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After the first wave of personnel moved in, the base welcomed a fresh batch of newcomers every day, perpetually wrapped in an orientation atmosphere.
The seaside town saw a constant stream of vehicles passing through daily, and the residents buzzed with talk about it.
Patricia and the administrative department she ran were worked half to death, and Ryan didn't have it easy either. Every day it was either a meeting with the engineering department, or a meeting with the research department, or a meeting with both departments at once.
"That concludes my report. Our engineering machinery and personnel are now fully in place. We only need to wait for the mech components to arrive, and we can begin testing and assembly immediately." The project's chief engineer, Logan, finished delivering his work report.
Ryan nodded, very satisfied with it. Engineering management wasn't his strong suit; he simply hadn't lived through much of it. But anyone dispatched here to assist him was never going to be a lightweight, and Logan had untangled every kind of problem smoothly. The originally complex assembly and testing work had become orderly and methodical under his planning. It was obvious at a glance.
Next came the research department's work. Following the usual convention, the researchers studied the technical documentation while carrying out work under Ryan's guidance, so he had a thorough grasp of every department's progress.
In Ryan's projects, "research department" was always a slightly inaccurate label, because in the early phases these researchers didn't actually perform research tasks. They only needed to fully digest the technical documentation Ryan handed down, then run experiments on the physical hardware once it was built.
Reeves and his colleagues had been exactly this way. When they were studying the liquid neural connection technology, the physical connection apparatus had already been manufactured. From then on they'd experimented and studied off the real device, and only now had they started research topics of their own.
As for the people who worried whether this approach might damage the researchers' capacity for innovation, that was pure nonsense. This was, at its essence, a process of learning from advanced technology and concepts. If learning could destroy a person's capacity for innovation, then no country would ever need to study the world's most advanced practices.
Besides, the researchers on-site were all grown adults, not schoolchildren. Ryan had no need to worry on their behalf.
Ryan delivered his own report on these matters, and the others at the conference table listened closely.
As they listened, they marveled. A research spectacle where one person did the work and ten thousand people studied it was a first for all of them.
Off to the side, Patricia and her subordinates took careful notes. The project touched too many fields, too broad and too tangled. By their count, the number of research and engineering organizations involved had exceeded one thousand, and her people had to coordinate the work behind all of them.
That workload went well beyond merely headache-inducing.
When the meeting ended, Ryan had just stepped out of the conference room and into the master control room when he saw, down on the floor, three enormous devices being delivered by truck.
He looked closely. Sitting on the trucks were the giant vector engines destined for Crimson Typhoon's back.
They'd completed their test run only recently, and today they'd been delivered. Evidently there were no remaining issues.
Ryan took the elevator down to the ground floor and watched the technical crew carefully unload the engines and situate them in the assembly zone. They'd undergo one more simple test here, and if nothing came up, they'd be temporarily sealed away to await installation.
The giant engines looked like enormous pipes. Each was over eight meters long, and with their smooth, glossy surfaces, they vaguely brought to mind oversized exhaust chimneys.
Ryan knew their size didn't end there. When they fired, the nozzle section would extend out farther, the section that could pivot. That section ran about three meters on its own.
The giant engines quickly drew the eyes of others in the base.
"What is that thing? It looks huge."
"Why does it kind of look like an aircraft engine?"
"No way. Aren't we building a mech here?"
People gathered around the vector engines, talking among themselves, and neither Ryan nor the nearby technicians made any move to shoo them off.
The Crimson Typhoon project kept its blueprints and specific technologies under the highest secrecy, but some basic information wasn't treated that way.
For one, the project involved far too many people. If the security system were designed to the maximum level, ensuring every individual could only access information relevant to their own work, the approach would be wildly impractical and uneconomical. It would cause disconnection between the research teams, massive waste of human resources, and a steep collapse in research and engineering efficiency. Unless a project was of the save-the-world variety, that classification level generally wasn't used.
For another, even if the people in the base saw these basic components, all they could see was an outer shell. They couldn't see through to the technology inside, and they couldn't see the engine's performance figures. The physical hardware and the technical documentation each had dedicated custodians.
Take this very moment. The people in the base had seen the vector engines and now knew three giant vector engines would be installed on Crimson Typhoon. What impact could that possibly have?
The engines had already been physically built.
Even if a self-proclaimed foreign expert learned this information, could he channel his powers across the Pacific and erase every trace of the three vector engines from existence?
Besides, everyone selected for the project had signed confidentiality agreements and carried security awareness, and they all operated under monitoring. If someone truly ran their mouth, there were people who would handle it.
The crew responsible for the vector engines ran their basic inspections on the three units, confirmed they'd suffered no damage, then carefully sealed them and towed them by vehicle into the component zone for storage.
With the vector engines leading the way, the other components arrived in succession over the following days, shipped to the new base from factories all over the country.
During this period, the engineering department technicians' main daily job was receiving "deliveries." Components that arrived on a given day had to be sorted, labeled, and stored in their corresponding rooms that same day.
More and more of the mech's parts arrived. Chief engineer Logan judged the timing right and soon issued the order to begin assembly.
Some components hadn't finished production yet, but installation could begin first, with the later parts awaited as work proceeded.
The first sections to be assembled were Crimson Typhoon's lower legs and feet.
The assembly zone's workshop closed its doors, a canopy was drawn over the top, and the space became fully enclosed. The assembly platform inside was put to use at once. The overhead gantry frames went to work, and components large and small were hoisted onto the platform and set in place.
Layer upon layer of scaffolding ringed the platform, and engineers and technicians worked across it, building against the blueprints.
Forklifts shuttled back and forth between the component zone and the assembly zone, transferring massive quantities of equipment and parts.
The entire base roared to life.