Deadline (2) +20
Kwaaang-!
A deafening metallic scream rattled through the factory.
The assembly line at Changwon Factory 2 looked less like a workshop and more like an abattoir.
Hatches were being ripped off armored vehicles that had been standing intact a moment ago, and a heavy crane was tearing into an engine compartment, lifting out its heart.
I stood in one corner of the chaos, tucked behind the materials warehouse where the noise was at least a little thinner, phone pressed to my ear.
[...Pardon?]
A flustered voice came through the receiver.
It was the head of HR at headquarters.
[Director, did you just say... I must have misheard.]
"You heard correctly."
I kept my tone calm, but every word was nailed down cleanly.
"I requested manpower support. The personnel here in Changwon alone aren't enough."
[But you went to Changwon this time, didn't you? Doesn't Changwon have a production team too?]
It was a perfectly reasonable question.
Unfortunately, this was not a reasonable situation.
"The Malaysia project just lit the floor under our feet. Huabei Industry's interference pulled the schedule forward. We're assembling the export prototype and running the swamp mobility test too."
I paused to draw a breath.
"We have to finish within twelve days."
[......]
Silence stretched from the other end of the line.
He was probably having a complete mental shutdown.
If I were in his position, I would have too.
After a moment, a trembling voice came back.
[T-twelve... days? Not twelve months?]
"Yes. Twelve days."
[Hah... Director Baek, the KAAV-II domestic model is only just beginning to reach the prototype stage. The export model was still only in the design phase, wasn't it? And you're saying you'll assemble it and finish testing in twelve days?]
"Yes. We have to."
[No, I mean... is that physically possible?]
The HR director's voice cracked.
Of course it did.
Anyone would think it was insane.
But I answered with complete composure.
"It has to be possible. That's why I'm asking for support. I'll read you the list."
I looked at the memo I'd prepared in advance and started reciting.
"Powerpack TF Department Head Maeng Giyong and Principal Researcher Jo Seokhun. Design Team 2 Manager O Jinhyuk. And Production Technology Team Leader Park Kwangchul."
[Ha... all right. I'll send out the cooperation notices to each department head...]
"One more thing."
[Yes?]
"If possible, send the entire Production Technology Team."
[What?! The entire production tech team?! Then who's going to handle the HQ line troubleshooting? Headquarters will seize up!]
A scream more than a protest.
But I didn't back down.
"Chairman Cho's approval has already been secured by Executive Vice President Choi. If it comes to it, leave only the minimum behind, but send as many as you can. Book them KTX tickets right now. They need to arrive by tonight."
[No, Director Baek!]
"Please. This is the difference between forcing a way into Southeast Asia or not."
Click.
I hung up unilaterally.
Headquarters would be in an uproar, but Executive Vice President Choi and Cho Yerin would sort it out.
What mattered to me now was not the administrative mess at headquarters, but the surgery in front of my eyes.
I shoved the phone back into my pocket and headed for the line again.
"Watch it! Don't touch the hydraulic lines! We're going to salvage those as they are!"
Senior Engineer Kang was bellowing at the top of his lungs, veins standing out in his neck.
Where his gaze pointed, a massive hulk was being methodically dismantled.
The KAAV-II domestic prototype.
The most precious thing our company owned, built with billions of won for delivery to the Agency for Defense Development.
But to me, right now, it was nothing more than an excellent organ donor.
"Senior Kang, has the domestic powerpack been removed?"
"Just pulled it out! But Director, are we really allowed to do this? This thing is booked as ADD property. If we tear it apart and then get audited later..."
Kang's face had turned the color of dirt.
And rightly so.
To researchers, a prototype was practically a child.
But I shook my head without hesitation.
"We'll put it back together later. Right now, I need a heart."
My gaze shifted to the line beside it.
There, three old K200 armored vehicles were being stripped down at the same time.
"Use the K200 bogie wheels and suspension arms as they are. Pick the best ones."
"Yes! Understood!"
The workers rushed in with impact wrenches.
To anyone else, it would have looked like madness. In technical terms, it was a form of cannibalization.
Stripping usable equipment for parts, a measure of last resort.
But to my eyes, it was perfectly clear.
Which parts were necessary, and which were just useless scrap.
