’re taken the attitude of who cares what Swift thinks. Okay, I agree, you don’t care. You can ignore me all you like at the summer camp. But I won’t have you messing things up here. The musketeers want to fight and they have to pay attention when they fight, and you don’t want to do that.”
“Hey sir, I lost family to the Midis. I want to fight. Being a musketeer is what I want.”
“Then why didn’t you act like it? I’m sorry for the family you lost but soldiering and obeying orders is not for you. You have half an hour to pack up your stuff and say goodbye to your friends. Mr Toms, you are to make sure that this happens.”
“Yes sir.”
Turns walked out of the musketeer camp half an hour later a lone figure heading West along the only road, obviously holding back tears. Gideon was astonished by this. If the man had felt that much about the matter why hadn’t he taken training seriously? All the other musketeers, he now had more than 50, turned out to watch Turnbull’s departure in silence.
“By all means look,” yelled Gideon striding into the middle of the road where all the musketeers could see him. “If you don’t want to be here; if you don’t want to follow orders then grab your stuff and follow him. Otherwise get to work!”
The musketeers instantly returned to their duties. Gideon still had problems with discipline but they were considerably less than they had been now that he had an ultimate punishment up his sleeve. Like Australian troops in the first World War on their way to the slaughter of Gallipoli and the Somme the very worst punishment was to be sent home. What fools!
Two days later the musketeers came together again to witness the firing of the new musket. Chief went through the loading sequence which, for anyone used to modern firearms, was complicated. He tore open a paper cartridge with his teeth, poured the powder down the barrel and the ball on top, which had also been in the cartridge, then the paper was put in to act as wadding, to keep the ball and powder in while the weapon was being aimed. The assemblage was then packed down with a ramrod. A cap, which was kept in a separate pouch, was fitted over the nipple at the other end and the hammer pulled back until it clicked into place. Finally the weapon was all ready to go but, as Chief explained, it was then a good idea only to point the weapon at whatever you intended to shoot at. Once the hammer was pulled back – cocked as they say (snigger) - a pull of the trigger would send the ball on its way. He aimed at a target – a wooden board with a bulls eye on it at 100 paces and hit it. That was good for a musket, but the machining of the barrel was vastly superior to anything that a veteran of the Napoleonic wars would have known.
“Excuse me. What about brass cartridges with a bolt action rifle?” asked some know it all from the ranks.
“We don’t have brass, or steel for the bolt,” said Gideon. “All we’ve got is the stuff we can get from the Witches. Its some sort of composite which can act like a metal but we’ve had a enough trouble getting this far. You can wait around while we figure out how to make the cartridges and a barrel with rifling” (grooves inside the barrel to spin the bullet) “so the whole assembly won’t blow apart, or you can take the musket until we do it. Considering the musket ball would drop a bison, if we ever encounter