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Part 9: SYSTEMS TEST
All told, it took four days to make the Fallen Star airworthy.
This wasn’t helped by the aerial array arriving late on the third day, after some prodding by Ham. Maira’s feet itched and she was pacing about restlessly at the end of the third day; sleep was hard to come by. Every problem solved seemed to throw up a new, smaller problem to fix, and at some point she knew she’d have to simply set them aside to get this thing in the air.
The first airworthiness tests were done on the third morning, and they quickly revealed a problem.
‘The only way I can communicate with you about the engines,’ Maira said, ‘is if I sprint back to the captain’s quarters and wave my arms out the window.’
‘What do you propose?’ Ham asked, wiping his hands on a greasy cloth. ‘It’s a bit late in the day to ask for adjustments to be made to the array.’
‘We don’t need a new array,’ Maira said. ‘We just need some wire and a couple of old radios.’
The morning was spent ripping radios and radio parts out of old trucks, ships, whatever else was piled up in the scrapyard. Ham and Maira set up a table outside his office, and Ham taught Maira to wire together a simple two-way radio. In the end they had four working by the time Maira started wondering about the array – she let Ham go off to talk to the metalworker while she finished a fifth.
The array arrived late enough that she’d gotten stuck on a sixth radio before Ham was back, and the fading light was enough to cool her enthusiasm.
‘We’ll fix it in place tomorrow,’ she sighed. ‘Tonight let’s get the radios wired in and run a quick test.’
Ham strung the wires from the engine room up to the crow’s nest, and then down to the helm, via a haphazard method of trailing them through the door and chucking the the spool down to the light engine. In the fading light he and Maira tested communication between the three they’d connected – helm, engine bay, and a spare in the crow’s nest for when they picked up a lookout – they came through crackly, but understandable. Good enough for simple instructions. Maira wiped the sweat from her brow as she fixed the final radio in place, up in the crow’s nest. Being up there gave her a panoramic view of Bolthead and Deanfleet Manor – the people of Bolthead scurried about like ants whilst behind her the manor was quiet and still. Not for the first time, she felt herself wishing she were down at the docks, boarding the next flight to anywhere.
Maira awoke with the sun as the fourth day dawned. The airworthiness test weighed on her mind; this would make or break the Fallen Star. Unwanted inheritance it may be, but Maira was damned if she was going to stay here while a problem with the bell or the light engine was fixed. That would eat through money, and she could easily grab a berth on another boat if that happened.
She had a quick breakfast of biscuits that Ham had left for her, and half a coffee from yesterday. The dawn sun illuminated the bell of the ship, the metal edges of the legs gleaming like razors. Maira looked at the enormous struts – they were elaborate, flared wide at the base but curved – not a particularly useful shape for parking on the ground. Something about it nagged at her – she chewed her lip, then sighed and left the cabin.
She jogged a circuit on the walkway, then headed down to the engine bay. It was eerie, seeing it so still, but it gave her time to put names to equipment and understand the layout: in the centre, naturally, was the light engine, used for inflating the bell – a light engine would inflate it far quicker than any gas burner, using raw sunlight rather than flammable gas; behind that was the radio array to port, and a fuel-powered generator to starboard – that powered the lights on board; finally, behind that was the enormous and thirsty engine, a vast metal tank which squatted slug-like on the deck, and powered the enormous rotors which propelled the Fallen Star forward. Maira knew all of it, in the detached way that she’d worked on similar engines before; but here she felt like an uninvited visitor. This was sacred ground – her father’s ship, the ship of legend – she had heard tales of it, but to be standing here was sacrosanct, without her father there to approve of it. She’d never set foot on the Fallen Star while she’d been alive, and now he was dead it was as though she were stealing his coat.
By the time Ham arrived at the ship, Maira had completed three more laps of the ship and she was out of breath.
‘You okay?’ Ham asked, eyes wide. Maira looked down at herself – she was drenched in sweat, not to mention her eyes were probably ringed with bags. She shrugged.
‘I just wanted to get moving,’ she said. ‘Are we ready to sort out the aerial?’
The new aerial took all morning to fix in place. First they had to cut the old aerial from the airframe – it had been fixed in place as part of the structure, and that meant another problem.
‘Let me guess,’ Maira said. ‘The new aerial is built to be removable – so we’ll need to cut this whole section out to bolt it in place?’
‘That’s correct!’ Ham said.
‘Alright, so the question is: does the new aerial need to go here? Or are we just doing it that was because it was the easiest option, and now it’s not?’ Ham shrugged.
‘Pretty much. It would be absolutely fine on the other side – though we’d be putting it behind the power generator. If anyone wanted to cripple us, aiming for that spot would be dangerous.’
‘So I’ve got to decide on convenience now, or potential danger in future.’ Maira paced the length of the engine bay, looking around the space.
‘Ham,’ she said, ‘does it need to go in the engine bay?’
‘Well from a technical standpoint, no,’ Ham replied. ‘But it complicates our wiring if it isn’t here. All the links go into the old aerial, so I’ll need to rewire them to go to wherever we put the new aerial.’
‘So… we could put it behind the hold?’
‘Why would you want it there?’ Ham asked.
‘Look at this ship,’ Maira said. ‘We’re in the middle of it here, and the hold is below and behind us. If we put the aerial below instead of above, we can fix it directly to your wiring and it will be more difficult to destroy. Is there any issue you can see with that?’ Ham stroked his chin as he mulled it over.
