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(A/N: my Skyrim have been unblocked so everyone can go read it now, thanks for the patience and sorry for the inconveniences!)
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And now, for the first time since the Brotherhood had taken to the skies, the balance was beginning to shift.
Morning came to the Science Division without ceremony.
No trumpet of sunlight through clean windows. No birdsong. Just the low hum of generators, the faint vibration of machinery waking up, and the smell of metal, oil, and recycled air settling back into the bones of the workshop.
Sico arrived early.
Earlier than most people realized he ever did.
The corridor outside the lab was quiet, lights dimmed to night-cycle levels, the Republic still half-asleep. He paused at the threshold for a moment, hands clasped behind his back, listening.
Inside, the workshop was already alive.
Mel was there, of course.
He stood near the central holo-table, sleeves rolled up, hair messier than usual, a mug of something dark and probably terrible steaming beside him. The blueprint hovered above the table again, but it wasn't static anymore. Subtle changes rippled through it with layers toggling, measurements updating, annotations appearing and disappearing as Mel worked through them in real time.
Around him, his core team was gathering.
Not all at once. They filtered in the way experienced people did that quietly, without fuss, already mentally halfway into the problem before anyone spoke a word.
Sico watched from the doorway for a few seconds.
This was the part most people never saw.
Not the speeches. Not the approvals. Not the final machine lifting off the ground.
This.
People who knew exactly how hard something was about to be and were here anyway.
Mel noticed him first.
He glanced up, eyes flicking toward the doorway, and gave a small nod. No salute. No formality. Just acknowledgment.
Sico returned it.
Then Mel straightened, set his mug aside, and clapped his hands once.
"Alright," he said, voice carrying without being loud. "Everyone here?"
A few murmured confirmations followed.
The core team stood in a loose semicircle around the holo-table.
There was Jansen, structural engineer, broad-shouldered, arms crossed, already squinting at the fuselage geometry like it had personally offended him.
Dr. Lira Chen from power systems, thin, sharp-eyed, fingers twitching as if she were already rearranging energy flows in her head.
Owen Pike, avionics specialist, leaning forward slightly, eyes locked on the control interfaces with almost predatory focus.
Rhea Morales, materials and composites, boots scuffed, jaw set, the kind of person who trusted test results more than theory.
A few others filled out the circle with fabrication leads, systems integrators, apprentices hovering just outside the core, listening hard and saying nothing.
Sico stepped fully into the room.
Mel gestured toward him without breaking stride. "You all know Sico," he said. "He's already signed off on this."
That got their attention.
A few glances shifted that quick, curious, respectful. This wasn't just another experimental project anymore. This was sanctioned. Backed. Real.
Mel took a breath.
"What you're looking at," he said, "is the Republic's first indigenous aerial platform prototype."
The blueprint expanded slightly, rotating to give everyone a clear view.
"It's inspired by the Brotherhood's Vertibirds," Mel continued, "but it is not a copy. Different philosophy. Different priorities. Different endgame."
Jansen let out a low whistle. "You shaved a lot of mass off the midsection."
"Yes," Mel said. "And you're going to tell me how I did it wrong."
Jansen grinned faintly. "Eventually."
A ripple of quiet amusement passed through the group.
Mel tapped a control, isolating the nose section.
"This is new," he said, tone sharpening. "As of last night."
Sico stayed silent, letting Mel lead.
"We're integrating fixed, forward-mounted weapon systems," Mel said plainly. "Pilot-aligned. No side-mounted crew guns."
That wiped the amusement away instantly.
Chen straightened. "Energy draw?"
"Managed," Mel said. "We'll get to that."
Pike frowned. "Targeting integration?"
"Manual," Mel replied. "Line of sight. No automation."
Rhea tilted her head. "Heat dissipation?"
Mel nodded. "Also on the list."
He looked around the room, meeting each pair of eyes in turn.
"This is no longer just a concept," he said. "As of today, we build."
No cheers. No applause.
Just a collective shift.
Weight settling onto shoulders. Minds snapping fully into gear.
Sico stepped forward then, placing a hand lightly on the edge of the holo-table.
"I won't be in your way," he said calmly. "But I will be nearby."
That mattered more than any speech.
Mel nodded once, then turned back to the blueprint.
"Okay," he said. "Phase one. Prototype construction."
