Youth World

Chapter 12 – Work Around the Camp

After waking up early in the morning, I lazily waded towards the center of the camp to grab myself a drink. The clay water stills were constantly purifying water that arrived from the lake through the bamboo pipes, and whatever water resulted from this was dumped into giant wooden barrels which had little taps on them which could be used as water fountains by the camp.

As I looked around, I could really notice that the camp's infrastructure was developing quite smoothly, and it resembled a small town more than anything at this point. People were scrambling around, presumably to gather materials and other things for the upcoming expedition.

I headed straight to the chefs to get myself some breakfast. I was so busy yesterday that I didn't even remember to eat breakfast, which caused me to be relatively unenergetic during the morning. What would I do today?

As I sat on the tree stump in the middle of camp, casually eating some cherries, a younger boy approached me and delivered some unsettling news.

"Alexander! Alexander! Urgent message!"

"What is it?"

"Remember the people that you sent to get salt?"

"Yeah. I sent 100 workers and 50 soldiers, right?"

"Yep. They were engaged in a massive battle!"

"WHAT???"

Nearly dropping my food, I sprang up, my ears visibly perking up. I grabbed the boy's shoulders and began vigorously shaking him.

"What happened? How did things go? Did anybody get hurt?"

"Chill! Chill! Stop shaking me! I'll tell you everything!"

"Sorry. Please, take a seat on this stump next to mine."

The boy, scared by my sudden outburst, sat down on the tree stump and began telling his tale. Many of the other people who weren't busy at the moment also gathered around to hear what he had to say.

"We began our journey by rounding the southern edge of Lake Washington, and we crossed the Cedar River where we encountered the friendly local peoples. After continuing northwest, we finally entered into what was formerly Seattle. Just as we were approaching, around 500 men armed with sticks and stones charged at us without even a warning!"

The crowd gasped in horror.

"What happened next? I hope everything went well."

I said that, but I wasn't really sure. I mean, they did outnumber us nearly three to one.

"Immediately, the commander ordered all the workers to also pick up spears, and the soldiers formed a shield wall. The slingers began throwing rocks from two football fields away, killing a dozen or so enemies instantly. We kept slinging rocks at them from long range until they approached within half a football field of range, and then they began to throw rocks at us. Our men used their shields to block the projectiles, and then they stood firm to brace for impact."

Looking around me, I could see that nobody was talking. They were too allured by the story to say anything.

"As the four hundred or so enemies hit our shield wall, the workers standing behind the soldiers began stabbing and thrusting at the enemies with their spears, instantly killing their front line. That broke their cohesion, and our soldiers began brutally stabbing them to death and bashing them with tools. As they turned and fled, we gave chase, cutting down hundreds of their men and capturing a few dozen. I reckon around two hundred made it out alive."

"And how many of our troops died?"

"Sadly, one worker, Debbie, was hit in the head with a stick, and she perished on the battlefield. About three other guys also succumbed to their injuries. A dozen or so were injured to some extent, but luckily that was the extent of our casualties."

"That is horrible to hear. What do you want us to do? Send reinforcements? We were going to send a party to construct ships on the Duwamish River today, so maybe I could send extra troops to provide protection?"

"That would be good. Is there anything else of note that you would like to tell us?"

"Yeah. We successfully made it down to the Puget Sound after burying our dead, and as I was leaving, they were building a small fort and setting up a salt collection system. We also made a deal with the neighboring tribes that said that we would get full control of those five miles of coastline and the adjacent forest if we return those lands to them in one month."

"We must ȧssemble a task force to seek retribution for the deaths of our comrades, and to ensure security of our ship construction site. Julius, are you here?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Lead an expeditionary force of three hundred men to Seattle in three days. The expedition today will still be launched, accompanied by the same number of troops. Does that sound good to everybody?"

One of my doubters, per se, a girl who was the leader of the cheerleading club, stood up and buŧŧed heads with me.

"You sure we should launch an expedition? I mean, do we really want to piss those guys off? Maybe peace is the better course of action."

"In a perfect world, that would be the case. However, this is real life. We have one advantage right now, and that is that we have superior weapons and training. If we don't use this to our benefit right now and force a favorable deal, we will eventually no longer have that advantage as the others begin constructing actual weapons. Therefore, we must launch a devastating strike that will render them so severely weakened that they will no longer be a threat. Got it?"

