Chapter LXV – Their postal code is found out.

49th of Summer, 5859
Libertycave, Mount Curry

Libertycave was more alive than it had ever been, if the vague concept of a settlement could be alive in the first place. No longer would they be stuck on top of a mountain waiting for fate to do what fate does!

Soon Gemeinplatz would tremble in fear at the march of the oppressed, whenever the oppressed managed to sort their logistics out. It was easy to say “Let’s go and defeat them while they’re distracted”, but to gather an army strong enough to beat those who are distracted? To have two hundred people march a place which’s a day’s walk away and potentially siege said place? Think of trying to plan a gathering involving ten acquaintances, and multiply that by twenty to the power of ten squared by the root of -i to the pi of 3.12452435; trying to make any sense of the previous jumble of words is only marginally easier than trying to gather two hundred people together to do anything.

Those who couldn’t fight were busy with preparing supplies: non-perishable food such as hardtack, extra javelins, spare underwear… everything that one could need when sieging down a city. For those who were to fight, Brown was giving his crash course on siege tactics, Tubman was giving her crash course on stealth tactics, and Ayomide was giving her crash course on impaling people with a javelin. All three of these would be important in their operation, especially the last part involving sharp objects entering others’ bodies.

Today had been Brown’s day to train, and he had spent most of his time educating the freemen on the usage of ladders for their upcoming operation. With his training time over, the old man had intended to make his way to the cave when…

“Captain!” It was a familiar voice, that of Ayomide running towards Brown. “We have… we have something!”

Brown waited until Ayomide stopped, took a few breaths, and calmed down. “Young lady, do you take me for a mind reader of some sort? What is that ‘something’ that you talk of?”

“It’s… it’s…” Ayomide opened her arms, pointing her hands forwards towards Brown. “…a wooden object that’s as long as this. There’s a metal tube stuck inside of it.”

“A wooden object with a metal tube inside…” Brown didn’t need to think long despite the vague description not helping him at all. “Young lady, that sounds like a firearm.”

“It doesn’t look like any firearm that I know of.” For Ayomide, a firearm could be described as “a wooden shaft with a long metal tube stuck at the end of it”.

No matter what the nature of this object was, Brown was curious. “Take me to it, young lady.” With that, Brown and Ayomide walked for only a minute before they encountered a curious crowd who had gathered around a small wooden crate flanked by an even smaller crate. A pair of barrels poked out from the crate, two metal barrels that looked out of this world in terms of manufacturing quality.

“Excuse me sir, excuse me lady…” Brown cut through the crowd, slowly making his way to the center of the human donut (unlike Ayomide, Brown didn’t get distracted by the thought of actual donuts). In the middle he found a pair that wasn’t a pair of barrels: Rabanowicz and Watanabe. Watanabe was shaking a bit, and Brown saw that he didn’t look too comfortable being near firearms. Rabanowicz was trying to peek inside the barrel-

“Miss Rabanowicz!” shouted Brown all too suddenly, swiftly confiscating the odd firearm from the curious woman. “That’s the business end of the rifle, you shouldn’t be looking through it!”

“W-What?!” Rabanowicz didn’t seem all too pleased to have her object of curiosity be taken away so suddenly. “This musket is missing a firing mechanism. Look,” She pointed towards the back of the rifle “there’s no match or wheel here to fire the gunpowder up. I’ve observed it to be totally safe.”

“Matches and wheels are not the only way to fire a firearm, Miss Rabanowicz.” replied Brown. Still, taking a second look, he noticed that the weapon lacked a flintlock or a percussion lock which would be familiar to Brown. It was obviously some sort of rifle, a carbine perhaps due to how short it was according to Brown’s 19th century standards where the average rifle would barely fit through a door.

On a metal part toward the back (the “receiver” as one might know of it), Brown found an English inscription stating “U.S. RIFLE / CAL. 30M1 / SPRINGFIELD ARMORY / 2656151”, which confirmed the fact that this was indeed a rifle. An American rifle at that, one produced in the Springfield Armory. Brown wondered how it had gotten here; an American rifle being transported to Gemeinplatz was no less mysterious than an American man being transported to it.

