Victor O'Reilly - Rules of The Hunt

In the center of the floor was an immense vertical construction of tubes and black metal and cylinders that looked like a cross between some insane scientist's vision of the ultimate destructive robot and a rocket complete with strapped-on boosters on a launching pad.

It was roughly the size of a six-story building, and Fitzduane felt dwarfed by it. It emphasized the scale of the facility they were in. The huge machine was in turn comfortably accommodated by its surroundings. The roof must be well over a hundred feet up. He looked, but his gaze was lost in darkness.

"Project Tsunami," shouted Kei into Fitzduane's ear. "This is what makes it all possible."

"What is Project Tsunami," Namaka- san?" said Fitzduane. "I haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about."

"Hah!" said Kei. "You know exactly what I am talking about, gaijin, and it is why we could not let you live, even if we did not have a past obligation to kill you."

The thought occurred briefly to Fitzduane that, in the interests of self-preservation, it might be a good idea not to get to know any more about Tsunami. Then he thought, What the hell! For one reason or another, Kei, quite obviously, had not intention of letting him live. He had not blown up three people just to have the pleasure of Fitzduane's company for a pleasant half hour or so.

"Indulge me, Namaka- san," said Fitzduane. "Let me put it as simply as I can. What the fuck is Project Tsunami?"

Namaka looked at him curiously. Perhaps the gaijin did not know. Perhaps he was not the threat he had appeared. That would be ironic. Well, it was too late to turn back now.

"Project Tsunami," said Kei, speaking into Fitzduane's ear to counteract the noise, "is the name we have given to our North Korean project. In defiance of the U.S. and, indeed, world embargoes, we are providing North Korea with the specialized plant and equipment necessary to manufacture nuclear weapons. It is an immensely profitable project and will restore the fortunes of Namaka Steel and indeed the keiretsu as a whole. And this machine – we call it Godzilla – is an important element. Godzilla allows us to forge the huge pressure chambers required for an essential part of the process. Few companies have the technology, and fewer still have the production plants of this scale. Look! They are just about to forge another chamber. You can see the whole process for yourself."

Fitzduane looked across to where Kei was pointing. A giant crablike machine running on tracks had scuttled up and extended two metal arms and was manipulating an enormous glowing cylinder. A darker material seemed to surround it, and as Fitzduane watched, the cylinder was beaten by what seemed to be a giant flail of chains.

"That is the ingot for one chamber," said Kei. "It weighs forty-two tons and it has just been heated to forging temperature by one of the ovens. The ingot oxidizes on the surface, so the impure surface layer – it is called scale – must be removed or it will hinder forging. Scale is peeled away partly by the chains and then by the initial forging."

For all the talk of high technology, beating a white-hot lump of metal with chains seemed to Fitzduane to be a crude process, but Kei certainly got some fun out of it. His face was glowing with enthusiasm and the ambient heat. Under his samurai helmet with its ornamental horns, he looked like some demonic goblin king.

"The ingot is now going through a series of preliminary deformation processes," said Kei. "The next stage is that it will be given a predetermined diameter by one of the smaller processes."

The crab moved the ingot away from the flail and placed it under a giant ram. The ram descended and deformed the ingot, making it shorter and wider. As this happened, the remaining scale fell from the shape and there remained only glowing, pulsating steel. It was as if this was new life emerging from a chrysalis, and it was a dramatic sight. Even Fitzduane, who felt he should be preoccupied with more important issues – like his imminent death – was impressed.

The crab next lifted the cylinder of pure steel and placed it under a 12,000 ton press. The cylinder, an approximate shape up to now, was placed in a mould and pressed to be dimensionally perfect. Then a further process pierced the cylinder to make it ready for the main extrusion.

"By doing the piercing process first," said Kei, "you cut down on the maximum amount of energy needed in Godzilla. It is like preparing a screw hole by drilling a small hole in advance. The total amount of energy used is the same, but it is spread and the peak is lower."

The crab now inserted the squat, pierced, forty-two ton cylinder at the base of Godzilla while Kei explained the procedure.

"That cylinder of steel now has a temperature of over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit – or over twenty times body temperature. It is placed upon a pedestal, and then the FE punch, or mandril, determining its internal diameter – in this case, one meter – comes down, and the vertical press forces the steel up, compressing it and reducing the wall thickness, so that what emerges at the top of the press as the process reaches its conclusion is a longer, thinner cylinder with the same diameter. To achieve this result – to extrude white-hot steel like toothpaste – it exerts a force of up to 45,000 tons."

The background noise of the gas ovens and the hammering of the pumps providing the hydraulic pressure to Godzilla was now dominated in turn by a long, appallingly loud, high-pitched screeching sound, as white-hot steel was compressed and squeezed.

The sound receded, and like some huge pink erection, a long, thin, hot shape -compared to the original ingot – was withdrawn from the top of Godzilla by a crane in the roof.

Kei looked delighted as he exhaled. "Now, gaijin," he said. "That – THAT – is power. It is beautiful to watch, don't you think?"

Fitzduane took a flier. He was talking to an enthusiast, and enthusiasts were notoriously indiscreet. Also, who was he going to have time to tell? He decided he had better throw in some positive sounds. Kei clearly expected an appreciative audience.

"That is singularly impressive, Namaka- san," he said. "And part of Project Tsunami?"

"Oh, yes," said Kei. "You have just seen one pressure chamber made. There are two hundred required for one phase of the process alone. So far, we have shipped one complete chamber to our customer. That will be tested, and then Godzilla will be put seriously to work. As you have seen, a pressure-chamber section can be forged from ingot to tube in under ten minutes. Allowing for finishing, welding on flanges, polishing, and so on – the really time-consuming elements – we shall still be able to complete the shipment in one year."

Fitzduane felt very depressed at what he was hearing. So this was the world that Boots was entering. What he was seeing was illegal, but nonetheless, here was Japan, the one country that had demilitarized and dedicated itself to peace, involved in the wretched business of nuclear weapons as well. It was a grim note on which to die. An inner rage began to burn.

Kei shouted an order, and Fitzduane was roughly pulled away and propelled between two yakuza across the vast floor and back up the steps to the dojo. As he was pushed through the soundproof double doors, he could hear the screeching of Godzilla once again as another pressure-chamber length emerged.

Inside the dojo, the silence could almost be felt.

Fitzduane was pushed to his knees. Ahead of him, a magnificent if barbaric figure in his medieval samurai armor was Kei Namaka. Behind him and slightly to one side stood Goto, similarly attired. On either side of Fitzduane were his yakuza guards. Two more yakuza stood against the wall. All six were armed with swords. The yakuza also had submachine guns.