Moving the Pieces Page 2

  My first task was to contact Bustere about ammunition; I didn’t know him well enough for direct telepathic contact so I had to do it via datalink message. Datalink was slow here on Calmena; It had to go from my head into our local server, from thence to orbit via tightbeam, then bounce around until it found a path back down to Bolthole Base, before making a mirror image journey from there to Bustere. It may have only been a couple of Imperial seconds, but it seemed forever by comparison. Request as much ammunition as possible in standard cartridge sizes. Karnel Gate is only an isquare from Yalskarr.

  The response was swift, I can get you five cubes each of revolver and rifle standards.

  That will last about a minute. Would it help if I batted my eyelashes at you? Asina suggested that.

  Wouldn’t make a difference if you had an entire squad up for an orgy. We’re working on getting some ammunition in surreptitiously from the Empire, but until we’ve got it in our possession, we have to make do with what’s on hand. We know you’re only a square from Karnel, but you know Windhome Bay is only about that far from the Wimarglr Gate, too.

  We’d often deliberately chosen mission sites for proximity to Gates, so that was nothing I didn’t know. The difference is Yalskarr is critical to both aircraft and petrochemical industries.

  Look, Joe, we know. But according to the Empire, everything we’re doing is a sideshow and under no circumstances to be allowed to compromise the presence of the Eyes and Ears on Calmena.

  That was a simple fact of life for us – we were a sideshow. It would be nice to save the Calmenans, but saving every human here on the planet wasn’t enough to counterbalance the risk of compromising the main mission of Bolthole Base and the Ears it supported.

  All of our maneuvering to save everyone we could was re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The population of Yalskarr and environs was less than thirty times sixty cubed – roughly six million. The population of Calmena as a whole was likely between three and six fifths - call it two and a half to five billion, Earth numbers. Census was rudimentary on Calmena, where it existed at all. Nobody had solid numbers on how many humans the remaining demonic holds on the planet kept for slaves and food. The Seven Gates connected to demonic homelands, and each of those homelands had tenths if not twelfths or more of demons. Let real demonic armies come through the Gates, and the only thing that could stop them was the metaphorical cavalry coming over the hill, by which I mean the Empire dropping the Masquerade that kept our efforts hidden and coming on planet with enough modern combat-suited Planetary Surface forces to make a difference. Even Folsogon, the Octus-in-rank and Council member who ran the charity that contracted us, was small fry compared to the Merlon and the Guardian, where that decision lay. Folsogon thought that when the war between demons and Empire actually began, the reasons for the Masquerade would evaporate, but he had no control over the decision itself. Yes, the Calmenan nations – most of them city-states by the standards of Earth – could make the demons pay for their conquest, but let the demons really push and they’d wash over us like the tide. They’d eat us, and they’d eat however many of their own troops we killed, and never notice their losses. When it came right down to it, all we’d be is a minor source of forage for their armies on the march.

  I did have one item to offer: My mother runs Earth Dogs. Would it help if I got her involved? Biggest company on the closest Imperial planet. It couldn’t hurt.

  The issue isn’t obtaining the ammunition. Any converter supplied with power can make the stuff. It’s bringing it on planet and transporting it in believable lots to where it needs to go. In the meantime, we’re running the smelters and smithies day and night.

  Right. A cutter could hold a decent amount of ammunition, and there were cutter runs to and from Earth every day. But then it somehow had to get to us from Bolthole Base via native transport methods and traceable to a native source. In the past we’d been able to cheat on the sourcing, but the more modern the Calmenans became, the more scrupulous we had to be about obtaining material from verifiable on-planet sources. If I tried the trick I’d used to supply Yalskarr during the last major demonic incursion, whomever Sephia’s replacement was would have me up before a Primus on charges of treason soon as they found out about it. I’d be guilty, too. The natives were getting sophisticated about their worldview. As I understood the issue, the Empire actually didn’t care about the natives discovering us as such – but if the natives found out, the demons would too, and that could not be risked for anything other than a significant threat to the entire Empire. Oh, I could find a few boxes of ammunition I’d ‘forgotten’ about, so long as it looked like it was made on-planet. But we needed shiploads.

