Chapter Fifteen – Teching Up
We prohibit under anathema that murderous art of crossbowmen and archers which is hateful to God to be employed against Christians and Catholics from now on - Second Council of Lateran, April 1139.
Gideon mulled over what the copied weapons meant for his grand strategy while the musketeers busied themselves sending the captured Midis on their way minus their tags, tending to the enemy wounded who were unwilling or unable to walk out of the redoubt with the others, and burying the dead. The Musketeers had lost two dead and six wounded, with only one of the wounded being bad enough to justify immediate evacuation to Agnes. Like the battle at the bridge the victory had been remarkably bloodless as far as the musketeers were concerned. But they could not afford many casualties and one of the deaths had been due to a musket fired by a Midi at point blank range. That worried Gideon. Eventually he called his officers together.
“We gotta tech up,” he told them. “We’ve got to finish off the Minie rifle we’ve been working on and issue it to musketeers real quick. The loading drill is the same, but we won’t be standing in line any more.”
His officers muttered.
“But we only just learnt to do that,” said one.
“Like I said we’re improving our technology – we’re teching up and that means we change tactics as well. If the other side’s got muskets, then standing in line makes great targets for them. Even if they’re not as well trained as us there’s a lot more of them. Only a few of them have to hit to shred our line. We can’t absorb casualties like they can. If we have rifles, however, and we’re in a prepared position we can make them start paying for attacking us at up to six hundred metres and more. The range in battles will be opening out, ladies and gentlemen, and we have to change tactics to suit.”
“Are you planning on defending this place, sir?” said Toms looking around.
“Well the redoubt has to be re-sited so that its on the other side of the crest and the walls spread out so that we can cover the whole gap with our rifles.”
“Knock it down and rebuild it, you mean sir,” said Lieutenant Stevenson.
“Yep, unless you have an APC or two in your back pocket.”
“APC - armoured personnel carrier – no sir,” she said. “I don’t have one of those, but its not going to be popular to rebuild the whole thing.”
“Look closely. Do I care? They can do unpopular stuff or leave their parents and families in slavery.”
Stevenson cast an appraising eye over the earth and wood fort. “I always like to rearrange,” she said.
“Excellent. We’ll also have to have people in the forests on either side so that we don’t get flanked, like we just flanked the redoubt. Half of A company will remain here and rebuild the fort to our needs. The rest will start raiding. I want human slaves to be freed and brought back here. If you see any sign of large bodies of Midis, everyone is to return here to defend this place. And keep me informed!”
“Yes sir!”
“And the drones are to be kept flying. Spot villages, spot hostiles, keep in contact with everyone. Captain Toms is in charge and, Captain Toms..”
“Sir?”
“I expect action right away. Get the drones to find villages to send our guys to. Support them with a car and a cart to bring in freed slaves, and screen with cavalry. Get busy.”
“Yes sir. You’ll be returning to The Witches?”
“Someone will be back today with supplies. Artillery and B company will be along soon, I hope. Now get to work everyone.” The officers melted away except for Stevenson who stood there smiling.
“You’ll see BD when you go back?” Gideon stared at her and her smile faltered. “You’ll see BD when you go back, sir?”
“BD is coming here in order to return to Haven City and her son,” Gideon snapped, “and that is the last time I will discuss such matters with you, Lieutenant Stevenson. If you again feel the urge to discuss matters other than military with me then you’ll find yourself back in the ranks.”
“Yes, sir,” she said subdued.
“I have enough of that from Kat,” he said in a softer tone. “I would punish her for disrespect and insolence and any other words I could think of, but I suspect it wouldn’t do any good. Now get back to your unit and get busy.”
Gideon got a ride back with the medivac train – a combination of car and two Midi trailers lashed onto the back bumper which worked if the driver did not try to break speed records and took bends slowly. A few of the younger male drivers had trouble remembering this. Gideon had to threaten one driver with being sent back to summer camp if he didn’t slow right down. They were still teenagers.
He had barely returned and started to deal with the matters on his desk when Kat turned up.
“Heard Lizzie Stevenson..”
“Lieutenant Stevenson.”
“Lieutenant Stevenson got cut off at the knees for daring to mentioning BD.”
“Remind me, how much did I pay for you?”
“Not enough, clearly,” said Kat cheerfully. “Most of the officers will have gone in a while, and me too.”
“That’s something to be thankful for.”
“What I’m saying is that with some manoeuvring you’ll be able to have a dinner alone with BD.. sir.” The last word was added when Gideon glared at her. “She won’t object – won’t say no.”
“How do you know this musketeer?”
“I asked her.”
“You what?”
“I was checking things out, smoothing the path. You can do this for a guy with a girl. Heaps more difficult the other way around. She was thinking of dating again and there’s not a lot on offer back in Haven City she told me.”
“In other words, she is sufficiently desperate to consider dinner with me. Asking a girl out when half the force you’re commanding is watching your every move is wearing, especially when individuals in it insist on meddling in the matter.”
Kat shrugged. “You say meddling, I say facilitating. Potato, potarto. Two companies will be gone and BD isn’t a musketeer so it heaps less of a problem than if she was. Everyone agrees it’s a good move.”
