Zarah Voss's Arc

Chapter 13 of 16

Back at her workshop, Zarah unwound the last coil and fed it through her press. The rod came out straight and bright. She had a dozen lengths now, enough for a full frame. She fit them into a box shape and welded the joints. Steel plates waited in a stack beside her, cut from her own mined ore. She lifted the first plate and set it against the frame. The fit was clean. She bolted the plate to the rod, then the next, working up from the base. The pod took shape under her hands, boxy and rugged, panel by panel. She checked each seam for a snug edge before she moved on. Sweat ran down her back. She did not stop to wipe it. This was the shell that would carry her drive. She wanted it right. She was halfway up the hull when an alarm cut through the quiet. Her sensor rig on the bench flashed red and shrieked. She dropped her wrench and looked up. A streak of fire tore across the sky. It burned white at the head and left a black trail behind. She tracked it as it fell. It struck the ocean far out, and a wall of steam rose where it hit. Zarah stood still and watched the steam thin against the sky. She knew that arc. That was not a meteor. Meteors did not correct their course, and this one had bent twice on the way down. Something built had come down hard. She thought of Thren, of the race they had both agreed to fly. Only two pilots had a ship on this planet. If that wreck was Thren's, the race was already lost, and a rival she had counted for years was in the water. She crossed to her sensor rig and pulled the reading. The heat signature was too small for a ship. It was a single module, boxy, the size of a hull segment. Not a whole vessel. A piece of one. She let out a slow breath. A dropped part, then, or cargo shed on descent. But no ship on Sporis shed parts. Hers did not. Thren's did not. Zarah looked at her half-built pod, then back at the steam on the horizon. She could ignore it and finish her hull tonight. But a fallen module meant metal, and maybe a working part she could not make herself. It might hold a shell better than the one she was bolting together. She had learned to chase what the water offered. She grabbed her gill root and her satchel. She strapped a plate to her arm out of habit. The hull would wait. Whatever had fallen would not stay whole for long in the deep. She left the workshop with the alarm still ringing behind her and started toward the shore.