NOVEL WEB 26.Inspection
The next two days went by in a blur. With Mr Yeager and Echo helping out, work progressed nicely. We had turned the absolute chaos of my workshop into, well, still chaos, but there were a lot less nacelles hanging on racks than before and most of my ship had been reassembled. The false caps I had fashioned had been pulled off and the nearly three meter long pods of field coils and plasma conduits were now hanging from the pylons instead. Inside, the deck plating was mostly in place with only a few pieces to be reconnected for the installation of the computer to be finished.
Although the older Ericksons along with Gilbert Yeager stayed in some of the transient quarters aboard D’reth, Echo had decided that she would be staying at my place. The first night had been quite the embarrassment for me, since I was unaware of that fact until the girl told me at dinner. I was quickly turned into a near useless mess, something she laughed endlessly about. There was a mostly joking comment from her mother about ‘not getting into trouble’ but in the end, Echo simply slept on the couch. We hung out in the evenings watching the Estoylan Chronicles and chatting about various things, but nothing more intimate than that happened, to my slight disappointment.
In the afternoon of the third day, we took a break to grab some lunch while we waited for the inspector. Echo’s parents joined us at my favorite cafe. The daughter and parents hugged and all of us sat down at a corner table. There weren’t any of us that looked to be entirely fresh-eyed.
“Hello, Captain.”
Marcus looked at me wearily. “Hello, Adresta. I hope your work is going better than our investigation. Security around this station is not exactly equivalent to what we are used to at home. Suffice to say, we have not been able to obtain evidence so far.”
I responded with significantly more enthusiasm. “We have requested that the inspector come by later today. Things are essentially completed, just some cleanup work to do after they finish. If the inspector approves, I can be flying as early as tomorrow. Gilbert and I are pretty confident that things are in good and proper order.”
The other engineer nodded. “This youngin knows her craft well. I only found a couple relatively minor faults with anything and they got fixed. It’ll fly.”
“That's great news!” Piped in Rachael. “I’m already getting tired of this station. It’s nice to get out on occasion, but I generally prefer being home and the people here are proving difficult. I fear that I’m not well suited for hanging about scavenger stations. I do hope that things go well.”
“I’ll be asking Mr Yates to continue the investigation using the logs we procured.” The captain sighed. “Since we haven’t found anything yet, I don’t see much point in sticking around longer. If your tests succeed, we can fly out together the day after.”
I nodded. “Sounds great. After inspection tonight, I’ll start packing. All of the furniture stays with the unit so I need not worry about that. The biggest things to get together will be my workshop and the primary computer array for my AI, Vox. I’m not terribly concerned though. The Oxide’s cargo hold is plenty big enough to hold it all.”
Lunch arrived and the five of us were able to dig into a vegetable stir fry. It was tasty. We probably would have continued talking longer after eating, but my holopad alerted me to a text message. I hummed. Usually Vox would have let me know about the message. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t ever commanded her to, but she did so anyway. No matter.
‘On my way to your hangar -Inspector F. Graf’
I quickly took another large bite of my food and then put the chopsticks down. “Time for me to go. Inspector is on the way.”
“Good luck.” Said the Erickson parents in unison.
“I’ll come with you,” Chimed in Echo.
Gilbert on the other hand just settled further into his seat. “I’m not finished eating. I’ll stay here for now. You kids go on.”
Echo and I both stood and said our goodbyes before rushing back to my hangar where we found a man already waiting for us at the door.
“Soren Matson? I’m Inspector Fareth. Here to inspect the Oxide-77 for flight worthiness, including a newly installed warp drive.”
Though I was about to let the deadnaming pass, I remembered what Echo said and that I had already gotten my legal name change. “It’s Adresta Matson, actually. But yes, I need that inspection.”
He looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “Adresta, huh? Whatever. I’m here to do a job, not judge your personal life.” It wasn’t acceptance, but it was better than I expected.
“Right this way then, Mr Fareth.” I unlocked the door and stepped inside. Strangely, the lights did not come on as I entered. “Um… Just a moment, sir. Let me get the lights.”
