pay him enough. Tell Kabanov a month, just like we agreed. Look, Andrei, we’ve talked this out before. Everybody knows that we’re skimming. Only you, me and Ivan Petrovich know how much. This is brand new stuff. There’s no way for anybody outside to tell how many failures we have for every working gun. A fifty percent failure rate isn’t unreasonable. And a forty percent failure rate, with us skimming ten percent, that’s pretty good. Most of your guys aren’t going to realize how well the drop forges are working now. So we sell one gun for every gun we deliver and we make a fortune. We deliver two chambers with every gun and sell five, and we make another fortune. We keep it up a few years, then we retire to rich estates, just like we planned.”
Andrei was rubbing his hands together but it was clear to Cass that Andrei’s sense of entitlement was winning out over his caution.
“So we write General Kabanov a nice letter, telling him that we’ve had serious quality control problems, but we will, through long hours and hard work, soon have the full complement of two hundred rifles for the Moscow Streltzi.”
“And what do we tell him about the cannon?”
Cass winced. The cannon were a whole other issue. Cass wasn’t the most sensitive guy around and he had killed people in the heat of a fight and worked the servants hard in the Gun Shop, but the casual way Andrei sacrificed serfs and slaves to the development of new weapons had horrified him. Well, bothered him, anyway. The problem with the cannon was figuring out how many teeth an iron breechblock needed-or even a moderately high carbon steel one.
When Cass had arrived, Andrei was working up an interrupted screw ten threads deep. Vladimir had provided the basic designs. When a double-charge, the standard testing charge, was tried in the gun, it had blown the breech out as though it hadn’t had any threads. The breechblock had sailed like a cannon ball, bounced off the ground, shifting fifteen degrees to the right, torn through a wall twenty meters behind the gun, and killed four people. Kill was really too mild a word. It had pureed four people. Or at least the parts of them that had been in the way. The only good thing you could say about it was it had mostly been quick.
Andrei wanted to try a fifteen-thread interrupted-screw design next and that was what they had done. Andrei also wanted a Welin breechblock, but he couldn’t have one. The Welin was a complex breechblock with levels of threading so that more of the breech could be threaded. But while Russian craftsmen were good they were slow! slow! slow! in terms of making something as big and complex as a Welin block. Between the Russian craftsmen and the Dacha, they could make standard bolt-cutting and nut-cutting tools in the sizes needed, so the Gun Shop could cut the threads in the breech and the breechblock. But the sort of complex shaping necessary for the Welin would have to be done by hand. And it would take months for a single breech to be hand cut. They made do with an interrupted-screw. Cut the threads into the block and the breech, then grind down the threads so that the block could be slid into the breech and screwed a quarter turn to lock it in place. That meant they needed a longer block and more threads to hold the same amount of force and the metal they were using wasn’t as consistent in its strength as twentieth-century metals which-again-meant a longer, heavier block.
Cass’ first contribution had been the notion of starting with a quarter-charge and gradually increasing the charge till they got to the standard double-charge or the breech blew so they would be able to tell how much they needed. “After all,” Cass had argued, “with a breech loader we can open the breech and use a ramrod to clear the barrel if we need to.”
That had saved time by letting them know just how much of a charge was needed to blast out a fifteen- thread deep breechblock. It turned out that to be safe they needed a thirty-thread block and that made for a very heavy breechblock. It needed supporting gear and bearings to hold it up and make it movable. And it was what would be called in another universe a “three-motion” block. Rotate, pull out, swing aside-four actions in point of fact-because a blast shield had to be swung into place. Some of the charge leaked out the less-than-perfect seal between the breechblock and the bore of the gun. Enough to be deadly dangerous to the gun crew without the shield.
All of this made the process of loading the rifled piece cumbersome. Not, however, as cumbersome as loading a muzzle-loader. They were small-bore guns for the weight of shot they fired and because they were rifled, they had a smoother, straighter trajectory. But they were slow to make and expensive. The Gun Shop had two of the eighty-caliber light cannon ready and parts for four more, but it took weeks to finish and fit the breechblock and threading for each gun. They might have four ready by the end of May, but three was more likely.
Cass shook his head. “Tell him we’ll try, but we don’t expect to have four by the end of May or five by the end of June. We’ll send him the guns as fast as we get them made and we’ll go ahead and send the two we have to now so he can train crews on them.” Cass paused. “The volley guns are doing well. And we should have half-a- dozen of them by the end of May.” Fortunately the volley guns used the standard chamber and barrel of the AK3. It just used twenty-four of them in three rows of eight. All they needed was the plate that held the chambers in place and the mounting carriage. It would divert some of their on-the-side AK3 rifle production, but this way they could claim that the volley guns were the cause of the delay.
Chapter 48
April 1634
“The police want to talk to you,” Gregorii said in his heavy Russian accent.
“Oh, Lord,” Brandy muttered. “What’s gone wrong now?” She picked up the phone receiver and said, “This is Brandy Bates. How can I help you?”
“Is that you, Brandy? I was trying for your Russian,” Angela Baker, the police dispatcher said.
“He’s off doing spy stuff, I bet, Angela. What’s up?”
“Well… we’ve got a caravan of Russians downtown. Lots of them. Are they yours?”
Brandy’s heart sank into her stomach. “Probably. We were expecting them around now. More or less.”
Angela laughed. “I’ll send them out to you.”
“Gee, thanks.”
The dragon ladies didn’t arrive alone. Over a hundred Russians came with them: a priest, his family, students of medicine, engineering, architecture, aeronautics, oil wildcatting and a host of other interests. But the dragon ladies ruled the caravan, three ladies of great houses. All three of them were mothers or grandmothers of boyars. One was a friend of Vladimir’s Aunt Sofia, Madam Lukashenko.
She was, Vladimir insisted, Brandy’s friend at court. Brandy’s enemy at court was Madam Sheremetev, as the old bat made clear with a sniff the day they arrived. The neutral, Madam Streshnyova, was a friend of the czarina’s mother, which Brandy figured was at least marginally a good thing. By now Bernie had been in Moscow for over two years. A Russian had flown not that long after Jesse Wood did. Admittedly, in a lighter-than-air balloon rather than an airplane, but flying was flying. There were plows and Fresno scrapers being made in some place called Murom. And an essential element to it all was Vladimir Gorchakov. Increasingly Brandy Bates was another essential element, doing for Vladimir here in Grantville what Bernie was doing in Russia.
As she did right now, arranging for housing for the flood of new arrivals. A number were allowed to rest from their trip, then sent on to the Wietze oil fields. Some were set up in one of the new subdivisions that had sprung up outside of the Ring of Fire and some were installed in the Residentz. But while Brandy could place most of them, the dragon ladies were unwilling to go where they were told.
“What about suites at the Higgins Hotel?” Brandy asked, feeling a bit desperate. Madam Sheremetev and her kabuki makeup was about the scariest woman she’d ever met.
“Oh, not for me,” Madam Lukashenko said. “I told Sofia that I’d stay with you. Natasha said that you have a fine house, the one your mother left you.”
Great, Brandy thought. A built-in chaperone, what a thrill. She forced a smile. “That will be splendid, Madam Lukashenko. I do have three bedrooms, if another of you would like to stay with me.”
Madam Sheremetev sniffed. Again. That sniff was beginning to make Brandy jump, because it always boded ill. “The, ah, Higgins, you said? A suite there, I think.”
Brandy couldn’t resist. “I’ll call and see if they have one available. They might not have room.”
“Of course, they will make room for me.”