"Uhhhh… That sounds rather unnecessary, but oh well. I guess we have to do what we have to do. I'm not taking part, but you do you."

"Julius, send news to prepare an expedition. I'll tell you the strategy I have planned so far. Everybody is dismissed."

The atmosphere in the camp was palpable. It was almost cuttable with a knife. People all around me were talking about what was going to be our first war. And worst thing was that we didn't even know much about our opponents. I needed info before I was going to act.

"Hey, kid," I asked the clearly traumatized messenger, "Do you know anything about our enemies?"

"A bit. We captured some of the fallen enemies during that battle and all of them joined us. One of them, their leader, told us that they belonged to the Southern Seattle Tribe, which had expanded to also include everything up to the Duwamish River and all the way up to where the football stadium used to be. He told us their camp was being built on a hill called Beacon Hill, and there were about 20,000 inhabitants there."

"Excellent. Thanks for the information. I think you shouldn't head back to the place where you came from just yet, since you will be important for leading our troops to the camp after they're done taking out the Southern Seattle camp. How about you get yourself some rest for now."

"Thanks, Alexander!"

The kid ran off into the distance.

"So, Julius," I began, "Should we discuss our plans for this battle?"

"Go ahead. I can't wait to get back at those scumbags!"

"What do you want to do? You are the commander for this war, after all."

"What I want to do is scout out the area and stay out of sight, and then scale the hill in the middle of the night and take out the guards with slings and bows from a long range. Then, light the whole camp on fire while killing everybody you can find and then leave as soon as the job is done. I know, it's absolutely horrific, but it's extremely effective. Would you allow such an action to be taken?"

"As much as I want to take the moral high ground and say no, that's pretty much our only chance to win. Let's do it your way."

"That matter is settled, then. You think that the camp will be safe with only five hundred people guarding it?"

"That should be enough. There doesn't seem to be any other tribes or groups that pose a significant threat at the moment, and five hundred moderately trained professional troops will easily rout an army twice its size as we saw at that battle that the salt collectors fought against those kids. By the way, we should probably come up with a name for that battle. Let's just call it the battle of SeaTac as that was the location of the airport where the battle was fought."

"That makes sense. There's a lot of work to do in order to prepare for the campaign, so I'll see you later."

"I wish you the best of luck."

That was really stressful. I mean, killing my people when they had no intent to attack you is quite dishonorable, but the attackers probably wanted to loot them and steal their supplies, or maybe they were afraid that they were infringing on their territory. No matter what the circumstance is, retribution would be paramount in protecting our interests and the safety of our group.

After eating lunch, I went to check on the papermakers. Their complex was enormous, with massive amounts of pulp lying all over the place. On the surface, I said that I needed paper to record and write, but that was only half of it. Another more militaristic use of paper would be for paper cartridges and cardboard.

But why cardboard? Isn't that what you use to ship items through a postal service? No. That wouldn't be our use for it.

We desperately needed cardboard to make Congreve rockets. I knew that Congreve Rockets used cardboard in its exterior construction before switching to sheet iron. However, it was impossible to create sheet iron for the next few years, so cardboard would have to make do. It was very light and had a high tensile strength, so it would be perfect for what I needed it to do.

However, gunpowder would be necessary to build rockets. Knowing this, I headed over to the chemists' section of the camp to check up on their progress. Of course, they had many different types of chemicals and compounds that they had to make, including some research with fertilizer, but I had told them to prioritize gunpowder. It's not like they had to research a new formula or anything, since gunpowder's recipe was quite simple. In one of the chemists' stockpiles, I could see a massive pile of potassium nitrate, which was probably collected from the numerous caves that were located pretty close to our camp. Good progress was being made.

Dinner went by without any major events occurring. I just walked around camp, alleviating public fears, checking up on things and helping any way I could. I made a speech to everybody right after dinner speaking about the specifics of the war plan, and that everything was going to be okay. I also riled them up with fiery language describing the barbarity of the attackers and the righteousness of our cause. After nearly a whole hour of speaking, the rest of the group were all up in arms, wanting to annihilate the South Seattle Tribe off the face of the earth. It's funny how words and peer pressure can change a whole group's attitude.

After dealing with a few more things, most of which were mundane or administrative, I entered my shelter and went to bed. Well, it was a giant spread out patch of moss, so not really a bed, but whatever.. As I drifted off to sleep, I noticed that somebody had expanded my shelter and added some makeshift furniture.