Re: Blood and Iron

Chapter 890: Cosmic Travelers

Bruno stood in a warehouse on the outskirts of Berlin. The name written on the sign out front, beyond the chain-link fence stated that the property belonged to the von Zehntner Agricultural.

What started as a decent-sized arms corporation responsible for providing largely munitions to the German Army had expanded into a vertically integrated empire across all major sectors of industry.

In any country based upon post-Enlightenment liberal values and free market principles the state would break up such a behemoth of industry and re-consolidate into a hundred smaller corporations.

But the von Zehntner consortium was the personal holding of a Royal Family and the source of their enormous wealth. Naturally, the German Reich had no interest in seizing personal assets from any citizen in the name of “fairness,” let alone a member of the aristocracy; and the higher echelons at that.

From the oil fields of Kamerun to the factories in Berlin and the world over. Bruno’s family owned the means of production and had guided those efforts towards the future.

It was through this silent consolidation of industry over the course of the last few decades that Bruno gained the ability that purse ventures that would otherwise be gridlocked by the inefficiencies of elected officials in the Reichstag, or lifetime bureaucrats in the Bundesrat.

And today, one of those realities was nearing completion. Its prototype being housed innocuously in what any rational intelligence agency was a warehouse for agricultural supplies.

But what Bruno’s eyes were gazing on, next to his son, Erwin, and the lead of the project, Werner von Braun.

Bruno’s steely gaze did not shift from the prototype for the longest time before looking over at the team responsible for its creation.

“Gentlemen… If this works as planned, then we as a nation might just enter the interplanetary stage by the end of the century….”

Werner’s smirk grew just a tad longer in response to Bruno’s words. As he commented on the device lying horizontally in front of them.

“It’s a simple three-stage rocket. Larger in scale and with a more complex ignition system than the previous ones we have used to launch satellites. But this should get a rover to the moon within the next year or two. If our parallel plans to send the first of our cosmic travelers into space go as planned, we should be able to conceivably see a manned mission to the moon within five years at the latest.”

Erwin was quick to approach his father and hand him a folder that contained spreadsheets and expense reports.

“Father, I know you have a fascination with space… But surely this scale of budget could be better put towards something like communications development, or perhaps even our ongoing computer research that has made significant breakthroughs over the last two years. This is a lot of cash to be burning into something with zero return on investment.”

Bruno looked over at his son for the first time in his life as if he was genuinely disappointed with him. But the expression could only be seen in his eyes, not in his voice.

“Can we afford the expense, or not?”

Erwin scoffed, rolling his eyes in the process.

“We could afford to build a stairway to heaven and it wouldn’t even begin to affect our bottom line. That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea!”

Bruno looked back over at Werner, not deigning his son’s lack of foresight with a second thought.

“You will receive all the funding you need to get this project up and running. The satellites that you and your men put into space played a significant role in winning the war. And while I want you to continue launching satellites and deep space probes, our focus now is getting to the moon.”

Erwin couldn’t bite his tongue any further after hearing his father just approve an even greater expense.

“Father!”

But Bruno cut him off with a sharp gaze and a low voice.

“Erwin… I understand that managing the family’s wealth is your business. But you just confirmed that this expense does not affect our bottom line. So… We will continue to advance into space, not because the gains will be immediate, but because in twenty-five, fifty, a hundred years. We will be the first to mine the asteroid belt. And when that happens, the confines of the earth are no longer relevant.”

Erwin stared at his father in complete and utter disbelief. Was this man seriously thinking about mining the asteroid belt?

Even Werner von Braun, who had since being a teenager dreamed of travelling through space, was taken aback by Bruno’s claims. Not by the impossibility of them, but by the sheer audacity.

This man had been funding rocketry development and subtly guiding its future since before he was even a graduate student. And yet, during that time, Bruno’s ultimate goal had not been what they had already accomplished.

Nor had it been sending a man to the moon. He was already thinking about the idea of extracting the minerals in the asteroid belt.

Both Werner and Erwin looked at each other for a moment in silence. As if they finally understood the sheer magnitude of time that Bruno had prepared for.

There was no guarantee Bruno would even live to see the day he claimed to be funding. And yet, when Werner understood this, it all finally made sense.

Every doubt he had ever had, every suspicion about why Bruno invested so much money into their private space program despite there being no market for it.

To him, it was always a bit absurd that a general, an aristocrat, and an industrialist was funding such endeavors for anything other than potentially personal curiosity and potential military applications.

But now… now he understood. And with that, Werner could not help but feel an intense sense of admiration for the man.

“Herr Reichsmarschall…. I’m not sure there’s another man like you to have ever existed in the history of mankind….”

Bruno scoffed at the remark, walking past the aerospace engineer and getting a better glimpse of the rocket before him.

“Please, you’re wasting your time if you think that flattery will increase your budget any more than I already have.”

Despite Bruno’s words, Werner didn’t seem dejected in the slightest; instead he looked over at Erwin and spoke.

“I have known your father for many years; he has always had his eyes focused well beyond the horizon. But I never expected they were gazing up at the cosmos above at a level even I couldn’t perceive.”

Erwin said nothing; he simply stared at his father’s back as if he had been misunderstanding his father for his entire life.

Erwin finally stepped forward, closing the distance between himself and the rocket.

“It will take decades,” he said quietly. “Research. Infrastructure. Launch failures. Public scrutiny.”

Bruno did not turn around. He placed a hand against the cold metal hull of the first stage.

“When I first began consolidating industry, there was no guarantee we would win the war. When I began restructuring the Army, there was no guarantee our enemies would collapse before we did. When I funded satellite research, there was no guarantee it would change the battlefield.”

He glanced briefly over his shoulder.

“But we positioned ourselves so that when opportunity presented itself, we were already standing where it needed to happen.”

Werner folded his hands behind his back.

“The Americans would have raced us for this,” he said quietly.

“They would have,” Bruno agreed. “But thankfully they no longer exist as a force capable of challenging us.”

Erwin watched the technicians running final diagnostics along the guidance systems. He noticed how young many of them were. Students barely out of university. Engineers who had grown up in a Germany that had never known humiliation.

“They won’t understand this investment,” Erwin said. “The Reichstag… the public.”

“Why do you think I funded this myself?” Bruno answered.

He stepped back from the rocket.

“Space is not romance,” he continued. “It is logistics extended upward. Whoever controls orbital infrastructure controls communication, navigation, surveillance, and eventually transport. The moon is not a symbol. It is high ground.”

Werner’s eyes lit up at that.

“And the asteroid belt?” he asked.

Bruno’s expression did not change.

“Energy. Rare metals. Industrial independence beyond terrestrial limitations. No nation that remains bound solely to the earth can compete with one that expands beyond it.”

Silence settled in the warehouse.

Dust floated in shafts of light cutting through the high windows.

Erwin felt something shift inside him; not disbelief, not skepticism, but scale. His father had always prepared for wars before they began.

Now he was preparing for centuries before they arrived.

“There will be failures,” Werner said carefully.

Bruno finally smiled, not arrogantly, but calmly.

“Then we will learn from them.”

He turned toward the exit.

“Begin construction of the next platform immediately. I want redundancy built into every stage. And start feasibility studies on lunar infrastructure while you’re at it. If we are going to climb, we will not do so halfway.”

As the heavy door shut behind him, the echo lingered in the vast warehouse.

Werner exhaled.

Erwin remained still for a long moment, staring at the rocket.

For the first time in his life, he understood that his father was not building a legacy.

He was building a direction.