~~~
Archaeological Site 42 outside New Kent, Mars. Administered by the 2nd (Sussex) Brigade of Engineers
December the 6th, 1848
“I swear to ye, Andrews, if Smitty pissed off to the pub again without checking his gear back in, I’ll ‘ave ‘im up on theft charges.”
“He’ll be in. Probably just fell asleep. He’s a lazy sort, him and that private he’s always bumblin’ about with. Akers?” Andrews had his feet up on a pile of burlap sacks filled with red Martian soil from outside. The low wall of sandbags served as the border between “The Dig” of New Kent and the small encampment of the Sussex Brigade of Engineers.
“Akers, that’s the one.” Sergeant Morrison, He who Weilded the Power to bring one Up on Charges, leaned his elbows on the sandbags and brought a spyglass up to his eye. The long central corridor of the New Kent ruins ran straight as an arrow for leagues, and it was only the curve of Mars that cut off the view. All 14 miles of New Kent clustered around that long, straight hallway, and all 400-odd of her unknown facilities lay to the right or the left.
“Mebbe they found somethin’,” Andrews offered, ever the optimist.
“Unless it were women or whiskey, it’d not be keepin’ them there. Ah, there ‘e is. The sod.” Morrison fixed the eyeglass on the form of two men emerging from a side tunnel. Only Smith and Akers were still in the Dig, so by process of elimination the two men were Smith and Akers Both were moving quickly and were a thousand paces away, at least. Neither carried anything in their hands, which was odd, given the mass of equipment they used for testing and evaluating installations.
“Summat ain’t right, Andrews. Spin up the wireless.” Morrison’s instincts had brought him through the Continental Campaign, the Russian Campaign, and the American Campaign as a sergeant in a regiment of foot without so much as a scratch, and they were screaming at him now. Andrews pulled his feet off the sandbags and rolled to the small meson transmitter. He turned the crank vigorously a half-dozen times, imparting a short charge to the energies within. He waited with finger poised above the transmitter switch to tap out a message.
Through Morrison’s eyeglass, Smith and Akers could be seen to run the full speed, headlong dash of the very young or very scared. Akers caught a boot and fell to the ground but Smith, heedless or uncaring, ran on. A number of forms moved out from presumably the same side tunnel with a strange, lurching march. They had head, arms, and legs in odd proportions and moved jerkily. One twitched an arm from vertical toward horizontal and moments later Akers’ head disappeared in a cloud of gore.
Morrison kept the eyeglass trained but had a moment of confusion. He’d seen violence in many, many forms, from the practiced, stately clash of armies to the sudden shock of ambushes to the clumsy clash of a bar brawl. Even so, he had difficulty slotting this current situation into the mental category of ‘attack’ until he saw Smith’s legs go at the knees. A cannonball in Virginia had done that to a messenger just a few yards from Morrison’s trench outside of Richmond, and something about the familiarity of it jarred him from his stupor.
“Under attack, two score enemies,” he said. Flat and calm. The sudden tapping of Andrews told him that the message was being sent. With position information he would have a minute and a half before Andrews was done and they could withdraw. Enough time to see to some mayhem.
Morrison pulled the emplaced heavy gauss rifle over and rested the barrel on the sandbags.
~~~
It is a rule that whenever an unforeseen disaster strikes, those who need to know the most must be asleep. It seems to be the case that commanders and politicians are perennially sleeping at the outset of history’s greatest challenges. This was not one of those cases.
In fact, Colonel Conor Mann, commander of the Sussex Brigade, was in the middle of a staff meeting. Not only that, a meson wireless operator was tapping out a shorthand of the entire meeting’s minutes, sending them real-time to both the Royal Society and to Mars Command. The meson wireless center of the headquarters was in the next room, where a half dozen men were monitoring for transmissions from the remote outposts of the Sussex Brigade. In short, Sergeant Morrison’s message was likely the fastest in human history that a decision-making process went from inactive to complete.
Within five minutes, all available units of the three brigades of engineers on Mars had been redirected toward New Kent. Given the unknown size and disposition of the enemy, however, three brigades of engineers were not deemed sufficient for the defense. The Homefront-class troop transport in Earth orbit had been informed and was descending into the East India Company Spaceworks’ aether funnel. The Order of St. George, Britain’s foremost knightly aether unit, and the 1st (Royal) Heavy Grenadiers were on their way to Plymouth to load into the troop transport. The second transport in the orbit of Mars warmed its aether engines and began heading back to Earth.
Colonel Mann’s staff officers and personal bodyguard cadre had prepared to move out the moment the message had arrived, so that once Mann had confirmed his reports had been sent and acknowledgment received he was suited in the atmospherically-sealed Mars-pattern aether armour and was on his way to dig site 42 near New Kent.
