Chapter 287 -280: The Position
IRONHOLD:Storage Facility 9
The doors were open when they came down from the yard, and she was fully lit.
That was different from the drawings. On paper, she was just lines with a man drawn beside her for scale. Lit from below, with gantries running her full length and men working the mounting three floors up, she stopped being a diagram.
Ironbreaker was waiting at the foot of the near track.
"Seven," he said. "Malen said seven. Six of you are here for the work and one’s here to argue. That’s the usual split."
"Which one’s arguing?" Verrin asked.
"Don’t know yet. Give it an hour."
He turned and started walking, and they followed him.
"Rules are rules, and I say them once. Nobody touches anything. Nobody stands under a load. If a man on a gantry shouts, you stop moving—don’t look up, just stop. Looking up is how a falling wrench finds your face." He didn’t slow his pace. "And nobody walks behind the spades. Those blades soak up the whole recoil — a hundred and twenty-four tons kicking backward into the ground. If one ever tears loose, anything behind it is gone." He didn’t slow down while speaking. "So you don’t stand there. Not when she’s loaded, not when she’s cold, not when she’s sat in a workshop with nobody near her."
"Even in here?" Marrick said.
"Especially in here. In here you’re thinking about your dinner. Out there you’ll be thinking about worse, and I’d rather the habit was already built into your legs by then."
He stopped at the breech.
Up close, it was far more intimidating than from the doorway. The breech block alone stood taller than Verrin. The loading tray ran back from it on a polished rail bed, bright and behind that, the ram vanished into its housing.
"What do you know about operating a gun?"
"Nothing," Kolt said.
"Good. I’d rather nothing than bad field battery habits." Ironbreaker laid a hand on the tray. "Twenty-four in the crew. Twenty do the ordinary work—aiming, sighting, spades, magic cores, mages, carriers. Four of you do the part that can’t be done by ordinary men. I’ll walk you through the steps so you understand why it takes four."
He counted them off on his fingers.
"Round comes off the carrier crane. Onto the tray. Tray comes up and locks to the breech. Round gets rammed. Charges go in behind it. Breech closes and locks. She fires. Breech opens, chamber gets cleared, tray drops back. Start again."
"Eight steps," Marrick said.
"Eight steps, eight minutes, and four of them will kill you if you get them wrong." He looked around at them. "Those four are yours. Congratulations."
Position one was the lift.
He walked them back to where the shell carrier would stand.
"The round comes across on the crane with the weight-reduction magic already on it. Six hundred kilos, near enough. Your man takes it off the hook and places it on the tray by hand, and he sets it down perfectly square." He tapped the rail bed. "Half a degree off and it jams when the ram drives it. A jammed round, a stuck ram, a live shell sitting on the tray, and a gun that isn’t firing while the enemy walks their artillery onto your position. Nine seconds. Zero mistakes."
"Why not use a second crane?" Odric asked.
"Because a second crane is a second piece of machinery to break, a second target to get hit, and a second obstacle in your way when you need to clear that tray in a hurry." Ironbreaker shrugged. "A man’s arms don’t jam. They just ache, and you can ignore an ache."
Position two was the ram.
He moved along the gun and placed his palm on the steel housing.
"Powered, but the release is manual and it’s stiff on purpose. A ram that triggers easily goes off too when nobody meant it to." He held up a single finger. "That’s the first reason it takes a knight. Here’s the second. You don’t just push the round in. You drive it home hard enough to seat securely against the rifling, and you have to feel when it’s properly set." He looked at them. "Too soft and it sits loose in the chamber. Anyone care to guess what a loose two-ton round does when the explosive charge goes off behind it?"
Nobody offered an answer.
"Neither do I, and I’d like us all to keep it that way."
Position three was the charges.
He led them past the breech to a rack set well back behind a wall of heavy armor plate.
"Propellant. Separate from the shell, goes in right behind it, and it’s the item on this gun most likely to wipe out all of you at once." His voice stayed steady, but he had stopped walking. "Heavy. Handled fast. Handled right next to a chamber that’s still burning hot from the last shot. There is no version of that task that is completely safe."
"Then what is there?" Wend asked.
"A man who does it the exact same way every single time. Same order, same hands, same speed, whether he’s fresh or he’s been at it for nine hours and the ground is shaking." Ironbreaker tapped the rack. "That’s why it takes a knight, and it isn’t just about the strength. It’s because that action has to be done identically each time and if you mess this up. The whole crew will be flying with the gun."
Position four was the breech block.
They walked back to the heavy block.
