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17
RHIANNON
I wasn't exactly sure what my plan was, yet. However, I was pretty confident I could figure out the fire suppression system on a ship if I had access to one. From what I knew, they were armed the same way a weapon was armed, set to fire when triggered. Only, in this case, the trigger was the heat of a flame.
It also happened that fires were one of the biggest risk factors for any ship or drone that wanted to stay airborne, so they all had pretty robust suppression systems onboard. As for drones, they had the added benefit of operating remotely, so we could send the thing straight to the heart of the fire.
At the edge of the estate, a large building loomed with a wide open bay. Inside, I could just see the nose of a drone poking out. Nikathy let me inspect it, waiting for my approval.
"It'll work," I announced. "You know how to fly this thing?"
"Of course I do."
He brought me deeper into the open hangar and flipped on a light. A whole console spread out in front of me, devoted to powering the drone. I couldn't imagine what Nikathy or his father had needed this thing for, but it was none of my business.
I read over the buttons quickly, scanning for anything that might be useful. Then I spotted exactly what I was looking for.
"Okay, if you can get it started, I think I can handle the rest."
"I sure hope so," he murmured. And then the drone was coming to life with a low buzz that rattled the walls of the hangar.
"Take it up and make a lap. I need to see where the hottest point is. If we're going to stop the fire, we need to be sure we hit the right spot."
I watched the bank of screens in front of me intently as the drone pulled out of the hangar behind us and took to the air. Nikathy worked silently, his hands deftly playing at the controls as he brought it up and over the main house. He made a lazy circle high overhead, and then another closer to the ground. I tried not to shudder at the complete destruction that I was seeing in some of those rooms.
"All right. You're going to bring it down close to the fire, but not too close. When I hit the discharge button, the ship is going to dump its suppressant. We don't want it to get carried away on the wind. But we don't want the flames to damage the drone's fuel cells, either. So when I say, bring it down, I'll hit the button, and then you need to pull up and out of there."
He nodded, and I counted down slowly, pointing at the screen so he could see exactly where I needed him to position the little ship. When it was in just the right place, I counted again, pressing my thumb into the button stiffly, and waiting for the ports under the belly of the ship to open. There was a long moment as the snowy powder began to fall, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
It was a start, but the fire wasn't out. All we had done was douse the largest of the flames, but the embers at the heart of the fire still glowed brightly on my screens.
"What now?" he asked, disappointment heavy in his voice.
"Take it to the pool," I instructed calmly. "We're going to take on water in the central tank, and make another drop."
"How?"
It was a fair question. The little drone wasn't exactly equipped with a bucket or any other means of collecting the water from the pool and carrying it to the house. But I had an idea, and I was banking on Nikathy's skills as a pilot to pull it off.
"Very carefully. Now that those ports are blown out from the suppression system, water can flow back into them and into the tank. If you can bring the drone down and dip the hull into the water just far enough to submerge the ports, we might be able to siphon enough up to make a difference. If we can get the worst of those coals put out, the rest of the fire will die down on its own."
I didn't know that for a fact, but Nikathy was still looking at me like I was out of my mind, so I needed to sound confident. Finally, he brought the ship around to the pools and I talked him through the process, having him dip one port in and then the other, rocking the ship lightly from side to side to release the air in the system and get the siphon going.
This created another problem, though, because I couldn't see the pool clearly, and I had no idea how large the tank was on the drone. It couldn't be too big because the thing wouldn't have gotten off the ground, but I also didn't want to sell us short if it could take on more water. I closed my eyes and started counting, hoping that by the time I reached the number in my head we would have enough.
"I think she's full," Nikathy muttered beside me. "She's starting to dip. It's hard to keep her up, and I'm scared one of her wings is going to strike the ground."
"Pull her up. We can't risk it." Whether we had enough water on board or not, this is what we had to work with. "You should be able to get closer to the ground now. There aren't any more big flames to watch out for, but we still need to be careful of the heat.
He nodded, babying the overloaded drone until it was bobbing uneasily over the ravaged frame of the house. I rested my hand on the button again and waited until I could judge the distance close enough. Then I hit it again. This time, the ship released a pitiful stream of water, hardly enough to account for all the time we'd wasted, and a cry of defeat caught in my throat. But just as I was about to give up on the whole ploy, the ship shuddered oddly, made a strange noise, and then a gush of water streamed out of the central tank.
It flooded down between the embers, soaking everything. From here, we could hear the protesting groans of the house's old bones under the weight. And the camera was blocked by a thick veil of steam.
Nikathy steered the drone back up and out of the cloud to where we could see. I couldn't be sure, but I believed the fire was out for good.
"What's going to happen next?" I murmured.
He shook his head sadly. "I wish I knew."
