Is It a Monster? +14
There was a strange calm before the storm.
Just a brief moment to catch our breath after everything had been set in place.
I popped open a canned coffee and turned my gaze to Assistant Manager Kim, who was sitting beside me.
In the United States, there were defense giants like Raying and Lockheed Mitchell.
There were plenty of other famous companies too, but those were the ones that stood out most.
And then there was Germany’s Rothenmetal, a company that had established an overwhelming presence by wielding the most advanced technology in Europe and standing shoulder to shoulder with them.
The German main battle tanks, including the Leopard series.
The latest infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers, including the next-generation main battle tank KF51 Panther, the Leopard 2, and even the 120mm smoothbore gun adopted by the American main battle tank, the Abrams.
Beyond that, there were countless other products Rothenmetal produced.
Each one boasted staggering technical prowess and had become a traditional heavyweight in its own field.
Assistant Manager Kim had worked at a place like that, then accepted a scouting offer and flown back to his home country.
What, I wondered, did he think of us—of Hanseo Defense?
And if he were to improve our company, improve South Korea’s defense industry, where would he focus his efforts?
The questions that came to me on a whim finally made it to my lips.
We should start with something easy and simple, shouldn’t we?
“Assistant Manager Kim. What do you think of Germany’s Rothenmetal? Do they also tear each other apart on-site like this?”
My question may have seemed a little abrupt, but Assistant Manager Kim gave a bitter smile and shook his head.
“No. Their system is perfect. If there’s a design error, they stop the line and wait around drinking coffee until the design team comes back with a fix. I can’t even imagine a researcher in a place like this... tearing open pipes with a wrench and patching them by hand.”
“So it just runs according to a tightly controlled system.”
“Pretty much. Each has its pros and cons. Their system is solid, but they don’t have this kind of romance.”
“...Romance?”
“Yeah. The thrill of making something work when it shouldn’t.”
“Ah.”
What a thing to say.
Still, there really was something to that.
The Korean defense industry was messy and improvised, not systematized in the least, but there were certainly moments that could be felt as romantic.
“Is that why you came to Korea? You gave up a comfortable system?”
“Well... sometimes I wonder if I was out of my mind, too...”
Kim toyed with the canned coffee in his hand as he continued.
“I got tired of everything flowing exactly as planned. It felt like my blood as an engineer was cooling down. But Korea is noisy and improvised... and weirdly enough, it feels alive.”
He looked at me and gave a grin.
“There’s also the fun of watching someone like Director Baek here make a mess.”
“I only started making messes not long ago.”
“Still, I get to watch, don’t I? Me.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“I was insulting you.”
Looks like this guy was finally getting comfortable around me.
Now he was even joking around like this.
Smirking, Kim and I kept sipping our canned coffees.
After a few more mouthfuls and some idle conversation with him, the heavy iron door of the lab let out a creak as it opened.
The ones who appeared were Team Leader Park and Director Song.
The two of them, a pairing that made no sense at all, walked into the lab side by side.
Director Kang, who had been reviewing documents, jumped up in surprise.
“What brings you two here?”
“Hey. Huh? Wow, Director Baek. Heard you already solved one today? You’re practically a fixer now.”
Director Song laughed heartily and came toward me.
I stood and greeted him.
“I got lucky. More importantly, Team Leader, how’s the prototype coming along?”
“What’s there to say? It’s been machined beautifully. Tolerances are within 0.005 millimeters. As long as we adjust the speed, it still runs fine. Don’t worry.”
Team Leader Park gave me a thumbs-up.
Director Song, standing beside him, laughed and added his own comment.
“I’ve already been hounding Quality to finish inspections as fast as possible and send it over. We should be able to wrap this up quick and move on with the procedure.”
“Thank you.”
For the time being, it sounded like I could stop worrying until Quality finished its work.
There was nothing I could do there anyway.
Just as I nodded to myself with that thought, Director Kang approached from where we stood.
His face was full of curiosity.
“Hey, you two. So why exactly are you in our lab? You here to sightsee or something? We’re busy as hell.”
“No, nothing like that. You went in to report to the head office earlier, didn’t you?”
“Huh? Ah, yeah. I did. We found a solution. Thanks to our Director Baek here. Oh, and I’ve decided to ride Director Baek’s line too? I’m number one. I’m not giving that up. If you’re joining, you can be number two.”
Director Kang burst into boisterous laughter.
Director Song looked at him and let out a baffled snort.
“You’ve really fallen for Director Baek, haven’t you?”
