Black Iron’s Glory

Chapter 369 Confirmation of Events

“... this is the opposite shore of Lan Lake Town, across a Lan Lake, and the Camel River flows into the triangle of Lan Lake. The land is fertile and ideal for desertification as a good field. With these immigrant families, which were previously understaffed, it will only take two years for our food under Amphiston to become self-sufficient. Of course, guaranteeing food consumption throughout the war zone is not enough, but the food requirements for the four mountain cities should be more than enough...

We will set up camel towns here and six to seven towns along both banks of the Camel River, a triangle that will accommodate more than 70,000 migrant families working in agriculture and allow the complete development of half of the plains under Amphiston.

However, we estimate that 100,000 immigrant families are less willing to engage in farming. Like this first group of 17,000 + immigrants, in addition to more than 1,000 households recruited by mining and business associations, there are also more than 2,000 immigrant families who, because of their skill, are willing to accept interest-free loans from us to open small workshops and shops, all of which are arranged in Lanhu Town and the four mountain cities... "

Claude is now stationed on the other side of Lake Lang town, listening to Sir Bennett, who is in charge of civil affairs in the war zone, on the settlement of immigrants. Fortunately for Claude, Sir Bennett was not a merely rhetorical politician, but rather a technical clerk with extensive administrative experience. Claude was much less troubled by the well-organized distribution of immigrant family industries under his auspices.

“Sir Bennett, do you have any other difficulties here?” Claude asked.

“Yes, our biggest problem now is labour shortages.” Sir Bennett nodded: “Although we only need to allocate wasteland to these immigrant families as their property, they build their own houses and everything, and the wasteland is open to them without our concern. But we also need to build underground drainage pipes on planned urban addresses and roads connecting towns, which we are responsible for.

But at present, we lack the labor to build these, and we don't have the funds to hire labor. Although Marshal Michel ordered more than 30,000 members of the Ranger Corps to participate in the construction, they were currently in charge of the Lanhu Town expansion project, which could only take up to a month to help build an underground drainage pipeline for Camel Town, and then the battalion could be pulled back to the mainland of the Kingdom. Without more than 30,000 soldiers of the Rangers, the infrastructure of the next six or seven towns would not be complete... "

This is a real problem, and the arrival of immigrant families does not mean a piece of land to tell them that it is up to your family to leave it alone. To build towns and connect the roads of the towns, there are also living materials and various daily groceries to meet the needs of immigrant families. However, food and temporary shelter are currently available to these immigrant families in the war zones, and there is a lack of funds to hire labour to build urban infrastructure and roads.

“Do you have a solution? Sir Bennett..."

“Yes,” Sir Bennett nodded. “But I need your help. ”

“So tell me, what's the way?” Claude asked.

“Didn't each of these immigrant families have a demobilized soldier to rejoin?” Sir Bennett said, "When they enlisted, they let them, like the Rangers, do the infrastructure for six months first, so there's nothing wrong with settling these 100,000 immigrant families...”

Oh, it turns out this Ser Bennett played the idea. One hundred thousand immigrant families, one hundred thousand demobilized and re-enlisted soldiers, that is, one hundred thousand free young and strong labor. But Claude thought about it and rejected Sir Bennett's offer.

“No, Sir Bennett. Upon re-enlistment, the demobilized soldiers had to be retrained and rehabilitated with the life of the barracks. You should know that they were recruited during the five years of war in the eastern part of the country and entered the battlefield with brief military training. Five or six years have passed since the end of the war, when he was forcibly discharged from service.

For a long-trained soldier, leaving the force for so long and returning to the force will also take some time to re-adjust to the camp life. These soldiers, who had only undergone short-term military training and had been forcibly discharged from the battlefield, needed longer training to be requalified. This is also the main reason why they are perceived by those counties in the kingdom as local instability and are willing to help their families migrate to us.

The most important task now in the theatre is to form five militant reinforced divisions to cope with the colonial war waged by the Kingdom of Hicks. At present, however, in addition to the more than 20,000 veterans transferred by the Rangers, only less than a quarter of the remaining eligible troops after the elimination of the more than 100,000 troops of the two overseas field corps. The five reinforced divisions require 160,000 troops, but we still lack more than 100,000 qualified soldiers.

