Chapter 41 January 404 AD Flattop Mountain- Steam Cannon (Patreon)

                With Shujaa’s written orders, Busara began to work immediately. First of all, he sent a message to the capital, telling them that Shujaa had specifically ordered him to use steam weapons. Then, he ordered his people to move the steam weapons from storage and began preparing them. This work wasn’t too difficult as Flattop Mountain had rails on every street to help move heavy supplies and equipment. It also allowed them to test locomotive design in secret, as it was easy to dismiss anyone without security clearance from the mountain to do tests. Unfortunately, it wasn’t time to showcase the locomotive, but despite that, it wasn’t hard for oxen to move the rather large pieces of equipment that made the steam weapons work on the rails. Rails across Paulsland allowed more goods to be moved faster with fewer oxen, so nobody on the mountain would view them suspiciously.

                There were three types of steam weapons. Cannons, sniper rifles, and arrow-range rifles. For today’s purposes, they would only be using cannons and sniper rifles. The Kush army had to go through the front gate to climb the mountain, as it guarded the only path up the mountain. Flattop Mountain had the perfect place to put the cannons and sniper rifles about two hundred yards above the gate. With that in mind, Busara kept the arrow-range rifles in reserve.

                Part of the purpose of using the steam weapons was to show as many Paulslanders as possible how effective the weapons were, so Busara ordered the majority of the militia to stay at the top of the mountain, either as archers or to help with their war engines. Busara was outrightly keeping the trebuchets and ballista firing from that spot as long as possible so that thousands of militia members would see the new weapon in action. This was a demonstration.

                When the steam weapons were being moved to their spot next to the other war machines, the militiamen looked on in confusion. They had never seen anything like the steam weapons, as to the militiamen, they were just oddly shaped tubes in various configurations. When Busara told Shujaa that these weapons were experimental, he wasn’t lying; they had several types of steam cannons and sniper rifles. That didn’t mean that these weapons are ineffective, far from it, but they had to build several types to learn, first of all, what made them most effective, and secondly which parts were easiest to make. Oddly enough, the non-conformity of the weapons made them more memorable to the surrounding militiamen.

                The confusion of the militia grew tremendously when they saw the five steam vessels for the cannons being brought to the weapons platform. The steam vessels to power the cannons were forty feet long and about eight feet high. In order to speed up the heating process it had baffles going through the steam vessel that allowed heat to transfer to the water more quickly. Sixteen oxen were needed to move the gigantic steam vessel, and that was before it was filled with water. This steam vessel was connected to eight cannons with five rubber and metal mesh hoses each. The Illuminati could have made smaller steam vessels for individual cannons, but their thinking was that the cannons would be used with a locomotive, and a locomotive would work better with multiple cannons. Their locomotive design had hose points for all three types of steam weapons.

                The steam vessels looked very similar to the gasification equipment used to turn coal into coal oil and other chemicals. Every man in Paulsland was familiar with gasification equipment. As the Illuminati brought the steam vessels to the weapons platform, the militiamen began chatting, wondering what in the world the Illuminati was doing. Their talking only became louder as the Illuminati began connecting hoses from the steam vessel to the cannons. The militia became so distracted by the steam weapons that sergeants and lieutenants in the militia began ordering men to be quiet and flogging men when they did not obey.

                By the time the Illuminati began bringing ammunition to the cannons, none of the militiamen dared say a word despite the large size of the ammunition. The ammunition was a seven-inch twenty-five-pound ball piece of iron, with a disposable iron wedge used to fully transfer power from the steam into the ball. Without the wedge, the ball just didn’t break the sound barrier. They had variants of ammunition that kept the wedge attached to the ball, but those were to be used against fortifications. Today, they were using the ball as they wanted it to skip through the gigantic formations that were heading their way.

                Once the five large steam vessels were set up, they began working on setting up the smaller steam vessels, which were five feet tall and about three feet wide. These were for the steam sniper rifles. As Busara watched them set up the smaller steam vessels, he smiled. These steam vessels were used to power a lot of equipment on Flattop Mountain. Despite their small size, those smaller steam vessels could replace about a third of the waterwheels in Paulsland and run their factories with no reduction in production.

                Busara hoped that after the militia saw them in use some of the militia would buy them for their own personal use, as the Paulsland constitution allowed and encouraged every man to arm himself with the latest equipment. Sooner or later, one of the men who bought this steam vessel would experiment with powering their equipment with their steam vessel. Albeit the seventy families would probably have him assassinated and their workshop destroyed before the information got out, but sooner or later steam equipment would catch on. Busara wasn’t bringing out the steam weapons to fight the Kush, he was bringing it out to fight the seventy families, the Kush were just his excuse, and the weapon in this fight wasn’t the cannons or rifles, but the steam vessels, especially the smaller ones.

                They had three dozen of the smaller steam pressure vessels, and each one was connected to five sniper rifles by similar hoses to what the cannons used. The rifles had grooves inside the gun to spin the bullet and make it more accurate. The sniper rifles were eleven feet long, as they found that it was the optimal length for accuracy, albeit the steam rifles had to use a tripod near the muzzle so that it could be aimed, and the snipers using the rifles had to set up their weapons on the very edge of the weapons platform, two hundred yards above the front gate of Flattop Mountain. On top of the steam rifle were telescopes. They got the idea directly from the notes King Paul had left for the Illuminati, as he felt the best use of what he called ‘gas-powered’ weapons was the snipers with a one-shot one-kill mentality.  

