The Wings of Mercury
Copyright© 2025 by Lumpy
Chapter 19
Devnum
Hortensius made his way down the docks again. The non-stop travel was a reminder of how time was catching up to him. It felt like only a few years ago that he was just opening his first factory, working constantly, getting it running and profitable through sheer willpower alone.
He still had that same willpower, but his body was starting to let him down, his hips screaming at him during the long walk from the train station to the docks. While he found the entire ship project interesting from a technical standpoint, he would be happy for the day when he could just stay at his factory and stop the endless travel back and forth.
“Lucan!” Hortensius called out as he shuffled his way to the slip where the shipmaster was looking over the rebuilt steamship prototype.
“Hortensius, my friend. Thanks for coming down. I know these trips are wearing on you, but we got the engine and propeller in place and started the tests, and I thought you’d want to see it. It’s a little early in the process, but after the last incident ... well, I wanted to make sure we both had eyes on it to make sure the flaws were ironed out.”
“Of course, of course. It is unfortunate, but this is how we learn the hard lessons. Thankfully, for this catastrophe, I believe we’ve identified the root cause.”
Lucan held out his arm to take some of Hortensius’ weight, the two walking out onto the platform and down into the still open shell of the test platform, allowing him to look down to see the still gleaming copper pipes and rebuilt boiler.
“The issue stemmed from the thin, high-pressure lines we initially used,” Hortensius continued. “They allowed excessive pressure to build up and feed back into the boiler, leading to a catastrophic failure, and we’ve implemented some additions to the design to fix that.”
“Your man mentioned that but didn’t go into specifics.”
“We’ve implemented thicker, reinforced pipes capable of withstanding higher pressures and incorporated a series of pressure relief valves that should allow the boiler to shed any backup and prevent that buildup from occurring again. Of course, my team will continue to monitor the system to make sure it really does fix it.”
“If we’re releasing steam to protect the boiler, how do we keep the pressure up? Won’t it just bleed all the power away?”
“It shouldn’t, since it should only release the steam in over-pressure situations, which would only happen if something else had failed, but that is possible in a combat situation, which could lead to a loss of power during combat.”
“That isn’t ideal.”
“No. Although neither is the boiler exploding during a combat situation.”
“That’s true,” Lucan said, frowning down at the ship.
Hortensius knew the shipbuilder would prefer to stick to wood and sail, things he was more comfortable with.
“The only real fix for this is training,” Hortensius said. “I think it’s clear every ship is going to need an engineer, which in this case just means someone trained on the system, inside and out. These men will be taught not just how to operate it, but to recognize problems and perform field improvements. It will make getting ships out of the slip harder, of course, since proper training can take as much time as building one of these, but I think we can set up a program to do it.”
“We should really start that now, then. The Consul has already asked about the new river ships twice this month, and I imagine those requests will become more frequent as the year draws to an end. If we want these engineers of yours trained properly, you need to start now. Unless you plan on parting with some of your people.”
“Ha, you know that is out of the question. I’ll begin working on a program now and see what volunteers we can get for it, since I’m sure that the training will also need some fine-tuning as we get into it.”
“Good. Then I’m extra glad you came out today because that could have been a major delay point in this entire project. You know, I must admit, this experience has given me a newfound appreciation for the risks involved in our work. I know you talked about how much harder the accelerated timeline made everything, but ... I hadn’t put that together with the safety risk before.”
“Yes. I think it takes the first big failure for all of us, before we realize just how big the costs can be if we make a mistake in haste.”
“Yes,” Lucan said in the tone of a man remembering his own failures, before shaking it off. “Well, so far, it seems the design is working better, but we’ll see once we get the entire ship built around it. I also wanted you to come by and talk about the propeller design. We got the bent one pulled out and had to make some design adjustments for this new one, as well as adding in the new protective shell you designed, which I have some concerns about.”
“Really? I thought it was actually ingenious when one of my designers brought it to me. It wasn’t in the Consul’s original plans, but the small-scale river testing we did showed that the housing would allow enough water to pass through to not impact momentum and would protect the blade and shaft from debris and even small impacts with shallow riverbeds, should they occur.”
“And our testing shows the same. My concern was twofold. One was clogging. The way it allows water to pass through is great, and will probably work well on the ocean, but in a river, with silt and debris, clogging will be a problem. I’ve talked to some of your guys about using some of the cabling equipment you designed for other areas and making some kind of metal weave to put over it, to keep that stuff out of the flow, but that has its own problem. It’s easy to see the pressure created by the water coming through will hold the debris in place, clogging the mesh. The more it gets clogged, the less water that comes through and the less propulsion we’ll get.”
“That is a good point,” Hortensius said, pressing his lips together in thought.
“I do have a suggestion, however.”
“Really? I’m all ears.”
This was the part Hortensius liked the most about collaboration. The bouncing of ideas off of each other, sharing thoughts. It got his heart pumping.
“Instead of the opening at the rear of the intake, what if that was closed and pointed, because it’s also adding drag to the ship, and instead we put these almost gill-like inlets down the length of the shaft housing to allow water in, smaller and still with the metal weave protecting from debris, but with enough of them, and each only providing a fraction of the flow, so that any one of them, or several of them, getting clogged wouldn’t impact the overall water flow.”
Hortensius nodded along as Lucan spoke. “That’s interesting. That’s very interesting. If it’s not a flat, wide surface, or even the curved one we had, and if we angled it out instead of in, the pressure of the water moving along the housing as it cut through the water would push the debris that did try to clog in the vents. That could very well work.”
Lucan beamed. “I’m glad you approve.”
“I do. You know, this is where it shows how much practical experience matters. The theory of all this is workable, but you have real experience with water. A lifetime of it. Which really helps you see other ways to do things that we didn’t think of. We need more of this. I should probably look at bringing in experts for whatever area a project is impacting for the other stuff we’re working on, who’ve used the design, or previous or similar designs, in the field enough to see the pitfalls we haven’t thought of.”
“That’s probably not a bad idea,” Lucan said, clearly happy he’d been able to contribute.
Hortensius, however, was already working out the venting idea. They were very close to being able to actually build one of these river beasts. He still didn’t see how well these could help them in the war, considering the rivers mostly ran west to east and not across the enemies’ path of advancement. What mattered was that the Consul did see.
Besides, this was a test platform for the ocean-going ships all along, which meant they were closer to that now than ever before.
Pella, Macedonia
The journey to Greece had been long, and Ramirus’s very bones hurt. The first two-thirds of the journey had not been that difficult, mostly done on long stretches of rail in fairly comfortable passenger cars, with the exception of a short boat trip across the channel.
The real trouble had been once they’d reached the edge of Italia, where the Britannian rail lines ended. From there, they had traveled by horseback over rough paved roads, across mountains and hills. Ramirus realized how much he’d grown used to living in a more modernized society, since this would have once been his normal transportation when he traveled beyond Devnum, and now he hardly ever mounted a horse. That had also been almost seven years prior. He was so much older now.
Finally, they’d made it to Pella, the once-grand capital of Macedonia. The city’s faded glory struck him immediately. Not just that it had faded from its glory days under Philip and Alexander, before the rise of the Carthaginians, although it certainly had lost the splendor it held at the height of the Hellenistic age. Again, he was forced to realize how much the Consul had given them and how it had affected nearly every aspect of his life.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.