Chapter 171: Forming the Company Part 2
The handshake across the breakfast table had settled the leadership question. It immediately raised a hundred more.
Arthur was the first to point out the stark, legal reality of their situation. He picked up his coffee cup, took a long, measured sip, and looked at Hollen over the gold rim of his spectacles.
"Congratulations, Hollen," Arthur said dryly. "You are officially the President of an enterprise with no physical plant, no payroll, no commercial product, and precisely zero operating revenue."
Hollen grunted, leaning back against the velvet cushion of his armchair. "You certainly have a way of painting a rosy picture, Arthur."
"I manage the group’s financial health," Arthur replied smoothly. "Optimism is a luxury reserved for engineers and inventors."
Ernest let out a soft chuckle as he pulled the master organizational layout back to the center of the table. "He’s right, Hollen. On paper, you’re currently commanding a ghost ship."
Hollen shook his head, a wry smile pulling at his gray mustache. "I’ve been President for less than ten minutes and I already regret taking the pencil."
"You’ll get used to the sensation," Ernest said, uncapping his drafting pen. "Or you’ll grow to enjoy the headache. Now... we build the human scaffolding."
The light mood in the dining room vanished instantly. The three men leaned in over the three sheets of heavy cream paper laid end-to-end across the table.
Hollen’s appointment had given the Teucher Iron & Steel Corporation its operational anchor. But an anchor meant nothing without a hull, sails, and a full crew.
They needed people. Thousands of them.
General labor was not what kept Ernest awake at night. Unskilled haulers could be recruited from the surrounding rural districts. Timber crews and ditch-diggers could be contracted by the hundreds through regional guilds. Bricklayers could be trained to lay refractory firebrick under competent supervision.
The real bottleneck—the lethal constraint that could destroy a multi-million-riel steelworks before a single blast furnace tapped its first slag—was far rarer and far more dangerous to lack.
Specialists.
Ernest lowered his nib to the paper, drawing a sharp, black box directly beneath Hollen’s name: Chief Metallurgical Engineer.
Hollen tapped his knuckle against the wood in immediate agreement. "That is the single most critical position on the entire site."
Arthur raised an eyebrow. "More critical than the chief mechanical engineer?"
"By a wide margin," Hollen said firmly, pointing a calloused finger toward the layout for the pneumatic converter shop. "If a steam engine throws a drive rod, you stop the line and swap the forging. If a metallurgical engineer miscalculates his sulfur ratios or misjudges a blow, eighty tons of ruined steel turns into a solid block of iron scrap inside your converter vessel. Bad steel ruins every single machine downstream."
Ernest nodded. "He’s right. The chief metallurgist will hold absolute authority over iron chemistry, carbon control, furnace practice, slag composition, refractory brick performance, and final mill quality standards."
He looked at Hollen. "The challenge is finding someone with the actual theoretical depth."
That was the quiet, uncomfortable truth hanging over the entire kingdom. Belfast had magnificent blacksmiths. It had old foundry masters who could gauge the temperature of a crucible by the exact shade of orange glowing in the coals. But metallurgy as a precise, quantitative physical science was still in its infancy.
Ernest continued writing, adding key executive posts down the administrative tree:
Chief Mechanical Engineer
Chief Civil Engineer
Chief Mining & Raw Materials Officer
Chief Industrial Chemist
Chief Electrical Engineer
Chief Heavy Rail Operations Officer
Master Boilersmith
Blast Furnace Superintendent
Converter Shop Superintendent
Heavy Rolling Mill Superintendent
Quality Control Director
Chief Maintenance Officer
Director of Site Safety & Inspection
Arthur watched the list grow, his brows knitting closer together with every line of black ink. "Ernest... where in the realm do you expect to find two dozen top-tier technical directors?"
"I know where a few are," Ernest said, tapping the box for Chief Civil Engineer. "The Helmarte Reconstruction Authority has three senior civil engineers who spent the last eighteen months laying deep concrete foundations and heavy stone drainage conduits for the capital. They understand massive structural loads."
He moved his pen down to the electrical division. "Electrical engineering isn’t our primary bottleneck. The hydroelectric station at Oriel gave us a solid core of junior technicians who know how to wire high-voltage dynamos and sub-panels."
