"Woo..." The train slowly drove into the central station in Trieste with a harsh whistle. The body was covered with white steam. With a loud bang, the carriage paused and stopped.

After looking at the bustling crowd outside the car window, Yannak put his military cap on his head, carried a brown suitcase, and walked slowly along the passage towards the door.

"Hi, Lawn, welcome to Trieste."

On the platform, a middle-aged naval lieutenant colonel was waving to him, Jeffries Kasich, his classmate at the Royal Naval Military School in Bora. In 1900, the two followed the Navy together in the Far East intervention operation together.

"Ah, fortunately, I didn't expect you to pick me up here." Yannak stretched out his arms and hugged Kasich.

"Your face has become much tender. It seems that life in the Vienna Admiralty office is really a supportive person." Kasich said with a smile, signaling the orderly officer beside him to pick up his suitcase and put it in a caulking car. "Come on, Luon, sit here." He opened the side door of the back seat.

"It seems you are doing well. This car costs more than 3,000 kroner." Yannak got into the car and shook his body in the back seat. The Isleia car seemed to have a spring installed under the body, and it also trembled twice.

"This is a car from the Navy Command, but every intermediate officer can be equipped with one, and you will have it soon." Kasich said with a blink of an eye and closed the side door casually.

The car drove slowly, passed through the crowd, and drove out of the Central Station.

It was at the end of September 1913, and Trieste didn't feel any chill.

"The Grand Duke Frederi needs an adjutant who is familiar with equipment production and knowledgeable about machinery manufacturing." Kasich said to Yannak in the car, "so I recommend you."

"I heard that the Grand Duke went to the Far East last spring and happened to witness the transfer of power in that country." Yannak said, "The emperor of that country is gone. I wonder who lives in the largest palace in the world now?"

"I heard that the emperor still lives in it, but the old empress who was in power in the Far East in 1901 was dead. The emperor is now a child." Kasich said. "I followed the Grand Duke to visit the Far East at the beginning of last year. Grand Duke Fredrich had a good relationship with their current president and army ministers. It was basically a peaceful transfer of power. The war only lasted for a few months, and there was no fierce battle. Later, the emperor abdicated, but was not killed like the French."

The car passed through the Istria shipyard and could see three behemoths being built on the ship platform at a glance - the "Grand Duke of Istria" class battleships: the "Grand Duke of Istria", the "Duke of Von Golden" and the "Lady of Istria".

Yannak has heard a joke widely circulated in the navy: Grand Duke Frederick, who was in charge of naval affairs and extremely wealthy, donated to the Imperial Navy this spring to build a new battleship, and his Madame Golden, who owns more than 100 million pounds of property, then donated to the Admiralty to build a battleship that was exactly the same.

In this way, the names of the two of them can be placed side by side and are well-known to the world. After all, when people mention a battleship, they always think of its sister warship of the same class.

Mrs. Golden's "righteous act" was praised by the old emperor, and she personally gave her the title of Duchess.

But this incident made the Grand Duke very dissatisfied. He was so jealous that he ran back to Berlin with his son in anger, which made the Habsburg family uneasy. In the end, the poor Grand Duke Fredrich had to donate money to build a battleship of the same level in the name of Grand Duke Erin, and he personally ran to Germany to apologize to Emperor William II. The matter was finally settled.

This famous joke is now circulating throughout Europe. The three latest battleships built by the Austro-Hungarian Navy are also privately dubbed: Grand Duke Istria, his wife and his **.

Thinking of this, Yannak couldn't help but smile slightly. This grand duke, who was famous throughout Europe, is indeed very interesting. He has always been a frequent visitor in gossip news in many national newspapers, but he is deeply loved by the people of the empire. He promoted the passage of the empire's Labor Act, formulated an eight-hour working system and a minimum daily wage standard, and vigorously built roads, dams and hydropower stations in China. In addition, he advocated the implementation of compulsory education for all, allowing all ethnic groups to open schools that use their own languages ​​and implement autonomy, which made the high-level nobles of the empire extremely dissatisfied with him.

Perhaps, it is also very interesting to do things under such a big man.

The car went up the hillside, and Calamille Castle appeared in front of him. A huge parking lot was opened in front of the castle, with many cars parked inside, including some expensive Mercedes cars with cars. Directly above the castle was an imperial flag with two crowns and a double eagle flag of the Imperial Navy.

In front of the castle is a green shrub wall, and the flower beds are filled with all kinds of flowers, red, yellow, white, purple, and even some precious blue roses. Through the shrub wall, you can vaguely see the gate of the Imperial Navy Command plaque and some people entering and leaving.

The Imperial Navy Department can only be regarded as a bureau under the Army Department, but it has great freedom and can report work directly to Emperor Franz.

The deputy chief of staff of the Grand Duke Istria is on the second floor, with a total of thirty-six people, who are directly led by Major General Benel, the deputy chief of staff of the Navy.

The new position is busy with business, and there are a lot of statistics that need to be made into tables every day. Such tedious work makes him busy and he has to work overtime almost every day.

He noticed that since the beginning of the year, the Admiralty Department had suddenly surged a large number of material orders, including more than 100,000 tons of rare metals such as copper, aluminum, lead, zinc, antimony, nickel, chromium, tungsten, manganese, and the purchase volume was much greater than the actual needs. This made him wonder. He had asked Major General Benel about this question, but the Deputy Chief of Staff told him that this was the order of Grand Duke Frederich and Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, and he asked him to just execute it.

Yankel doubted whether someone was trying to make a mistake when ordering the materials, but he couldn't see anything. The purchase price of these materials was even lower than the price on the market, but it was too large. He even suspected that the empire was planning a lasting total war.

He felt ridiculous for his idea that the situation in the Balkans, although turbulent, was not worthy of the empire. The countries that had just been independent from the Ottoman rule would not be opponents of the Imperial Army, unless it was because of the Russians.

Russia? Yankel thought to himself that although the relationship between the two countries is not close and even hostile to each other, it is still far from fighting.
Chapter completed!