The Steam Age: Gears and Bones

Chapter 37

As night fell, they stopped at an abandoned farm.

It was less a farm and more a pile of half-collapsed stone walls and a few charred beams barely holding up the ruins.

Half of the roof of the main house had collapsed, and rubble was piled up in the corner. Snow blown in by the wind had accumulated on the broken bricks in a thin layer.

The barn was completely burned down, leaving only a few charred pillars standing forlornly on the foundation.

The only place that could barely shelter from the wind was the outbuilding—a small stone hut that may have originally been used to store farm tools. Although some of the roof planks had collapsed, the overall structure was still intact. The four walls were made of stone, with only a doorway without a door panel on the front wall.

The flag captain led his men to clear a relatively flat area in the side room, covered half of the doorway with spare canvas from the carriage, and built a windbreak wall with rubble in a corner of the room.

Only one large tent was set up, large enough for all the team members to squeeze in, but Perfit had it pitched inside a side room—under double cover, even with a small oil lamp lit, no light could be seen from the outside.

The smokeless stove was dug outside the back wall of the side room, right next to the base of the stone wall.

The Ross veterans were so skilled at this job that it was like breathing; from digging the hearth to testing the smoke diffusion, it took them less than half an hour.

When the first pot of snow water boiled, Perfit was sitting in the corner of the outbuilding, leaning against the stone wall, with Chernzov's tattered map spread out on his lap.

She can walk on her own now.

Her legs were still a little weak when she got off the carriage, and Belfast reached out to help her up—the steam knight armor had completely stopped working, but Belfast's own alchemical doll structure could still move normally. However, without the hydraulic assistance driven by the steam core, her power output had returned to normal levels.

Under Perfit's guidance, the two alchemists opened the Steam Knight's outer shell, allowing Belfast to emerge, while the head maid continued to take care of Perfit.

Perfitt helped her into the side room, and as he sat down in the corner, he felt a sigh of gratitude emanating from his spine.

She drank half a bowl of hot water, ate a small piece of softened dry bread, and then had someone summon Allen and another alchemist.

"I need a radio transmitter," she said bluntly, her voice still a little hoarse, but her pace had returned to normal. "The cruiser is still waiting to pick us up off the northern shoal."

If we continue south along our current route, we'll get further and further away from the coastline. We must inform them to change their plans and retreat to the port of Romulus to meet us.

Allen and the other alchemist exchanged a glance.

The other alchemist was a middle-aged man in his early forties named Morris, who was in charge of equipment maintenance at Langdon Laboratory and knew the structure of various experimental instruments like the back of his hand.

He frowned and thought for a moment, then said, "The core components of a telegraph are an oscillator and a power supply. The power supply can be solved with a hand-cranked generator—we have a spare hand-cranked generator on our carriage, originally intended to power portable experimental equipment. It's not very powerful, but it should be enough to drive a simple telegraph."

"Oscillators are rather complicated; we don't have any readily available."

"Can you put it together using the stuff in my lab kit?" Perfit asked.

Allen had already opened his toolbox and was taking inventory of the parts.

As he rummaged through the items, he muttered what he needed: "The oscillator can be generated using a spark gap—two copper plates with an adjustable gap can produce high-frequency pulses. We can make this ourselves."

"I'll wind the capacitor plate myself, wrapping the copper wire around the inductor coil. I'll also use some glassware from your lab kit as a substitute for the discharge bottle."

He looked up at Morris and said, "We can forge the missing parts on the spot—the copper sheet needs to be thinned, the spark gap needs to be accurate to the millimeter, hand polishing is too slow, it will be faster to do it with the basic material shaping array."

Morris nodded, already rummaging through his leather pouch for the alchemical materials he carried with him, picking out a small copper ingot and a few graphite rods: "Give me the copper sheet."

I've been drawing basic shaping magic circles for over ten years; I can draw them correctly even with my eyes closed.

Give me a flat stone slab as a base, and I can forge the copper sheet and support needed for the spark gap within fifteen minutes.

Allen responded, took out a pre-wound inductor coil and a roll of copper wire from the experimental kit, and laid a wooden board on his knees to begin winding the capacitor. Perfit watched them from a distance for a moment, leaning against the stone wall, to make sure they didn't need any extra help, then lowered his head again and flattened the map on his knees.

There's still time; she needs to plan her route for tomorrow.

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The next morning, as the pale sunlight peeked through the gaps in the canvas of the side room's doorway, Alan and Morris had already finished assembling the telegraph machine.

The spark gap oscillator was fixed on a flat stone slab. The gap between the copper sheets was adjusted using the thin copper wires that Morris had drawn out last night using the basic material shaping array. The precision could barely reach the sub-millimeter level.

The inductor coil and capacitor board were wrapped together with copper wire and connected to the output of the hand-cranked generator. The antenna was a wheel spoke that had been removed from a horse cart and tied to the top of a charred pillar found in the ruins of a granary. It was supported by two knights and stood upright in the open space behind the side room.

Perfit stood beside the transmitter and checked the message that had been coded the night before.

The message was short, containing only three pieces of information: the expedition had evacuated the city and was heading south by land towards Holy Romulus; the cruiser was to weigh anchor immediately, bypass the northern route, and proceed to Stocana port to await the signal for fleet rendezvous; and a confirmation reply was given.

She handed the message to Allen, who squatted down in front of the transmitter and began pressing the trigger switch for the spark gap.

Intermittent electric sparks crackled in the gaps between the copper plates, and high-frequency pulses radiated outwards along the antenna. Each discharge left a faint ozone smell in the cold morning air.

The message was sent three times.

After each message was sent, they would stop and wait for a reply.

Allen pressed the headphones to his ears, closed his eyes, and slowly adjusted the spacing of the capacitor plates with his fingers, trying to pick up the cruiser's radio response frequency from the chaotic background noise.

After the third transmission, he suddenly opened his eyes, pressed the earpiece tighter, and said in a low but excited voice, "Received. They replied with two words: Confirmed, Stocana."

Perfico nodded, instructing his men to remove the antenna and return it to the carriage, and to disassemble and pack the transmitter into a box.

The whole process took less than 15 minutes.

Before the sun had fully risen, the expedition team had already packed up their camp and continued south.

The wilderness was deserted.

They had completely left the swamp area, and the surrounding terrain gradually transitioned from frozen shrubland to gently undulating gravel hills. The ground hardened and dried, and the cartwheels no longer made that unsettling muddy sound as they rolled over it, leaving only two shallow ruts.