Building a Viking Empire with Modern Industry-Chapter 240: Managing City Titan
City Titan, The Iron Keep
"It is entirely impossible!" Jarl Harald bellowed, "You ask me to count the coal, distribute the wheat, and assign the shift rotations for fifty thousand men, but the numbers never align! The English laborers are starving in the lower districts, the newly acquired Chinese prisoners are sitting idle in the quarries, and the grain silos are mysteriously emptying twice as fast as we record!"
Conquering a territory with blood and iron is the easy part, but managing the logistics of an exploding industrial metropolis is a nightmare that can break the minds of the fiercest warriors...
City Titan had just absorbed forty thousand defeated Tang soldiers, swelling its total population to unprecedented figure that the primitive agrarian infrastructure of the British Isles had never seen before.
Feeding, housing, and organizing an absolute ocean of humanity! If the coal miners do not receive their winter rations, they strike or starve, and Ragnar’s traditional Viking warlords were trying to operate this delicate machinery by hitting it with a battleaxe...
Stepping out from the shadowed alcove of the grand hall, Ragnar observed his fiercely loyal but completely illiterate general, he let out a sigh that instantly silenced the murmurs of the surrounding Viking overseers.
Jarl Harald dropped to one knee, "Forgive me, my King... Give me an army of Saxons to slaughter, and I will bring you their heads! But these numbers..."
"Rise, Harald, and step aside," Ragnar commanded.
Sitting in the freezing darkness of a reinforced iron cell, Master Lin, the former Chief Censor and highest-ranking Confucian scholar of the destroyed Tang expeditionary force, shivered violently beneath a thin blanket. The elderly scholar jumped in terror as the door of his cell was suddenly unbarred.
"On your knees, eastern dog!" a heavily armored Viking guard barked, striking the butt of his spear against the stone floor.
Master Lin and his three subordinate bureaucrats immediately threw themselves onto the ground, pressing their foreheads into the stone while frantically whispering prayers to their ancestors.
They were men of the brush, not the sword, and the terrifying presence of the towering barbarian King who now filled the doorway was enough to stop their hearts.
"Look at me, Master Lin," Ragnar ordered.
Slowly, the elderly scholar tilted his head upward, his wide eyes meeting the gaze of the Iron Father.
"I possess a network of deep-vein coal mines, and a rapidly expanding industrial sector that requires absolute logistical precision..." Ragnar declared.
The Confucian scholars of the Tang Dynasty were not just poets and philosophers. They were the rigorously tested. To even pass the Imperial Examinations, these men had to memorize tens of thousands of characters, master complex economic theories, and manage entire provinces of millions of peasants.
"Great Iron Father!" Master Lin stammered, "We... we are scholars! We know nothing of your metal beasts or your roaring furnaces! But if you seek order... the methods of the Heavens can be applied to any earthly endeavor... Spare our lives, and we shall count every grain of wheat in your empire!"
"You will do far more than count, Master Lin," Ragnar replied, "I am pulling every single literate Tang scholar from the labor camps. You will form my new Ministry of Administration. Thus, you will serve the Lion Banner, or you will feed the furnaces. Do we have an agreement?"
Master Lin prostrated himself completely, "Ten thousand years of life to the Iron Father!"
...
Within mere days, the chaotic, shouting-filled administrative halls of City Titan were completely transformed. Replacing the towering, bearded Viking warlords were hundreds of gaunt focused Tang scholars dressed in simple, identically cut gray robes.
"Move the third coal division to the western shafts immediately!" Master Lin barked. Standing atop a raised wooden dais, he pointed his calligraphy brush at a newly drawn map of the city’s industrial zones.
"The output of the Bessemer converters has increased by four percent this morning... Increase the grain allocation to sector four by two hundred pounds, and deduct it from the surplus silos!"
Running frantically between the desks, a terrified Saxon messenger bowed before the eastern scholar.
"Y-yes, my Lord Administrator! Right away!"
They invented a complex token system for food distribution, ensuring that every single laborer, whether English, Viking, or Chinese, received the exact caloric intake required for their specific physical exertion. There was no more guessing. There was no more waste.
Ragnar looked down upon the bustling streets of City Titan, standing beside him, Gyda traced a finger down a newly delivered administrative ledger,
"The latest reports from Master Lin’s office are flawless..." Gyda murmured, shaking her head in disbelief.
"The coal surplus has increased by fifteen percent simply by optimizing the wagon routes. Furthermore, the food riots in the lower districts have entirely ceased."
"But placing so much infrastructural power into the hands of our defeated enemies..."
"If they choose to manipulate the ledgers, they could cripple the foundries without ever lifting a sword."
"They will not manipulate a single digit..." Ragnar countered, "They are terrified, powerless men surrounded by a sea of Viking steel. If the city thrives, they eat roasted meats. If the city starves, they will be the very first ones the mob tears to pieces."
Pausing for dramatic effect, Ragnar set his mug down upon the ledge. "They know this, Gyda. Consequently, they will manage my empire with a desperate perfection that no loyal warrior could ever hope to muster."
