Deadline +21
His ears rang to the point of pain.
Conference room, Changwon Factory No. 2 TF.
In the stifling air, Manager Kim of the cost-control team was still echoing through the room, his voice raw with anger.
"Department Head Baek, are you in your right mind? Titanium?"
I rested my chin on my hand and watched his flushed face without much interest.
It was the reaction I'd expected.
He stabbed a finger at the beam projector screen, veins standing out on his neck.
"Can't you see that? It's already 200 percent over the target materials cost! The system won't even approve an order like this!"
On the ERP screen, a glaring red warning line was flashing.
The head of export sales, sitting beside him, jumped in as well.
"Huabei Heavy Industry in China quoted 3 billion won per unit. But a titanium body? Just the materials alone pushes it past 5 billion per unit! Even if we set the margin to zero, we'd still fail on price points and get eliminated!"
That objection was only natural.
A corporation wasn't a charity.
No matter how much authority had been delegated to me, there wasn't a single working-level manager here who would approve a money-losing deal by ignoring the system and the rules.
If an audit came down later, the one left holding the bag would be them.
So now I needed to explain in more detail.
To give them at least some rough idea of what I was trying to do.
Senior Kang, who seemed to have a decent grasp of my plan, was sitting in the corner with an unnervingly serene expression. The ones making a scene now were only those who hadn't been told what I was planning.
I walked calmly over to the whiteboard.
Scratch, scratch.
A large rectangle, and beside it a hexagonal honeycomb structure.
After finishing the sketch, I turned to face them and spoke.
"Everyone's fixated on titanium as a material and misunderstanding the point."
I drew diagonal lines through the empty spaces in the hexagonal structure.
"What I've designed is a honeycomb structure. Eighty percent of the volume is air. The actual titanium mass involved is less than one-fifth of a conventional steel armor plate."
At my explanation, Manager Kim faltered.
It looked as though he was only now realizing this wasn't some insane stunt to use a ridiculously expensive material in bulk.
But he immediately shook his head and pushed back.
"So what if the weight drops? Do you know how much titanium costs per kilo? And what about the machining cost of carving something this complicated? The tail will be heavier than the dog."
The machining cost was something I had a solution for.
I was just about to explain it when...
"Manager Kim."
A cold voice cut across in front of me.
It was Director Cho Yerin, who had been looking out the window.
She slowly turned and looked over the working-level staff.
"You're missing the forest for the trees. Immediate operating profit margin? That's not the point."
"Excuse me? What do you mean by that...?"
"What do you think will happen to our share price if we win this contract? The moment we plant our flag in the Southeast Asian market, our market cap will jump by trillions of won. Is the issue a few pennies in front of your nose?"
Cho Yerin's eyes flashed sharply.
She paused for a moment and swept her gaze across the room.
After specifically passing over the faces of the department-head level people who looked like they didn't want to be responsible later, she added meaningfully,
"The finance approval has already been handled under my authority. Put your concerns about breach of trust and audits aside. I'll take responsibility."
As expected, clean and decisive.
She had perfectly anticipated and handled the responsibility issue I'd been about to raise myself.
Thanks to that, the steam in Manager Kim's protest deflated at once.
"Ah... if Director Cho says so..."
"And one more thing."
Cho Yerin picked up the laser pointer on the table.
The red dot danced across the projected sales forecast chart.
"We'll give the printer away for free, but we'll sell the ink for money."
"Ink?"
"A 30-year exclusive maintenance contract. That's what we'll attach as an option."
She smiled with complete confidence.
"Consumables, depot-level overhaul kits for maintenance, dedicated software, electronic equipment, training, even a dedicated simulator. Once Malaysia adopts it, there'll be money to make everywhere you look. For the next 30 years, we'll keep a straw in it and draw steadily from the bottom."
Impossible to argue with.
At Cho Yerin's confident tone, the employees hesitated, then exchanged glances among themselves.
The anxious expressions in their eyes were shifting into something closer to acceptance.
Justification, profit, and the company's survival strategy.
A perfect line of reasoning.
Once she confirmed the room had settled down, Cho Yerin gave me a sly grin, playful as ever.
