Conscription had been instituted in the Empire of the New Britain Isles, and now in the Republic of Real People as well. But nothing like that had been proposed in the Homes forming the new Union simply because, once the war practically surrounded them, there was no place left for “runaways” to go. Particularly after the battles of Aryaal and Baalkpan. That was when it was driven brutally home that there weren’t any noncombatants and it became understood that every person, male or female, capable of bearing arms and living under the protection of the Alliance from the Malay Barrier to the Filpin Lands, was a member of a local guard. Even factory workers attended daily drill sessions (usually at work) and fell in for larger unit instruction once a month in the open killing grounds beyond the ever-expanding earthen walls protecting the cities. Armories stocked with old-style muskets were conveniently situated and factory and yard workers were assigned defensive positions close to where they worked.
That was all well and good, but though anyone was theoretically subject to being called up and sent to an Advanced Training Center and assigned to a building regiment, or shipped off to replace casualties, it almost never happened. They needed workers as badly as troops. The addition of the Great South Isle, or Austraal, to the Union would help a great deal—eventually. The populous Homes there had remained an untapped reservoir of potential sailors, soldiers, and labor for most of the war. Now they were in it, and though most had to stay and build their own factories and defend their cities, many wanted to fight for their people—and their new nation. Getting them here—or anywhere—was a major problem, however. The Allied sea-lift capacity was stretched to the breaking point, supplying forces in the east and west, halfway around the world. And Austraal didn’t have the same nautical mind-set of other Homes in the Union. Their huge island was lush and fertile (on this world) and never depended as much on the sea. They had a few decent shipyards, but it was taking time for them to gear up—and there was no point in building more old-style ships like they were used to, in any event. They’d agreed to focus on heavy haulers and auxiliaries, based on the hull design of the Scott class steam frigates, but half again as big. In the meantime, Allied seagoing Homes ponderously freighted steam engines down to Austraal shipyards, and just as tediously returned with loads of volunteers. Alan considered it his duty to, by example, get those recruits to choose the Navy or Marines. Besides, he thought, wearing the uniform lets me remind everyone that I belong to the Amer-i-caan Navy Clan, and, chairman or not, whether I currently outrank him or not, Captain Reddy’s still my high chief.
The carriage slowed as it passed the growing military cemetery on the shady grounds surrounding the Great Hall, and finally stopped. The Great Hall was once supported high in the air by the massive Galla tree growing up within it, but had “expanded” down to the ground. Alan was running late for his rendezvous with Lord Bolton Forester, ambassador from the Empire of the New Britain Isles, but the tall, gray-haired man with a huge mustache stood from a bench on the hall’s porch and smiled up at Alan. Forester’s aide, Lieutenant Bachman, had been pacing on the carefully fitted timbers, watched by a relatively short and wiry, and also apparently amused, man named Henry Stokes. Stokes had been a leading seaman aboard HMAS Perth, and was now Director of the Office of Strategic Intelligence (OSI). Alan remained in the carriage as a pair of Lemurian Marines escorted the men to join him, ready to assist them up if necessary.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman!” the Imperial ambassador said through a grin behind his mustache, climbing up with an agility that belied his years.
“It’s still just Alan, unless you want me calling you Lord Forester again,” Alan replied dryly.
“Oh, no. Bolton’s the name.” He sat opposite Alan and leaned forward. “I confess some difficulty resisting the urge to rub it in, as it were, however. I apologize.”
“You shouldn’t be sorry,” Stokes said, hopping up and sitting next to Alan. He was quickly followed by Bachman, who stiffly folded himself on the bench beside Forester. “He needs to get used to it an’ quit maunderin’ about, wishin’ he was just a simple sailor again. He ain’t,” Stokes continued. “Bloke’s the bloody chairman, an’ needs ta act like it. Includin’ lettin’ folks be polite to ’im.”
Alan shook his head and glared at Stokes, wondering if the Australian could read minds. There was no doubt he was well suited to his intelligence role. Probably better than Commander Simon Herring had been. Herring had always seemed more interested in the process of his “game” than achieving results. With one possible exception . . .
