Pipe Dreams

Delilah was gathering dust in her spot on the edge of the Eavestown docks. There were few passersby. Occasional someone would glance at her as though trying to decide whether she was a piece of trash ripe for the scavenging or indeed an actual starship. The small kiosk with her flight plan the only real evidence to the latter. She’d been contracted over a month ago to fly to Anson’s World in Red Sun. but that was before her owner and Captain Lazaurs Quick died in a Persephone Hospital. Her future now lay in the hands of his son, and only heir, who promised he would arrive from Paquin in short order.

Freddie poured over the flickering electronic manual, his small eyes squinting to make out the tiny writing. He often had to flip back and forth to the glossary as he read. The translation of the original Chinese wasn’t the best, nor was Freddie’s Chinese. He could speak it well enough, like everyone else, but reading it was another matter. He was working on the hydraulic locks for the starboard engine. His coveralls were saturated in hydraulic fluid, and the components were littering the small balcony outside the engine room. The engine room was too cluttered and crowded with wires, pipes and bypasses installed over the decades to keep her flying. He had laid out the pieces on a piece of tarpaulin in a decent order, he had to in order to keep it all straight.

He used some painters tape to label each piece. Someday he hoped he wouldn’t need to do so. He’d learn it. He had it in his blood. His father was patient, but his patience was disappointed, Freddie never found the knack his father “Pipes” had for engineering. When his father died last year, he resolved to carry on the family tradition, in part because he wanted to honor his father, but also because the ship took him in when the Verse was not so friendly. And he inherited some respect in virtue of his father. Lazarus used to make jokes at his expense, but in the end always did right by him. Rachel too was often short, but was always there when he needed her. The rest of the itinerate crew came and went, most were disgruntled with the pay and working conditions, some threatened to report the ships technical safety violations, others tried to steal what they could. Freddie figured Cap Laz valued his loyalty even if his talents were not always up to snuff. When he was helping his dad, that was never a problem. But since his father passed, the load was more than he could really manage. It was like the ship was dying too, same as the Captain. Freddie was doing his best, but just as the Coreside Doctors on Persephone weren’t enough to save the Captain, neither was he as engineer enough to save the Delilah.

The Captain did try to hire another chief engineer over the last year, but the competent ones were too afraid. Maybe I should be too, Freddie thought. When the new captain showed up, he thought maybe he could talk to him about some of the upgrades he had in his books, things his dad wrote on the “to do wall" outside engineering. Maybe he’d bring the money they needed to make the fixes. You never knew. He had heard that the Captain’s son owned a Casino on Paquin. That meant he was well oiled, as they say. Maybe they could fix’er up enough to sell, and get a newer ship, one that didn’t need so much work. He could manage the maintenance on a newer ship he reckoned.

He set down the manual, and took a spanner to the carcass of the hydraulic lock once more. Despite being well lubricated, one piece wouldn’t come off. He reached for can of rust remover, shook it up and sprayed it on to part. The spray doused his hand, and interacting with something on the part, sizzled on his bare skin.

"Hun Dan”!" (Damn!)

He yelped in pain and dropped the part over the balcony down through the missing deck plating two decks to the the cargo floor where it landed with an echoing ring like a church bell. He wiped off the fluids and held his hand, raw red from the chemicals. He stood awkwardly holding his hand out like something foreign and dangerous, and with his good hand he reached for the hand comm taped to the wall next to the entrance to engineering. He pressed the button to send a call signal.

“Rachel! Rachel. You there. I need some help, I burned my hand something fierce. Can you bring the the first aid? I think I may pass out.”

Rachel frowned a little as Freddie's voice crackled over the comm. Burned? she repeated to herself. Settling Mortimer on her desk, she took off to find the boy, her lanky frame making short work of the distance. A few steps detour to retrieve the sorry bit of supplies they called a medkit and then she was looking at him. True to story, Freddie was swaying, his hand an angry red. He held it up to her, his blue eyes stricken.

"Well damn Freddie," Rachel said softly, laying the kit to one side and reaching for his hand to look at it. "How'd ya do that honey?" Wincing as she gently turned it to look at it, the scent of rust remover, oil, rust, and lubricants hit her nose. "We need to neutralize this, wash it off. C'mon to the kitchen and you can tell me exactly what you mixed together."

