Chapter 138: Brann’s Course

Brann’s test hull was the ugliest ship Leo had ever seen.

It sat on a cracked landing pad at the far end of the yard, a stripped-down Thyrrian racing frame with half its paneling missing, so that its wiring and fuel lines hung out of its sides like the guts of a gutted fish, and its two engines didn’t even match... the left one was long and sleek and silver, and the right one was short, fat and painted a faded peeling green.

"What is that...?" Harper asked in horror. It looked like it had come from a war...

"It’s a test hull," Brann said.

"What happened to it...?"

"Test pilots," Brann said, and spat on the ground.

Leo walked slowly around the ship, looking up at the mismatched engines, the scorched patches on the belly and the long crack running along the cockpit glass.

’This thing’s held together with wire and hope,’ he thought. ’And I’m supposed to fly it between all those cranes...?’

He looked up at the yard.

The course Brann had set out for him ran straight through the heart of it.

A winding path marked with glowing orange beacons that threaded between the towering construction cranes, under swinging cargo booms, through the gaps in the half-built hull scaffolds and back down to the same cracked pad.

"Three laps," Brann said, folding his scarred arms. "Don’t touch anything. Don’t hit any of my workers. Don’t scratch any of my cranes... and land it in one piece."

"And if I scratch a crane?"

"Then you buy me a new crane," Brann said. "And the deal’s off..."

"Right," Leo said, and climbed the ladder into the cockpit.

The seat was cracked leather, and the hard-light grips flickered a little when he touched them, like they weren’t sure they wanted to work today, and the tail-link slot behind him blinked its same lonely amber light.

[Tail-link not detected. Switching to manual grip control...]

"Yeah, yeah," Leo muttered. "I know... At this point, let me just put my dick in it."

He wrapped his hands around the grips and took a breath, and he let the guide settle into his spine.

It woke up slowly, the way it had in orbit with the same warm current spreading out through his arms and into the ship, and the flickering grips steadied under his palms.

’Alright,’ he thought. ’Let’s see what you’ve got.’

WHRRRR-CHUG-CHUG-WHOOOM!

The engines coughed, sputtered and finally caught, the silver one with a smooth high whine and the green one with a deep rattling growl, and the whole hull shook unevenly from side to side like it was trying to walk with one short leg.

Leo lifted off.

The test hull wobbled into the air and immediately pulled hard to the right, because the green engine was pushing harder than the silver one, and he had to hold the grips tilted to the left just to fly straight.

’It pulls right,’ he thought, gritting his teeth. ’Hard enough to kill me if I let it...’

He nudged it forward toward the first beacon.

The first lap was slow and careful.

He threaded the hull between the cranes with the engines rattling and coughing, ducking under a swinging boom loaded with armor plates and sliding sideways through the gap between two scaffolds with barely three meters on either side.

WHOOSH... CREEEAK... WHOOSH!

The workers on the scaffolds stopped working and watched him go by, and a few of them shook their heads.

The second lap was faster.

He’d started to feel how the mismatched engines fought each other, and he stopped fighting them and started using them, letting the stronger green engine swing the hull around the right-hand turns and easing off it on the left-hand ones, and the ugly ship began to move almost smoothly through the yard.

’There it is,’ he thought. ’I’m getting it now...’

Halfway through the third lap, as he was sliding the hull between two of the tallest cranes in the yard, the green engine died.

KA-CHUNK!

The deep rattling growl on the right side stopped instantly, and the hull lurched violently to the left, rolling over so fast that the whole yard tipped sideways in the canopy.

WEEEE-WEEEE-WEEEE!

[Warning: Starboard engine failure]

[Warning: Asymmetric thrust]

The nearest crane swung toward the cockpit glass, so close that Leo could see the rust on its bolts.

"Damn it!"

He slammed the grips hard to the right, and the hull kept rolling.

He eased the silver engine back to half power, and the roll slowed, but now the ship was sinking, dropping straight down toward a stack of armor plates ten meters below.

’One engine... one engine on one side... come on, think!’