The hologram shifted again, breaking apart into exploded views with components separating, systems color-coded, dependencies clearly marked.
Mel pointed.
"Jansen," he said, "you're on airframe and structural integration. I want stress simulations running continuously. Assume damage. Assume partial failure. Assume someone's shooting at it."
Jansen cracked his neck. "I'll make it hate being shot."
"Good," Mel said.
"Rhea," Mel continued, "materials. I want composite blends that we can actually manufacture, not theoretical miracles. If it can't be made here, it doesn't go on the bird."
Rhea nodded sharply. "I'll start pulling samples. And I want crash debris access."
"You'll have it," Mel said. "Hancock's team brought in more last night."
Her eyes lit up. "Perfect."
"Chen," Mel said, turning, "power systems. Hybrid integration. I need redundancy without cascading failure. If one system goes, the others keep breathing."
Chen smiled thinly. "I've been waiting for an excuse to tear Brotherhood power doctrine apart."
"Here it is," Mel said.
"Pike," Mel continued, "avionics and controls. Pilot-first. Clean interfaces. And you're coordinating with Sarah's people for combat ergonomics."
Pike nodded. "I want pilot feedback early."
"You'll get it," Mel said. "Probably sooner than you want."
Mel took a step back, scanning the group.
"Fabrication leads," he said, "start prepping bays two and three. I want parallel assembly where possible. No bottlenecks."
A chorus of acknowledgments followed.
"Apprentices," Mel added, raising his voice slightly, "you're attached to leads. You observe. You learn. You do not improvise unless told."
A few nervous nods.
Mel let the blueprint settle, hovering steadily now.
"This prototype will fail," he said bluntly. "Something will break. Something will overheat. Something won't behave the way we want."
No one argued.
"And when it does," Mel continued, "we don't hide it. We document it. We fix it. We move forward."
Sico watched their faces.
There was no fear there.
Just focus.
Mel gestured toward the far wall, where storage bays and fabrication stations waited.
"Go," he said. "Get what you need."
That was it.
The room exploded into motion.
People peeled off in different directions, calling out requests, pulling up manifests, tapping on terminals. Tool lockers opened. Crates were rolled out. The quiet hum of the workshop deepened into something louder, more purposeful.
Sico stepped aside as Mel moved past him, already mid-conversation with Chen about power routing.
"Hey," Sico said quietly.
Mel paused, turning back.
"This weapon integration," Sico said. "If at any point you think it crosses a line—"
"I'll tell you," Mel said immediately.
Sico searched his face for a moment, then nodded. "That's all I needed."
Mel hesitated. "You know this makes us a target."
Sico's expression didn't change. "We already are."
Mel snorted softly. "Fair point."
They parted without ceremony.
The rest of the day blurred.
Metal screamed as it was cut. Sparks flew. The scent of ozone and hot composite filled the air. Holo-screens flickered with stress graphs, power curves, and warning alerts that were argued over, dismissed, recalculated.
Jansen cursed loudly when a simulation showed microfractures propagating faster than expected.
Rhea threw a sample across the room when it delaminated under thermal cycling.
Chen rerouted power three times before lunch and wasn't satisfied with any of them.
Mel moved between them all, not micromanaging, but present while listening, questioning, nudging, occasionally overruling when instinct and experience told him to.
By late afternoon, the skeleton of the prototype began to take shape.
Not whole.
Not pretty.
But real.
A fuselage frame hung suspended from overhead rigs. Rotor assemblies lay partially assembled on reinforced tables. The nose section that new, modified, purposeful was sat off to one side, already bristling with potential.
Sico returned in the evening.
He didn't interrupt.
He stood at the edge of the workshop, watching engineers argue over millimeters like they were matters of life and death.
In this world, they were.
Mel eventually noticed him again, wiping grease from his hands.
"We're ahead of schedule," Mel said, voice tired but alive.
"For now," Sico replied.
Mel smiled faintly. "Yeah. For now."
Sico's gaze drifted to the nose section.
"Can it really hit a Vertibird?" he asked quietly.
Mel followed his gaze.
"If the pilot's good," he said. "And if the machine holds together."
Sico nodded. "That might be enough."
Mel looked at him. "You're thinking about first contact."
"I am," Sico said. "The Brotherhood won't ignore this forever."
"They'll come looking," Mel agreed.
