"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 during 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.