“How could I not? He’s that competent. Ah, Director. I’ll be in your care today as well. And tomorrow, and the day after, and next year, and the year after that. Understood?”
“Hah, haha... I’ll be in your care too, Director.”
All I could do was give an awkward smile as Director Kang actually dipped his head toward me in an exaggerated show of deference.
Director Song shook his head and said, “After you reported to the head office, they called right away. Told us to come in for a minute.”
“Just you? Or Team Leader Park too?”
“We went together. And there the head of headquarters said this—give full support to the automatic loading TF. Said we need to crush the finance people’s arrogance this time.”
“...Oh. At this point, that doesn’t sound like a casual remark. He must be serious.”
“Yeah. Looks that way.”
Director Kang’s face brightened at the story.
Listening to that, I slowly nodded to myself.
Headquarters Director Choi had also come up through engineering.
He must have had a lot bottled up against the finance division, which had spent all this time tightening the noose around everyone’s necks with nothing but performance figures as a weapon.
Was that why?
The scale of this had grown bigger than expected.
This was no longer just about a TF or two, or the survival of a few employees. It had become a battle of pride for the entire business division.
“Anyway, if that’s the head director’s order, give us a status update. What exactly were you doing?”
At Director Song’s words, Assistant Manager Kim stepped forward.
Pointing at the circuit diagram drawn on the whiteboard, he explained the method we’d applied: “clearance control using hydraulic back pressure.”
Team Leader Park listened with his arms folded, then nodded.
“Hmm. Using back pressure to create tension and control clearance... the theory checks out. Let’s turn it on once. I want to see something.”
Assistant Manager Kim activated the machine.
At the same time—
Kuuuuung—
With a sudden roar of machinery, the robotic arm moved.
Director Song was impressed that the vibration had been properly tamed, but Team Leader Park reacted differently.
He listened intently as the noise gradually faded, narrowing his brow and leaning toward the machine until the sound finally became pure silence.
“...”
After listening for a while, Team Leader Park spoke.
“I think the rail’s binding.”
“Huh? The rail is binding?”
I asked back in confusion.
Team Leader Park nodded with a calm expression.
“Yeah. The sound’s off. There’s metal in it. A faint scraping. Didn’t you hear it?”
“No. Not at all.”
All I could hear right now was the hum of the motor in my ear.
Perfectly normal, and in fact remarkably quiet.
But Team Leader Park looked absolutely certain.
The rail, he said.
Following his gaze, I looked down toward the lower part of the machine.
And then I saw it.
An alien little streak of color.
Deep in the gap of the lower guide rail supporting the machine, tiny red sparks were popping, tap, tap, in the darkness.
The light was so faint and the sparks so small that I’d missed them entirely, but...
He’d noticed the noise from that?
Not because he was looking for it, either—just while listening and saying he’d take a look?
Team Leader Park... was he a monster?
It was astonishing, but I couldn’t just stand there admiring him.
We’d confirmed with our own eyes that this was the problem.
Which meant I needed hard evidence that others would accept.
After a moment’s thought, I ran my finger along the end of the rail where the red sparks were flying.
Swish.
Lubricant clung to the tip of my glove.
I rubbed it between my fingers.
This would make good proof.
“Take a look at this.”
When I held up my finger, Kim and Team Leader Park leaned in.
Among the yellow grease were faint, glittering silver particles.
“Metal dust. And the lubricant’s gone cloudy too. Looks like the metal’s grinding against itself inside.”
“Huh. It really is.”
Kim frowned.
As I took off my gloves, I said, “We did put a strong tension load on it with the back pressure. So at the section where the guide rail has even a microscopic flatness error, it probably couldn’t withstand the pressure and the friction coefficient shot way up.”
“Yeah... that definitely creates the conditions for increased sliding resistance, in theory.”
Kim nodded grimly.
Team Leader Park clicked his tongue.
“This isn’t just a load problem. If it keeps going like that, the rail surface will gall. It’ll still run for now, but once it goes past 100 hours, the rail itself will start getting torn apart.”
It was an accurate diagnosis.
I climbed back onto the workbench and slipped underneath the machine again.
The point where the red sparks were flying most violently.
To the eye it looked smooth, but I could see the bottleneck where the flow of energy was snagging and sticking.
Dragging the workbench back out from under the machine, I said, “It’s here. Section 3 of the rail, fifteen centimeters down from the bottom. The flatness is slightly off there, so every time pressure is applied, it starts binding from that point.”
“...?”
Team Leader Park’s eyes widened.
“No... how did you know that? You can’t see that with the naked eye.”
“Huh? Oh... I just figured it from the pattern of the metal dust.”