He tapped the mechanical post. "Teucher Machine Works has a dozen brilliant shop foremen who can build anything drawn on vellum."
Then his pen paused, hovering over the metallurgical block.
Hollen finished the thought for him, his voice flat. "...But high-volume pneumatic steelmaking doesn’t exist in Belfast yet."
"No," Ernest admitted. "It doesn’t."
Silence settled over the room.
It was the cold, unyielding reality of their industrial ambition. Ernest knew the underlying thermodynamics and chemistry of the Bessemer process. Hollen knew the practical, physical behavior of hot pig iron. The machine shops could manufacture the blowers, hydraulic rams, and heavy iron trunnions.
But running an integrated, modern steelworks twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, required an entire operational culture.
A blast furnace stack could not simply be damped down at sundown and lit again after breakfast. The coke batteries had to bake continuously. The hot-blast stoves had to cycle endlessly. Day shift, swing shift, night shift.
Every single hour demanded trained, vigilant leadership. One master superintendent needed three shift superintendents. Those shift superintendents needed dozens of foremen. The foremen needed crew leaders who understood steam pressures, molten metal hazards, and crane signaling.
Ernest slowly tapped the brass cap of his pen against the mahogany wood. "We cannot buy this workforce, gentlemen. We are going to have to build it from the ground up."
Arthur frowned. "How many men are we talking about?"
"To run Phase One and Two at full capacity?" Ernest looked up. "Eventually? Thousands."
Arthur nearly set his coffee cup down off the edge of the saucers. "Thousands of engineers?!"
"No," Ernest corrected, shaking his head. "Thousands of skilled, disciplined industrial operators."
His pen moved across a fresh sheet, detailing the technical trades:
Precision Machinists.
High-Pressure Boilermakers.
Structural Riveters.
Master Patternmakers.
Mechanical Draftsmen.
Industrial Electricians.
Survey Technicians.
Locomotive Mechanics.
Millwrights.
Foundrymen.
Laboratory Technicians.
Stationary Steam Engine Operators.
Hollen studied the list, squinting. "We have men doing some of those jobs right now in the capital, Ernest."
"We do," Ernest said quietly. "And what happens if we poach them?"
Hollen went quiet. He understood the economics of the workshop better than anyone.
If Teucher Iron & Steel simply posted absurdly high wages in Helmarte and hired every experienced machinist, foundryman, and patternmaker away from existing factories, the capital’s light industries would instantly collapse. Machine shops would lose their best crew leaders. Production of civilian goods would stall. Prices across the province would skyrocket, and regional manufacturers would view Teucher Industrial Group as an existential parasite.
Worst of all, the kingdom’s absolute supply of skilled human labor wouldn’t increase by a single man. It would merely shuffle the same limited pool from one building to another.
"We cannot steal the kingdom’s existing workforce," Ernest said firmly. "We must expand it."
Arthur leaned back, folding his arms. "That is far easier said than done. It takes four to seven years of traditional apprenticeship to produce one master machinist."
"Under the guild system, yes," Ernest replied.
Hollen’s eyes narrowed, his sharp mind picking up the shift in Ernest’s tone. "What are you planning?"
Ernest didn’t explain verbally. He reached for a fresh sheet of white vellum and laid it across the top of the chart. In clean, bold lettering, he penned three words:
TEUCHER TECHNICAL INSTITUTE
Arthur stared at the header, dropping his pen onto his ledger with an exhausted sigh. "Oh, gods. Not another one."
Hollen let out a loud laugh. "What’s wrong, Arthur?"
"I know that look," Arthur said, pointing a finger at Ernest. "That is his ’one engineering problem requires a whole new institution’ expression."
Ernest ignored Arthur’s dramatic groan and kept writing. "A modern industrial state cannot rely on medieval craft guilds to supply its technical intellect. We need a systematic, standardized educational pipeline."
"Hollen’s old forge trained apprentices," Arthur noted. "That system worked for centuries."
"Hollen trained forty apprentices over five years," Ernest countered, looking at the old master. "We will need four hundred skilled men on the floor every six months just to staff the rolling mills and converter bays. We need a formal technical school."
He drew two distinct branches beneath the institute’s header.
