Chapter 9: Aurelium Ignition
STRIFE WAS BEAUTIFUL THIS time of year. The sky was warm and gold. The sun peeked through the clouds and reached down with its long fingers to the tall grass that covered the mountains below. The smell of tall golden grass wafted through the air. It was the aroma of life at the beginning of a gentle summer. You could hear the buzz of grass crickets playing their symphonies between every blade.
The air was warm, warm and sweet with the smell of summer. A gentle summer breeze blew through Maintenance Hangar 13. It was too beautiful of a day to be working with the hangar doors closed. Aurelius had opened them at the beginning of his shift. This hangar was up on a range of hills. Out the back doors, there were rolling golden mountains with little dark emerald patches of trees. Out the front the massive doorway framed a view of the city of “Blades”. It was the only metropolis on Strife and Aurelius found himself staring out at the city. Maybe in another fifty years these hills would be covered in overpriced condominiums but for now, it was a hell of a place to spend post–boot camp days in the Service-Corp he thought to himself.
Aurelius was a hardware technician or “hard tech” for short. At least, that’s what he was registered as. He joined up to escape the troubles back home and wanted to follow his passion for working on engines. It didn’t matter the type of engine—old internal combustion or mass core accelerator—he loved them all. The Service-Corp was the place for a kid with these talents to flourish.
Like most mornings, Aurelius was on his back under a vehicle. His hands were covered in grease and his overalls were dotted with oil, and he loved it. He completely tuned out the sounds of rushing water coming from a hose. Someone was washing down a craft or trying to get the oil stains off the floor. Aurelius didn’t even notice until an ice-cold puddle caught up with him and shocked him out of his happy place.
“Ow!” he yelled, creeping out from under the craft. “Dude! What the hell! I’m working here!”
His buddy Benny laughed, “Sorry, Strifer. My bad.”
“Can you do that later? I’d like to get through the day without being electrocuted.”
Benny shut off his hose. “We know how hard that is for some people.”
Aurelius shot him a look.
“Sorry, just trying to polish up the place.”
“Here… I could use your help.”
Aurelius climbed up on top of the craft and sat between two turbine intakes. This hopper flew like a jet through the air but could also fly up into space. It had a miniaturized version of an engine that could get it as far as the next world if it needed to. Hoppers like this one were popular and the backbone of the Service-Corp Air and Space Force. They had a few hundred at their disposal, and entry-level hard techs like Aurelius and Benny were in charge of tuning up and fixing them. Aurelius’s dream come true.
Aurelius pulled off a panel and began tweaking something inside.
“What’s up?” Benny asked.
“Flow regulator says both turbines should be getting power…”
The craft was dead silent.
“Doesn’t sound like anything’s getting power.” Benny said.
“I know. That’s the problem. I need you to hop in and run a diag.”
“You can’t do that?”
“Not while I’m up here, genius.”
Benny hopped into the cockpit and flicked through the controls. The craft began to hum and vibrate.
Aurelius pulled a coin out of his pocket and held it over one of the engine housings. He gently let it go. It hung, floating in the air a few inches off the craft. He flicked it with one finger, and it began to spin.
“Okay. That’s all I needed. You can get back to beautifying the place.” Aurelius said.
Benny hopped out of the craft and looked up at Aurelius. “What are you doing? What is that?”
“My own diagnostics.”
“Oh god…” Benny shook his head. “Not that again. Strifer, why don’t you learn how to do it the right way?”
“Takes too long. Plus, I’m no good at the math.”
Aurelius wasn’t kidding; he was “math dead.” The complexities of tuning a faster-than-light engine were overwhelming and laborious. This wasn’t the way he worked on them back home. He had learned everything from his father, who didn’t have the money for the latest and greatest tools; he had to resort to other means. Aurelius had learned every one of his father’s diagnostic techniques. Balancing a coin over the antigravity generator was one of his own.
Benny picked up a socket wrench and began checking the screws around the craft. “Yikes. Remind me never to fly in one of your hoppers.”
Aurelius rolled his eyes.
“What, do you need a tutor or something?” Benny asked.
“Tried that. I just don’t have the patience for it. I guess it’s the technobabble I don’t get.”
“Technobabble?”
“Yeah, the tests look like Terranese to me.”
“Rough, Strifer, rough. What’s the biggest engine you’ve ever worked on?”
Aurelius pointed to the hopper.
“You’re kidding me!”
