Join a dedicated Crown gunner on the battlefield
“Drop by three degrees elevation.”
The ratcheting clunk of the gears clattered as the sweating firing crew worked them, the barrel of the artillery piece dropping by a fraction that would translate to hundreds of yards at the other end.
“Charge coils. Hold for four.” The twin banks of arcmagnetic conductors began to buzz as they stored voltaic charge. The crew could feel their teeth begin itching and hair standing on end.
Gunner First Class Charvi Alam checked the calculations on the scrap of paper on her knee, then took one final look through the rangefinder. The chipped and dusty glass showed a Faust colossus wading through the sea towards the heavily fortified Raj position in Konkan, on the western coast of India.
The towering war machine glittered as the white surf cascaded off its limbs in the hot Bombay sun. It was beautiful really, albeit in a terrible way, a thing wrought for naught but destruction. Behind it, the Imperium patrol ships crouched on the horizon. The fleet had been probing the Raj’s defences for months now, and this advance party was just another feint as they sought weaknesses — Bombay, with its deep water harbour was ideal to anchor their fleets if ever they should choose to invade.
The Faust was powering forwards. Charvi could feel the cold weight of dread settle in her stomach. The sizzling tracers of arc energy crashed into the beach from its cannons, tearing apart their fortifications in a blast of scorched concrete and broken bodies.
“Fire,” she ordered.
The whine of the arcmagnetic conductors reached its highest pitch, and with a bark the Merlin railgun fired. The skies reverberated with the boom that came from the solid sturginium-alloy round punching through the sound barrier. The sheer friction from the air caused it to fly with a visible line of searing fire, screaming as it plunged towards its target.
The Faust took the round in the shoulder, the massive shower of sparks knocking it sideways, but it put its head down and charged onwards, rushing towards the beach.
Charvi began to calculate the next firing solution on her scrap of paper. It was yellowed and covered in a dense scrawl of diagrams and equations tracking the speed of rounds, elevation, even the resistance of the air. On the back of her notes, or maybe the front rather, was the letter from her husband.
They had a little shop in Shepherd’s Bush together, an automata repair outfit that aligned gears and re-punched code cards for the well-to-do’s domestic help. Faiaz, her husband, worked out the front as the chipper and cheerful proprietor that welcomed the ladies and gentlemen when Mister Butler or Missus Maid went on the fritz.
Charvi worked out the back. In the den of broken metal men and constant calculations, that was where she found her thrills. Nothing was more pleasing than a well-calculated and programmed punch card.
She had been a mere gunner when she enlisted, but when the fancy-dandy officer of her unit had found himself on the wrong end of an Imperium rocket battery, she received a dubious field promotion. The other officers, with their good breeding and noble families back in England didn’t like her much, but she couldn’t find the energy to really care.
There was a shout from the next Merlin railgun over on the beach, the gunnery crew leaping from the sides as it exploded in a blast of sizzling arc energy.
“It’s still coming! Traverse, ten degrees. Elevate four. Charge for ten, we want a proper hole in this fellow.”
“Aye!” came the shout of her crew. The gun began to swivel sideways, its point looking up now as the colossi drew closer.
“Fire!”
The round slugged the colossus in the chest, punching through the front armour and out its back, sending a shower of thick black fuel oil spraying out behind it. Even as it bled it still waded through the surf, its heavy footfalls reverberating powerfully enough for Charvi to feel in her feet. The round impacted somewhere in the ocean behind it like a lost cricket ball.
Even as she scribbled on the back of it, even as the titan of death stormed towards her, she couldn’t help but hear the words of the letter rattle through her head.
Oh, it’s been so hard since you signed up to serve. The shop is so busy, and Rosie has been so helpful in keeping the place going. We didn’t mean for it to happen… I didn’t know if we’d begun to drift apart even before you left… now you’re on the other side of the world… papers on the way… please sign… I will always love you…
How could Faiaz be so… so typical? So boringly predictable.
The colossus was towering over them now, raising its claw, ready to plunge it into the shoreline defences, punching through the harbour wall to admit the Imperium fleet into the bay.
Charvi was scribbling furiously, calculating not just her own gun's firing solution but also for the line of Merlins set along the beach. She was rattling off the elevations and transversals of each into the telephony handset, each gun chief reporting back confirmed.
The air above the beach wavered and twisted with the heat radiating off the gun coils. The whine had reached a mind-itching tinnitus pitch, melding with the claustrophobic humidity.
“Fire for effect,’ she finally shouted over the overwhelming noise of the Merlin’s voltaic charge.
The Merlins sang as they fired one after the other. The searing comets of rounds peppered the colossus, shearing through metal and splintering hydraulics and voltaic channels. There was an explosion from somewhere within it, a crump that pushed it backwards, and finally the giant crashed into the sea like a man cast overboard.
A ragged cheer went up from the crews of the Merlins and the rifles sheltering in the bunkers. Bombay’s harbour wall was unbreached. Charvi fancied she could hear seething German curses on the wind, foiled once again.
Charvi let go of Faiaz’s letter and her calculations, letting the sea breeze take the paper, before it went spiralling up into the sky on the superheated updraft of the Merlin’s coils. She watched it go, and then drew another sheet from her pack. She had begun writing a letter, but couldn’t find the words. Across the top it read ‘Dear Faiaz—’ She crossed them out with a grim smile and began to calculate how best to put a hole below the waterline of the Imperial vessel on the horizon.
The calculations sang in her mind. Reprogramming automata was all well and good, but this was a real thrill.
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