Youth World

Chapter 20 – The American Soldiers Join!

There were about three days before the day of departure. Everybody was working faster than ever, panicking to get everything done. Aidan messaged me that around two brigades worth of 17- and 18-year-old soldiers from the former military base down south were heading north to join us, since their leader Conrad Von Sheila was Lucas' "brother". The two weren't related, but they had grown up as neighbors and Conrad always treated Lucas like he was part of his family. This festered a deep bond between the two.

A bunch of Aidan's ships were complete, most of them large canoes. These would be used to ferry the soldiers to Port Duwamish, from which they would arrive at the camp, which I named to Fort Factoria. The namesake of the camp came from the former neighborhood and shopping district on which the center of the camp now stood.

Since the soldiers knew how to use guns way better than us, I announced that all newly produced guns would be handed over to them. At this point we had over a thousand Cascadian Rifles since about five percent of the camp's population were dedicated to producing them and the other gunpowder weapons.

In order to encourage the workers to work even harder, I was sitting on a bench near the Cascadian Rifle production facility, churning out rifles faster than anyone else. Since we didn't have a factory or ȧssembly lines, I could produce a handful per day. That was mainly because I had a lot of experience making this model of rifle, and it was also my own design.

This time, it would be Lucas' turn to greet the newcomers. Since he knew Conrad better than I did, it was only fair for him to do the talking. Initially, Conrad wanted control over the whole camp, but after long and protracted negotiations it was agreed upon to name him the commanding General of the Armed Forces while I'd remain the leader of the group as a whole. Our weapon systems were so drastically inferior from the US military's equipment before the apocalypse that I reckon the soldiers probably wouldn't know what to do with them, especially the cannons and the rockets.

I had also sent out a group of a hundred or so to clear the mountain pass of any obstacles and construct basic infrastructure to make the journey a bit easier. After further calculations, most of the camp estimated that about fifty people would either die or be lost during the mountain crossing, which was a far cry from what was originally expected. Wagons and other technologies, as well as salted food and proper coverings from the coldish temperature, would really help in reducing the casualty rate. I tasked them to build a fort at the entrance of the mountain pass to guard it just in case somebody would want to attack the strategically vital location.

As for Aidan, he wanted to eventually include the navy sailors located in the former US navy base in the city of Bremerton into Cascadia. The sooner this was accomplished, the better, since these guys would be useful beyond compare in his shipbuilding efforts. If they were left alone, they could successfully oppose Aidan's empire building efforts in the Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean, something that we deemed most troublesome. So far, we hadn't gotten in contact with them yet, but Aidan hoped to talk to them in a week or two. Aidan might have to make some compromises to make things work, something similar to what we did with the soldiers.

The kids on the large island in the middle of the lake decided to join us, since their island was relatively desolate and devoid of any significant number of animals or edible plants. Therefore, they were starving, and the fire that may or may not have been accidentally caused by a rocket test gone wrong burnt down a lot of the island, causing mass starvation and a forced exodus across the lake. I ȧssigned these guys to the metallurgists and other related crafts, since currently weapon production was of the utmost importance.

Besides making rifles, I spent the rest of my time organizing the wagon trains and determining the order in which they would go. The equestrians and horsemen had a hard time training the animals to haul the wagons, since that wasn't built into their brains due to thousands of years of humans being gone. However, these animals were quite intelligent, and they would probably be able to adjust just in time for the expedition.

I was alerted near midday that the soldiers had made their way inside the camp, led by Lucas and Conrad. They wanted to meet me, since I was the leader of the camp. Not wanting to be outdone, I mobilized all troops inside the camp to stand behind me as a show of strength.

Conrad was a man with a very warm appearance. He was tall and imposing yet had a friendly face that exuded a feeling of warmth inside every person who met him. However, behind this façade was a methodical marine who valiantly served in the mountains of Central Asia and threw a grenade straight back at the enemy, granting him an audience with the president. Before the apocalypse struck, he was 18 years and 364 days old, so he was right on the age cutoff between those who disappeared and those who didn't.

We were in a friendly faceoff, with a thousand of my armed men facing even more of his. And it seemed like at least half of his soldiers had a… Henry Rifle?

Conrad was the first to break the awkward silence.

"It seems like you guys are rather advanced, huh?"

"You're one to talk!" I broke my level headed character for a moment, unable to contain the gun nut inside me, "You guys have Henry Rifles!"

"And you guys have… Frankenstein Trapdoor Springfields?

"How did you guys make your rifles?"

"We're soldiers! How did you guys make your rifles?"

"You go first."

