Chapter 94: Designing the Freighter

November 16, 221 AD.

Drafting Halls, Praetorium of Civitas Aurelia, Gallia.

The numbers were staggering...

Gaul was producing upwards of twelve thousand tons of pig iron every month. The Syndicate had eclipsed the metallurgical output of Britannia, Hispania, and the Italian peninsula.

Even the Sassanid Persian empire was out-produced by a factor of ten!

This ocean of metal was swallowed by the Forge Master’s economy.

Forty percent was devoured by the military sector... cast into clay housings, crossbow cassettes, and steel plates meant to armor the hulls of the navy.

Over half of the iron was diverted into civil infrastructure, forging pipes for steam-pumps, plows, and structural supports for factories.

Driven by this surplus, the Syndicate’s naval yards on the southern coast had exploded into a frenzy of construction.

Lucius had outlawed the Roman method of building a ship from the keel up in a single drydock. Instead, he implemented modular assembly. Ribs, hull planks, and steam-boilers were manufactured in separate zones across the twelve assembly plants, then shipped downriver to be bolted together at the docks.

In six months, the Syndicate’s armada had grown from a handful of galleys to a fleet of steam-driven gunboats.

They boasted eighty steam-assisted Liburnian cruisers, designed for coastal raiding, and twenty steel-plated Isolda-class ironclads.

This tonnage made the Syndicate a naval power, rivaling the imperial fleets of Alexandria and Antioch before the Senate knew they were in the water!

Currently, at the Massilia drydock, the prototype for a new vessel was undergoing stress testing.

It was a shallow-draft river monitor, dubbed the Valeria-class, designed to patrol the deltas of the Rhone.

Instead of combat trials, the engineers were testing the ship’s buoyancy, boiler pressure stability, and structural endurance in simulated storm conditions.

During the live-fire phase, a flaw had emerged...

The engineers had mounted a torsion-powered bombard on the forward deck, intended to shatter fortifications.

But when the bombard fired, the recoil threatened to capsize the hull, destabilizing the steam engine’s pressure valves.

The Forge Master struck the bombard from the blueprints, replacing it with a battery of swivel-mounted Decimus Engines.

The smaller weapons sacrificed siege-breaking power but provided anti-infantry capabilities suited for a river monitor, eliminating the recoil threat.

While the schematics were being stamped for production, the intellectual heart of the Syndicate continued to beat inside the praetorium of Civitas Aurelia.

Deep within the drafting halls, Linus — the engineering prodigy who had saved the steam-press months prior — was standing before a chalkboard.

Having been elevated by Lucius for his genius, the teenager was lecturing a dozen apprentices, most of whom were grown men twice his age.

Linus pointed to a schematic on a student’s wax tablet. "If you do not calculate the lateral thrust correctly, the aqueduct collapses, the water pressure drops, and the Forge Master throws us all into the sulfur mines. Recalculate the keystone angle."

Before the apprentice could erase his tablet, the doors of the drafting hall swung open.

Linus let out a sigh, turning around to reprimand the intruder.

"I told the guards that this workshop was closed to—"

Linus cut himself off.

Standing in the doorway was Cassian, the Director of Military Logistics.

The man looked like he had been dragged behind a cavalry charge. His tunic was rumpled, his eyes were bloodshot, and he clutched a satchel as if it were a shield.

Flanking him were two Custodes guards.

"Linus," Cassian grunted, his voice raspy from exhaustion.

He walked into the room, waving a hand. "Give your students a recess. We need to talk."

Linus swallowed.

A visit from the Director of Logistics usually meant someone had failed a quota, and in Lucius Cassius’s empire, failing a quota was a dangerous proposition...

"Class dismissed," Linus ordered. "Go memorize the Vitruvian ratios. All of them."

The apprentices scrambled out of the hall, eager to escape the presence of the Custodes. Once the room was empty, Cassian collapsed into a chair, dropping his satchel onto the drafting table.

He pulled a flask from his belt, taking a pull of raw spirits.

Linus approached the table, wiping chalk dust from his hands.

"Director Cassian. You look... terrible, if I may speak freely."

Cassian sighed, rubbing his temples. "I haven’t slept in four days, Linus. The proxy war in Hispania is draining our explosive reserves, the agricultural sector is screaming for steam-pumps, and Legate Rufinus is massing three legions on the northern border. My logistics trains are stretched so thin I can practically see through them."

Linus frowned. "The roads cannot handle more transport wagons, Director. The cobblestones are fracturing under the weight of the iron ingots. If you add more carts, you will destroy the trade routes."

"I know," Cassian replied. "Which is why I am not asking for more wagons. I am asking for a ship."

Cassian unclasped his satchel and pulled out a roll of vellum, slapping it down onto the drafting table.

"The Forge Master has reviewed our supply bottlenecks," Cassian explained, tapping the parchment. "The Isolda-class ironclads are perfect for sinking Roman triremes, and the Liburnians are excellent for raiding. But they cannot haul cargo. We are relying on Titus and his network of smuggler galleys to move sulfur from the east. It is too slow, and it is too vulnerable."

Linus leaned over the table, his eyes darting across the vellum. "So you need a freighter. A cargo hull. Why come to me? Heron the Greek oversees the commercial shipwrights."

Cassian let out a laugh. "I went to Heron. The old fool told me it was impossible and threatened to resign. So, I am bringing it to the boy who thinks he can out-engineer Archimedes."

Linus’s pride flared. He crossed his arms, leaning back. "Heron is a relic who still thinks bronze is a high-tier metal. What exactly are the parameters?"

Cassian leaned forward. "The Forge Master wants a steam-powered bulk freighter. It must be armored enough to survive a ramming impact from a Roman warship, but it must be unarmed to maximize cargo space. And it needs to possess a carrying capacity of eight hundred tons."

Linus stopped breathing. The color drained from his face.

Eight hundred tons...

The largest merchant galleys in the Roman world — the grain ships of Alexandria — maxed out at four hundred tons, and they required favorable winds and massive crews to avoid sinking!

Cassian was asking for a metal ship twice the size of Rome’s largest vessel, powered entirely by an engine!

"Director," Linus stammered. "The structural stress on a wooden keel carrying eight hundred tons of cargo, plus the weight of a steam boiler and steel armor plating? The hull would snap in half the moment it hit rough waves in the Mediterranean."

"That is exactly what Heron said," Cassian noted, reaching for his flask. "He said the water displacement would rip the ship apart."

Linus stared at the vellum. He was terrified...

The largest vessel he had ever drafted was a fifty-ton coal barge for the Rhone. This was a monumental leap.

If he failed, he would waste thousands of tons of the Syndicate’s iron, and Lucius Cassius did not tolerate waste.

"Heron is right about the timber," Linus whispered, his eyes widening. "A wooden keel would snap."

Cassian sighed, preparing to stand up. "Then we are doomed to the wagons—"

"I didn’t say it was impossible," Linus interrupted. He grabbed his charcoal stylus. "We cast the spine of the ship out of steel. We build a skeletal iron frame, and we bolt the timber to the outside."

Cassian froze, staring at the boy as if he had just sprouted a second head.

"An iron skeleton? Will it even float?"

Linus flashed a grin, already sketching the structural ribs onto the vellum.

"Tell the Forge Master he will have his blueprints by the end of the week."