Devil's Due (Destroyermen #12)(75)

Bekiaa rolled her eyes. Despite her fur, she was used to the equator. Unlike Grik, however, her people could function perfectly well in the cold, as long as they dressed appropriately. That didn’t mean she liked it. And though this was considered a pleasant spring day by the locals, before Donaghey rounded the cape and brought her to the Republic, she’d experienced fifty degrees only when she’d flown. Her primary duty in the Republic, as Inquisitor Choon described it, was to represent the other allied powers and advise him, Kaiser Nig-Taak, and, more specifically, General Marcus Kim. She considered it just as important to advise Captain Reddy, via wireless, on the true state of the Republic’s preparations for war. Second to that, she’d done her best to ensure it was ready to make a useful contribution when operations finally began. After what had been, in some ways, a tediously delayed mobilization, enforced by the League battleship Savoie in Alex-aandra harbor, the Repubs were frantically making up lost time to open the second front their allies so desperately needed.

Historically, the Republic’s approach to any hypothetical conflict with the Grik was to rely on superior firepower. They’d apparently been on par with the Empire of the New Britain Isles, militarily, for about two hundred years, and had been equipped with decent artillery and flintlock muskets. But the Grik had now passed that point themselves. Since the late-nineteenth century, however, and certainly since SMS Amerika’s arrival with early twentieth century Germans and British prisoners of war, the Republic had changed amazingly. Ostia, bordering the huge Lake Taa-Hu, was a prime example. In sharp contrast to the architectural opulence of Alex-aandra, Ostia was rough-hewn and angular, a wilderness city surrounded by a mixture of prairie and dense forests of tall trees with high, chaotic branches. Until the last few decades, lowlying Ostia had been a small, picturesque village blessed with moderate winters, where wealthy merchants and government officials often retired. There’d always been modest timber, and, to a lesser extent, iron production there; the unpretentious mills and puddling furnaces reminiscent of eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century Europe, fueled by coal from Nicaeaa and strong rivers that formed and fled the lake. Over the past twenty years, however, as the Republic experienced a true industrial revolution, Ostia’s and nearby Cosaa’s abundant resources and central location had turned them into lumber-and metal-producing powerhouses.

Little actual manufacturing occurred there, but huge stone buildings housing smelters and foundries were erected. Bremen joined Nicaeaa to provide coal for the new furnaces, and steam power had largely replaced the rivers. More iron ore—and now manganese—came from dozens of little mining towns that had sprouted to the west. Other raw materials like copper, lead, tin, and zinc came for processing, from Colonia on the west coast, and left as refined ingots, as well as brass and bronze. Much of Ostia’s and Cosaa’s output went south to the steel mills of St. Peter and St. Paul, where new open-hearth and Bessemer process furnaces stood side by side, the first making less, but more specialized, steel; the latter making more, for less critical applications. But Nicaeaa and Bremen, little different in appearance from Ostia, had burgeoning steel mills as well, and took more of the trade each year. Heavy manufacturing and shipbuilding, as well as armaments factories, were still largely centered in Augustus and Trier on the west coast, but Derby, Whitby, Emden, and now even Ostia itself were beginning to test those waters—except for shipbuilding, of course. Derby was farthest along, despite its location on the frigid highland steppe, in the production of high-quality heavy ordnance. This was because it had a fine river of its own, the newest, most modern facilities, and possibly because its workers never complained about the heat they had to labor in.

But Ostia was nearest the very center of the predominately human/Lemurian Republic of Real People, encompassing all of southern Africa up to latitude 260 south, and slightly farther in the west. The boundary wasn’t political, established through negotiations with the Grik, but had been arrived at after centuries of coexisting with the malevolent species to the north. The Grik simply didn’t seem comfortable crossing the 26th parallel, and comfort was apparently the prime consideration. The moderate to downright cold climate in much of the Republic had been its greatest protection across the ages. This defense was reinforced by a network of road-connected forts along the frontier, none of which could’ve long withstood a concerted attack, but each theoretically supportable by garrisons from the others—with sufficient warning.

And there’d never been any delusion that the Grik weren’t their enemy. Parties of them did occasionally venture south in the summertime, killing and eating anyone they found, and their mass hunts sometimes drove great packs or herds of destructive or carnivorous beasts south of the frontier. Indeed, numerous Republic expeditions had traveled north over the years, in search of exotic game or resources (iron, copper, and coal were plentiful in the eastern mountains), or even attempting peaceful contact with the Grik. Few returned. Finally, though the Republic never courted all-out war, the Grik had made it plain that the Republic was next on their list for conquest. That made the Republic and its people reasonably glad the alliance with the United Homes and the Empire of the New Britain Isles had given them an opportunity to deal with the long-standing threat.

Fortunately, the Republic hadn’t been entirely unprepared. For nearly a decade, they’d been making fine, breech-loading field pieces called Derby guns, after the new city where they were manufactured, based on something they referred to as a French 75. They’d been making powerful, single-shot, bolt-action rifles in 11 mm even longer, and now a respectable number of Maxim-inspired machine guns, in 7.92 x 57 mm, were being manufactured in Augustus. They also had other, quite interestingly lethal devices, but Bekiaa’s appreciation of them was tempered by her indignant annoyance at having to learn yet another unit of measurement.