The morning in Whitneyville carried a unique scent.
It was the smell of damp earth, the moisture from the river, and the accumulated coal dust and machine oil from the factory district.
For Frank Cole, this was the scent of his new battlefield.
As the head of manufacturing for Militech, Frank had been in his office for three days.
At this moment, several blueprints, laden with expectations, lay silently on the large oak table in the design room, like Pandora's Box, unleashing captivating yet incredibly thorny challenges.
There was no extraneous sound in the design room, only the rustle of charcoal pencils on engineering paper and the occasional howl of the cold wind outside the window.
Three men surrounded Frank; they were the core technical pillars of this factory.
The foremost was Silas Blackwood, a chief artisan nearing sixty, his face etched with furrows like the rifling on the gun barrels he had forged with his own hands, deep and clear.
