Eric Flint: Grantville Gazette.Volume XV

"Our eight thousand and three thousand in Rzhev…" He felt confident that he could rout the Russians. His force was a modern army, six thousand infantry, two thousand cavalry. "But I would have liked to capture that balloon. I doubt it will return; I suspect the Rus commander has sent it away to keep it out of our hands."

He nodded to his subordinates. "But it doesn't matter that much. There is a time for subtlety, gentlemen, and a time for more direct means. This is the latter."

"Sir!" Colonel Bortnowski said.

"As soon as their balloon is out of sight, Colonel, you will take the Seventh Fusiliers…" Gosiewski continued with a list of units designated to attack the east downriver edge of the wall. "We will hold here until the artillery has produced a breach in their golay golrod. You will then advance. Our situation is simple. Once we get within their outer wall, at any point, they are done and we can roll them up. The Russian soldiers don't have the stomach for a standup fight. They carry walls with them, so they'll have something to hide behind. Take that away and they're like sheep among wolves."

It took another hour to work out all the various details, including a skirmish against the upriver edge of the wall to pull the defenders away from the planned breach point.

"General, the Poles are moving," Tim said as he entered the tent.

"What?" the general had been taking a nap. He sat up on his cot. "Their cannon?"

"Not yet, sir."

"Very well. Give me ten minutes."

By the time General Izmailov got to the walls, the Russian corridor was acting like a disturbed ant bed. Izmailov didn't rush. He strolled. Exhibiting no hurry, he listened to reports as he went, stopped and greeted people. And, to an extent, the ant bed calmed. Actions became less frantic and more purposeful. When it was reported that the Polish cannon were moving into position, he quickened his pace and started giving orders.

"Get those guns in place!" The small, rifled, cannon of the Russians were moved into position, set up and loaded behind sections of wall. Ropes were attached to those wall sections so that they could be quickly moved out of the way.

"We'll give it to them now, boys," General Izmailov shouted. "Before they realize what hits them."

The order was given while the Polish cannon were still out of effective range. Their effective range-not the effective range of the rifled breach-loading Russian guns.

The men on the ropes strained and the walls moved out of the way.

"Aim them! Don't just point them randomly!"

The gunners took a moment to refine their aim.

"Fire!"

Boomcrack! Boomcrack! Boomcrack!

The small cannons sounded like they couldn't make up their mind whether they were cannon or rifles. The rounds they fired were small, just under an inch across and three inches long. But they exited the Russian guns in a flat trajectory and went precisely where their gunners told them to go. Two rounds hit the outer wagon of the Polish gun train. The third missed; it hit a wagon wheel which was shattered. Pointlessly, since the exploding powder wagons would have destroyed it a tenth of a second later anyway.

A Polish gunner lay on the ground, blown off his feet but otherwise uninjured, shaking his head less to clear it than in confusion. They were half again out of a cannon's effective range. Even as he lay there, another boomcrack and the gun carriage of one of the six polish sakers, or nine-pounders, shattered as a smaller but faster round ripped though it. The gunner, after due consideration, decided that where he was, was a rather good place to be. Much better than standing up next to the guns.

Aleksander Korwin Gosiewski was not so sanguine. In the midst of disaster, he saw what he wanted to see. The Russians had opened a breach in their wall to allow their cannons to fire. He decided that if he moved fast enough he could exploit the breach. He rapped out orders to Colonel Bortnowski and sent off the messenger. "Attack now. Go for the breach. Charge damn it! Charge!"

Much against his better judgment Colonel Bortnowski charged. Sort of. The charge of a pike unit is rather akin to the charge of a turtle. Slow and steady. Which may win the race and may even win a battle when it's charging another pike unit. But when charging a wall two hundred and fifty yards away and when that wall is manned by troops with rifled breach-loading AK3s that can be fired, have the chamber switched, then fired again several times, the charge of a pike unit becomes an organized form of suicide. Eventually, of course, the pikes broke. But not nearly soon enough. Their casualties were much worse than the casualties the Russian cavalry units had suffered just weeks before. Colonel Bortnowski was among the dead. They really should have used the Cossack cavalry, but it was in the wrong place.

The Polish force withdrew, but it was only temporary, as General Izmailov knew quite well.

"Gentlemen, our situation is untenable as it stands," General Izmailov said. "We must take Rzhev and soon. Tim, I want you to coordinate with the unit commanders, start tightening the collar again. Get us salients as close to the to the walls of Rzhev as you can…" The general described what he wanted and work began again. The plan was to get several points right up against the walls, such as they were, of Rzhev. Which would still leave the problem of defending against a potential attack by the Polish relief force while at the same time using most of his force to breach the defenses of Rzhev. To attack effectively-and just as important, quickly-they would need overwhelming force against the troops occupying the town. To get that, they were going to have to virtually strip the outer golay golrod of fighting men. And like any fortification, no matter how temporary or permanent, the walking walls needed to be manned be effective.

Two weeks later they were in position and as ready as they were going to get. At the closest point the inner golay golrod was only twenty feet from the makeshift walls around Rzhev and there were five points where they were within fifty feet.

Nick gave a bit more steam to the right side engine to turn the Testbed left. The winds were gusty. He had gotten word a week before that they would be making the attack on Rzhev today. His job was especially vital because to make it look real they had to know where the Polish forces were attacking long before it happened. He looked out and noted the position of a Polish cavalry unit.

Rrrrriiiipppppp!

Nick looked up and swore.

The gas bladders on the Testbed were made of goldbeater skin. Ever have knockwurst? Well, goldbeater skin is basically the same stuff they put around the sausage, the intestines of large animals. For goldbeater skin, the intestines are cut open and glued together a couple of layers thick. The sheets of goldbeaters skin are mostly self adhesive and formed into short, fat sausage shapes rather than round balloons. It had never occurred to anyone to wonder what would happen if you applied steam.

Granted, by the time the steam reached the steam bladder it had cooled quite a bit. On the other hand, the steam bladder on the Testbed had by now been slow cooking for several weeks. A little bit of extra steam pressure was all it took. Of course, it gave along the seams. As soon as the rip happened, the steam spread out still further and turned into mist, then started condensing onto the other gas bags in the Testbed where it did comparatively little harm. But the steam cell was gone; its lift was gone.

The gondola lurched. Nick swore again and reached for a lever to angle the thrust that remained to him.

The steam bladder, when filled and functioning properly, provided about five hundred pounds of lift to the Testbed. The semi-rigid airship had just gone from neutral buoyancy to five hundred pounds negative buoyancy. Which didn't mean it dropped like a five hundred pound lead weight. It was more like a five hundred pound feather. The steam bladder was located three-quarters of the way to the front of the Testbed, just above the gondola, so naturally it nosed down. Which meant that the engines were pushing down as well. Airships dive like they do every other maneuver. Slowly. A similar disaster in an airplane would have given the pilot less then two minutes to fix the problem, as the plane nosed over and accelerated to over a hundred miles an hour straight down. Nick had a good five minutes before he would hit the ground.