3.26: Reliability

“What happened?” Lothar asked, cautiously circling the cannon, as if it was a dangerous wild beast.

“This is some Ea-Nasir level shit. Except I’m Ea-Nasir.”

“Who?” He cocked an eyebrow in confusion.

“Bad copper.”

“What are you talking about… Sire?”

“The brass. It’s too soft. After firing, it should shrink back just enough that it can be pulled out of the breech by a small lever. Instead, the bloody cartridge has expanded into every tiny imperfection.”

“What imperfection? It was very smooth.”

“Nothing is perfectly smooth,” I said, kicking the carriage wheel in frustration. It only hurt my foot. “If it doesn’t come out, we’ll have to melt the entire cannon down,” I said, hefting the cleaning rod.

Poor Kovar’s face blanched.

I shoved the rod down the cannon’s muzzle and thrust it into the cartridge.

Nothing happened.

My anger rising, I pushed hard.

Finally, the cartridge budged. Only a little.

A few more thrusts and the annoying piece of brass flew out of the breech with a metallic twang.

I heaved a sigh of relief, but I wasn’t happy. If the crew had to do this on the battlefield, the cannon might as well be a muzzle loader.

It would have to be redesigned.

My shoulders sagged. I really wanted to take a break.

But the world wouldn't let me.

As the elders began to leave, I turned to my four guards; Theo, Noah, Ethan and Helad.

“I dismiss you four as my bodyguards.”

Their eyes widened in panic.

I had chosen those four this morning for a reason. They were the best shots among the Hunters.

“Sire?” Theo asked.

“You heard me,” I said, handing him the rifled musket.

He took it reverently with both hands, cradling it like a child. They shook slightly around it, even when he had already known I would it be giving it to him.

“I have a new assignment for you four. Learn this weapon inside and out, until you know it as intimately as your bow.”

He nodded sharply, as did the other three.

“I didn’t say it in front of the others, but it can shoot a lot farther than 50 meters. Get good enough with it,” I said, raising the peep-sight with the smaller aperture upward, “and you can take out a man beyond 200 meters.”

Eyes filled with reverence looked at the rifled musket.

“Sire,” Noah spoke up, “there’s… only one of it and four of us.”

“Kovar and Aramid are finishing two more. You can get them from them tomorrow. Also, I don’t need to remind you that this thing is a national secret, right?”

They shook their heads in unison.

I met their eyes, one by one.

“If our enemies can replicate this thing, we are finished. That means losing it will be a very serious crime.”

Their eyes remained fixed on me even as their faces paled. They inclined their heads as one.

“Same goes for you,” I told the older and more responsible Benno, who I had put in charge of the cannon crew. “There must always be two men watching that thing. Now let’s practice.”

I showed them how to handle the rifle, how to sight it, reload it and maintain it.

Then we began shooting at the closest target.

It only took three or four shots for them to get accustomed to the recoil and the powder flash next to their face. The moment they did, their shots became instantly better than mine. In less than an hour, they were hitting the 100 meter target almost every time, while I did it only once in four attempts.

“It’s only a 100 meters away. Why am I so bad?” I complained out loud.

“Practice, Sire,” Theo replied.

“I have more than you! I fired it dozens of times while figuring out the bullet.”

“Can we try too?” Fennar asked, cautiously approaching us.

I looked at the five teenagers.

From their looks, the boys definitely wanted to try it out.

“You any good with a bow?” I asked.

“I…”

“Haven’t touched it?”

He shook his head.

“Then no. You’ll need to first get good with at least a crossbow first. Once you aren’t terrible and we have enough rifles and powder to spare, then you can try them out.”

“But Master, you aren’t good ei—”

“Leader’s privilege.”

As the valley rang with the shots, I looked at the Hunters, excitedly talking among themselves on how to translate their experience with the bow to become better with the rifle. I had no doubt that with a few weeks of rigorous practice, they would soon be hitting human sized targets beyond 200 meters.

They didn’t need me watching over their shoulders anymore.

I had a different task now; to make sure they hit their target beyond 200 meters on the first shot, not fourth. Valuable targets didn’t just stand there like the dummies.

I have that spyglass. It could work as an optic. Also, turning the boring table into a rifling machine shouldn’t be that difficult.

At the end of the hour, I handed the rifle and another pouch of powder and shot to Theo.

“Do you remember the rules regarding safety?”

“Yes,” he said promptly. “Never point it at anyone I’m not trying to kill. Always treat it if it is loaded. Keep my fingers off the trigger unless I’m about to shoot and always think about what is beyond my target.”

“Good. Also, do not forget to clean the barrel after every ten shots. Without it, not only will reloading become difficult, the gunk will make the barrel rust very quickly. Seriously, don’t forget. If it weakens too much and lady luck is not on your side, it might just explode in your face.”

Their eyes went to the barrel again.

“Even if you don’t die,” I said with a straight face, “you will find your hand gone.”

