I started with a ship full of max-level veterans, and I'm just a complete noob.

The same telegram was placed right in the middle of the factory's conference table by Director Wang.

The lead type on the paper was terribly crooked, as if the person styling the hair was trying to suppress the trembling in their hands.

It was already daylight, but no one in the factory's conference room mentioned the joint ignition test that had been suspended the previous night.

The modulation waveform of Yuanlei-1 is still on Jiang Ming's notebook, and the equipment is still lying in the 502 research room, not yet completely dismantled. But what is now in front of everyone is that the communication on the front line in the Northwest has been cut off for seventy-two hours.

Wu Hanzhang stood on the left side of the table, his hands supporting him on the edge, and looked down as he read the few lines of text over and over again, his lips pressed into a straight line.

Director Wang did not sit down; he stood in front of the window with his hands behind his back.

Outside the window is the gray corrugated iron roof of Workshop No. 1, and in the distance, white smoke is billowing from the boiler room chimney.

The late autumn sun shone on half of his face, casting the other half into shadow.

"The peak power is three kilowatts, and the frequency band coverage has expanded from the original 5.2 to 5.4 to 4.8 to 5.6 MHz. The border patrol team has been out of contact for more than seventy-two hours." Director Wang's voice was as flat as if he were reading a work report, but every word he spoke carried a weighty weight. "The encirclement force is advancing towards Mine No. 04 in the blizzard, but they have no means of communication with the rear command post. All the radios at the battalion level are silent."

Jiang Ming sat at the conference table near the door, with a sketch of the northern foothills of the Altun Mountains that he had copied from a topographic map the night before spread out in front of him. The launch points marked with red and blue pencils now seemed insufficient.

"What does three times the power mean?" Wu Hanzhang looked up at Director Wang.

"That means it's not just one transmitter." Jiang Ming continued, pointing to the circle marked 04 on the sketch. "A single magnetron achieving one kilowatt in this frequency band is already the limit. Three kilowatts can only be explained by one: they connected multiple transmitters in parallel and used a distributed antenna array to set up a directional radiation array in the rock fissures at the top of the mine. They used the multipath reflection of the mountain to concentrate the energy into the communication coverage area of ​​the main force regiment at the front."

Director Wang turned around, walked back to the table from the window, and took out a second document from his briefcase, placing it next to the telegram.

"This decision was made by the ministry at 3:00 AM this morning." He tapped the bright red security seal on the document cover with his index finger. "We organized a technical assault team, jointly drawn from the Third Electronics Factory and the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to carry the first batch of trial-produced Yuanlei-1 magnetrons, high-power pulse modulation sources, and dual-balanced receiver pre-stage equipment. They will travel by military train along the Longhai Railway and then the Lanxin Railway, arriving at the front-line command post within three days to carry out on-site technical suppression and coordinated clearing operations."

Wu Hanzhang picked up the document, turned to the second page, and glanced at the compilation table.

"Where's the technical team leader?"

"The ministry's intention is for your factory to nominate," Director Wang said, glancing at Jiang Ming.

Jiang Ming had already stood up, and the chair leg scraped against the cement floor with a short sound.

"I'll go."

Wu Hanzhang crumpled the corner of the document in his hand. He looked up at Jiang Ming standing there. The 23-year-old was wearing faded blue overalls with rosin stains on his cuffs from welding the night before. But when he said those two words, his back was straight and there was no hesitation in his eyes.

"You are a double Class A protected individual," Wu Hanzhang said.

"I built the pulse modulator for Yuanlei-1, I designed the dual-balanced mixer, and only Lao Sun and I know the diffusion parameters of the dual-diffused silicon tube. If any part of the process goes wrong at the front line, no one else can make adjustments on-site." After Jiang Ming finished speaking, he picked up the red and blue pencil from the table, wrote his name in the blank space of the sketch, and then handed the pencil to Wu Hanzhang.

Director Wang neither stopped him nor echoed Wu Hanzhang's concerns. He simply took the unlit pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and put it back, making a very subtle nod.