The titanium honeycomb hull was already a perfect skeleton.
All that remained was to strip out the parts needed until it was complete, then finish preparing them for assembly.
"We need to move a little faster..."
No matter how many parts we pulled, fusing components from different models into one machine was never simple.
The standards were different, the wiring was different, and the control logic was different.
With only the manpower at Changwon Factory, there wasn't enough time to solve this impossible puzzle.
Time kept slipping away without mercy.
Before I knew it, dusk had begun to settle beyond the factory windows.
The dismantling work was nearly complete, and the line was strewn with the bare titanium hull, reduced to its skeleton, and the extracted components scattered in disarray.
"Ugh, my back..."
"Hey, when are we ever going to finish sorting all this wiring..."
Just as the workers were beginning to collapse onto the floor from exhaustion—
"Huh? Director! Over there!"
The employee who had stepped outside for a smoke shouted in a panic.
"Taxis! A whole convoy of taxis is coming in!"
I let the corner of my mouth curl upward and got to my feet.
At last.
A dozen or so Kakao taxis rolled through the factory gate in a line and came to a stop, kicking up dust.
The doors opened and the passengers climbed out.
Men in immaculate suits, utterly out of place amid the greasy factory floor.
Their neckties were crooked from rushing over, and each of them carried nothing more than a single briefcase.
At the head of the group was a familiar face.
A man climbing out while scowling fiercely, already calculating the fare.
"You brat! Baek Gunwoo!"
It was Powerpack TF leader, Department Head Maeng Giyong.
The moment he spotted me, he strode over and jabbed a finger at my face.
"Are you out of your mind? Even on the KTX over here, I thought my ears were lying to me. Twelve days? You want to finish in twelve d-a-y-s? What are you, some kind of god? Do you just say, 'Let there be light,' and light appears, you punk?"
"You made it. Faster than I expected."
I smiled as though used to his shouting and offered my hand.
Rather than swatting it away, he grabbed it rough-handed and let out a long sigh.
"Agh, seriously. What sin did I commit in a past life to get tangled up with someone like you..."
Familiar faces spilled out behind him one after another.
Principal Researcher Jo Seokhun, the number one authority on powerpack control; Design Team 2 Manager O Jinhyuk, who was practically my own hands and feet.
And then—
"Hah. What a mess."
The middle-aged man who stepped out last adjusted his glasses and swept his gaze across the factory interior.
Production Technology Team Leader Park Kwangchul.
A master of process optimization, and an engineer who could make a stubborn assembly work by force of skill alone.
He walked slowly to my side.
His eyes quickly scanned the dismantled KAAV-II prototype, the K200 parts, and the titanium hull laid out at the center.
To an ordinary person, it would have looked like a scrap yard.
But in a veteran's eyes, it must have looked very different.
"You stripped the domestic prototype for the engine... kept the K200 hydraulic lines to lay in the suspension... "
Park gave a short laugh and muttered under his breath.
"And because the hull's titanium modular design, you're bolting it together without welding? Hah. That's absurd. This isn't even LEGO."
In ten seconds flat, he had seen through the core of the Frankenstein process I'd designed.
He yanked his tie loose and clapped his hands toward Maeng and the workers.
"All right, are we done sightseeing? If you understand the situation, move!"
Park's order snapped through the air.
"Manager O! Get the design data up! We need to rewrite the BMS logic from scratch, so get your team over with Maeng's!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Production tech team! Split into three groups. Group One, engine mount machining. Group Two, wiring cleanup. Group Three, come with me! We're matching the powerpack interface first!"
It happened in an instant.
The once-chaotic factory began to develop an invisible order.
Even Maeng, who had been grumbling all the way over, had already thrown off his jacket and was crouched in front of the powerpack with the drawings spread open, while Principal Researcher Jo was heating up a soldering iron.
These were headquarters' elite.
With them, the impossible could become possible.
I watched the lively scene unfold and smiled with satisfaction.
How much time had passed like that?
"Wait. Stop. Everyone, hold it."
A voice poured cold water over the heated worksite.
It was Park Kwangchul.
He was using the flat top of the stripped KAAV-II prototype as a desk, the drawings spread out before him, brow furrowed deeply.