  There was one more trick to try – a couple of minor native manufactories here in the Yalskarr region made bullets. Mom and Pop operations compared to what Bustere and Kilman ran, but they could make bullets. We could offer them premium prices for as much as they could produce. Motivate them to sell us as much as they could make – everyone around ‘knew’ we were rich from all the money we made from ships, planes, and the repair and manufacture of parts for them. I’d just have to find a reasonable motivation for us doing so. But given what Sephia had said, I was certain we’d be glad of every last round.

  The first of two sizes we’d use the most were rounds originally designed to fit an up-engineered Springfield Rifle. A full isixth in bore by about ten in length, it was a good bet to put down a manes or terostes, the biggest common demonic types. As the technology had advanced, we’d kept designing around the same round – it made adoption of better weapons much easier. We had machine-guns decades more advanced than the up-engineered Vickers we’d used in the last major incursions, and rifles I’d bet on over the AK-47s we’d used as starting points in their designs. Even aircraft-mounted weapons used the same roughly .43 caliber round.

  The handgun round was bigger in bore – roughly .55 caliber – but it had to be if you were going to kill big demons at handgun ranges. We’d gotten a good reliable M1911 equivalent as well as any number of revolver designs shooting it. The double-action revolver design had been a real problem, too, but we’d finally got an Earth consultant who managed to create something that could move all the requisite parts the needed distance while still being something most Calmenans could pull. The local M1911 redesign only held six rounds in a bigger magazine, while the bigger rounds and metal reinforcement required cutting most of the revolvers to five shots. We kept hoping some talented local would engineer an automatic with a larger capacity, but what we had was good enough that our weaponsmith’s time was better spent elsewhere.

  There were other locally made weapons firing other sizes of ammunition. But since manes and terostes were the most dangerous common demonic types, the rounds we’d designed around killing them remained the most popular, indeed, the default sizes for firearm ammunition. Kind of like if there were rampaging man-eating hippopotami and grizzly bears running around Earth in numbers such that you were likely to encounter them even if you were just out to plonk a couple rabbits for dinner. People carried the guns meant to kill the big demonic predators because if they didn’t, they became dinner. Or slaves, which had the same endpoint with more misery before that end.

  I sent Bustere a message about other sorts of ammunition. Demonic armies and tactics meant tanks were a waste of resources at Calmena’s current technological level. We couldn’t make enough of them to be anything other than targets for the weapons made by their brakiri. Big field pieces took too long – our artillery consisted of mortars that could be set up in a minute or so, taken down almost as quickly, and cheap enough to be abandoned if we had to. We’d given the Calmenans flame-throwers, also, although the mass charge tactics used most often by the demons necessitated they be vehicle-mounted if the operator was to have any chance of survival.

  Bustere’s reply was the bottleneck for napalm was the flamethrowers and bombs casings to put it in. Dildre had re-developed napalm; she and her partner Arrel served the
same function to the petro-chemical industry that Asina and I filled for aircraft and ships. The difference was they dealt with production, refinement, and transportation, where Asina and I were done once the contraptions were assembled and working. At least the natives had learned enough to create and manage railroads on their own, even if the engine technology was being surreptitiously driven by us. Rail would never be as economical as water transport, but rail could go places ships couldn’t. Ships were the same – I was improving marine diesels whenever I could take time away from aircraft development, as native casting and machining got better – then I released the designs into general circulation. The point of our mission wasn’t personal enrichment, it was driving industrial and mercantile development so the Calmenans could better fight off the demons.

