like you said.”
For an instant, Bernie was speechless. “Cool my breech? You just hacked a hole in the breech of one of my new musket barrels and you tell me that?” He looked almost wildly around. “Where’s Campeti? If you won’t listen to me, maybe he can control you! In fact, I want him to hang you!”
“Why’s ever’body always want to hang me?” Silva asked, as if genuinely curious. “Calm down, Bernie, you’ll hurt yourself. You ’cumulated a extra hole or two in the big fight yourself, if I recall. If you start leakin’, Lieutenant Tucker’s gonna get sore, and she’ll have the skipper down on you. He’ll make you take a rest, and you’ll be countin’ waves in the bay at the Screw while Campeti runs this joint. Besides, just ’cause I’m goofin’ off don’t mean I’d dee-stroy a perfectly good musket barrel without a pretty good reason.”
Bernie paused and took a breath. Silva was right. He was a maniac, but when it came to implements of destruction, if he wasn’t actually a genius, he was at least a prodigy of some monstrous sort. He still had his “personal” BAR, and was one of the few people allowed to run around with such a profligate weapon and a full battle pack of precious ammunition. His new favorite weapon however, that he carried just about everywhere he went, was of an entirely different sort. Bernie glanced at the thing where it leaned near Silva’s workstation with the bag of necessary equipment it required.
It had begun life as an antiaircraft gun aboard shattered Amagi, a Type 96, twenty-five millimeter. The breech had been damaged in the battle and the flash hider shot away, so Silva “appropriated” it during one of their early trips to the wreck to salvage anything that remained above water. He told Sandison what he was doing, and the still painfully wounded (like nearly everyone) torpedo officer and Minister of Ordnance gave his blessing to the project. For most of his life, before joining the Navy, Silva had just been on the loose. For a time however, he’d worked for an old-school gunsmith near Athens, Tennessee. In that part of the country, even in the mid-thirties, many guns they worked on were old-fashioned muzzle loaders, even flintlocks. His time there was probably what made him strike for the ordnance division in the Navy. In any event, he’d learned a lot about “old-timey” guns, so Sandison gave him the flintlock from the shortened musket O’Casey had when they rescued him.
Silva turned the Type 96 barrel down as light as he thought was wise on one of the lathes, breeched it, and fitted it to a crude stock. Then he made a hollow-base. 100-caliber bullet mold like a Civil War Minie ball, so the bullet would expand and take the gain-twist rifling. He still worked on it now and then, dolling it up, but what he had was a massive weapon, weighing almost thirty pounds, with a five-foot barrel. It was amazingly accurate with its quarter-pound bullet, but the recoil was so horrifyingly abusive, nobody but Silva had ever even fired it. Probably no human but Silva could fire it more than once without serious injury. He called it his Super Lizard Gun, and was anxious to test it on one of the allosaurus-like brutes. He never wanted to go up against one of those incredibly tough monsters with a. 30-06 again.
“So,” Bernie said resignedly, “show me why you shouldn’t hang. And this had better be something useful!”
“Sure.” Silva held up the barrel he’d altered. “Alden wants muskets, and that’s fine. That’s what we can do right now, so that’s how we go. What you’re making- we’re making-is basically an old muzzle-loading Springfield. You settled on cap instead of flint because they’re simpler and we can make the caps. Good call. Might want to make a few flintlocks for scouts, explorers, or such in case they wind up out of touch for a while-they can find flint if they run out of caps-but that’s beside the point. You’re also startin’ out with smoothbores because we haven’t built a rifling machine yet, and with the way Griks fight, a good dose of buck ‘n’ ball is just the ticket. Again, fine. The main thing right now is to get guns with bayonets in the hands o’ the troops. Eventually, we can take the same guns and rifle ’em, use Minie balls just like ol’ Doom Whomper over there. Everything’s great, and we move the ’Cats from fightin’ like they did in Roman times to the 1860s.
“But the skipper wants breechloaders, and that got me thinking. Everybody seems to figure that means, all of a sudden, we hafta jump from the old Springfields to the kind of Springfields we brought with us, our ’oh-threes. That’d be swell, but it’s a lot bigger jump than folks would think, and it’s bigger than we hafta make.”
“It is?”
