I sent a dozen messages out, trying to locate them, but had no luck. A company and a half of men had simply disappeared! We never did find them, their equipment, or the airplanes, either. It remains a mystery that is told late at night around the fires, and the story grows a bit with each retelling.
Interlude Three
I hit the STOP button and started fumbling with the keyboard, trying to call up the Historical Corps records on just what had happened to all those men and all that equipment. I wasn’t that used to the system, and it took me quite a while to get what I wanted.
The naked girl at my side looked on without saying anything, so I explained to her what I was after. She just said, “Yes, sir.”
She was a cuddly little thing and seemed to enjoy my light petting, but she didn’t have a lot to say. I mean, she didn’t actually encourage my roving hands, but she didn’t object any, either.
Eventually I dug out what I was looking for.
“Those men were caught in a Mongol ambush,” I told her. “They were going without a cavalry screen, and those planes on their war carts made it hard to get their weapons out. They were killed to a man. Then the Mongol commander had their armor and equipment sent straight back to the east, and the bodies hidden. If the Mongol craftsmen can figure out the guns and planes, Conrad is going to have some serious problems on his hands!”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
I hit the START button.
Chapter Twenty-Five
FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD STARGARD
Since the war was over, the boys were back at their usual two shifts, going to school in either the mornings or the afternoons and working in the shops or flying on the opposite shift. I couldn’t address them all until after the evening meal.
“Gentlemen. First off, I want to thank you for your dedicated service in the war that together we have just won. While a final head count is not yet in, I think that I am safe in saying that over two million Mongols were killed on the banks of the Vistula by our riverboats, and those boats could not have done half that job without your accurate scouting and reporting of enemy positions. I think that it is fair to say that a million of the enemy owe their timely deaths to your own very good work! That’s more than were killed by the regulars at Sandomierz, Cracow, and Three Walls combined!”
“Furthermore, the land forces were able to defeat the Mongols that got over the Vistula with relatively light losses. That would not have been true had there been another million enemy troops fighting against them. We could have been totally defeated! And had the Christian army lost, Poland would have been lost. The fifty thousand or so knights that waited with Duke Henryk at Legnica probably would not have fared any better than Duke Boleslaw’s conventional knights at Sandomierz. You deserve much of the credit for saving all of Christendom!”
They spent some time cheering. I let them go on until they wore themselves out. Then I told them the other half of the story.
“On the other hand, your performance was far from perfect. First off, you totally missed the entire Mongol army that skirted the Carpathian Mountains and entered Poland by crossing the rivers where they are scarcely more than mountain streams. You got so involved with patrolling the Vistula that you didn’t bother looking south of it. You not only did not find them, you made the near-fatal mistake of assuming that they could not be there!”
“Worse yet, you did not sit on Count Lambert when he got the stupid idea of landing at Sandomierz to take part in the ‘final’ battle with the Mongols. True, he was your liege lord and you were required to follow him, but it was also your duty to give him good advice, and there you failed him completely! You failed him, and he and two dozen of your classmates died because of your failure. They died uselessly, because of one man’s vanity and your pusillanimity. And then, since we had no aerial reconnaissance, Cracow was burned because of your failure! East Gate fell because of your failure! Three Walls was attacked because of your failure! ”
A look of dark horror was spreading over the boys. I stopped and let my words sink in. Then I continued,
“The trained warriors of the Christian army would not have failed in this fashion. Part of the training they get clearly defines their duty to both their subordinates and their superiors. They know what courage, and honor, and duty really are. And you must learn!”
“Therefore, Eagle Nest, with all who work and fly here, is going to be absorbed into the Christian army. Starting one year from today, no one over fourteen years of age will bee allowed up in a plane who has not completed the full one-year course at the Warrior’s School. This means that in the next two years every one of you is going through that school, and if you want to swear fealty to me and not have to give up flying forever, you had better pass the course! That includes the instructors as well.”
“The Warrior’s School will be starting up again in two weeks. I will expect half of those of you who are over fourteen to be at it. In the future, no new student will be accepted here without first being a warrior. That’s all that will count, besides good eyesight and physical fitness. Eagle Nest will no longer be a haven for those of noble birth. Anyone who can qualify will get in. And it will no longer be an all-male organization. Qualified young ladies will be flying within the year.”
“I am Conrad, and I taught you that air is strong! Believe what I say!”
“On the plus side, this means that all of you boys and men will soon be drawing a regular army salary, and your various benefits will be brought in line with theirs.”
“Oh, yes. You will also be getting a share of the rather extensive booty that the army took, so if not exactly rich, you are all at least quite nicely off. I’d like to speak to the instructors tomorrow morning for about a half hour to discuss scheduling. Good night!”
I had jerked the boys around pretty severely, and I didn’t want to sit in on the inevitable bull sessions that would occur while they absorbed it all. I went immediately to the small room that was always reserved for me there. Zenya was waiting for me, of course, but I firmly resolved to get at least some sleep that night.
