The Power of Ten

Chapter 16-413: Chop and Shop

Ninety seconds, and the first section of the bow was sheered off and fell away. We all watched it fall off and slam to the ground below with a dull clang, and the ringing beat of the Wall returned to a slow, breathing hymn-like hum, serene and ready for more.

A magnetized crane came down quickly, men stepping up to guide it into contact with the severed hull fragment. Opposing elements engaged with a crackle, and the magnohook adhered solidly to the fallen metal, yanking tons of steel up into the air before slowly moving towards a tracked rail conveyor ready there to accept it and move it down a tunnel to the smelter next door.

Chief Engineer Onrus grinned ear-to-ear, and the hyn waved his hand in a spinning motion at the success.

I watched as the universal tracks at the top of the Shop spun ninety degrees around and centered on the ships long axis, right along a line of leyser lights forming a triangular centering above it. The grasped rods were pulled apart slowly, one of the rotator arms clacking quietly as its gears sent it towards the stern of the ship a couple hundred feet away.

The Wall of Thunder extended out between the rods, deepening into a slow, basso hum that trembled on the bones. I wasnt worried about it being long enough, as the Wall had been Widened enough to reach two thousand feet if needed, enough to stretch the length of the biggest tankers in the world... and this dry dock had been built to accommodate those ships, and could even take in barges or similar vessels.

We were going to build one of these along the Mississippi for just that reason.

The Chop Shop was humming along with the Wall as the rotator-arms were centered precisely along the keel of the ship, right over the stack and command centers, nothing spared here.

With a chop of Onrus hand, the Wall descended as the Gear-arms rolled smoothly down. QL 30+ mechanical engineering is no joke.

The cutting wasnt really any faster than before, but watching that Wall of black sound break into tingling song as it first touched the stacks, and then continued down to cut into the command cabin, and then finally down into the superstructure, was pretty surreal.

The power of the Wall was that it didnt need to cut into the ship just from the top, as it would also do so from its sides as well. Theyd be able to fine-tune the speed soon enough, so it really was ten feet of Wall doing the cutting, and not just the leading edge. Optimal speed would be when only an inch or two of Wall in the middle was showing, and the maximum amount of cutting surface was engaged.

Down it went, and the dancing silver lights became a varied medley of bouncing musical effects, while steel and metal powdered and gave way beneath it. The majority of the wave was rapidly lost to sight, only the rods gripped at bow and stern visible from here, while those above watched the main cut and monitored the speed required from there.

It took about fifteen minutes to work all the way down from the top of the stack to the keel, and the whole ship groaned and slipped a few inches with a creaking crack of settling metal splitting as the Wall came down into the grove in the floor put there specifically for this purpose.

Secondary arms down there accepted the stern rod, and shuttled it smoothly forwards along unseen rails to the matching rotator at the bow. The bow arm extended a second set of pincers to accept it, and then rose smoothly back into the air to await the stern arm coming back forwards to reclaim its rod up top.

Gripped in opposing rotator arms once again, the Wall was spun horizontally over the bisected ship, and slid quickly across, chopping through the engine stack of the Tallahassee in almost no time at all.

Cuts in all three dimensions. I nodded approval.

The sub-deck cutting had already been tested. There was a second set of arms that could be brought up if a ship was under ten thousand tons and could be held up off the floor below. It could then be sliced horizontally open from below, and the parts drop right down onto conveyor carts as each section was cut open, and just sent off directly to the smelters for melting.

Thered been a couple freighters run through the Shop before this, but this was the first decommissioned naval ship being sent off.

Ripping apart a steel ship had never been done so quickly. Theyd be able to fully slice apart a ship at somewhere around ten feet a minute, even with armored hulls. As the ship grew lighter, the braces on the sides could lift it off the floor, and the sub-deck cutting could commence, dropping sections directly onto the railcars below to be sent away.

At this point, it was all about finding optimal handling sizes and sections to cut it in. We should be able to process a large ship in a single day, and handle multiple smaller ones.

I held up a trio of gleaming diamonds. Onrus grin grew wider as he looked at the other three command stations, and the Gear-arms waiting there to accept their own rods.

Four cutting Walls worked faster than one...

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There were already ships being sailed here to be scrapped. Given how many such were out there, the Chop Shop was going to be busy for years... and that didnt include the ones we were going to put on the Mississippi and in San Diego.

It was another nice way to cover ship movements, with all the confusion of freighters being lined up to be chopped up and melted down.

We werent chopping up all of them, however. Lighter vessels could simply be dragged out and sunk, creating barrier reefs for fish and coral to grow on for otherwise smooth sections of the sea floor.

