The Engine We Carried

The replacement port engine arrived in a crate that had been used for something alive.

A faded quarantine symbol covered one side. The other bore three layers of shipping labels, each from a different habitat and none from Pelin Exchange. Sera had it dragged to our berth by a loader with one wheel missing.

“Functional,” she said, tapping the crate. “Not elegant. Do not ask whether it has a warranty.”

“I was going to ask whether it has all its parts.”

“It has more parts than your skiff.”

I looked at the crate. “That is a low standard.”

Sera’s mouth moved almost imperceptibly. On anyone else, I would have called it a smile. “You have fourteen hours before the corridor’s first safe alignment. After that, the route remains usable, but the debris probability rises.”

“Can we leave in fourteen hours?”

“If you install the engine.”

“And if I do not?”

“Then you will possess a valid route to the central planets and no way to follow it.”

She walked away before I could accuse her of enjoying this.

Iven stood beside the open cargo hatch, his body held very still. His remaining function estimate hovered on my wrist screen: eighteen hours and thirty-two minutes. The number had become a third person in every conversation. It listened. It waited for us to spend it.

“I can assist with the installation,” he said.

“You can sit down and remain operational.”

“That is not assistance.”

“It is the highest-value assistance currently available.”

He examined the engine crate. “The mounting geometry may be incompatible.”

“It will be.”

“You sound confident.”

“I have met machinery.”

I cut the crate open.

The engine was older than the one it replaced, but less damaged. Its housing had been painted a color that might once have been yellow. The intake vanes were clean. The coupling ring had only two stripped bolts. I considered this generous until I found that the control bus used a military connector discontinued before I was born.

I laid the old engine’s broken coupling beside the replacement and took measurements. The skiff’s port nacelle had been scorched during the transfer burn. Three sections of the mounting frame were fused together, and the remaining bolts had expanded in place. Removing them would require heat I could not safely use near the fuel lines.

“I will need to cut the frame,” I said.

Iven lowered himself onto the berth’s edge. His movements were smooth but delayed by fractions of a second. “The thermal shielding behind the frame is compromised.”

“I know.”

“If you cut through the second brace, heat will conduct into the propellant manifold.”

“I know.”

He turned his lens toward me. “You have not inspected the manifold.”

“I inspected it yesterday.”

“You inspected the exterior.”

“That is generally where manifolds keep their secrets.”

“I have a repair schematic.”

“Of course you do.”

His right hand moved toward the skiff’s open service panel, then stopped. He had learned to ask before touching the work I was doing. This was a small courtesy. It made me want to permit him everything.

“May I display it?” he asked.

I gave him the data lead.

His fingers connected it to the skiff’s diagnostic port. The old screen flickered, filled with a diagram, and then displayed an error in three languages. Iven waited exactly two seconds before tapping the casing.

The diagram returned.

“Violence,” I said.

“Percussive maintenance.”

“Violence with a trade certificate.”

He enlarged the manifold section. The drawing showed a bypass valve buried behind the damaged frame, accessible only from beneath the nacelle. I would have missed it. If the engine mount heated during the test burn, the valve could be closed manually before the manifold ruptured.

“Why was this not in the standard service panel?” I asked.

“The manufacturer believed technicians preferred difficult access.”

“The manufacturer believed technicians had enemies.”

I crawled beneath the nacelle.

For the next three hours, I cut, drilled, and swore. The skiff was too small for comfortable work even before I filled it with tools and replacement parts. Metal shavings stuck to my gloves. Old insulation came away in gray strips. Twice, a fastener spun loose and struck my cheek hard enough to bruise through the skin.

Iven passed me tools when I asked. He did not offer unnecessary observations. When my shoulder began to shake from holding the cutter overhead, he braced the housing with one hand and took the weight without comment.

“Your arm is not rated for that,” I said.

“Neither is your shoulder.”

“Mine is replaceable.”

“So is mine.”

I slid out from beneath the nacelle and looked at him.

He held the engine housing steady. The servomotors in his left arm trembled. His chest light had dimmed by one shade.

“That was not an invitation,” I said.

“I know.”

“Then let go.”

“If I let go, the housing will shift.”

“I can secure it.”

“You have not secured it.”

His precision was irritating because it was correct.