  Right now, most of my time was being spent developing the gunships based upon Swass-class transports. I’d designed in a bomb bay for napalm bombs, as even the extended range flamethrowers required being too damned close to the terrain – call it two sixty-fours of paces, local measure. Two Gatling-style machine guns firing our standard rifle round and two high-velocity automatic grenade launchers and the ammunition for them filled the rest of the cargo area, firing off the left side of the plane so the pilot could see what was happening. The problems were weight and balance – first, the firing platform had to be reinforced, and then we had to make certain that neither the weight of the platform nor the recoil of the weaponry unbalanced the plane. Then we had to ensure our pattern for feeding ammunition worked also. It appeared they weren’t major problems, and I’d checked my solutions through computer simulations at Bolthole Base, but we’d never be certain until the first time we tested them under conditions as close to combat as we could devise. The first prototypes would be ready in a couple more days – if the demons waited that long. Speaking of which, “Makis, spread the word that putting in extra time is encouraged and will be paid at higher rates on the new Nhadragh planes. I’ve got a feeling we’ll be needing them soon.”

  “Right, boss. Can’t wait to see if it all works.” He’d been born a farmer’s son outside Yalskarr. He was big and brawny, at least by local standards. He’d helped crew one of the Vickers machine-gun knock-offs we’d used to defend Yalskarr from the last big demonic incursion, and stuck around to learn the aircraft business as it grew from the first primitive plane to what it was today. These days, he looked older than I did, but he’d become one hell of a designer and project manager. He’d probably contributed more actual original ideas to the Nhadragh than I had. Once upon a time, he’d asked where I was getting the designs for our planes from. I’d told him, “I can’t tell you that yet. Trust me.” He’d never asked again, but the look he gave me now was eloquent enough. He knew the designs were coming from somewhere that wasn’t Calmenan in origin, but he also knew how much what Asina and I were doing had benefitted Yalskarr and the rest of Calmena.

  “Soon, Makis. I’ll be able to tell you soon.”

  “Suddenly, I’m chilled. Like a likahn digging up my grave.” He wasn’t stupid. In fact, he was probably the smartest natural state human I knew.

  “I understand.” No need to tell him the demons were on the way in such numbers as to constitute a tsunami that would wipe away all life where it reached. “But there are wonderful things coming as well.”

  “Hope my grandchildren will be alive to enjoy them.”

  What to say? I couldn’t guarantee the next week to anyone living on Calmena – myself and Asina included. The only thing I could do was nod. “Let’s get this plane ready. Quickly.”

  It was his turn to nod. “I’ll tell the assembly line managers to push production, too.”

  “All deliberate speed,” I agreed, “It will do no good to send out four aircraft that fall apart rather than two or three that work like they should.”

  He nodded again in understanding – there’d be no time to repair mistakes.

  Chapter Three

  Sephia’s replacement arrived the next morning. Asina and I – and all the other Advancement Mission teams – got a message. “My name is Platoon Private Mikahald, and I’m the new Base Commander for Bolthole. I’m not in search of disrupting projects already approved by my predecessor, but it’s going to take me a week or so to become current on all the work and proposals, so expect some delays in the decision-making process, as she’s not available to illuminate me on how it all fits together. Expect some queries and contact requests as well – I’ll need some things she knew explained to me in the context of Calmena today. The sooner I satisfy my need for diligence, the sooner you will receive your responses.”

  One other thing about Mikahald was obvious: He was operant, where Sephia had not been. He wore the gold triangle of a Second Order Guardian, as well as the slightly different gold triangle of a Secundus-in-rank, indicating eligibility for civil office. His body type was the short compact standard that some folks on Earth had dubbed the ‘bear’, the most common choice among operants. Most of a head shorter than me, broad in the shoulders and with plenty of padding as fuel for potential duels. His facial features looked like my indio forbears on Mom’s side – flat with a broad nose. His coloration was something clearly not natural, a bluish tint to medium dark brown skin. His uniform had three decorations – both the Red Bar and Green Stripes for valor, and the Thinker’s Medal with blue framing to indicate a second award. I hadn’t served in the military yet, but my understanding was the Empire didn’t award many Thinker’s Medals to those below the sergeant grades. Any private with two of them would be sharp. Whomever had selected him for this command had likely realized he needed someone who could think fast here in command here on Calmena. Not that the Empire encouraged stupid commanders – far from it – but I’d expect him to be at least as smart as Sephia had been, even with all her experience.

