Chapter 24

Author’s note: [ and ] delineate mind-to-mind dialog.

Igrax’s insight into what made a good javelin was a tremendous help in designing the warhead. Igrax worked with the potter in fleshing out the details while I worked on improving the fuse. We were amazingly lucky to have a working prototype in about two weeks that Igrax was happy with and that Hippolyte approved of.

Both of them were advocates of the amentum, a leather throwing strap that greatly improved the range and accuracy of the javelin. The amentum was a bit difficult to learn to use, but once mastered, made the javelin’s effective range comparable to the crossbow. By the end of the two weeks, we were ready to freeze the design of the Mark 1 Zeus Javelin. It was given that name for what I considered to be obvious reasons.

The potter made up enough warhead shells to use up the last of my blasting powder. That gave us 30 of the Zeus Javelins, enough to demonstrate them to the Coronis Army. We broke the army down into small groups so that everybody could get a good look at the weapon and its effect. Of course, Igrax did the demonstrating, and he made quite an impression with the new weapon.

I explained that we were out of the sulfur needed to make the blasting powder that was the heart of the warhead. We would issue the weapon for training once we were able to find some more sulfur. Hopefully, that would not be much longer. Meanwhile, everybody was going to train with the use of the amentum, because that was going to be essential when the Zeus Javelins were issued.

Fortunately, 12 pounds of sulfur were delivered about a week later. I had to pay one silver coin per pound of the sulfur, but I couldn’t afford to quibble about the cost, since I had no way to make blasting powder without the sulfur. I also figured that I would just leave my standing order for 50 pounds of sulfur active, since I needed every pound that I could get. I had plenty of silver coins, so I was not bothered by that exorbitant cost.

It looked like I should also put out a standing order for saltpeter. I was going to need a little over 5½ pounds of saltpeter for every pound of sulfur, and that took a lot of piss. There was no way around it, I was going to have to teach anybody who would listen how to get saltpeter from urine, but I certainly was not going to teach them how to make gunpowder. I did not say why I was interested, but I also put out the word that there was a cash reward for anybody who could tell me where to find a bat cave. Bat guano (droppings) was very rich in saltpeter.

We had a few pounds of saltpeter on hand since we had continued to extract it ever since I realized that I was going into the business of manufacturing blasting powder. I would switch to the bat shit and away from the urine as soon as I could get a reliable supply, but we would stay with what we had until then.

Anyway, I had Igrax contact the potter about more of the pottery warhead shells, and to tell him that we would need about 1,000 of them in the near future. I had to grin when I gave the order to Igrax. He gave out with a belly laugh because he knew exactly how the potter was going to react when he heard how many of the shells we wanted. Igrax also contracted with several carpenters to supply us with the dowels used as the diesel pistons and the shafts used as the main body of the javelin. Yes, I was starting my own “industrial/military complex,” but I had no choice in the matter.

I wanted a separate group specializing in the Zeus Javelin something like Damon’s cavalry. These grenades would be devastating in the kind of warfare usually practiced in this era, and I figured a Zeus Brigade led by Igrax would be a key piece in making sure that we fought only short wars. I wanted every soldier to be able to use the Zeus Javelin effectively. The Zeus Javelin would be such a force multiplier that we should be able to take on even the Persians when we had enough of them available.

It also occurred to me that we could modify the Zeus Javelin so that it could be fired by a ballista. I could imagine the dismay when our enemies were hit by an artillery version of the Zeus Javelin. The question was just how big a warhead would be needed for such a version of the javelin. Maybe we could even load the warhead with shrapnel to add even more of a kick from our artillery. A combination of firebombs and Zeus Javelins launched by a Big Boy battery should go a long way toward protecting our fort from the most determined attacker.

We had one hell of a development program ahead of us if I could get all of this to work. With all of the things that Hippolyte had to do, I could not use more than about 15% of her time with my projects. No matter how I sliced it, I was going to have to establish an R&D (Research and Development) department just to follow up on all of the ramifications of the Zeus Javelin. There was no telling what else we could come up with to make wholesale killing one of our standard diplomatic tools. Like it or not, Coronis was going to become a major factor in the development of Greece and ultimately the rest of the world.

I was going to have to talk this weapons R&D operation over with Hippolyte as soon as possible, and get her behind it. For one thing, her advice on weapons was going to be a key part of our efforts. If there were a weapons expert anywhere in Greece, she was the one!

[As far as I am concerned, you have done so well with your weapon inventions so far that I am all in favor of anything else you want to do. I will not have any trouble following what you are doing, and I will make suggestions as appropriate. Please do not fail to ask any questions that you may have. Besides, it is just plain fun to follow your work.]

[Thank you, Hippolyte. I will keep that in mind.]

I discussed my R&D plans with Janos, and asked him to find me some candidates for the R&D effort. He brought me a couple more candidates, and I made Titanos, my mechanical engineer, a permanent member of the staff. I wanted a separate building to use as our research lab for safety’s sake, and I had it constructed from wood as a small copy of the fort because I wanted something more substantial than a tent.

Hippolyte and I were both concerned about having an attacker set fire to the base of the walls of our fort and laboratory, so I reopened the prospect of a deep dry moat surrounding the fort and the lab buildings. My idea was to pile dirt against the base of the walls so that the wood of the walls could not be reached from the ground. The dirt for this protective cover would come from the deep dry moat. The dragline would be used to dig the moat and obtain the dirt for coating the walls.

We also dug a deep pit, covered it over with a wooden roof, and covered that with the dirt that came from the pit. This was to be our ammunition dump where we stored our blasting powder and the Zeus Javelins when they were not issued to active troops. The dump would be connected to the lab and the fort by tunnels made the same way as the dump. That would cut way down on the construction time.

Thank the Fates, Zeus, and Ares! A large bat cave was found which had never been mined for its guano. There seemed to be tons of the stuff there, and the cave was close enough to make it practical to haul from the cave to the lab for processing. I never told anyone, except on a “need to know” basis what I was using the guano for. At last, we had all of the saltpeter that we would need.

Sulfur was now the bottleneck, but eventually I managed to accumulate 500 pounds of sulfur, and I canceled my standing order for sulfur at that point. Later on, I could open the pipeline again when it looked appropriate.

We now moved into a prime project of producing enough blasting powder for every soldier to have access to four Zeus Javelins. Enough of the javelins were made to have 15 for every member of the Zeus Brigade. Each of the smaller javelins used three ounces of blasting powder, and that called for a total of 441 pounds of blasting powder for them.

I figured 300 pounds of blasting powder for the larger Zeus Javelins to be used by the ballistas. We made up a series of the large Zeus Javelins for test firing on the Little Boys and on the Big Boys. Once the javelins were ready, I sent out an announcement of the day of the test firing, along with an invitation to come to the fort for the display.