Wrapping a Cannon
Standing in the second level of the mezzanine, I squinted at the mass of scrap that had been piled up there. Cracked dies, sheared punches, and more than one slag-covered billet sat there, while the crane clanked as an earthen golem turned the ratchet.
"So, you have a plan for all this?" the Earth Mage asked, scratching her chin idly as she handed me a bill of goods. "Lots of good steel here, after all."
I shrugged, not bothering to pull my wings in. Leaving them out could be more comfortable, especially when Ibuki was down at the forge heating up the whole tent. Little flutters could make surprisingly good cooling breezes, and just being able to casually jump out of the steele was always good for a laugh. "Depends. Is Metallurgy Lab finally getting over that run of hot shorts they hit last week?"
The mage winced. It was obviously a sore subject. "Yeah, they pulled the ore run that was causing that. You want that too?"
"Why would I want a run of iron ore we all know is sulphur-ridden?" I asked pointedly. "This is a material reclamation shop, not a foundry!"
"It could be, though."
My level stare held zero amusement. "I'm not exactly in the business of undercutting the other shops, miss, especially without a name to place to a proposition."
"I suppose I should introduce myself." the mage muttered. "Melanie FitzAlan, Dot of Earth, and on the off chance you don't remember, the one who helped set the foundation for this structure."
Squinting, I unpackaged that name for a moment, tying it to the brown-haired young woman in front of me. Aside from a drab and practical skirt, loose-fit gray blouse, and a leather work vest with gold striping- the closest we could get to high-viz safety gear- she didn't really stand out except for a few scars on her right hand. They looked like rather nasty wounds, probably old burns.
"Alright, miss FitzAlan, what is your proposal?" I asked, pacing over to the ladder. "We'll head up to the office, and I might as well show you some of the paperwork."
It was the matter of a hop, skip, and a shove of the wings to get up for myself, while FitzAlan had to climb three flights of ladder. While less than courteous, it would be unbecoming of me to just heft her over my shoulder and haul her up. Still, in the time she took to get there, I had already dressed the dining table into a working table, and had laid out a blank set of proposal forms as well as some paper. God- or Brimir, in this case, the effort being nearly entirely the native Tristanians- bless the Print Shop, and their dedication to making sure the standardized forms did flow.
"So, these forms." FitzAllen said, staring at the table.
"First thing you need is your finished material good." I said, pulling out the relevant piece of paper. The fact the 'first part' would be nine pages deep into the eventual folder of paper was immaterial- that was the most important part. "Theoretical and magical developments are good, but also the function of TRIMS. Considering how everyone's gearing up for the big one, well, three guesses as to what's going to make the paper-pushers smile on you."
"A finished good?" FitzAlan asked, stroking her chin. "Steel, obviously, but that's not very explanatory."
"We'll note it down for later then." I said, calmly scribbling it on the back of a month-old bill of delivery for a broken roller I still had no idea what to do with. I was good at repurposing things, sure, but that was a bit beyond me! "Next thing is your method."
"Ah, the bit I do know!" FitzAlan said, laughing. "My plan was to use your Fairy library and see what sort of magical improvements you'd done to reducing the work needed on a puddling furnace. If you've figured out one of those… Bessemer? The big old steel-making pots, I figure you've got to have something just as good for the small specialty stuff."
My lips pinched. "Couldn't you just file a request for the Library in Arrun to handle, or pay a copier?"
I was answered with a shaking head. "Copy fees in Arrun aren't cheap, and my father is only a barron under Wolesley. It was expensive enough to get me out here, you know?"
"Then your proposition is dead on arrival. You need a goal, a means, and a team put together to even get a proposition looked at."
"If this is in humor, it is a poor jape." FitzAlan said cooly.
"It's not a joke." I shot back. "This place lives and dies on paperwork."
"Then that's that, I suppose. My family's puddling furnaces will be shut down in a year." she said, growling. "If nothing else, it wouldn't be too great a disgrace for the family to lose an unmarriageable daughter to working for the Fairies."
Rolling my eyes, I went for the other pile of paperwork on the impromptu desk. "As much as I sympathize with your issue, there is a way around the whole 'not knowing' thing."
