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An Iron Harvest Oneshot Thing

Aaron Fox

SB's Minor Junker Descendant and Hunter of Nazis
Author
So, I was at the Iron Harvest discord and, well, they were like 'when is fanfiction about the setting going to happen' and I said 'I'll have my hand in it' and... well... this very short idea came up. I'll post it here for posterity reasons. This features Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert of Hohenzollern, aka Wilhelm the Second, in his more natural environment: making machines. It isn't well known but Wilhelm the Second was something of an engineering geek. As in he would draft engines when he wasn't doing affairs of state or with his family sort of geek.
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Outside Königsberg, East Prussia – Königsberg Mechanical Works; April 20th, 1920

Adolf frowned as he looked at his latest project. Despite everything so far, the Fenrir project has been slow going, although the current Kaiser thought simply upsizing a Wotan and give it a fully traversable turret was quick and easy. At least Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert of the House of Hohenzollern understood the intricacies of engineering and mechanics, given that the man is also a certified engineer himself… although it is odd to see one of the royal houses practically covered in grease and oil.

"Alright, try it now," Wilhelm ordered as he stepped away from the engine. The biggest problem with the Fenrir is the motive system, and more specifically the power plant that would power it. So far, the engines available were too weak -and thus too unreliable- to work and at this point the team here was simply throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what would stick. Everything else had been worked out for the most part. The turret and it's traverse system have been thoroughly debugged so far, the weapon -a modified 10.5cm field howitzer that is a compromise between anti-vehicle and HE capability- is well tested, the control system -while far more effective than the ones used in current vehicles- is still having the kinks worked out, and the various sights are proving to be very effective.

However, all of it would be useless if the power plant issue isn't solved.

"Alright, clear the floor!" the floor manager ordered, "Have fire suppression teams on standby!" Several groups of workers -clad in firefighting gear- prepared for the worst as the engine team kickstarted the engine. This one a more interesting design, as it is started electrically and not mechanically… but interesting was the description of the man behind the design: Ferdinand Porsche. The man is incredibly talented, but the problem is that more often than not his ideas were far too ahead technologically like his proposals for diesel-electric motors for the walkers. The less said about the first Wotan prototypes with his diesel-electric motors literally going up in flames, the better.

The engine spluttered to life after a quick inspection, filling the bay with a thunderous roar. The engine was one taken from the heavier zeppelins, extensively modified for vehicular use. If all goes well, it would provide the Fenrir with the necessary power to allow the Fenrir to work. The engine team slowly revved up the engine, working their way to maximum safe RPM.

"So far, so good," Adolf commented as Wilhelm stood beside him, "Now let's see how it'll keep up with the demands." Wilhelm only nodded in agreement as he wiped off the grease and oil. Protocol for the test would be to wait until the fuel tank ran out of fuel or something happened to the engine, whatever happened first. Given the fuel tank was the one planned to be fitted to the Fenrir, it would take a while.

The engine itself had an experimental transmission to allow the use of the turret's hydraulic turret traverse. While the system was pretty large, it was the only real thing that would allow the turret to rotate without having a large crew to do so. Ships could get away with momentum wheels and large and inefficient hydraulics due to their immense size and the fact that a good portion of modern ship turrets were made up of lifts and not crew spaces. Using them on a vehicle, however, is trickier as the turret is also part of the crew compartment. Thankfully, the hydraulic system that the team designed made it (comparatively) that much easier. The only problem would be if the hydraulics failed due to battle damage, as using a hand crank made the turret traverse very slow.

A few minutes in, there was a ker-thunk and the engine stalled. As per procedure, the engine was turned off and the engine given space just in case if it literally burst into flames. After about a minute, it was deemed safe enough to inspect the engine.

The problem wasn't that hard to find. The shaft that connected the engine to the small electrical generator had a previously undetected fault in it and snapped, which caused the engine to suddenly stall itself due to the sudden change in tension which caused it to overrev.

"Well, at least it didn't literally burst into flames," Wilhelm chuckled, "We'll probably have to use a higher-end steel for the generator shaft then…"
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It's something I literally threw together just for kicks...
 
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