The Plains of Pluto
Copyright© 2025 by Lumpy
Chapter 8
Carthage
Another body was found floating in the harbor. That made for two so far this month, along with a man stabbed in an alley, a woman whose neck was broken when she inexplicably climbed onto the roof of a small row of homes and then fell off, and another man who just disappeared with no trace anywhere.
That man had seemed promising. Valto, a man of similar means to Geral but with no connection to her previous agents. He’d indicated knowing some of the very low-level people Geral had identified for her as being involved in the rebel activity, giving him at least some sort of in with the group. He’d contacted her once since he made contact with those friends, to let her know he’d had success and should have something for her soon.
The praetorians had kept an eye out for him from afar, confirming his whereabouts and that he was still active in the poorer districts. He had returned to his home each day and was visible.
And then one day, nothing. She’d had his home under watch since his disappearance and he’d never returned to it.
Medb scowled. All this seemingly random violence, all connected by the fact that these people were all ‘agents’ of hers that she’d been trying to get infiltrated into the rebels that were still operating in the city. The death toll was climbing, and this didn’t include the dozen more who, while still alive, had provided little more than mild gossip and secondhand rumors.
It was true, she didn’t have time to properly train any of these people in intelligence gathering, since time was of the essence right now, but the same had been true of Geral and he had still managed to get deep into the conspiracy.
She’d thought she might at least stumble onto someone with a modicum of ability by now.
But no. They either allowed themselves to be sidelined or ended up dead.
She crumpled the latest report and hurled it at the wall. After a year of this, she still had no knowledge of what these people were doing.
A sharp knock interrupted her brooding.
“Enter,” she said, straightening in her chair.
It wouldn’t do for people to see her sulking. Claudius stepped inside, nodding to the two praetorian guards who stood outside Medb’s office before closing the door behind him.
“I assume you have something,” Medb said, a statement and not a question.
“I believe so. I’ve had men mixed among the night shift dock laborers for weeks now, and they have seen several of these unusual ships you mentioned. The ships themselves are flagged under multiple nations. Hispania, Italia, Scandi, Britannia ... even some Greek vessels. As far as I can find, there is no pattern to it.”
“One or two groups working together, that I could believe, but something like this cannot be that widespread.”
Claudius opened his mouth to speak but Medb continued, “Maybe Geral was wrong, and he was just seeing patterns where none exist. It would be a striking coincidence, but still, it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve been led down false paths.”
“My lady,” Claudius tried again.
“I was so sure, though. Geral was quite clever, and in his note, he sounded certain this was the key. Certain enough to die for whatever he discovered.”
“My Lady,” Claudius said when she finally paused, “there’s more. My men have noticed one peculiar thing that ties the vessels together. Every single one of these ships, regardless of flag, had crew members who spoke Egyptian.”
“Egyptian? That’s ... unusual. As a people, they’re not generally known for their sailing prowess. Too accustomed to the calm waters of the Nile and the Middle Sea.”
“Which is why it garnered my people’s attention. Most merchant crews we’ve seen have been Scandi, regardless of the origin of the ship. There are exceptions, of course, but what’s truly noteworthy is that my men found no trace of Egyptian sailors on ships that operate more normally. They appear only during these nighttime operations.”
“That is notable.”
“What’s more, these Egyptian crew members seem to hold authority over the ships’ regular crews during loading. They never leave the vessels, even during the brief periods when other crew members are granted shore leave, which is rare enough for these particular ships. So far, it’s the only thing notable about these ships beyond the hours they keep. Without that, they would be odd, but otherwise innocuous. Though I confess I can think of no reason for their involvement in whatever this is.”
“I can think of several reasons,” Medb said darkly. “None of them good.”
Factorium
Hortensius shut the heavy wooden door behind him, wanting nothing more than to flop down on his padded ‘thinking’ chair and close his eyes for a few minutes.
He’d spent the night on a train from the far southern tip of the country, after examining the fields that the Consul had marked for future drilling, once the mechanics for the drilling platform were all worked out. Beyond just designing it and getting it prepared, he had to make sure that the areas they wanted to build them on were actually clear. The Consul may know where this special oil was located, but he didn’t know who was living there.
It was a good thing he’d checked. Several were under active farms and small villages, and one was right under where a train depot had been built to provide services for one of the more rural populations. The train station he could move. It would cost, but it was doable.
The villages were harder, and something he’d have to leave up to the Empress and her ministers.
