Building a Viking Empire with Modern Industry-Chapter 96: Workplace Environment

The Outskirts of City Titan (Sector 4)

Earl Godwin was at the head of his acquisition team; they had marched from the border of Mercia to the industrial heartland of Northumbria for the last few days, while Ragnar was engaging in the "Nottingham Audit."

Godwin had just breached the outer perimeter of City Titan.. or so he thought.

They were currently in the "Sector 4 Residential Zone," a grid of identical brick housing units that confused the Saxon raiders to no end.

They planned to sack the warehouses before marching on the Governor’s Palace.

However, when they entered the district, they noticed strange, low-slung bunkers made of grey stone protecting the intersections.

As they got close, aiming to steal the copper wiring from the streetlamps, a mechanical thrum echoed through the streets.

"My Lord!" a housecarl shouted. "The walls... they are buzzing!"

It did not take long before Godwin and his forces began to panic. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Wasn’t Titan supposed to be a ghost town defended by interns?

Something was amiss, but Godwin’s greed was heavier than his caution.

He began to rally his forces, who were terrified by the "Grey Magic" of the perfectly paved roads.

Godwin immediately began to order a consolidation.

"Push forward! Fall back to the main avenue! Clearly, the residential zone is a maze designed to confuse honest Christians. We must regroup at the Factory Gates!"

Godwin could not fathom the possibility that the "abandoned" outer defenses were a funnel. He figured the lack of resistance was due to the cowardice of the Viking "Manager," Leif the Lesser.

Suddenly, a hidden panel in one of the concrete bunkers slid open.

A Torsion Spike.. smaller than the siege variant but deadly at close range.. fired a bundle of rebar shrapnel.

The jagged metal tore through the front rank of the Mercian raiders, turning wooden shields into splinters.

The men were terrified by such efficient violence.

They rapidly retreated towards the direction of the Factory District. With advanced urban planning, a single "Pillbox" could protect the intersection quite efficiently.

If the Army was willing to suffer more losses, they could have eventually swarmed the bunker, but their main goal was to seize the Governor’s Palace and capture Gyda.

As such, they abandoned the idea to raid the housing units, instead deciding to place their faith in the sheer weight of their numbers to overwhelm the central gate.

...

The Factory Plaza

After marching for several more minutes through the eerily empty streets, the Army, whose morale was shaken by the lack of lootable gold, arrived in the Central Plaza of City Titan.

To their surprise, the massive iron gates of the Blast Furnace facility were wide open.

"A miracle!" Godwin laughed, pointing his sword. "They have surrendered! The heathens know their false gods cannot save them!"

The entire plaza was surrounded by high, brutalist walls made of Ferro-Concrete.

Steam pipes ran along the tops of the walls like veins of a mechanical beast.

Luckily for them, the "Range Department" did not fire upon sight, convincing Godwin that his army of 3,000 men was truly welcome to accept the surrender.

However, as he entered the plaza, he noticed the silence.

Shortly after, he noticed a figure standing on the steel balcony overlooking the factory floor entrance. It was Prime Minister Gyda.

She was heavily pregnant, one hand resting protectively on her stomach, the other holding a black ledger.

She was dressed in a gown of deep purple velvet that cost more than Godwin’s entire earldom.

The gas lamps flickered, illuminating her sharp, calculating face, creating the illusion of a Queen of the Underworld judging the souls of the damned.

Godwin immediately felt his greed race as he gazed upon the woman he intended to ransom.

He put on a greasy smile as he rode his horse into the center of the trap.

"Lady Gyda!" Godwin shouted, his voice echoing off the concrete. "You are wise to open the gates! Surrender the treasury and the Director’s blueprints, and I shall allow you to leave... after we discuss the terms of your captivity, of course."

However, Gyda’s reaction to his words confused the Luddite Earl. She didn’t look frightened. She didn’t look like a hostage. She looked like an auditor who had just found a massive discrepancy in the books.

She stared at him with a look of absolute fiscal contempt.

"Earl Godwin," Gyda’s voice rang out, amplified by the acoustics of the plaza. "You have trespassed on private property. You have damaged municipal infrastructure. And you have interrupted the third-shift production cycle."

Godwin frowned. "What are you babbling about, woman? I have an army!"

