How Firm a Foundation (17 page)

“Rate of fire would drop significantly with that many fewer guns,” Rock Point pointed out, and Mahndrayn nodded.

“Absolutely, Sir. On the other hand, each hit would be enormously more destructive. It takes dozens of hits, sometimes hundreds, to drive a galleon
out of action with solid shot. A handful of hundred-pound exploding shells would be more than enough to do the job, and just to indicate how the weapons would scale, a rifled thirty-pounder’s shot would weigh about
ninety
pounds, which would give you a shell weight of only forty-five or so, so you can see the advantage the larger gun has. Of course, the smoothbore thirty-pounder’s shell is only
around twenty-five pounds, and its bursting charge is proportionately lighter, as well. And if both sides start armoring their vessels with iron, anything much lighter than eight inches probably won’t penetrate, anyway.”

“That sounds logical enough,” Rock Point acknowledged. “We’ll have to think about it, of course. Fortunately it’s not a decision we’re going to have to make anytime soon.”

“I’m afraid we might have to make it sooner than you may be thinking, Sir,” Seamount put in. Rock Point looked at him, and the commodore shrugged. “You’re talking about the possibility of beginning production and stockpiling weapons, Sir,” he reminded his superior. “If we’re going to do that, we’re going to have to decide which weapons to build, first.”

“Now that, Ahlfryd, is a very good point,”
Rock Point agreed. “Very well, I’ll be thinking about it, and I’ll discuss it with the Emperor as soon as possible.”

“Thank you, Sir.” Seamount smiled. “In the meantime, we have a few other thoughts that should be more immediately applicable to our needs.”

“You do?”

“Yes. You may have noticed Commander Mahndrayn’s hand, Sir?”

“You mean that fathom of gauze wrapped around it?” Rock Point asked
dryly.

“Exactly, Sir.” Seamount held up his own left hand, which had been mangled by an explosion many years before. “I think Urvyn was trying to do me one better. Unfortunately, he failed. All of
his
fingers are still intact … more or less.”

“I’m relieved to hear it. Exactly what bearing does that have on our present discussion, however?”

“Well, what actually happened, Sir,” Seamount said
more seriously, “is that we’ve been experimenting with better ways to fire our artillery. The flintlocks we’ve gone to are far, far better than the old slow match-and-linstock or heated irons we used to use. That most of our new prizes’ guns are still using, for that matter. But they still aren’t as efficient as we could wish. I’m sure you’re even better aware than we are here at the Experimental
Board of how many misfires we still experience, especially when there’s a lot of spray around or it’s raining. So we’ve been looking for a more reliable method, and we’ve found one.”

“You have?” Rock Point’s eyes narrowed.

“Actually, we’ve come up with two of them, Sir.” Seamount shrugged. “Both work, but I have to admit to a strong preference for one of them over the other.”

“Go on.”

“Doctor
Lywys at the College gave us a whole list of ingredients to experiment with. One of them was something called ‘fulminated quicksilver,’ which is very attractive, on the face of it. You can detonate it with a single sharp blow, and the explosion is very hot. It would reduce lock time significantly, as well, which would undoubtedly improve accuracy. The problem is that it’s very corrosive. And another
difficulty is that it’s too sensitive. We’ve experimented with ways of moderating its sensitivity by mixing in other ingredients, like powdered glass, and we’ve had some success, but any fuses using fulminated quicksilver are going to tend to corrode over time, and according to Doctor Lywys, they’ll lose much of their power as they do. For that matter, she says at least some of them would probably
detonate spontaneously if they were left in storage long enough. They do have the advantage that they’re effectively impervious to damp, however, which would be a major plus for sea service.”

“I can see where that would be true,” Rock Point agreed.

“We’ve pushed ahead with developing those fuses—for the moment we’re calling them fulminating fuses, after the quicksilver, although Urvyn is pushing
for calling them ‘percussion’ fuses, since they’re detonated by a blow—but I decided we should explore some other possibilities, as well. Which brought me to ‘Shan-wei’s candles.’”

Rock Point nodded. “Shan-wei’s candles” was the name which had been assigned to what had once been called “strike-anywhere matches” back on Old Terra.

