The AGSS Starbound was nothing like the ship Gracie grew up on. The corridors sparkled, and every display lit up brightly. It had a crew of hundreds rather than the Flutter’s single extended family. Everything in the engine room matched the original schematics. The captain’s disapproval wasn’t nearly as scathing as Gracie’s grandmother’s, and the engineering chief was downright indulgent by comparison.
Nana had taught her to tear an engine apart and reassemble it blindfolded, but these drives were more complicated. There were thrusters, secondary thrusters, backup thrusters, and a fuel optimization matrix. Disassembling them for educational purposes was frowned upon, so Gracie relied on readouts like her professors taught her.
Most fixes involved tapping buttons on a screen, but sometimes she still got to roll up her sleeves and swap components out. Even the lubricant smelled cleaner here.
When she informed Engineering Chief Stubbins, “All systems nominal,” he nodded without checking the readouts.
“You’re good. Take your break.”
She still didn’t know the Starbound the way she knew the Flutter, but every vessel had its rhythms. She was slowly learning to navigate the corridors and anticipate when issues were likely to arise.
You could get into all sorts of trouble when you knew a ship well enough to think you could predict it. The Starbound was only a few years old, so it often behaved as Gracie expected. But the engine gods were fickle, and all ships performed as expected until they didn’t.
Even at optimal efficiency, the Flutter’s engines didn’t hum this smoothly. But when she opened the break room door, a rhythmic clunk more suited to an older ship joined the sound. A system was no longer nominal. Back home, she would have turned around to investigate. Here, someone else was on shift and responsible for it. She should get her coffee so she would be sharp.
Gracie tried to savor the smell and let the warmth creep through her hands, but the new clicking sound was distracting. She counted the beats while contemplating what component could make that pattern. By the time she made her way back to her post, the hum was an entire tone too high. “Something’s wrong.”
Stubbins muttered curses from several planets and glared at the monitor. “Six blasted things are wrong, and I can’t work out which problem is causing which other problem.”
Nana always said problems came in storms. Gracie didn’t wait to be told to check readouts.. Half the values were out of range, but not in ways that related to each other. If there wasn’t a single root cause, it was going to be a more complicated fix.
She had protocols and a checklist to guide her through untangling the dependencies. “I’m going to reset the propulsion matrix to defaults.”
Stubbins grunted acknowledgment while he worked a different interface with each hand.
The engines briefly went silent. Entire arrays of indicators flashed red at once, then went dark. The lights were scattered across the board as they came back. When the matrix finished booting, the engines hummed at a new wrong pitch and different readouts were out of range. “I don’t know if this counts as progress.”
“Just continue the checklist, kid.”
Everything Gracie tried moved the numbers around, but they never landed in range. The clicking came and went, but the hum and thump persisted with the subtle shaking under her boots.
If she didn’t know better, she’d say the engines were sad.
But she knew better, so if the diagnostics were failing, it was time to open something. Thumping had a physical cause, and she would locate it. Was something loose? Stuck? Misaligned?
Gracie rolled up her sleeves and unbolted the access panel. The burnt smell of too much friction wafted up. Surely if she hit the engine with copious quantities of lubricant, whatever part that was stuck would start moving. The clicking abated, but the thumping remained. Also, the readouts were still wrong.
“I don’t understand.” Gracie rolled her shoulders back into a more natural position. How did Nana stand so proud after decades on this job? “That should have worked.”
The chief scrolled from readout to readout. “It should have. This entire malfunction makes no vaping sense.”
Stubbins had been working on this ship for six years and on this engine model for even longer. If he didn’t know, who would?
Nana would know. Nana was always ready for every weird quirk the engine gods threw at her.
The engines whined some more.
Nana always said to hear what the ship was telling you. The engines were complaining. She imagined herself in the engine room back home, listening to those sounds. If she visualized hard enough, maybe she would hear Nana’s voice telling her what to do. She let herself see the old dials and the dents in the deck plating.
Nana’s tchotchkes scattered around. The ones she was never supposed to move lest she make the engines go all “wonky.” That was the technical term.
She’d already tried everything she was trained to do. “Permission to try something ridiculous, Chief?”
Stubbins slammed another access panel that hadn’t fixed the issue. “You know what? Knock yourself out.”
Gracie hurried to her locker. She’d packed the whimsical figures in a moment of sentimentality. They didn’t take up much space and reminded her of the cozy engine room where it all started.
The engines were all wonky. She found a place near the engines that wouldn’t interfere with any vents or get too hot for objects molded from unknown polymers of uncertain age. Stubbins gave her a puzzled look as she gingerly set the sleeping teal lizard figure down.
The engines calmed to a purr. Red indicators turned green. Stubbins remained puzzled.
“All systems… nominal.”
Gracie stroked the lizard’s head. “Engines, this is Bob. He’s your new guardian.”
She had pleased the engine gods; surely, that would please Nana.
* * *
Ⓒ Margaret A. Hanson