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(A/N: I hope everyone give my new novel Skyrim a chance and added it to their library!)
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But because now they knew exactly what they were dealing with, and they weren't backing down.
Five hours later, the workshop felt like a different place.
Not quieter because the noise had intensified, but more focused. The easy background chatter was gone. No idle jokes. No half-finished sentences drifting into nothing. Every voice now had an edge to it, sharpened by adrenaline and the kind of concentration that came from knowing you'd just brushed past something ugly.
The Vertibird still hung silent in its gantries, the scorched section of conduit now fully exposed. Panels had been removed with surgical care, each bolt tagged, logged, and set aside. Temporary scaffolding surrounded the midsection, allowing engineers to climb, crouch, and crawl into spaces that had never been meant to be comfortable.
The skeleton looked vulnerable like this.
Open.
Its sleek lines interrupted by bare internals, its predatory silhouette softened by the mess of hands and tools crawling over it. But there was something intimate about it too, like seeing the inside of a clock for the first time and realizing just how much had to go right for the hands to move.
Mel stood at the center of it all, coat long abandoned somewhere near the entrance, sleeves rolled up, forearms streaked with grease and ash. His tablet had been replaced by a wall of projections with structural models, power-flow simulations, thermal maps that layered over each other in shifting transparency.
Chen hadn't left the core bay once.
Not to eat.
Not to sit.
She moved between terminals like she was tethered to them, eyes bloodshot but razor-focused, fingers flying over controls with mechanical precision. Her voice had gone hoarse somewhere around hour two, but she refused to stop talking, narrating data as if silence might let something slip past unnoticed.
"Power history logged," she said. "I'm replaying the exact millisecond window before cutoff."
Mae stood beside her now, no longer hovering at the edge of the group. Her tablet was synced to Chen's feed, thermal data scrolling in sharp peaks and valleys.
"There," Mae said suddenly, jabbing at the screen. "That spike. It's not just heat, it's directional."
Chen leaned in, squinting. "Directional how?"
Mae pulled up a comparison overlay. "It isn't radiating outward evenly. It's being pulled toward the frame junction."
Jansen, perched halfway up the scaffolding, looked down sharply. "Pulled?"
"Yes," Mae said. "Like something created a preferential path."
Rhea was already adjusting her own projections. "That would mean—"
"Conductive resonance," Mel finished.
The room stilled.
Chen straightened slowly. "But that junction is insulated."
"From static conditions," Mel said. "Not dynamic flex."
Jansen cursed under his breath. "I knew it."
He climbed down, boots hitting the floor with a dull thud, and strode over to the structural display. He pulled up a stress animation, fingers stabbing at the air.
"Watch this," he said.
The projection shifted. The Vertibird skeleton appeared as a ghostly wireframe, forces rippling through it in slow motion. As simulated torque increased, the midsection flexed that barely visible, less than a millimeter but enough to alter alignment.
"There," Jansen said. "That joint twists just enough under transient load to bring the power conduit within resonance distance of the frame rib."
Rhea leaned closer. "And the rib is grounded."
Chen's eyes widened. "So when I rerouted assist power—"
"You created a momentary loop," Mel said quietly. "Not an overload. A feedback echo."
Mae swallowed. "It fed itself."
"Yes," Mel said. "For a fraction of a second."
"And that's all it needed," Rhea added.
Silence fell again.
Not shocked silence.
Understanding silence.
Sico, who had remained in the background through most of it, stepped closer now. He'd watched the team work themselves raw, watched the way the panic from the explosion had burned off and left something colder and more precise behind.
"So," he said evenly, "you found it."
Mel nodded. "Yes."
"And you can fix it?"
Mel didn't answer immediately.
He looked at the projection again, then up at the real machine, his eyes tracing the problem area like a scar.
"Yes," he said finally. "But it means changing things."
"Good," Sico said without hesitation. "Do it."
Mel glanced at him. "You didn't ask what it costs."
Sico met his gaze. "Time spent fixing a flaw is cheaper than time spent burying pilots."
That earned a faint, grim smile from more than one person in the room.
Chen exhaled slowly. "We can isolate the conduit further. Increase separation. Add a damping sleeve."
"And re-route the assist path," Rhea said. "Less efficient, but safer."
Jansen nodded. "And I can stiffen the joint without over-reinforcing it. Spread the load differently."
Mel listened, letting the ideas pile up, then raised a hand.
"Okay," he said. "One change at a time. We fix the physical vulnerability first."