Marshal Michel has been urging us to complete the formation of the five divisions as soon as possible, but without qualified sources, we are also powerless. Everyone now places their hopes on these 100,000 demobilized soldiers, hoping that they will come as soon as possible to supplement their troops for integrated training. Therefore, I am unable to respond to your request to include these 100,000 demobilized and re-enlisted soldiers in the construction, which will delay our integration plan... "

Though rejected by Claude, Sir Bennett had long anticipated that Claude was telling the truth. Rather than settle immigrants, the battlefield is now the most important place to form five reinforced divisions to ensure that, in this colonial war, the invasion of the army of the Kingdom of Hicks can be resisted, at least under Amphiston.

After a moment of frowning, Sir Bennett said once again: "Commander, if these re-enlisted ex-combatants are not allowed to work, could they have some more grass and daily groceries allocated to the Zone Logistics Department? Perhaps we could employ these materials to build utilities and road foundations for the Nikancas, but that would require extra labor to take care of their construction..."

There is no way to do this. There is no money in the war zone, no budget for this construction. As Sir Bennett put it, the Nikanchas were hired to work with grain supplies and those living days in the captured Hicks kingdom with groceries. It's just that the Nikancas are so muddy they can't climb the wall, and the efficiency of their work alone can make you desperate. If you don't hire a large number of supervisors for strict supervision, a hundred meters long road they can build for three or four years, anyway they will always try to do something lazy and steal to cut the load...

Claude nodded: "Okay, grass, these are from the three rear governorates, and we can overstate some of the wear and tear, the daily groceries in the warehouse that we were trying to sell to these immigrant families, and now we can hire Nekanca to work. But jazz can also use these daily groceries to hire immigrant families without their help. It should be a very easy job to supervise those Nikancas..."

Sir Bennett thought about it and agreed: "That's a good idea, and I'm sure those immigrant families would be happy to be hired. They just moved here, missing these daily groceries, paying for them, so they don't have to go outside and save us money. Perhaps we can also use dried meat, fur and grass as hire fees, winter will soon arrive, I believe these immigrant families also need to stockpile some supplies..."

After resolving the problem, Claude returned to Langhu town, just entering theatre headquarters, and saw Colonel Shazorak sitting in the guest room waiting for him to return. Claude rushed up to apologize, saying he was sorry to keep him waiting. Colonel Shazorak's respectful subordinate status pays tribute to Claude and indicates that what Claude tells us has come to fruition.

After entering Claude's office, Colonel Shazorak took three documents from his briefcase and placed them in front of Claude. The first document was a confession, which Claude wanted, and the businessman who came to buy large stockpiles of armaments admitted that he was an agent in the Kingdom of Hicks, who came to search for information on military preparations in overseas territories. Using women and money to buy General Van Snick, get a lot of military intelligence from him, and eventually, through General Van Snick, to buy back the arms seized by the Rangers in order to save time and transport reserves for the next colonial war...

Claude was satisfied that with this confession, General Navansnik's guilt was completely fulfilled and he did not have to bear the following charges himself. Marshal Michel also has steps down, and he can totally use this statement to drive General Van Snick, a scumbag, away from the Rangers.

Most surprisingly, Claude could not see that the statement was fabricated, and even the testimony of the three maids who accompanied him when the merchant invited General Van Snick to the Grand Tavern at Castle Grenouille was attached, and they heard General Van Snick himself say that he did not care about the identity of the person who bought the armament, as long as he sold it to whoever...

The second document is the real confession, and the second confession is more fake than the first. In fact, the merchant who bought the armament was indeed a man of the Kingdom of Hicks, but only a smuggler. The purpose of his trip to the Territory was to procure a consignment of grass for sale to the colonial county of Vibato, and since the Kingdom of Hicks was focusing on the exploitation of mineral resources on the Nubian continent and had traditionally paid little attention to agriculture and pastoralism, it was necessary to purchase large quantities of food from outside.

Since the outbreak of the colonial war with the Kingdom of Ovieras, seven Overseas Territories have cut off food deals with the Six Kingdoms colonies, resulting in a rapid rise in food prices in the Six Kingdoms colonies. Although some have already begun to cultivate fields, after all, investing heavily in harvests for long periods of time has not been able to fill the huge food gap with water truck salaries, so many smugglers have come to overseas jurisdictions to acquire grass and traffick it to Vibato County, which has become a lucrative offshore financial route.

