The Army's Worries (2)
Once the shrapnel commotion died down, the demonstration grounds were left in absolute ruin.
"Uuuugh…."
"Nngh. That stings."
Behind the shattered platform, the Army's master of ceremonies broke out in a cold sweat at the sight of the metal shards scattered before him, while the medics waiting on the sidelines came sprinting over.
"That was more dangerous than we expected."
A slightly frightening thought occurred to the laboratory director. If something like that rained down on a European wooden ship, wouldn't it tear the vessel clean in two with a single hit?
"It seems we overdid it trying to give you a thorough demonstration. Our apologies."
Even within the Army, there was no denying that the second explosion had used a bit too much explosive.
General Kim Jae-cheol and the chemistry laboratory director sat side by side, wiping away cold sweat.
"Thankfully, no one seems to have died, even if there were injuries."
"Phew…."
At the words that no one had died, General Kim Jae-cheol let out a sigh of relief — fewer people hauled off to the Temple meant less paperwork for him.
Not that it mattered much. Gashes and scrapes just needed a dab of spit, didn't they?
That was simply the kind of country Daehan was.
"Once the grounds are cleared, let's move on to the next demonstration."
"As long as nothing explodes this time, we should be fine."
The next demonstration on the docket was a test of the incendiary bomb.
It had been developed as a side project when the laboratory was experimenting with petroleum extracts, and it seemed perfectly suited to setting something somewhere ablaze.
All one had to do was fill it with petroleum and attach an ignition mechanism, so the structure was simple enough.
"Next, we will conduct a test of the incendiary bomb."
"This one will be fine, right?"
"It's fire, so at least I can relax a little."
"Phew…."
Flap flap.
Once again, in the form of a shell — the soldiers waiting by the distant cannon waved their flags.
"Firing now."
"FIRE!"
BANG!
The cannon belched smoke once more, and the shell went shrieking through the air.
Perhaps because the target had been blown to pieces, this time it seemed they had simply fired at a boulder quite some distance away.
WHUMP — FWOOSH!
With a sound like an enormous boulder crashing down, flames that burned not so much red as pitch-black surged up from where the target had stood.
"Whoa…."
"Is that an incendiary bomb, or a smoke bomb?"
"What kind of smoke is that?"
The flames were certainly blazing ferociously, but the smoke coming off them was truly staggering.
If one of those were lobbed into an enclosed space or a building, the occupants wouldn't burn to death — they'd suffocate.
"Oh? It burns for quite a while, doesn't it?"
"And it seems sticky. It's taking quite a long time to drip down off the rock."
The petroleum distillate base mixed with rubber was apparently producing a rather fine synergy.
The laboratory director beamed with satisfaction. When you thought about it, weren't all of these his children? No wonder he felt good, with everyone singing their praises.
"Remarkable."
"That was entertaining."
"How many of those can you produce?"
Watching the demonstrations, the Navy and the Daehan Company alike found themselves surrounded by things they coveted terribly.
Amid the crowd pressing in on General Kim Jae-cheol, he wore the smile of a victor.
"Heh heh. Just wait a moment, everyone. There's one more thing."
"Oh? Another weapons demonstration, is there?"
"Well now. Whether you'd call it a weapon, heh heh…"
Vrum vrum vrum vrum.
From where he was looking, something was approaching with a truly menacing sound.
The Army's reform effort needed exactly two things.
Weapons, and vehicles.
For the sake of those vehicles, everyone who had been obsessing over steam tanks was shipped off to Daehan Automobile.
"Please! Just build us an engine!"
"Save us, we beg you!"
A mob of them lay sprawled across the ground in protest outside the main gates of Daehan Automobile.
They hadn't realized it when they saw the Ddareungi, but the moment they watched an auto-carriage on its test drive, a picture formed in their heads.
"No! This is obstruction of business! Everyone, go back where you came from!"
"We can't! We cannot leave! Our children are starving at home, sir!"
"What nonsense is that?!"
Who in Daehan went hungry? The automobile company was thoroughly sick of these Army researchers whining and throwing tantrums over nothing.
Blocking the main road and carrying on like this — it was embarrassing to the whole neighborhood, and someone had to do something about it.
