Chapter 16-413: Chop and Shop (1/2)

Ninety seconds, and the first section of the bow was sheered off and fell away. We all watched it fall off and slam to the ground below with a dull clang, and the ringing beat of the Wall returned to a slow, breathing hymn-like hum, serene and ready for more.

A magnetized crane came down quickly, men stepping up to guide it into contact with the severed hull fragment. Opposing elements engaged with a crackle, and the magnohook adhered solidly to the fallen metal, yanking tons of steel up into the air before slowly moving towards a tracked rail conveyor ready there to accept it and move it down a tunnel to the smelter next door.

Chief Engineer Onrus grinned ear-to-ear, and the hyn waved his hand in a spinning motion at the success.

I watched as the universal tracks at the top of the Shop spun ninety degrees around and centered on the ship’s long axis, right along a line of leyser lights forming a triangular centering above it. The grasped rods were pulled apart slowly, one of the rotator arms clacking quietly as its gears sent it towards the stern of the ship a couple hundred feet away.

The Wall of Thunder extended out between the rods, deepening into a slow, basso hum that trembled on the bones. I wasn’t worried about it being long enough, as the Wall had been Widened enough to reach two thousand feet if needed, enough to stretch the length of the biggest tankers in the world... and this dry dock had been built to accommodate those ships, and could even take in barges or similar vessels.

We were going to build one of these along the Mississippi for just that reason.

The Chop Shop was humming along with the Wall as the rotator-arms were centered precisely along the keel of the ship, right over the stack and command centers, nothing spared here.

With a chop of Onrus’ hand, the Wall descended as the Gear-arms rolled smoothly down. QL 30+ mechanical engineering is no joke.

The cutting wasn’t really any faster than before, but watching that Wall of black sound break into tingling song as it first touched the stacks, and then continued down to cut into the command cabin, and then finally down into the superstructure, was pretty surreal.

The power of the Wall was that it didn’t need to cut into the ship just from the top, as it would also do so from its sides as well. They’d be able to fine-tune the speed soon enough, so it really was ten feet of Wall doing the cutting, and not just the leading edge. Optimal speed would be when only an inch or two of Wall in the middle was showing, and the maximum amount of cutting surface was engaged.

Down it went, and the dancing silver lights became a varied medley of bouncing musical effects, while steel and metal powdered and gave way beneath it. The majority of the wave was rapidly lost to sight, only the rods gripped at bow and stern visible from here, while those above watched the main cut and monitored the speed required from there.

It took about fifteen minutes to work all the way down from the top of the stack to the keel, and the whole ship groaned and slipped a few inches with a creaking crack of settling metal splitting as the Wall came down into the grove in the floor put there specifically for this purpose.

Secondary arms down there accepted the stern rod, and shuttled it smoothly forwards along unseen rails to the matching rotator at the bow. The bow arm extended a second set of pincers to accept it, and then rose smoothly back into the air to await the stern arm coming back forwards to reclaim its rod up top.

Gripped in opposing rotator arms once again, the Wall was spun horizontally over the bisected ship, and slid quickly across, chopping through the engine stack of the Tallahassee in almost no time at all.

Cuts in all three dimensions. I nodded approval.

The sub-deck cutting had already been tested. There was a second set of arms that could be brought up if a ship was under ten thousand tons and could be held up off the floor below. It could then be sliced horizontally open from below, and the parts drop right down onto conveyor carts as each section was cut open, and just sent off directly to the smelters for melting.

There’d been a couple freighters run through the Shop before this, but this was the first decommissioned naval ship being sent off.

Ripping apart a steel ship had never been done so quickly. They’d be able to fully slice apart a ship at somewhere around ten feet a minute, even with armored hulls. As the ship grew lighter, the braces on the sides could lift it off the floor, and the sub-deck cutting could commence, dropping sections directly onto the railcars below to be sent away.

At this point, it was all about finding optimal handling sizes and sections to cut it in. We should be able to process a large ship in a single day, and handle multiple smaller ones.

I held up a trio of gleaming diamonds. Onrus’ grin grew wider as he looked at the other three command stations, and the Gear-arms waiting there to accept their own rods.

Four cutting Walls worked faster than one...

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There were already ships being sailed here to be scrapped. Given how many such were out there, the Chop Shop was going to be busy for years... and that didn’t include the ones we were going to put on the Mississippi and in San Diego.

It was another nice way to cover ship movements, with all the confusion of freighters being lined up to be chopped up and melted down.

We weren’t chopping up all of them, however. Lighter vessels could simply be dragged out and sunk, creating barrier reefs for fish and coral to grow on for otherwise smooth sections of the sea floor.

Right next door to the Chop Shop, the chunks of steel shaved off the ships were being melted down with equally great speed, then either re-mixed, filtered, or poured out into new forms and molds. Heavenbound Hall had purchased this old foundry, torn it down with remarkable speed, and rebuilt it from the ground up for this purpose. I might have dropped in a couple of times to help them with some truly impressive amounts of Stone Shaping to get things in place, as well as lay the Walls down. Just more goldweight getting burned... and the excess heat was being vented off into a new ventilation system to help heat the surrounding neighborhood and streets when it was engaged.