“Yeah. The Army-our old Army-had the same problem once. After the
… War Between the States, they had millions of muzzleloadin’ Springfields, see? Thing is, everybody was startin’ to go to center-fire breechloaders. Even f… likkin’ Spain. Whaddaya do? This fella named Ersky Allin-er somethin’ like that-had sorta the same job as you. Anyway, he figured a way to make center-fire breechloaders outta all them muskets, and it was a cinch!” Silva brandished the barrel again, then fished around on a bench covered with strange-looking objects he’d been working on. He picked something up. “He, this Allin fella, cut the top outta the breech, like I just done, and screwed and soldered this here hinge-lookin’ thing to the front of the gap.” Silva held the object in place. “The thing on the other side of the hinge is the breechblock-we can cast ’em a lot easier than I milled this one out!-and the firin’ pin angles from the rear side to the front center!” He held the pieces together and the breechblock dropped into place with a clack!
“I ain’t pulled the breech plug out and milled the slot that locks the thing closed, but again, it’s a simple alteration. You cut a barrel, put this on, then grind the hammer to where it hits the firin’ pin square. All else you gotta add is a easy little extractor!”
Bernie’s eyes were huge. “Silva, you are a freak-show genius!”
“Nah. Maybe Ersky Allin was, though.”
Bernard Sandison looked at Dennis. “How did you do this? I mean, how did you know about this?”
Silva shrugged. “I had a couple over the years. First rifles I ever owned. Sometimes huntin’ was the only way a fella could stay fed, what with the Depression, and you could buy one surplus at just about any hardware store, or order one from Monkey Wards or Bannerman’s for a few bucks.”
Bernie shook his head. His childhood and Silva’s had been… different. “What did they shoot? And how…?”
“That’s another neat thing. You’re forgin’ these barrels on a five-eighths mandrel. Once you ream ’em out smooth, they’re about sixty-two-caliber or so. You go ahead and build yer riflin’ machine and rifle forty-five- or fifty- caliber liners to solder in the old barrels and then chamber ’em! Simple as pie. The first Allin guns they put liners in were fifty-seventy. When they started building rifles like this from the ground up instead of convertin’ ’em, they made receivers for ’em an’ did ’em in forty-five-seventy. That’s a forty-five- or fifty-caliber bullet on seventy grains of powder. Black powder, just like we have now. Both had a pretty high trajectory, but they’d stomp a buffalo to the ground. Probably a lot better for critters around here than a thirty-aught-six. Big and slow gives you big holes and deep penetration. Small and fast gives you small holes, and maybe not so deep penetration. If you’re too close, light bullets, even copper jacketed, just blow up on impact and never hit anything vital.”
Oddly, Bernie noticed that when Silva was talking ballistics, he didn’t sound as much like a hick, but he’d already begun tuning him out. Silva had just solved one of the biggest problems he’d expected to face over the next year or so. It had bothered him for a number of reasons. He’d felt a little like everything they did before they came up with “real” weapons was sort of a wasted effort. Silva’s scheme might not give them truly modern weapons, but they were leaps and bounds beyond anything they were likely to face. But what about cartridges?
“These fifty-seventies and forty-five-seventies, what were they shaped like? The shells?”
“Straight, rimmed case,” said Silva, grinning. He knew what Bernie was thinking. One of the problems they faced with making new shells for the Springfields and Krags they already had, not to mention the machine guns, was the semi-rimless bottleneck shape. “Even if you haven’t solved the problem of drawing cases-which I figure you will-you can turn these shells on a lathe if you have to.”
Bernie beamed. “I swear, Silva! Why didn’t you just tell me you wanted a musket barrel? I’m going to see you get a raise out of this. .. or a promotion, or something! Take the rest of the day off. You’re still technically on leave anyway. Go hunting or have a beer! Kill something; you’ll feel better!”
“Raise won’t do me any good, an’ I don’t want no promotion. All I answer to is you, Campeti, and the skipper anyway. You can call ’em ‘Allin-Silva’ conversions, if you want, though.”
“You bet! Do whatever you want! I have to talk to the skipper!” With that, Bernie rushed away with the still- dripping barrel and trapdoor arrangement in his hand. Silva watched him go. “Whatever I want, huh?” Silva said, eyebrow raised.
CHAPTER 4
