24th June 1574"Take aim!"
With a single sergeant"s order, all the recruits raised their rifles and pointed them at the set of the moving targets. Creating this contraption was quite easy on the surface. Just by making a few ditches, filling them with simple, wooden tracks and covering the top with simple planks and a bit of earth, one could move upright poles with a target hanged down on them with a single move on the operating lever. By connecting all the mechanisms to the power output of a single steam horse, all the targets would suddenly start moving on the predesigned trajectories, allowing my recruits to train how to fight against specific formations.
"FIRE!"
With a booming sound of multiple rifles going off at once, nearly a third of the targets were swept from their respective supporting poles, falling heavily to the ground.
"TAKE AIM!"
With the sergeant voice suddenly turning way louder to reach recruits ears through the noise of all the rifles clanging as they pushed the rotating lever on the side of their handles, it suddenly became harder to speak to my quest.
"FIRE!"
Watching as only about half the initial numbers of the targets were pushed to the ground this time, I couldn"t help but frown. With nearly a hundred rifles firing at once, only twenty of the forty targets were downed during two salvos?
"No matter how great the rifles are, unless we will be able to get the perfect gunpowder, the accuracy will remain as bad as it is now. That"s why I told you that there is no point in creating a separate plant for making ammunition."
Turning my sight from the training troops of mine to Jan Bone, I only smiled in response. After all, what was the point of explaining how the real accuracy wasn"t that important if the men would never get the time to reach the level where it would matter? As long as those rifles capable of shooting up to ten bullets before changing the circular magazine could be supplied to a huge ma.s.s of people, no enemy would dare to stand against this power!
It was also crucial that while ordinary rifle that was supplied to all the militaries around the world could shoot more or less at the target as far as one hundred meters (110 yards) away. In this field, looking at those recruits shooting down the moving objectives about two hundred, fifty meters away from them was already a significant improvement!
But it didn"t change the fact that their combined accuracy worked only due to a huge number of people shooting all at once! In essence, it was not the efficiency of the weapon, but a pure mathematical-statistical chance!
"You know that I don"t have any funds on hand to invest in gunpowder plant right now. Even if we somehow managed to convince other n.o.bles to allow us to import pure sulfur from the Crown"s mines, it would still require us to find someone interested in organising the production for it."
There was no point in explaining in detail why this idea was rotten in its core. As something that my entire military force would depend on to work, by allowing anyone else to have even a shred of control over it, I would be crippling my strength if that person ever decided to change his or hers allegiances!
Additionally, there was the fact that in terms of gunpowder making, I had absolutely no idea how I should even get to it! While the smokeless gunpowder was produced in modern times with saltpeper, something I knew only due to how as I kind I attempted to make my own, silly explosives, I had no way of knowing how to obtain nitrate in the first place!
"How about… Letting me handle it? I took my time observing all sorts of elements that you infused in your plants, and that gave me an idea. For now, most of the gunpowder is made by hand, with people mixing the material as precisely as they can… But it goes without saying that not only the ingredients are not as finely powdered as your machines could make them, nor as precisely mixed. As long as the ratios could be brought to perfection, even if the quality of the gunpowder wouldn"t reach the level you want, it would still be better than what we have on hand right now. Also, I don"t think you are in any position to claim that you don"t trust me now…"
Even if others could take Governor"s last sentence as a threat, or at the very least, a warning, I simply shrugged my arms while allowing my mouth to curve upwards. With the fact that I gave up all my machine guns directly into Jan"s owners.h.i.+p despite no one pressuring me to do so in the first place only showed how I valued our relations.h.i.+p and where did I saw myself in it.
Allowing anyone to control the output of my gunpowder was risky. The baseline for the idea was to locate the plant in the proximity of my lands and regulated by the Bone"s family alone. With this, it would be easy to make sure that even in case of the unfortunate death of my most excellent protector, it would still fall into my hands!
"Okay then, I will leave it to you. I think I can spare some of the cement mix and concrete blocks for the factory… The problem is, it will need to be far away from the town and the fortress due to the high risk of an explosive accident happening. After all, if fires fueling the steam horses were to come in contact with even the tiniest bit of the finished product…"
Usually, the gunpowder would be prepared in a place that had a complete ban on any sources of fire, from torches through lamps all the way to candles. Yet if we wanted to use steam horses, there was no way to avoid using the fire in the first place! Even if the entire factory could be constructed in the form to minimalise the risk of the accident, there was no way to prevent it completely!
"Wait… Fortress? What the heck? Are you building a d.a.m.ned fortress here, right now?!"