Maeng Giyong, Jo Seokhun, and Senior Engineer Kang gathered around him.
"What's the matter, Team Leader?"
I walked over, and Park tapped a spot on the drawing with his pen.
"Director Baek, I get the idea, but the tolerances don't line up."
With that permanently sullen expression of his, Park looked at me.
Back when I was still only a manager, he used to speak to me much more casually.
But between my promotion to department head and the fact that I'd become the head of a division directly under Chairman Cho, his manner toward me had become a little more awkward.
"The K200 bogie axle and the hole in the titanium hull are off by 0.5 millimeters. Assemble it like this, and the wheel will come off in motion."
"Mm. That's a definite problem."
It was a sharp observation.
Steel and titanium. The microscopic gap that appears when you join dissimilar metals.
It was the sort of detail most designers would have missed, but his veteran eyes couldn't be fooled.
"That's why I prepared a bushing. There's a box in Materials Storage, Zone B-4. It was specially ordered after calculating the difference in thermal expansion between titanium and steel."
A bushing was the equivalent of cartilage between bones.
With that alone, the 0.5 millimeter gap would be completely controlled.
Park's eyes widened at my answer.
"Hah. You planned that far ahead? You really are thorough."
He gave a short laugh and nodded, apparently realizing this hadn't been a spur-of-the-moment idea but something prepared through careful calculation.
But as the saying went, every mountain pass had another mountain beyond it.
This time, Maeng Giyong crossed his arms and challenged me.
"Hey, Baek. Fine, the hull's one thing. But the powerpack's the problem."
"What's the problem?"
"You're stripping a diesel engine and grafting it to an LFP battery? Easy to say. But the K200 engine uses a mechanical plunger type. It's just a bare-bones machine with no ECU. And you want to connect that to a cutting-edge BMS? They can't even talk to each other, so how are you going to control engine RPM? Are you going to have the driver sit in the back and pull the accelerator by hand?"
Principal Researcher Jo Seokhun, standing beside him, joined in.
"He's right. The motor draws hundreds of amps in an instant, and the engine's response speed can't keep up. The moment you hit the accelerator, voltage sag will shut the system down. It would take at least six months to design the logic. Twelve days? That's out of the question."
Their cold, expert analysis.
They weren't wrong.
If you forced together technology from different eras, trouble was inevitable.
Manager O Jinhyuk, who had been setting up a workstation on a makeshift table and running simulations, had gone pale too.
But I drew a line in red pen across the blueprint and spoke.
"Then let's not control it."
"...Pardon?"
Maeng asked back blankly.
"Disconnect the engine from the drive shaft. Take off the transmission too."
"What? Hey, if you take off the transmission, what are the wheels going to turn with?"
"The motors alone. The engine will only run the generator."
I continued explaining in a voice full of conviction.
"We don't need complicated variable-RPM control. Fix the engine RPM at 2,200, the peak torque range. When the battery charge drops, start the engine to generate power. When it's full, shut it off. We only need those two signals. No complex communication required."
For a moment, Maeng's mouth fell open.
"Hah... damn. A series hybrid? That's the same principle as a submarine, isn't it?"
Jo Seokhun's eyes flashed too.
"Wow... then we don't need voltage-control logic at all! Just an ON/OFF switch and we're done? Then... if we stay up all night, I think we can lay the wiring!"
The answer was there.
The impossible twelve-day schedule was slipping, through a technical trick, into the realm of what could actually be done.
Park Kwangchul slapped his knee.
"Good. Numbers are in. Senior Kang! Take every hydraulic line pulled from the K200 and clean them all up. Maeng, tear down the engine and separate the transmission!"
Just then—
"D-Director! There's a problem!"
O Jinhyuk, who had been hammering at the keyboard in front of his laptop, shouted in a rush.
"It's the wiring. If we use the engine as a generator, the vibration gets severe, and it overlaps with the high-frequency EMI coming from the LFP batteries and motor inverters laid under the floor. If we route the wiring along the floor, communications will be cut everywhere! The simulation fails across the board!"
The floor plan on the screen was covered in red warning lights.
Laying the LFP batteries low had been good for the center of gravity, but in exchange the floor had become an electromagnetic hell.