‘The only issue would be if the hold were filled with lead or something,’ he said. ‘The signal is built strong, to pass between ships over great distances. It may mean we need to adjust our facing to talk to people directly behind us, but that’ll be a rare hurdle.’
‘That’s good enough for me. Let’s get it in place, then we can take our test flight.’
And so they fixed the aerial in place. Maira and Ham roped themselves to the railing and rappelled down to bolt it underneath the remnants of the old aerial. Then Ham cracked open the hull to access the wiring, re-routing it from the engine bay down to its proper place. They ran a quick test to ensure communications worked – Maira at the helm bashing out a quick series of dots and dashes for a test message, and Ham listening in from the radio set in his office.
Once that test was passed, Maira took a breath and steeled herself for the flight test.
‘I’m nervous, Ham,’ she admitted. They were in the engine room, going over final checks before they brought this ship into the sky for the first time in decades.
‘Are you worried it’s not going to work?’ Ham asked. Maira looked down at the floor.
‘I’m worried it is,’ she said. ‘This was dad’s ship. He’s got stories from it going back decades; he was an infamous pirate, and the books are full of his daring escapes and miraculous heists! If this works – if it flies again…’ She tailed off. Ham laid a hand on her shoulder.
‘You’re worried about living up to that legacy,’ he said. ‘I get it. But I’m not expecting you to be another Dorian Deanfleet – I just want to help you have that freedom your dad wanted for you.’ He smiled warmly, and Maira smiled despite herself. She shook her head.
‘Thanks Ham,’ she said. ‘I just hope I can do him proud. He was the only one who accepted me here; I don’t want to feel like I’m trashing all he built when I fly this thing.’
‘First we’ve gotta fly it, captain,’ Ham said, and grinned.
Maira didn’t tell him about the knot she felt in her stomach. As she made her way to the helm she felt the bile rising – so much she could have said, but didn’t.
That she was not a captain. Couldn’t be a captain.
That her stints aboard various trade ships, council-backed light runners, dragon hunter vessels, had rarely lasted more than six months.
That she was more used to sleeping in a cramped crew berth and jumping ship without a word at whatever port, than she was commanding and crewing a ship.
She stood at the wheel and stared out at Deanfleet Manor, now quiet and calm. Money-grubbing family members had left now that their benefit had been reaped, and it was back to her mother, siblings, and the help. The Deanfleet family would keep quietly ticking over, the grief covered over with dust rags and locked up in unused rooms; Salem would become an administrator and slip into mediocre wealth, doling out kickbacks to the businesses who bribe him and ignoring the plight of the people; Annalise was fated to be a subdued housewife to some administrator friend, or else strike out on her own and be disowned; and for her mother, spinsterhood until she quietly passed away, and had a funeral and a will-reading similar to her husband’s. She thought about coming back for that, and realised that in all her daydream fantasies she was away from the home, off on some grand adventure.
‘Anywhere’s better than here,’ she muttered. She picked up the radio and said, ‘ready for ascent, Ham! Give it ten seconds on the light engine and then stop.’
‘Roger, captain!’ Ham’s voice came through, then the radio clicked off. The silence of the helm was broken by the distant hum of the light engine operating, and the hill was lit up by the glow of the light as it spilled over the ship, the green of the grass going from dark forest to a brilliant emerald.
And then the ship rumbled, and there was a sudden feeling of pressure, and the whole thing lifted slowly off the ground.
The Fallen Star was flying again.
For Maira, the only thought going around her head was, It works! It works! It works! But she shook herself out of her triumph and clicked the radio again.
‘Testing, testing,’ she said. ‘Ham, do you read?’
Nothing but static. She waited until the engine cut off, and tried again. This time he responded.
‘Loud and clear, captain! We’re already above Deanfleet’s roof! I told you light engines are fast!’
‘I tried to call you during the ascent,’ Maira said. ‘Did you receive it?’
‘I did not, captain, sorry. Could be an issue.’
‘We’ll discuss it later. For now activate the aft engine – we need to test the movement systems.’ She turned the wheel at the helm, feeling the resistance from the long rudder controls – at some point they would need to pull into a shipwright for a full service, she couldn’t imagine the levels of rust build-up over decades of disuse – and the Fallen Star began to turn towards the sea.
The afternoon was spent testing systems whilst in the air – the power generator, aerial, and aft engine all worked fine. The light engine was impressive, Maira marvelled at the speed at which the ship could ascend.
‘It can descend faster, but we’ll wait to test that system,’ Ham said.
‘Agreed. Take us down slowly, Ham.’
The ship descended, and Maira piloted it into the yard tentatively. It landed hard, the wood and metal frame groaning under the stress but holding. As the sounds faded and Ham reported a successful landing, Maira gripped the wheel and breathed out hard, exhausted with the effort of piloting a ship by herself. Eventually her heart rate steadied, and she sank down into the captain’s chair, exhausted. Ham entered the helm and clapped her on the shoulder.
‘You should be proud of yourself, Maira,’ he said. ‘First time in more than twenty years that the Fallen Star has taken to the air!’
‘Thanks Ham,’ Maira said, waving off his hand. ‘I’m just gonna rest here for a minute before we take stock.’
She closed her eyes, noting the sound of Ham’s retreating footsteps, and slowed her breathing. Before she knew it, she was asleep.