“Wish I could say I was. My pa used to service hoppers about this size. That’s where I learned to do this kinda stuff. Like he always used to say, ‘If you can’t fix it with duct tape, then… you’re not using enough duct tape.’”
Benny sincerely hoped Aurelius was joking, but either way he wasn’t about to fly in any of the hoppers he serviced. “How long you been in the hangars?”
Usually people tested out after a couple months and moved onto bigger and better things.
“Nine months,” Aurelius answered.
Benny stopped midratchet. “Nine months? Holy shit, Strifer! Maybe I should double check the whole damn craft!”
“I know!” Aurelius laughed. “I know, I know.”
“Shit. Sorry, dude.”
Benny couldn’t believe it. The honest truth was Aurelius was a damn good mechanic. Good enough that people knew of his reputation.
“That’s bad. Like real bad. How do you expect to get drafted to a ship?”
“Well, if my good looks don’t help me, I guess I’ll just have to get real lucky when they need someone to replace the lightbulbs,” Aurelius joked.
Benny didn’t laugh; he had his attention elsewhere.
“Hey… Hey!” Aurelius said snapping his fingers to get Benny’s attention.
“Huh?”
“Quit the daydreaming and help me with this.”
“I wasn’t daydreaming,” Benny said. “I was checking out that cruiser coming in over the Capital.”
Aurelius pulled his head out of the engine. Sure enough, a large Service-Corp cruiser was coming in and docking at the Spire in the center of the city. This wasn’t uncommon, but it was still a sight to see as it darkened several city blocks beneath it.
“Never seen the Freedom’s Reach before?” Aurelius asked.
“Nope. It’s a lot bigger than the other ships I’ve seen dock.”
“Yeah. It’s the Governor’s ship.”
“That guy gets his own ship? I wanna go into politics… Think of all the skirts you’d get with a ship that size.” Benny laughed.
“It’s not the size of the ship that matters—it’s the size of the mass core that counts.” Aurelius couldn’t help himself.
“And you wonder why people think you’re a dork?”
The coin Aurelius had placed was beginning to wobble. This wasn’t good; it told him something was wrong in the antigrav assembly. He hopped down and powered off the craft.
Aurelius went around back and removed a panel under the engine. “Hey, help me here right quick.”
The two of them removed each screw and dismounted the antigrav generator. It was heavy, and setting it down on the ground was a two-man job, ironically.
“You’re gonna be here a long time if you don’t figure something out.” Benny said.
Aurelius smiled. “I’ve made my peace with it.”
“Maybe you just gotta focus a little. You know, grow up a bit.”
A cocky smile creeped its way across Aurelius’ face, “I don’t wanna grow up. I reckon it’s a trap.”
“You can’t stay here forever, Blaze!” Sergeant William Barber barked as he entered the hanger, causing Aurelius and Benny dropped their tools and saluted.
“At ease,” the Sergeant ordered.
Sarge was intimidating as hell the first few weeks of boot camp, but after that, he grew on you, so long as you didn’t cross him.
Sarge had a touch screen in one hand and his signature cigar in the other as he walked up to Aurelius. “What the hell is wrong with you, Blaze?”
“You’re gonna have to be a little more specific than that, sir!” Aurelius said with a shit eating grin still on his face.
Benny had to swallow his laughter.
“All right, chuckles.” Sarge said blowing a mouthful of smoke at them. “Benny, your three and a half months are up. And i’m pleased to see that your tests are good…”
Sarged flicked through the pages of a document on his pad before continuing, “Congo rats, you’re getting moved to a ship. Looks like you’re being sent too the Ember Cascade. They need good engineers. You’ll have to kiss Aurelius goodbye and hope he learns from your example.”
Sarge shook his hand. Benny was elated; he had been looking to get this post for a while.
“You’re dismissed.” Sarge ordered, saluting Benny.
Benny didn’t know what else to do but to get a move on and head for the hallway off to one side of the hanger. At least if he walked slow he might be able to eavesdrop on Aurelius and Sarge’s conversation.
The look in Sarge’s eye made Aurelius nervous. He knew he was gonna get barked at for something; it happened all the time. Sarge pulled up his last test scores. “Aurelius Blaze. You know, your scores on your retake really shouldn’t be lower than the original.”
Aurelius stood silent. What could he say?
“What the hell is wrong with you, Aurelius?”
“Sir, did you read my essay answers?”