Jo Seokhun looked troubled.
"Damn... there's only space under the floor. If we run it through the ceiling instead, the wiring length doubles, and the resistance makes it impossible."
Caught between a rock and a hard place.
There was nowhere to run the cables.
I moved behind O Jinhyuk and stared at the monitor.
Between the waves of red noise on the screen, a blue path only I could see rose into sharp relief.
The hexagonal titanium honeycomb structure.
Those hollow spaces were linked together like a natural circuit designed for electricity to flow through them.
I pointed at the monitor.
"Manager O, reroute it through wall B-4 instead of the floor."
"Pardon? That's a narrow titanium bulkhead..."
"It'll fit. Then bend it forty-five degrees at the joint and bring it out through the opposite C-2 section."
O Jinhyuk, half skeptical, entered the values I called out.
Tap, tap.
The moment he hit Enter—
The blazing red screen turned green in an instant.
"Uh...?"
O Jinhyuk's jaw dropped.
Jo Seokhun, watching from the side, looked stunned.
"Hah, using the titanium wall itself as a shield... and the noise dropped to zero. Director, did you really calculate that in your head?"
Jo's eyes went round.
He was staring at me in disbelief.
I only shrugged.
"I think... this should work."
"T-this'll do! The wiring problem's solved!"
"Good. Then let's start right away."
At O Jinhyuk's words, I picked up the thread.
Everyone around us began moving at once.
Everything was going smoothly.
The engine was seated, and the wiring path had been decided.
At this rate, it looked like we could finish not in twelve days, but in a week.
Then—
I sensed something odd from a corner of the assembly line.
Park Kwangchul should have been in motion, directing the production technology team, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Where the hell had he gone?
Scanning the area, I found him standing in front of a general-purpose milling machine shoved into the corner of the factory.
He'd already thrown off his jacket and loosened his tie.
"Team Leader? What are you doing over there?"
As I approached, Park clamped a high-strength aluminum block that had been rolling around on the floor into a vise and answered with blasé indifference.
"The engine mount bracket doesn't fit. The K200 one is welded, and this one is bolted, so the height floats by a full three centimeters."
"Ah."
A fatal problem.
But there was no sign of panic on Park's face.
Only irritation, as though this were just one more bothersome task.
"If we call a mold shop, it'll take a week. We don't have time, so what are we supposed to do? If it doesn't exist, we make it."
"You're going to cut it yourself?"
"Why? You think I've lost my touch already?"
He gave a short laugh and set up the end mill.
"I don't even have time to write CNC code. It's faster to just feed it by hand. Move aside, sparks are going to fly."
It was exactly the sort of thing you'd expect from Park Kwangchul, a man who could handle ultra-precision work with his bare hands.
But just as he reached for the handle—
"Move."
A thick regional drawl cut in.
Song Kijang had arrived without me noticing.
He tapped aside the milling machine handle Park had been about to grab and blocked him.
"City boy, you've got good eyes but slow hands. I'll handle the machine. You just call the coordinates."
Park's eyebrow twitched.
"Old man, this is precision machining. The engine mount is a 0.01-millimeter tolerance fight. Your eyesight can't be that good anymore, can it?"
"Hah! That's rich. I can hit 0.005 millimeter blindfolded. Quit yapping and call the numbers!"
Song Kijang gripped the handle with practiced ease and spun the spindle.
Park looked at him for a moment, then let out a dry laugh and unfolded the drawing again.
"Fine. If you make a bad part, I'll bill the material cost immediately."
"Quit your blather and call the numbers!"
The two masters stood before the milling machine.
There was no need for me to squeeze into their space.
It was already their own world.
"X-axis 150, Y minus 20. Feed in."
Wooooong-!
With Park Kwangchul calling out the values, Song Kijang's hands moved at astonishing speed.
Kikigigigik-!
With a sharp cutting cry, aluminum chips burst up like sparks.
I watched for a moment, let out a rueful laugh, and turned back to my position.
Park, Song Kijang, Maeng in the back, Jo Seokhun too—
Everyone was moving like their lives depended on it, carrying out their roles.
It was an incredibly reassuring sight.
At this rate... maybe we really could finish in less than twelve days.
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