Building a Viking Empire with Modern Industry-Chapter 242: Rules of War

After three weeks at City Titan, The Outer Artillery Proving Grounds

Ragnar crossed his arms over his blackened breastplate. Three weeks had passed since the catastrophic firedamp explosion had nearly severed the empire’s critical coal supply in the Western Deep Vein.

Ragnar and Chief Engineer Ludwig had successfully stabilized the collapsing shafts by deploying massive, steam-powered centrifugal fans. By constantly pumping fresh, high-pressure oxygen deep into the subterranean tunnels, they had effectively purged the invisible methane gas, allowing the highly disciplined Tang laborers to resume their furious extraction of the precious anthracite coal.

A firedamp explosion usually meant a mine was permanently sealed, abandoned as a cursed, burning tomb for generations. Ragnar looked at an apocalyptic underground inferno and decided to literally blow it out.

Now, with the coal flowing uninterrupted into the roaring blast furnaces of the capital, the Iron Father had successfully turned his mind toward the ultimate integration of East and West.

Resting upon a carriage bolted with iron rivets just a few paces ahead of the King was the terrifying culmination of this forced marriage between Viking metallurgy and Chinese alchemy.

It was a cannon, but it was unlike any primitive, highly volatile thunder-tube the Tang Dynasty had ever produced.

Forged entirely from a single, flawless billet of hyper-purified Bessemer steel, the artillery piece gleamed with a predatory luster under the pale winter sun.

Kneeling beside the breach of this terrifying new weapon, the captive eastern alchemist, Master Wei, trembled, his cracked fingernails meticulously adjusting the firing mechanism.

The Tang engineers possessed the recipe for black powder, but their chemical ratios were wildly inconsistent, and their bronze cast barrels were plagued with microscopic air bubbles.

But Ragnar had forced them to purify their saltpeter to a staggering ninety-nine percent concentration, mixing it in perfectly damp, compressed corned grains. Furthermore, he had introduced them to the holy grail of modern ballistics: Rifling.

Inside that gleaming Bessemer steel tube, Ragnar’s precision machinists had meticulously carved spiraling grooves. When the pressurized gases from the ignited powder expanded, they forced the aerodynamic, conical iron shell to grip those grooves, violently spinning the projectile as it exited the muzzle... This gyroscopic stabilization prevented the shell from tumbling wildly in the air, transforming an inaccurate, smoothbore weapon into a hyper-lethal sniper rifle scaled up to the size of a siege engine!

Thus, a technological gap of several centuries was violently, irrevocably bridged in a single afternoon.

"The propellant charge is secured, Great Iron Father!" Master Wei stammered,

"The corned powder is packed precisely to your terrifying specifications! The primer is ready!"

Striding up the ridge with the commanding steps of a conquering warlord, Vanguard Commander Bjorn let out a booming laugh that echoed across the barren testing grounds.

Having just returned from his spectacular, bloodless conquest of the Kingdom of Leinster, Bjorn was practically radiating a terrifying aura of victorious pride.

Gripping the delicate, trembling hand of his newly wedded bride, Queen Aisling of Ireland, Bjorn pulled her gently but firmly toward the viewing perimeter.

"Show us this new magic, brother!" Bjorn roared,

"You promised me a weapon that would render the highest castle walls entirely obsolete, and I have brought my lovely Irish Queen to witness the dawn of our new era!"

Queen Aisling clutched the wool of her emerald cloak, she had seen the Bessemer steel swords back in Dublin, but this massive beast radiating an aura of suppressed, apocalyptic violence was something entirely beyond her medieval comprehension!

"Target the limestone cliff face directly across the frozen inlet," Ragnar commanded, "It is precisely one mile away. Show my Vanguard Commander what true power looks like."

Master Wei approached the breach of the cannon.

Taking a deep breath, the elderly scholar pressed the burning match directly to the powder-filled touchhole.

A blinding, instantaneous flash of pure, white-hot kinetic energy erupted from the muzzle, followed a fraction of a second later by a concussive, atmospheric shockwave that physically punched everyone on the ridge squarely in the chest.