He turned to Jansen. "Structural modifications. Light reinforcement, redistributed. No hard lock."
Jansen nodded. "I'll need to fabricate new brackets."
"You'll get them," Mel said.
"Chen," he continued, "you redesign the conduit path. No resonance risk. Assume worst-case flex."
Chen's jaw set. "Already thinking about it."
"Mae," Mel said, turning to her, "thermal shielding. I want redundancy."
Mae swallowed, then nodded firmly. "I can do that."
Sico watched her straighten under the responsibility, the way fear didn't vanish but transformed into something steadier.
Leadership wasn't about eliminating doubt.
It was about giving people something solid to stand on despite it.
The next two hours passed in a blur of movement.
Fabricators roared to life, shaping new brackets and supports from composite alloys. Sparks flew in controlled bursts as welders worked with meticulous care. The damaged conduit was removed entirely, its charred insulation stripped away and cataloged like forensic evidence.
Chen supervised the rerouting personally, crawling into spaces no one else fit, muttering calculations under her breath as she worked. Her hands trembled once, briefly, then steadied.
Mae hovered nearby, testing materials, running heat simulations, rejecting two shielding options before settling on a layered solution that balanced insulation with weight.
Rhea recalculated load distributions again and again, refusing to accept anything that didn't behave under exaggerated conditions. She snapped at anyone who tried to rush her, then apologized later without prompting.
Jansen swore constantly.
But his hands were sure.
Sico stayed.
Not because he needed to.
Because it mattered that he did.
He took calls quietly at the edge of the workshop with updates from patrols, reports of Brotherhood movements that felt like they were circling, waiting. He answered them with half his attention, the other half always on the skeleton overhead.
Every now and then, someone would glance his way, reassured by his presence even if they didn't consciously realize it.
Five hours after the explosion, Mel called for a stop.
"All right," he said, voice rough but steady. "Let's walk it."
The team gathered beneath the Vertibird again, this time not around a console but around the machine itself.
The modified section looked different now.
Subtly.
Cleaner.
The conduit path curved more gently, pulled farther from the structural rib. The new brackets distributed load across three points instead of one. Thermal shielding wrapped the assembly like layered skin, matte and purposeful.
"It's not pretty," Jansen said.
Mel snorted. "It's beautiful."
Chen brought up the updated diagnostics. "Simulated flex under worst-case conditions. No resonance. No feedback."
Mae added, "Thermals stay within margin even if insulation fails at one layer."
Rhea crossed her arms. "Load redistribution slightly increases stress elsewhere, but nothing critical."
Mel nodded. "Acceptable."
He looked at Sico. "We're ready to test again."
Sico didn't hesitate. "Then test."
The workshop cleared once more.
Fire suppression stood ready.
Medics on standby.
No one joked this time.
Chen took her place at the console again, shoulders squared. Mae stood beside her, eyes glued to thermal readouts. Jansen and Rhea flanked Mel beneath the fuselage.
Sico stood where he always did now—close enough to see, far enough not to interfere.
"Primary core to standby," Chen said.
Lights flickered.
Steady.
Hum.
Deeper still.
"Voltage stable," Mae reported.
"Thermals nominal," Pike added from the side.
Mel raised a hand. "Five percent."
Chen complied.
The hum deepened.
The air pressed in.
No flash.
No crack.
"Structural response?" Mel asked.
"Within tolerance," Rhea said.
"Torque compensation?" Mel pressed.
Jansen nodded. "Smooth."
Mel watched the readouts climb, slow and controlled.
"Ten percent."
The Vertibird did not protest.
No flicker.
No hiss.
Just power, flowing the way it was supposed to.
Mae's breath caught. "Thermals holding."
Chen's hands trembled slightly now, not from fear but from the sheer effort of holding still.
"Fifteen percent," Mel said.
The hum grew louder, resonant, almost alive.
Still nothing broke.
Mel exhaled for what felt like the first time all day.
"Kill it," he said gently.
Chen did.
Silence fell again.
This time, it felt different.
Relief seeped into the room slowly, cautiously, like people didn't trust it yet.
Then Mel laughed.
Not loud.
Not long.
But real.
"Well," he said, rubbing his face, "that's one ghost laid to rest."
Chen sagged against the console, a shaky smile breaking through exhaustion. Mae let out a breath that sounded suspiciously like a sob and then laughed at herself for it.
Jansen clapped Rhea on the shoulder. "You owe me a drink."