When I brushed it off, Team Leader Park let out a dry laugh.
“Good grief. So this is what happens when you’re good at design—your eye for detail gets scary. You’re like a ghost, a real ghost.”
He seemed sincerely impressed.
But the real issue was the solution.
“But if it’s a hardware issue like that...”
Kim scratched his head, looking troubled.
“It won’t be easy to fix right away. We can’t just reorder the rail, and we don’t exactly have time to strip it out and send it for reprocessing.”
“Exactly. With the equipment we have now, there’s no way to correct that microscopic height difference...”
The demonstration was set for tomorrow afternoon.
That gave us roughly twenty-four hours, but... disassembling this entire machine and re-machining it within that window was physically impossible.
Just as I was thinking about what to do and how to do it—
“Looks like everyone’s in a bind.”
Team Leader Park spoke.
Director Kang let out a small sigh.
“Well... yeah. There’s no solution right away.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll handle it.”
“This? By hand? Come on, even for Team Leader Park, that’s a stretch. You really think this’ll work?”
“I’ve eaten iron rice for a living my whole life. If the machine can’t do it, a person has to. You think I can’t?”
Team Leader Park pulled a scraper out of the toolbox.
A chisel-like tool used to shave metal surfaces with microscopic precision.
Scraping—an old, primitive method that relied entirely on the sense in an expert craftsman’s fingertips, and yet was also the most precise of all machining techniques.
The enormous Team Leader Park lay back against the workbench and slid himself under the machine.
Scrape, scrape.
From beneath the machine came the sound of those rough hands moving with exquisite delicacy.
Shaving away steel while feeling errors measured in micrometers through his fingertips.
Director Kang, peeking nervously at Team Leader Park’s legs sticking out from under the machine, swallowed hard.
Then thirty minutes passed.
“Hoo...”
Team Leader Park emerged from beneath the machine.
As he got to his feet, he wiped the sweat beading on his forehead.
“How is it?”
While Team Leader Park had been working, Director Song—who’d been drinking coffee with Director Kang on one side of the lab—walked over and asked.
Team Leader Park flashed a grin.
“I think it came out right. Take a look.”
“Okay. Let’s run it.”
“Got it.”
Assistant Manager Kim started the machine.
And at that same moment—
Wiiiiiing—
It changed.
The breathing of the machine, the sound it gave off, had been transformed completely.
Just a little while ago, if you listened closely, there had still been a rough, low growl, faint but unmistakable, like an ox straining to drag a heavy load.
But now that was gone.
Only a sleek, light sound remained, low and smooth, like a skate blade gliding over ice.
Once the friction disappeared, there was no reason for the motor to scream anymore.
Even the red sparks I’d seen were gone, as if scrubbed clean from existence.
“Check the current values.”
“Load is down fifteen percent! Heat generation speed has dropped dramatically too! Friction resistance is practically zero. At this rate, not ten minutes—twenty should be no problem!”
Kim shouted in excitement.
Team Leader Park grinned and looked at me.
“Well? Director Baek. Useful enough?”
“It’s perfect.”
At this point, wasn’t it basically impossible for a problem to come up during the demonstration?
The automatic loading TF had probably run into all kinds of issues while developing this thing up to now, but that all seemed irrelevant at this point.
All that automatic loading mechanism needed to work perfectly was high-quality parts with no precision clearance issues, after all.
“Thank you for your hard work, everyone.”
*
The automatic loading TF demonstration.
If it were up to me, I wanted to watch that demonstration too.
Since it was a piece of equipment that had passed through my hands in one form or another, I wanted to see whether it would actually work.
But if I went there, I’d only be causing trouble for Director Kang, Kim, and Assistant Manager Jo.
No matter what Head Office Director Choi might think, it would be like publicly showing that they lacked the ability to solve the problem, right in front of the finance division that directly held their livelihood in its hands.
So I spent the time in our office with Director Song.
Even while the composite armor prototype, TP-C, was undergoing quality testing, there was still plenty of work I had to personally review and handle.
And while I was buried in work, pounding away on the keyboard alongside Assistant Manager Jeong and Assistant Manager Kim, it happened—
Creak.
The office door opened.
I thought someone was just heading to the restroom and ignored it, keeping my focus on the paperwork and the keyboard.
“Director Baek.”
A familiar voice called out.
Headquarters Director Choi.
He stood in front of me with Director Song beside him, looking down at me.
“H-headquarters Director?”
Before I knew it, I was on my feet.
Headquarters Director Choi smiled faintly and said, “Come with me for a moment. Let’s talk.”