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The Martian Lecture Series #2
Aug. 4th, 2008 06:42 pmIn the days of my jaunt, we couldn't send up anything bigger than a largish Thames steamer, and once you count in the victuals, drink, and air there was precious little space left over to cram in Redcoats, rifles, ammunition, field guns, and the thousand-and-one sundries required to make a bit o' Earth on Mars.
In consequence of which, Her Majesty's Empire on Mars and the Moon and elsewhere had to be held by as many men as could be crammed into a few sardine tins, and these would get shot off regular into space as fast as they could be loaded. You can imagine a great scattering of penny packets of soldiery being strewn out by some great arm over the planets. Fifty men here, twenty there, a couple of patrols with a Captain in charge over yonder, and 200 miles of frozen desert between the each of 'em. At the time of the Aubochon Expedition, there were mayhaps 2000 British soldiers guarding fifty-thousand square miles of howling wilderness and a thin stripe of settled canal. Most of 'em had been stuck there for five years, and some of them are stuck there still – the ones that didn't die in the aftermath of our expedition, mind you.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Around about Christmas of 1867, word came down from Mars that a man - a human being - had been crowned king of Aubochon, which is miserable pile of inhabited ruins at the terminus of two dead canals. We only knew of the place because of a couple of Jesuits who'd made it there in '64, and not even they'd bothered to stay long enough to convert any of the locals. They said there was a young king, not very popular, with a smallish army. The city itself was just a few thousand dirt-poor merchants and labouring class, with no one to sell to and no one to work for, save themselves. If the place was important at all it was because it lay at the southern edge of Clan territory, which runs from a few hundred miles north of the equator all the way to the ice caps, so far as can be told. At that time, we'd never had a contact with 'em that didn't end with a hold-full of pine boxes getting shipped back to Blighty, and no one the wiser as to why the beggars had taken offense. The idea was they hated outsiders, and you don't get much more outside than droppin' in from another planet.
In any case, Aubochon was - and is - the one spot on Mars we know of with a supply of food and drink and strong backs anywhere close to the Clans. It'd always seemed too far out to make a strike at it, as well as too uncertain, what with the Clans liable to drop out of the sky on their filthy great wings the second a chap put his head down to pulls on his boots. And now? With the place evidently being run by a Son of Dear Old Earth, the time seemed right and proper for Her Majesty's Government to drop by and, in the parlance of Parliament and The Times, "establish a permanent diplomatic presence."
And, just to be sure our little visit wasn't taken he wrong way, Her Majesty decided to send the largest body of armed Earthmen Mars had even seen, a full battalion of infantry with an extra helping of sappers to help smooth the way and make our place secure. It'd be a mixed bag of colonials, Canadians, Gurkhas, and other sturdy stock used to cold weather or thin air. It's the sort of force that could be shipped in a couple of trains back home, but it was going to take every space ship in her Majesty's service to shift 'em all to Mars.
We set off from the Sri Lankan Spacedrome in March of 1868. Getting there was a bloody life's work in and of itself, but that's a tale for another lecture, one the newspapers won't take much interest in...
- transcript from lecture “Six Months in the Phaethoniis,” by Brigadier Franklin Begg, HM Own Martian Rifles (Ret.), delivered to the Royal Astronomical Society, August 1st, 1888.
In consequence of which, Her Majesty's Empire on Mars and the Moon and elsewhere had to be held by as many men as could be crammed into a few sardine tins, and these would get shot off regular into space as fast as they could be loaded. You can imagine a great scattering of penny packets of soldiery being strewn out by some great arm over the planets. Fifty men here, twenty there, a couple of patrols with a Captain in charge over yonder, and 200 miles of frozen desert between the each of 'em. At the time of the Aubochon Expedition, there were mayhaps 2000 British soldiers guarding fifty-thousand square miles of howling wilderness and a thin stripe of settled canal. Most of 'em had been stuck there for five years, and some of them are stuck there still – the ones that didn't die in the aftermath of our expedition, mind you.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Around about Christmas of 1867, word came down from Mars that a man - a human being - had been crowned king of Aubochon, which is miserable pile of inhabited ruins at the terminus of two dead canals. We only knew of the place because of a couple of Jesuits who'd made it there in '64, and not even they'd bothered to stay long enough to convert any of the locals. They said there was a young king, not very popular, with a smallish army. The city itself was just a few thousand dirt-poor merchants and labouring class, with no one to sell to and no one to work for, save themselves. If the place was important at all it was because it lay at the southern edge of Clan territory, which runs from a few hundred miles north of the equator all the way to the ice caps, so far as can be told. At that time, we'd never had a contact with 'em that didn't end with a hold-full of pine boxes getting shipped back to Blighty, and no one the wiser as to why the beggars had taken offense. The idea was they hated outsiders, and you don't get much more outside than droppin' in from another planet.
In any case, Aubochon was - and is - the one spot on Mars we know of with a supply of food and drink and strong backs anywhere close to the Clans. It'd always seemed too far out to make a strike at it, as well as too uncertain, what with the Clans liable to drop out of the sky on their filthy great wings the second a chap put his head down to pulls on his boots. And now? With the place evidently being run by a Son of Dear Old Earth, the time seemed right and proper for Her Majesty's Government to drop by and, in the parlance of Parliament and The Times, "establish a permanent diplomatic presence."
And, just to be sure our little visit wasn't taken he wrong way, Her Majesty decided to send the largest body of armed Earthmen Mars had even seen, a full battalion of infantry with an extra helping of sappers to help smooth the way and make our place secure. It'd be a mixed bag of colonials, Canadians, Gurkhas, and other sturdy stock used to cold weather or thin air. It's the sort of force that could be shipped in a couple of trains back home, but it was going to take every space ship in her Majesty's service to shift 'em all to Mars.
We set off from the Sri Lankan Spacedrome in March of 1868. Getting there was a bloody life's work in and of itself, but that's a tale for another lecture, one the newspapers won't take much interest in...
- transcript from lecture “Six Months in the Phaethoniis,” by Brigadier Franklin Begg, HM Own Martian Rifles (Ret.), delivered to the Royal Astronomical Society, August 1st, 1888.
