Ghostfield
Location: The Pit, Mahporeem Imperial Starfighter Academy — Aerie
Objective: Make the Blade Fly Again
Outfit: Dark Tank/Undone Coveralls
Equipment: Toolkit, Diagnostic equipment
Tags:
Priesse Namada
There were several different kinds of broken. Jyote Veyr had learned most of them. There was broken because someone shot it, which tended to be obvious. There was broken because some idiot flew it into something, which was usually even more obvious. There was broken because the manufacturer had decided three millimeters of access clearance was perfectly adequate for a component requiring four millimeters to remove, which was less obvious but considerably more offensive. Then there was this.
Jyote stood beside the open fuselage of the ancient Blade-class starfighter with one hand braced against its hull and stared into several thousand years of engineering decisions. "What the hell were you thinking?"
The Blade offered no explanation. That was becoming something of a problem. The fighter occupied one of the larger maintenance bays in the Pit, surrounded by enough equipment to make it appear that Jyote had been systematically looting the rest of Aerie's maintenance complex. Portable illuminators hung above the exposed hull. Diagnostic cables snaked across the deck. Two repulsor carts carried tools, replacement components, and several pieces Jyote had removed from the fighter but had yet to confidently identify.
Blade Two sat farther back in the bay, largely intact. Jyote had resisted cannibalizing it. So far. Blade One had not been so fortunate. Several sections of its ancient armor had been removed, exposing machinery that probably hadn't seen light since whoever had owned the Decadent Lord still considered themselves alive. Jyote had changed clothes twice since beginning the inspection and had long since given up on the third set. Her sleeveless shirt was stained with lubricant and dust, her yellow work trousers were tied loosely around her waist, and there was a dark streak across one cheek from an absentminded attempt to wipe sweat from her face. She didn't particularly care. This was fun. Not easy. Easy was boring.
Jyote leaned farther into the open hull, following a bundle of ancient conduits with the beam of a handheld illuminator. Power distribution. Probably. The problem was that the Blade's designers seemed to have possessed a philosophical objection to separating systems that modern engineers generally preferred not to explode simultaneously. One junction disappeared beneath what Jyote thought was part of the maneuvering system, crossed something she had initially identified as avionics, and terminated at a component whose purpose had changed three times in her notes.
Jyote withdrew her head. "All right. You're either a power regulator, some kind of field controller, or a very elaborate way of killing the pilot." She looked at the component. "I'm leaning toward the third one."
A nearby maintenance droid chirped. Jyote pointed her hydrospanner at it. "You don't know either." Another chirp. "Exactly." She turned back toward the fighter.
Recovering the Blades had been the straightforward part. Find them. Secure them. Get them off the Decadent Lord before that ancient tomb decided to produce another unpleasant surprise. Jyote had spent most of that operation thinking about whether the fighters could be recovered rather than what she was going to do with them once they were. Now she knew.
She wanted one flying. Not a reproduction. Not an ancient shell wrapped around modern flight systems until the only original part left was the silhouette. This fighter. That complicated matters. Anything obviously perishable could be replaced. Power cells weren't sacred. Neither were seals, hoses, insulation, lubricants, or several kilometers of wiring that Jyote absolutely did not trust after however many centuries the fighter had spent sitting aboard the Decadent Lord.
The engines were another matter. So were the controls. Jyote wanted to know how a Blade had actually flown. She climbed onto the maintenance platform beside the cockpit and lowered herself into the pilot's seat. That had generated another page of questions. The controls weren't incomprehensible. Pilots were pilots, regardless of century. Thrust was thrust. Pitch was pitch. Yaw remained stubbornly yaw. But there were differences.
Jyote rested one hand on the ancient control interface and moved it experimentally. The mechanical resistance was heavier than she'd expected. There were secondary controls positioned where she would never have put them, indicators grouped according to priorities she didn't understand, and one control beside the throttle that seemed far too prominent for something she still couldn't identify. She'd traced it twice. Both attempts had ended somewhere inside the maneuvering systems. Probably.
"So what did you do?" Jyote moved the control again. Nothing, obviously. Blade One remained thoroughly dead. But Jyote imagined the fighter moving. Roll? No. Vector adjustment? Maybe. Some obsolete precursor to modern maneuvering thrusters? That was possible. She frowned. Engineering could only tell her so much.
Jyote understood ships. She was an ace before her injury and she still could fly well enough to test something she'd repaired, and understand what pilots needed from their machines. Respectable wasn't enough. Not for this. She climbed back out.
A holographic schematic hovered beside the fighter, reconstructed from several days of scans and liberally covered in Jyote's annotations. Some were proper engineering notes. Others were considerably less professional.
POWER?
FLIGHT CONTROL — MAYBE
WHY?
And beside one particularly troublesome junction: DO NOT ENERGIZE UNTIL I FIGURE OUT WHAT THIS DOES.
Jyote added another line between the unknown cockpit control and the maneuvering assembly. Then erased it. Then drew it differently. Then erased that one too. "Kriff it." She tossed the stylus onto the cart. There came a point in every repair when staring at something stopped being engineering and became stubbornness. Jyote knew the difference. Usually.
She grabbed a rag and wiped her hands as she crossed toward the edge of the maintenance bay. A datapad waited there beside a half-finished drink, displaying the message she'd sent earlier. She'd asked for a pilot. Not just somebody with flight certification. Aerie had plenty of those. She wanted someone who could sit inside an unfamiliar cockpit, look at controls designed by people dead for millennia, and think about the machine as a pilot rather than an engineer. Preferably someone willing to entertain the possibility that Jyote might eventually ask them to fly it.
Jyote glanced toward the entrance to the Pit. Then back toward Blade One. "Don't embarrass me." The ancient fighter remained silent. Jyote narrowed her eyes. "And don't kill anybody, either. I'm serious about that one."
Footsteps sounded somewhere beyond the maintenance bay. Jyote looked toward the entrance again, rag still in one hand. Maybe her pilot had arrived. She hated she needed one. Jyote was determined to fly one of the Blades herself, but someone else would need to test their full potential.
