Dominion of the Baltic Sea Week 1 E
Imperator Pax
Talon Master
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Week 1 E
The mills closing had been an unpopular but ultimately economic reality. Simply put it had been a practical decision based on world conditions of the late and post cold war. There were people who had, and still people who had argued that the shut down hadn't been necessary... they used all kinds of arguments, emotional down to that the downsizing hadn't been necessary that the steady reduction and transitional period had still been turning a profit...
.. but the writing had been on the wall... it was true there had been 'tax shenanigans' write offs and waivers and the family trust had managed the transition to get out of paying stuff as possible, and that had included the family trust turning the mills over to the university trusteeship ... maybe if they had waited for gentrification to continue the trust could have made a bigger profit but that was an iff... and no one had been thinking like that...
... and it would have been a gamble given the eventual financial recession half way through the war on terror...
Stewart was standing a little further back. He'd grudgingly left the mk 18 back in the toyota, but he had modern single point drop leg, an update from the double blackhawk drop legs of the early war on terror when they'd still been running thin skinned humvees and the old guard were still complaining about being told to wear armor. The Glock was unsuppressed, but had a weapon light and he was a wearing an expensive maritime plate carrier.
It was a far far contrast to Charles's black fancy turtleneck and sports jacket. That was more endemic of the problem. Viktor had gone to OCS on completion of his masters, deferring the nearly complete dissertation, but he'd still gone to the colours like a million other men after the towers, and the GwoT had begun. That wasn't how Charles Alexander saw things. He'd been interning at goldman sachs he had bigger ambitions... so as far as he was concerned, and he'd been vocal about it, Viktor had gone to war not because 'three thousand yankees had died, but just because he wanted to kill people'. He didn't view Tony or Michael the same way, the marine noncom, degree not withstanding, was just dumb muscle... Charles didn't distinguish the technical qualifications to the skill sets involved in Raider applique.
Charles had other ideas too, and while not whole formed, they had potential.
"Its true that the market pressures which made the mill long term unviable no longer exist," What with being almost four hundred years in the past, ... alternate timeline, whatever, "The market conditions which make a mill like this viable and economically productive don't necessarily exist either."
That wasn't to say that in theory it couldn't be made productive, which was something to talk about but there were other other other issues. All kinds of them that would need to take priority in terms of manufacturing before they started dealing with money and heavy capital ventures. They finished up and he closed the door watching the beamer pull away.
They needed to make sure the town didn't starve first. Tony waited until the BMW beyond visual before speaking, "What an asshole."
"Yeah." Luke replied, even as the sergeant turned over the engine.
"Where to?"
"Chemistry department." He replied, "This may not be viable, but between the university and the technical college, we can manufacture modern ammo." They'd end up having to throttle down production of course... they currently had a much higher volume of precursors that they'd eventually use up, but they could produce ammunition... the shortage would be in primers... still even that was doable he just needed to make sure he had a claim on the equipment and the alcohols necessary to do it, and that meant moving.
There were other industrial tasks that could be looked at of course. Screw manufacturing, and the use of 19th and 20th century button jigs but ammunition was a consumable... and a modern infantry unit shot a lot of bullets. Drawn brass was easy, and the machines were already set up.
And Tony brought the valid point that even accounting for rechargeable batteries they were going to lose a lot of technology. Night vision gear, tubes, and peq 15s and the other kit modern infantry relied on was going to become scarce as batteries were used up... batteries like 123s were going to be harder to replace... maybe not impossible but they'd require sources of minerals... that he certainly off the top of his head couldn't name a local source for.
They dismounted the Toyota truck to a relatively crowded campus parking lot. He had to wonder how long until the city, or county started weighing siphoning gas from parked cars... and if the cars had been cleared off the road. The gas would remain stable locked up inside fuel tanks for a time... but it wouldn't last forever... and it would be inefficient to dole stabilizer out to individual cars.