She whispered softly, "Problematic elements eliminated. I did well, didn't I?"
I gave a faint laugh and nodded slightly.
"Yeah. You did well."
At this point, I could say the working-level staff were fully under control.
Now all that remained was to turn the strategy I'd built into reality.
*
The next day, machining room, Changwon Factory No. 2 in Gyeongnam.
In the middle of a site vibrating with the shriek of machines and the stench of oil, a thick regional accent exploded out.
"Senior Kang, have you lost your damn mind?"
An old man in grease-stained workwear slapped the drawings onto the floor.
It was Song Gi-jang, the living legend of the Changwon factory.
In the eyes of the master who had spent sixty years cutting metal, a knife-edged hostility gleamed.
"You're telling me to machine this in one day? Do I look like titanium's some kind of dried noodle? The moment an end mill touches it, the heat'll cook the tool to death! This shape is impossible, no matter how you slice it. I swear on my wrists, it can't be done!"
Senior Kang Min-soo, standing nearby, placated him in a fluster.
"Master Song, at least let us try once..."
"Try, my ass! You'll wreck the whole machine, I tell you! What do those soft-handed kids from Seoul know, coming here and spouting nonsense!"
Song Gi-jang's stubbornness was absolute.
But I had no intention of blaming him.
By conventional engineering knowledge and ordinary field experience, machining a titanium honeycomb structure really was brutally difficult.
That was why I had already prepared the CAM data for machining the titanium into a honeycomb structure yesterday.
I strode forward and held out a USB drive.
"Master Song."
"And who the hell are you?"
"You don't need to put your wrist on the line. Just run the machine with this data."
Song Gi-jang looked me up and down.
It was the look of a man wondering what roadside punk had wandered in here.
"What is it?"
"Optimized CAM data. Don't cut it upright; run the tool in sideways with a lateral pass. And raise the RPM to 12,000."
The next instant, Song Gi-jang's eyes widened as if they might pop out.
"What? 12,000? Have you gone insane? At that speed, the friction heat'll make the tool blow apart!"
"It won't blow apart."
I cut him off firmly.
"Trust me and run it once. If the tool breaks, I'll cover everything."
When my gaze didn't waver, Song Gi-jang let out a dry laugh, sounding almost offended, and snatched the USB from my hand.
"Ha! Fine, then. If you smash the machine, remember I'll have your salary garnished."
He was the kind of man who wanted to see how this would end.
Song Gi-jang roughly loaded the data into the five-axis machining center and hit start.
Senior Kang, frightened, covered his ears and stepped back.
Wheeeeeeeeng!
The spindle spun up at high speed with a roaring shriek.
Everyone flinched, expecting the sharp crack of a broken tool.
But then...
Tap, tap, tatat-tap...
"Huh?"
Senior Kang opened his eyes.
Instead of the awful screeching they'd feared, a crisp, smooth sound filled the factory.
Relief began to show on his face.
And all the while, I could see it clearly.
Following the blue optimal path I'd drawn in the simulation, the tool was dancing along the grain of the titanium.
There was no time for heat to build up.
Chips flew off in a controlled spray.
Perfect control.
"Wha...?"
Song Gi-jang, who had been glaring with his arms crossed, slowly let his mouth fall open.
He stared, dazed, back and forth between the monitor readouts and the workpiece.
This was a process that would normally have taken three days.
But the machine kept spinning as if possessed, and exactly four hours later.
Thud.
A perfectly machined titanium block in the shape of a hexagonal honeycomb dropped out from the discharge chute.
The surface was mirror-smooth, and the error margin was nearly zero.
Only silence remained in the machining room.
"This... works?"
With trembling hands, Song Gi-jang picked up the specimen.
A lump of metal still carrying lingering warmth.
He stroked the cross-section as if he couldn't believe it, then slowly turned his head and looked at me.
"Hey, you..."
I met his stare without changing expression.
"Thank you for your hard work. Senior Kang, shall we go right away?"
"Huh? Ah, yes!"
Now it was time to confirm whether this honeycomb titanium had the same performance I'd intended.
*
We moved straight to the underground laboratory.