The old man examined the alien rifle, trying to figure out how its firing mechanism worked while the onlookers watched him. He pulled and pushed on the various parts, his first futile attempt being to try pulling on the trigger guard as if he was operating a lever-action rifle, keeping the barrel pointed towards the ground so that he wouldn’t end up shooting any bystanders. Eventually he lucked upon the operating rod and Brown managed to open what he thought was the breech of the rifle. However, compared to the Beecher’s Bibles (a.k.a. the Sharps rifle) which he was familiar with, this breech still looked alien. There was no place to put a percussion cap, or any mechanism on the outside to activate the percussion cap, nor was there a place for a paper cartridge to go in. “What sort of cartridge would go in this?” he wondered audibly.

His wonderment received a reply from Watanabe. “Cartridge? Like, a bullet?” The otherworlder pointed at the smaller crate that hadn’t caught Brown’s attention yet. “I think these are bullets.”

“They are?” Brown checked on the crate, and saw that there was a whole lot of small brass-colored tubes that were packed together by metal bands. They looked cartridge-shaped to him, though why someone would waste brass on such a thing was beyond Brown. “What sort of cartridge is this?”

Watanabe shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve only seen guns in movies and games, never used a gun myself.” Drawing from his miniscule experience in World War II media, he continued “I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to ram that whole thing in the gun to reload it.”

Brown debated for a second whether shoving objects inside a firearm was a good idea, but he decided that it was better to try Watanabe’s suggestion. What good would be a gun if there was no way to reload it? The old man pushed the clip inside the rifle and, voila, it fit inside the magazine like hand in glove. Brown pushed the operating rod forward and closed the bolt, shouting “Stand back and shield your ears!” before pulling the trigger…

Click.

A disappointing load of nothing. “Huh…” Brown played around with the gun a bit more before finally finding the safety catch. The old man let out a final “Alright, shield your ears!” before pulling the trigger again.

BANG!

The sound of a loud explosion, an explosion that had created much less smoke than Brown expected from gunfire. Some of the freemen instinctively jumped away or dropped on the floor, not expecting such a noise; there were those among them who had never seen a firearm before. To Brown’s surprise, he saw the bullet he just fired jump out the gun and drop on to the floor. Out of curiosity he pulled the trigger again.

BANG!

The rifle fired again, much to Brown’s surprise. He had seen repeaters, guns with the ability to carry more than one cartridge, but the repeaters of his time all had to be manually operated to reload the ammunition with each shot. This gun had seemingly reloaded itself without Brown’s intervention.

“What hath God wrought…” mumbled Brown, unable to keep himself calm when being faced with such technology. How had this come here in the first place? The rifle in his hands was way beyond the technology of Gemeinplatz, not to mention beyond the technology of Brown’s time. The old man couldn’t discount a miracle or divine intervention, though Providence usually worked in ways way subtler than “drop a shipment of rifles and let Brown figure it out”.

“Hmm… Oh! What’s this?” Rabanowicz had been unable to keep herself from trying to pick the second rifle up after seeing the first perform in Brown’s hands. However, she had uncovered something upon emptying the crate. “There’s a paper at the bottom.” She lifted the paper in question up for all to see.

The paper itself was as alien as the rifles: a pearl-white page with letters “written” cleanly in four languages (English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean). Watanabe recognized the familiar Calibri font used in modern computers, and the message on the paper was clearly printed through a printer. Brown read the contents of the paper aloud for all to hear:

This is a gift from a friend. I have included visual instructions on the back of this paper on how to use this gift.

Kim will come soon donned in black armor, do not trust him. His only concern is with using you for further his wealth. I shall meet you when he is defeated.

May the countless leaves of the forest bless you.

– Nirmal of Chanakburg