Sico's jaw tightened slightly. "And when they do… I don't want our people turning left or right, hoping a gunner can line up a shot."
Mel's expression hardened.
"They won't have to," he said.
The workshop lights dimmed slightly as night-cycle kicked in, but no one stopped.
The workshop didn't sleep.
It pretended to, sometimes with lights dimmed, warning indicators muted to softer hues, ambient systems throttled down to conserve power, but the people inside never truly stopped. They rotated. They rested in corners. They drank bad coffee and argued in low voices while machines continued to hum, patient and tireless.
Night-cycle blurred into early morning again before anyone really noticed.
Sico was still there.
He had taken a seat near the far wall at some point, one leg crossed over the other, coat draped loosely over the back of the chair. He hadn't slept. That was obvious to anyone who knew him well enough to notice the tiny tells: the stillness, the way his eyes tracked movement instead of drifting, the fact that he hadn't left even once.
Mel caught sight of him again just as dawn-shift alarms chimed softly across the Republic.
He frowned.
"You're still here," Mel said, not accusatory, just stating a fact.
Sico looked up from the tablet he'd been reviewing from field reports, patrol routes, Brotherhood activity markers, and shrugged slightly. "So are you."
Mel snorted. "That's different. I live here."
"Then I'm visiting," Sico replied.
Mel wiped his hands on a rag and leaned back against a tool bench, finally letting himself pause. The workshop around them was quieter now, a lull as teams rotated out and others filtered in. The skeleton of the aircraft loomed overhead, suspended like a half-formed thought from ribs of reinforced alloy, skeletal struts exposed, wiring channels still empty but clearly defined.
It was unmistakable now.
Something real was being born.
Sico followed Mel's gaze upward.
"It's coming together faster than I expected," he said.
Mel nodded. "Barely. We're still arguing with physics."
"That's normal for you," Sico said.
"That's optimistic," Mel countered.
They stood in silence for a moment, listening to the faint clink of tools and the distant hiss of a fabrication printer cooling down.
Then Sico spoke again.
"There's something else I want to revisit."
Mel sighed quietly. "I had a feeling."
Sico didn't smile.
"You said last night you didn't want this to become Brotherhood doctrine with Republic paint," Sico said carefully. "I agree with you."
Mel glanced at him. "But."
"But," Sico continued, "we're not fighting in a vacuum. And we're not always going to be the ones choosing the engagement."
Mel folded his arms. "Go on."
Sico stepped closer to the suspended fuselage, craning his neck slightly to study the underside where future hardpoints and access panels would go.
"The fixed forward weapons make sense," Sico said. "They give the pilot initiative. They shorten reaction time."
"Yes," Mel said.
"But air combat is chaotic," Sico continued. "And no matter how good the pilot is, there are angles they won't be able to cover."
Mel's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
"You're talking about crew support," Mel said.
"I am," Sico replied.
Mel exhaled slowly through his nose. "We talked about this."
"We talked about not turning it into a flying gun platform," Sico said. "That's not what I'm suggesting."
Mel turned fully to face him now. "Then say it plainly."
Sico didn't hesitate.
"I think we should include mounted guns," he said. "Crew-operated. Miniguns, or something comparable."
The words hung in the air, heavier than the hum of generators.
For a long moment, Mel didn't respond.
He looked up again at the skeleton, eyes tracing lines, imagining mass, recoil, power draw, crew positions, center-of-gravity shifts. You could almost see the calculations happening behind his eyes, faster than any terminal could manage.
Finally, he spoke.
"You realize what that does," Mel said quietly.
"Yes," Sico replied.
"It adds weight," Mel continued. "Complexity. Training requirements. More power demand. More failure points."
"Yes," Sico said again.
"And it changes perception," Mel added. "Externally. Internally. This stops being a 'defensive platform' in people's minds."
Sico nodded once. "I know."
Mel let out a tired laugh that held no humor. "You're very calm about this."
"I have to be," Sico said. "Because the alternative is pretending the Brotherhood will fight fair."
Mel turned away, pacing slowly beneath the aircraft. He reached up, resting a hand briefly against one of the exposed struts, grounding himself.
"When I designed this," Mel said, voice low, "I wanted it to survive contact. Not dominate it."
"And if survival requires more than one set of eyes and one firing arc?" Sico asked.
Mel stopped pacing.
"That's the question," he murmured.