"Closes under power. Seals by hand. Every round, every time—a man puts his shoulder behind it and drives the final lock home." He rapped the steel with a knuckle. "Get it wrong and burning gas escapes past the block when she fires. At six hundred millimeters, that isn’t a small leak. That’s the entire rear of the gun blowing apart, taking everyone standing within thirty feet along with it."
"Those are the four positions. Lift, ram, charges, breech." Ironbreaker looked along the line of men. "There is no station on this gun where a mistake gets you a second chance. Every single error costs the crew, the gun, or both."
"And the other twenty?" Wend asked.
"They do everything else, and none of their jobs kill them as fast." He shrugged. "They lay the barrel, aim, secure the ground anchors, run the ammunition carriers, keep the magic cores powered. Good men, and an ordinary field battery could do that work tomorrow. It’s your four spots they can’t fill. Your four positions decide whether she fires every eight minutes or every twenty."
"So we are the engine of the firing cycle," Kolt said.
"Twenty men get her ready to shoot. Four men make her shoot again. That’s the entire design."
Verrin had wandered back to the loading tray, standing beside it with his hands hanging loose.
"Can I try one?"
"Which position?"
"The lift."
Ironbreaker looked at him for a moment, then called up toward the overhead platform. "Practice round on the crane! Everyone clear the tray bed!"
There was shouting above, and someone swore at an assistant. A mage came down from the upper walkway—a small, tired woman with white chalk covering her wrists. She stood near the carrier and activated a spell Kolt couldn’t quite see. The air around the shell shimmered strangely for a second, then returned to normal.
"That’s all?" Verrin asked.
"That’s four months of her training and about nine seconds of yours. Don’t get comfortable—she has two hundred more of those to handle today, and she’ll be pleasant for maybe nine of them." Ironbreaker gestured toward the heavy hook. "Whenever you’re ready."
Verrin took the round off the crane.
Kolt watched his shoulders absorb the sudden weight, watched him find the balance, and the two tons of shell move across three feet of air in one man’s arms before settling onto the metal bed.
It landed crooked.
"Two degrees off. That’s a jammed round. Try again."
Verrin lifted it back off the tray. Set it down again. Still crooked.
"Again."
On the fourth attempt, it sat down perfectly square. Verrin stepped back, breathing harder than he wanted anyone to notice.
"How long did that take?"
"Fifty-one seconds and four attempts." No trace of soft praise. "In a month, it needs to be nine seconds on the first try, or you aren’t working my gun."
"Nine seconds."
"Nine."
Verrin nodded slowly. He didn’t look offended at all. He had finally been handed a real challenge after months of standing around.
"Right," Verrin said, reaching for the hook again.
Kolt found Ironbreaker near the breech block a bit later while the others remained gathered around the loading tray.
"Tell me the part you left out."
"Which part?"
"You told us what the four loaders do. You haven’t said what commanding this position actually means."
Ironbreaker rubbed his gray beard.
"Standing where everyone can see you when the first counter-battery shell hits. That’s most of it." He shrugged. "Twenty gunners who have never been under heavy fire will watch one single man to see if they’re going to survive. If that man ducks behind the frame, everyone else will be hiding behind the frame within a minute, and the gun stops firing."
"So I stand out in the open."
"You stand where they can all see you, and you give orders in a calm, flat voice. Load. Ready. Fire. All day long." He looked up at the towering barrel. "It’s a terrible way to fight a war, but it’s the only thing that works. I’ve seen it from the other side of a siege line. The artillery unit that keeps firing is always the one where someone refused to take cover."
"And when my own men start falling?"
"Then you keep giving orders in that same flat voice." Ironbreaker didn’t break eye contact. "That’s the job. Malen picked you because you already proved you won’t retreat. Nobody said it was going to be pleasant."
Behind them, Verrin was on his seventh attempt and had brought his time down to twenty-eight seconds. Wend and Odric were debating the best angle to approach the tray. Marrick had found a mechanical winch on the crane he wanted to inspect, under the watchful eye of an engineer who clearly knew his reputation.
"Four hours to set up the gun," Kolt said. "Six to pack up and move."
"Give or take."
"Then I want my crew doing both in total darkness, completely blindfolded, before we fire a single live round through her."
Ironbreaker raised his eyebrows slightly.
"That’s going to cost you a month of misery."
"A month of misery now is better than learning during a siege that the only man who knew how to release the ground anchors was the one who just got killed."
Ironbreaker studied Kolt for a moment. Then he turned toward the overhead gantry and shouted at the top of his lungs.
"Six weeks! They’re staying six weeks, not four! Inform the barracks!"
"I didn’t say six weeks," Kolt said.
"No," Ironbreaker replied. "You said something smart, so I’m charging you an extra two weeks for it."