Chapter 14

When the train left Valencia to take Clovis and the governors home, Emperor Reba and his wives stayed behind to catch the next ship home. Izem and I planned the attack on the Vandals at Carthage. He was sure he could get 50,000 troops within three months so we set the attack date for September 1. I would provide three thousand ground troops armed with rifles, and two hundred mortar crews. The rifle infantry and mortars would cover the west wall of Carthage since there was no other way for the people to escape. To the north was a mile or so of the peninsula and then the sea. To the south and east were a lake and the sea. My armada would blockade the port, capturing any ships attempting to flee. With the false dawn, the shipboard mortars would target the palace and barracks.

Once the shipboard mortars fired, Izem wanted Amazigh troops to rush the walls of the city while our land-based mortars targeted the walls. I suggested waiting until the mortars breached the walls, as it could take some time.

With a plan in place, Izem headed home with 10,000 crossbows and 10,000 of the Mongol short bows. They had enough of the Mongol short bows by now that they had plenty of men proficient with them. “Think you can handle this?” I asked Captain Drogo. His confident grin, knowing that I was yanking his chain told me how much he’d grown since taking over. Originally, he would have had to fight down his outrage that I would question his ability, even teasingly.

“I think we can handle a few Vandals,” he answered confidently. He went with Izem to help explain the plan to the other Amazigh chiefs and to help answer any questions.

I was finally able to turn my attention back to my dreaded “TTD List.” I wanted to do two things right away, one that I had put off since before starting on the steam engines. I put the second one off a few days more and began the first. I spread word that I was looking for woodcarvers who could read and write both Frankish and Latin. I found two men almost immediately in Valencia, and tasked them with carving each letter of the Frankish and Latin alphabets. I showed the men how big to make the letters (roughly a quarter inch tall). I wanted the letters plain and simple with no artistic flourishes. One of our scribes wrote out each letter the way I wanted it. Once they finished carving the letters, we would cast them in plaster, and then in steel to use in printing presses.

While they worked on that, I headed for my laboratory/workshop. Years ago, I collected the equipment and materials I would need, including our version of Pyrex glassware. I had previously explained to the glassmakers about borosilicate glass, indicating the necessary materials, giving them the recipe, and letting them play with it. I now have several shelves filled with their handiwork, with the spiral glass condensing tubes being the most intricate.

Using globs of animal fat that we save for making soap, I melted the fat and strained off the impurities. One of my assistants then dropped several long, thin strips of zinc into a large, corked beaker filled with hydrochloric acid and moved the beaker closer to the liquid fat. Glass tubing and rubber tubing ran from the top of the beaker (now producing hydrogen gas) to the bottom of the flask filled with melted fat. The hydrogen produced by the zinc and acid bubbled through the liquid fat while I swirled the flask to mix the melted fat and hydrogen. A second tube ran back out through the cork of the fat-filled flask, allowing the buildup of gas inside the flask to escape.

Through trial and error, I learned that it took about fifteen minutes of this to convert most of the liquid fat to the chemical I needed. After fifteen minutes, I allowed each batch to cool and separate into layers.

Next, I performed a similar reaction, but heated pyrolusite and potassium chlorate to form oxygen that I ran through a different batch of liquid fat to create adipic acid (adipic from the word adipose, meaning fat). When both batches were complete and separated into layers, I strained out the impurities, mixed the correct layer from each batch together and heated them, adding a little vinegar to remove even more impurities.

Finally, I poured the resulting mixture into a three-foot-long narrow stainless-steel tube. The cap, containing a plunger, screwed onto the open end of the tube sealing it, much like modern caulking guns. When I pressed the plunger, thin, threadlike nylon fibers came out through tiny holes I made in the bottom cap of each tube. When the nylon filaments reached a foot long, one of the women I had there grabbed them with a gloved hand and began twisting them as if making thread from cotton, wool, or silk. When the thread was long enough, she hooked it to a treadle-powered spinning wheel with a bobbin I hoped was large enough to hold the thread from the entire tube.

Eventually, we wove nylon thread into fabric. Women loved the soft, silky feel of the fabric. Other of the nylon threads were braided together to make thicker nylon string, and even nylon rope. When everyone figured out that nylon rope didn’t rot like natural-fiber ropes did when they got wet, demand skyrocketed.