Freddie did his best not to shed any tears as she rinsed the chemicals from his hand. He felt guilty watching her crank the pump to get water from the spigot. He had promised to get the water pumps online weeks ago. Plumbing it turned out was nearly as difficult as engineering. He did his best to recount how he'd burned himself. And as he got to the part about dropping the hydraulic lock mechanism three decks down, he winced wondering first whether it survey the fall, and second whether they could afford a replacement if it didn't. Without being able to lock the thruster pods, they were pretty much grounded. The pain in his hand helped turn his mind from that and he tried to think happier thoughts.

"Did you know the Captain had a son? I never heard him mention any family." Freddie said, though he did have a vague memory of his first encounter with the captain. His father introduced them and Lazarus said something like "a son who wants to follow his father, well who knew?" He didn't think much of it at the time, but it made him wonder now.

Rachel sighed internally. Sweet, but sometimes she thought that PIpes had dropped a wrench on poor Freddie's head one too many times. "Yes baby," she answered, looking his hand over before putting on precious ointment and wrapping the injury gently in some of their even more precious gauze. "Remember, he's supposed to be coming to get ‘Lilah outta hock." She tied off the gauze and stood back, giving the young man a reassuring smile. "So you ok?"

"I'll be alright, though might need a couple more poppers to sleep tonight." He eyed the bottle of painkillers Rachel held guardedly. He knew they didn't have a lot of supplies, but it wasn't like they had a big crew right now.

Freddie looked appraisingly at his hand and up to Rachel appreciatively. " I mean, did you know before….," he died, he thought but didn't say, "before that lawyer told us he was the new owner? Did the Captain ever talk about him? You knew him a lot longer than me. Did you know his wife," Freddie doubted the Captain was ever married, “or the boy's mom anyway?"

"Yeah. Met her once. She was pretty." Rachel watched his eyes caress the bottle in her hand and popped the top. "One half., " she announced, breaking the pill she shook out. "You still got stuff to do. 'Lilah's got to be ready to go when we're paid out here." She gave him the pill and got him a glass of water. As he washed the painkiller down, she gathered up the supplies.

"What were you working on again? I can help a little. Three hands better than two?" She grinned. "Don't expect much tho'. I know more about flying her than fixing her." She began the journey back to the engine, not even checking to see if Freddie followed her. She knew he would. They were all that they both had left, the little family of Delilah still broken and in loss without its patriarch and guiding hand. First Pipes, then Laz. . .too much, too soon. They never had any money, but they had had each other. And now the family was broken. She woulda left too. She could have had any job she wanted. But she couldn't leave Freddie, wouldn't leave 'Lilah. Not yet at least.

"She wasn't a spacer," she said over her shoulder when Freddie stopped trying to tell her what he was working on. Didn't matter tho’. Lazarus had loved her to stupidity. Unfortunately, Lazarus wasn't smart enough to stay. The Black was a harsh mistress, caught your heart, made you make stupid choices. And Lazarus never met a pretty face he could resist either.

She paused at the entrance of the engine room, taking in the mess, the jury-rigging, the desperate need for a good mechanic. "And yeah, Laz and she were married. Cute kid. Although he's a man now I expect."

Freddie trailed after Rachel across the rickety bridge made of grates and scaffold to the entrance of engineering. The engine room had spilled out on the deck outside it over the years, until the deck itself suffered and had to be removed. Now there was a sort of makeshift balcony extending ten feet or so out from the engine room. A ship of polished hull plate, long stripped from the exterior, was attached to the wall next to the old entrance to the Engine Room proper. Scribbled across the top in bold underlined letters were the two simple words that haunted him TO DO. Underneath those was a long list of things he needed to get done. When his father brought him aboard the list was maybe seven things long, at the top in neat print was "REPLACE CAPISSEN ENGINE"

It was retouched every now then, and pretty indelible. It was something of a joke on the ship. His father complained endlessly about the Engine claiming it would shake it self loose one day. Indeed it did, well enough to disengage it, though not enough to kill them all. Only after extensive retrofitting and bracing did it seem to run smooth... enough. Still, it was the first and final job. Originally the tasks were written on there and a day or two later wiped clean, but as Pipes aged, and more so after he died, the list got longer and longer. Now there were new columns sprouting up after the list reached the bottom. Some of the older tasks were now so faded or smudged that he couldn't even read them. If they were really important they were in bigger letters, or underlined.

