Despite which, kerosene was a far better fuel choice in the end. That was why TTE was converting a lot of its heavy equipment to liquid fuel.
“That’s going to make things at least a little easier,” he said out loud, “and I realize we’re talking about a single division, not an entire corps. How many Bisons are we actually going to need?”
“The Model A’s the personnel carrying version,” chan Yahndar replied, “and each of them can transport two cavalry squads-minus their horses, of course. Assuming we had enough of them for the entire division, we’d need almost five hundred.” He smiled faintly at the civilian’s horrified expression. “Fortunately for your logistics concerns, we don’t have anywhere near that many, though. For that matter, the Army’s been buying about three times as many Model B’s-the pure tractor variant-as Model A’s. We’ll be lucky if Division-Captain chan Geraith is able to scrape up two hundred of the A’s. We’ll probably have several hundred Mules to support them, though, and the Mules run on kerosene, like the Mark Twos.”
“That’s still going to burn Saramash’s own pile of coal,” Yanusa-Mahrdissa pointed out. “Then again, we’ve already got Saramash’s coal pile right here at Shosara.” He smiled another crooked smile. “Our own heavy equipment’s got quite an appetite for it, you know. Moving it’s still going to be a pain, though.”
“That’s why the Army’s also scraping up every dray it can find up-chain from here and shipping them forward. I understand TTE’s combing out its own steamer fleet, too, even if no one had come up with any hard numbers for the Division-Captain before he sent us on our merry way. I think we can confidently assume there’ll be quite a lot of them, and we’ll probably end up using some of them to move troops, as well, especially after the first infantry comes forward to join us. And at least we won’t have to move as much fodder! That’s one thing a dragoon’s used to calculating. It doesn’t feel right leaving the horses behind, but the Bisons will actually move a lot more cargo per ton of ‘fuel’ than animal traction can. And each ton of it will be a lot less bulky than fodder, too.”
Yanusa-Mahrdissa nodded silently, his brain grappling with the quantities of coal, kerosene, and other supplies which would have to be transported through what amounted to a howling wilderness.
Resym was going to be bad enough. The railhead had already extended the next best thing to a thousand miles beyond the entry portal, located near the site of the small town of Shdandifar in the New Farnalian republic of Darylis, but it was almost three thousand miles-over a thousand of them through the heart of the Dalazan Basin’s rain forest-to the exit portal, near where the Limathian river city of Paditharyn ought to be. They were fortunate the existing rail line covered over half of the rain forest crossing, and even more fortunate that TTE survey parties had already laid out the railbed for the entire trip. The fact that the Portal Authority had surveyed dozens of identical planets meant picking a route was seldom that great a challenge, although there were exceptions, of course. But someone still had to go and hike or ride the entire route to be sure there weren’t any surprises, local and ground erosion, watersheds, landslides, tree growth patterns, and even earthquakes could provide plenty of those.
In this case, though, they knew now where to expect the greatest difficulties, and the Portal Authority’s standard practice of using the rail line’s planned route for the initial animal-drawn traffic of exploration meant there was at least a rough roadbed hacked through the jungle. It was little more than a muddy trail in far too many spots and the speed with which the jungle encroached on and reclaimed roadbeds had to be seen to be believed. Nor had that trail ever been intended for vehicles as heavy as the 3rd Dragoons Bisons and Steel Mules or for the sheer quantity of traffic which would shortly go streaming down it. But his own advanced construction parties were improving it steadily. It would offer a starting point, at least, and if the Bisons’ towing capacity was really that great…
“How many Bisons do you have available right now, Battalion-Captain?” he asked.
“We’ve got about a dozen aboard the other ships,” chan Yahndar replied a bit cautiously. “We didn’t see any point in bringing along more than that, especially with how tight shipping is and how much heavy construction equipment Master Banchu needs to move this way. Besides, the entire idea is for our initial scouting efforts to be carried out on horseback. The kind of smoke trail a column of Model A’s throws up would be a bit hard to conceal.”
“I understand that,” Yanusa-Mahrdissa said. “But one of the key things we need to worry about is getting enough heavy equipment far enough forward for our bridge builders. For that matter, moving the bridging materials is going to be a problem, and there are areas-especially in Resym-where we’re simply going to have to do major road improvement-a lot of major road improvement-if it’s going to support the amount of traffic Division-Captain chan Geraith’s talking about putting down it. The tractor-trailer steamers we’d normally use to transport our bulldozers, graders, and steam shovels are bigger than hell and not very well suited for breaking trail through the middle of a rain forest. But if we can tow the flatbeds behind your Bisons instead of the regular wheeled tractors we can probably move the heavy stuff a lot farther forward a lot faster. And if you’re going to be moving on horseback initially, anyway…”
“I see your point.” Chan Yahndar nodded. “We may be able to trade off to some extent. I know you’ve got a lot of standard steam drays working around the railhead. Maybe we could give up a few Bisons for heavy towing and replace them with wheeled drays which are individually lightly loaded enough to get through and give us the capacity we’ll need. For that matter, we could trade them out for Mules as they come forward. In fact,” he frowned in sudden thought, “I think we need to suggest just that to Division-Captain chan Geraith. We didn’t have any of the Mules here in Traisum when we started out, but if he can get enough of them forward to support us while we scout the route, it would help a lot from a tactical perspective, as well.”
“How?” Yanusa-Mahrdissa asked curiously. “I thought they didn’t have much payload capacity,” he added, and chan Yahndar snorted.
“They don’t, compared to a Bison, but they’re faster than a Bison, so they wouldn’t have much trouble catching up to us well before we hit Thermyn, and we won’t have anywhere near the logistical requirements the main column will. More to the point, though, they burn kerosene, not coal, and they burn hot enough there’s no visible smoke. We’d be a lot harder for some dragon or eagle-lion to spot, and we’d be able to leave all of our Bisons with you for the heavy hauling.”
“I think that’s certainly an idea worth looking into,” the Shurkhali agreed. “And I know Master Banchu plans to transfer all his heavy equipment and heavy lift transportation to this side of the Vandor as quickly as he can find shipping for it. Eventually, we’ll have plenty of steamers available to move stuff forward from Shosara; the problem’s going to be how quickly we can improve the roadbed enough for them to do the moving.”