On Basilisk StationThe commissioner's mouth twisted at her expression, and she rose from behind her desk, turning the com terminal to direct its pickup at her coffee table. A strange weapon lay on it, looking very like some crude version of a pulse rifle, except that it had neither a magazine nor a proper stock. Instead of a vertical butt stock, it ended in a flat, horizontal arc of curved metal, perpendicular to the line of the barrel.
"See this?" Dame Estelle's voice asked from beyond the pickup's range.
"Yes, Ma'am. What is it?"
"This is what killed Matt, Honor. My people tell me it's a single-shot, breech-loading flintlock rifle. One built for a Medusan."
"What?!" Astonishment startled the response out of Honor before she could stop it, and Dame Estelle's hands appeared on her screen as the commissioner lifted the clumsy-looking weapon.
"That was my response," she said grimly. "This—" she touched the curved metal arm "—is the butt plate. It's made of metal because there's no decent wood on the planet, and it's shaped like this because Medusans don't really have shoulders. It's designed to go across the firer's chest to absorb the recoil, but that's not the most interesting part of it. Look."
She turned the weapon on its side and gripped a small knob on the trigger guard, then cranked the entire guard through a half turn. A plug of metal dropped vertically out of the barrel, and the commissioner lifted it to show the opened breech to the pickup.
"It's a very ancient form of breech-closure for nitro-powder weapons, though I understand it usually operates in line with the barrel, not vertically." Dame Estelle's voice was almost distant, a dry, lecturer's voice like a buttress against her own shock. "It's called an 'interrupted screw,'" she went on. "Basically, it's nothing more than a long, coarse-threaded screw with the threads cut away on two sides so it only takes a half-turn to engage or disengage it. One of my com techs is an antique weapons buff, and she tells me it's the only practical way to achieve a gas-proof breech seal on a weapon that uses loose-loaded propellant. They shove a hollow-based projectile of soft lead about eighteen millimeters in diameter in here, put the powder behind it, and close the breech."
Her hands demonstrated on the screen, and she turned the weapon on its side.
"Then they pull back this hammer, which opens this little pan, and they put more loose powder into it. When they pull the trigger—"
The S-shaped hammer snapped forward, striking the lump of flint in its jaws against the roughened inner surface of the pan lid, and a brilliant spark flashed.
Dame Estelle dumped the weapon back onto the table and returned to her desk, swinging her terminal until she looked out of it at Honor once more, and her face was grim.
"A Medusan could reload this a lot more quickly than we could," she went on. "If he puts the butt directly over one of his arms, he could actually reload and re-prime it with that arm without even lowering it from firing position with the other two. And it's a lot longer-ranged and more accurate than you might think. The barrel is rifled, and the explosion of the powder—old-fashioned black powder, not even nitro-cellulose, they tell me—spreads the hollow base of the projectile, forcing it into the rifling and spin-stabilizing it. It's no pulse rifle, Honor, but according to my weapons buff's best guesstimate, this thing is probably accurate to two or even three hundred meters . . . and we have no idea how many of them are out there."
"Dear God," Honor murmured, her mind racing as she envisioned thousands of Medusans armed with those primitive but deadly weapons.
"Exactly," the commissioner said harshly. "It's crude, very crude, but that's because someone took considerable pains to make it look that way. The actual manufacture is quite good, and, given the current Medusan level of technology, it's an ideal weapon for them: simple, sturdy, and within their own manufacturing capabilities, even if only barely. But there is no way—no way—this many sudden advances could occur naturally in one lump. My com tech tells me it took centuries for Old Earth to advance from crude, fuse-fired smoothbores to anything remotely like this. In fact, she insists no one on Old Earth ever produced one that incorporated all of these features, except for something called a 'Fergusson Rifle,' or something like that. And that one never went into mass production. So—"
"So at least the design had to come from someone off-world." Honor's voice was equally harsh, and Dame Estelle nodded.
"My own opinion, precisely. Some greedy idiot has jumped the Medusans' ability to kill one another—or us—by something like fifteen hundred T-years." The Resident Commissioner looked strained and old, and her hand trembled slightly as she brushed hair back from her forehead. "He's brought this abortion in through my security, and he's turned it over to the nomads in the Outback, not even to the Delta city-states. Even if we nail him, there's no way to put this genie back into the bottle if he's taught the Medusans how to build the things. In fact, they're bound to figure out how to make heavier weapons—real, honest-to-God artillery—so unless we want to take over the role of guaranteeing the Delta's security with off-world weaponry, we're going to have to encourage the city-states to learn how to make the goddamned things just so they can defend themselves! And worst of all, our forensic people think the Medusans who killed Matt were hopped to the breathing slits on mekoha—the same off-world mekoha we've been seeing clear on the other side of the Mossybacks."
"But . . . why?" Honor asked slowly.
"I don't know," Dame Estelle sighed. "I just don't know. I can't think of a single commodity on this planet that could possibly be worth this kind of investment, Honor. Not one. And that," she finished softly, "scares me a lot worse than if I could."
I never understood why Haven didn't just teach them how to make heavier weapons. Then they wouldn't have had to worry about even Young discovering huge shipments of arms.
Or, since they knew Young would be the one guarding the gate, why they didn't just plan to smuggle thousands of tailor-made heavy artillery to the Stilthies.
It wouldn't have changed the final result, but the RMN officers and reps on the ground would have been toast.
And the Stilthies are going to remember that slaughter when they
do get around to advancing that uncorked genie.
And what was the reason for Coglin
or the courier boat to be needed. Just have a guy on planet looking at his Timex until time to yell
charge!And then the RHN just happen to stroll in-system at the appointed time, "Well what do we have here?"
RFC hasn't suggested that their ancestors had interstellar transport, has he ?
"