He turned back to Sico. "Where?"
"Where what?" Sico asked.
"Where do you want them?" Mel clarified. "If we're even entertaining this."
Sico's eyes flicked back to the aircraft.
"Side mounts," he said. "Port and starboard. Limited traverse. Enough to cover blind spots, not enough to spray the horizon."
Mel nodded slowly despite himself.
"Crew-operated," Mel said. "Manual."
"Always," Sico agreed.
"No automated suppression," Mel continued. "No remote firing."
"Yes."
"No external intimidation," Mel added sharply. "Nothing oversized. No visible 'message.'"
Sico met his gaze. "Agreed."
Mel rubbed his face, exhaustion finally catching up to him.
"You're asking me to walk a very thin line," he said.
"I'm asking you to make sure our people don't die because we were idealistic," Sico replied softly.
That one landed.
Mel looked away, jaw working.
For a moment, he said nothing.
Then he sighed.
"Alright," he said quietly. "Let's talk miniguns."
Sico didn't smile. But something in his shoulders eased.
Mel gestured toward a nearby console, pulling up a new layer of the blueprint. Side profiles appeared, translucent outlines forming along the fuselage.
"If we do this," Mel said, "they're recessed. Partial housings. Not hanging off like trophies."
Sico leaned in. "Good."
"Crew positions will be cramped," Mel continued. "Visibility will matter. Armor will matter. Ejection options will be… limited."
Sico nodded. "They'll know the risks."
Mel glanced at him. "You're assuming people will volunteer."
"They will," Sico said without hesitation.
Mel didn't argue that.
He adjusted the schematic, muttering under his breath as he did. "We'll need to reinforce the frame here and here. Recoil dampening. Ammo feed systems. Power assist for rotation."
"And pilot coordination," Sico added. "Clear lines of communication."
"Yes," Mel said. "No friendly fire. No crossing arcs."
He paused, then looked up.
"This is as far as I'll go," Mel said firmly. "Fixed forward weapons for the pilot. Limited side-mounted miniguns for crew defense and support. Nothing more."
Sico held his gaze. "That's all I'm asking."
Another silence followed.
Then Sico gestured upward.
"The skeleton," he said. "How close are we?"
Mel followed his gaze again, assessing with a critical eye.
"The primary frame?" Mel said. "Another three days, maybe four. Depends on whether Jansen stops arguing with gravity."
Sico allowed a faint smile. "And the full prototype?"
Mel didn't answer immediately this time.
He took a breath, then another.
"If nothing catastrophic happens," Mel said, "two weeks."
Sico's brow lifted slightly.
"If something does?" he asked.
Mel shrugged. "Three."
"Two to three weeks," Sico repeated.
"That's my estimate," Mel said. "Assembly, integration, ground testing. No flight yet."
Sico nodded, absorbing that.
"That's faster than the Brotherhood would expect," he said.
"That's because they think we can't do this at all," Mel replied.
Sico looked at him. "Can you?"
Mel met his eyes.
"Yes," he said simply.
They stood there for a long moment, surrounded by half-built ambition and the quiet determination of people who knew they were changing the balance of something much larger than themselves.
Around them, the workshop began to swell again as new shifts arrived.
Jansen stomped back in, coffee in hand, already scowling. "Tell me you didn't approve additional mounts without telling me—"
"I did," Mel said.
Jansen groaned. "I hate both of you."
Rhea followed close behind, carrying a stack of composite samples. "If you add more weight, I'm not magic."
"No one asked you to be," Mel said. "Just clever."
She smirked. "That I can do."
Chen appeared next, tablet under her arm. "If you're adding miniguns, I need to redo power distribution."
Mel nodded. "I figured."
Pike leaned against a railing above them, looking down. "Crew positions?"
"Side mounts," Mel called back.
Pike whistled. "They'll want armor."
"They'll get it," Mel said.
Sico watched the team react that not with panic, not with resistance, but with immediate adaptation. Problems were already being broken down, reassigned, attacked.
This was what leadership looked like when it worked.
Mel caught Sico watching.
"Still think this crosses a line?" Mel asked quietly.
Sico considered the question, then shook his head.
"I think the line moved a long time ago," he said. "We're just finally acknowledging it."
Mel nodded slowly.
"Then let's make sure we don't lose ourselves while crossing it," he said.
