Far Horizon (Juggernaut #4)

Two

'Most things aren't,' said Malachi in the tone of one who has seen too much.

'Point taken. So what's the problem?'

'It's all a problem. I don't understand how it works together. You've done a jigsaw puzzle before, right?'

'When I was little.'

'Well this is like a ten thousand piece jigsaw puzzle that has the same picture on each side, and all of the pieces are missing.'

'Mal, you're always exaggerating things you don't understand. You just can't see how it fits together yet. When you do you'll realise how easy it was all along.'

'That's easy for you to say, you're the software expert.'

'And your the engineering expert. That's why we make such a great team.'

Malachi smiled a big beaming smile. He liked that description. He had always thought of Tila and Ellie as being his team, but Nina was different. Their relationship was... different. Nina complimented him in a way Tila and Ellie never had. They were like sisters. Nina was... better.

Nina crouched for a better look at the underside of the skeletal Valkyrie.

'You want to walk me through it?'

Malachi crouched next to her and balanced himself with one hand on the exoframe.

'I'm used to last generation tech. That's the best we can hope to find here, so I'm not exactly prepared for this. It's been a steep learning curve.'

'Such as what in particular? The core systems?'

'Not so much. They are newer and better. No surprise there. Way better, actually, but putting this back together again and making it fly is the easy part.'

'So engines, navigation, life support and so on, are all standard?

'Standard-ish. Familiar enough anyway. The hard part is the secondary systems. Sensors, jump engines and something in the code called flight profile. You heard of that?'

'No. Are you sure it's not just another name for a pilot assist feature?'

Malachi shook his head and stood up.

'I don't think so. Look at this.' He pointed to the wing struts. 'See?'

Nina peered at the mechanism he was pointing at. 'Not really. Is it the aerodynamics? The wings are unusually tapered for a space fighter.

'Partly, yeah.'

'So this is designed for atmosphere too? That's not so unusual. Even your Rhino can fly in an atmosphere.'

He laughed along with her at her joke. 'Yeah, like a brick through soup.'

'But that's not what you mean?'

'Look closer.'

'I see some internal panelling, a slat of some kind, is that a piston and a control surface?'

'Yep.'

'But it's inside the frame'.

'Weird, huh. Now go and look at the panels which covered this section.'

Nina straightened up. No wonder Malachi was stumped. Who would build a control surface inside the hull of a ship? She walked to the panels Malachi had pointed at and examined them. They seemed perfectly normal. The alloy felt lighter than she had expected but that wasn't a surprise. She expected military tech to be better than the civilian gear that washed up on their shores. She would have puzzled over the aerodynamics of the ship if she hadn't already known is was designed for atmosphere as well as space.