Rhea snorted. "You owe me two."
Sico stepped forward.
"You did good," he said.
Mel met his eyes. "We learned."
"Yes," Sico agreed. "And you changed."
Mel nodded. "We updated the blueprint."
Chen glanced over. "Literally. I've already logged the revisions. This configuration is the new baseline."
"Good," Sico said. "Make sure it stays that way."
"It will," Mel replied. "No one repeats this mistake."
Sico looked up at the Vertibird again.
It hung there, silent, unbroken, stronger than it had been yesterday not because it hadn't failed, but because it had.
"This thing," Sico said quietly, "it's going to change the balance."
Mel followed his gaze. "Only if it survives long enough to fly."
Sico's mouth curved faintly. "After today? I think it will."
Behind them, the team dispersed slowly, exhaustion finally catching up now that adrenaline had nothing left to feed on. People leaned against consoles, shared quiet words, let themselves breathe.
The next day did not arrive gently.
It arrived with the sound of metal on metal, of grinders screaming to life, of generators coughing awake and settling into their familiar, chest-deep rumble. Morning light filtered through the high workshop windows in pale slats, catching dust motes that hung in the air like static, turning the whole space into something halfway between a factory and a cathedral.
If yesterday had been about survival, today was about ambition.
The Vertibird skeleton still dominated the bay, but attention had shifted. The midsection of yesterday's crisis was sealed, reinforced, logged, and left alone. No one hovered there anymore. No one stared at it like it might bite.
All eyes were on the open floor to the east side of the workshop, where a long, reinforced table had been cleared completely.
Rotor blades did not forgive mistakes.
Mel stood at the head of the table, coffee long gone cold in a metal mug he hadn't touched in an hour. Rolled schematics were spread out before him, weighed down by tools, data slates, and one particularly stubborn wrench that someone had dropped and forgotten.
Chen leaned over the projections, hair pulled back into a messy knot, stylus tapping against her teeth as she frowned.
"These dimensions work on paper," she said. "But paper doesn't have to fight air."
Rhea nodded, arms crossed. "Or vibration. Or thermal expansion at altitude."
Jansen snorted. "Or bullets."
Mae winced slightly at that, then sighed. "He's not wrong."
Mel rubbed his eyes, then dragged his hands down his face and refocused. The blueprint hovering above the table showed a set of rotor blades that were elegant in their simplicity that slim, aggressive, designed to slice rather than push.
Too elegant, maybe.
"Alright," Mel said. "Let's say we build them exactly like this."
He tapped the projection.
"Composite alloy core," he continued. "Ceramic layering for heat resistance. Reinforced leading edge."
Chen nodded slowly. "Light enough to lift. Strong enough to survive moderate damage."
"Moderate," Jansen emphasized.
Rhea tilted her head. "But not prolonged stress. The flex tolerance is narrow."
Mae scrolled through her tablet. "And thermal behavior changes under sustained rotation. Especially with variable lift."
Mel exhaled. "Which means—"
"Which means we need better material," Chen finished.
The table went quiet.
Not shocked quiet.
Resigned quiet.
Mel stared at the blueprint again, jaw tightening. He'd been circling this problem since before dawn, hoping that it would resolve itself if he stared long enough.
It hadn't.
"How much?" Rhea asked.
Mel didn't answer right away. He pulled up a secondary projection, this one a material breakdown list.
"Best-case scenario?" he said. "Forty percent more high-grade composite than we currently have. Worst-case? Sixty."
Mae let out a low whistle. "We don't have that."
"No," Mel agreed. "We really don't."
Jansen scratched his beard. "We can downgrade."
Mel snapped his eyes up. "No."
Jansen held up his hands. "I'm not saying I like it. I'm saying it's an option."
"It's a bad one," Mel said. "Rotor blades don't get second chances. If they fail, the whole craft fails."
Chen nodded firmly. "He's right. We don't compromise here."
Rhea sighed. "So what's the play?"
Mel straightened.
"I go shopping," he said.
That earned him a few looks.
"You?" Mae asked.
"Yes," Mel replied. "Me."
Chen frowned. "You're not exactly—"
"—a people person?" Mel finished dryly. "I know."
He rolled up the schematics, securing them with a practiced motion.
"But Magnolia can get what we need," he said. "If it exists. And if she can't… I know someone who might."
Jansen's lips twitched. "That sounds ominous."
Mel grabbed his coat. "It's practical."
He paused, looking around at his team.
