Jessica solar's Arc

Chapter 15 of 15

Jessica came down from the throne room with the chart rolled under her arm and a list in her head. Three days. Two working hands, counting her own. Michael could weld a seam if she stood over him, but he was an artist, not an engineer. Rook could read stars and not much else yet. She needed the port nacelle rehung, the stabilizer housing rebuilt from the frame out, and the coolant lines run before she could even test a burn. She stood in the engine bay and looked at the hole in her ship and knew she would not finish in time. She was still standing there when she heard the wrench. It tapped down the corridor in a slow, uneven rhythm. Metal on deck plate. She turned. An old fae came around the bulkhead, silver hair, oil-dark coveralls, leaning on a cracked wrench welded into a cane. He did not look at her. He looked at the stabilizer housing. "You've got the mounts crossed," he said. "Third from the left. It'll shear on first burn." Jessica set the chart down. "Who are you." "Kael Groven. I fix the lights in the crew quarters. I have been fixing them for two hundred years." He tapped the cane against the deck. "I heard the throne thaw. Figured the ship was awake again." "You've been aboard the whole time." "Someone had to be." Behind him, a girl stepped through the hatch. Sharp jaw. Flight uniform pressed flat. Medals lined up straight on her chest. A cadet, and young, and standing at attention like the room might grade her. "Vael Vireth," she said. "I train in the war room. Nights. I can lift, I can weld, I can run a diagnostic loop." "You've been on my ship." "Yes." "How long." "Since the crash." Jessica looked between them. Two more ghosts her ship had been hiding. She thought of the finished coupling she had found that first night, the tools left out, the lights that had never gone dark in the crew quarters. Not abandoned. Tended. "Show me the mounts," she said to Kael. He was already limping past her. He set the cane against the housing and put both hands on the third mount and named every part he touched. Vael dropped her jacket on a crate and picked up a torque driver without being asked. Michael came in with the star chart copies and stopped in the hatch. "Get Rook a chair he can move in," Jessica told him. "He reads. We build." By the end of the shift the stabilizer housing was framed. Kael had corrected two more of her welds without comment. Vael had run the coolant line clean on the first try. Jessica wiped her hands on her robes and did not care about the grease. She had a crew. She had two days left. And she still did not know if the ship would fly before the crimson faction arrived at the coordinates only she could give them.