“Yeah I did. In fact, I read them a few times… And I still don’t understand them. That’s why I’m here.”
The test was mostly how to mix the right fuel to mass-field ratios and how to check the plasma flow in your boson field. In other words, it was all hieroglyphics. Aurelius was relieved Sarge came down to talk about it. If he had a chance to demonstrate the idea from his answer, maybe Sarge would go easier on him.
“I want you to explain, in plain English, what this ‘alternative method’ is.”
“Sir, I understand the need for the test. You gotta know these things when you build a ship, or you work on it midflight. I get it. But in a real hot situation, all that stuff in the books won’t help you, and you’re not gonna have time to double-check your long division. You need to be able to think on your feet, think on the fly.”
“This is the way it’s done. This is the way it’s always been done, and this is what gets things done safely.”
“Sir, if I could demonstrate?”
Aurelius connected a cable from the craft to the antigrav generator now sitting on the ground. He leaned in the cockpit and turned it on.
“You have a coin, sir?” Aurelius asked.
“Where the hell are you going with this?”
“All I need is a half Strife or something.”
Sarge dug through his pockets and handed one to Aurelius.
“That’ll do.”
Like before, Aurelius held it about six inches over the antigrav generator and slowly let it go. Just like before, it sat there floating in midair, as if on the end of a string.
“The coin’s being suspended by the antigrav field,” Aurelius said.
He flicked the edge of the coin with his finger, and it began to spin. “Now if any of your calculations are off, even a little, you’ll be able to see it in the spin of the coin.”
Aurelius flicked some controls. The coin began to rotate slower, then fast again, “If there’s a problem, you’ll know right away.”
He flicked a switch that caused the coin to fall out of the air and the generator to sputter out.
Sarge was silent. Aurelius couldn’t tell if he liked the idea or even understood it. After a moment, Sarge spoke up, “What if you don’t have a coin?”
Aurelius spent the next ten minutes showing Sarge all different everyday items you could use instead. A pair of sunglasses, a screwdriver, or a shiny bubblegum wrapper. If there had been more time, he would have shown him all the other techniques he had learned to diagnose and fix other very complicated problems.
“Seriously, sir. No one’s ever done it this way before?” Aurelius asked.
Sarge was impressed. “Nope. Fifteen years in the core, and I’ve never seen it done this way. Where’d you learn to do something like this?”
“My dad. He taught me everything I know. Said I had a real keen understanding of engines.”
“All right, Mr. Blaze. This is neat, but not what I got from your test.”
“Yeah, I know… It’s too bad there’s no show-and-tell section.”
Sarge scratched his head. “That’s damn inventive, but tricks like that ain’t gonna get you further than this hangar, and you’ve already been here too long.”
“I know, I know… I’m trying. What can I do, sir?”
Sarge took a long hard drag on his cigar. “Think I’m gonna have to move you somewhere. You’ve been in this hangar way too long, Mr. Blaze.”
Sarge’s tone scared Aurelius.
“I told you not to get too attached to this place,” Sarge said, walking out.
Benny came running back in. “Did you just get booted or something?”
“God, I hope not.”
“Damn, dude. Sorry. That’s a pretty cool little trick though.”
“Yeah. Fat lot of good it did me though.”
“Well, I really should get out of here and pack up. Hey, let’s go out and get a beer tonight. I know you could use one right about now.”
“Gina’s Bar?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure. Congo rats on your new post by the way.” Aurelius said.
Benny looked like he didn’t know what to say,“ Well… I’ll see ya later, Strifer” Benny said, walking out.
“Yeah... Sure….” Aurelius said as his friend left the hanger; “I guess a drink will do me good...” Aurelius turned from the door his friend had just left through, and returned to his tinkering on the hopper. Tomorrow this hanger might not be his home anymore, but today it still was, and today there was a Grav Assembly that needed figuring out. Aurelius could spend days doing little work like this, he liked fixing things. He knew his destiny was in space, traveling the stars and seeing the sights, saving people in danger and all that space adventurer shit, but the thought that that might not be what happened didn’t bother him as much as he thought it should. Yeah he was bummed, but mostly because the Corps was the best place to learn how to do the repairs he wanted. It wasn’t the adventure he was sad to be giving up, it was the tools, the grease, the stuffy and overheated hangers filled with junk and noise and activity. That was what was pulling at his heart, that and the strange thought that his older brother would be disappointed with him somehow.