Smugglers in this Hicks kingdom have two shallow seabed carriers that typically travel along the coastline, carrying heavy loads of ships at a slow speed and unable to withstand deep sea wind waves. But these materials are very suitable for transporting grass. So he docked the two boats in the fishing port town and took them with him to the capital, Castel Grenouille, to find out where there was a lot of grass to sell, and he met General Van Snick, who wanted to sell armaments.

This is an unexpected pleasure for smugglers, who, after all, would have been more valuable than grass in armaments from the Kingdom of Hicks. If he were able to redeem the materiel, he could pull it off with the Hicks Army in Port Vibato, which would be very convenient for his future smuggling activities. That's why he spent so much money on General Van Snick, acquiring all the armaments that the Rangers had stockpiled.

The third document is a detailed list of the intercepted arms shipments, and Claude picked it up and was shocked by the red typeface on the previous page, because none of the red typefaces indicated the arms shipments of the Hicks kingdom, but the manufactured weapons equipped by the Royal Oberas Army, more than 400 Obash Type III firearms, more than 3,000 Obash Type II firearms, several barrels of manufactured gunpowder ammunition, even four infantry light field artillery and accompanying gunpowder shotguns, etc...

“This, what's going on?” Claude was surprised to point to the list of red fonts on this page and asked.

Colonel Shazorak replied silently: "This was all found on that large convoy, and we questioned the soldiers of the convoy's logistics battalion, who said it was also sold by General Van Snick. Because the general said that they couldn't be brought back to the mainland of the kingdom anyway, so they simply sold it for a good price. The General has also stamped all of these weapons stockpiles on the logistics reserve sheet with the stamp of battlefield consumables. ”

“Heartbreaker! Damn it! To sell the Kingdom's manufactured weapons and equipment to people of unknown origins, does he really think he can do whatever he wants with the blood of the Sterling royal family?” Claude stood up angry.

Three days later, Marshal Michel returned from an inspection in Robisto County and arrived in Lake Lan town, where Colonel Claude and Shazorak handed him two statements and that list of materials at the first time. Marshal Michel took a good look, tore up a second confession, and then ordered the guards to bring General Fansnik, who had been locked up for a week.

General Van Snick came out of the lockdown room with a ragged shirt and a grey-headed face. At the sight of Marshal Michel, he blamed Claude and others out of anger, illegally imprisoned him as logistics chief and colonel, and claimed that beating this case to King King would also punish Colonel Claudes Cree and Colonel Shazorak and several other culprits...

Marshal Michel just asked if he was reselling the stockpiles.

General Van Snick simply admitted and claimed that the handling of surplus armaments was his responsibility as logistics chief, that everything he did was legal and that the price he sold was also reserved funds for the Rangers, not stuck in his own private pocket...

Marshal Michel simply asked his deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Nevis, to recite the statement of the merchant of the Kingdom of Hicks, and General Fansnik was immediately paralyzed. He knew very well how lethal this confession would be to him, and only a moment later he shouted arrogantly that it was a planting setup. He had no private enemy agents at all, and this confession was false!

But even with a false confession, Marshal Michel would have made it real, recruited guards to come over and removed that golden sun stamp from Fansnik on the spot, which meant that General Fansnik was deprived of his military duties. The guards were then ordered to take the convict Van Snick back to the holding cell. Marshal Michel said that he could not punish Fansnik on the spot, but had to deprive him of his military duties before returning to the kingdom and leaving him to Prince Hansburg himself.

The main reason why Marshal Michel returned from the direct command of Robisto was the imminent arrival of the Kingdom's envoy. Unlike those immigrant families, the Special Envoy of the Kingdom needed to visit the three overseas jurisdictions in the rear and meet with his Governor, so the journey was a few days slower than that of the immigrant convoy.

Two days later, the Royal Envoy finally arrived in Lake Lan town. He brought an official announcement announcing that the Rangers would be repatriated in early November after the integration had been completed. A letter of formal appointment from the Royal Army Ministry was also brought. Claude was appointed head of the Thunder Division, commander-in-chief of the theatre and promoted to Major General of the Kingdom.