Jake Morrison's Arc

Chapter 45 of 54

Ten days into the build, the first machine sat finished on the enclave floor. Marisol wiped grease on her shorts and stepped back. Steam hissed from its copper tank. Electric motors spun the props. A gunner's seat waited behind the pilot, a fifty caliber bolted to a swivel. Jake circled it once. "You got one done," he said. "If you can get one done, I can start training pilots on this." She grinned. "I can have the next done in two days. Then more." But Jake saw the real problem. Nobody in the walls had ever flown. Two hundred builders knew wire and steel, not sky. If untrained hands lifted these things into a battle, they'd stall and drop into the water. Two weeks of work, gone in one bad launch. He needed pilots before he needed a fleet. Darrell found him staring at the controls. The tall man crossed his arms, wrench-scarred hands tucked tight. He and Jake had hauled trash together once, before the world fell apart. Now Darrell ran a walled city and did not spook easy. "You look like a man with a new worry," Darrell said. "We can build fifty. Can't fight with fifty crashes." "That's it," Jake said. "We train first. On the ground." He walked the machine to an open square inside the walls. He chained the frame to steel posts so it could rise a few feet, then no more. "Nobody flies free until they can hover chained," he told Darrell. "Throttle, balance, cut power soft. They learn the fall before they leave the dirt." Darrell pulled forty steady people off the walls. Jake ran them through it, one by one. The first man gunned the throttle and the machine slammed sideways against the chains. Jake killed the power. "Slow," he said. "Feel it lift before you push." By afternoon three could hold a hover. By the next dawn, twelve. Marisol tuned each motor as it came off the line while Jake drilled the crews behind her. The machines multiplied. Two a day, then three. Three hundred and fifty builders worked in shifts, welding frames and winding wire under the mall lights. Jake unchained his best pilot on the ninth day of training and let her lift free. She rose ten feet, held steady, and set down clean. The square cheered. He had his first real pilot. By the end of the second week, forty machines stood ready and forty pilots could fly them. Not the full fifty, but a fleet with hands that knew the sky. Jake ran his palm along a warm copper tank and felt the fear turn to something harder. He had wasted no time and lost no window. Then Darrell walked over, radio in hand, face gray. "Scout just called in," he said. "The tyrant's boats left the docks this morning. They're already on the water."