CHAPTER 20
Guns are dangerous things.
Hedy, who had been an actress for many years, was quite familiar with the methods of film production. But now, when she actually had to handle these old-fashioned and cumbersome items, she was somewhat surprised.
Compared to modern, compact handguns, the long guns of this era originally required two people to carry them. Now, they've been modified into something resembling a long trumpet, and only muscular men can fully control them.
Putting aside the weight, the more troublesome aspect was their recoil.
When Da Vinci was testing the first three generations of firearms, he once told Hedy to stay as far away as possible.
Gunpowder was unstable, or perhaps the gun barrel design had issues. If the barrel exploded, it could potentially blow the whole person up along with it.
Fortunately, she was lucky enough to survive.
Miss Luris, who was at least six feet tall, could hold her own in a fight with anyone. But now, as she tried to tame this beast-like firearm at the shooting range, she was knocked to the ground several times by its recoil.
She cursed, "My shoulder blade is about to be shaken loose!"
"Mr. Zino, you should shoot again once you've stabilized," Da Vinci said slowly, wiping another long gun beside him. He casually remarked, "The other day, a new recruit got too close when he fired, and almost had his brow bone caved in."
Hedy was reviewing some documents that Dechio had sent her, occasionally listening in on their conversation.
The French had not arrived quickly. They had been waiting in Luka for a month.
According to news from the Medici, multiple forces had already set off, and the three-nation defense alliance had officially entered its deployment phase.
Hedy kept an eye on things, fearing something might go wrong in Milan. She had Atalante stay inside the city to look after the properties and business, while Dechio, as her first secretary, helped her organize various tasks.
During this period of staying behind, nothing happened in Luka.
The residents started living their normal peaceful lives, and few cared about the fate of the muddled old city lord.
The latter had completely given up resistance in his private garden.
After eating, he would slump down and snore, too lazy to bother with anyone anymore.
Taking advantage of this assembly period, Hedy officially named the legion—Diamond.
She had completed the control and decentralization of both large and small mercenary groups. All the leaders were granted seemingly honorable and prestigious military ranks and titles, yet no one noticed that certain things were secretly being reshuffled.
Everyone was happy to see the commissions continually rising, and they themselves appeared respectable and impressive.
However, the leaders of the mercenary groups found their control over the scattered soldiers increasingly being balanced and checked.
It must be said that her previous life’s clever manipulation of interpersonal relations came in as sharply as a blade in this era.
The Diamond Legion was divided into four divisions, each scheduled for regular patrols, handovers, and training drills. Though the number of musket troops was not large, every single one of them was carefully chosen elite.
Only a very few could master the use of the matchlock gun proficiently.
Da Vinci never expected that one day he would stand in front of a group of soldiers, teaching them how to use weapons. Yet, his adaptability was quite timely.
He was tall and eloquent, and his reputation in the army was growing daily.
Luris once again steadied the gun with her shoulder, aiming at a wooden target in the distance.
About a hundred feet away from her, another man fired first—
As soon as he pulled the trigger, accompanied by a deafening explosion, his entire body was pushed back by the recoil of the long gun, stumbling several steps. The heavy wooden stock nearly struck his forehead, and a distant scream could be heard.
The wooden target stood perfectly still, without a trace of gunpowder on it.
... How was Leo able to control the weapon so flawlessly when he fired?
Hedy casually signed her name on the military order and raised her head to observe the situation on the field.
They had originally been working on enhancing the matchlock gun’s explosive power and lethality, but given the current situation, this might not be a good thing.
She squinted slightly, trying to figure out where she had missed something.
The guns of this era did not have grips.
Though she had never experienced war herself, she knew what such things looked like on television.
It seemed that different countries' armies used different kinds of guns, and the shapes of the grips varied as well.
There were quite a few triangular ones—according to basic geometric principles, triangles imply stability.
But there were also vertical grips, which seemed to be quite popular.
Hedy thought for a moment and gestured for Leonardo to come over.
He had been wiping down a cannon, halfway through, but seeing the gesture, he quickly grabbed a cloth and hurried over.
