Chapter 5

John was done for the night, no amount of coaxing his dick would get it back up, even with the pharmaceutical help. It wasn’t for lack of trying on Tess’s part. She held his soft dick in her mouth for close to an hour before finally giving up when John said “It ain’t happening tonight.”

She looked at him and said “That’s OK, it still makes me feel good even if you are not hard. It feels like I’m serving you. It makes me feel wanted and appreciated, instead of used. I like being used and taking orders, but feeling wanted and appreciated is much better.”

John nodded his head while wondering to himself how the hell she got past the service shrinks. After some more thought, he figured ‘Fuck it, I need to turn in my man card if I complain about this set up.’

He looked over at Mei who didn’t look well and asked, “How are you feeling?”

Mei replied “I feel sick to my stomach, I don’t know why?”

John turned to Pixy and said “Tomorrow, make it a priority to get her and the rest of you into an OBGYN for a check up. We have the cash if not insurance.”

Pixy said “Consider it done.”

Mei came over and sat in his lap. “Are you still going to love me if I have to stop having sex for a while?”

John looked puzzled for a moment and said “Of course, all of us will. We are as much committed to you as you are to us. I hope you’re not doubting that?”

Everyone nodded to this, then took turns hugging her. Mei broke down crying at that. “I’ve been scared your yellow fever would break if that happened.”

John got a bit pissed at that, but held his tongue. Then he finally said “Take a look around you, there is only one white girl in the crowd. No one here has ‘yellow fever’ but they do have the hots for your tight little sexy ass and bright smile. That’s got nothing to do with your race. If you’re harboring those kind of thoughts, you need to ditch them immediately.”

John settled down as he realized it was the pregnancy talking. He rubbed her belly and said “No child of mine, or their mother will be abandoned. You saw for yourself where I came from, that’s not happening on my watch.”

She smiled and hugged him tightly. “Sorry, just feeling insecure.”

John said, “Thanks for letting us know, that’s the kind of thing that can grow into a monster if you don’t get it out, so don’t be sorry. We are all here for you.”

She nodded into his shoulder and went silent. Everyone was quiet for a few minutes lost in their own thoughts after that.

Then they all heard a light snoring coming from Mei. John looked at the girls and said, “Help me get her to bed.”

John found himself on the outside of his King-sized bed thirty minutes later. Pixy, Mary, Mei, and Tess were puppy piled into each other in the center.

He looked at the clock. It was 2100 hours and he was wide awake, so he got up, made some coffee, then took it into his computer room. After logging in, he downloaded the documents that had been sent to him.

He looked through the engineering documents and drawings first. Nothing stood out except for the AWS D1.1 call out for welding and NDE. It may be a European company for the client, but they had designated a US structural code for building the tower segments. It was a bit unusual but not unheard of.

He then opened non-conformance (NCR) log. There was a litany of them. The lions share were NDE UT rejects. He pulled up one of the reports attached and sat up straight. “What the fuck is this???”

On the report was a distance amplitude curve. No where in that code is a DAC curve used. Looking further, he saw this particular report listed a five-megahertz transducer. It should have been between 2 and 2.25 MHZ.

John went to look for any change orders but there was nothing.

Sitting back, he took a sip of coffee then said aloud “No wonder they flagged these and rejected them. The NDE is *NFG.

He then pulled up the welding program, materials, process qualifications, personnel certifications, all looked good.

Closing that out, he pulled up procurement. He shook his head when he saw the clusterfuck they’d made of it. Especially going cheap on not wanting lamination scans from the mill. The mill was sure to highlight the fact on the material test report. They were obviously covering their own asses there. If any of those plates were laminated from the factory Rodriguez Wind hade no recourse because of the dumbass procurement manager.

Thinking about this, John realized Rodriguez Wind looked like a bunch of dumbasses on paper. He was surprised the clients were even giving them a chance to make it right.

Looking further, he saw why the towers were dropping into the sea.

He found where the ‘procurement manager’ had approved a change from ASTM A572 specification which was the standard specification for High-Strength Low-Alloy Columbium-Vanadium structural plates to ASTM A36 which was the standard specification for mild low carbon steel plate. The only bright spot in that clusterfuck was the chemistry was a match for A572, which meant it was originally intended to be dual certified. This wasn’t unusual as it was inefficient for the mill to make just a run of A36. A572 met and exceeded the requirements for A36, so it wasn’t unusual for them to simply write the paper for A36 as per the customer requirements.

John knew then, there was no chance in hell the client would approve these towers if it was true A36, especially for North Sea duty. They’d be lucky if they could swap them out for desert duty somewhere.

John brought his email back up and hacked out a brief summary to Petra of his findings. He copied Raul to be sure.