  He wasn’t afraid to make decisions though. Asina got a message from Kilman, Bustere’s partner. The new commander has given me permission to use a converter to boost our real production by twenty iprime. The catch is we have to ship it via native methods. Twenty sixtieths may not sound like much to the uninitiated, but it meant that there was a sudden surplus over existing contracts. If you can make a million widgets per day but existing contracts require nine hundred thousand, a sudden boost to a million and a third means you suddenly have over four times your previous surplus. It makes a difference. Our assembly lines were building four Molitor B-29 knockoffs and four C-130 variants per day, as well as various and sundry other aircraft. If we could suddenly boost it to five – or sixteen per three days – we’d have plenty of surplus aircraft to send where they were needed. If parts production was similarly boosted, mechanics planetwide would suddenly have plenty of spare parts.

  Asina told him to ship us and Yalskarr all he could spare from the new production, and keep shipping it. Since the arms team was on Hashiboor Continent, the first batch would come via ship in about fifteen days. The mom and pop shops here in Yalskarr were hiring help as fast as they could get it, as Asina had guaranteed them a third more than current market price for at least the next local year, which was a little under five Earth months. Things would look better as far as ammunition within about three local weeks.

  If we had that long.

  The overtime we’d used had gotten the first of three Nhadragh prototypes to where it was ready for a test flight, or so our assembly supervisors claimed. Everything was signed off; the ammunition hoppers were filled, and the napalm canister bays as well. The loading and firing crew from the Guard were standing by – they’d been part of the assembly teams, a deliberate measure designed to make certain everything really was as it should be. Weight and balance checked out as it should, although our crew chief, an older career military with a couple years’ experience in Swass transports, wanted to add more weight to the nose. Since we were under gross, I’d agreed and ordered sandbags just in case – just over five hundred pounds, Earth weight.

  Time for the walk around. Since we’d sta
rted with an operational Swass aircraft for conversion, I really wasn’t too worried. With the weapons door and napalm bomb bay closed, it looked pretty much like every other Swass flying from a distance. I checked those two items for external hangups, and had Makis cycle the napalm bay doors a couple times for good measure. Since they were pretty much straight out of a Molitor (our B-29 knock off), I expected them to work and they did. Ghent nagged me one more time about making the weapons forward firing; I waved away his nattering. We climbed aboard through the rear hatch. I had the loading and firing crew cycle the weapons door a couple times. Not far behind the wings; we’d installed bars as manual stops for all the weapons to keep the field of fire clear of the wings. Makis paused a moment to explain to them one more time that the wings were full of fuel, so please don’t try to defeat the weapons stops or we would all die a fiery death. We knew damned well that there was no limit to the mischief a mostly young firing crew could get into, so we wanted them to understand that they shouldn’t try this one particular bit of defiance, ingenuity, or simple monkey tinkering.

  The weapons doors worked, the guns deployed into the hatch as designed. The weapons hatch could be worked manually from inside the aircraft, although you’d have to be careful about it. The napalm bay was a little more problematic – in fact I didn’t see any way someone trying to open them manually in flight wouldn’t be swept out by the wind. We’d have to install the hand crank mechanism from the Molitors on the production model, just in case. But the Nhadragh should be able to land with napalm bays full – in fact it would make the balance a little better - and the cockpit crew would have to be complete dumbasses to release the napalm without a confirmed open bay.

  There was no way I was letting anyone else pilot our first run; Makis had agreed to sit in what on Earth would have been the flight engineer’s seat, Ghent climbed into the right co-pilot’s seat. We ran through the checklist for startup, got the two inboard turboprops running, and taxied out of the hangar onto the ramp before starting the two outer engines. So far, so good, although I was reminded once again how difficult the engines made it to talk or hear. If things had gone on another few years, we’d have had time to develop earphones and microphones, but that was moot now.