My next stop was Coaltown, where things were booming nicely. The coal seam there was one of the most massive in the world, being fully two dozen yards thick, Once our miners had penetrated through the substantial layer of limestone above it and the layer of clay between the coal and the limestone, they had just been going in any which way. It didn’t seem to matter to them, since wherever you dug, you were digging through coal.
We set up a more rational system of exploitation. Surveyors transferred a true east-west line down to the bottom of the main elevator. Then the miners cut a barrel-vaulted chamber, two dozen yards wide and a dozen yards high, through the limestone, leaving the clay on the floor. Every four dozen yards they started a cross-vault to send shafts at right angles to the main one. The limestone was sent to the cement plant.
When these miners got a gross yards east of the shaft, another group started harvesting the clay for the brick works. And this group was followed by coal miners, who could work with a stone ceiling over their heads, which, being vaulted, wasn’t likely to cave in. Not only did this prove to be an efficient way to get the minerals out, it also left behind these huge, cathedral-like rooms and tunnels that sure looked to be useful for something.
The next day I went to Copper City. Here the Krakowski brothers had things well in hand, and production was going full swing. They were delighted that the city was now army property, though in fact it didn’t actually change anything immediately except for some accounting procedures. In the long run, though, it meant that we didn’t have to get Duke Henryk’s permission to change things, and that speeded things up a bit. Mostly, I had asked for the city because I had been pretty sure that I could get it at the time. Greedy of me.
Then we raced back to Three Walls and got there on the evening of the fifth day since leaving East Gate. At last I could get down to being an engineer again!
Zenya had just sort of tagged along duri
ng the trip, and I really couldn’t just leave the girl in what was to her a foreign city. Once back at Three Walls, she sort of fell in with my other three servants and proved to be outstanding at giving back rubs. A week passed before Sonya asked me if she shouldn’t be put on the payroll like everybody else. By then I had gotten so used to having her around that I went along with it. Yet the whole affair nagged me. Had I hired her, or had she hired me?
Francine was still staying in Cracow, and that was fine by me. She could come back when she was ready, but I’d be damned if I was going to beg her to come home.
Despite my firm intentions to do technical work, my next four days were spent doing managerial stuff. There were the plans for the new standardized factories to be gone over and approved, and then the plans for the factory that would make the precast concrete structural members for the standard factories. The bills of materials had to be carefully scrutinized, since we would be putting these buildings up at the rate of one per week for the next two dozen years or so. Little mistakes can become big mistakes when you are working with those sorts of numbers.
And each of these structures was more than just a factory.
Each housed a complete company of workers and their families, with a school, a church, a cafeteria, and many of the usual things that a stand-alone company needed. Well, since they would be built right next to each other, they could share facilities on certain things. They didn’t each need a separate general store, for example, and inns were built only at the rate of one for every two companies, although they had to be larger, of course. Rather than having one medical officer per company, they were grouped in clinics that each served six companies, so that there were always two doctors on duty at any time of the day or night.
We were really planning a huge industrial city, and except for some land set aside for hobby gardening, there would be no agricultural work being done. But at the same time a city environment needs things that a country place can do without, and each factory had a gymnasium and a swimming pool.
The factories were to be built on both sides of the Coaltown-East Gate railway, which would be expanded to four tracks and roofed over in the course of construction. In the future, bad weather wouldn’t slow down interfactory transportation.
Each company-sized factory/housing complex was to be seventy two yards long, three to six stories tall, and a half mile wide. It would be a strip with housing on the outside, then community services, and then a factory at the middle that abutted the covered railroads. All this would be under a single roof, and it would rarely be necessary to go outside in the cold Polish winter.
Building one a week, on alternate sides of the road, we would be constructing a long strip city, a mile wide and growing a mile longer every year. It would be called Katowice after my hometown in modem Poland.
A more difficult job was scheduling just what each of these factories would produce and making sure that they had the machinery and skills to produce it. There were many crowded product sections in our existing system, and much of the job would consist of moving them to Katowice and enlarging and modernizing them in the process.
After a few years, once we had at least three companies producing a given product, we would be able to use a system where the captain of each company would have almost complete control over what his group would be making and how they would make it. Functionally, it would be a free enterprise system. But free enterprise doesn’t work well when there is only one producer and only one consumer, and for start-up, that would be the situation. Most of what would be produced would be needed for building these factories and for the concrete forts we would start putting up next year. We had specific requirements, and it would have to be regulated from the top. It was a massive scheduling job, but at least there wasn’t much politics involved. It was such an audacious project that people got a kick out of just jumping in and doing their best.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I was going over the truly bodacious amounts of steel reinforcing rod that would be needed, and subconsciously, worrying about how I was going to fairly divide up the booty without causing inflation, when a visitor arrived.
I wouldn’t have been disturbed this way if I had still had Natalia working for me, but the new girls weren’t as sharp as she was. Four people were trying hard to replace one, and they were doing a poor job at id, I didn’t realize what a treasure I had until I lost her.
