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Chapter 4 - Old Men - Part 1
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It didn't take the Caravel long to settle into an almost identical rhythm to the one pre-'We Fly'. After all, excitement doesn't fly a spaceship, nor does it repair the Type-C…
A couple days into this new status quo, I was waylaid. See, between the hangar at the front of the ship and the living area to the rear is the generator. So large and heavily armoured that you have to walk down these narrow passageways on either side to get around it, something of a choke point, you might say. As I came to the end of one of these tight corridors, I saw none other than Chief Gros with arms folded, his bulk almost filling the entire width of the narrow space.
“Sir?”
“Come on, with me,” he grumbles back. Rather than go straight to the hangar, Gros leads us through an off-shot passage and into none other than the ship's generator room. My breathing suddenly feels a little stilted.
The room is simply the generator’s front face; a machine this large has multiple other access panels, but this is its heart. In front of us is a wall of monitors and switchboards, all before a couple dozen valves, levers and the far end of its main body. Said body is simply a big metal circle, from my perspective, about two metres in diameter.
The part of the room for standing in, is actually relatively small, only going back about three metres from the wall of instruments, with two benches affixed to the back wall for resting either yourself or tools on. The walls are bland silver metal, covered in bolts, like any other part of the ship. The lighting is a tad dim, adding to the claustrophobia of the small place. There is a constant humming here from the machinery.
My heart is beating a lot faster than I would like.
“This beauty is the ship's core. Now I know they like to over-specialise you kids these days in the academy, but I'm a little more free-thinking. I believe every mechanic needs to have the basics of this lady here, and every engineer needs to know some maintenance tricks for the Vijiaks. So for the next hour, with no interruptions, let's get you primed,” Gros says with a wry grin, slamming one fist against the round face of the generator to hammer home his point, all while taking a big gulp from his flask.
It clangs.
He hadn't hit it very hard, but in this enclosed space, it echoes – I wince.
Gros's brow furrows, “Hey, what was that?”
I close my eyes. I can’t keep them open any longer. Breathing slowly, I hold one hand over my heart and just kept breathing, in and out, in and out, deep breaths for a good thirty seconds. I open my eyes, “Sorry, I'm fine now. Sorry.”
“Kid, you're pale as a sheet, the hecks wrong?” Gros asked in his usual gruff tone but with apparent concern on his face.
“It's nothing, I'm fine sir.” I must have been very pale to have caught Gros's, of all people's attention, this badly. He's famous, and rightfully so, personal mechanic of the Crusade for a start but also a highly experienced mechanic and engineer both. But among the crew of the Caravel, when not half-drunk, he always seems the least invested to me, always grumbling, never showing Templar any respect, seldom in a good mood. He comes off as more of a brute than a genius craftsmen.
Today, though, Gros does something entirely unexpected; he takes me by the shoulders, brings me to one of the benches against the back wall, and sits me down gently. I barely resist. I feel terribly weak.
He takes the seat next to me. Like the rest of the ship, there is no gravity here. Sitting down and standing are effectively the same load, but it feels good to sit nonetheless.
“Well, feel any better?”
I do my best to nod and smile, “I'm fine, really, it won't happen again.”
I don’t feel fine, but I also don’t want to look weak or incapable before my colleagues, never mind my boss.
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Gros frowns, “Wanna talk about it?” He says with a sigh.
He doesn’t sound that enthused, nor do I feel that inclined. Yet he has a right to know. Really, I ought to have told him and the others when they first offered me this job – this is on me alone – I take one more deep breath and dive into the short version of my very silly story.
“M-my... Dad was an engineer specialising in ship generators. During a battle, his ship took a hit from an enemy it never even saw. The generator began to shut down, but it hadn't been hit directly, just shaken a bit, least that’s what everyone thought.
He headed to the control room, only then realised it was already too late… In his last moments, he sealed every bulkhead and screen on the ship. It didn't do much. Hundreds still died, though a handful, including my uncle, who was nearest to the ship's extremities, survived.”
Gros nods along, “Sounds like– Actually sounds like something I heard a while back. What is your full name, Kris?”
I cringe again. It's bad enough being in this room, listening to that endless hum under these dim lights, talking about this of all things. Still, if I lie, Gros will just check the records, I’m stuck, “Kris… Kris Umanu.”
“Umanu? There was an engineer a few years back by that name who people said might become my successor. People say that about anyone with any skill in our field, mind you. As long as I’m the best, there's bound to be comparisons,” the famous chief mechanic says a little bitterly, “Still, this guy showed real promise if I recall. I remember his ship sinking being fairly big news at the time too, right? One of many such losses maybe, certainly I doubt your dad became a household name, but it sounds like he was a real hero.”
I scoff, although in my current state, it comes out as more of a squeak, “I'm not sure about all that. The survivors all died within a few more months anyway. My mom definitely didn't think it was heroic.
She'd been injured prior, forcefully retired and that had already hurt her psych. My uncle, he sang Dad's praises for the sacrifice, but he never knew how stupid that was. Those details haunted my mom; she'd seen a ship's generator once, and that image seemed to sear it into every memory she had of Dad. First, it was screaming in her sleep, then it was delusions while wide awake... The things she imagined, she described – his skin all melting slowly off, his eyeballs evaporating, his body being shattered – I'm not even sure any of those things would have happened, but she kept having these horrific visions.
I... I ended up kind of scared of machines, especially cars and stuff. BUT, I've seen doctors and been to therapy. I promise I have documents and stuff! I'm fine now, really!”
Gros raises a hand to slow my rapidly excited speech; “No one's calling you out, kid. You don't have to defend your job like that or ‘nothing – But I do want to ask why you became a mechanic of all things? I mean, the Vijiak’s generators are effectively just smaller versions of a ship’s.”
I laugh lightly, “It was the last part of my therapy, to face it 'head-on' and get a job in the same field as Dad. I did an apprenticeship for a few months before deciding to join up. Those couple of months automatically got me placed in the Vijaik support division.”
“So that's it, eh? But seeing a full-size generator, probably similar to the one your, ah, mom talked about, just caught you off guard?” The chief mechanic says delicately.
I nod.
“Well, alrighty then.” Gros folds his arms, a stern expression on his face, “Then we'll just sit here. I booked this place for an hour, so we can't waste it. We'll sit and listen to the hum and all the other creaks and groans it makes, the slosh of liquids moving through the coolant pipes and so on. It's been a while, but I have the schematics somewhere. We can do a little book learning while we listen. That's just what we'll have to do until ya' no longer wither from looking at that thing.”
I stare at Gros, feeling gobsmacked, “You'd really be ok with that?”
“Tch, nothing to do with being ok or not. That's just what we need to do to get you to the same place as all my other apprentices,” he grumbles, but it lacks his usual bite. There is a genuine hint of warmth to him in that moment.
I learned a lot about Chief Gro's in those hour-long tutoring sessions, and they did help. Knowing how the machine worked in detail, understanding it, and listening to it, really changed its effect on me. More so than either of us could have guessed.
Seeing that other side of Gros, the side that calls all his subordinates, even the veterans, 'apprentices', was worth it, too. For the first time, I found myself wanting to understand the man and his abrasive attitude more, instead of just trying to copy his example.
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