Gyda opened her ledger and made a mark with a piece of charcoal.

"Your credit," Gyda declared cold, "is denied. Initiate Protocol: Steam Clean."

The moment Earl Godwin heard those words, his heart sank into an abyss.

In the next second, the ground beneath them began to rumble.

The "decorative" grates lining the floor of the plaza - which Godwin assumed were for drainage -suddenly hissed.

HISSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Leif the Lesser, standing in the control room with his hand on the emergency release valve, pulled the lever down.

"Purging the boilers!" Leif cackled.

Superheated steam, pressurized to 150 PSI, erupted from the ground vents. It wasn’t fire; it was worse. It was a white, scalding cloud that cooked flesh inside armor instantly. The plaza turned into a pressure cooker.

"MY EYES! IT BURNS!"

The screams of 3,000 men filled the air, drowning out the hiss of the steam.

The horses panicked, throwing their riders into the boiling fog.

Godwin tried to cover his face, but the heat was all-encompassing.

He realized too late that he had been tricked.

That the open gate was not a surrender; it was a mouth. And he had walked right into the stomach of the beast.

As the steam cloud began to dissipate, leaving the Saxon army writhing in agony, Gyda raised her hand again.

"Loss Prevention Team... clear the floor."

On the rooftops of the concrete factories, panels slid open.

The Titan Garrison.. interns and reserves armed with crossbows and buckets of boiling oil appeared.

The thunder of hundreds of crossbows went off. Bolts rained down into the plaza, pinning the scalded Saxons to the pavement.

Gyda turned around and walked back into her office, leaving the men of the garrison to do their work.

She had a budget meeting in five minutes, and this hostile takeover attempt was eating into her schedule.

In his last moment, Earl Godwin realized the horrifying truth of the "New World." He wasn’t fighting warriors who wanted glory. He was fighting a system that viewed him as a logistical error.

He tried to crawl toward the gate, his skin blistered and red.

"The gold..." Godwin wheezed. "Where is the gold?"

A shadow fell over him.

Leif the Lesser stood there, wearing a heavy leather apron and holding a large wrench. He looked down at the Earl with a mixture of pity and annoyance.

"There is no gold, you idiot," Leif sighed. "It’s all reinvested in infrastructure."

Leif brought the wrench down on Godwin’s helmet.

The blow caved in the metal and the skull beneath it.

"Janitorial!" Leif shouted to the reserves. "Clean this up! We have a delivery of coal coming in an hour, and I want this plaza spotless!"

With the advancement of the "Kill Box" architecture and the men on the roofs protecting it, there was not a single area where the enemy could hide. They were quickly processed by crossbow bolts and steam burns. Their limbs littered the plaza, alongside the melted remains of their looted copper pipes.

Without their commander, the army ceased to exist as a fighting force. It became a biological hazard.

Some strayed towards the walls hoping they would be out of the steam range, only to be met by the "Can-Openers" waiting in the alleyways.

Others routed away and were caught by the hidden Torsion Spikes at the residential intersections.

Much like Ragnar’s liquidation of Nottingham, the Defense of Titan was quickly turned into a masterclass in industrial pest control. There was nowhere for these men to run within the confines of the Factory District; every street was a pre-planned firing lane.

In the end, not a single soul who had entered the Plaza with the intent to loot was allowed to leave with their severance pay.

Gyda had left the defense of the headquarters up to the "Interns," and they did not disappoint the Board of Directors.

With the trap sprung and the enemy army annihilated, a quarter of Mercia’s military strength had died within the walls of a factory they didn’t understand.

A fact King Aethelred of Wessex would not become aware of for some time, one which would ultimately prove to be the breaking point of the Saxon resistance.

For when Ragnar’s main force finally finished their march from Nottingham and linked up with the Titan Garrison, the Directorate would own the North completely.

Gyda sat back down at her desk. She felt a strong kick from the baby.

"Hush now, little asset," she whispered, patting her belly. "The noise is over. Mummy just balanced the books."

"Leif!" she called out.

The Site Manager stuck his head in the door, blood and soot on his face. "Yes, Prime Minister?"

"Send a raven to Ragnar," Gyda ordered, her eyes gleaming with cold satisfaction. "Tell him the home office is secure.."

"It will be done, ma’am!"