Anyway, this guy was standing at my drawing board, trying to get my attention while I was doing arithmetic in my head. He was covered with rings, brooches, necklaces, and other jewelry, a thing I have never liked on a man. Personally, I wore almost none at all, except for the brass on my dress uniform. And the solution hit me!
It was vitally important that each of the men get his fair share of the booty. I couldn’t possibly cheat them and keep the army intact. Yet having that much spending cash dumped on the market would be equally disastrous. The answer was jewelry! Every man would get a new dress uniform with the epaulets, buttons, buckles, insignia, sheaths, dirk handle, and sword guard in solid gold. With a little creativity we could probably get three or four pounds of gold on the lowest warrior basic!
And then there would be a glorious medal for being a member of the Radiant Warriors, bigger than a man’s hand, and various other medals for valor and participation in various battles. The women who manned the forts would get similar decorations., along with a nice dress uniform, which we didn’t have as yet for the women, and the Big People would be decorated as well! And there should be something nice that a warrior could give to his wife, say, a necklace or a belt—or, better yet, both! They would get the booty, but not in the form of inflationary cash. Uniform doodads would stay off the market, because the men would have to come in dress uniform on certain occasions, and it would be embarrassing to show up wearing mere brass.
I was smiling insanely when I looked up at the fellow and said, “Can I help you?”
“Well, yes, your grace,” he said, confused by my grin. “I am Baron Zbigniew, and I was vassal to Count Herman of Cieszyn. I have been told that you have inherited his estates. Is this true?”
Would you believe that what with all the things going on, I had completely forgotten about the city that I had inherited? I dropped my pencil and bent the lead point.
“I knew I forgot something! Forgive me, Baron. Yes, I now own Cieszyn and those lands that were held by both the count and his wife. There has been. so much happening lately that I have not had time yet to do everything. Look, for now have one of the secretaries put you up in the noble guest quarters, and we’ll discuss the matter tonight at dinner.”
“Yes, your grace.” The baron limped away on crutches.
When he was gone, I said to my lead architectural designer, “Do you know of anybody who would want to be my representative in Cieszyn?”
“Why not Komander Wrocek, sir? I served under him in the war. He is a member of the old nobility, so he knows the game, and he lost his leg at the fight in Cracow, so he won’t be of much more use to the regular army. He should be up and around by now, I expect.”
“Not a bad thought, Josep. Betty, go to records and get me Wrocek’s file. Then check through the files and get me the names of all the officers, captain and above, who were permanently disabled in the fighting. Sitting at the high table and presiding might be just the job for them. There are going to be a lot of posts like this to fill once the knights get back from Hungary.”
I tried to get back to what I was doing, but other things were nagging me. I sent a message to my jeweler, telling him to see me, and another to Francine:
MY DEAR WIFE, IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO JOIN ME AT THREE WALLS, WHAT WOULD YOU THINK OF BEING MY REPRESENTATIVE AT CIESZYN? CONRAD.
Francine answered back within the hour:
MY DEAR HUSBAND, YOU ROB ME OF THE CROWN OF POLAND, AND NOW YOU WANT TO STUFF ME INTO A BACKWATER PLACE LIKE CIESZYN? MAY YOUR DEAR SOUL ROT IN HELL! FRANCINE.
I deduced by this that she was
still unhappy. And now every radio operator in the army would know about it. I was angry at her, but I wouldn’t hire a new maid this time. I was already one up.
So I sent to Komander Wrocek, who was recovering at Wawel Castle, offering him the job at his old rank. He was delighted and promised to come within two weeks, as soon as his doctors let him free. Another message was sent telling my accountant at the Pink Dragon Inn in Cieszyn to go to the castle and see what he could do about figuring out the finances there.
By then the afternoon was over, and it was time to meet the baron for dinner. More and more, lately, I found myself taking my dinner away from the cafeteria, and many of my breakfasts as well. Mostly it was my new servants’ fault. They made eating so damn decorative! Yet I made a point of always eating lunch with the other people in the cafeteria just so I wouldn’t get out of touch.
I explained the arrangements that I had made, and Baron Zbigniew was agreeable, though he looked disappointed. I decided that he probably wanted the job for himself. When I talked with him a bit, he admitted it.
“I’m sorry, Baron, but the fact is that I barely know you. I hope that you can understand that I need an old and trusted friend in such a critical position. Your services will still be needed, of course. Komander Wrocek will need all the help he can get. He lost a leg at the Battle of Cracow, you know. How did you happen to be injured, incidentally? The Mongols?”
“I only wish it had been an honorable war wound, your grace, but the sad truth is that I had no sooner gotten to Duke Henryk’s camp at Legnica than my horse slipped on the ice and I went down on an iron spit that was loaded with a duck that was roasting next to a cooking fire! The damned thing went right through my leg and into my horse. It nailed us together, and after they put the poor beast down, they had to cut it - and the saddle! - in half to get the carcass off me. And all the while I had to lie there half in the snow and half in the burning coals, and me not a Radiant Warrior!”
Lord Conrad’s Lady Page 19