“Everyone agrees!” spluttered Gideon. “I hope that just means everyone on the Get Colonel Swift A Date committee, all members of which are about to face disciplinary action from their commander if musketeer Katrina Shevchenko does not get out of my face.”
A trumpet sounded from the parade ground. Then they heard “B Company formation – com’n line up people, marching order. Full packs. We’ve got serious road to burn before night fall.”
“Permission to join my unit, sir,” said Kat standing up straight and giving what she imagined was a salute.
Gideon laughed. “Go and do your duty musketeer Shevchenko.” Kat turned to go. “And musketeer..”
“Sir?”
“Be careful.”
“I’m always careful, sir,” she said, and ran off.
Kat could be annoying, but she was an annoyance he was used to. Gideon had no wish for her to stop a Midi spear or bullet.
Kat had barely gone when BD appeared, leaning against the wall next to his desk and folding her arms.
“For someone who commands the whole force you don’t have much of an office, do you?” she said, amusement in her voice.
“This is more of a Maoist-style guerrilla insurgency than a military unit with all the trimmings,” said Gideon. “If I had a proper office I could keep people like Kat out.”
“She has her uses,” said BD. “Had a few chats with Kat. Would you want to keep me out?”
“I guess not, but you won’t be around much longer. I should be able to get you close enough to Haven City to walk tomorrow if you want.”
“Well, yes, have to get back to my son.”
“Tonight then do you want to have dinner, just the two of us?”
BD smiled. “You’re going to drop your studied indifference towards me, Colonel?”
“I was never indifferent, studied or otherwise, just busy. In case you haven’t noticed there’s a war going on.”
“I’d noticed and I guess if you can spare the time I can too.”
They fixed a time and BD drifted away just as the head of his artillery and his chief designer, Captain Chifley, came in.
“Heard we’re moving up the tech tree,” he said. “You weren’t going to tell me?”
“I literally haven’t had a chance since I made the decision this morning but, yes, as you might have heard the Midis are getting muskets so we want to go to rifles. We don’t have the person power to trade volleys with the Midis, even if we do five for their one. How is the rifle going?”
“Got it working, as it happens. Bullet expands in the barrel and hits reliably at three hundred for anyone with some training – and a distance more for someone like Skull. Otherwise it’s the same weapon we’ve been using, same way of loading, just much more accurate. The musketeers have just got to remember to load the bullet the right way around - concave end down and pointy end up – and the bullet’s gotta be greased.”
“All sounds good, now we’ve just got to make and test what, a thousand or so? That’s going to be super fun.”
Chifley shook his head. “No need – we can do conversion kits.”
“Convert the existing muskets? Would that work?”
“They had conversion kits for muskets in the American Civil War, man, er sir. It’s just a tube with the grooves on the inside which we slide down the barrel and clip over the muzzle. Doesn’t even need to go right down ‘cause we got powder at the end. The new bullet is a bit smaller so we can’t use the existing bullets but we can recycle those in grenades. We just get the Witches machinery to produce the right bullets and conversion sleeves, and our people to assemble the cartridges and we’re in a whole different era of firearms technology. The Midis won’t be doing those chants of theirs when they attack, they’ll be too busy dying.”
“I thought it’d take months to switch to rifles but we’re talking about weeks.”
Chifley shrugged. “A couple of weeks, maybe – longer to train everyone up to shoot straight. We haven’t bothered much before – just got ‘em to keep the muskets level. We can even do a side-arm version for the cavalry, basically a sawn-off musket but it’ll have to do.”
“What about artillery?”
“Doing anything there is going to take a lot longer, sir. Scaling up to do the same thing with full cannons is a different game. Gotta stick with smoothbore for now.”
“What about mortars?” said Gideon thinking of their new fort at Terminus.
“You mean like Thor? Yeah, sir, I want to make maybe half a dozen but not nearly as hard to move around. They can lob exploding shells right into those Midi formation. Real useful.”
“Okay, sounds good, but I also want a much smaller version along the lines of those small modern mortars where they’d throw a rocket in the top,” said Gideon.
“Rockets, sir..?”
“We’re not going to start making rockets, but we have grenades. Basically I’m thinking of a small, trench grenade thrower – maybe two grenade throwers per company.
“Give me a week to make and another week for tests, but maybe we want to group them together. Make a real barrage,” said Chifley.
“Hmmm! I’ll think about that. A Barrage sounds good.”
Chifley grinned.
The question of dated but still effective technology arose again that evening with BD. Dinner went well, with the officers of the remaining companies leaving them alone and, after dinner, instead of sitting to watch a movie with the rest the couple went for a walk. It was cold but clear and the stars shone. Gideon kissed BD in the shadow of The Witches’ structure and she kissed back for a time before gently pushing him back.
“We can’t get too carried away,” she said. “I’m not fixed up in any way at the moment.”
“I have an answer,” said Gideon, still holding her in his arms. He took a thin plastic package out of pocket and held it up. In the dim light it took BD a moment to realise what it was.
“One of these, really?” she said, taking it. “These things are soooo twentieth century.”
“My musketeers have been using them. There’s quite a few in the stores here. And let’s face it, my life recently has been about making old technology work.”
BD put her other arm around Gideon’s neck and smiled.