4. New Goal

Bitz had moved his entire laboratory to the commander’s quarters. Then he demonstrated his process twice. They could hardly believe the was pulling ammonia from the air. It felt like magic—even to Bitz, who obviously understood the hard science.

Air and water went in; the magical substance guayn came out. The reason they had been fighting for islands for decades. And now they could make it for free!

“Not bad,” the commander grunted, “for a Jurad.”

“Not bad?” Bitz bit his tongue. “But of course, dear Pricecat, I am merely a humble scientist in service of the Freethieves.”

The Pricecat was joined by two more animals. An older beaver and a truly ancient tiger. They had probably done important things for Doveland … a hundred years ago.

“We must scale this process,” said the tiger. “If we can have a thousand animals repeat this, every day, we’ll have enough ammunition for all within weeks! Can you teach this process to others?”

Bitz moved his small, round glasses. “The average chemist should be able to—”

“And strangers we pluck off the streets?”

“Well, erm,” stammered Bitz. His wife Bilara saved him by pulling him into an adjacent room.

Bitz tried to listen to the conversation of the other men once he was gone. Was that something about “that Jurad is playing a trick on us”?

Bilara was furious and grabbed his attention instead.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Prevent worldwide starvation.”

Bilara turned around. Her board tail swept all materials off the table. “Your process can create fertilizer, yes. But it creates terrible weapons with the same ease.”

“We are at war, dear.” Bitz calmly cleaned his glasses against his own fur. “In times of peace, the scientist is needed for progress. In times of war, the scientist is in serve of his homeland.”

“This war is foolish.”

Bitz tried to hug his wife. Her tail hit him in the face as she turned to stare out the window.

“Every war is foolish,” she hissed. “You can still step back, dear. Tell them how dangerous your invention is. Tell them it was indeed a trick, a joke, a jest. Anything to prevent—”

“We want the same thing,” said Bitz. “For the war to end swiftly. If we outnumber the opponent’s ammunition, it’s over much more quickly.”

“I doubt that.”

“It’s simple math, dear, that with more bullets—”

“If we want the same.”

Bilara kicked the door open and ran away.

Bitz watched his childhood love go, frowning. Should he follow? He stayed put.

He caught the final part of the conversation. The commander had clarified, to his ancient colleagues, that the industrial revolution had taken place by now. They didn’t need to hire a thousand animals to make ammonia with their bare paws.

They could build a machine to do it for them. Faster and cheaper. Bitz was about to do a joyous dance, but—

All this excitement had made them forget about the Godesweets, who still waited for them mere kilometers away.

The sun had risen, the land was well-lit, and that meant the attack could continue.

The first bombs shook the earth. The floor slanted and Bitz was glad he had not eaten anything yet today.

The commander yelled out the window. Then he moved to the Telephone.

A black, elongated object was kept in its place by a twirling cord. Buttons stuck out of the wall underneath it, showing numbers 0 to 10, each one as large as Bitz’s head.

A Telephone for quadrupeds. The commander alternated between using his snout and his paws to rapidly type a phone number. A crackling sound echoed through the space. Because quadrupeds could not hold the object, like apes, the volume was always raised to fill the entire room.

As the Telephone rang, the commander smiled at Bitz.

“I’m going to make you acquaintance of another genius inventor and engineer, Bitz. In a few months, I want to see rows of machines making guayn for us!”

The tapping and rattling of gunshots hammered Bitz’s ears. A horrible unescapable feeling. His ears hadn’t stopped ringing for months and he could barely sleep here.

Was his wife right? Fear of losing her grabbed his heart. Fear of seeing that angry and disappointed face as well. But now he realized she’d been angry at him ever since the day he enthusiastically agreed to join the war effort.

Why was he doing this? Was recognition so valuable to him? Because some of them called him a dirty Jurad? No, he was a scientist. He searched for truth! What others did with his inventions … was none of his concern, right?

Yes. He was simply right. The war would be over sooner if they fought harder. And that’s what Bilara wanted, right? No more war?