The guide flared in his back.

It flooded through him warm and bright, out through his hands and into the ugly little ship, and for a second, he could feel exactly how the hull wanted to move.

’Again...’

...How much the silver engine could push before it spun him around, how much the dead weight of the green one was dragging his tail down, and exactly where the balance point was between them.

He found it.

He tilted the hull up on its side, nose high and wing low, and fed the silver engine just enough power to hold it there, so that the single engine pushed the ship forward and up at the same time, in a slow sideways glide.

WHRRRRRRRRRRRRR...

The test hull slid out from between the cranes on its side, wobbling, and glided across the yard like a wounded bird, and Leo brought it around in a long slow arc back toward the cracked landing pad.

’Easy... easy... easy...’

He leveled it out five meters above the pad, cut the silver engine and let it drop.

THUD!

The hull settled onto the pad with a soft crunch, perfectly flat, right on the center mark.

Leo sat in the cockpit with his hands still on the grips, breathing hard and staring straight ahead.

’Did that... did the engine just die by itself?’

Then he looked over at the side of the pad, where Brann was standing with a small remote control in one scarred hand and his thumb still resting on a red button.

’Of course,’ Leo thought, and his jaw tightened. ’Of course he did... What sort of testing is that?’

He climbed down out of the cockpit.

The whole crew came running across the yard toward him, with Harper shouting at Brann and Camila already pulling out a cold pack, and Vexa running ahead of all of them.

Brann stood very still, looking at the test hull sitting perfectly flat on its mark.

Then he pulled his goggles down over his eyes and said nothing at all for a long, long moment.

"...Fine," he finally grunted. "You can have the parts."

Vexa let out a delighted cry and threw her arms around both Leo and Brann at the same time.

"You cut my engine..." Leo said, glaring at the old man over Vexa’s shoulder. "What if I died?"

"I did," Brann agreed, completely unbothered. "Anyone can fly a ship that works, boy... I wanted to see what you’d do with one that didn’t."

That afternoon, back at Tarn Point, Leo sat down with Jin-Ah at a long table in Vexa’s library, which Elena had already more or less taken over, with a stack of blank paper, a pot of coffee and Jin-Ah’s slate between them.

"We need to talk about money..." Leo said.

Jin-Ah looked up at him, and her whole face lit up like he’d just handed her a present.

"Yes," she said, very seriously. "Yes, we do."

"Vexa’s paying for the ship as my prize, and she’s giving us a place to stay... but we can’t live off her forever."

Leo rubbed the back of his neck.

"We’re legal now. We’ve got IDs. I want us standing on our own feet... making our own money, with our own skills."

Jin-Ah was already writing.

"I’ve been thinking about this since the registry," she admitted, and her pen flew across the paper. "Our treasury is five thousand eight hundred Zuni. That’s not enough to live on for long, not on a world this expensive... but each of us has something valuable to sell."

"Like what?"

"Harper’s custom slugs, for one." Jin-Ah tapped the paper. "Her vortex-grooved penetrators punched through a Federation corvette’s shield... Mercenary companies on this planet would pay very well for ammunition like that... especially if it’s hand-tuned."

Leo grinned.

"Harper’s going to love that."

"Camila’s crops," Jin-Ah went on, writing faster. "With her talent, she can grow food and medicinal plants three times faster than normal... Vexa’s greenhouse alone could supply a small market stall and her medicines... Fresh, high-quality medicinal herbs are expensive here. I checked."

"Elena?"

"Elena could broker deals," Jin-Ah said without hesitation. "You saw her with Brann... You saw her with the Vorn on Driftmark... Merchants on Nexus-Prime would pay her just to negotiate on their behalf... She’d be terrifying."

"She’d be amazing," Leo said, before he could stop himself, and then cleared his throat. "Aoi?"

Jin-Ah gave him a strange look, but kept writing.

"Aoi’s maps," she said. "Her Tactical Cartography can map unexplored space with incredible accuracy. Explorers, salvagers and prospectors all need charts. She could sell routes."