"Oh?"
Pushing over the hiring-on paperwork, I steepled my fingers. "TRIST offers each Team a hundred Yurudo a month copy budget, and frankly the most I use ours for is getting the weekly papers and a few tomes on gunnery. If you want to put in requisitions for books on furnaces and ore refining, I won't stop you."
FitzAlan laughed darkly. "And at what cost to me?"
"This team needs an Earth mage." I replied candidly. "Golems, even cheap and simple ones, are a massive labor-saving device, and more importantly I want this shop built into an actual building at some point. Besides, we're going to need-"
"Boss!" Ibuki yelled up from below. "I'm done with the cannon core, come take a look when you can!"
"-expansions." I finished. "One moment please."
It was a short glide down to check out the bundle of cast iron ingots that had been beaten together into a core. A quick measurement confirmed it to be the correct size- five pouce, or about twelve centimeters. Technically it was supposed to be twelve point four centimeters, but I did want the final boring to go into the first layer we welded down, so the remaining point four centimeters could come from there.
"Think we can start?" he asked, smirking.
"Tomorrow." I replied. "We're gonna need a lot of help for this."
"I'll call my friends, see if they can help." Ibuki said, before looking at our sawhorses. "And probably get some better rests for this. It's pretty damn heavy as it is right now."
"How heavy?" I asked, gulping.
"Almost four tons."
"What?!" I screeched.
"Calm down, that's not too heavy." Ibuki said calmly. "Back when I was helping load boats for Dunkirk, the frontliners were carrying… uh, forgot what they called 'em… moyennes? Bastard culverins? Lots of heavy-ass guns, and they all weighed a ton ish, and they were shooting 'em all day! Four tons on short lifts is nothing!"
Looking at the eleven mail long, four metric ton mass of iron that Ibuki was casually manhandling with small grunts to rotate as we talked, I decided nodding along was the best course of action. "Just get it and the shop rigged up for this tomorrow- and make sure the rest of us can haul it around too!"
"Right!"
With a jump and a wingflap, I was back upstairs, where FitzAlan had been looking out over one of the safety ropes. Her eyes were still wide open as she watched the Gnome below working the cannon-core back into the forge, before he started drawing bar stock to work on.
"So you want in?" I asked, grinning. It took a moment, before she nodded with conviction.
"Yeah, I'm in."
I grinned. "Good. Tomorrow, we're getting started."
///
Rubbing my eyes tiredly, I looked at the sandwiches Cadenza had managed to whip up for breakfast, as well as the steaming hot pot of tea. Mornings were not my friend, even if FitzAlan and Ibuki were quietly talking shop by the forge as the latter got ready to move the iron. Either way, all the important people- and about two dozen apprentice forgers who could be trusted to swing a five-libre sledge all day- were gathered around. Picking up a sandwich dejectedly, I started eating, as FitzAlan got her golem ready to help move the cannon core and Ibuki grinned. The sandwich was unfortunately small, but it was enough to get me motivated enough.
"Y'all ready?" I asked, making sure the answer was an affirmative nod. "Good. Everyone else, listen up!"
Flaring my wings and casting a quick Boosted Voice- technically an illusion spell!- I shot up to land on a clean patch of table.
"Alright people, get ready! Charles, Audery, you're on bellows to start, switch out with someone else every half-hour. We want this iron coming out of the forge a solid orange, so don't spare the pump. Paul, Marcus, Duchevel, you're on the outside of the forge feeding the iron in. We've got the sheet on rollers, so watch your feet. Stefan, Luke, keep the coke coming. Jules, Maurice, flux. I want this thing to be dripping, you understand? This is going to be a long-ass weld, and we don't have a good way to fix it if there's separation along the way. Juliet, you're going to be doing general shop ventilation, and maybe taking a turn on the hammer if Ibuki or I need a minute. Cadenza, the shop is closed to visitors, and I need you to keep interruptions to a minimum. FitzAlan, your golems are handling the core. Ibuki, we're doing the weld."
Everyone grinned, getting ready for the work. "And remember: once we get this done, everyone eats on me at the restaurant!"