The two Marines climbed on the back of the carriage and Alan instructed the driver to proceed. The paalka mooed, and the carriage trundled forward. “I let people be polite,” he defended. “Hell, I’m polite! But it’ll take time to get used to all this.”
“With respect, Mr. Chairman, you ain’t got time,” Stokes stated simply. “Not any.”
Forester frowned. “I doubt it’s of any great importance how we address one another as friends, but Mr. Stokes has a point. My own Governor-Empress was thrust into an arguably more difficult situation than yours. At least you enjoy a measure of domestic stability, after all. She”—he nodded at Alan—“with the help of Captain Reddy, of course, survived an attempt on her life, the loss of both parents, and the destruction of her entire government. This, immediately after our country was plunged into wars both foreign and domestic.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully as they moved into what remained of the old commercial district. “She kept things together largely by insisting the proprieties be observed—even as she fundamentally reworked the Empire around her. She couldn’t have succeeded without help from our allies,” he conceded, “or if she’d shown the slightest indecision. Or, frankly, flexibility.”
Always objective when it came to analysis, Stokes nodded at Forester. “Not to be a knocker, but that hasn’t worked as well lately, if you’ll pardon me sayin’.”
Forester grimaced. “Combined with the . . . impetuosity of youth, she did perhaps allow her inflexibility to overrule the better judgment of more experienced minds,” he allowed, acknowledging the debacle that led to the naval Battle of Malpelo, against the twisted forces of the Holy Dominion. In hindsight, the battle had been a great victory, as had General Shinya and X Corps’s desperate defense of Fort Defiance. It even appeared a turning point may have been reached in the war against the Doms. But that was in spite of Governor-Empress Rebecca Anne McDonald’s decisions, not because of them. She’d done a great deal to rectify her errors, helping the situation do perhaps a bit better than simply stabilize, but her inflexibility had undoubtedly cost lives.
Alan threw his hands up. “So you both give me hell about being too familiar, then tell me I’ll lose us the war if I’m too imperious. Which is it?”
“Both, I suppose,” Forester said. Stokes nodded agreement.
Alan avoided rolling his eyes in frustration and changed the subject instead. “So, Bolton,” he began, stressing the ambassador’s first name, “how was your visit to the lovely, friendly paradise of Sular?”
Forester rolled his own eyes, and began relating his latest discussions with the most recalcitrant member of the Union. He may not have been a citizen of the United Homes, but it was in his nation’s best interest that the Union thrive, and Alan often used him as a trusted, “objective” go-between. The carriage slowed again as it moved through crowds of workers coming off shift, even as others headed in the opposite direction. Most were Lemurians, of course, their furry coats dingy from long hours at machines or forges, their large-eyed faces slack with fatigue, tails hanging low. Quite a few were human females, however, generally dark-haired and -skinned, averaging about five feet, five inches tall. They were the expat Impie gals, who’d come to Baalkpan and the Filpin Lands before Governor-Empress McDonald “emancipated” them, nullifying the indentures many labored under. Some went home after that, but most remained. This was home now, and they were just as much cit
izens of Baalkpan, the Filpin Lands, even the American Navy Clan, as anyone else. They were weary too, often performing work difficult even for Lemurians, but they were free, and helping the cause with determination.
The thing that struck Alan most was, in spite of their exhausting labor—and the prospect of more for those heading to work—everyone’s morale seemed good. Many even tiredly cheered when his carriage passed! This after word had already spread about the sinking of SMS Amerika by yet another potential foe, and the terrible losses they’d sustained in the battle with Kurokawa north of Mahe. They still trust us to pull this off, to win, in the end, Alan thought. They still trust me. One way or another, I’ll earn it. No matter what, he swore.
“I don’t know how you’ve done it,” Forester said softly, interrupting his discourse on Sular and apparently echoing Alan’s thoughts about the people here.