The commander finished his phone call. He punched a spot on the wall to sever the connection. It shook Bitz from his thoughts.

The Pricecat’s burning eyes stared into his. “For now, though, I want you to convert the process into ammunition as rapid as a hare.”

“Ah, well, I might have boasted too much,” started the beaver, as he fidgeted with his glasses. “It’s fertilizer, nothing more. It, erm, gives plants the necessary minerals, makes the ground hold its water more easily, and circulates air. There is no way to use it for weapons or—”

“DO IT.”

The Pricecat left the room and ran to the front line. The final chests of ammunition were handed out. Rather quickly, the vanguard had to drop back and the fight moved towards the heart of the abandoned city.

His beaver paws shook. His entire body shivered. He accidentally crushed the first flasks he grabbed.

What to do?

The floor never stopped shaking. The commander yelled endlessly. The front line moved back again; they simply lacked the firepower to keep Godesweets at any safe distance.

Visions shot through his thoughts. The enemy storming this room, taking him prisoner, maybe even … killing his wife.

He straightened his back. His hands found the right buttons, flasks and wires. All the ammonia he’d made so far, could be connected with oxygen to create nitrate. On its own, that wasn’t dangerous. It was flammable and had to be stored carefully, but no weapons would fire with it.

For that, you needed a second part. Nitrate keeps something burning, but you have to set it on fire in the first place. The material for the other step—sulfur or saltpeter—was readily available in this army camp.

The Godesweets entered the camp. Bitz could barely hold onto the flasks because of the rumbling room during the rain of explosions. He didn’t dare look back, look out the window. He had to find his wife. Where would she be? Surely she’d found a safe place somewhere?

The explosions ceased, just for a minute. Bitz’ heart ceased too. A tail he didn’t recognize slid past the window like a windshield wiper.

The doors opened with a loud bang.

He turned around. His glasses flew from his snout and landed in a corner of the room.

They were Freethieves, not Godesweets. Not yet. Praise be Doveland! They hadn’t lost yet.

The soldier ran inside and pointed at several petri dishes with white and black powder.

“Yes,” Bitz said, voice shaking. “New ammunition.”

The battle took ages, during which at least a hundred soldiers visited to grab some powder.

The Godesweets made the city stagger and waver, but never fall. They had just enough firepower to defend it until nightfall.

His heart stopped again when Bilara ran at him, alive and well. She ran through a ghost town, built from half-destroyed buildings, piles of rubble, and fires that never seemed to extinguish.

The commander passed her with a grin, black smears of gunpowder on his cheeks.

“Bitz! You are a special Jurad. The smartest one I know!”

Bilara pushed him, the highest commander of this camp, aside like an annoying mosquito. In any other situation this would’ve cost her dearly, but the Pricecat was too excited to care.

“We did as you ask. Please let us leave the army camp now and don’t ask us to return.”

Her words fell on deaf ears.

She must have felt, dear reader, as if she didn’t exist. As if she were already a ghost and nobody could hear her. I tried to help her. I tried to sow doubt in the mind of Bitz—but he was a man without empathy, deep in his soul, and nothing could change that.

I tried to delay the attack of the Godesweets to give Bitz more time to think it over. If anyone had listened to Bilara … none of the terrible things that you’ll discover soon would have happened at all.

Messengers ran into the dark gray room.

“The Godesweets have assigned a new Islandseeker who is taking all our islands! He even dares sail into our territory!”

“Not a worry in my ears,” said the commander with a grin. “We don’t need that guayn anymore. Let them waste time on those islands.”

Bitz had an insight. A Eureka moment thanks to years of studying chemistry. The particles he’d used for the ammunition could also form a gas. If you connected them differently, you would get an incredibly painful and dangerous gas.

An invisible, poisonous gas.

A silent killer that had to win them the war.

An amazing invention by this very clever Jurad, which might even earn him the Knobbel Prize.

Bitz shook himself out of his grasp. “I have another idea, commander.”

The Pricecat took the Telephone again.

“My dear Jurad, you get everything you need.”