Chapter 1425 - The Spanish Arms Race

"The expanding driving bands don't necessarily have to be copper," Lin Shenhe said, his voice laced with fatigue, his eyes bloodshot.

The task of mapping and identifying the weapon parts and shrapnel brought back from Manila by the Haiqi one by one was not easy. The Intelligence Bureau had been demanding his assessment report urgently, so he had been working through his rest time.

"Lead will work too. It's much cheaper and easier to machine."

"The shells and driving bands are minor issues," Wang Ruixiang lit a limited-edition Gold South Sea cigar, took a puff, and continued, clearly not done talking. "The key point is, what kind of guns can he actually build? Let's ignore that nonsense about rifling an old Spanish cannon just to show off in a parade. Are large-caliber rifled guns so easy to build? Does that Japanese devil have the ability to replicate Krupp or the Rock Island Arsenal with his bare hands? Does he have drilling machines? Boring machines? Steam hammers? Even the Commie Eighth Route Army at Huangyadong had two steam engines, for crying out loud. If he can climb the entire artillery tech tree all by himself, leading a bunch of white-skins who only know how to wave Bibles and matchlocks and Filipino natives who don't know shit, then our entire Industrial Sector in Lingao might as well go hang ourselves from lampposts."

"I have a long telegram from the Manila Station here. The Confidential Office only finished translating and delivering it just before the meeting started." Jiang Shan took over. "It reports the latest situation: the Spanish authorities are building a metal smelting workshop of considerable scale west of Manila, at the confluence of the Pasig and San Juan rivers. The authorities have conscripted Chinese masons, carpenters, blacksmiths, and coppersmiths from Manila and Cavite to work there—four or five hundred men have already been sent. About 1.5 kilometers upstream from the river mouth, they are building a dam on the San Juan River for hydraulic power. Chinese artisans are using hardwood cut from upstream to build some kind of waterwheel mechanism..."

"That's useless," Wang Ruixiang blew a smoke ring dismissively. "Hydraulically powered machine tools, heh heh, the efficiency is appallingly low. Do they expect to forge gun barrels with hydraulic hammers? Then the biggest thing he can possibly make is a 12-pounder Napoleon."

"That's not the point. The point is that he believes he can build it, and the Spanish believe he can build it too," Lin Shenhe said. "Besides, he could simply use the crudest method—rifling smoothbore cannons—to make large artillery. The Spanish aren't very good at making cast-iron guns—that doesn't matter; they can use those bronze guns. The Spanish have very mature experience in casting bronze guns anyway. We shouldn't underestimate his ability to maximize the potential of a primitive environment. Let's look at his work."

He took an object from the sample case—the rocket wreckage Xue Ziliang had seen.

"Crude enough, right? It falls far short even of our Hale rockets, let alone any modern rocket we're familiar with. Since this Japanese fellow is a modern arms smuggler, what hasn't he seen—aviation rockets, Stalin's Organs, Type 63 107mm rockets? Why did he choose the Congreve rocket? Because this thing is simple enough: just a body plus a balance stick. The body is rolled from sheet iron; no need even for seamless steel tubing."

Lin Shenhe took a drink of water to catch his breath, then continued confidently:

"Some fragments indicate that this Paul has further simplified the process by pressing the warhead casing directly onto the mold using papier-mâché. Yes, even if this guy improved the design, the accuracy of these rockets is still very poor; fired off, many would practically perform Brownian motion. But they're good enough to bombard cities, burn ships at the docks, and tear down native villages. Most importantly, they're not hard to build."

"You mean," Wang Ding tried to summarize, "he's proficient in weapons technology, but he's not a simple tech-worshipper. He focuses on manufacturing weapons with the best possible performance permitted by the conditions of this time-space."

"Cheap and plentiful," Lin Shenhe replied. "That's the principle of underground arms dealers supplying irregular forces. If that Paul did this kind of work in the past."

"This man is dangerous. He used a fake name and identity even on Lando's ship. What secret is he hiding from an accomplice in illegal dealings?" Jiang Shan offered his view.

"Maybe before transmigrating he was a weapons expert, or at least a technician in a related industry. He might be a terrorist. And after transmigrating, he smartly used his knowledge and skills as a stepping stone. We don't know yet whether he chose to join the Spanish colonial authorities passively or actively, but the Spanish would certainly welcome an inventor bringing them new weapons."

"Why? Just because we attacked the galleons and scared the piss out of the Spanish devils in Manila? They spent so much money and trusted a yellow man of unknown origin just to quell their vain fears?"