“What?” Alan asked, falsely cheerful. Many Lemurians spoke some English now, but they’d never hear his words over the ruckus, regardless of how good their ears were. They’d hear his tone, though. “How we’ve killed a generation—and sparked a population explosion of another that’ll never know the culture we destroyed, or even their own parents?”
“No,” Forester said. “How you saved them—despite the rest. They’re fully aware of that, I assure you,” he added. Alan said nothing more.
Past the old ropewalks—now a factory making thousands of wooden barrels and hundreds of wheels for heavy freight wagons and artillery pieces every week—they turned right to parallel a loud, smoky battery of oil-fired steam generators providing electric power to a pair of huge machine shops on either side. As sad as it genuinely made him that they’d turned this almost idyllic city into a massive industrial complex, Alan could never suppress a lurking sense of wonder at all they’d accomplished. What began as his own little Ministry of Industry and Sonny Campeti’s Ordnance Division, which attempted to manage a wide variety of relatively small enterprises—with the exception of the refineries, shipyards, foundries, and ammunition works they’d geared up at once—had morphed into a blossoming, if chaotic, manufacturing infrastructure. Not only here, but at Maa-ni-la, and in the Empire as well.
The shipyards were the most evident example of that, and from the vantage point of the carriage, they’d grown to encompass nearly everything. And the Baalkpan Metal Works was now inextricably combined with them. Under the ownership of two brothers, it had expanded from its prewar capacity of making crude, nonferrous castings to pouring complex iron castings for every manner of thing, and was getting tolerably good steel from Madras. It had multiple divisions of its own, including steel mills, rolling mills, tubing and pipe mills, as well as facilities for making wire and wire cables. The Baalkpan Boiler and Steam Engine Works made arguably better boilers and engines than they’d first copied, and they’d been surpassed by similar works in Maa-ni-la and the Empire in terms of output, as had the Baalkpan ICE houses, which made internal combustion engines. Those here were still amazingly productive, but focused more on innovation than quantity. This was where they’d pioneered the new radial aircraft engines and steam turbines, for example, because Baalkpan had made the longest strides in specialty steel production and treatment.
That had been a conscious planning decision, not only to spread the load, but also to build in future competition. With the ratification of the constitution, it was agreed that all manufacturing facilities would—someday—be broken into competing companies. Letts had worked hard for that, since the labor and treasure of all the people had gone into making them. Those same people who’d worked so hard for so long—before they were even paid—would have shares they could keep or sell. It would be a nightmare to implement, but it was the right thing to do, not only for the people but also for the future. Competition was good. That would have to wait, however.
The powder mills and magazine complexes (now situated on the other side of the bay, northeast of the Baalkpan ATC), were frighteningly monstrous, but there was redundancy now. Most industrial Homes or land-based “states” in the Alliance had powder mills of their own, and numerous secure magazines. The Grik zeppelin raid on Baalkpan hadn’t hit the one they’d had at the time, but that was sheer luck. They’d never risk such a devastating blow again by keeping all their explosive “eggs” in one basket.
The only exception to that was the Smokeless Propellant Works on Samaar. There weren’t enough Sa’aarans, a race of Grik-like Pacific islanders that Saan-Kakja, the high chief of the Filpin Lands, had taken in, to expect them to contribute troops. Only one, with the unlikely name of Lawrence, was currently under arms for the Union. But in their gratitude to Saan-Kakja, the Sa’aarans desperately wanted to be of use and actually lobbied to have the dangerous installation built in their midst. The fact that Samaar was overrun with a kind of plant that produced an ideal type of cellulose for the project was advantageous. And there’d be other installations of the type soon, in Sular and on Respite Island, importing the “guncotton” plants from Samaar. But the demand for regular gunpowder still surpassed the need for the “smokeless” variety, and probably would for some time to come.