"Alright. We couldn't recreate the manufacturing process for smokeless powder, though we know how to do it. That's why we decided to make Henry Rifles, which could fire quickly and were awfully reliable. Now its your turn. How did you guys make Trapdoors?"

"Before the apocalypse, I made a rifled musket from scratch, and then I converted it to a Trapdoor, and then I added a tubular magazine and new sights. Using this expertise, we produced over a thousand of these. We also made muzzle loading cannons, some rifled and some not. I see you guys have some breech loading cannons. Those look quite like French Lahitolle cannons."

"Yeah, we didn't base those off of the Lahitolle. Since we didn't have smokeless powder nor the best steelmaking technologies, this was the best we could come up with. A lot of them were leaking gas early on, so it took a while to perfect them, hence why we only have ten of them. You sure know a lot about firearms."

"Certainly. I've been obsessed with them from a young age. By the way, the gas leaks were also the reason why we didn't go for a more advanced design. However, since my guys are less experienced about firearms than yours, I was forced to pitch them less advanced designs. May I ask what caliber of bullet your Henry Rifles use?"

"8mm."

"What a coincidence! We do too! Would you mind exchanging rifles and bullets so we could see how our respective guns were built?"

"I have no issues with that. Here."

We exchanged our guns, and then we immediately began scanning every nook and cranny of our rifles and bullets.

"Hmm..." Conrad pondered, "Your steel is very crude. This is clearly not made by somebody who knows what they're doing."

"I agree. It's the best that a bunch of kids could produce in a reasonable and fastish timeframe. Your steel is of a far higher quality. So are your bullets. Most of your things are way more advanced than ours."

"You guys did a great job in producing weapons. For a bunch of younglings, you've exceeded our expectations. I originally wanted to become leader so that we could help you guys, especially Luke, but it seems like you guys can manage yourselves. After Luke wrote me a letter confirming that you guys were this advanced, I immediately wanted to join forces to protect the interest of both parties. Also, this was slightly out of necessity."

"What caused you guys to want to join us?"

"It's a complete mess down south. A giant empire formed by gangsters in the former city of Tacoma has been constantly attacking everybody around it and enslaving much of the local populations. They tricked a thousand of us to make peace between our two factions, but they ended up murdering most of our envoys. After our leader died, there was a power struggle, and we were the only ones who were left. The rest either fled or left, leaving their guns behind in the chaos. Luckily our advanced weapons technology didn't escape along with them, or not that'd be a pickle."

"Slavery??? They have slaves?"

"Oh, yes. If you thought the Confederate slaves were treated poorly, then you haven't seen nothing yet. The empire in Tacoma which calls themselves the Golden Legion forces the enslaved into phalanxes during wartime and onto plantations during peacetime. To be fair, we would be able to completely eviscerate the "Golden Legion" in a war, but we didn't want to fight at the moment. Instead, we reckoned joining you and crossing the mountains for a new start and then coming back in a few years to get our revenge would be a far better option."

Conrad was wiping a tear from his eyes. One could only tell his attachment to his deceased comrades.

"Don't worry, we will return to the west to avenge your comrades. Say, why don't I give you all a tour of the camp? We didn't construct extra quarters for you all since we're leaving soon, so you'll all have to bunk with us for the next three nights."

"No problem."

"That's a relief. Without further ado, let's start the tour?"

I showed the soldiers everything in the camp, from the steelmaking facility to the fisheries, from the papermaking area to the carpenters' quarters. Conrad was shocked at the progress we'd made, but he was confused as to why we would use a steelmaking procedure that produced such weak steel in comparison to theirs. He was also surprised at our use of rockets since they hadn't bothered to produce any. Their cannons could shoot way further than even the largest of our rockets, so that might warrant that train of thought.

After the tour was over, Conrad presented me with a Colt revolver as a gift. I gladly accepted and presented him with the most beautifully crafted of longbows as my gift to him. After trying it out at the archery range, he handed the bow to one of subordinates for storage. Although today's dinner was supposed to be a large feast in celebration of the soldiers' arrival, we didn't cook too much food since most of it would be necessary for the long way east. The soldiers understood this and ate their own rations for the night. The soldiers heartily drank the alcohol that they had brought along with them, while I declined due to my personal beliefs.

After the soldiers had placed their weapons in the armory, which had ballooned to five times its original size, I headed to bed, with Lucas, Conrad and two other soldiers bunking along. There was bȧrėly enough room to lie down, and we were stacked on top of each other like sardines. Man, this was the most uncomfortable night of my life.. And the body odor as well. I had taken frequent baths in the lake, so I smelled fine, but these soldiers smelled like rotten milk and sweaty socks! Ewww!