Now that earned a cheer. As everyone scattered off to their tasks, I breathed in deeply, going over to a large locker that had almost considered gathering dust. Inside were my tools. The Black Dragon leather apron, proof against fires, stray enchantments, and the heaviest slag splatter went on first, snug and tight on my frame, the knot falling into place easily. My peaning and shaping hammers fit in next, the Anaglam heads clacking into jewel steel loops like old friends. Finally, I grabbed the arch-tool, my seven kilo Mithril sledgehammer. Sometimes you needed delicacy, calm deliberation, and gentle motions.
As FitzAlan's golems held the rod containing the cast iron cannon core, I grinned. Ibuki had already lined the start of the sheet up perfectly, and Jules had already fluxed it well. Heaving my hammer up over my head, gravity and months of practice dragged it down in a stately arc, slamming into steel with a percussive clang that echoed throughout the shop. Fuck delicacy, we had a cannon to build.
Once I finished tacking the steel sheet to the core, Ibuki brought his own hammer into play. He favored a ten-kilo jewel steel piece, enchanted with some inscrutable Leprechaun work that more than made up for the lesser quality of the head. The few Spriggan crafters I had met were all cold-blooded bastards, scavenging materials and PvP rewards carefully- a set of Leprechaun tools were worth millions to the right buyers, and I had never been near that sort of cash flow in my limited time playing the game with the rest of the White Claw. For a Gnome, though? Must have been easy as pie.
It was at about the point we finished welding the sheet in the first ring and had lapped it over itself to begin the spiral down towards what would be the the muzzle, that I started wishing I had some music. While ALO didn't have the legendarily schizophrenic SAO crafting interface, what it did have was time investment for a piece of work. I would regularly dump an hour into building a mid-level sword, or up to three for my top-end gear like my own smithing hammers, just by turning on a playlist and cracking open a book on the bench in front of me. Now, that option was denied by the necessity of each clanging hammerblow and the cold calls of 'turn' when we needed to move the core.
Smirking, Ibuki looked down at what was becoming a cannon, one inch of hard-set weld at a time. "Next time," he declared, working on settling a lap that had started to slip as I continued the main shaping blows, "we're pre-beveling the edges of the sheet so we don't need to deal with this."
"Agreed." I said, breathing deeply. After that, it was back to hammering. Some twenty minutes later, Ibuki needed a water break, forcing Jules up to the plate. He could only swing the five-kilo wrought iron hammers that Tool Shop handed out like free candy, but it was enough to help keep the pace up. Taps and hauling with tongs kept the bands even, while the might of hammers sealed the metal to itself regularly. Once Ibuki was back, I then switched out, taking the time to eat another sandwich and chug away what felt like a third of a liter of water.
"Going good?" Cadenza asked me, before I started pouring the rest of the water on my head.
"Well enough." I replied, shaking my hair out. As she recoiled from the water, I sighed. "Just wish I had some music."
A hemming and hawing came from the Puca, before she nodded and flared her wings to fly up to the office. Shaking my head, I just picked my hammer back up, moving over to take my place from Audery, where he just nodded and got back to work elsewhere. Quite wisely, Ibuki had decided to take over setting the plate, so all the junior smith had to do was hammer it into the weld. I saw no reason to change it, so I just went back to slamming home the steel to itself and the iron. While the goal wasn't to weld the steel to the iron, it would be inevitable at least some spot welding happened, as the core served as a titanic heat sink for our working metal. Whether the thermal expansion rates would be different enough to server those welds, well, time would tell.
We were a third of the way up the gun, almost to where the trunnions would eventually go, when I felt the thump of a little hand-drum down deep in my soul. That was Puca music-magic, the sort that would punch well above its weight. I'd only had it on me a few times in my time in ALO, mostly when the White Claw was doing backpack-work for a Puca guild, but it was the sort of thing that was hard to forget. There was no core or precise delineating line to it, like there were with other races' buff magics, but rather the pulse of every instrument. One Puca could empower; ten could make a lamb into a lion.
Settling down on the table, Cadenza kept banging her drum, setting up a steady rhythm. It only lasted a minute, but as the ringing hammers tuned themselves to the heartbeat there, I could feel my hammer getting a little easier to swing. Then she started singing.
