Quality-Inspector Tanaka

Hiroshi Tanaka spent twenty-six years walking Combine foundry floors with calipers, rejecting ships at acceptance. One in seven, sometimes one in five, went back, including finished hulls whose weld bead was out by a hair. The yards hated him. The fleets that received what survived him did not.

When the company offered a captaincy, it assigned him the Tolerances, a hull he had personally rejected three years earlier. The message was not subtle. He accepted, stripped the ship to the frame, and rebuilt every weld himself. It is now within his spec, which means it is overbuilt by the Combine's. He fights like a man who has certified every joint he is standing on. He is fifty-eight and soft-spoken. The yards still send him hulls. He still sends them back.