"And you?"

Jin-Ah paused.

"Logistics," she said, a little shyly. "Supply chains. Cargo planning. Freight routes... I could manage shipping for merchants, It’s not exciting, but it pays."

"It’s what kept us alive for a while, Jin-Ah," Leo said. "It’s plenty exciting..."

Jin-Ah went a little pink and looked down at her paper.

"And you," she said. "You’re the pilot who beat the Neon Phantom... Guild contracts, escort work, salvage runs. Once the ship is upgraded, we could take jobs as a whole crew."

She sat back and looked at the page, covered from top to bottom in her neat, tiny handwriting, and her eyes were shining.

"If we do even half of this," she said quietly, "we could be completely self-sufficient within two months. Maybe less..."

Before Leo could answer, the library door opened, and Elena came in with a thick stack of printed specification sheets under her arm.

"Brann sent over the technical specifications for the parts," she announced, and dropped the stack on the table in front of Leo with a heavy thump. "We need to decide on the reactor configuration before he ships it."

THUMP!

Leo picked up the top sheet and frowned at it.

"Tune it for speed..." he said.

"Absolutely not," Elena said instantly. "Tune it for stability."

"Speed..."

"Stability, Captain."

"Elena, we’re going to be running from the Federation half the time... Speed is what keeps us alive."

He simply needed to outspeed all the people after him... That was the best solution.

"And stability is what keeps the reactor from melting through the deck when you push it past its limits, which you always do," Elena shot back, folding her arms.

"A stable reactor gives us consistent power to the shields, the weapons and the life support... A speed-tuned reactor surges and drops, and one bad surge in the middle of a fight could take our shields offline at the worst possible moment."

"But a stable reactor’s slow to respond," Leo argued. "When I need power, I need it instantly, not two seconds later..."

"Then learn to anticipate your power needs two seconds earlier."

"That’s not how flying works!"

"Then explain to me how flying works, Captain," Elena snapped, "since apparently I’m too stupid to understand."

Leo put the sheet down.

"Okay," he said, and his voice went quieter. "Okay... I’ll try."

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, and tried to find the words.

"When I’m linked to the ship, I fly it by feel," he said slowly. "Every plate, every thruster... it’s like it’s my body and when something comes at us, I don’t think, ’Okay, I need more power to the starboard thrusters.’ I just... move, the same way you’d jerk your hand back from a hot stove. And if the ship can’t move as fast as I do, it’s like trying to run through deep water. It’s like my body’s lagging behind my brain."

Elena opened her mouth to argue then she closed it again.

She was looking at him differently now, with her head tilted a little and her icy eyes narrowed, but in a thinking way instead of an angry one.

"...Like your reflexes are faster than your muscles?" she said slowly.

"Yeah. Exactly like that." Leo rubbed his sore jaw. "Vexa said the same thing yesterday."

Elena was quiet for a long moment, and then she sat down across from him, pulled the spec sheet toward her and picked up a pen.

"Then we don’t tune it for speed," she said. "And we don’t tune it for stability..."

Leo blinked.

"Then what?"

"We tune the core for stability," Elena said, already writing, "and we add a secondary capacitor bank between the reactor and the thrusters, charged and waiting at all times. The reactor stays steady. The capacitors give you the instant burst you need... and then the reactor refills them." She looked up at him.

"Your reflexes get their speed and my reactor doesn’t explode."

Leo stared at the sheet, and then at her.

"Elena," he said, "that’s brilliant."

"I know..." Elena said.

They argued over the details for another hour, and Elena conceded one point to him, very grudgingly, and made him concede two to her, and by the time they were done, the plan on the table was better than either of theirs had been.

Elena gathered up her sheets and stood, tucking them under her arm.

At the door, she paused with one hand on the frame and her back to him.

"Your flying is reckless and undisciplined, Captain," she said, without turning around. "...But it’s not wrong."

Then she was gone, and Leo was left sitting there staring at the empty doorway.

’Was that a compliment?’