~~~
17th of December, 1848. Command Post Alpha-42 outside New Kent.
“They’re all like this?” Colonel Mann stared down at the pieces of the enemy combatant on the table. Two sergeants from his personal guard waited at the door, while a lieutenant and captain from the Sussex Brigade and three xeno-archaeologists stood in a loose circle around the table.
“Yessir,” answered the captain. He was, in fine military style, quite terse.
The Royal Society Fellows were not. “It seems to run on a very advanced version of the Babbage Process, sir. The torso, here, houses the majority of the clockwork necessary for running the . . . creature. Contraption? Contraption. The aether reactor is here, and the secondary and tertiary processors here, the primary decision-making unit seems to be here, and the . . .”
Mann had quickly tuned out the ramblings of the boffin but he knew enough of their convoluted speech to pay attention at “primary decision-making unit”. “You mean its brain?”
“I would hesitate to ascribe human characteristics, organs, or emotions to the clockwork quite yet.” Mann prided himself on the power of his gaze, which had been known to instill such feelings of guilt and shame in sergeants that they heaped it onto the enlisted men for months at a time. While of a different tradition and somewhat thick-headed, the boffin was not entirely immune to it. “Yes, brain would be an apt analogy,” he conceded.
Mann shot his gaze to the captain of engineers, silently asking the question that a logical military man would ask. The captain shook his head. “Very difficult to kill that way, sir. The chest is heavily armored, with most everything important in there. The head only seems to be spare bits. Pop it off and they keep coming.”
“The weapons?” Mann said, moving to the arm of the thing.
“Basically a gauss cannon, lower caliber than our Enfield ‘47s but it fires faster.” The captain held up the other hand, which terminated in three fingers and two thumbs. “This one comes with whatever else it might carry. Usually nothing, sometimes a sort of curved hatchet for the close work.”
Mann nodded. The boffin seemed to have plenty more to say, but also knew enough to keep it to himself for the moment. “Is this the only weapon?”
The captain shook his head and yielded the floor to the lieutenant. “There are a few other forms we’ve seen. A smaller four-legged version that is a mortar on legs. We call them “dogs”. They want to lob mortars, but not much use in the Long Hall where they can’t do it what with the low roof. There’s also “horses” though they look even less like ‘em than the dogs look like dogs. Four legs, they’re either four gauss cannons mounted on legs, else they’re a pair of something like our pulse mortars, or they’re one of some big, God-almighty cannon we’ve got nothing like. Punches through walls and armour a treat, mucks about with defenses.”
Mann scanned the room quickly, nodded, and thanked the group, then gestured for the captain to follow him. Colonel and captain left the specimen and headed for the command tent, though both are in truth under the wider tent habitation tent to give warmth and air to the encampment. Mann stopped in front of the rough map of New Kent, first penned by the orbital survey corps and later filled in by the first xenologists.
“Are these forces accurate?” he asked. The Long Hall of New Kent with its 14 straight miles showed the main presence of the Sussex Brigade about two tenths of the way along the hall from the east. Three tenths was the tentative marking showing the chamber that had given forth these clockwork men. Three tenths from the western side were force markings showing the 3rd (Cheshire) Brigade of Engineers.
“Yessir, as of two hours ago and been quiet since then,” the captain answered. “Cheshire has linked us into their meson network. We are receiving their reports as they are.”
“And tell me about the action two days ago. Cheshire took the brunt of it, yes?”
The captain nodded. “We’d been holding out here, as requested, and 3rd Cheshire arrived at our backs on the 13th. On the 14th they moved to plug the other end of the city.”
Mann nodded. “It’s a blessing these things were found here. The Long Hall is the place to bottle ‘em up, if ever there was.”
“Yessir.” The captain waited a moment to be sure he didn’t interrupt, then continued the report. “The Martians - beg yer pardon, sir, we’ve been all callin’ ‘em such - they were already entrenched at the end of the Hall, waiting for reinforcements or somesuch, as they’d been probing our defenses for a few days. Cheshire fought ‘em back into the hall and bottled them up, same as we had, but it was a tough fight of it. Estimates was 8% of the brigade dead or wounded, with all of 3rd Battalion taken off the line to regroup. 80% strength, or thereabouts.”
“But now we’ve got ‘em bottled up at both ends. And they’re still attacking, yes?”
The captain nodded sharply. “Yessir. They’ve got it in their clockwork to break out, and that’s just what they try to do. Probing attacks at all hours, and anytime they think they see a way, a heavier attack. But we’re well dug in, sir, and they’ll spend themselves against us eventually.
“We can hope. Once the knights arrive these things won’t be my worry any longer.”
~~~
The Homefront landed in a temporary funnel set up by the engineering brigade and disgorged her cargo of one thousand aether knights; the 1st Royal Heavy Grenadiers and the Order of St. George. Colonel Mann gladly relinquished command over to the Order of St. George, and advance units of both knights battalions established themselves just inside the barricades of the 2nd and 3rd Brigades of Engineers.