The Baalkpan, Maa-ni-la, and now Imperial naval arsenals were responsible for making everything from small arms—such as the “trapdoor” Allin-Silva breech-loading rifles, carbines, and shotguns—to torpedoes, mortars, bombs, and ever larger naval rifles. With the associated heavy lathes required, they were also tasked with making other large machined parts such as propeller shafts. Each of these endeavors, and those devoted to making the new automatic weapons, pistols, bayonets, cutlasses, and even canteens and helmets, was under the supervision of various division chiefs, as was the production of the thankfully small variety of fixed ammunition for all standard weapons. Alan imagined dismally that they had several regiments’ worth of division chiefs alone, scattered around the Alliance. Napoleon was wrong, he realized. Armies don’t move on their stomachs. They slide along on the slippery heaps of paper bureaucrats excrete like brontosarry shit. How the HELL did we manage all this before we even had paper?
In addition to reporting to Ordnance, each division made duplicate reports to the Ministry of Industry and Supply, which coordinated the production of all other combat gear, from shoes and sandals to field smocks, cartridge boxes, rations and medical supplies, transport wagons, and field-comm gear. And then, of course, there were the thousands of “little” things that troops needed in the field—like shelter. Alan still managed to find a measure of ironic amusement that all their ’Cat soldiers and Marines slept under shelter-half pup tents. But each of those had to have stakes, ropes . . . The list was endless. Finally, Supply had to figure out who needed what, when, and where, and arrange to get it there. That’d been Alan’s primary job before his acclamation to chairman—and the one he missed least of all.
The only reason any of this is working, he thought, as Ambassador Forester continued to describe the self-serving shenanigans of the Sularans, besides the fact we’re in an existential war, is because stuff is so cheap. He’d helped institute a financial system more than a year before, the first the Lemurians had ever really known. Before that, their various economies were based on barter and carefully tabulated indebtedness founded on numerous standards. The closest they’d come to the gold standard in use in the Empire of the New Britain Isles, and that Alan had roughly copied here, was a barrel of gri-kakka oil as a reference for relative value. But with so much dependent on petroleum now, gri-kakka oil was in the tank. It still made better lamp oil and flux for a wide variety of natural lubricants—including bullet lube—but the industry was probably almost as dead as the sea monsters they killed to get it. But metal, any metal, had real value, and gold, being the most durable of all—and least useful for turning into bullets, blades, and airplane engines—set the standard for the relative, representative value of other metals that could be made into things. Copper, iron, zinc, lead, all had value relative to their weight in gold, and gold w
as the “money” they exchanged in their place.
The most valuable metal in the world, for example, was aluminum, worth ten times its weight in gold. They needed it for a number of very specific things, primarily to do with aircraft, and simply couldn’t make it yet—if ever. All they had was what remained of the old PBY Catalina, a few wrecked P-40s, an old “Betty” bomber they’d found crashed in the jungle of Borno, and a few other curious relics that turned up from time to time. Not long before, for example, a prospecting team recovered the carcass of a P-40 lost in the raid on Madras. They’d been looking for it specifically and had a good idea where it was, but then another team discovered the wreckage of a Japanese dive bomber on the southwest coast of Java, near Chill-Chaap. So there was always hope that other “leakers” from another war-torn world might appear.
And, as Alan noted, things were cheap. At least for now. The economy of Forester’s Empire of the New Britain Isles had been pretty much in the crapper, and it would’ve been virtually impossible for them to go on if not for a number of factors. First, they were in an existential war as well, and that tended to make people more flexible when it came to what they were willing to sacrifice for the cause. Second, Rebecca Anne McDonald had assumed almost dictatorial powers in the wake of the treachery of the so-called Honorable New Britain Company, and members of her own Court of Directors and Court of Proprietors. The mass murder of most of the loyalists within her government had left her little choice. She’d seized the assets of the Company, and all those implicated in the treason. Then, as a gift, the Western Allies informed Her Majesty where large oil and gold deposits might be found within the bounds of the Imperial colony in North America, centered near a bay city they called Saint Francis. That reserve gave the Empire much-needed credit to draw upon.
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