Grant called a meeting in the main conference room. He stood at the head of the table with his arms crossed while his senior engineers sat in a row looking at their laptops.
"We've exhausted every option," Grant said. "The engine is dead. I'm recommending we inform the Navy that the contract cannot be fulfilled."
Derek Simmons, his deputy, nodded immediately. "The metallurgy alone would take six months to analyze. We don't have the time."
Nobody argued. Nobody offered another idea. They had all agreed weeks ago that the Titan was beyond saving. The meeting was just paperwork.
That same afternoon, Avery Jackson walked through the shipyard gates for the first time in two years. She carried a cardboard box under one arm. Inside it were the last of her father's personal items from his locker in the janitor's closet: a thermos with a dented lid, a pair of reading glasses, and a photograph of Avery at age eight sitting on his lap in the garage, holding a wrench bigger than her forearm.
Earl Jackson had worked at Hargrove for 30 years. The first 15 as the only Black master mechanic the yard had ever employed. The last 15 as a janitor who mopped the same floors he once commanded.
He died two years ago from lung disease, the kind that comes from breathing chemical fumes without proper ventilation for over a decade. The company never issued him a respirator. It said janitors did not qualify for engineering-grade safety equipment. The shipyard sent flowers to the funeral. Nobody from engineering attended.
Avery walked past Bay 12 on her way out. She did not plan to stop. But the bay doors were open, and the Titan sat under overhead lights surrounded by diagnostic cables and scattered tools.
She recognized it instantly, not from photographs, but from memory. From the thousands of hours her father spent describing every cylinder, every valve, every firing sequence in their garage at home.
She stopped.
She looked at the intake manifold from 20 feet away. Something was wrong. She could see it from where she stood. The secondary fuel rail was sitting at the wrong angle, not by much, maybe four degrees, but enough.
Her father would have seen it in three seconds.
She stepped closer. A security guard blocked her path.
"Authorized personnel only, ma'am."
"I used to come here with my father. He worked on this engine."
"The janitor?" The guard almost smiled. "This bay is restricted. Engineering staff only."
Avery turned to leave. Then she heard Grant's voice behind her.
"Well, well. Look who crawled back."
Grant stood in the bay entrance with Derek at his shoulder. Three other engineers lingered behind them, coffee cups in hand.
"I was just picking up my father's things," Avery said. She held up the cardboard box.
Grant glanced at it. "Then keep walking. Your father's contribution to this yard ended with a mop and a bucket."
"The fuel rail on cylinder bank two is misaligned," Avery said.
She had not planned to say it. The words just came.
Grant blinked. Derek looked at her, then at Grant.
"Excuse me?" Grant said.