A series of probing attacks on Christmas Day, 1848, gave way to an all-out assault by the clockwork men on Boxing Day. The heavy weapons in either end of the Long Hall, reinforced by elements of both battalions of knights, easily turned back the assault with huge losses inflicted on the attackers at both ends of the Long Hall. Three of every four creatures to march down the halls into the fire of the British Army were rendered non-functional.
The slaughter of Boxing Day seemed to cause a collective re-thinking by the clockwork men. Some strategic point had been passed where the enemy was no longer willing to spend units in wholesale, futile assaults, and instead adopted a defensive posture. Scouts of the knight battalions reported that the side tunnel from which they had come was heavily fortified with gun emplacements and that the clockwork men had abandoned the Long Hall altogether.
It became clear that the knights would need to root the enemy out of the side tunnel. The heavy weapons were a concern, of course. Earlier gravitational surveys of New Kent showed that it should be possible to breach the walls of a chamber behind the clockwork men from the outside and storm in, surprising their rear flank and opening another front in the assault. This would allow a frontal assault of the gun emplacements.
The Royal Heavy Grenadiers were selected for the frontal assault and the Order of St. George would take up positions on the surface of Mars, along with engineers to lay the breaching charges.
~~~
Lord Reginald Barclay, Earl of Ulster, checked the seal on the stretched duranium mantle over his head and shoulders before placing the neutronium helmet over all. The Long Hall was still pressurized, but the breaching charge from the Cheshire Brigade would open it up to the outside. No use in being caught unprepared.
“Signal anytime now, sir.” Ulster glanced over at his wireless operator, then checked the clockwork wristwatch built into the armor. He nodded, and glanced back at the Royal Heavy Grenadiers. All were in order, arrayed along one wall of the Long Hall, waiting for the signal. His troops, in excellent array. He’d have preferred open sky above them - tunnel work wasted some of the abilities of the armour, but he fought the Queen’s enemies where ever they chose to be.. He glanced forward. One thousand paces to the side tunnel. One thousand paces through the tunnel to the opening beyond. Two hundred fifty paces across the room to the main battery of guns. Half a league, all told. Easy work. If St. George’s Order got their first, no work at all..
On the surface, elements of 3rd Cheshire had laid a half dozen charges along the outside of the shell of New Kent, with a follow-on of four more in case the first didn’t crack the egg completely.
Brigadier General Collins turned to the nearest staff officer. “Message to 1st Royal, ‘assault to commence in 10 minutes, acknowledge’. Message to engineers, ‘breach immediately, upon my mark’.” Two staff officers trotted out from under the command shade, one heading for the wireless operators’ tent and the second for the small cadre of engineers. Collins glanced at his watch.
Moments later the ground of Mars shook with a heavy explosion which was oddly silent in the thin Martian air. Blue gouts of aether plasma sprayed from the area at the base of New Kent’s walls. In the later investigation the major in charge of the engineers would insist that the charges went off prematurely through no fault of his own. The officer carrying the message would insist that he got no further than ‘breach immediately,’ at which point the eager engineer pushed the plunger.
What no one could ever ascertain was the status of the second message. The wireless operator was partway through - had, in fact, sent only “assault to commence” - when the explosion rocked the surface. The resultant quake threw the pointcast wireless meson telegraph out of alignment with its destination, and the corresponding telegraph operator with the Royal Heavy Grenadiers dutifully reported “Assalt to commence” before sending the acknowledgement over the broken link.
Once Brigadier General Collins’ insistent curses died down, he stormed to the wireless operator and demanded to know if the acknowledgement had been received. It had not, so Collins was led to believe the Royal Grenadiers must, therefore, be sitting and waiting for their orders. A runner was sent to get in touch with the Royal Heavy Grenadiers, which involved at least 10 miles’ travel, and to re-establish instant wireless contact.
Down in the Long Hall, Ulster turned to the five hundred heavy grenadiers and bellowed, “Forward, Grenadiers! To the guns, and glory!”
~~~
The poem “The Charge of the Grenadiers” written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson on the 9th of February, 1849
Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the Hall of Kent
Stormed the five hundred:
'Forward, the Grenadiers!
Charge for the guns' he cheered:
Into the Hall of Kent
Stormed the five hundred.
'Forward, the Grenadiers!'
Was there a man a’feared ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the Hall of Kent
Stormed the five hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they fought and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Charged the five hundred.
Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the aether-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Clockwork & Martian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter'd & sunder'd.
Then they stormed back, but not
Not the five hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with gauss and shell,
While knight & soldier fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of five hundred.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge and cheer!
Honour the Grenadier,
Noble five hundred!