"Level One: The Trades Academy," Ernest explained. "Intensive, six-month to two-year practical programs. Students split their days—mornings in classroom lectures learning blueprint reading, shop mathematics, and basic metallurgy; afternoons in physical instruction workshops practicing metal-turning, boiler-riveting, pipe-fitting, or electrical wiring."
"And Level Two?" Arthur asked, his interest quietly piqued despite his complaining.
"Level Two: The Engineering College," Ernest said, his pen moving swiftly. "A four-year rigorous curriculum. Applied calculus, classical mechanics, thermodynamics, strength of materials, organic and inorganic chemistry, structural design, and machine kinematics."
Hollen stared at the two-tier layout. "You intend to take young farm boys and turn them into full engineers?"
"The ones with sharp minds, yes," Ernest said plainly. "We cannot rely forever on the few men who happened to learn drafting by luck. We need to manufacture engineering talent with the same consistency that we manufacture steel rails."
Hollen stroked his thick beard, his brow furrowed in deep thought. "It’s a grand vision, Ernest. But it has a fatal flaw."
Ernest stopped writing. "Name it."
Hollen offered a wry, knowing smile. "You can build the grandest lecture halls and workshops in the kingdom, my boy. But who is going to stand at the blackboard and teach?"
Arthur burst out laughing, clapping his hands together. "He’s got you there, Ernest!"
Ernest looked at Hollen, then slowly pointed the brass cap of his fountain pen at the old founder’s chest. "And that is precisely why you are the President of this corporation, Hollen."
Hollen blinked. "Wait. Does that mean I’ve already earned my salary?"
"You don’t have an approved salary yet," Ernest replied dryly.
"Then I resign immediately."
The tension broke, all three men laughing as the morning sun warmed the room.
When the chuckling died down, Ernest returned to Hollen’s question with absolute seriousness. "We recruit the faculty from every source available. In Belfast, we pull senior shop foremen from Teucher Machine Works to teach the practical machining trades. We contract civil engineers from the Reconstruction Authority for structural drafting. We bring in surveyors from the Royal Survey Office for land geometry."
Arthur tilted his head thoughtfully. "And foreign recruitment?"
Ernest paused, considering the political and financial implications. Foreign realms possessed established foundries, older mining operations, and deep technical traditions. They had experienced engineers who had spent thirty years managing heavy steam plants and chemical works.
"We recruit foreign specialists wherever domestic knowledge falls short," Ernest declared. "We offer generous housing stipends, long-term service contracts, and competitive salaries."
Arthur nodded slowly. "Top-tier foreign expertise will be expensive."
"It doesn’t matter," Ernest said flatly. "If a veteran foreign metallurgist prevents one catastrophic breakout on a blast furnace or saves us six months of trial-and-error on converter refractories, his salary pays for itself ten times over in saved capital."
Hollen chuckled softly. "Listen to you. You’re starting to talk like a cold-blooded merchant."
"Don’t insult me," Ernest smirked.
By mid-morning, the breakfast plates had long been cleared away, replaced entirely by stacks of structural charts, legal drafts, and operational diagrams.
The corporate framework was taking definitive shape:
Hollen Vane would serve as President and Chief Metallurgical Officer.
Arthur would remain at the group holding level, overseeing corporate finance across all Teucher enterprises rather than binding himself exclusively to the steelworks. A dedicated financial controller would eventually be hired to handle the day-to-day books of the steel company, reporting directly to Hollen while adhering to Arthur’s strict group-level accounting standards.
"That arrangement suits me fine," Arthur noted, rubbing his tired eyes. "I have enough legal contracts on my desk to pave the driveway."
Samuel Wright would remain attached to the Royal Survey Office, allowing Teucher Iron & Steel to contract the kingdom’s premier civil survey teams directly during the heavy construction phase while the corporation built up its own internal civil engineering department.
Every decision followed the same core principle: leverage existing talent where possible, build permanent internal capability for the long term, and never cannibalize the vital state institutions Ernest had worked so hard to establish.
By eleven o’clock, three sheets of paper were pinned together across the end of the mahogany table, forming a comprehensive master organizational tree.
Hollen stood over the layout, resting his large hands on the edge of the wood. "I’m going to need a proper administrative office."