“Well, basically what we’ve come up with, Sir, is a tube—we’re
using the same sort of quills we’ve been using with the artillery flintlocks at the moment, although I think it’s going to be better to come up with a metallic tube in the long run; probably made out of copper or tin—filled with the same compound we use in one of Shan-wei’s candles. It’s sealed with wax at both ends, and we insert a serrated wire into it lengthwise. When the wire is snatched out,
friction ignites the compound in the tube, and that ignites the main charge in the gun. As far as we can tell, it’s as reliable as the fulminating fuses even in heavy weather, as long as the wax seals are intact before the wire’s pulled. It’s less corrosive, as well, and it lets us dispense with hammer lock mechanisms, completely. For that matter, we could easily go directly to it on existing guns
which are already designed to take the quills we’re using with the flintlocks.”

“I like it,” Rock Point said with unfeigned enthusiasm. “In fact, I like it a lot—especially the ‘easily’ part.” He grinned, but then he raised one eyebrow. “Exactly how do the Commander’s damaged fingers figure into all this, though? Did he burn them on one of the ‘candles’?”

“Not … precisely, Sir.” Seamount shook
his head. “I said I prefer the friction-ignited fuses for artillery, and I do. But Urwyn’s been exploring other possible uses for the
fulminating
fuses, and he’s come up with a fascinating one.”

“Oh?” Rock Point looked at the commander, who actually seemed a little flustered under the weight of his suddenly intense gaze.

“Why don’t you go get your toy, Urwyn?” Seamount suggested.

“Of course,
Sir. With your permission, High Admiral?”

Rock Point nodded, and Mahndrayn disappeared. A few minutes later, the office door opened once more and he walked back in carrying what looked like a standard rifled musket.

“It occurred to us, Sir,” he said, holding the rifle in a rough port arms position as he faced Rock Point, “that the Marines and the Army were going to need reliable primers for
their artillery, as well. And that if we were going to provide them for the guns, we might as well see about providing them for small arms, as well. Which is what this is.”

He grounded the rifle butt on the floor and reached into the right side pocket of his tunic for a small disk of copper which he extended to Rock Point.

The high admiral took it a bit gingerly and stood, moving closer to the
window to get better light as he examined it. It wasn’t the flat disk he’d thought it was at first. Instead, it was hollowed on one side—a cup, not a disk—and there was something inside the hollow. He looked at it for a moment longer, then turned back to Mahndrayn.

“Should I assume the stuff inside this”—he held up the disk, indicating the hollow side with the index finger of his other hand—“is
some of that ‘fulminating quicksilver’ of yours?”

“It is, Sir, sealed with a drop of varnish. And this”—Mahndrayn held up his bandaged hand—“is a reminder to me of just how sensitive it is. But what you have in your hand is what we’re calling a ‘primer cap,’ at least for now. We call it that because it fits down over this”—he raised the rifle and cocked the hammer, indicating a raised nipple
which had replaced the priming pan of a regular flintlock—“like a cap or a hat.”

He turned the weapon, and Rock Point realized the striking face of the hammer wasn’t flat. Instead, it had been hollowed out into something a fraction larger than the “cap” in his hand.

“We discovered early on that when one of the caps detonates it tends to spit bits and pieces in all directions,” Mahndrayn said
wryly, touching a scar on his cheek which Rock Point hadn’t noticed. “The flash from a regular flintlock can be bad enough; this is worse, almost as bad as the flash from one of the old matchlocks. So we ground out the face of the hammer. This way, it comes down over the top of the nipple, which confines the detonation. It’s actually a lot more pleasant to fire than a flintlock.”

“And it does
the same thing for reducing misfires, and being immune to rain, you were talking about where artillery is concerned, Ahlfryd?” Rock Point asked intently.

“Exactly, Sir.” Seamount beamed proudly at Mahndrayn. “Urwyn here and his team have just found a way to increase the reliability of our rifles materially. And the conversion’s fairly simple, too.”

“
Very
good, Commander,” Rock Point said sincerely,
but Seamount raised one hand.

“He’s not quite finished yet, Sir.”

“He’s not?” Rock Point looked speculatively at the commander, who looked more flustered than ever.

“No, he’s not, Sir. And this next bit was entirely his own idea.”

“Indeed? And what else do you have to show me, Commander?”

“Well …
this
, Sir.”