The latest one on the list that fit that description was the hydraulic locks. They were not holding which could mean real danger trying to maneuver outside of orbit or on longer atmospheric runs. The diagnostics seemed to indicate a pressure loss. Truth be told, for most engineering problems Freddie relied heavily on the Cortex. He read through various engineering boards, and submitted his naive questions to them, asking about whatever problem he faced. In this case the loss of pressure. The responses were evenly critical or cruel, either making fun of his ignorance, or strongly recommending he hire a 'competent engineer' to see to the problems. But usually somewhere down the line someone would post a recommendation.

Indeed for this one, a likely cause was grit or sediment building up in the valves. He merely needed to disassemble the unit, clean it, re-lubricate it and reassemble it. It sounded easy enough, but things rarely were.

He left Rachel gazing at the list and walked carefully down the two shaky flights of stairs to pick up the part he dropped and inspect it for damage. He discovered in alarm that it had split into two pieces, but upon inspection he noticed that it was the two pieces he was having trouble pulling apart earlier. And they appeared intact!

"Note to self," he said in a quiet voice, "when all else fails, try dropping parts three decks." He took the pieces, did a quick check to ensure there were no other pieces lying around, and went back to the stairs. He took a deep breath. He wasn't built for all this running up and down stairs. I'll need to move Fix Elevator up the list. By the time he reached the Engineering deck he was huffing and puffing. "Got the parts," he called out to Rachel.

As he sat down next to the tarp to work, he took a moment to catch his breath, then he spoke aloud tentatively, not looking at her. "I don't know about you, but I kind of hope the new guy sells this old ship and buys a new one. It would be nice to fly in something that wasn't always breaking down." He paused. "I took the train into town to see that show yesterday, remember?, and it was amazing. All gleaming silver. The seats didn't have no holes in them. The lights all worked. They had running water in the head, on a train! I forget sometimes what its like to have nice things. You know?"

Rachel could only nod. Sure, Delilah had character, but she was limping along held together by habit and twine. It was only a matter of time before the seals failed and she and whatever poor souls on-board asphyxiated as the air leaked out into the Black. The last landing before this one, she had sworn that the engine had tried to rip itself free to drop 'Lilah to the dirt so it could go sail off on its own. She smiled lightly at the memory. Lazarus always said a landing you could walk away from was fine. The looks on the faces of the ground crew had told her that they wouldn't have agreed with that at all. She had noticed that they were waiting with fire suppression and other gear, had given her silent claps as she had come down the ramp. And she would have admitted that she drank an extra beer that night at the bar.

She still wondered if she had held on to this contract outta dedication to Laz, stubbornness, or a desperate need to prove to herself that she still was one of the best pilots to ever hold a stick. She was old now, like the Delilah, some would say beyond her prime too. But flying the shipwreck took nerves of steel, by the seat of your pants flying, a pilot who just didn't fly by instruments and computers, but one that felt the bird beneath her butt, felt her strain and shift through her fingertips on the stick. As the metal and fire screamed and danced around her, she felt it as if she were the Delilah herself, felt the minute surges and falls in power and the feel of the Black and the schizophrenic sucking resistance of the atmo of the planets they landed on.

Like when she had barrel raced as a girl to trophies bonded as one to the horse flying beneath her, so she was with her ships. The feeling was something beyond training, something beyond skill. It was a subsuming, a melding of man and mount into one entity. She knew that 'Lilah might kill her someday. Hell, she'd probably break apart and flame out of existence trying to get her off planet now. But the old crate had so far been the greatest test of everything she had been and was ever to be and Rachel wasn't sure she could let go of the thrill.

She looked down at the young man, so like his father and yet so tragically not. "Someday we'll have all the good stuff Freddie," she assured him. "Heck, the young Mr Quick sounds like a real businessman. I'm sure that he will see 'Lilah and realize that she's past her prime. We'll be on a new ride in no time." Reaching out, she ruffled his hair. "You'll have to learn how to work on the new engines and computers boy. Heck, they're so advanced now, it may pilot and fix itself. The kid won't need us."

Rachel McAlister