The city hadn’t yet woke up.
Fog clung to the outside of Ministry of Warm.
Inside in General Beauchamp’s office.
Beauchamp sat with his second cup of coffee, shoulders relaxed, but his eyes alert.
He had learned to read the mood of a day by the temperature of his drink.
Cold coffee usually meant trouble.
He called out, "Yes?"
Lieutenant Ravel entered. "Sir, Major Moreau is here."
Beauchamp raised his eyebrows slightly. "So early?"
But he couldn’t help and think.
Here comes my trouble.
Ravel nodded. "Said it couldn’t wait."
Étienne Moreau entered and saluted.
Beauchamp returned it. "Major," he said, "if you’re here before the bells, it must be important."
"It is, sir," Moreau said plainly, removing his gloves. "I need ten minutes."
"You’ll have fifteen. Sit."
Moreau didn’t hesitate.
The chair across from Beauchamp creaked as he lowered himself into it.
For a long moment, he said nothing. Then, calmly, he asked.
"Do you still have ties at Hotchkiss et Cie?"
Beauchamp blinked. "The arms firm?"
Beauchamp set his coffee down. "I know half the engineering floor at Saint-Denis."
Moreau gave the faintest nod. "Then I have something to show them. A weapon."
Beauchamp tilted his head, listening.
"I’ve been thinking about our tank doctrine. About how PAP, while reliable, won’t last. The Germans will armor up. The 37mm standard will become obsolete faster than we expect. We’ll be forced to dig deeper trenches and pray for British armor."
"You have an alternative?"
"I have a design. A concept. Inspired by older theories, but reworked cleaner, leaner. Something man-portable, shoulder-fired, and effective against armor."
Beauchamp was quiet for a moment. "You’re talking about a recoilless weapon."
The general didn’t scoff.
He leaned forward slightly. "Everyone’s been chasing it. Americans, Italians, even Poles. The gas venting makes it unpredictable."
Moreau nodded. "Which is why it hasn’t been fielded. But I believe it’s doable. The basic principle is solid. You vent hot gases rearward at the same time as you fire the projectile forward. Recoil is neutralized."
"Newton’s Third Law."
Beauchamp steepled his fingers. "Do you have drawings?"
"Not yet. But I’ve reconstructed most of it. I can finalize the model by tomorrow. A full technical breakdown. Chamber strength, blast radius, cartridge design."
"You said inspired by old theory. Where did this come from?"
"Sweden, sir. They’ve been experimenting with a lightweight model. I took the seed of it basic venturi, sealed breech design and built something I believe we can manufacture with what Hotchkiss already produces."
Beauchamp studied him. "Weight?"
"Eleven kilos unloaded. One or two-man crew. Fires a 20x180mm projectile with fin-stabilization."
"Effective at 400 meters. Penetration thirty millimeters of armor at that distance."
Beauchamp let out a soft whistle. "That’s enough to punch through the side plates of a Panzer I and II. Maybe even early IIIs."
"And you’re confident?"
Moreau met his gaze without hesitation. "Yes."
The general reached for a pen, jotted down a short note on a torn sheet of paper, and tucked it into his desk drawer.
"I’ll arrange for a meeting. Tomorrow. My office. You, me, and two engineers from Hotchkiss. Nothing official yet." Google seaʀᴄh ɴovelfire.net
Moreau nodded. "Understood."
"Come prepared. If your weapon works as you say, we may have a small revolution on our hands."
Moreau rose, saluted. "Thank you, sir."
Beauchamp stood as well. "You’ve earned the trust, Major. PAP was no fluke."
"I don’t intend to fluke anything, sir."
The general smiled faintly. "Good. See you tomorrow."
The streets of Paris were still grey and quiet when Moreau emerged.
A soft drizzle had begun, soaking the cobblestones and seeping into the cracks of old buildings.
There were no doubts in his mind.
Every step, every word, every choice calculated.
A single thread, carefully pulled, could reshape what followed.
He passed the Louvre, still asleep behind its iron gates, and crossed the Seine.
His apartment was modest.
Inside, he lit the lamp on his desk, stripped off his coat, and sat.
The pages before him were blank.
He drew quickly, fluidly.
First the weapon’s silhouette a tube, just over a meter long, tapering slightly toward the rear.
The venturi nozzle flared like a small jet’s exhaust.
Next, the breech assembly a sliding block, manually opened and closed, gas-sealed with steel lugs.
He paused to recall the temperature tolerance of steel alloys.
The rear vent had to endure 1,800 degrees Celsius, at least.
He scribbled numbers in the margin 300 MPa pressure in the chamber, a propellant ignition rate of under 0.7 seconds, an optimal gas dispersion cone of 110 degrees rearward.
The math wasn’t perfect, but it was close enough for an engineer to grasp.
Then he turned to the projectile.
The casing would be brass or steel, cartridge length 180mm.
The warhead, a shaped-charge HEAT design, with copper lining to punch through armor.
He sketched the stabilizing fins, the fuse assembly, and the propellant base.
The more he drew, the clearer it became.
A reality waiting to be built.
He remembered debates years in the future about whether recoilless rifles were worth the effort.
But he also remembered footage of them in use.
A Finnish soldier kneeling behind a frozen rock, the rifle’s backblast shooting ice into the air as the shell screamed across a field and detonated against a tank’s tracks.
The crew never made it out.
He wrote quickly effective against light armor, mobile formations, convoy support vehicles.
Not for direct assault too slow to reload but deadly for ambushes.
His next note read not a war-winner, but a war-delay machine.
France didn’t need to break German armor.
It needed to bleed it.
To make every kilometer of advance cost blood and steel and fear.
If even a handful of squads carried this weapon into the Ardennes, it would change everything.
By the time the candle had burned halfway down, he had diagrams for every component the tube, the sight mount, the breech, the trigger group.
A breakdown of loading cycles.
A detailed table for ammunition weights, blast radii, venting temperatures.
He paused, finally, only when his hand began to cramp.
The final note he added in the corner of the last page was more a statement than a calculation.
"Buildable now. Fieldable by spring 1937. Mass-producible by ’38. Field tests within 10 months if approved."
He leaned back, staring at the pages before him.
This was no longer memory.
A weapon, not yet born, but already aimed.
Tomorrow, he would walk into Beauchamp’s office with a folder under his arm and change the direction of an army.