Salvage (4 page)

“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.

“I hear you,” Jerej shouts into the handheld. “I'm on it.

“Damn,” he says again, once the alarm has shut off. He runs a hand through his hair and kicks the boom. “Worthless. How am I supposed to do a proper fix with scrap for a seal?”

I bite my lip. “Maybe . . .”

Jerej frowns at me. “What?”

“What if you made it so it didn't push so hard?”

“You mean decrease the pressure?” Jerej shakes his head. “That seal's so bust, Lifil could break it.”

I reach past him and finger the seal's frayed edge. It's not the center that's weak, only the outer rim. It's like trying to keep the top on a jar of preserves without a ring.

“What if you had something . . .” I trail off and hurry to the supply shelves. I rummage through until I find what I need—a round rubber belt with enough give to fit over the mouth of the piston.

Jerej makes a face. “What's that for?”

“To keep it in place,” I explain. “You lower the pressure, see? Then you put the seal back on and put this over it, around the sides.”

“I don't know.” He takes the belt from me. “I guess . . . it might do. The casing wouldn't fit back over it, though.”

A moment of doubt creeps up on me. “That won't hurt it, will it?”

Jerej frowns in thought. “Not in the short run. I s'pose no casing's better than no boom at all.”

I hover near the stairs as Jerej tries my fix. When it's in place, he calls up to Balab again.

“You'd better have it this time,” the head Fix grumbles.

The hum starts back up. Slowly, the boom moves back on track, clicking as each section snaps into place. I hold my breath. It's slower this time with the pressure turned low, but the seal holds. The last length of the arm clicks home, and the machinery powers itself down with a sigh.

“It worked!” Jerej grabs my shoulder and lets out a short laugh.

I laugh with him, and for a span of breath, we are those children again, running free across the bay.

Then suspicion chills Jerej's features. He steps away from me and narrows his eyes. “How . . . how did you know that fix?”

“I didn't,” I say. My mouth has gone dry. “Just a lucky guess.”

We stare at each other in uncomfortable silence. The other Fixes would never let him hear the end of it if they found out a girl had made the fix for him.

“I only wanted to help,” I say. “I won't tell anyone.”

Jerej's mouth sharpens into a line. “No. You won't.”

I catch my breath, stung. Jerej is right. He'd be teased, sure, but we both know I'd have more to lose if it came out I was the one to find the fix. Even so, it hurts to hear him say it.

“You should go,” he says. “You've got your own chores.”

“Right so,” I agree. And without another look at him, I flee up the stairs.

The girls my age are still off on their duties, so most of the women bathing themselves are wives, some only a few turns older than me, their bellies big with child. They smile on me and whisper to their neighbors as I kneel on the cleanroom tile beside them. The word I'm to be a bride must be making the rounds.

I cover my hands and arms with oil and try to ignore the leaden feeling in my stomach.

Never let them see you doubt
, I hear Modrie Reller say.
A so girl is a beacon to her people. She is our mother Saeleas reborn in virgin glory
.

I lift my chin and concentrate on wicking away the day's flour and dirt with the dull, curved blade of my strigil. Let them talk. As gossip goes, it isn't the bad kind. Far better than any rumor about my unnatural interest in fixes. Maybe it's better to be remembered this way, the dutiful daughter, not anyone extraordinary. I will be like Saeleas. I will be a story my crewemates tell their smallones of how a woman may be raised high by virtue and obedience.

I find Modrie Reller waiting for me back in the women's quarters, Llell at her side. I stop dead. Llell's arms are full of copper bands and quilted cloth, her eyes fastened to the floor. By all rights, she should be the one being washed and prepared for betrothal, since she's near a full turn older than me, and we both know it. Modrie Reller knows it, too. It's pure cruelty to make her attend another bride. I flash a look at my stepmother, but her face is serene.

“You're leaving us a bride.” Modrie Reller motions Llell forward with a clipped wave. “We have to be sure you arrive looking like one.”

Llell and I can barely meet each other's eyes as she helps me into fresh skirts, my good, dark-green ones with tiny mirrors surrounded by pale green starbursts. Why is Modrie Reller doing this? Llell can't have wanted to be my handmaid. She tugs too hard at my skirt ties. The cords dig into my skin, but I bite my lip and keep my tongue still.

Llell finishes with my skirts and laces me into a sleeveless quilted shirt with inlaid copper disks. Afterward, she holds up a mirror while Modrie Reller carefully combs and braids my hair. The dye leaves it shiny, but still some brittle, even after the cooling cloth.

“Hold out your arms,” Modrie Reller says when I am brushed and braided.

I do. She has Llell kneel and wind the copper wire around my ankles and forearms. I try to hold still as she wraps me with practiced, pinching efficiency, but I can tell from the flush along her hands and downturned cheeks that shame is burning her up inside. Meanwhile, the copper weighs heavy on me, making my every move graceful but achingly slow.

Llell narrows her eyes to see better as she doubles the last of the wire into a tiny loop and secures it in place.

“Heavens, Llell.” Modrie Reller rolls her eyes. “Don't squint. No one wants a squint-eyed wife.”

“Modrie,” I mumble in protest.

“Modrie nothing.” She waves a hand, dismissing me. She flicks out the tip of her fan at Llell. “Now the mirror.”

I try to catch Llell's eye, but she lifts the heavy mirror again, hiding her own face behind the reflection of mine. Modrie Reller grips my chin as she paints pale shine onto my cheeks.

“There now,” she says when she finishes. “At least you don't look so Earth bred.”

I can't see myself, only some other girl. A bride in her thick green skirts and heavy copper wristlets, face shimmer-pale beside her deep red braids. Is that me? I feel as if I'm only a passenger in this body.

“That will do, Llell.” My stepmother flaps open her fan and waves it to cool her neck. “Have your mother bring those tapestries to the bay, the ones for the bride gift.”

Llell slinks from the room. Maybe I can find her before the visiting party leaves, explain how I didn't ask Modrie Reller to pull her from her duties, didn't want her forced into being my handmaid . . .