I secured the housing. He released it and sat back. The motion took effort he tried to conceal by making it orderly.

“Iven.”

“Yes?”

“Do not spend your remaining time making my work easier.”

He looked at the engine, not at me. “Your work is part of my remaining time.”

That sentence entered the berth and stayed there.

I returned to the nacelle before he could see what it did to my face.

By the seventh hour, the new engine was mounted. The coupling ring needed a spacer, which I made from the courier’s outer casing after removing its emergency beacon. The control bus required six centimeters of wire and an interface relay I had been saving for a better day.

This was not a better day. It was merely the day that had arrived.

I soldered the relay while Iven read the route core’s instructions aloud from the skiff’s console. The central corridor had three narrow turns through fields of frozen debris. The final transit could not be automated. Manual piloting was not a suggestion; it was the only reason the route remained valid.

“Your hands must maintain port thrust within a margin of two percent,” he said.

“Mine are excellent hands.”

“You dropped the soldering iron.”

“It was hot.”

“That is generally the hazard associated with soldering irons.”

I laughed before I could stop myself. The sound startled me. It seemed too large for the berth, too alive among the exposed wires and old grease.

Iven’s head turned toward me.

“What?” I asked.

“I was recording it.”

“Delete it.”

“No.”

I should have objected. Instead, I bent over the relay and let him keep the sound.

The engine’s first test nearly failed.

When I powered the bus, the port nacelle shuddered and drew twice its projected current. I killed the feed, opened the panel, and found the relay sparking against the frame. The spacer had shifted by less than a millimeter.

Iven was already moving toward the cutoff.

“Stop,” I said.

“The circuit is unstable.”

“I can fix it.”

“Your hand is bleeding.”

I looked down. A sharp edge had opened my palm. The blood was bright against the black grease.

“That is not relevant.”

“It is relevant to your grip strength.”

“It is less relevant than you touching the cutoff.”

He stopped. His hand remained suspended between us and the panel.

I wedged the spacer into place with a strip of copper, wrapped my bleeding palm in insulation tape, and powered the bus again.

The engine coughed.

Then it turned.

The vibration traveled through the berth, through the skiff’s deck, and into my knees. It was not a beautiful sound. It was rough, uneven, and mechanically offended to be alive. I pressed my hand against the housing.

The port thrust indicator climbed past eighteen percent.

Twenty-one.

Twenty-four.

I killed the engine before it could rise higher.

For several seconds, neither of us spoke.

“Installed,” I said.

“Functionally installed,” Iven replied.

I turned on him. “Do not ruin this.”

“It is structurally sound.”

“Better.”

He stood and crossed to the pilot’s console. With careful fingers, he removed the automated guidance limiter from the control column. The limiter had been designed to prevent a human pilot from making rapid corrections. The route demanded rapid corrections.

He adjusted the seat forward by four centimeters.

“For me?” I asked.

“You require a clearer view of the port thrust gauge.”

He lowered the control column. Then he taped a small handwritten sequence beside the manual override: HOLD, CORRECT, RELEASE. His handwriting was not handwriting, exactly. It was a set of printed symbols shaped by a machine learning human penmanship from old maintenance manuals.

“You prepared this while I was under the nacelle,” I said.

“I calculated that you would insist on piloting the final transit.”

“I have not insisted.”

“You are holding the route core.”

I looked down. I had been gripping it since Ring Twelve.

Iven’s chest light flickered once.

“I want you beside me,” I said. “Not conserving power in a berth. Not watching from a diagnostic screen. Beside me.”

His lens rested on my face. “That will consume additional function.”

“I know.”

“Your objective is to reach the central planets.”

“My objective is to reach them with you.”

The words were less difficult than they had been at Nacre-7. That frightened me more than difficulty would have.

Iven placed his hand over mine on the control column. His fingers were cool, jointed, and unsteady at the tips.

“Then I will be beside you,” he said.

Outside the berth, Pelin Exchange rotated through artificial night. Beyond its hull, the route corridor waited among the frozen metal.

We had an engine now. We had a map. We had thirteen hours before the first safe alignment.

The skiff had one more problem: I had never piloted a port-thrust approach through a debris corridor.

Iven turned on the training simulator.

The first virtual moon struck us in eleven seconds.