Chapter 4 - The Red Tag
Celeste's face turned white with absolute rage. "You're fired," she breathed out, her voice trembling with venom. "Effective immediately. Get off my property."
"Gladly," Miles said.
He turned on his heel and walked down the hallway toward the heavy steel fire stairs.
Behind him, the boardroom door flew open, and Arthur Pendelton ran out into the corridor, his face twisted in horror. "Miles! Celeste! What's happening?!"
"He's terminated!" Celeste barked, her voice echoing off the high ceilings. "Escort him off the premises, Arthur! Security will clear his locker!"
"Celeste, no!" Pendelton cried out, looking like he was about to suffer a stroke. "You can't fire him! The Apex contract explicitly requires a certified Master Metrologist with ten years of continuous facility tenure! Miles is the only person on the entire eastern seaboard who holds that specific federal endorsement for the Mark-IX forge!"
Celeste froze mid-stride.
She spun around to look at Pendelton, her chest rising and falling rapidly under her tailored wool suit. "What did you say?"
Pendelton ran his hands over his bald head, his eyes wild. "It's in the federal compliance annex! Section 12-B! Because the Mark-IX turbines are deployed in deep-water military zones, the primary quality release must be signed by an inspector who has been on-site for a minimum of a decade! If you fire Miles, the certification is voided automatically! Apex can't buy us without it!"
Celeste stared at Pendelton as if he had spoken in ancient Greek. Then she turned her head slowly to look down the corridor where Miles was pushing open the heavy steel door to the stairs.
"Keaton!" she called out, her cold, artificial composure completely cracking for the first time. "Stop right there!"
Miles paused at the threshold, holding the heavy door open with his elbow. He looked back over his shoulder.
"Is this true?" she demanded, stepping toward him.
"You're the one who reshapes companies, Ms. Winthrop," Miles said softly. "I thought you read the fine print."
Without waiting for her response, Miles stepped through the door and let it slam shut with a loud, metallic boom that echoed through the entire administrative wing.
He walked down the three flights of stairs, his heavy boots making a steady, unhurried rhythm against the concrete steps. He pushed through the ground-floor exit and walked straight out into the main machine shop of Bay 4.
The shop floor was humming with activity. The massive overhead cranes were moving thirty-ton steel castings across the room, their yellow warning lights flashing against the high, dusty rafters. The air vibrated with the deep, throbbing roar of the CNC milling centers turning raw forged iron into precision machinery.
Jonah Pike saw Miles walking across the concrete floor and immediately stepped away from his control console, wiping his greasy hands on a red shop rag.
"Miles!" Jonah called out over the noise of the machinery. "What happened upstairs? Pendelton ran through here ten minutes ago looking like he'd seen a ghost."
Miles walked over to his primary measuring station—a massive, twenty-ton solid granite inspection slab that rested on air cushions in the center of the bay. Resting on top of the granite slab were three newly machined Mark-IX turbine housings, their silver surfaces gleaming under the high-bay halogen lights.
Miles didn't answer right away. He reached into his tool box, pulled out a bright red plastic tag attached to a thick copper wire, and uncapped a heavy black permanent marker.
On the red tag, in clear, dark capital letters, Miles wrote three words:
STOP WORK — HOLD.
Jonah stared at the red tag, his jaw dropping. "Miles... what are you doing? That's a master quality freeze tag. If you hang that on the Mark-IX line, the whole plant shuts down."
"The line is out of compliance, Jonah," Miles said calmly.
"Out of compliance?" Jonah whispered, looking around nervously. "The tolerances were tight this morning, but we were within three ten-thousandths!"
"The management is out of compliance," Miles corrected.
He looped the copper wire through the lifting eye of the primary Mark-IX turbine housing, pulled it tight, and twisted the wire shut with his pliers.
Then, Miles opened his top tool drawer, picked up his leather-bound notebook containing sixteen years of calibration data, and set it inside his heavy canvas tool bag.
He picked up his steel scale, his brass feeler gauge, and his father's wind-up watch.
"Where are you going?" Jonah asked, his voice shaking with sudden fear for his friend.
Miles zipped his canvas bag shut, lifted it by the heavy webbed handles, and looked back at his crew.
May you like
"I'm taking my sixty-four hours of unused vacation time, Jonah," Miles said quietly. "Tell the floor to turn off the spindles."
He turned away from the granite slab and walked toward the heavy glass doors leading out to the employee parking lot. Behind him, the bright red tag hung silently against the silver steel of the multi-million-dollar turbine, glowing like a drop of fresh blood under the industrial lights.
