Oloiker: War Bicycles

As alkali-powered firearms became increasingly more commonplace, the Karioter grew more and more outdated. Wlitowa and Tuhra technically did not need but desperately desired to keep the melee element of combat alive. However, weroiki were generally slow and tired out rather quickly. While this was fine with medieval levels of ranged combat, where ranged units were fewer in number, less accurate, and took longer to shoot, in firearm combat the Karioter would have been lucky to reach the enemy at all. The solution, if the melee charge was to survive at all, was to make the Karioter faster. The solution, as decided by Tuhran and Wlitowan military strategists, was to have a motor do most of the heavy lifting with regards to speed.

Collaboration efforts for the military research were largely turned down. Keyrit, with its mostly mountainous climate, saw no need for speeding across the plain when careful placement could make their hilly island fortress impregnable. Well-trained alkali firearm wielders could do the work of twice as many karioter, and significantly more efficiently, too. Besides, the days when the royalty of Keyrit spurred on two weroiki and charged into battle were long gone, and the monarchy now focused on colonization efforts abroad.

Ugo-yt too declined the offer. They were open to working with the Tuhrans, under the assumption that the Tuhrans ran a government that wasn't partial to their Wlitowan overlords. If the Ugo-yt could drive a wedge through the two nations, they would have jumped at the opportunity. They were not, however, interested in working with the Wlitowan government over nearly anything, and the prospect that this military project would unite the two was loathsome to the Ugo-yt Empire. From a technical aspect, the diversity of the Ugo-yt Empire's geography had forced the Ugo-yt military to be prepared to fight in nearly any enviroment, from barren wastelands to rugged forests to deserts to fertile plains. The Karioter could only be used for a select few biomes, much less a motorized version of the Karioter. The Ugo-yt didn't respond to Wlitowa's offer of partnership, and declined Tuhra's request.

The city-state of Welkwu was perhaps a necessary third party to bring to the discussion. The birthplace of Wouraiya's Industrial Revolution, Welkwu could produce almost anything, and produce it at a relatively cheap cost. When motors were invented, industry titans in Welkwu built entire factories dedicated to building them, almost accidentally monopolizing the market. Still, their motors were better than the quality that Wlitowa made, and cheaper than the kind that Tuhra made. The one problem was that the Tuhran people viewed Welkwu as a traitorous splinter faction and were loath to do business with them. Wlitowa had to pull a few strings to convince the Keyrit Order to mediate on Wlitowa's behalf. From Welkwu to Keyrit to Wlitowa to Tuhra, there was enough diplomatic distance to make negotiations palatable.

While Welkwu pulled all the industrial might of the operation, designers and testers in Wlitowa and Tuhra guided the project in the direction they saw fit. Originally, they tried simply replacing the weroiki with small motorized vehicles. Not only was this difficult to control from the driver's perspective, it was also ridiculously vulnerable to attack. Weroiki could take an javelin or two and maintain their speed, but a single gunshot into the pulling machine would destroy the vehicle outright. The pulling vehicles were given copious amounts of armor to deal with the gunshots. While the designs would later be inspiration for Keyrit's tank designs, the early motors couldn't handle the stress. Those that didn't scrap themselves on initiation moved terribly slowly, to the point that a single weroiki could walk faster.

It was determined, then, that the rider of this new vehicle would have to be on top of the motor for it to work. The motor couldn't handle any extraneous weight otherwise. An armored four-wheeled construction proved to be bunk. A three-wheeled construction followed the same route. Two wheels, one in front of the other, was the only viable solution for charging enemy lines. Riders were given a hilariously small, hilariously thin viewfinder through which they could find a path through the enemy lines in front of them. The standard bullet of most armies was thicker than the viewfinder, so the Wlitowa technical higher-ups believed that hitting the rider was impossible without first piercing the armor. Test trials seemed to confirm this.

Now that the rider was able to get into melee range of the enemy, there was great debate over what the next steps should be. In its heyday, the karioter was a fearsome element. The weroiki would trample over anyone and anything standing in front of it, and the rider would stand from atop an elevated platform, skewering or slicing enemy foes from above. However, the new bike couldn't lift onto other soldiers and trample them, and the bike was far too low to the ground to be considered an advantageous position for melee. The workaround for the trampling mechanism was to place a cowcatcher on the front of the bicycle, to uproot formations and throw them aside. Unfortunately for the riders, it seemed that the bicycle would have to be dismounted in order for the rider to be viable in melee.

This was a problem. When a cavalry unit could harass and disengage, the unit could wreak havoc at multiple points at multiple times. The return on investment was significant. However, when every charge becomes a suicide run, the military poured hundreds of hours of manpower for one, maybe two of the enemy. When it came to highly-specialized military components, the Keyrit Order was easily the most experienced, if not perhaps the only nation with experience. Even though the Keyrit Order turned down the offer, retired Keyrit tacticians were hired to make sense of the project. Keyrit tactics had long since evolved past most forms of melee combat, but deep understandings of history gave the tacticians enough insight to provide a detailed synopsis for how the bike would turn out. These tacticians were the first to give the project its name: the oloiker. The oloiker would be used strictly in flanking missions, where allied ranged units pinned down enemy ranged units. The oloiker would rush through and disrupt enemy lines, giving allied ranged units a clear advantage. If the combined charge and firearm assault succeeded in routing the enemy, the oloiker would be retrieved. The process would repeat itself on the flanks until the entire enemy army was wiped out, from one point to the other.

This plan was ill-formed at best, as would be shown in a Wlitowan expedition to Retrougo, where the oloiker were employed for the very first time. The forested terrain of Retrougo made concerted flanking efforts by things on wheels nearly impossible. Half the battalion didn't make it to the enemy, and that's before the concentrated fire. Those that did couldn't coordinate the right time with the ranged units further down the road, and only two or three made it out alive. While the tactics might have worked on more open battlefields such as Yatkaugo, Wlitowa didn't have the luxury of choosing its battlefields. However, the oloiker riders redeemed their investment value when they were split up into individuals and reassigned as message runners. The cowcatcher meant that they could ram through battlements and problematic roadblocks, and their motor ensured that divisions of the army could know what was happening at all times. Armor was significantly dialed back for convenience and speed purposes, making even more use of the oloiker's flexibility. Retrougo was ultimately a lost cause, but the oloiker was a logistical, technological victory for the Wlitowans in the long run. When the Keyrit electronic communication system failed, the Wlitowan runner system would take over, providing for a nearly impregnable message delivery system.