The researchers standing in front of the large hydraulic press wore expressions split between anticipation and anxiety.
"Department Head, the shape came out beautifully, but..."
Senior Kang pushed up his glasses, still uneasy.
"Will the joints hold? Titanium brazing is really tricky. One bubble in there, and the load will tear it apart. Simulation and reality are different."
"That's right. Saying that thin wall can hold 30 tons doesn't make sense, not by normal standards."
The researchers were still skeptical.
No matter how precisely it had been machined, asking a hollow structure to bear the weight of a tank went against engineering intuition.
I said nothing and walked over to the press control panel.
"Let's look at the facts directly. We'll know in a minute anyway."
As I said that and pressed the button, the press descended with a heavy groan.
The steel pressure plate began crushing down on the specimen.
[LOAD : 5 TON]
Still fine.
[LOAD : 15 TON]
The machine began to creak and grind.
The researchers squeezed their eyes shut.
It was about time for the titanium honeycomb to burst.
[LOAD : 25 TON]
But the specimen didn't budge.
Instead, the hydraulic motor in the press itself began to scream.
[LOAD : 35 TON... MAX]
"W-wha...?"
Senior Kang screamed.
"It's not breaking! It's not breaking!"
"My God... safety factor over 2.0!"
Even under 35 tons of pressure, the titanium honeycomb stood firm.
And in that moment, I could see it clearly.
The force pressing down from above flowed through the hexagonal walls like water, dispersing across the structure and draining downward in blue trajectories.
When the structure was perfect, it could surpass the limits of the material.
That was the truth proven in that instant.
"You see it now?"
When I asked calmly, Song Gi-jang burst out laughing in disbelief.
"Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. I've never seen anything like this in my life."
The eyes of Senior Kang and the researchers changed.
In the place where distrust and doubt had been, confidence in what could be done was now taking root.
*
That night, design lab.
The mood had completely reversed.
The gloomy, funeral-like atmosphere from earlier was gone without a trace, replaced by the noise of a market.
On the monitor was the titanium honeycomb hull model I'd opened up for them, and the researchers were laying out components on top of it, playing a kind of Tetris while arguing with real passion.
"Senior! The lower hull is so light the center of gravity has risen by 30 centimeters. If we put the turret on like this, it could roll over on a swamp slope!"
It was a serious problem, but Assistant Manager Hong's voice was strangely excited.
Senior Kang was just as energized, pointing at the monitor.
"Then lower the power pack as far as possible to the floor! Rework the fuel tank shape too and wedge it between the frame members! There's plenty of room anyway with all those honeycomb openings!"
"Wow, with all this extra space, we can really do all kinds of things."
Assistant Manager Yang's eyes were sparkling too.
"Then should we lay battery packs across the floor in the leftover space and go hybrid? That'd fix the center of gravity and give us quiet movement too."
Another researcher frowned at the suggestion.
"Are you crazy? The underside is the most mine-vulnerable area. If we lay batteries there and they blow, we'll all be roasted. You're not planning to turn an armored vehicle into a crematorium, are you?"
He wasn't wrong.
With ordinary lithium-ion batteries, it would be no different from suicide.
But I nodded and spoke.
"If we use lithium iron phosphate instead of lithium-ion NCM, the problem goes away."
"LFP? That's heavy and not very efficient."
"That's exactly why we use it. Because it's heavy, it's good for center-of-gravity control, and more importantly, LFP doesn't explode even when it's penetrated."
I pointed at the lower frame on the monitor.
"We'll fill the titanium honeycomb with LFP cells, then mold the surrounding area in flame-retardant resin. That way, even if a mine goes off, the batteries will only act as shock absorbers. Nothing catches fire."
Only then did the opposing researcher's mouth fall open.
"Wow... that lets us get both protection and power at the same time. And when we're escaping swamp terrain, motor torque is better than the engine's, so this could really be something."
The atmosphere kept improving.
The current was shifting from "Can we really do this?" to "At this rate, we might actually build something real."
Because of that, everyone had forgotten their fatigue and was still talking with burning eyes when...
Bang!
The design lab door was thrown open roughly, and one employee rushed in, out of breath.
Panic was written all over his face.