"No one touches the rotor design until I'm back," he said. "No shortcuts. No 'what if we just—'"
Chen raised two fingers. "Scout's honor."
Mel gave her a look. "You were never a scout."
She smirked. "Still not touching it."
Satisfied, Mel turned and headed out.
Magnolia's office sat on the upper levels of Freemasons HQ, far enough from the workshops that the noise softened into a distant hum. The corridor leading to her door smelled faintly of old paper and polished wood with a deliberate choice, Mel suspected. A reminder that some things were still meant to feel stable.
He knocked once.
"Come in," Magnolia's voice called.
She looked up from her desk as Mel entered, glasses perched low on her nose, a stack of manifests spread out like a battlefield. Jenny stood nearby, arms full of crates' worth of datapads, clearly mid-argument.
"—I'm just saying," Jenny was saying, "if we shift the supply route—"
She stopped when she saw Mel.
Magnolia followed her gaze. One eyebrow lifted.
"Well," Magnolia said, leaning back in her chair, "this can't be good."
Mel closed the door behind him. "Depends how much you like miracles."
Jenny groaned softly. "He needs something expensive, doesn't he."
"Yes," Mel said. "And hard to find."
Magnolia steepled her fingers. "Go on."
Mel didn't waste time. He laid out the specs, the quantities, the reasons. He explained why substitutes wouldn't work, why half-measures would kill pilots, why time mattered almost as much as quality.
Magnolia listened without interrupting, eyes sharp, mind clearly racing ahead of him.
When he finished, she leaned back and sighed.
"You're asking for a lot," she said.
"I know," Mel replied.
"And you're asking for it fast."
"Yes."
She glanced at Jenny. "Thoughts?"
Jenny grimaced. "We can source some of it locally. Some. But not all. And what we do find will cost."
Magnolia looked back at Mel. "How badly do you need it?"
Mel didn't hedge.
"If we don't get it," he said, "the prototype doesn't fly."
That settled it.
Magnolia nodded once. "Alright."
Jenny blinked. "That's it?"
"That's it," Magnolia said. "I'll move funds. Tap our more… flexible contacts."
She looked at Mel. "But even then, this won't cover everything."
"I figured," Mel said.
Magnolia's gaze sharpened. "Where are you going next?"
Mel hesitated for half a second.
Then: "Scavenger team."
Jenny groaned aloud. "Of course you are."
Magnolia smiled faintly. "Hancock?"
Mel nodded.
Magnolia considered him for a long moment, then nodded as well.
"Be careful," she said. "And be clear. Hancock respects honesty. He despises bullshit."
Mel snorted. "Then we'll get along fine."
Scavenger division was awake in its own way when Mel arrived.
Neon flickered against rusted metal. Music bled out of open doors. Laughter that too loud, too forced are echoed through narrow streets that smelled of chems, grease, and desperation.
Mel kept his head down and his pace steady.
The Scavenger Building loomed ahead, its battered façade patched with scrap and stubbornness. Guards eyed him as he approached, hands hovering near weapons.
"I'm here to see Hancock," Mel said calmly.
One guard squinted. "You got an appointment?"
"No," Mel replied. "But I've got a reason."
That earned a look.
A moment later, the doors opened.
Hancock lounged inside like the world owed him a favor. Feet on the desk. Hat tilted just so. A grin already forming.
"Well I'll be damned," Hancock said. "If it isn't one of the Republic's miracle workers."
Mel stopped a few steps in. "I need help."
Hancock laughed. "Straight to the point. I like that."
He gestured vaguely. "Talk."
Mel did.
Not with politics.
Not with threats.
He talked about machines. About lift. About failure. About how rotor blades didn't care about ideology, only physics. He explained what he needed and why, and he didn't pretend it was anything other than what it was.
When he finished, Hancock leaned back, fingers steepled behind his head.
"You know," Hancock said, "most people come in here trying to sell me a war."
"I'm not," Mel said.
"No," Hancock agreed. "You're selling me a future headache."
Mel allowed himself a thin smile. "A flying one."
Hancock laughed again, louder this time.
"You want materials," Hancock said. "And scavengers."
"Yes."
Hancock studied him. "You're not going to tell me it's for 'peace,' are you?"
Mel met his gaze. "No."
Good.
That seemed to please him.
Hancock sighed theatrically. "Alright, genius. I'll help."
Mel blinked. "Just like that?"
Hancock shrugged. "You didn't lie to me. And flying machines change the board. I like a shaken board."