Even just expanding the fortifications had stretched the Governor's budget to the limit in the history of the old timeline, forcing him to repeatedly appeal to the King for increased subsidies. Yet now the scale of rearmament in the Manila colony far exceeded that of the old timeline.

"First of all, historically, the current Governor of Manila has spent years immersed in the fear of an imminent Dutch invasion. If you care to read the compilation of historical materials provided by the Great Library, you'll know to what extent the Spanish feared this threat. The letters from the Spanish Governor to the Council of the Indies, the Privy Council, and the King are filled with the delusion of being besieged. And historically, he did indeed invest large sums in the defense of the Philippines and Manila."

Wang Ding spoke with assurance.

"After we seized two Manila galleons and signed a commercial contract with the Dutch, the fears of the Spanish in Manila were further amplified. Their hypothetical enemies now include us, in addition to the Dutch and the British. Speaking of the big picture, this is the Thirty Years' War. Richelieu's France is about to ally with Sweden against the Catholic camp. Spain's situation in Europe will become difficult. War is the greatest driver of military technology. Now they have a weapons genius who is good at utilizing existing technical resources, and who also happens to be a devout Catholic—in Spanish eyes, this is practically a blessing from God. Moreover, the military pressure Spain faces is global."

"Global?"

"The Spanish—or rather the Habsburgs—are the world's first global empire. Unfortunately, this empire was born in an era without radio or motorized ships. In the Mediterranean, they face the Turks; on the European continent, the Protestant German princes and the harboring-evil-intentions French. Then there are the Dutch and the British. In Asia and the Americas, the Dutch and British spare no effort in attacking Spanish ships and colonies. As if to add more burdens to this empire, now the Spanish King is also the King of Portugal, and the already stretched Spanish naval squadrons have to shoulder the task of defending Portuguese possessions—so the decline of the Spanish is not accidental, but inevitable."

Every governor of a Spanish or Portuguese colony knew very well that once attacked by an enemy, unless a local squadron happened to be stationed in the harbor, they would receive no support whatsoever. The defense of the colony depended entirely on themselves, on being prepared for battle in ordinary times.

Wang Ruixiang snorted. "Who gives a damn. Let the Spanish fire rockets and burn Paris, and the French learn to make rockets and burn Madrid—wouldn't that be great? As for the colonies, they can burn each other. The more the white devils kill each other, the better—saves us from having to do it ourselves when we conquer Europe later."

"That's thinking too far ahead. Let's look at what realistic threats this transmigrator's works will bring us," said Xu Ke, who had come from Kaohsiung to attend the meeting. "Leaving aside what cannons will be mounted on the Manila fortresses, the mysterious vessel under construction under the bamboo shed in the shipyard Lando discovered should probably concern us more."

As he spoke, an image of a dry dock completely covered by bamboo sheds appeared on the projector.

"Judging from the outer dimensions of the dry dock and the area of the temporary bamboo shed, the tonnage of this ship is not large—even very small. If it is a ship, the displacement won't exceed one hundred tons."

The question then arose: a ship of merely one hundred tons would not be worth covering with a bamboo shed by any means.

"...Obviously, there must be some secret weapon under that bamboo shed."

"Given the usual nature of the Japanese, it's definitely something like a Final Decisive Battle Weapon."

"Very likely. Could it be a Gundam?"

Xu Ke coughed. "Naval Intelligence believes the possibilities of a submarine or a spar torpedo boat being built under that bamboo shed are fifty-fifty. Given that there is no sign Hale has mastered steam engine technology, the likelihood of a human-powered submarine is very high. If we don't pay enough attention, one day when the fleet enters Manila Bay, the tragedy of the Housatonic might be replayed more than two hundred years early."

"You're joking. If you put it that way, we should be building Consul-class subs too. Besides, even if it's real, the fishery sonar on our Type 8154 cruisers is already thirsty."

"The history of submarines goes back a long way; it's not surprising if he can build one. It's just not of much value. This so-called submarine—as long as the ship maintains proper lookouts, it's impossible not to spot it, and it can't attack moving targets."

"The submarine doesn't matter. If this transmigrator makes simple naval mines and lets the Spanish take them to Keelung to lay them, it would pose a threat to our convoys sailing in the Taiwan Strait."

"Naval mines? Even if the guy can design them, can the Spanish build them?"

"Simple moored mines are no problem. Drifting mines are even easier to make—much more convenient than cannons," Lin Shenhe said. "The trigger mechanism can use chemical fuses. Since he can make mercury fulminate, this isn't difficult. If the Spanish intend to give up the Keelung base but want to cause us trouble, naval mines are a very good choice."