Sogbourne’s eyes narrowed slightly. “There’s a great deal of interesting information in what you’ve said. Very well, Hundred Olderhan, pull the ammunition from different boxes and let’s see the results.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Jasak returned to the shooting bench. He pulled out the ammunition. Loaded the rifle with great care. Lifted it to his shoulder. Took careful aim. Pulled the trigger. Worked the action. Pulled the trigger again. The result was five mechanical clicks, five perfectly punched primer cups, and zero fired rounds. When Jasak recovered the rounds from the ground and brought them over to him, Jathmar stared at the unfired cartridges in baffled consternation.
“It can’t be the ammunition,” he frowned. “Did you bring any of the reloading tools out here with you, Jasak?”
“We brought one of everything we found in your camp. Including the loaded gear bags.”
“Good. I need to see them.”
Jasak escorted Shaylar and Jathmar out to the shooting benches, since she insisted on coming along. Commander of One Thousand Solvar Rinthrak, another of the officers from Jasak’s court-martial, also insisted on following them, and while the others watched closely, Jathmar used the tools in the reloading kit Jasak had brought to pry the bullets out of the cartridge cases. He tipped out the powder, piling it up on the table, then used a punch to remove the priming cups. He felt squeamish about doing that to “live” primers. There wasn’t enough explosive compound in a primer cup to do real damage, but the very idea of hammering on a primer that hadn’t been fired went against the grain.
Once he’d removed all five primer cups, he tipped them over in his palm and examined them closely. There was nothing wrong with them. The dried film of liquid explosive used as priming compound coated their interior exactly as it was supposed to. That film was shock sensitive, igniting under the sharp jolt of a firing pin, and he could see the primer painted into the cups. There were no voids, no spots where the coating was thinned out to let bare metal show through.
They should have fired.
Shaylar echoed that thought aloud. “They should have fired, Jathmar.”
“It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. And that’s saying a hell of a lot, considering where we’re standing, right now.”
Shaylar had the temerity to chuckle, which startled Sogbourne into staring at her.
“Well, it is funny,” she told him, meeting his rather hostile scowl with a smile. “We see things that are flat-out impossible every day. Every hour. Even the way the bathroom works is weird enough to raise gooseflesh. But even with all of that, I have to agree with my husband. Those cartridges should have fired. But they didn’t. And that’s just as impossible as anything we’ve seen in your civilization.”
Sogbourne’s scowl shifted into a thoughtful frown.
“Maybe I did something wrong?” Jasak suggested.
“I was watching you very closely and I didn’t see you do anything wrong. Certainly not wrong enough to cause this.” He held up the five unfired cartridges, then added the first one Jasak had tried to fire to the pile. “One might be a fluke. But six…” He shook his head. “I don’t know why, but they simply failed to fire, and they should have.”
Gadrial, who’d been sitting quietly in the row of chairs reserved for witnesses, called out a request to join them.
“Yes, please, Magister Gadrial.” Sogbourne nodded. “Perhaps you can explain what’s going on.”
She crossed quickly to the shooting bench and stood beside Jasak while Jathmar explained the problem.
“How are they supposed to work?” she asked.
Jathmar glanced at Shaylar, who shrugged. He started to refuse, but then he returned her shrug, instead.
Why not? he thought. They can’t duplicate a formula that tricky to make from a generalized description.
So he explained the process of manufacturing the liquid explosive, explained how and why the spark from a tiny, controlled explosion caused the powder charge to burn, generating gas that was confined in such a small space that it pushed with terrific force against the place of least resistance: the bullet, which was merely held in place by a small crimp in the metal rim of the cartridge case. The one thing he didn’t explain was the ingredient list for the priming compound and powder. He preferred to keep that secret for as long as he could.
“It’s a very simple, very basic process of chemistry and physics,” he finished the explanation, “but the manufacturing process is something I don’t understand very well. I’m told it’s difficult to make some of the ingredients and the steps in combining them are very complex. Even small variations can ruin a batch. But I’ve given you the basics as I understand them.”
When Sogbourne glanced at Shaylar, she said, “Don’t look at me. Jathmar knows more about it than I do. I can shoot a rifle or a handgun and I’ve learned how to reload cartridges, but I don’t have the slightest idea how they make the components.” When Sogbourne looked at her with a clearly skeptical frown, she said, “Does a non-Gifted person have to understand how the spells that operate a cook stove are put together? How and why they work? Does a non-Gifted person need to know every single line of the incantations that run a slider chain or operate the controls that heat or cool your house?”
“Point well taken,” Gadrial nodded. Then she grinned. “Very well taken, in fact.”
Sogbourne glared at Gadrial and Shaylar with a belligerent air, then he muttered, “Oh, all right. Point taken.” But his eyes remained suspicious.
“So the primer explodes, which causes the powder to burn, which creates pressure?” Gadrial asked.
“That’s right.”
“How much pressure?”
“It varies from one type of gun to another and it varies from one type of ammunition to another.”
“Why?” Sogbourne asked, frowning again.
“When the length of the cartridge case changes, you can either pack in more powder or be forced to put in less, depending on whether it’s larger or smaller. The size of the grains of powder and the number of those grains determines how much pressure will develop inside the case. Beyond that, some gun types are more robust than others, which means you can safely add more powder to a cartridge, generate higher pressures, and end up with higher speeds for the bullet when it leaves the gun barrel.
“When you start reusing them in the field, you also have to take into account how old your cases are. If a case is new or nearly new, you can put more powder into it than into an older case. Older ones are more brittle from the heat generated by repeated firing, which can cause them to split or tear apart inside the chamber if you load them as heavily as you would a new case.
“You also have to consider how high the metal quality is to start with. The metal in the gun, itself, is a factor. An old gun that’s been fired thousands of times is more likely to crack or split during use than a new gun. If the metal quality’s lousy to start with, you can create problems from the very outset. I’ve seen guns with parts that sheared off, from cheap metallurgy and shoddy manufacturing and poor maintenance, and a couple of those broken guns caused serious injury to the men shooting them. So you see, there isn’t an easy or definitive answer to your question.”