He stood. "I'll send some of my people out. See what they can dig up. No promises."
"That's all I'm asking," Mel said.
Hancock grinned. "Just don't crash it on my city."
Mel paused at the door. "No promises."
Hancock laughed as he left.
By the time Mel returned to the workshop, the light had shifted again. Afternoon bled toward evening. The team looked up when he entered, tension etched into every line of their posture.
"Well?" Chen asked.
Mel set his coat down slowly.
"We're getting the materials," he said. "One way or another."
The room exhaled as one.
Mae smiled. Rhea nodded. Jansen cracked his knuckles.
Chen leaned back in her chair, eyes closing briefly. "Good. Because I really want this thing to fly."
Mel looked back toward the Vertibird skeleton, silent and waiting.
"So do I," he said.
Four days later, the workshop learned a new sound.
It wasn't the scream of grinders or the rhythmic thunder of presses. It wasn't even the constant mechanical breathing of generators that everyone had long since tuned out. This sound came irregularly that first as a distant rumble, then as shouts echoing down corridors, boots pounding concrete in a way that carried urgency instead of routine.
Convoys.
The first truck rolled in just after dawn, its suspension groaning under weight it had no right to be carrying. Dust coated its sides, thick enough to dull the Republic markings into vague shapes. Two escorts peeled off to secure the perimeter while the rear gate dropped with a heavy clang.
Mel was already there.
He hadn't slept properly in days. None of them had. But when the doors opened and the crate seals were cracked, exhaustion took a back seat to something sharper with relief edged with disbelief.
High-grade composite slabs. Raw, uncut. Still bearing the faint scorch marks of wherever they'd been scavenged from. Old-world aerospace stock, if Mel's eyes weren't lying to him.
"They actually found it," Mae breathed.
Mel ran a hand over the surface, fingers tracing imperfections like braille. "They did."
Chen crouched near the manifest tablet, eyes flicking back and forth. "Serial markers suggest pre-war manufacture. Some degradation, but—"
"—within tolerance," Rhea finished, already running numbers in her head.
Mel straightened slowly, chest tight. "Magnolia pulled miracles," he said. "And Hancock didn't disappoint."
That first delivery cracked something open.
After it came the second. And the third.
Not all at once. Never neatly. A crate here with reinforced ceramics. A battered container there filled with layered thermal compounds Hancock's scavengers had pulled out of collapsed research facilities and half-buried bunkers that had eaten men before.
Each arrival was logged, checked, tested.
Each arrival pushed the impossible closer to merely difficult.
By the end of the fourth day, the east side of the workshop looked less like a planning space and more like an altar to trial and error. Raw materials stacked in careful rows. Cutoffs already accumulating in bins. The long table was gone, replaced by jigs, molds, and an assembly rig that Mel had sketched at three in the morning and built by sunrise.
This wasn't theory anymore.
This was manufacture.
"Alright," Mel said on the morning of the first build attempt, voice carrying over the hum of the shop. "This is Blade One. Prototype. Expect it to fail."
That got a few grim smiles.
Chen stood at the control terminal, hands steady despite the dark circles under her eyes. Mae hovered nearby, tablet hugged to her chest like a shield. Rhea and Jansen flanked the assembly rig, both wearing that specific expression engineers got when something was either about to work or teach them a painful lesson.
The composite core slid into place with a muted thud.
Mel watched alignment markers snap green one by one.
"So far," Jansen muttered, "so good."
The ceramic layering came next. Heat-treated sheets bonded under controlled pressure, the air around them shimmering faintly as thermal regulation systems kicked in.
Mae frowned at her readout. "Temperature gradient's drifting."
"How bad?" Mel asked.
"Not catastrophic," she said. "But not ideal."
"Log it," Mel replied. "Proceed."
They always proceeded.
That was the rule.
The reinforced leading edge went on last. Precision mattered here. A fraction of a degree off and the blade would sing itself apart under rotation.
Rhea adjusted the jig by a hair's breadth. "Lock it."
Jansen did.
Mel nodded. "Cure cycle."
The chamber sealed.
Minutes stretched.
No one spoke.
When the chamber opened again, Blade One lay there with looking solid, complete, and deeply suspicious.
"It looks… right," Mae said softly.
Mel didn't touch it yet. He circled it instead, eyes tracking every line, every seam.
"Looks don't matter," he said. "Test it."
They mounted it on the stress rig.
