Chapter 912 – Three Men on the Deck

Under the new combat and exercise naming regulations, naval exercises would be named after bodies of water, army exercises after land features, and joint army-navy exercises after islands, with the common-era year appended. The Grand Library had already prepared more than twenty thousand names for random selection by the Fuboian Forces.

"Begin phase two of the exercise." Fu Sansi gave the order. The men on the bridge raised their binoculars in unison.

Three signal rockets soared from the Chidian. The ships and personnel, which had just settled down, sprang back into motion.

Engineer troops began marking off different passages and zones on the beach with multicolored flags. Soldiers busied themselves constructing the beachhead.

The newly completed EMS and TNT—both H800-class vessels of the Hexie-lun series—also participated in the exercise. EMS was mainly responsible for landing and unloading drills at ports with existing facilities, while TNT handled drills for beach landings without port infrastructure.

As a new type of standard transport vessel, these ships were equipped with shipboard cranes in addition to standard cargo holds, including a traction-powered steam crane and a specialized davit for launching and recovering small boats.

The steam-driven cranes hoisted one-ton crates and cargo pallets onto the deck with a roar, then swung them onto two-wheeled handcarts on the pier. Though the Zidian wheelbarrow had good maneuverability, its carrying capacity was limited. The Vehicle Factory had therefore produced a new handcart modeled on the U.S. military's two-wheeled dump cart, dubbed the Jifeng—"Gale."

Zidian and Jifeng carts streamed back and forth across the six-meter-wide temporary pier, ferrying supplies ashore. On a second pier, engineers were laying lightweight rails. This rapid-construction light rail system had first been used during the Sanya landing in Operation Giant. The technology and its application were now quite mature.

To prevent cart wheels from sinking into the sand, reusable standard bamboo pallet boards were laid on the beach, extending from the hastily built temporary pier more than a hundred meters to the gravel surface of the temporary depot area.

Because Operation Engine involved landings in Taiwan, Jeju, and Shandong—none of which had existing port facilities—everything had to be transferred by small boats. The Joint Logistics Command and industrial technical personnel had been studying how to rapidly construct pier-bridges. The requirement was that at low tide, the portion extending into the sea should still have four to five meters of water depth, convenient for docking and unloading. In the end, they'd settled on floating pier-bridges built from prefabricated concrete barges, while permanent piers would use the technically simplest gravity-type design.

Li Yan lounged on the Chidian, leisurely watching the bustling activity. He'd even brought a chair to sit on deck and enjoy the sea breeze, occasionally raising binoculars to survey the beach and the waters.

Li Yan had come to observe the Penglai-1631 exercise as head of the intelligence department. His purpose was to "coordinate intelligence work in Operation Engine."

He glanced at Wu Mu, who was also sitting on deck "observing" with an expressionless face. Transmigrators and naturalized cadres in the Political Security General Administration—except for Zhao Manxiong—all wore this sort of unsmiling expression. This curious phenomenon aroused Li Yan's interest.

Wu Mu wore a white regulation shirt. His special blue collar insignia marked him as a member of the "Sword and Shield of the Senate"—the Political Security General Administration.

Both men had come to attend the Intelligence Security Joint Conference on military intelligence and political security system reform, held at Maniao Fort. At this two-day conference, the young officers grouped in the Young Officers' Club—backed by transmigrator military officers from the "young Turk" faction—had proposed establishing a Military Intelligence Bureau and a Military Political Security Office.

As the army expanded and specialization increased, there were rising calls within the military for an independent Military Intelligence Bureau to meet the growing needs for military and geographic intelligence collection, prisoner interrogation, and the like. Some transmigrator officers wanted the military's Decemvirate organization placed entirely under military jurisdiction—establishing a Political Security Office and a General Political Department within the military to manage these matters. Some even proposed that Special Reconnaissance Command should also come under military control.

"Hmph, delusional." Li Yan watched all this with a smile, sneering inwardly. Never mind the bloated power the military would gain from such a move—even their current limited resources and manpower couldn't support establishing yet more redundant organizations.

The intentions of this bunch from the Young Officers' Club were all too obvious. Special Reconnaissance Command and the Decemvirate system within the military had been cultivated by the Executive Committee specifically as vital forces for maintaining internal stability—how could they possibly be handed over to the military?

So the proposal had naturally been rejected at the joint conference. Although Wei Aiwen had said he would submit it to the Senate for discussion, opposition among rank-and-file transmigrators was also high. Moreover, the senior military officers themselves had little interest in such a reorganization. The "military intelligence and political security system reform" pushed by the young officers, even if it entered the proposal process, would fail to reach the legally required support threshold and wouldn't proceed to Senate deliberation. There was little suspense about that.