No reaction.

“Get it? Handgonne.”

Nothing.

“No?”

Disappointed, I turned back towards my carriage.

“Sire?” Noah said from behind. “The reloading takes a very long time. Can it not take cartridges like the cannon?”

“You mean the cartridge that got stuck? No. Not for some time. It’s possible, but it will take time.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. It’s a problem of metallurgy and precision machining.”

They looked at me with blank stares.

“Don’t expect brass cartridges soon.”

It was one thing to make a few dozen cartridge cases for a few cannons, which could be individually tested and sized for a specific breech, another to make thousands of perfectly identical tiny cartridges that would work with any gun.

Even with our steel, lathe and vernier calipers, we were still in the craftsmanship era, not industrial one.

There was a historical breechloader handgonne design that used metal cartridges centuries before the industrial age, but the part that took the brunt of the recoil was braced on only one side. That was asking for it to blow up in your face, which it must have, or it would have been more common. The engineer in me wanted to make it and refine it, but the leader shut him up.

Get some reliable weapons first, experiment later.

“Um… what if it rains?” Ethan asked. “You said we can’t get the powder wet.”

I grimaced. “There’s a hole in front of the pan. You’ll find tiny umbrellas in the bag.”

Their eyes flitted away from me in discomfort.

“I know. It’s not an all weather weapon. Yet. That’s why you are not discarding your bows. Have fun,” I said, turning towards the carriage.

“You don’t look happy,” Aprilia said beside me, as I leaned against the back of the seat.

“I may have oversold the weapons.”

“But they are amazing! I can’t imagine anyone who’ll remain standing in front of them.”

“Yes, they are powerful, but they are prototypes, and the cannon isn’t even reliable. Fixing that would be just the first step. Powerful weapons can be fragile in their own way.”

Her bewitching eyes narrowed dangerously for some reason.

“Fragile?” Ansel asked in shock.

“They require complex systems behind them,” I answered. “Proper manufacturing and storage of the ammo, along with proper manufacturing of the weapons and casings with very tight tolerances. We don’t even have that. Even after I develop the capacity to manufacture precisely identical copies, the whole system will need redundancy. If any one of the components fails, all of it will come crashing down and the soldiers will be left holding useless, expensive toys in their hands.”

I almost clutched my head.

I wouldn’t be achieving all that before I left Chadom. Not even if I worked all day, every day.

“Do you not see it?” Aprilia asked, her voice laced with anger.

“See what?”

She didn’t reply, turning away from me.

“Wake me up when we reach the industrial district,” I asked her.

“No,” she replied flatly.

“No?”

“The day has just begun and you are already dozing off!”

“I would have taken a break, if the cannon had worked.”

“It did!”

“Once. That’s not good enough.”

“Can’t it wait one day?”

“I also have other things to do.”

“You have time. There’s still a month left till your wedding.”

“So, only three weeks before I have to leave. That’s not a lot of time.”

“And what good will all your ‘accomplishments’ be if you drop dead?”

“I won’t. I’m not that old.”

She huffed again and moved away from me.

“Wake me up when we reach it,” I told Ansel and Rowan.

They did not.

I woke up to find we had already reached Cradle. Miffed at Aprilia, I locked myself in my study.

Outside, a light drizzle began pattering against the walls.

Ethan had been right to point out that black powder was not reliable in rainy season. It absorbed water, even from the humidity in the air. Wet powder meant misfires or hangfire. An unreliable weapon was as good as useless. No, worse.

I had a few people working on building a deep underground silo for the powder, but with our manpower stretched thin, it was going to be fairly small.

We needed an alternative.

The first one that came to mind was smokeless powder.

No. If not sealed properly, it would also become unreliable.

The problem was sealing the powder. The same problem plaguing the cannon.

My eyes found the “paper” on my desk.

The two men I had tasked with making paper months ago had kept working. I wouldn’t be caught sending letters to anyone on it, but it was finally beginning to resemble actual paper. The thickness was… much, but at least it was uniform. The texture unfortunately was not, making it unsuitable for writing. Still, that didn’t mean it was useless. I rolled it around a short dowel, then twisted its ends. It held; no tearing.

“Time to make some paper cartridges.”

Not the kind that could be just inserted into the gun as they were. No; you’d tear one end off, put some of the powder in the priming pan, then shove the rest of the cartridge, powder first, down the gun’s muzzle with a rod.

It would make reloading rifles much faster than manually measuring a charge for every shot and hopefully also keep the black powder dry.

There were plenty of children who weren’t old enough to contribute to construction of Cradle, but they did have nimble hands and free time after school.

I grimaced. I was going to become a fat-cat industrialist, employing kids for next to no wages in my new factory.

“It’s for the good of the nation,” I reminded myself. It’s not like I was going to keep them there all day. Only a few hours.

Tired from all the thinking, I trundled toward the bed for a nap. The moment I fell on it, sleep engulfed me.