The test section covered six hundred miles of the Perseus front.
Ten thousand jacks stood in groups on new piles. Each group had cross-braces, pressure gauges, and two escape routes. Crews had practiced leaving the area until nobody needed directions.
Tie Kuang walked the line with Austin before the start.
“These are ten thousand of the planned fifty thousand main jacks,” Tie told the shift leads. “No extra units hidden in the count. The other forty thousand stay in the yards until this section earns them.”
Tian Luo stood behind the safety rail with the sixty arbiters. Austin had offered them a shuttle home. None had taken it.
At the pump station, Wu Ji checked the power feed. Xuan Ming checked the gauges. Pug sat beside the manual release with his ball between his paws.
Austin keyed the all-crew channel. “I will raise pressure in five steps. At each step, we stop and read the movement gauges. If the rock starts sliding, I release the load. The goal is information, not a heroic number.”
The pumps started.