Spin-up began slowly.
At ten percent load, it held.
At twenty, it hummed.
At thirty, a sharp crack split the air.
The blade twisted, delaminated along the ceramic interface, and failed catastrophically. Fragments slammed into containment shields with violent force.
Silence followed.
Mae flinched, then exhaled. "Well."
Chen closed her eyes. "That's on me. I underestimated shear stress at that bond."
"No," Mel said. "That's on all of us."
He stepped closer to the ruined blade, crouching to examine the failure point.
"Good news?" Jansen offered.
Mel looked up. "It failed honestly."
Rhea nodded. "Clean break. No hidden instability."
"That means we can fix it," Mel said.
Blade One was tagged, documented, and set aside.
They moved on to Blade Two.
Day one bled into day two.
Blade Two survived longer, made it to forty percent before microfractures propagated too fast to contain. Blade Three warped under thermal cycling. Blade Four sang with a high, keening resonance that made Chen swear and abort the test before it could tear itself apart.
Tempers flared.
Sleep vanished.
At one point, Jansen threw a wrench across the shop so hard it embedded itself in a corkboard twenty meters away. No one commented. Someone retrieved it later and placed it back where it belonged.
Mae cried once.
Quietly. In the corner. She wiped her face, squared her shoulders, and came back without a word.
Mel noticed.
He didn't say anything then.
On the third night, they sat on the floor around Blade Seven, backs against tool cabinets, sharing stale rations and colder coffee.
"This thing hates us," Chen said flatly.
"It doesn't hate us," Rhea replied. "It just doesn't care."
Mel stared at the ceiling. "That's worse."
They laughed. Weakly. Because if they didn't, something else would break.
By day four, patterns began to emerge.
Not solutions.
Patterns.
Chen adjusted bonding agents. Mae layered thermal shielding differently. Rhea rebalanced flex tolerance. Jansen shaved grams off reinforcement where it mattered and added them back where it didn't.
Blade Ten failed slower.
Blade Eleven failed quieter.
Blade Twelve held long enough that Mae smiled before it gave up.
Progress measured in seconds and millimeters.
On the fifth day of manufacturing, Mel hadn't left the workshop in thirty hours.
Blade Fifteen lay on the rig.
No one spoke as spin-up began.
Ten percent.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Forty.
Mae's fingers dug into her tablet.
Fifty.
Chen's breath hitched.
Sixty.
Rhea leaned forward, eyes narrowed.
Seventy.
The hum deepened, steady, controlled.
Eighty.
Jansen whispered, "Come on."
Ninety.
The rig vibrated, but the blade held. Flexed. Recovered.
Mel raised a hand. "Hold."
The system stabilized.
No cracks.
No resonance spike.
No thermal runaway.
"Kill it," Mel said softly.
The rig wound down.
Silence settled that not the heavy kind, not the defeated kind.
The kind that waits.
Mae checked her readouts three times. Then again.
Chen stared at the structural graph like it might change if she blinked.
Rhea straightened slowly. "It's within margin."
Jansen laughed, short and disbelieving. "It's actually within margin."
Mel didn't smile.
He walked to the blade and placed his hand on it.
Solid.
Warm.
Real.
"We don't celebrate yet," he said. "We make another."
Groans answered him, but no one argued.
Blade Sixteen took two more days.
It performed the same.
Blade Seventeen came after that.
Then Eighteen.
By the end of the fifth day, four blades sat side by side on reinforced racks.
Identical.
Balanced.
Stable.
Mel finally allowed himself to sit down.
Hard.
He dragged a hand through his hair and laughed with a low, exhausted sound that cracked halfway through.
"We did it," Mae said, voice barely audible.
Mel looked at his team.
At Chen, eyes red but bright. At Rhea, posture finally relaxed. At Jansen, grease-streaked and grinning. At Mae, standing taller than she had a week ago.
"We made a decent one," Mel said.
Chen snorted. "Decent? These are miracles."
"No," Mel replied. "They're earned."
He stood and looked toward the Vertibird skeleton again.
For the first time, he could see it whole.
Not as a collection of problems.
But as a machine waiting to fly.
Then the next week did not blur the way the previous ones had.
It stacked.
Layer by layer. System by system. Decision by decision.
If the rotor blades had been about survival and about learning where the machine would break if pushed, then filling the skeleton was about identity. About deciding what this Vertibird was going to be when it finally lifted itself off the ground and stopped being an idea.
The workshop changed again.
