He stared at the concrete.
“I figured if you were some office rep coming to tell us the system was fine, I wasn’t going to make it easy.”
“And instead?”
“Instead I called Iron Ten an office girl.”
“Yes.”
“That’s going to follow me forever, isn’t it?”
“Only if your brother loves you.”
“He does.”
“Then yes.”
Mason laughed.
This time it did not sound like the bar.
Then he looked at me.
“Why’d you tell him they saved themselves?”
“Because they did.”
“He says you kept them alive.”
“Your brother remembers being on the ground. I remember being in a room with a headset.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
Mason considered that.
Then he said, “He says you never disconnected.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because they were still transmitting.”
He nodded as though that explained more than I intended.
Then his expression changed.
“What happens if the replacement parts don’t get here?”
“We wait.”
“And lose the slot.”
“Maybe.”
He looked toward the test pad.
“You really willing to do that?”
“Yes.”
“For a connector.”
“For whether the system works.”
“You make everything sound simple.”
“Your brother said the same thing.”
“He hates that.”
“I noticed.”
Mason stood in silence for a while.
Then he held out his hand.
I looked at it.
“What?”
“Proper introduction.”
I shook it.
“Mason Reed.”
“I know.”
“Yeah. That ruined it.”
I smiled.
He released my hand.
Then he said, “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re the one signing.”
It was the kindest thing he had said to me.
Which made what happened next worse.
Part V — Final Load
The replacement connectors arrived the following evening.
By sunrise, every accessible module from the affected batch had been opened.
Nine showed early heat discoloration.
Four did not.
Three were inconclusive.
Enough.
More than enough.
The approved connectors were installed in the test units.
Bench checks passed.
Low-load checks passed.
Thermal cycle passed.
The program director sent one message.
Proceed to final acceptance.
No greeting.
No argument.
Just that.
At 1100, we began.
The final run was more demanding than the first.
Higher sustained network traffic. Longer movement intervals. Repeated node loss. Simulated interference.
The kind of test people hated when they wanted equipment to succeed and loved when they wanted to know if it deserved to.
Mason ran the primary console.
Sergeant Reed supervised the section.
I stood behind them with the acceptance folder closed beneath my hand.
For two hours, the system behaved exactly as advertised.
Temperatures stable.
Voice clear.
Data continuous.
At 1307, Mason looked over his shoulder.
“Still bored?”
“Getting there.”
“That good?”
“Boring is excellent.”
He turned back.
Sergeant Reed checked the route status.
“Next load increase in three minutes.”
Mason acknowledged.
At 1310, traffic climbed.
Seventy percent.
Eighty.
Eighty-five.
The temperature remained stable.
Sergeant Reed looked at me.
I gave no reaction.
At 1315, one of the remote nodes dropped.
The network rerouted automatically.
No interruption.
Mason allowed himself a smile.
“Clean handoff.”
I wrote it down.
At 1322, the second node dropped.
Again clean.
At 1329, simulated interference increased.
Audio quality degraded, then stabilized.
Everything was working.
The tension on the pad began to loosen.
People moved less carefully.
Someone made a joke over the internal net.
Mason shook his head.
Sergeant Reed almost smiled.
At 1338, the warning appeared.
Yellow.
Lower-right corner.
Thermal threshold.
Mason’s smile disappeared.
Sergeant Reed leaned forward.
“Which module?”
Mason read the serial number.
Not one of the replaced modules.
I checked the list.
Different subsystem.
Different connector.
“Temperature?”
“Rising.”
“How fast?”
“Two degrees in thirty seconds.”
Sergeant Reed looked at me.
I moved beside Mason.
“Load?”
“Eighty-seven.”
“Fan?”
“Green.”
“Voltage?”
“Normal.”
Another warning appeared.
Then another.
Three modules.
Mason whispered, “No.”
The primary data feed stuttered.
Recovered.
Stuttered again.
Sergeant Reed keyed his radio.
“All stations, prepare to hold.”
Mason stared at the screen.
“Wait.”
His brother looked at him.
“I’ve got something.”
“What?”
Mason pulled up the power distribution page.
The thermal rise was not centered on the connector.
It was upstream.
“Bus load.”
I leaned closer.
He pointed.
“Look at the spikes.”
The power draw surged every time the system rerouted traffic.
Not outside design limits.
But close.
Too close.
Sergeant Reed said, “We didn’t see that last test.”
“We didn’t get this far.”
Mason’s hands moved across the keyboard.
“Routing event adds load. Load adds heat. Original connector was just the first thing cooking.”
I felt the entire review shift beneath us.
The connector defect was real.
But it might not have been the whole defect.
Sergeant Reed said, “Can we isolate?”
Mason shook his head.
“Not without killing redundancy.”
The radio cracked.
“Control, Route One. Voice breaking up.”
Sergeant Reed answered, “Copy.”
Mason looked at me.
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