                The steam weapons took nearly four hours to set up. Each Illuminati member that set them up loudly explained how they did so, specifically so the militia would overhear. They even requested some of the militia members to help them set up the steam weapons. During that time, the Kush military decided to send out two hundred thousand soldiers to test the defenses of Flattop Mountain. In response, Flattop Mountain launched flaming ballista bolt after flaming ballista bolt. Although its accuracy was abysmal, it had a two-mile range, and with hundreds of thousands of targets, they managed to take out hundreds of Kush soldiers. When the flaming ballista began to fire, the militia started focusing on the battle instead of the new things the Illuminati had brought out.

                When the Kush soldiers were near enough, the trebuchets started throwing stones. When the Kush were just two hundred and fifty yards from the front gate the archers began launching their arrows from the two hundred-yard high weapons platform, creating a deadly rain of arrows. The Kush soldiers lifted their shields up high trying and largely succeeding to defend themselves from the deadly rain, as they continued their march to the gate.

                At this point, the Kush soldiers were deep into the range of the steam weapons, but Busara wanted to put on a show that none of the militia members would ever forget, so they held their fire until the Kush soldiers were just one hundred yards from the front gate. Then he ordered the archers, trebuchets, and ballistae to stop firing. The Paulsland military was disciplined, so within thirty seconds, all the projectiles from the Paulsland side stopped coming. This was so shocking that the Kush soldiers actually paused for a moment.

                Then Busara broke the pause by yelling, “STEAM RIFLES FIRE!”

                One hundred and ninety steam rifles immediately fired on the Kush men closest to the front gate. The noise was deafening as loud cracks screamed out, and then the front line began to fall. Their shields and armor were unable to stop the penetrating power of the rifled bullets. Less than a second later, the riflemen opened fire again, then again, then again. Their rifles had cylinders with ten bullets. In less than ten seconds, they fired off one thousand nine hundred lead bullets. The Kush had hundreds of casualties; in fact, they had more casualties from the rifle fire than they had from the flame ballista bolts and arrows combined.

                Despite their casualties, the Kush continued marching forward since most of the army hadn’t seen what happened, and so those in the back forced those in the front to keep marching. Each man of Kush was marching forward, hoping to raid Flattop Mountain for the drugs it held and get high.

                Although the soldiers of Kush didn’t know what happened, the men of Paulsland did, and they were stunned by the steam weapons’ power. Where arrows may crack armor after hitting it enough time, the steam rifle burst through the armor. Where their best archers took a minute to fire ten arrows the steam rifles shot ten bullets in less than ten seconds.

                While they were coming to grips with the power of the new steam rifles, the steam riflemen had to pause and change out their cylinders. As they changed their cylinders, an eerie silence fell, but as soon as it did so, Busara yelled, “STEAM CANNONS FIRE!”

                When they fired, there was a much louder crack, and instead of landing at the front of the enemy formation, the twenty-five-pound iron balls landed in the middle of their formation, and after they hit, they bounced off the ground at extraordinary speeds, and tumbled through the Kush lines. Every Kush soldier who saw the power of the cannonball tried to run. They watched as a fellow soldier near them was whole one moment, then the next, they had a large gaping hole going through their shield, armor, chest, and back, and the men behind them. Then, they began processing the red mist that was made up of the fluids that were in the bodies of their comrades a moment before.

                The men of Kush began shouting, “THE DEVIL IS HELPING PAULSLAND!”

                It took nearly ten seconds for the cannon crews to reload and reposition the cannons to fire once again, and once again, it caused utter havoc in the Kush formations. As lines of men began exploding, it affected enough Kush men that the men in the back noticed and turned to run, as the men of Kush fully believed only the power of the devil could cause such amazing destruction.

                As the men of Kush turned to run, Busara had no pity for his enemies. He ordered his men to continue firing until the men of Kush were out of range. Unfortunately for the men of Kush, the steam rifles had a range of a mile and a quarter, at least in such a target-rich environment with a height advantage, and the steam cannons had a range of one point seven miles, at least when they were on top of Flattop Mountain. Before they could get out of range, almost ninety thousand men had died.

                The age of steam had finally started.

                The militiamen of Paulsland were shouting and cheering by the time the Kush forces were out of range. It was the best thing they had ever seen. They were begging the Illuminati for the right to take the weapons, and Busara agreed to let them take the sniper rifles, the small steam vessels, and the Illuminati that knew how to use them. Meanwhile, the Kush camp packed up and began moving South East, toward the Zambezi River. After the battle, they felt that it was urgent for them to reach the Paulsland capital before those weapons made it there. They had to get the Paulsland surrender as soon as possible or lose everything.

                Two hours after the battle was over, a message came in from the capital from the Hall of Representatives chastising the Illuminati for using a secret weapon without their permission. Busara gladly shared this message with the militia. Busara knew that the only representatives still in the capital were too old to go out with the militia, but it was imperative to his goal that the militia believe that both Halls of Representatives in their entirety were against the steam weapons. It meant that the militiamen would go out and gladly preach about the effectiveness of the weapons with religious fervor, which would counter any narrative that the seventy families tried to spin.

                 The next day, to Busara’s surprise, he received a message stating that Kingsminister Jinka wanted to meet with Busara as soon as possible and that Jinka was leaving his million-man army, which was on the way to the capital, to reach him as soon as possible. He expected to be there in less than a month. Busara smiled, it looked like he had an ally.