Rise of the Horde

Chapter 911: Chapter 910

Mekka’s sixteen workers arrived at the forge district workshop before the first bell of the morning.

They came in two groups: nine from the outer quarter residential expansion’s interior stonework and seven from its exterior facing. They were competent with measurement and consistent at following instructed sequences, which was what the wall-mount installation work required. They were not experienced with the bonding compound or the specific application rate for the installation base sockets. Zul’jinn had not expected them to be.

He briefed all sixteen in eight minutes.

He told them what the wall-mount installation was, what the bonding compound required, what acceptable work looked like, and what the consequence of unacceptable work was. He did not soften the last part. The installations were going onto the northern perimeter. What they were being installed to address was on the other side of the perimeter and approaching at a rate that Dhug’mhar’s engagement report had helped define. Work that failed under operational load failed at the worst possible moment.

None of the sixteen asked questions about that. They were Horde workers. They understood what the northern perimeter was for.

He split them into the third crew and paired them with two of his forge district people who had been on installation work from the first day and understood both the technical requirements and the pace. Then the three crews started.

The northern perimeter arc was a two-mile section of wall face with twenty-three installation positions staked and prepared in advance by Zul’jinn’s survey team: base sockets cut, alignment guides set, wall face cleaned to bonding specification. The work at each position was the compound application, the unit placement, the load alignment check, and the bond initiation sequence that began the six-hour curing interval.

The first crew completed positions one through four by midday. The second crew completed positions five through eight. The third crew completed positions nine through twelve, coming in two positions ahead of the midday checkpoint projection, which Zul’jinn logged without commenting on to the crew directly.

Gorrak walked all twelve positions at the midday checkpoint.

He carried the bond verification kit: a calibrated probe, a load measurement gauge, and a notation book with the specification minimums printed at the top of every page so the reference was always visible without looking away from the work. He checked each bond at the measurement points Zul’jinn had specified and wrote the reading beside the position number in the log.

Three of twelve were at the center of the acceptable range. Seven were at the upper portion of the range. One was at the lower acceptable threshold. One was below it.

He marked the one below threshold in red notation and went to find Zul’jinn.

Zul’jinn went to position eleven and looked at it without speaking for thirty seconds. The bond application had been made at the correct coverage area but the compound layer was thin on the eastern side of the base socket’s curved interior. Not carelessness. A technique error: the applicator had moved at a consistent speed across the full base rather than slowing at the socket’s rounded interior corner, where the compound needed to be applied at reduced speed to achieve adequate saturation depth.

He had the position redone.

The redo added forty minutes to the third crew’s cycle. The incomplete bond layer had to be cleared and the socket re-cleaned before a new application could begin. The redo’s bond went into the curing interval at the forty-minute mark and would complete at forty minutes past the cycle’s end, which pushed position eleven’s final installation to the start of the second cycle rather than the close of the first. He documented this in the cycle log and did not adjust the timeline projection. One position shifted to the second cycle’s start was not a timeline adjustment. It was the first cycle absorbing a correction.

He went back to Gorrak.

"Position eleven’s applicator," he said. "The technique error is pace at the curved interior. Before the second cycle begins, show the entire third crew the correct approach on a demonstration piece. Not as a correction directed at the applicator. As a second briefing for all of them."

Gorrak made a notation. "You do not want the applicator singled out."

"The applicator made a technique error on the first position of the first cycle of the first day. That is the consequence of insufficient initial briefing, not insufficient competence. A demonstration to the full crew corrects the technique and does not create the other problem."

He walked back to the perimeter. The first and second crews were already preparing positions thirteen through sixteen for the second cycle. The six-hour curing intervals on positions one through twelve were running. Position eleven’s redo was in cure at the forty-minute offset.

Eleven of twelve first-cycle positions were solid. One had been caught by the verification protocol, corrected, and documented before the end of the cycle. Gorrak had found the deviation at the first midday checkpoint rather than at the final cycle review.

That was the verification protocol working correctly on the first day it was used.

Zul’jinn stood at position twelve and looked along the arc toward the northern gate’s eastern flanking tower. The installation positions ran from there to the western flanking tower in a continuous arc. Each finished position was a platform for the wall-mount equipment currently staged in the gate district’s storage warehouse. The equipment was fabricated. It was waiting for the positions to receive it.

Twelve days remained. Twenty-two positions remained.

He went back to the workshop to begin the materials check for the second cycle.

The materials check showed one variance: the curing compound substrate inventory was at ninety-one percent of the quantity the full fourteen-day schedule required. Not a shortage yet. A trajectory that became a shortage at the current consumption rate on day eleven, which was three days before the arc’s completion. He had sent the substrate question to Vorra Deepcut four days ago and had not received a response. He sent it again, this time through Arka’garr’s courier to the Arch facility, with a notation at the bottom: I need a response before day seven. After day seven the substrate trajectory becomes a planning decision rather than an information request.

He went to the perimeter to watch the second cycle begin.