The east side, once an altar to failure, slowly transformed into a staging ground. The four finished rotor blades were moved with ceremonial care, cradled in custom racks padded with shock-dampening gel and wrapped in translucent shielding film. No one touched them unless they had to. When they did, they did so gently, like handling something alive.
The Vertibird skeleton waited in the center of the bay.
Not silent anymore.
Expectant.
"Okay," Mel said on the first morning of integration, voice rough but steady. "We start from the spine outward. Power before teeth."
Jansen smirked. "You just like saying that."
Mel didn't rise to it. He was already walking beneath the fuselage, tablet in hand, eyes flicking over mounting points that had only existed as blue holograms a few weeks ago.
Weapon hardpoints were first.
Not because they were eager to arm it, but because mass distribution mattered, and everything else would have to compensate around them.
The primary mounts slid into place with a deep, satisfying thunk, magnetic locks engaging as structural bolts tightened automatically. The sound echoed through the bay, low and final.
Chen watched the readouts. "Alignment's clean."
Rhea crouched near the port mount, tapping a diagnostic node. "Reinforcement ribs holding."
Mae frowned at her tablet. "Minimal thermal bleed. That's… better than expected."
Mel nodded. "Good. Log it."
The secondary mounts followed. Smaller. More flexible. Designed for adaptability more than brute force.
"Missiles?" Jansen asked.
"Later," Mel replied. "Empty for now. We care about the frame surviving, not proving a point."
That answer carried weight.
No one argued.
By midweek, the Vertibird no longer looked like a skeleton.
It looked like something halfway to real.
Power systems went in next.
Primary core housing sealed for the final time, its casing layered with shielding that had been adjusted after the earlier failure. Chen personally oversaw every connection, every routing path, double-checking for the kind of ghost that only appeared when you stopped looking.
"Isolation zones confirmed," she murmured, more to herself than anyone else.
Mel stood beside her. "Anything feel wrong?"
She hesitated, then shook her head. "No. Different. But… right."
That was as close to confidence as Chen ever came.
They brought it online incrementally.
One system at a time.
Lights bloomed along the fuselage again with soft blues, steady ambers and no flicker this time. The hum that filled the bay was deeper, smoother, like a machine that knew itself better now.
No smoke.
No heat spikes.
No alarms.
Mae exhaled slowly, shoulders sagging for the first time in days. "Thermals are stable."
Jansen laughed under his breath. "I don't trust anything that behaves this well."
Mel allowed himself the ghost of a smile. "Neither do I."
The cockpit came next.
That was personal.
The pilot seat arrived wrapped in protective casing, scavenged and rebuilt from an old military transport. It had been stripped down, reinforced, and refitted to survive impacts that would shatter bones if the padding failed.
Mel watched as it was hoisted into place.
He didn't touch it.
Not yet.
"This is where someone lives," Mae said quietly.
Jansen nodded. "Or dies."
"Which is why we get it right," Mel replied.
Chen climbed into the cockpit once the harnesses were installed, settling into the seat with practiced ease. She adjusted controls, tested reach, sightlines, visibility through the reinforced canopy.
"It's tight," she said. "But not claustrophobic."
Rhea peered in. "Sightline's good. No blind spots?"
"Minimal," Chen replied. "Pilot'll have to trust instruments, but that's always been true."
Mel finally stepped closer, resting a hand on the cockpit frame.
He imagined someone sitting there. Hands on the controls. Heart pounding. Trusting the work they'd done with their lives.
"Log feedback," he said quietly.
Chen nodded. "Already doing it."
The searchlight installation felt almost gentle by comparison.
Mounted beneath the nose, its housing was reinforced but elegant with a cone of focused brilliance capable of cutting through night, fog, and smoke.
Mae powered it on briefly during calibration.
The beam stabbed across the workshop, white and unforgiving, lighting up dust and scars on the walls that no one ever looked at closely.
Jansen shielded his eyes. "Yeah, okay, turn that off."
Mae grinned faintly as she did. "Range is excellent."
Mel nodded. "Good. We don't fly blind."
Weapons systems followed.
Not all at once.
Not rushed.
The internal control architecture went in first with interfaces, safeties, redundancies layered so thick that failure would have to fight to reach the surface. Chen and Rhea argued quietly over a subroutine for half an hour, voices low but intense, until they settled on a compromise neither of them liked but both could live with.
"That's engineering," Jansen said dryly.
When the external systems were finally mounted, the Vertibird took on a different presence.