The joint conference's only concrete result was that the Foreign Intelligence Bureau agreed to establish a dedicated Military Intelligence Section internally, incorporating several active-duty army and navy intelligence officers to handle military intelligence—this was already de facto reality, merely restated here. Now they were essentially just preparing to absorb one more army-system transmigrator intelligence officer. At the same time, the Foreign Intelligence Bureau would train several military intelligence personnel for the army and navy.

As for the Political Security General Administration, Zhao Manxiong had as usual not appeared—he never showed up at meetings. Even at the Executive Committee's expanded sessions, it was often Deputy Director Ma Jia or Office Director Wu Mu who attended on his behalf. At the conference, Wu Mu had merely restated, with his usual cold demeanor, the principle that the Political Security General Administration would not transfer the military's Decemvirate system—unless such a transfer order came from the Senate. The Political Security General Administration would continue periodically forwarding Decemvirate reports to the Fuboian Forces General Staff, as always. Of course, Li Yan knew the word "complete" was missing from that statement.

On the bridge, several transmigrator officers were chatting, surrounded by their orderlies, messengers, and guards. Wu Mu glanced at them. Several of those otaku-turned-officers had developed a certain military bearing after fighting a few battles—no longer the broke, short, ugly otaku look from the old timeline.

As one of the heads of internal security, Wu Mu was familiar with the vast majority of transmigrators; he'd read their files. After Zhao Manxiong became First Deputy Director, he'd ordered that individual tracking of each transmigrator cease, replaced by receiving reports on each department from that department's Decemvirate members. Since the Decemvirate's reporting principle was "report everything regardless of importance," many transmigrators' affairs came through in those reports anyway.

Wu Mu looked at Sope, who sat nearby, head bowed over documents. He wasn't very familiar with Sope. The man had gained some notoriety after D-Day: when he boarded the ship, his personal luggage contained several hundred mechanical watches of various styles. As Sope put it, these mechanical watches would be worth more than diamonds in the new timeline.

Li Yan had just noticed that a naturalized logistics officer at the beachhead command post was wearing a mechanical watch—undoubtedly a product from the old timeline. Li Yan recalled that the Executive Committee had never issued stored mechanical watches to any naturalized citizen; this watch could only have come as a personal gift from Sope. Had this been reported? Wu Mu realized he hadn't read the Decemvirate's periodic reports in quite some time—he'd been too busy lately. He made a mental note to check when he got back.

Sope sensed Wu Mu's gaze and looked up with a smile. "Want to grab a good spot at the Baitu camp? The environment here at Baitu is rather nice—at least it's quiet, not as noisy as Bairren City."

"No thanks, I have a lot to do tomorrow," Wu Mu said. "Too much work; I simply can't keep up."

"You work hard enough as it is." Sope knew that transmigrators from the Political Security General Administration and the Foreign Intelligence Bureau never discussed their specific work or movements with others. He secretly admired this—genuine professional discipline. By comparison, quite a few civilian-background transmigrator officers in the army and navy were notorious big-mouths.

"You're the ones who really work hard." Wu Mu knew the logistical pressure on Operation Engine was enormous, and this was the first major deployment for the newly established Joint Logistics Command—failure was not an option. Hong Huangnan, as overall chief, was commanding logistics support from Hong Kong, while Sope would be responsible for materials collection and dispatch in Lingao. The purpose of the logistics training course the General Staff was running at Maniao Fort was self-evident.

Even so, the logistics work was more than the Joint Logistics Command could handle alone; Wu De's Planning Commission would also shoulder part of the burden.

"Oh? The militia's been mobilized too?" Li Yan, who'd been watching the beach through binoculars, said in surprise. He spotted a group of militiamen shouldering second-generation standard spears forming up as they disembarked.

"Yes, some militia have been called up." Sope glanced at the beach. "In the past, when we mobilized village militia, we always drew from the most reliable villages—Salt Field Village and the like. This time, the militia are coming from major clan villages like Huang Family Stockade. Sending them out is a good opportunity to break them down and educate them away from home, and let them witness the Senate's power for themselves."

"Some of them probably won't be coming back to Lingao," Li Yan laughed.

"Of course. Those who perform well—we'll arrange for them to serve as local cadres in Taiwan or Jeju Island. They'll have better prospects there than scraping by in Qiongzhou." Sope smiled. "Just make them so happy they forget about home. As for their dependents, we'll send them over later. Plant them firmly and let them take root."

Wu Mu nodded. This was using the mobilization opportunity of Operation Engine to begin dealing with the clan power structures in Lingao and elsewhere—a stratagem to cut the ground out from under the clan landlords and local strongmen.