"Old Sun will go with you." Wu Hanzhang took the pen and wrote the three characters "Master Sun" after Jiang Ming's name.

There was a knock on the door. When Fang Xudong pushed the door open, he had obviously heard the conversation in the hallway. He didn't say anything extra and went straight to the table, picked up a red and blue pencil, and signed his name behind Master Sun.

"I'm in charge of measurement and joint debugging." Fang Xudong put down his pen, his tone no different from when he usually reported data in Lab 502.

Wu Hanzhang looked at the three extra names on the sketch, remained silent for a few seconds, closed the file, and stood up.

"I'm going to get Director Zhang's stamp."

Fifteen minutes later, when Wu Hanzhang returned from the factory director's office, the upper left corner of the application in his hand was stamped with a bright red factory seal. The red ink was not completely dry and shimmered on the paper.

When Jiang Ming reached out to take it, he noticed a line of comments written in pen below the official seal. The handwriting was that of Director Zhang, and it read, "Agreed, be careful," followed by the date and his signature.

Wu Hanzhang didn't describe the expression on Director Zhang's face when he stamped the document, but Jiang Ming could read something he hadn't seen with his own eyes from the slightly twitching jawline that had been there ever since he returned.

In the second drawer on the left side of Director Zhang's desk, there was a kraft paper envelope containing a thin personnel file. Inside the file was a handwritten note with only six characters and a punctuation mark.

"Protect this only child."

The ink on that sticky note had turned yellow, and the corners were slightly curled, indicating that it had been written at least six months ago.

The moment the red seal was pressed down, Director Zhang's hand holding the official seal paused on the table for about three seconds before he lifted it up. Then, he used his other hand to push the drawer containing the personnel files back in, and the brass lock made a soft click.

Jiang Ming was unaware of these things. He only knew that his application had been approved and that his name was listed first on the technical task force's organizational chart, followed by Lao Sun and Fang Xudong.

Before leaving the factory's conference room, Director Wang said one last thing: "All equipment must be packed up by tonight and loaded onto the truck before dawn tomorrow."

At 2 p.m., the iron door of Workshop No. 1 was locked from the inside. Lao Sun and Da Liu carefully removed the Yuanlei No. 1 magnetron from the test bench in Research Room 502, wrapped it with three layers of cotton and two layers of oil paper, and put it into the custom-made wooden trough of the military shockproof box, stuffing the four corners with shredded cotton and spring pads.

The pulse modulator was disassembled into three units. The high-voltage capacitor bank was sealed with wax for insulation and then placed in the second box. The thyristor was fixed separately in a wooden box and then covered with a sheet metal shell.

Fang Xudong personally wrapped the dual-balanced mixers DBM-01 and DBM-02 in tin foil and cotton cloth, and placed them, along with the three dual-diffused silicon triodes, at the bottom of the third shockproof box, with a thick notebook on top as a buffer.

At 6 p.m., all six military shockproof boxes were sealed with lead seals, and the lids were affixed with top-secret labels in red with white lettering and shockproof arrows.

In the courtyard in front of Workshop No. 1, the sound of a diesel engine grew louder as a military truck rolled over the gravel road and stopped in front of the iron gate. The rear panel of the truck fell down, making a dull metallic sound.

Four soldiers in cotton military uniforms jumped off the back of the vehicle and lined up at the workshop entrance to wait.

Old Sun pushed open the iron door from the inside, and six tin boxes were lined up in a row under the light, their bottom handles gently bumping against each other in the cold wind.

Jiang Ming checked the seals and serial numbers one last time, stuffed the logbook into his toolbox, and looked up at the gravel road outside the gate that led to the factory's dedicated power line.

Night had fallen, and a deep whistle came from the direction of the railway in the distance.

The soldiers bent down and lifted the first box, causing the steel plate in the back of the truck to tremble slightly.

Before tonight, all these things still lying on the test benches in Lab 502 must be sent westward, along with the people and equipment.