Except for that wrinkle, the trip had been successful overall, with the exception that, as wonderful and life-changing as trains had been, sleeping on one during an overnight trip was all but impossible. The blasted thing never stopped moving or vibrating, was loud, and wasn’t insulated well enough to keep you from freezing while in the cars.
All in all, not a great way to spend the night. He’d been looking forward to falling into his thinking chair and catching a few hours of rest.
That wasn’t going to be an option after he walked into his office and saw a thick packet that he recognized. For a man who was busy leading the legions in a life-or-death struggle in the east, the Consul did send a lot of these packets. It never ceased to amaze him how prolific the Consul could be.
Of course, it was the new weapons that the Consul had them constantly producing and improving that enabled them to defeat Carthage and what was going to finally allow the Western Alliance to push back against the eastern threat, so he had no time to relax.
Dropping his things, Hortensius picked up the packet and broke the seal, unsurprisingly finding stacks of technical documents and drawings, each more intricate than the last.
His eyes widened slightly when he saw what it was. For more than a year, they’d been doing work that the Consul had said was leading up to a new weapon system. Even knowing that was what they were working toward, for Hortensius, it had seemed to be impossibly in the future. Something on the horizon that they would never reach.
Part of that was because the Consul hadn’t shared his plan for how each step fit with the others, but Hortensius understood the reasoning for that. Even the Consul’s extraordinary output had limits, and he knew the volume of instructions that he received, and that he was not the only one getting these kinds of detailed diagrams. Sorantius, Lucan, and others had equally detailed work assigned to them from the Consul, with many of the projects intertwined together, fitting like an intricate mosaic.
Seeing this, though, it was like reaching the summit of a mountain after a long climb. Not that Hortensius was one to climb very many mountains.
The Consul had mentioned, in passing at least, what the weapon would be, but that had not done it justice. It was such a far cry from the rifles they had been using since the last war. Loaded quickly from the bottom by sliding the metal-cased bullets into a long, tube-like magazine, with a lever that the soldier would have his hand through when firing. As each round fired, he would work the lever, which would automatically eject the casing from the previous round and load a new round into the firing chamber.
Where it took twenty to thirty seconds for a soldier to load one of the current rifles, pouring powder down the barrel, ramming the ball home, priming the hammer, a soldier using this could fire a round every second.
Admittedly, the magazine had limited capacity, holding what looked to be maybe seven rounds, which could quickly be expended, even the loading of those was faster. A soldier could have another seven rounds in the magazine in a matter of seconds as well. If he was reading this right, a legionnaire with this rifle could fire all seven rounds and load in seven new rounds in the time it took a current soldier to load his rifle once.
The volume of firepower would be enormous.
As would the speed at which the men went through ammunition. The Consul had warned them that they would need to have significant production of both gunpowder and the metal casings once the new weapon systems were in place, and Hortensius had begun expanding their facilities to produce more, but until this moment, it had not occurred to him just how much more they would be using.
He’d tripled the production of both after the Consul’s warning, thinking he was going overboard, but he didn’t question his instructions. It was clear that, instead of going overboard, he had missed the mark by several factors. They needed to seriously up production of both, to build up a stockpile of rounds to be ready when the first of the new rifles came off the line.
They had some time.
Looking at the diagrams, it was clear this would not be an easy feat ... There were going to be hurdles. The lever mechanism was complex and would take time to get the tooling right, and he was concerned about the magazine spring which pushed the bullets forward.
Just looking at the diagrams, he could see that wear would be a problem, with the spring losing tension over time. This would be the part that wore out the most, without a doubt. Well, and maybe the small pin that was used to transfer motion from the trigger to the firing mechanism.
Both were so thin that the current steel they had, even the alloys, would wear quickly. He would have to get with his gunsmiths and foundry foreman and see what thoughts they had about increasing the strength of these parts without making them unworkable for their given task, especially important in the spring which couldn’t be so stiff that it lost functionality.
The Consul’s notes seemed to indicate he would accept a level of failure, and they should prepare a large number of these parts to be replaced in the field. Hortensius would follow that instruction, but if he could improve on the design he would.
This would take time and it would be months if not a full year until these were in production and reached the troops.
When they did, however ... this would change the nature of warfare again.
Devnum
Lucilla hadn’t realized how much she’d missed home. While it had been good to see Ky, after almost a year of separation, and she’d needed to see her people serving on the front line, and more importantly, be seen by them, this was where she belonged.
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