The departure of Inspector Vane left a vacuum of silence in the Oakhaven valley that was quickly filled by the rhythmic, unrelenting throb of the geothermal turbine. With the threat of immediate Imperial interdiction receded, Deacon no longer had to hide the "Deep-Pulse." The dummy gas works were dismantled within forty-eight hours, the hollow iron tanks sold for scrap, but the lesson remained: the Empire was watching, and they were watching the numbers.
To satisfy the massive Imperial contracts for the Mark VII "Vanguard" Tractors—the heavy-duty, steam-powered vehicles meant to reclaim the blighted farmlands of the Western Marches—Deacon knew that the traditional "master-and-apprentice" workshop model was dead. Even with the geothermal power driving every belt in the valley, they were only producing three units a month. The Empress expected three hundred.
"We aren't just building tractors anymore, Miller," Deacon said, standing on the newly constructed observation gallery overlooking the Great Foundry floor. "We're building a process. From this moment on, no single smith builds a whole machine. A man who spends his day filing a cylinder head will become the best cylinder-filer in the world. He won't waste time looking for a wrench or waiting for a forge to heat up. The work will come to him."
Deacon introduced the Continuous Flow Assembly Line, a concept that felt like heresy to the local craftsmen. He organized the floor into a linear progression of stations, connected by a series of heavy-duty rollers and overhead cranes driven by the central turbine.
At the start of the line, raw iron plates were fed into hydraulic shears; at the end, a completed Vanguard Tractor rolled off the ramp, its boiler pre-tested and its brass fittings polished. The "Logistical Insight" in Deacon's mind was in a state of constant, high-speed calculation, identifying bottlenecks before they happened. He realized that the movement of parts was just as important as the making of them.
"It's too fast, David," Julian remarked one afternoon, shouting to be heard over the synchronized clatter of a dozen pneumatic riveters. "The men... they look like the machines. They don't talk. They don't look up. They just move with the belt. There's a tension in the housing district that wasn't there during the 'Great Pipe-Lay.' They feel like they're being used up."
Julian's observation was accurate. The sudden influx of labor—refugees from the coal-starved south and displaced smiths from the ruined Guilds—had swelled Oakhaven's population by thousands in a single season. These men weren't Oakhaven originals; they didn't share the "siege-mentality" loyalty that had carried the town through the early audits. They were "wage-laborers," a class of people Deacon's world recognized well, but this world did not.
The tension broke during the third week of the high-speed production run. A man named Hallow, a former Master Smith from the Loom Guild who had been reduced to a "Station 4" bolt-tightener, dropped his wrench and walked off the line. Within minutes, thirty others followed him, congregating in the muddy square outside the foundry gates.
"We aren't iron!" Hallow shouted, his voice hoarse from the foundry smoke. "The Sergeant wants us to breathe the steam and eat the soot so he can please the Empress! We want the 'Oakhaven Standard' for ourselves, not just for the machines! We want a ten-hour bell, and a guarantee for the injured!"
Deacon stood at the foundry gates, looking at the crowd. He didn't see enemies; he saw a predictable consequence of the Industrial Revolution. He had optimized the iron, but he had forgotten to optimize the human element. The "Logistical Insight" didn't have a formula for "fairness," but it did have one for "sustainability." If the line stopped, the contracts failed. If the contracts failed, the Sun-Guard returned.
"You want a ten-hour bell?" Deacon's voice carried over the crowd, aided by the natural acoustics of the valley walls. "You'll get it. And you'll get the 'Oakhaven Medical Fund.' But understand this: the belt doesn't stop because of a grievance. It stops when the job is done. I will give you a seat at the planning table, but in return, I want zero defects. If a tractor fails in the field because a man was 'tired,' that man isn't just failing me—he's failing the people who are starving in the West."
The birth of the Oakhaven Labor Council was not a peaceful affair, but it was a functional one. Deacon negotiated the first labor contract in the Empire's history not out of kindness, but out of the cold necessity of production. He realized that to build a new world, he couldn't just be the Sergeant of the machines; he had to be the Sergeant of the people who ran them.
As the first fifty tractors were loaded onto the "Iron Caravan" for delivery, Deacon watched from the ramparts. He saw the smoke of the foundry, the rhythmic movement of the line, and the tired but proud faces of the Council members. The Oakhaven model was working, but the "human friction" was generating a heat that no geothermal siphon could ever vent.