"Twas late '65 at the old Wallsend Yard
She was commissioned to haul the black tar
Built the Northumbria there on the bar
Roll, Northumbria, Roll"
It was in English, true, but I could recognize a little of it. A lot of the hardcore Puca had taken up international folk music to amplify their repertoire and boost their library of buffs, so it wasn't at all unusual to hear them singing something strange to boost a group. Call and response music was huge, too: only an idiot laughed at a group of Puca on a fishing trip as they sang, danced, and hauled in mythical amberjacks larger than they were. I could never hear Soran after that without remembering one of them throwing a 'spare' fish at me that was worth more than my monthly reagents budget.
And it's one for the hot sun above
Two for the empire we love
And it's three for the fire that burns down below
Roll Northumbria
Roll, Northumbria, Roll
Looking down at the gun as we had worked through the singing, I nearly gasped. Between Ibuki and I, we'd been making some pretty neat welds. Still, there was a definitive point where the neat welds stopped being just neat, and started to be perfect. I could count where each hit had landed, equidistant from every other hit, perfectly patterned out with little hatches from the jewel steel hammer and round peans from the dark angalam.
The song finished, and Cadenza just grinned at us as the forge stilled for a minute. "Any requests?" she asked, still smirking.
"That's… that's what your magic feels like?" FitzAlan asked, gulping.
"Yeah, I know, not my best work." Cadenza shrugged. "We do more than just fly, you know!"
"I almost didn't notice."
"Yeah, first time working with the Puca is always a treat." Ibuki said, grinning. "They've got a buff for literally everything."
Smirking, Cadenza just hovered over to where she could lean on a stack of crates. "Fua… praise me more!"
"Only if you know Dear Old Stan." Ibuki smirked. "The Dreadnaughts was the first band I could really listen to in English, back when I went to Woodstock."
"You were in Woodstock? What were you doing in America?" Cadenza asked, before her eyes got sharper. "And if you were going for the music, then why aren't you a Puca too?"
"Woodstock of Canada, not the American one." Ibuki clarified. "I helped set up a line at the Toyota plant there, about a decade and a half ago. It was a fun year."
Harumphing, Cadenza smiled. "Well, I don't know that one, but if you were in Canada, you probably know this!"
With a slightly syncopated drumbeat, the Puca was off, and so were our hammers.
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy
As the buff picked back up, we went to work. Perfection was maintained all the way, and the longer we worked, the less work it seemed to be. The trunion point was covered easily, Ibuki and I broke for water again, and on the last chorus my Gnomish friend took the time to join in on the song, giving it one last burst of power. Once that was done, it was a fairly stock endurance buff song, letting our work crawl up the barrel as the golems kept the piece stable. The back was cooling nicely, still a black cherry red, while we ran up the chase.
"This is going better than I thought." Ibuki grunted, as Cadenza ended her set. We had two more rotations of the core to go before we were done, and the end was in sight.
"Yeah." I muttered. "This is a hell of a lot better idea than my discount Parrot rifles."
"We can make those later, when we need rifles. Until then, I think we can be happy with this."
And so it went. Without the buffs, we had to be every little bit more careful, and there were still some snags as the workpiece started bouncing under our hits. Even the best sawhorses had trouble with multiple tons of bouncing steel, and FitzAlan was wearing out and her golems with her. The flux was getting thinner, our coal was trying to stick to the work, prompting sweepers to brush it off.
Still, we finished it. Cracking my back, I went outside. Five hours to weld the first layer to that cannon. Another three to weld the rod bundle together to serve as the core. Two hours to make the 'plank' of sheet steel that had been what we'd wrapped around the gun. Call it two more layers of wrapped steel as the core, then we would heat rings of wrought iron and slide them over the gun, before filling the barrel with water and spinning it to cool them down to an even tightness. A final sleeve of wrought iron, or steel if I could get it, over the back. Then we'd bore her out, and present the gun.
The best part? We were still on time and on budget for our other project, and if this gun was anywhere near workable I'd be able to get us power hammers and some actual mechanization so I could go back to lounging about the office!