Mahndrayn raised the rifle again and Rock Point suddenly noticed a lever on its
side. He’d overlooked it when he examined the modified lock mechanism, but now the commander turned it. There was a clicking sound, and the acting high admiral’s eyebrows rose as the breech of the rifle seemed to break apart. A solid chunk of steel, perhaps an inch and a half long, moved smoothly back and down, and he could suddenly see into the rifle’s bore. The rifling grooves were clearly visible
against the brightly polished interior, and Mahndrayn looked up at him.

“One of the things we’ve been thinking about in terms of the new artillery is ways to speed rate of fire, Sir,” he said. “Obviously if we could think of some way to load them from the breech end, instead of having to shove the ammunition down the barrel, it would help a lot. The problem is coming up with a breech mechanism
strong enough to stand the shock, quick enough to operate in some practical time frame, and one that seals tightly enough to prevent flash from leaking out disastrously every time you fire the piece. We haven’t managed to solve those problems for
artillery,
but thinking about the difficulties involved suggested this to me.”

“Exactly what is ‘this,’ Commander?” Rock Point asked warily, not quite
able to believe what he was seeing. The possibility of breech-loading artillery, far less a breech-loading
rifle
, was one after which he’d hungered ever since gaining access to Owl’s records, but he’d never imagined he might be seeing one this quickly. Especially without having pushed its development himself.

“Well,” Mahndrayn said again, “the way it works is like this, Sir.”

He reached back
into his pocket and extracted a peculiar-looking rifle cartridge. It was a bit larger than the ones riflemen carried in their cartridge boxes, and there were two oddities about its appearance. For one thing, the paper was a peculiar grayish color, not the tan or cream of a standard cartridge. And for another, it ended in a thick, circular base of some kind of fabric that was actually broader than
the cartridge itself.

“The cartridge’s paper’s been treated with the same compound we use in Shan-wei’s candles, Sir,” Mahndrayn said. “It’s not exactly the same mix, but it’s close. That means the entire cartridge is combustible, and it’s sealed with paraffin to damp-proof it. The paraffin also helps to protect against accidental explosions, but with the new caps, the flash from the lock is
more than enough to detonate the charge through the coating. And because the pan doesn’t have to be separately primed, the rifleman doesn’t have to bite off the bullet and charge the weapon with loose powder. Instead, he just slides it into the breech, like this.”

He inserted the cartridge into the open breech, pushing it as far forward as it would go with his thumb, and Rock Point realized a
slight lip had been machined into the rear of the opened barrel. The disk of fabric at the cartridge’s base fitted into the lip, although it was thicker than the recess was deep.

“Once he’s inserted the round,” Mahndrayn went on, “he pulls the lever back up, like this”—he demonstrated, and the movable breech block rose back into place, driving firmly home against the fabric base—“which seals
the breech again. There’s a heavy mechanical advantage built into the lever, Sir, so that it actually crushes the felt on the end of the cartridge into the recess. That provides a flash-tight seal that’s worked perfectly in every test firing. And after a round’s been fired, the rifleman simply lowers the breech block again and pushes the next round straight in. The cartridges have stiffened walls
to keep them from bending under the pressure, and what’s left of the base from the
previous
round is shoved into the barrel, where it actually forms a wad for the next round.”

Rock Point stared at the young naval officer for several seconds, then shook his head slowly.

“That’s … brilliant,” he said with the utmost sincerity.

“Yes, it is, Sir,” Seamount said proudly. “And while it isn’t quite
as simple as changing a flintlock out for one of the new percussion locks, fitting existing rifles with the new breech mechanism will be a
lot
faster than building new weapons from scratch.”

“You’ve just doubled or tripled our Marines’ rate of fire, Commander,” Rock Point said. “And I’m no Marine, far less a soldier, but it would seem to me that being able to load your weapon as quickly lying
down as standing up would have to be a huge advantage in combat, as well.”

“I’d like to think so, Sir,” Mahndrayn said. His usually intense eyes lowered themselves to the floor for a moment, then looked back up at Rock Point, dark and serious. “There are times I feel pretty useless, Sir,” he admitted. “I know what Commodore Seamount and I do is important, but when I think about what other officers
face at sea, in combat, I feel … well, like a slacker. It doesn’t happen very often, but it
does
happen. So if this is really going to help, I’m glad.”