"Phew. Fine. We'll give you an engine, so why don't you build the machine yourselves? A large-scale engine is a first for us too, I'll have you know."
Much as he wanted to help, the auto-carriage had only just entered its test-drive phase.
Before it could go into regular use, they still needed stabilization work and further durability testing.
They were already shorthanded, and that was when Dong-ja laid eyes on these men.
As he made his proposal for a collaboration, a smile of victory spread across Dong-ja's face — he had just secured himself a roster of elite personnel.
"Oh! Sir, thank you! Where do we go?"
"Everyone, pack your things and come along. I'll escort you to the laboratory."
"BWAAAHAHA! Excellent!"
"Large-scale" it had been called, but it was still roughly the size of a farm tractor's engine.
Well, it was the biggest engine they had at the moment, so calling it large wasn't exactly a lie, was it?
Once inside the laboratory, the steam tank researchers fell head over heels for the internal combustion engine.
"Gasp! This thing is stronger than I thought!"
"Exactly! If we make it even more powerful, we could build a tank with it!"
Judging purely by the power of the engines currently producible, the steam engine was overwhelming — but the internal combustion engine had the advantage of being small.
Built to the same size, it could put out far more power.
"Huh? Hold on. This thing doesn't need a warm-up at all!"
"Right! It's ready the moment you start it!"
And one more quality that made it ideal for military use: unlike a steam engine, it required no warming up for tens of minutes or hours.
Even the steamships of today had to stand around stoking their boilers for tens of minutes just to build up steam pressure.
Deploying at a moment's emergency was simply out of the question.
The internal combustion engine did need some warming up to protect the machinery, but in a pinch it could move immediately.
"The answer we've been searching for — it's been here all along!"
"Come on! Quickly! Let's study the blueprints first!"
"Hurry! Hand over the blueprints!"
With personnel even more passionate than his own employees, Dong-ja looked like the true winner of the day.
These were the men who had built tanks, after all — they lacked nothing when it came to mechanical engineering.
The auto-carriage research advanced at a blistering pace.
"Hmm. First we should build what General Kim Jae-cheol ordered, no?"
"That way we buy ourselves time to build something bigger."
Building an actual tank would still require a great deal of refinement.
But the compact vehicle the military was requesting felt entirely achievable with the engines they had now.
So that they wouldn't get dragged off anywhere else, the researchers began by building a small vehicle modeled on the Ddareungi.
"They say it needs to stop bullets, but armor over the whole thing would be far too heavy and inefficient."
"Then… half? No, how about we shield only about a quarter? Enemies will almost always come at us from the front or the sides."
They mounted the auto-carriage engine on a Ddareungi frame and added a sidecar seat, and space grew desperately tight.
"The engine has the power now, so let's scale it up a bit. This thing is way too small."
"Agreed."
The new heart — four times larger than a Ddareungi's engine — was undeniably powerful.
More than enough to build what they wanted.
The body swelled to at least one and a half times the size of a Ddareungi, and the sidecar, meant to haul plenty of cargo, grew twice as large.
Above all, a sturdy frame wrapped around the whole thing so that even if it rolled over, the rider wouldn't be crushed, with steel plating to shield the body — that was the vehicle they created.
With its streamlined body and rounded contours, it looked like it would shrug off a bullet with ease.
"Perfect! Send it off, and we go back to obsessing over the tank!"
"BWAAAHAHA!"
They figured the fine details of its appearance and features could be polished later, and plunged right back into tank research.
And so the vehicle they sent off made its grand entrance at the demonstration grounds.
Heh heh heh. Today's stars are not those things, my friends! Everyone — time to make you all green with envy.
Along with General Kim Jae-cheol's scheming inner thoughts, a new cavalry force — one that would let Daehan project its firepower across a battlefield at speed — was revealing itself.
Vrum vrum vrum vrum.
What had been hidden under a tarpaulin began to move: a menacing machine painted entirely in deep black, fitted with steel plating for ballistic protection that shielded its driver — utterly intimidating.
Perhaps because the engine wasn't quite finished yet, great clouds of black smoke billowed out of it, making it look all the more threatening.
"Oh?"
"What is that?"
"It's too big to call a Ddareungi, isn't it?"
The onlookers could tell it was something like a motorcycle.
