The high dark rock rim of the Three Crowns Valley swept in an unbroken, sixty-mile circle of void-alloy steel.
Along the double-track line, the forty-eight combat railcars glided at forty miles per hour, their three-axle bogies humming against the cold metal.
Inside Turret Number One, the clockwork heart of the fire control system was ticking with rhythmic care.
It wasn’t a mystical crystal or an ensorcelled orb.
It was a Napierian clockwork integrator, designed according to Chapter Seven of the Naval Ordnance Clockwork Computing Manual.
Inside an oil-tight bronze housing, thirty-two three-space-folding logarithmic cams rotated on parallel spline shafts.
Each cam was machined with a complex, waving surface representing the exact non-linear relationship between projectile drop, air thickness, train speed, and target angular bearing.
The carriage rolled along the curved track. Then, bronze follower pins traced the three-space-folding curves of the cams, mechanically transmitting height and bending angles directly to the high-pressure gun-laying jacks.