The deafening roar of the weapon entirely shattered the serene silence of the Scottish highlands, sending thousands of panicked seabirds scattering wildly into the gray sky. Billowing clouds of thick, acrid white smoke instantly engulfed the firing line, smelling strongly of sulfur and absolute destruction.

Tracking the shot with his highly specialized, brass-rimmed spyglass, Ragnar watched the violently spinning, aerodynamically perfect iron shell cross the mile-wide expanse of the inlet in a matter of a few terrifying seconds!

Striking the massive, solid limestone cliff face with an unbelievable accumulation of kinetic force, the armor-piercing shell detonated upon impact.

A breathtaking explosion of pulverized white rock and blinding dust erupted outward, sending massive boulders tumbling violently down into the freezing, dark waters of the loch below.

An entire section of a literal mountain had just been violently erased from existence by a single, spinning piece of iron fired from a mile away! If an enemy army saw this, they would simply drop their weapons, fall to their knees, and pray to whatever gods they believed in, because traditional armor and stone walls were now completely, fundamentally meaningless!

"By the blood of the gods!" Bjorn shrieked, "It crossed the water in the blink of an eye! We could anchor the ironclads offshore and level every coastal city in Francia without a single man leaving the deck..."

Queen Aisling gasped for breath, her hands flying up to cover her mouth as she stared at the massive crater scarred deeply into the distant cliff.

She finally understood why her husband had smiled so confidently in her father’s court.

However, before Ragnar could issue the command to reload the terrifying weapon, the thud of armored boots announced the sudden, urgent arrival of Commander Leofric.

Sprinting up the elevated ridge, the veteran spymaster clutched a scroll tightly in his leather-gloved fist, his face entirely devoid of its usual stoic mask.

"Great Iron Father! Vanguard Commander!" Leofric gasped,

"An urgent intelligence briefing from our deep-cover merchants in the Mediterranean! The geopolitical theater has completely fractured!"

Snatching the scroll, Ragnar shattered the wax seal.

"..."

"It appears the Byzantine Emperor is not nearly as foolish as his Amorian predecessors," Ragnar murmured,

"While the Abbasid Caliph foolishly stripped his borders to appease the marching Tang expeditionary force, Emperor Basil the First unleashed his heavily armored Cataphracts. The Byzantines have rapidly reclaimed the entire Anatolian frontier, plundering the defenseless Arab cities and filling the vaults of Constantinople with unimaginable wealth!"

"Cowards!" Bjorn spat.

"It is not cowardice, brother..." Ragnar said, "Basil has correctly identified a fatal imbalance in the global power dynamic. By severely wounding the Abbasid Caliphate, he ensures that the Arab armies cannot flank him while the Tang march. However, this massive influx of plundered wealth will undoubtedly trigger a massive Byzantine military expansion."

The Abbasid Caliphate was supposed to act as a massive, geographic sponge, slowly absorbing and draining the Tang army’s logistical momentum before they ever reached the West. But if the Caliphate collapses completely under the combined, crushing weight of the Chinese locust swarm and the Byzantine heavy cavalry, the entire Middle East will fall into a chaotic dark age... Ragnar needs the Abbasids to survive just long enough to bleed the Tang army dry!

Ragnar ground his teeth together, "If the Caliphate falls, the Byzantine Empire will monopolize the Mediterranean trade routes, eventually giving them the capital necessary to challenge our naval supremacy,"

"We cannot allow the Caliph to be completely devoured. He requires a sudden injection of military superiority to stabilize his borders and halt the Byzantine advance."

"You want to send our Bessemer steel to the Arabs?!" Leofric gasped,

"My King, Baghdad is thousands of miles away! It would require a massive logistical undertaking to supply them!"

"I am not sending them steel, Leofric," Ragnar replied,

"We have forty thousand captive Tang soldiers who understand the rudimentary basics of gunpowder, but they lack our disciplinary steel. I will select five hundred of our most elite, highly disciplined Viking Grenadiers. We will arm them with the new rifled muskets, our specialized fragmentation grenades, and a battery of these new field cannons."

Stepping forward, Ragnar clamped a hand onto Bjorn’s armored shoulder,

"You will command this expeditionary force, march into the heart of the Abbasid Caliphate, and you will show Emperor Basil exactly what happens when medieval cavalry charges into a wall of highly concentrated, industrialized artillery fire."