Structural integrity on the strut is marginal, Fred continued. And by marginal, I mean I am surprised we are not currently sitting on the pad with the strut sitting in the cargo bay.
She tilted her head, pausing mid-stride as she studied the load-bearing calculations scrolling past her vision. It held, she shot back. Marginal is still functional. Log it.
Logging it under ‘Miracles and Blind Luck’ he retorted.
Just log the fuc-udgeing data, Fred.
Language, Cait.
Rolling her eyes, she ignored him. Fred had been stuck in her head since she was fourteen, and he still acted like she was a teenager stealing her brother’s speeder. Reaching the starboard access panel, she yanked the release lever, and grabbed the torch from her belt.
“Right,” she said, clamping the torch between her teeth. “Let’s see what the damage is.”
The heat radiating off the slabcrete under her feet was brutal. It soaked through the knees of her flight suit the second she crouched down, baking her from the bottom while the sun beat down on her head. Sweat trickled its way down the center of her back. Shit, she felt like a rotisserie chicken out here. Her hands were already slick with grease and sweat, and she hadn’t even opened the main housing yet.
Sliding onto her back, she wriggled under the hull. It was darker under here, but no cooler. The air sat stagnant, smelling of hot hydraulic fluid and dust. Wonderful, just fuc-fudging wonderful.
Scanning hydraulic pressure, Fred murmured. Lines one through three are stable. Four is showing a variance.
She grunted, reaching up to trace line four. Her fingers came away slick with fluid. A leak. Brilliant. Wiping her hand on her thigh, she kept moving, checking the power relays and the fuel line couplings. This was the grunt work. The part her brother never did because he had technicians for it, and the part her father assumed she couldn’t do because she was a girl who should be in the office filing manifests.
But out here, far beyond civilized space, the logic was simple. Things broke and you fixed them. Or you didn’t, and then you died in deep space. Simple.
She glanced through the gap between the landing gear and the slabcrete at the other ships. A heavy lifter on the far left, scarred and ugly, was piloted by a veteran. A mid-size hauler in the middle berth, run by an older woman Cait had clocked arguing with a fueling drone earlier. They were nowhere to be seen. Which meant they were smart and inside… out of the sun.
Cait.
Fred’s voice changed. The dry snark vanished, replaced by a clipped, precise tone that made the hair on her arms stand up.
The diagnostic on the port line is reading a pressure loss inconsistent with gradual wear.
She froze, her hand halfway to a coupling. Define inconsistent.
The loss pattern suggests a sudden failure point rather than a seal degradation or stress fracture.
What do you mean? Has it snapped? Shimmying out from under the hull and ignoring the scrape of concrete against her shoulder blades, she scrambled over to the port side housing and popped the panel.
She managed to duck in time as red fluid splattered onto the pad surface at her feet.
“Holy sh?—”
Hydraulic fluid had sprayed the inside of the casing, coating everything in a slick, red sheen. Ignoring the mess, she aimed the torch at the main line.
Her eyes widened.
It wasn’t a rupture or a pressure-induced tear. It was a clean, straight slice through the reinforced rubber, deep enough to weaken it so it would blow the moment the system pressurized for landing.
Ice flooded her gut.
Run a comparison, she ordered, her mental voice tight. Check the damage pattern against standard failure profiles.
Already running, Fred said, his voice devoid of emotion. The edge is too clean for a rupture.
She stared at the line. Then her eyes drifted to the component next to it. A secondary power relay. The space where it should have been was empty.
“What the?—”
Reaching in, she picked up the mounting bracket lying loose in the bottom of the casing and held it up to the light, turning it over in her hand.