"What is it?"
"I'm not very familiar with mechanical analysis..." She pulled out a discarded manuscript, flipped it over, and sketched a quick diagram. "If we added a grip at the middle or rear part of this long lever-like weapon, would it improve its stability?"
The primary goal was to reduce recoil and stabilize the gun, and secondly, to allow for better control over shooting accuracy.
Da Vinci furrowed his brows, took the pencil, and sat beside her.
He was an outstanding mathematician, having contributed to the design of Milan Cathedral's dome.
"You've drawn two types," he murmured. "A triangular one, and the other a grip perpendicular to the ground and the barrel?"
"I'm not sure where the grips should be placed on the lever," Hedy explained. "Do you think this would be useful?"
Da Vinci had already started calculating rapidly, too absorbed to answer her question.
The charcoal pencil quickly drew diagrams of force analysis with different focuses, arrows, and values marking the points of application and distribution, along with sketches of different grip shapes.
By the next day, they began experimenting with the placement and shape of the grips.
Da Vinci had stayed up all night making a movable grip stabilizer, and together they designed four different types of grips based on their shared ideas.
The grip couldn’t be too heavy or too light, and it had to maintain a stable balance against recoil.
Luris mumbled that mathematicians were too particular but still joined the experiment along with the others.
The results came quickly, so much so that Hedy was somewhat surprised.
The right-angle forward grip reduced recoil in both the vertical and horizontal directions, and it was quite easy to hold.
The vertical grip, while greatly reducing muzzle rise, was effective in suppressing the barrel, but it still caused noticeable deviation in the trajectory.
The genius craftsmen immediately began modifying the matchlock gun's design, creating wooden grooves specifically for the grips and finding the most suitable insertion points.
The number of destroyed targets in the musket camp grew rapidly, piling up like stacks of firewood.
Hedy let out a long sigh of relief and began addressing another issue with Leonardo—the gunpowder mixture.
This fascinating substance, originating from the distant East, had evolved and changed continuously due to the ravages of war.
In simple terms, gunpowder consists of three main components—saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur.
The igniter, the fuel, and the explosive.
It was because of gunpowder that untrained peasants could pierce the armor of knights, and it also contributed to the escalating wars and chaos in Europe.
"Simply put, the roughest ratio right now is 8:1:1," Da Vinci led her to the arms factory's smelting process and explained in a low voice, "But this is not the right answer."
"How do you know?" Hedy observed the blueprints for cannons and giant crossbows, following him into the gunpowder preparation room.
"Experiments," Da Vinci shook his head. "I’ve tried 6:3:1, and 7:2:2. It’s always missing something."
Sometimes the burn rate was too fast, but the explosion was small. Other times, the explosion was too powerful but unstable. The ratio hadn’t been adjusted to the ideal one yet.
Hedy paused, deep in thought. "What about the specific percentage?"
"What?"
"Percentage?" She suddenly realized something and asked, "Don’t you know that word?"
"Is... it about the ignition method?" Da Vinci shook his head. "It has nothing to do with ignition."
Hedy froze for a few seconds, then belatedly realized that the term was from modern Latin.
She trusted him more than she had in the past few years and, at this moment, didn't mind explaining this rather modern concept. "Let’s say we divide the value into one hundred parts. Then we can make the ratio more precise, right?"
"You mean like dividing a clock into segments?" Da Vinci blinked in confusion, repeating, "That’s what the word means?"
"Exactly, in every hundred parts, how many parts for each." Hedy took out her notebook from her bag and handed it to him. "Could you calculate and adjust the ratio?"
The young man didn’t bother with pleasantries, immediately beginning to compare the past data and analyze it. She stood by his side, faintly amused by the situation.
Many things that are commonplace in the modern world are like stars that have yet to be discovered and observed in this era.
There are no swings, no cola, and no percentages.
But while she lives in this time, she can also escape many things.
In the decades leading up to her old age, from the media to television, people eagerly spread rumors about her, sensationalizing her life with crude and vicious words like "sexpot."