Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

“Near done,” I call back. “Ten cooling, two cooking, two to go.”

“Finish up and go clean yourself.” Modrie Reller snaps open her fan and beats the steaming air away from her face. “Your father wants you for the visiting party.”

The pan of eggcakes wobbles in my hands. Me, on the visiting party? In our crewe, it’s rare for an unwed girl to set foot outside the ship. I had thought the Æthers—or whoever my father and brother chose, but please let it be the Æthers—would come aboard to claim me when the time came, like they did for those girls at the meet five turns past.

I grip the pan more firmly so the cakes don’t slide to the floor. “As you say, Modrie.”

Eme and the other smallgirls make wide eyes at me. Modrie Reller turns to go, and I clap my hands at them so they won’t spot my nerves. “Enough now. Hurry on.”

I’m itchy with sweat and covered in flour by the time we finish the cakes. I gather my oil cask and strigil as I make my way to the women’s cleanroom. I am reaching to pull aside the tapestry of Saeleas that covers the door when the shipwide alarm sounds. My heart jolts. I race back into the corridor. A group of men—Fixes—led by my brother Jerej thunders down the hall in the direction of the control room, leaving the few women about wide-eyed and flattened against the walls in their wake.

I pick up my skirts and hurry after Jerej, careful to keep far enough back so they won’t spot me. I know I should leave it to them to fix what’s gone wrong. I should keep to my own duties and be content to worry quietly with the other women. But I can’t help myself. This ship is my home, too, and some small part of me thinks the Fixes might let me help if they were desperate enough. Oh, Ava, they would say. If only we had known what a talent she had for fixes sooner . . .

The alarm stops as Jerej and the others reach the control room door. I hover outside and listen.

“. . . said you had fixed it.” The head Fix, Balab’s, voice reaches me first.

“We did fix it,” my brother says.

Balab snorts. “Not well enough.”

“I told you, we need a new pressure seal on the piston.” Frustration creeps into Jerej’s voice, making him sound younger than his fifteen years. “I can patch it all you want, but that boom’s never going to work proper unless it’s got a new seal.”

I sigh with relief. It’s only the boom again, one of the arms that spreads and retracts our solar sails. The men must have been pulling it in to prepare for docking when it broke.

“You’re the heir,” Balab says. “You try convincing Cerrec the seal’s Priority. See where you get.”

“Maybe I will.” Jerej snaps back.

“Do,” Balab says. “But in the meantime, get down there and patch it up so the whole spar doesn’t snap off when we dock. The rest of you, back to your duties.”

I scurry away from the door and squeeze into one of the canary alcoves just in time. Jerej stalks past me.

I slip out after him and shadow him down the hall, into the access stair to the Parastrata’s innards. We pass the reactor engines humming behind their lead barriers and cross a gangway suspended over the murky desalination pool. Whenever I’m on kitchen duty, I volunteer to run things down to the Fixes in this part of the ship. I used to hope I’d get to see the reactor, but then I heard some of the men say it can melt your skin if you get too close. Jerej disappears down the last flight of stairs, into the dim sail storage berth. He stops at the bottom and stares at the half-folded boom.

“I know you’re there.” His voice echoes in the bare room.

I freeze, heart racing.

He looks over his shoulder and frowns up at me, stopped halfway down the steps. “What are you skulking down here for, Ava?”

“I wasn’t skulking,” I say.

He rolls his eyes. “Sneaking, then. What is it you want?”

“I, um . . .” I fiddle with the fan in my skirt pocket. “I thought I could help.”

“Help?” He laughs, and then looks down at the broken boom and the mess of hydraulic fluid all over the floor. “All right, you can help.”

I grin and start down the last flight of stairs, but Jerej stops me at the bottom.

He points to a bucket of rags beneath the steps. “You can sop all this up so I don’t slip.”

Of course. He would never let me help with the fix itself. Why should he? But I nod anyway and fetch the rags. At least I can watch Jerej at his work, see if I can pick up anything new. And then when I’m with Soli and Luck, the thers will see how good I am and let me on Fixes.

I watch Jerej from the corner of my eye as I clean. He pulls out the pins holding the boom’s casing in place and lifts it away to show the arm’s inner works. It looks some like a skinned goat’s leg, only with metal rods and tensile wire where the bones and ligaments would be, and a piston for the knee. I can see how it should work, the hydraulics easing the boom along its path, but with no pressure, the whole operation is jammed.

Jerej removes the piston from its mount. The seal curls up on one end, blown open by the force of the hydraulics.

Jerej grunts in displeasure. “Hand me that adhesive, would you, Ava?”

I glance at the supply shelves behind me. Cans and tubs of all sizes fill the levels, each with their own indecipherable label across the front. I could no more pick out the one he wants than fly the ship.

Jerej looks up and rolls his eyes. “The red can. Top shelf, on the right.”

I fetch it to him and step back to watch.

Jerej coats the seal in sticky spray, fits it back onto the piston, and pulls a device with a wide muzzle from the fixes dangling at his belt. It buzzes softly as he moves it around the edges of the seal.

“What’s that?” I say.

Jerej throws me a half-amused look. “A cold fuser. What else?”

“What’s it do?” I ask, even though I can guess it’s somehow meant to help the seal stick better.

Jerej raises his eyebrows. “It doesn’t interrupt me when I’m working.”

“Sorry.” I drop my sodden rag into the bucket and grab a clean one. Learning fixes is well and good, but Jerej is right. His work is Priority. I shouldn’t be pestering him.

Jerej fits the piston back into the arm, refills the hydraulic chamber, and snaps the casing around it once again.

“There. That should last us till we dock, at least.” Jerej wipes his hands on his trousers and buzzes up to the control room with the handheld hanging from his belt. “So Balab, are you there?”

“Right so.” The older man’s voice comes back.

“I’ve got it raveled,” Jerej says. “Start it up.”

An electric hum fills the air. The boom shudders to life and resumes its slide, folding itself gracefully into sections.

Jerej pockets his handheld and grins. “Told that oldboy I’d do it.” He looks at me, and for a moment, I see the smallboy he was when we were younger, the one who played chase with me in the hangar bay before we were old enough for our separate duties.

Behind him, the metal arm jams and a deafening bang rocks the air. The boom jerks and collapses on itself with a shriek I feel in my teeth.

“Damn!” Jerej jumps clear of the spar and holds out a hand to shield me. In the distance, the warning alarm starts up again.

His handheld crackles to life—Balab, cursing him blue and laying out his plans for my brother’s worthless hide.