The particular restless energy of a group of men who have been given a reason to take a side and are privately doing the math of where they stand. Ethan kept working. The next piece of the calibration sequence was the hardest one yet, a set of interdependent valve adjustments that had to be done in a specific order. Each one affecting the tolerance of the next, so that a mistake at step one propagated through every step after it.
And the whole sequence had to be started over. He'd read it in the blueprint six times. He understood it completely in theory. Now his hands had to understand it the same way.
He started the sequence. His fingers moved through the first adjustment. Perfect. The second.
The third he felt a resistance he hadn't expected. And stopped. Not forced it. Stopped.
Breathed. Let his fingertips read what the resistance was telling him. It wasn't wrong resistance. It was the engine telling him the third adjustment needed a slightly different approach than the blueprint specified.
Because 20 years of settling in the ambient temperature of this room had changed the tolerances by a fraction. Imperceptible to any diagnostic tool. Completely legible to a set of hands that had learned to listen to metal the way other people learn to listen to language. He made the adjustment the way the engine asked for it, not the way the blueprint described.
He moved to the fourth. Perfect. Then the fifth. The sequence began to flow.
The door knocked at the halfway point. Ethan didn't stop. "Who is it?" "Tank."
A pause. "Joker sent me. Says you need to know Rex has been talking to the captains all afternoon. He's got six of the eight on his side already.
The vote is going to go against the bike." Ethan's hands didn't stop moving. "What does that mean exactly? Against the bike?"
"Means they authorize scrapping it," Tank said through the door, and the words came out with the weight of something that had been dreaded for a long time. "Club rule. Two-thirds majority of the captains council can authorize disposal of any club asset. Joker can't override it alone."