"The eastern scholars have proven their worth, we shall reward their efficiency with increased grain allocations."
However, before the Iron Father could fully articulate his grand plans for the expansion of the eastern railway lines, the doors of his private solar were violently kicked open.
The doors revealed the figure of Commander Leofric. Yet, the veteran Viking warrior was not alone, nor did he carry himself with his usual stoic arrogance. Dragging a second man by the collar of his ruined tunic, Leofric stumbled into the royal solar.
The second man was Chief Engineer Ludwig, but the brilliant Saxon inventor was nearly unrecognizable. Covered from head to toe in thick layers of greasy black soot, Ludwig was coughing up chunks of dark phlegm.
"Great Iron Father!" Ludwig shrieked, "The earth! The earth has torn itself open! It is gone! Everything is gone!"
"Control yourself, Ludwig..." Ragnar bellowed, "What happened?"
Leofric dropped to one knee, smashing his fist against his blackened breastplate while keeping his gaze locked firmly on the stone floor.
"My King... it is the Western Deep Vein. Sector Four, the deepest and most productive shaft where the Tang prisoners were extracting the newly discovered anthracite seam. There was a subterranean eruption... A blast of Heavenly Fire from deep within the rock itself!"
When Leofric said "Heavenly Fire," he was not talking about Tang Dynasty gunpowder. He was describing the invisible, catastrophic killer known as Firedamp.
As miners dig deeper into the earth, the coal seams naturally release highly flammable methane gas, which the miners called Firedamp. Because they are using open-flame lanterns to see in the pitch-black tunnels, a single pocket of trapped methane can suddenly ignite. The initial methane explosion kicks up thousands of pounds of highly combustible coal dust into the air, triggering a secondary, massive thermobaric explosion that propagates through the entire tunnel network at supersonic speeds!
It is a literal wave of liquid fire that vaporizes everything in its path and collapses millions of tons of solid rock. Being trapped hundreds of feet underground when the very air turns into a roaring inferno? It is a terrifying demise!
Ludwig continued to sob, "The pressure wave... it shot straight up the primary vertical shaft. It blew the iron elevator cages completely off their steam-driven winches. The wooden scaffolding at the surface was instantly incinerated... My King, the entire tunnel network of Sector Four has completely collapsed!"
Gyda felt the color completely drain from her beautiful face, "By the gods... Master Lin’s administrative ledgers explicitly stated that the third Tang labor division was assigned to Sector Four this afternoon. Ludwig... how many men were down there?"
The Chief Engineer squeezed his eyes shut, unable to look the Queen in the face. "Three thousand, my Queen. Three thousand captive eastern laborers, alongside fifty of our best Viking overseers and twenty Saxon engineers. The blast... the blast sealed the main artery entirely. If the fire did not instantly turn them to ash, the lack of oxygen and the poisonous gases surely will!"
A suffocating silence descended upon the grand solar, so thick and oppressive that one could practically hear the individual drops of blood hitting the floor from Ludwig’s brow.
"The Western Deep Vein provides exactly forty-five percent of the daily caloric fuel required by the central foundry complex..." Ragnar said,
"Thus, without that specific flow of high-grade anthracite, the Bessemer converters will begin to cool within exactly forty-eight hours. If the converters cool, the molten steel solidifies within the crucibles, permanently destroying millions of pounds of capital equipment and halting our entire military production line..."
If word reached the vassal kings in Wessex or the Irish lords that City Titan had lost its ability to forge the invincible Bessemer steel, rebellion would spark within a week. The Abbasids and the Byzantines might be tearing each other apart in the Mediterranean, but if Ragnar’s war machine stalled for even a single month, his enemies would smell the blood in the water!
Ragnar turned back to the terrified men kneeling upon his floor,
"Leofric! You will immediately mobilize the entire Vanguard garrison! I want the Western Deep Vein completely locked down and quarantined! Not a single worker, merchant, or scholar leaves that sector. If panic spreads through the remaining Tang labor divisions, they will riot, and I will hold you personally responsible for every resulting fatality!"
"It shall be done, Iron Father!" Leofric roared.
"And you, Ludwig," Ragnar continued, "Wipe the blood from your eyes and remember that you serve the Lion Banner. You will commandeer every single high-pressure steam pump currently operating in the city’s aqueduct system, and you will physically drag them to the collapsed shaft! You will pump the poisonous gases out, you will pump fresh air in, and you will dig through that collapsed rock with your bare hands if you must!"
Ludwig nodded his head frantically, his eyes wide, "Yes! Yes, my King! We... we might be able to clear the primary blockage if the secondary supports held..."
"They are not dead until I give them permission to die!" Ragnar declared,
"Those three thousand Tang soldiers belong to my foundries, not to the dirt! Move!"
Stumbling backward, Ludwig threw himself out of the open doors, sprinting down the hallway to execute the King’s impossible commands while screaming for his subordinate engineers.