Fuel shortages would be a problem as early as the end of the month probably... maybe not for off road diesel but that was largely for tractors... but there were going to be shortages of that eventually. They didn't get very far, he'd started categorizing computer inventory, and writing things down when his iPhone still reading a cell tower signal, and also linked to the University WiFi and configured to accept wifi calling buzzed angrily in his chest pocket.
Forty minutes later he was looking irritably at the bag Walter had just tossed on the table.
Maybourne's first arriving bag was... Luke eyed it. The AR 15 was normal, the pair of glocks wasn't really pushing anything... but the tomahawk was a bit silly even if they had carried them in Afghanistan. The two fixed blade knives as well for that matter. Those were the glaring oddities he saw everything else was for the most part normal for a day bag even the dromedary bags. Normally he just kept bottled water in his car for day to day travel... but too each their own. The pointy objects were... well he had never considered needing to conceal a knife in his belt. Most of this was par for the course.
Maybourne had gone back and opened the back passenger door to the Toyota, and retrieved another bag he had tossed in about an hour earlier, and waved to a deputy who was standing around "Here see these ammo cans they go in the back of your cruiser, right?"
"We should have room," The man replied... clearly hoping that would be the case... and given the way the springs on the suv were struggling already.... Luke spared a glance at the boxed 556 ball ammo. He could guess where the bulk had come from.
"I need an honest assessment of where we stand."
"Beside that it aint normal?" Devil hissed, "That's why I asked about the planting, but you right. Are right," He leaned back and took a swig from the water bottle. "Mass Casualty Event is pretty serious concern."
"No that's not what I meant." He told the other other ex marine present.
"We're gonna throw a drone up Luke its electric they figure its our best option." Oliver remarked he was running his hands through his freshly cut hair like it was itching, and if Luke had to guess he'd probably been in the middle of a hair cut when the calls had started going out. "Its not a great drone, but its something."
He wanted to laugh. It was fucking absurd. When they'd invaded iraq the special mission units had had access to drones... and of course hte modern corp had access to significantly more common drones... never mind Army aviation battalions field what were basically predators of their own... he was under impression they'd been rebranded to mitigate the Air Force complaining... but it wasn't 2001... a small drone could be a couple hundred bucks a good camera and moped engine... the problem was flight time, and resolution.
Someone cursed as they fumbled a barrett and the light fifty dumped into the park dirt. They were at the edge of the line... further south than the last time they'd gotten a call out, and even though he was pretty sure he could guess what was going on. It must have been another of Wallenstein's foraging parties... which meant if it was Wallenstein the army must be close... whatever little drone they were going to put up wasn't going to cut it.
They were going to need to find out what was going on at Stralsund to the north west of them on the coast of the baltic. If the county was pulling ammo from where he was thinking this stuff was coming from they probably hadn't mentioned it to the city, but they probably thought this was going to get bad... or rather that if the early modern army got in among civilians it would be bad, both materially, and psychologically...
The great benefit to the whole fucking mess was that it went both ways. That would be true when a west virginian town called grantville arrived from another alternate earth... that the change in topography, and the oddities it created were such that local mercenaries weren't quite sure how to deal with the change. With a comparable tech base it wouldn't have mattered, they'd have figured it out and then it would come down to which side had more soldiers and the better position... or really the side with the most guns... which was in most respects what it did still end up coming down to.
... both now... and in the future.
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Notes: whats going to happen in the current version is that this will update through April as we continue to work through May 1628, this first week first post change, including dealing with coverage of both the skirmishes but also the internal face and side particularly dealing with people are in commerical jobs, university students, bankers, the urban population not facing that outward pressure.
This also clearly calls forward to when Grantville arrives in 1631, and pointedly that down time military commanders were not stupid per se and that the geographic transformation of a sizable piece of landscape courtesy of a ring of fire would probably make most officers some caution, there are exceptions to this but that will be dealt with later, particularly as we need to demonstrate the dangers and lethality of volley fire at distance (and this is the early modern period, this is the period of the tercio and pike and shot, guns are commonplace as the standard infantry weapon in the way they were of infantry blocks and lines of a hundred years in the future).