I used the first batches of nylon, however, to make special nets. We made the nets from heavy-duty nylon string with one-foot square gaps in the mesh. I then had slave women use wooden frames to meticulously hand-tie smaller meshes with one-inch gaps into one-foot by two-foot meshes. They folded those meshes to make a pocket a foot square and sewed the pockets on both sides and the across bottom into the one-foot-by-one-foot gaps in the nylon nets. Then they sewed one of the two top edges to the big net, leaving the top of the smaller mesh open like a pocket. Once I was ready, I would drop a pearl oyster into each pocket and the entire net would hang offshore from floating wooden frames. We helped keep those wooden frames floating with basketball-sized, air-filled glass floats.

Nylon ropes secured the bottom of the nets to a series of ten-pound lead weights. When the nets were in place, the lowest row of oysters would be at least twenty feet above the ocean bottom to avoid the worst of the silt. Each of the nets was ten feet high by fifty feet wide, and we could sew nets together to make nets twenty, thirty, or more feet deep depending on the water depth. Some would be ten net units, or a hundred feet deep. The first batch of nets and floats were ready about the time of the planned invasion of Carthage, so we held off installing them.

I did send instructions with ships leaving for Madagascar and places beyond. I wanted our ships to contact pearl divers in the easternmost part of Kantoli (part of what is modern Indonesia), as well as the areas that are modern Burma, Australia, and Japan. I wanted them to secure as many live pearl oysters as possible from the divers there. They were to keep the oysters in large barrels, adding fresh buckets of ocean water several times every day and night, letting the excess water spill over the top.

I wanted pearl oysters from Japan, as well as black lipped pearl oysters, white-lipped pearl oysters, and Gold-lipped pearl oysters from Kantoli, Burma, Australia, and environs. The instructions I sent were to bring back as many of each as possible, up to 3,000 of each variety. Any crew able to convince a family involved in the pearl industry to relocate would receive a hefty bonus. The family had to include at least one expert diver and one person expert at opening the oysters to check for pearls. I would work with the family or families to show them what I wanted. They also needed to bring back translators so we could communicate with the pearl industry families.

My agents had only recently concluded negotiations with the four hundred or so inhabitants of Sitra Island in the Persian Gulf to purchase it from them. The island is along the east side of Tubli Bay, just off the east coast of modern Bahrain. It has several freshwater springs that provide water for the population and livestock to drink, as well as for agriculture. I intended to build a sturdy wall around the entire island for protection since there was still the potential for raids on the island by pirates. I would also build several large stone cisterns to hold water and would install clay pipes to run water to irrigate fields.

I even intended to enlarge the island somewhat by importing rich soil from the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers some three hundred miles to the north. There was plenty of water on the island to increase agriculture, but very little fallow arable soil still available, just enough to grow crops to support the island’s current inhabitants. There were also date palms scattered across the island.

Fishing boats and pearl boats were able to dock in the shelter of the bay. We would build a single pier to the southeast and dredge a harbor deep enough to allow our Capital Class and Duchess Class ships to dock. The Capital Class ships could already reach several points on the eastern shore, but it was tricky.

I intended to increase the population of the island, including adding five hundred troops to protect it. Initially, most of the extra people would be engineers and slaves to do the building. Eventually, the island would be home to our pearl industry, agriculture to support them, and other supporting businesses.

Breaching the outer walls of Carthage in five places only took a short time with our mortars, then the 50,000 Amazigh troops poured through the nearly undefended breaches. Once the mortar attack began, our riflemen began picking off any Vandal troops who showed themselves. Breaching the outer wall could have been quicker, but they originally trained half of the mortars on the Vandal barracks. They breached the second wall even before completely securing the first wall. They didn’t need to breach the third wall. Flags of surrender began waving shortly after the Amazigh troops took control of the two outer walls and showed how easily they could breach the walls.

As planned, our ships stationed just offshore targeted the palace and barracks to begin the attack. They found King Thrasamund’s body several days later in the rubble of the palace. Less than half of the Vandal soldiers survived, with less than half of those uninjured. Sailors rushing to the military harbor stopped in their tracks when they saw our ships offshore. By then, everyone knew what one of our ships did to a coordinated attacking fleet of a hundred Roman ships. None of the Vandal sailors even thought about trying to attack our armada. They concentrated on staying hidden to avoid flying debris.

When it was over, any Vandals who owned Amazigh slaves were shackled, chained, and sent to Valencia. From there, we sorted them out and sent them elsewhere depending on what they knew how to do. Originally, the Amazigh had planned a bloodbath in the city, but Captain Drogo told them we wouldn’t help if they did. Eventually, they agreed on our plan to make slaves of the Vandals (and others) who had Amazigh slaves. They did make the Vandal men who owned slaves watch as their wives and daughters were raped, the same as happened to the Amazigh females when they became slaves. After that, the married Vandal men who owned slaves went to Valencia, never to see their families again. The Amazigh troops kept single Vandal men shackled as slaves for several projects Izem had in mind.