"Emergency! Emergency!"
"What's wrong?"
I stood up from my seat and asked.
"We just got an urgent transmission from our liaison in Kuala Lumpur. The Malaysian Ministry of National Defense has confirmed the bid schedule!"
"The schedule? We haven't even fixed our side's timeline yet."
We had only said that a prototype could probably be finished in about a month.
That was all.
So if they were fixing the schedule now, shouldn't that involve some coordination between us, Malaysia, and China?
While I was thinking that, Senior Kang came up and said,
"That's ridiculous! Under normal circumstances, prototype vehicle production takes at least three months, and they set the date without even consulting us?"
The employee's face turned miserable.
"Well... Huabei Heavy Industry in China pushed hard, apparently. Seems they lobbied senior officials in the Malaysian defense ministry."
"Lobbied?"
"Yes. It looks like those bastards... found out Department Head Baek had joined this TF."
The employee carefully looked at me as he went on.
"If not, there's no other explanation. They definitely got ahead of us so we wouldn't even have a chance before Department Head Baek turned the board over."
Huabei Heavy Industry.
They were moving pretty quickly.
"So, when did they demand the schedule?"
At my question, the employee swallowed hard and answered.
"For the local mobility evaluation... they set it for two weeks from now."
"Two weeks? What the hell... does that even make sense?!"
Senior Kang screamed.
But the employee wasn't finished.
"The problem is Malaysia's response. China isn't exactly wrong, and Huabei Heavy Industry already has a prototype vehicle on site waiting... They've informed us that if we can't bring a physical unit in two weeks, they'll treat it as a forfeit."
The next instant, silence fell over the design lab as if someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over it.
It felt like I could hear the sound of hope shattering into pieces.
"We're screwed... that's just them telling us to get lost."
"The Chinese really came prepared. While we were grinding away at drawings, they were loading vehicles onto a ship and staging their little show."
The researchers clutched their heads and sank into despair.
"We haven't even placed the parts orders yet. How are we supposed to build a car in two weeks? Just ordering bolts and nuts takes a week to arrive!"
"Executive Director, shouldn't we complain through our government? This is clearly unfair..."
The design lab had turned into a disaster area.
But I stroked my chin, lost in thought.
They had used the advantage of already having a prepared physical unit to attack our weakest link: time.
The cleanest and cruelest method.
Two weeks...
I slowly lifted my head and looked at the titanium armored vehicle model on the monitor.
It was an impossible deadline.
That is, under normal process.
But we weren't making a normal machine now, were we?
"This is actually good news."
At my quiet remark, every despairing gaze snapped toward me at once.
"Department Head Baek? Do you understand the situation? Two weeks. Two weeks! Even if we place the orders right now, the engine and transmission won't arrive for another month!"
Even as Senior Kang shouted, I gave a faint smile and stood up.
"What's the point of waiting for new parts?"
I pointed at the massive assembly plant visible through the window.
"If we don't have what we need, we tear apart what we do have and use that."
"Excuse me?"
"The design is done, and the skeleton has been machined in titanium. All that's left is to put a heart into it."
I looked around at the dazed researchers and clapped my hands once.
"What are you all standing around for? Pack your things."
"P-pack our things for what...?"
"We're going to strip every rolling thing in the factory, starting with stock vehicles and test vehicles, and pull them apart for parts."
When Senior Kang finally caught my meaning, his jaw dropped.
"You mean... we're going to dismantle perfectly good finished vehicles and harvest the parts? D-Department Head! That's a violation of regulations! If the audit office finds out, we're all dead!"
"If we win the contract, it's a bonus. If we don't, we'll all go to prison together. Start dismantling."
I answered firmly.
Then, from behind, Chief Executive Director Choi, who had been listening with his arms crossed, let out a snort and stepped forward.
"Yeah, that's what the Chinese bastards want to see, isn't it?"
He clenched his fist and his eyes flashed.
"Don't worry about anything outside the actual work. We'll handle that. Right, Director Cho?"
"Of course."
Cho Yerin replied with a grin.
Cho Yerin and Chief Executive Director Choi.
Reassuring, very reassuring.
"All right, then. Shall we move?"