Sico extended a hand.
Mel looked at it for a beat, then took it, grip firm and brief.
Then a week has passed.
Not cleanly. Not neatly. It didn't arrive as seven tidy days on a calendar with boxes checked and tasks completed. It came as a blur of overlapping shifts, half-slept nights, arguments that carried over from one day to the next, breakthroughs that happened at three in the morning and problems that refused to stay solved past lunch.
Time in the Science Division stopped behaving like time anywhere else.
It stretched.
Compressed.
Bent itself around urgency.
By the end of that week, the workshop looked different.
Not just busier, but also changed.
The air carried a deeper, constant vibration now, the kind that settled into your chest if you stood still too long. More power was being drawn. More systems were live. Temporary lines had been replaced with permanent conduits. The smell had shifted too with less raw metal, more heated composites and sealed insulation, the scent of something transitioning from parts to purpose.
And at the center of it all stood the skeleton.
Finished.
The frame no longer felt like a thought experiment suspended in midair. It was whole now, fully assembled, hanging from reinforced gantries that barely creaked under its weight. Every rib locked into place. Every strut reinforced, braced, double-checked. The fuselage had a presence to it that hadn't existed before that long, lean, unmistakably predatory even without armor plating or paint.
A Vertibird.
Not Brotherhood-made.
Republic-born.
Sico stood at the edge of the workshop, hands clasped behind his back, watching it the way someone might watch a sleeping animal they knew would eventually wake.
He hadn't announced his arrival.
He rarely did.
Mel noticed anyway.
He always did.
The core team had gathered beneath the aircraft, holo-projectors active, power diagrams layered over the physical reality of the frame above them. Cables ran like veins along the floor, feeding test systems. A half-dozen terminals were open at once, each showing a different aspect of the same problem.
Power.
Not just generating it.
Managing it.
"How much margin do we have if the forward weapons and one side mount draw simultaneously?" Chen asked, fingers dancing across her tablet as numbers updated in real time.
"On paper?" Pike replied. "Enough."
Rhea snorted. "Paper doesn't vibrate."
Jansen crossed his arms, staring up at the underside of the fuselage. "Paper also doesn't shear when torque spikes."
Mel held up a hand. "One at a time."
He glanced up at the skeleton, eyes narrowing slightly, then back to the projections.
"Chen," he said, "answer assuming worst-case turbulence and partial power loss."
Chen didn't hesitate. "Then we're flirting with brownout unless we isolate non-essential systems aggressively."
"Define 'non-essential,'" Jansen muttered.
"Comfort," Chen shot back immediately.
"No seats?" Pike asked dryly.
"Padding," Chen clarified. "Environmental stabilization beyond survivability thresholds. Anything that exists to make it pleasant instead of functional."
Rhea tilted her head. "Pilots won't like that."
"They don't have to like it," Mel said calmly. "They have to come back alive."
Sico listened.
He didn't interrupt.
This wasn't his arena, not directly. His role here was weight, not leverage. Presence, not pressure.
Mel caught sight of him again and gave a brief nod, acknowledging him without breaking the flow.
"Okay," Mel said, tapping the holo-table. "Let's step back. Big picture."
The projections shifted, collapsing dozens of layers into a simplified schematic from power source, distribution, consumption.
"This thing needs to fly," Mel said. "Not hover. Not limp. Fly. Under load."
He pointed.
"Primary lift systems," he continued. "Avionics. Control surfaces. Those are sacred. Everything else negotiates around them."
Chen nodded. "I can build a priority ladder. Hard-coded."
"And redundancy?" Pike asked.
"Triple," Chen replied. "Independent routing. Physical separation where possible."
Jansen frowned. "You're adding more cabling."
"Yes," Chen said. "And you're reinforcing more structure."
Jansen sighed. "I already am."
Mel allowed himself a small smile at that.
Sico shifted his stance slightly, eyes tracing the finished skeleton again. The side mount housings were visible now that not weapons yet, but reinforced recesses built into the frame, subtle unless you knew what you were looking for. Purposeful without being loud.
"How long?" Sico asked quietly.
Mel glanced over.
"Skeleton's done," Mel said. "As you can see."
Sico nodded once. "And now?"
Mel exhaled slowly.
"Now comes the part where we convince it to wake up without tearing itself apart," he said.