They kept many of the younger Vandal women as concubines or second wives, but Izem insisted on saving the best-looking two. The one with the biggest tits went to Clovis (he loves big tits), and the taller of the two was sent to me. It’s not that I don’t like big tits, mind you, but I am able to appreciate other features, too, especially a tall, attractive woman. The woman sent to Clovis carried the tattered banner of King Thrasamund for Clovis to add to his collection. Those women deemed too old or too young to consider as concubines were sent to Valencia. By then, the Vandal men had been reassigned to other locations, with detailed notes about who we sent where so family members didn’t end up together. Most of the older women fit right in at our cotton, silk, and nylon mills, as well as the silkworm warehouses. We introduced Rodelinda, the Vandal woman sent to me, into our bed the first night she was here.

They plundered the city of Carthage, stripping it of its wealth. One quarter of the wealth came to Valencia in payment for our support. One quarter went to the Amazigh troops and the chieftains who supplied them. The remainder Izem used to repair the damage to the walls and barracks in Carthage, and to repair and expand existing Roman roads. Many of the Amazigh chieftains had seen Malaga, including our concrete roads and our railroads. They agreed that both would both enhance trade and speed up travel in their territory, as would rebuilding their main harbors to be more like ours. They planned to use the Vandal ships for trade, even the military ones.

Now, aside from two tribes of Huns living in the northeast corner of the Black Sea, every shore of or adjoining the Mediterranean was now under Frankish control or control of an ally.

Izem traded half of the male Vandal slaves and ten pounds of gold to us for an equal number of the Sassanid slaves with experience building and concreting our roads. We again ramped up our cement production and stockpiled barrels of it in warehouses in Malaga waiting for Amazigh ships to pick it up. It probably would have been faster and more cost effective for us to deliver it, but they were excited about having such a large fleet of ships and wanted to put them to immediate use.

For a month, the conquest of Vandal territory continued. With Carthage captured and the king dead, only the biggest cities put up any real resistance, and their determination was short lived. The remaining cities surrendered within an hour, providing even more slaves for the Amazigh and freeing thousands of Amazigh who had been kept as slaves.

Others of my troops secured the islands we gained: Corsica, Sardinia, and Malta. There was little resistance since the islanders didn’t really care which country claimed them as long as we left them alone. Sardinia already knew us because we already had more than a dozen mines there. They were actually encouraged to hear that they were part of The Frankish Empire now. We told the Vandals on the islands that we would leave them in peace so long as there were no problems. When we explained what happened to the Vandals captured by the Amazigh, they suddenly became much more agreeable.

While the Amazigh troops and my loaner troops were mopping up, my wives and I headed for Sitra Island to check on the progress. I already had ten pearl divers there using the diving helmets and air hoses. They had reached a compromise with the locals who were initially upset by the advantage our divers had. Our divers agreed not to take pearl oysters in water less than a hundred feet deep, the deepest the free divers could go and still be able to work long enough to make the effort worthwhile.

They had the nylon mesh nets set up and were experimenting with seeding the pearls the way I showed them. Unfortunately, I’d only seen the procedure performed on television, and had never attempted it. The ten oysters I operated on died. The others had similar results for a short time before they began to get the hang of it and were proficient enough now that ninety-five percent of the oysters survived.

I made small, hand-cranked tumblers for families to use on pieces of shell, rounding the edges. First, their families carefully filed each piece to make it reasonably rounded. Then, they tumbled a handful or two for several days. Anytime someone in the family wasn’t doing something else, they cranked the tumbler to make shell beads. Even the kids were able to help with the tumbling. We brought several thousand of the beads with us. For now, I had women across Iberia turning more pieces of oyster and clam shells into small, roundish beads. Eventually, I planned to move that industry to Sitra Island, too.

When we arrived, two Capital Class ships were dredging the island’s harbor. The ships were rigged with steam-driven dredging equipment. A long conveyor belt-like device was outfitted with stainless steel buckets that dredged silt from the shallow ocean floor. The buckets emptied into a wide U-shaped chute that angled down to barges. Once each barge was full, it carried the muck to the Gulf of Oman to dump it while another barge took its place. Still more barges brought in a steady supply of rock that they dumped into the water, forming what would become the new, eastern edge of the island.