Sharper.
Meaner.
Even unarmed, the silhouette spoke a clear language.
This was not a transport.
This was a statement.
Mel stood back and took it in.
For a moment, just a moment, he felt the weight of it all on what this machine represented, what it would change once it left the ground.
Then the moment passed.
Work remained.
They spent hours on the small things.
The things no one would ever praise.
Cable routing so clean it looked intentional. Panel seals tested and retested. Access hatches labeled twice. Emergency release mechanisms calibrated until they snapped open with the same resistance every time.
Mae slept in the workshop twice that week.
So did Jansen.
Mel didn't leave at all.
On the sixth day, Sico came by.
He didn't interrupt.
He just stood at the edge of the bay, arms folded, watching as the team worked with the quiet efficiency of people who knew exactly why they were here.
Mel noticed him eventually and walked over.
"It's almost ready," Mel said.
Sico nodded. "I can see that."
His gaze lingered on the cockpit, the weapons mounts, the rotors still waiting off to the side like coiled potential.
"You trust it?" Sico asked.
Mel didn't answer immediately.
"I trust the people who built it," he said finally.
That seemed to satisfy Sico.
The final day before the test flight arrived heavy and quiet.
No shouting.
No music.
Just the low murmur of systems coming online one last time.
The rotor blades were installed at dawn.
Each one lifted, aligned, and locked into place with painstaking care. The bolts seated with a sound that made Mel's chest loosen just a fraction.
They stepped back together as the last blade was secured.
The Vertibird stood complete.
Not perfect.
But whole.
Mel keyed his comm.
"Control," he said. "Prepare for ground test sequence."
The reply came back steady. "Ground test standing by."
Chen took her place at the systems console. Mae monitored thermals. Rhea watched structural integrity. Jansen hovered near emergency cutoffs, hands ready but relaxed.
Mel stood where he could see everything.
"Begin spin-up," he said.
The rotors started slow.
Almost shy.
Air moved. Dust lifted. The sound built that not screaming, not violent, but powerful and controlled.
Ten percent.
Twenty.
Thirty.
The Vertibird shuddered once, then settled.
Forty.
Fifty.
The wind whipped through the bay, loose papers skittering across the floor.
Mae's voice came tight but calm. "Thermals stable."
"Structural response nominal," Rhea added.
Sixty.
Seventy.
The rotors blurred now, the machine pressing against gravity like it resented being held down.
Jansen grinned. "It wants to go."
"Let it," Mel said softly.
Eighty.
Ninety.
The restraints groaned.
Mel raised his hand. "Hold."
The system stabilized.
The Vertibird hovered in potential, every part of it humming with restrained force.
Mel exhaled.
"Kill it."
The rotors wound down slowly, the sound fading into a silence that felt earned.
No one spoke for a long moment.
Then Mae laughed with a short, incredulous sound. "It didn't try to kill us."
Chen wiped her eyes. "Low bar. But yes."
Rhea nodded. "Everything held."
Jansen looked at Mel. "So?"
Mel looked at the machine.
"So," he said, voice steady, "we're ready."
At the work of weeks, of failures and stubborn refusal and hands that never quite stopped shaking. Outside, the sky stretched wide and empty. And very soon they would finally answer it.
______________________________________________
• Name: Sico
• Stats :
S: 8,44
P: 7,44
E: 8,44
C: 8,44
I: 9,44
A: 7,45
L: 7
• Skills: advance Mechanic, Science, and Shooting skills, intermediate Medical, Hand to Hand Combat, Lockpicking, Hacking, Persuasion, and Drawing Skills
• Inventory: 53.280 caps, 10mm Pistol, 1500 10mm rounds, 22 mole rats meat, 17 mole rats teeth, 1 fragmentation grenade, 6 stimpak, 1 rad x, 6 fusion core, computer blueprint, modern TV blueprint, camera recorder blueprint, 1 set of combat armor, Automatic Assault Rifle, 1.500 5.56mm rounds, power armor T51 blueprint, Electric Motorcycle blueprint, T-45 power armor, Minigun, 1.000 5mm rounds, Cryolator, 200 cryo cell, Machine Gun Turret Mk1 blueprint, electric car blueprint, Kellogg gun, Righteous Authority, Ashmaker, Furious Power Fist, Full set combat armor blueprint, M240 7.62mm machine guns blueprint, Automatic Assault Rifle blueprint, and Humvee blueprint.
• Active Quest:-