Chen glanced up. "Power integration, stabilization, control testing. That's not trivial."
"It never is," Mel said.
Sico studied the team that sweat-streaked, exhausted, sharp-eyed. People who had already invested too much to walk away even if they wanted to.
"How long until it can start?" Sico asked.
Mel didn't answer immediately.
He looked up at the Vertibird again, eyes moving from nose to tail, mentally ticking off systems.
"Best case?" Mel said. "Two weeks."
"And flight?" Sico pressed.
Mel's mouth tightened slightly. "Three."
Sico nodded. "Two to three weeks, then."
"That's the window," Mel confirmed. "If nothing goes wrong."
Rhea laughed once, short and humorless. "Something always goes wrong."
Mel didn't disagree.
The conversation resumed around them, voices overlapping as new sub-problems were identified, split, reassigned.
Sico stepped back a few paces, letting the team work, his gaze never leaving the machine.
A week ago, this had been ambition.
Now it was inevitability.
The days that followed settled into a rhythm that was brutal but effective.
Morning briefings bled into afternoon tests. Afternoon tests bled into evening recalibrations. Night cycles became prime problem-solving hours, when fewer distractions meant sharper focus and bolder ideas.
The power core whicb a hybrid system adapted from salvaged pre-war designs and heavily modified Institute principles, became the heart of everything.
And the most dangerous part.
Chen lived beside it.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
She dragged a cot into the power systems bay and slept there when she slept at all, waking at the slightest fluctuation in readouts. Her team rotated around her, some brilliant, some green, all learning fast because there was no other option.
"This routing won't hold under sustained lift," one of the new recruits named Mae, from Sanctuary said one night, voice hesitant but steady.
Chen leaned over her shoulder, scanning the data.
"Why?" Chen asked.
Mae swallowed. "Thermal creep. It's subtle, but it accumulates."
Chen stared for a long moment.
Then she nodded. "Good catch."
Mae's shoulders sagged in relief.
"Fix it," Chen said. "You're on it."
Across the workshop, Jansen and Rhea argued over load distribution like it was personal.
"You're overcompensating," Rhea snapped, slapping a stress graph onto the holo-table. "That reinforcement's going to cause transfer failure here."
"And if I don't," Jansen shot back, "this strut snaps under asymmetric thrust."
"Only if your math is wrong."
"It's not."
"Then your assumptions are."
Mel listened to them both, then pointed.
"Split the difference," he said. "Reinforce both points lightly instead of one heavily."
They stared at him.
"…That's actually elegant," Rhea admitted reluctantly.
Jansen sighed. "I hate it."
"Good," Mel said. "That means it might work."
Sico moved through it all like a shadow.
He spoke with Preston briefly about updates on patrols, recruitment, Brotherhood sightings growing just slightly more frequent, just slightly closer.
He checked in with Sarah about pilot readiness.
"They're eager," she said. "Too eager."
"Good," Sico replied. "We'll need that."
But most of the time, he watched.
He watched Mel argue and compromise and refuse.
He watched the core team push themselves past exhaustion and then keep going.
He watched the Vertibird slowly gain systems, substance, gravity.
By the end of the week, power flowed through it for the first time.
Not fully.
Not safely.
But enough to make lights flicker along the fuselage, status indicators blinking alive like a pulse.
The room went quiet when it happened.
No one had announced it.
Chen hadn't made a speech.
She'd just nodded once, fingers steady on the controls, and engaged the sequence.
A low hum filled the bay that deeper than the generators, more resonant. The gantries vibrated faintly. Diagnostic screens lit up in cascading patterns.
The Vertibird wasn't moving.
But it was awake.
Mel felt it before he saw it.
The way the air changed.
The way sound shifted.
He looked up, breath caught for just a second.
"We're live," Chen said quietly.
No one cheered.
They just stared.
Sico felt something settle in his chest that not pride, not fear, but recognition.
This was real now.
"Kill it," Mel said gently.
Chen did.
The hum faded. The lights dimmed.
The silence afterward was louder than any celebration.
Mel turned to Sico.
"That," he said, voice rough, "is why we need time."
Sico nodded. "You have it."
Mel studied him. "Do we?"
Sico didn't answer right away.
"Not forever," he said finally. "But enough."
Mel let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
"Good," he said. "Because two to three weeks is optimistic."
Sico allowed himself the smallest smile.