After confirming that the manual switches weren’t working either, I grabbed an emergency flashlight from the kit near the door and used it to make my way back to the control panel in the back room. Vox’s core was still running, but only at reduced power.That gave me an idea of what had happened.
Sure enough, the hangar’s power breaker had been tripped and the core was running off of backup power. That explained why Vox hadn’t given me the alert before and why the lights were out. D’reth being as old as it was, occasionally circuits would surge, the breakers prevented any damage, but it would cut off power in the area until reset. It wasn’t as common as the issues in the cafeterias and lifts, but far from unknown.
With a few switches flipped, lights flickered on through the hangar and I was able to meet my guests back at the door.
“Apologies for that, inspector. Just a tripped circuit. You know how it is around here.” He nodded. “Well, come on in. Don’t mind the mess, we’ve been doing a lot of work the last few days.”
My guest pulled a pad from his bag and opened a document showing the schematics of the Centurion transport, likely to compare the star drive specifications. Another pad already had the entirety of my maintenance logs opened for his perusal.
“I will begin by inspecting the frame for structural integrity. Then I will move on to flight systems, engines and finally the drive. You will need to remove access panels as needed in order to facilitate this process. By submitting to this inspection, you agree to abide by my judgment no matter the result, under penalty of law. Do you understand?”
“Understood, sir. You may proceed.”
He harrumphed and began the inspection. Many times I had to open up spots along the fuselage so he could look underneath, but I never heard him say anything negative about what he saw. In fact, the man was almost completely silent except for the occasional hum. He did spend a good amount of time looking at the nacelles and the reactor core which made me nervous. There was also not insignificant time spent looking over the computer module.
All I could do was watch on and do as he instructed. Echo observed from a distance, using the chair from my back room. Even after Fareth had looked over all of the ship he brought all of the systems online one by one to measure their performance. Everything from the comm system to the emergency life support was put through its paces over the course of the next five hours. This guy was being more particular than even the inspector that had looked at the Oxide when I was preparing to fly for the first time.
There were a couple things that the inspector noted, mostly loose connectors and improperly secured components. Inspector Fareth called them out as they were found. Thankfully, none of them were things I couldn’t fix within a few minutes. I, in fact, did so while he continued the inspection. As I completed tasks, I called him back over to get the fix noted and signed off on.
When the man had completed his inspection, he stopped at my workbench and withdrew a number of things from his bag. “Matson, excepting the minor grievances that you addressed already, I find no reason to keep this vessel grounded. You will be required to submit logs from your first faster than light tests, but I hereby give you clearance to perform them under a provisional certificate. The logs will be reviewed and if nothing of note is found, you will receive your certificate of flight worthiness within two days.”
I beamed. Pure happiness and anticipation burned in my veins. It took everything I had not to jump with joy and scream it for the entire station to hear.
“Thank you, Inspector! I’ll have them sent to you as soon as I’ve completed the flight!”
After a few gruff niceties, Inspector Fareth left Echo and I alone in the hangar once again. As soon as the door sealed I let out a squeal”
“YEESSSS!!! We passed! We PASSED!!”
Echo laughed at me, but was also sporting a big grin. “Yes we did. The three of us certainly put in enough work.”
With giddy energy, I pranced over to the Oxide and did my best to hug the cockpit bubble. My arms couldn’t stretch wide enough, but I was too happy to care, even as Echo chortled at me.
“I want to fly! Like, right now!”
“Addy,” cautioned Echo. “We can fly tomorrow. It's late and we need our rest for now. Besides, didn’t you say something about packing?”
I pouted and replied with a whine. “I know, but I wanna fly…”
My companion put an arm around my shoulders and giggled. “You’re cute like that. The time will come though.”
Blushing hard, I slumped down and finally nodded. “Fine…” Seemingly in response to the acceptance of my fate, my belly rumbled. “Oh… I guess I didn’t eat enough at lunch.”