Then again, there was hardly any other vehicle in existence to compare it to.
"Oh? The sidecar's been enlarged so it can carry weapons and cargo, I see?"
"And it's no slouch in speed either. The engine must be an even better model."
"Is this for patrol duty?"
The crowd sussed out its purpose and design in no time at all.
"It is the 'Iron Horse' — a new creation to replace the cavalryman's mount. It needs neither water nor fodder, and it doesn't poop, either."
"BAHAHAHA!"
"He's right, you know. Horses are a manure problem. Hahaha!"
Leave a pile on the street and you'd be hauled off before you could so much as blink, and made to pay dearly for it.
That was, in fact, one reason the streets were so clean.
Vrooooom.
And then the Iron Horse began its riding demonstration in earnest.
The Iron Horse came fitted with a three-speed transmission.
Dong-ja's daughter Dae-hee's invention, paired with a far more powerful engine — the result was explosive.
VRAKA-KAK!
The wheels spun out, kicking away rock and dirt, and in an instant the Iron Horse came charging forward.
"Oh!"
"That's genuinely fast!"
"Not train-fast, maybe, but it leaves the Ddareungi far behind!"
The speed looked to be nearly double that of a Ddareungi.
VRKAKAKAK
When it banked sideways, the wheels actually lifted off the ground — it was riding very nearly on the level of an acrobatic stunt.
"Oh! Magnificent! So stable, too!"
With the sidecar, the center of gravity formed a triangle, and the Iron Horse teetered precariously before settling back down on all three wheels.
The driver, of course, was living a waking nightmare.
"Holy—!"
"Are you insane?! SLOW DOWN!"
"It's faster than I thought, okay?!"
VRKWAKAK!
Right up until he'd been selected as the demonstration driver and was practicing, the speed had been thrilling — that rush of wind through his chest had felt absolutely glorious.
But now he was performing sharp maneuvers in front of a crowd, and he'd very nearly flipped the thing.
"Why is this thing SO fast?!"
"It wasn't like this earlier!"
Driver and sidecar passenger alike were living a waking nightmare.
Twice the speed of a Ddareungi was, roughly speaking, just a little over twice the pace of a hard sprint.
But people had almost no immunity to speed yet.
At this level, it would feel like riding a modern-day sports car.
"Who knew dropping it into high gear would do THIS!"
"Ahead! Watch the road! WAAAAAH!"
VRKWAGAGAK
They had been chatting away when they spotted it — a chunk of shrapnel the size of a human head, left over from the demolition demo, lying directly in their path.
If they hit it, at minimum someone would be seriously injured and the Iron Horse wrecked, and their own survival was hardly guaranteed — so the driver had no choice but to wrench the handlebars sideways.
"It's slipping again! We're sliding!"
"GRAAAAH! YOU drive it then!"
"How am I supposed to do anything from the sidecar?!"
The spectators were happily watching, murmuring how wonderful — but the men riding it were living a waking nightmare.
Tragedy up close, comedy from a distance — wasn't that how it always went?
"Truly splendid!"
"How many of these Iron Horses can you produce in a month?"
"Might the Navy take an interest as well?"
Since when did the Navy have any use for such a thing?
"Would be rather handy for amphibious landings, wouldn't it?"
"You mean load that thing onto a small boat and drive it off?"
"…."
He simply coveted the thing and wanted it for himself, and yet Captain Kim Dae-cheol was being unusually strict today.
Eheheh. Tempt them, yes. You lot get yours built LAST!
He was, in his own way, taking revenge on the Navy.
Hadn't they nitpicked his every minor infraction and taunted him, demanding personnel cuts at every turn?
"Or perhaps you'd like to ride it on the water? Tsk, tsk — it doesn't float, Admiral."
"Gnnh…."
"And if you don't truly need it, but merely intend to drive it around your own base anyway — then make do with Ddareungi for now, thank you."
"…."
Quite unlike his usual self, the Navy captain's face was flushing red and trembling with rage today.
Kim Jae-cheol felt like going back and tracking down the men who had drafted this proposal just to give them each a big fat kiss.
Following in the wake of its ironclad warships, the Army of Daehan, too, was steadily stepping into the age of mechanization.