"Optimism seems to be working for you so far," he said.
Mel snorted. "Don't jinx it."
They stood beneath the finished skeleton of a machine that would soon challenge the sky itself.
The next day began the way most days did now.
Too early. Too loud. Too fast.
The workshop lights were already at full intensity when the first shift arrived, washing the vast space in hard white illumination that left nowhere to hide fatigue. The Vertibird skeleton loomed larger than ever, no longer just a presence but a constant reminder of how close they were to something irreversible.
Cables had multiplied overnight.
Power trunks as thick as a forearm snaked across the floor, bundled and labeled, running from the primary core housing into distribution nodes mounted along the frame. Temporary shielding panels had been added in places, transparent composites bolted in with quick-release clamps so technicians could see exactly what was happening when current flowed.
Nothing was left to assumption anymore.
Mel stood beneath the fuselage with his core team clustered around him, tablet in one hand, stylus forgotten between his fingers. He hadn't slept much. None of them had. But there was a sharper edge to his focus this morning, the kind that came right before a leap.
"Alright," he said, voice carrying just enough to cut through the background hum. "Same sequence as last night. No shortcuts. No heroics."
Jansen rolled his shoulders. "You say that like someone here wants to explode."
Rhea didn't look up from her console. "I absolutely do not trust that joint under load."
Chen glanced over. "That joint isn't live yet."
"That's what worries me," Rhea replied.
Mel ignored the exchange. He keyed his comm.
"Control, confirm isolation zones," he said.
A voice crackled back. "Isolation confirmed. Non-essential personnel clear. Fire suppression standing by."
Mel nodded to himself.
Sico stood off to one side, near a structural column, arms folded loosely across his chest. He wasn't in the way, but he wasn't distant either. Close enough to see everything. Close enough to matter if something went wrong.
He met Mel's eyes briefly.
Mel gave a tight nod.
This wasn't a conversation moment.
This was a trust moment.
"Chen," Mel said. "You're up."
Chen's fingers hovered over the console for half a second longer than strictly necessary. Not hesitation. Then she moved.
"Primary core to standby," she said. "Routing through test distribution only. No weapon systems. No lift."
The lights along the Vertibird's spine flickered, then steadied. Status indicators bloomed to life one by one, soft blues and ambers chasing each other down the frame.
A low hum filled the bay.
Deeper than yesterday.
Heavier.
"Voltage stable," Mae reported from a secondary terminal, voice tight but controlled.
"Thermals nominal," Pike added. "For now."
Mel watched the readouts scroll, eyes flicking between projected data and the physical machine above him.
"Bring it up five percent," he said.
Chen did.
The hum deepened. The air felt denser somehow, like pressure building before a storm.
Sico shifted his weight slightly, every instinct humming now. Not panic. Readiness.
"Structural response?" Mel asked.
"Minimal vibration," Rhea said. "Within tolerance."
Jansen frowned. "Torque compensation is lagging half a second."
Chen swore under her breath. "I see it. Rerouting assist."
"Careful," Mel warned. "Don't—"
The sound cut through the bay like a hammer striking metal.
POP—CRACK.
A sharp flash of white-orange light burst from the midsection of the skeleton, just below the port-side mount housing. For a fraction of a second, the world seemed to stutter.
Then came the heat.
And the smoke.
"OFF!" Mel shouted, voice raw. "Kill it! Kill it now!"
Chen slammed the emergency cutoff.
Power died instantly.
The hum collapsed into silence, replaced by the angry hiss of something burning.
Flames licked briefly along an exposed conduit, small but violent, spitting sparks as insulation charred.
"Fire!" someone yelled unnecessarily.
"I see it!" Rhea shouted back.
Jansen was already moving, sprinting toward the affected section, eyes locked on the frame. "Port midsection! Conduit breach!"
"Extinguisher!" Mel barked.
"I've got it!" Pike shouted, grabbing a red canister from the wall mount and hauling it toward the flame.
Sico was moving too, faster than anyone else, not toward the fire but toward the perimeter.
"Clear the area!" he called out, voice cutting cleanly through the chaos. "Everyone not on suppression, back now!"
People obeyed without thinking.
Training kicked in.
The fire crackled, small but dangerous, fed by residual heat and damaged insulation.