That got a laugh. “Alright, we can stop for some food, but you aren’t getting out of the packing! We’ll grab sandwiches on the way to your unit. We ought to call Dad and Gilbert, though. Let them know that you passed.”
“Good idea. I’ll make the call now if you can wait a minute.” She nodded and I flicked open my holopad. I didn’t have the engineer’s contact card, so I called the captain, hoping that they were together.
Marcus’s face appeared a few moments later, smiling at someone off screen. “Hold on, love. Adresta is calling.” His eyes turned back to me. “Well, you look happy. I assume things went well?”
“Nothing we couldn’t handle on the spot. My conditional flight certificate has been approved! Echo’s making me go home and pack though…” I was dejected at the last bit.
The captain raised an eyebrow. “Is that not what the plan was?”
“Oh, don’t mind her, Dad,” my bully of a friend answered with a smirk in her voice. “She’s just being impatient.” her father nodded and chuckled.
“Sounds like you when we were getting ready to leave for the Celeste Institute, or even a couple weeks later when we were taking you on your first shopping trip afterward.” I laughed at that and took great satisfaction in the retribution being exacted on the now brightly blushing Callisto Erickson.
“Daaaddd!” she whined. “I was excited!”
“And so is Adresta!” He said, laughing all the more at his daughter. “Anyways, I’m glad to hear it, Adresta. I’m afraid that Rachael and I are a bit tied up with a meeting right now, but we will most definitely be there in the morning to watch the flight. I’ve no doubt that Mister Yeager will want to be there as well.”
His words put a bounce back in my mood. “Thank you, Captain. Best of luck with your meeting, I’ll not interrupt it further.”
Rachael’s face came into the picture over Marcus’s shoulder. “For now, get some rest, you two. You especially, Miss Matson. You’ve all worked very hard the last few days. We don’t want anything to go wrong tomorrow because you didn’t sleep enough tonight.” She blew a kiss at the camera. “Sleep tight, Callisto, dear. We’ll meet you first thing tomorrow at Adresta’s hangar, alright?”
Echo waved at her parents. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Thank you from me as well,” I said. “You all have been more helpful than I could have ever asked for.”
“Glad to help, Miss. Marcus and Callisto both have been very forthcoming with their exaltations of you.” Rachael seemed nice, I was pretty sure that I was going to like her. Good thing, too, since this is the person that would be handling all of my payroll.
Marcus spoke again. “Have a good evening, you two.”
I gave a polite ‘good night’ in response and Echo echoed with a ‘G’night Mom and Dad!’. The call ended and left us alone once again.
“Hey, just a minute before we leave, Echo. I’m going to check on Vox. I didn’t earlier because of the inspector.”
“Alright Addy.”
I stepped into the back and sat at Vox’s console. Her core was still running, but it was on low power mode. It was easy enough to bring it up to full capacity again, though.
“Hey Vox, you there?”
For a brief moment, there was only silence and I was concerned that something had really gone wrong, but my fear was for naught.
“Greetings, Miss Adresta.”
I sighed in relief. “Looks like a breaker tripped and your core went into conservation mode. Are all of your systems operational?”
“Standby for status check.” I waited with baited breath. “Check complete. All systems are nominal. Logs show that primary power terminated at one-six-one-three hours station time. All systems switched to emergency backup power within point zero zero two seconds. No errors noted.”
A deep breath. “Good. Excellent, even. I’m glad you’re alright. I don’t think I would be able to live without you, Vox.”
Cheekily, the AI replied, “Estimates show that your life would continue without major risks to physical health. Mental health is more questionable, however.” I laughed.
“Thanks, Vox. Glad to know you have my back.”
“As always, Ma’am.” With that done, I turned and found Echo standing in the doorway. She expressed gladness that Vox was alright and the two of us left the hangar.
On our way to my apartment, we did indeed grab some sandwiches for dinner. After arriving back at my unit, packing wasn’t fun, but having Echo around made it a lot more bearable. It hadn’t taken much to put most of my meager belongings in a duffel bag. Sleep was slow in coming though, I was too excited for what was to come.
The flight of a lifetime was only a few hours away.