Right next door to the Chop Shop, the chunks of steel shaved off the ships were being melted down with equally great speed, then either re-mixed, filtered, or poured out into new forms and molds. Heavenbound Hall had purchased this old foundry, torn it down with remarkable speed, and rebuilt it from the ground up for this purpose. I might have dropped in a couple of times to help them with some truly impressive amounts of Stone Shaping to get things in place, as well as lay the Walls down. Just more goldweight getting burned... and the excess heat was being vented off into a new ventilation system to help heat the surrounding neighborhood and streets when it was engaged.

Permanent Walls of Fire were also great heat sources for bigger Steam Engines, too. With my Caster Level, the only risk was anti-magic, and that was largely dealt with just by enclosing the thing.

Needless to say, me being willing to burn the goldweight to Cast such things gave my Allegiance a huge advantage in the re-tooling process, much to the dismay of the competition. This, in turn, led to other shenanigans which had to be addressed, and show our lack of appreciation for aggressive business tactics.

Saving the world was no excuse for costing wealthy people money, power, and influence, after all. If they wanted their own Permanent Walls of Fire, they could just pay the market rate, after all.

Wait, wait! Wasnt it impossible to use Walls of Fire for a Heating System? The magical heat just evaporated twenty feet away from them, after all. It was all just magical energy.

That was precisely why steam power was a thing in magical worlds, because water interacted with magical hot and cold differently than most things.

Instantaneous magic had almost no lingering effects on physical objects. Fireball a stone, you could pick it up seconds later without harm. Walls of Fire didnt really generate updrafts past twenty feet, as the air lost the heat, and basically just revolved around there getting hot, the same temperature as all the other affected air. A suit of armor under Chill Metal would collect a coat of rime, but an inch away from it, you could barely feel it was cold, despite the fact it could almost freeze your finger solid with a touch.

When those things hit water, well, as long as the water changed state, it could capture the heat exchange.

Fireball water, and you created steam... and that steam wouldnt just collapse back into teardrops, it could still scald you. Icebolt the water, and youd create a line of ice... and it would remain behind and melt totally naturally.

If it just stayed water, almost nothing would happen. The change of state was part of the capture process.

So, Walls of Fire, boil the water, heat exchange the steam, and you have a very clean heating system... or steam power. Walls of Icefire, do the same thing, cooling system... or mass refrigeration. No freon needed, tyvm.

Naturally enough, this added more stuff for me to do, and more spells for me to Cast. There was really nothing out there that could compete with a Permanent spell Cast at 50+, and Wall of Fire was one of a handful I could do that with.

Frying more goldweight every day, that was me. Those rods with my trademark silver-edged black flames (or black-edged silver icefire flames) suspended between them were soon some very high-in-demand items, and every major smelting company worldwide was willing to pay through the nose to get a set for themselves.

Or steal them, but that was generally a bad idea. I made those things VERY easy to track... So swallow the one (or two, or three) time outlay and maybe keep your foundry going in the New Normal that was on the way.

Traveler was also a Captain of the Magitech Industry! Whoda thunk?

Naturally, such requests piling up were being sent to Heavenbound Hall, and my schedule was starting to look a mite crowded at times. Couple all that with expansion of business and recruitment of people for factories and the like, and yeah, I was helping Heavenbound Hall with some serious expansion plans.

The Church of Harse had always been big into banking, but without computers, electronic bidding, and the communication network that had driven international finance, that whole industry was starting to sputter and falter. Mechanical logic engines had to be put in place, leaning towards ever more precision engineering demand... there were all sorts of places to invest in and develop with great speed.

The more radical leading edge financial firms were already going into free-fall as their business evaporated, as they lost fortunes in stable industrial firms basically overnight and couldnt unload their positions. My warnings to Heavenbound Hall had given them a big jump on getting out of vulnerable positions and moving money into more usable assets... or to start backing development of businesses themselves.

Job turmoil was going to be another thing driving conflict once the Shroud went down. My warnings gave nations and people time, and of course some werent going to make that adjustment, and then blame me and everyone else when it all came true, creating more chaos and discord with their own selfishness.

It would all settle out, because the demand for actual manual labor only increased in a magical world. Magic wasnt made by tech, after all.

Hells, if all you did is craft-coin work, i.e., tripling the Value of raw precious materials, you had a steady job forever. It was one of the biggest training careers we were undertaking now.

There was a path of thought that magic items, once made, would stick around for a good long time, and gradually saturate society, meaning low magic would be available to everyone.

That was possible... but unlikely. Magic items could be Burned, the raw power removed and put into other items... which, generally, were more expensive items. That meant that opportunistic people would simply grab the low magic stuff and concentrate that power into fewer, more powerful possessions of their own.

So, the world would never be swimming in +1 magical Stuff. That +1 Stuff would be Burned to make +2 stuff, which would suffer the same fate for +3 stuff, and so on, and magic would always be expensive because of that.

It meant magical stuff would always be luxury goods. The only exceptions to this would be Permanent or very long-lasting spells, like Eternal Flames or Eternal Lights and the like.

And Energized rare materials.

Guess who was currently providing lots of those?...