Pike skidded to a stop beneath the frame and triggered the extinguisher, white suppressant blasting upward in a controlled arc. The flames sputtered, flared once in defiance, then died under the chemical cloud.
The smell was immediate and awful from burnt polymer, scorched metal, acrid suppressant that caught in the back of the throat.
Silence followed.
Not calm.
But held.
Mel was already there, stepping through lingering smoke, hand raised to stop Pike from spraying further.
"That's enough," he said. "It's out."
He stared up at the blackened section of the frame, jaw clenched so hard the muscles jumped.
Chen stood frozen at the console, hands still braced against it, eyes wide but focused.
"I didn't overdraw," she said quickly. "I swear. The spike came from—"
"I know," Mel said, not looking at her. "We'll find it."
Mae approached slowly, tablet clutched to her chest. "Thermal spike registered here," she said, pointing. "Right before cutoff. It wasn't sustained. It was… sudden."
"Like a backfeed," Jansen muttered.
"Or a resonance issue," Rhea said.
Mel finally looked down.
"Everyone breathe," he said quietly.
They did. Some shakily.
Sico stepped closer now, boots crunching over suppressant residue.
"Anyone hurt?" he asked.
A chorus of headshakes.
"Good," he said. Then, softer, to Mel: "Talk to me."
Mel exhaled slowly, running a hand through his hair.
"Localized failure," he said. "Small. Contained. But it shouldn't have happened."
"No," Sico agreed. "But it did."
Mel's eyes flicked back to the damaged conduit.
"That section wasn't even under full load," Mel said. "Which means something else pushed it."
Chen swallowed. "I rerouted assist power when torque lagged. It should've balanced."
"But it didn't," Rhea said.
"Because the frame flexed," Jansen said suddenly.
Everyone turned to him.
"What?" Mel asked.
Jansen gestured upward. "Micro-flex. Barely measurable. But enough. When the frame shifted, it altered the alignment just enough to cause a feedback loop."
Rhea's eyes narrowed. "That's… possible."
Mae nodded slowly. "I saw a transient distortion in the structural sensors. I thought it was noise."
Mel closed his eyes briefly.
"Noise doesn't burn insulation," he said.
Sico watched them, the way blame didn't fly, the way nobody raised their voice. This wasn't panic. This was damage control, the good kind.
"What does that mean?" Sico asked.
Mel opened his eyes.
"It means the skeleton's telling us something," he said. "And we need to listen."
He looked up at the Vertibird again, not with frustration now, but with something closer to respect.
"You okay to keep going today?" Sico asked.
Mel didn't answer immediately.
He surveyed his team. Chen pale but steady. Jansen already thinking three steps ahead. Rhea biting her lip, running simulations in her head. Mae standing a little straighter than before.
"Yes," Mel said finally. "But not like this."
He turned back to Chen.
"Full diagnostic sweep," he ordered. "Every sensor. Every pathway. I want to see the ghost before it bites us again."
Chen nodded. "On it."
"Jansen," Mel continued. "Structural modeling. Assume worst-case flex under partial lift."
Jansen grimaced. "That's going to be ugly."
"Then we'll make it less so," Mel said.
"Rhea," he said, "revisit load distribution. No assumptions carried over."
She nodded once. "Fresh eyes."
"Mae," Mel added, surprising her slightly, "you're on thermal behavior. Lead it."
Mae blinked. "Me?"
"You saw it first," Mel said. "Trust that."
She swallowed, then nodded. "Okay."
Sico watched that moment carefully.
That was leadership too.
He stepped closer to Mel, lowering his voice.
"You still have time," Sico said.
Mel looked at him, a flicker of something sharp passing through his eyes.
"We just lost a little of it," Mel replied.
Sico nodded. "But you learned."
Mel glanced back at the blackened conduit.
"Yes," he said quietly. "We did."
Fire suppression crews finished clearing residue. Engineers began cordoning off the damaged section. Replacement parts were already being fetched, hands moving with practiced urgency.
The Vertibird hung silent again.
Not wounded.
Warned.
Sico took one last look at it before turning away, already thinking ahead to defenses, to patrols, to the inevitable moment when this machine would lift off and announce to the Commonwealth that the balance had shifted.
Behind him, Mel and his team went back to work.
Not because it was easy.
Not because it was safe.
But because now they knew exactly what they were dealing with, and they weren't backing down.
______________________________________________
• 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:-