Arthur gave a thin smile. "Now you’re acting like an executive."
"I’ll need several offices," Hollen corrected, tracing the executive branch with his thumb. "And I want the chief engineering department placed in the wing right next to mine."
"Why?" Ernest asked.
"So when one of your university boys designs an impossible pipe layout, I don’t have to walk half a mile across the yard to tell him he’s an idiot."
Ernest grinned. "Approved without reservation."
Hollen pointed to another box on the operational chart. "Maintenance should report directly to the plant production manager."
"No," Ernest countered immediately, crossing out the connecting line with his pen. "Maintenance remains an entirely independent department."
Hollen frowned, looking up. "Why? The plant manager knows when the machines need to run."
"And that is precisely the danger," Ernest said firmly. "A plant manager’s performance is measured by daily tonnage. A maintenance chief’s performance is measured by machine safety, mechanical tolerance, and long-term asset life. If maintenance reports to production, the plant manager will inevitably force his mechanics to delay vital boiler inspections or bypass safety interlocks just to hit his monthly quota."
Hollen opened his mouth to argue, then hesitated.
The old founder remembered a dozen instances in small private foundries where shop owners had pushed cracked crane hooks or thin boiler plates past their limits just to finish a lucrative order—often with horrifying results.
"Independent maintenance," Hollen conceded, nodding slowly. "And independent safety inspection."
"Non-negotiable," Ernest said, his voice hard as iron. "We are going to be handling hundred-ton ladles of liquid iron, high-pressure steam boilers, massive overhead travelling cranes, and heavy rolling mills. One negligent operational shortcut can incinerate twenty men in a second."
The humor left Hollen’s face entirely. The scars on his own hands were a constant reminder of the brutal nature of heavy metallurgy.
"Safety reports directly to my desk," Hollen stated quietly. "If an inspector says a furnace lining is thin, that furnace stops tapping. Period."
"Agreed," Ernest said, redrawing the line directly to the President’s box.
Line by line, box by box, the ghost company was gaining substance. It was acquiring structure, operational logic, clear chains of command, safety protocols, and a defined human strategy.
To an outsider, the sheets of paper would have looked like tedious, dry administrative bureaucracy. But Ernest understood the deeper reality:
A machine transformed energy. A factory transformed physical materials. An organization transformed human effort.
Without the third, the first two were nothing more than silent piles of stone and iron.
Hollen stepped back, taking a deep breath as he viewed the complete corporate chart. Yesterday, he had been the owner of a respectable urban foundry. This morning, he was the head of an industrial titan that existed only in ink and paper.
Yet staring at the crisp layout, the doubt in his mind began to dissolve. He could already visualize the men who would fill those empty boxes—trusted master smiths from his old shop, sharp young machinists from the machine works, draftmen trained during the capital’s reconstruction, and bright young apprentices who would one day run the greatest converters in the world.
Hollen looked up at Ernest. "When do we open recruitment for the core engineering staff?"
Ernest smiled, capping his fountain pen. "Today."
Arthur let out a soft, theatrical groan. "Of course we do."
"Send formal internal notices to every branch of Teucher Industrial Group," Ernest instructed, turning to Arthur. "Machine Works, mining operations, transport divisions, construction units. I want every foreman and manager to submit their sharpest candidates for executive transfer."
He looked at Hollen. "You personally interview every candidate for the senior superintendent roles. Pick the men you trust implicitly."
"I’ll pick the men who know their business," Hollen grunted. "Trust comes after they prove they don’t panic near molten metal."
"Even better," Ernest said.
Arthur gathered his financial ledgers, stacking them neatly under his arm. "And what about the technical institute proposal?"
Ernest walked over to the tall bay window, looking out across the sunlit estate toward the distant blue horizon where the capital lay.
The technical institute would require land, building permits, faculty contracts, practical workshop equipment, and eventually a formal educational charter from the Crown. It was another monumental enterprise—another massive expenditure on the balance sheet.
Ernest turned back to his team with a calm, resolute smile.
"We draft the foundation charter for the institute tonight," Ernest said quietly. "Belfast isn’t just going to manufacture steel, gentlemen. We are going to build the engineers who build the future."