Page 43 of Fly to Fury
For a few minutes, they worked quietly. Fieran shifted, not sure if Pip found the silence comfortable or as tense and laden as he did.
What should he say? He found himself increasinglystruggling to talk to her. The easy camaraderie that had characterized their friendship so far seemed to be fading, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it.
“Pip, I—”
“Fieran—” Pip spoke as he did, looking up from her work for only a moment before ducking her head.
“You first.” Fieran finished yet another socket and added it to the drawer where the various sockets were organized by size.
Pip kept working for a moment before she set aside the tool, though she kept fiddling with the greasy rag. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. It’s—”
Footsteps pounded on the cement floor a moment before Lije skidded into the bay. “Lunch isn’t coming today.”
Fieran shared a glance with Pip. It seemed their moment was at an end before it had a chance to begin.
She returned the look before she hopped off the workbench. “What do you mean? Isn’t the mess sending up sandwiches?”
“No.” Lije grimaced as he gestured toward the nearest hangar door. “All this rain caused part of the bluff to give way, and it’s taken out the tram tracks and the road between here and the mess. The only way to get from here to there is by foot or by horse. The private they sent to inform us was soaked to the skin and covered in mud to his knees.”
Sandwiches would never survive such a trip without becoming a soggy mess.
“Are they sending up some kind of field rations or something more waterproof?” Fieran glanced at the hangar door again. A waterfall of runoff poured from the hangar’s roof, creating a veritable wall of water between them and the world beyond.
“No.” Lije shook his head, a hand pressed over a stomachthat growled loudly enough for Fieran to hear from several feet away. “We’re on our own.”
Fieran scrubbed a hand over his face. As tired as he was growing of the same ham and cheese, roast beef and cheese, or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every third day, the same old food was far better than no food at all.
“I saw a crate of field rations mixed in with our spare parts. It was probably supposed to be for one of the airships or for the army at the frontlines.” Pip pointed toward the door that led to Bay 3 and their storage area. “I labeled it and put it on the shelves with our other things.”
Sensible. It would have been far more of a hassle to submit the proper paperwork to send the crate to where it belonged than to simply store the thing.
“Let’s take a look and see what we can scrounge.” Fieran set off in that direction, Lije and Pip hurrying after him. “You didn’t tell anyone else about the food situation yet, did you?”
“Not yet.” Lije shook his head.
“Though everyone probably knows something is up. The half-drowned messenger would have been a giveaway.” Fieran suppressed his sigh. Lije’s panic would have also sparked interest, and even now rumors about what was happening would be flying around the hangar. “Well, let’s hope we’ll have a solution by the time we tell them.”
He’d rather tell them Mongavaria was attacking than mention they didn’t have food for the day.
When they stepped into Bay 3, Pip trotted to take the lead between the rows of racks that now held the spare parts and crates instead of the chaos of detritus it had been when they’d arrived. She halted before a small crate set on one of the middle shelves. “This one.”
Fieran lifted the crate’s top, which had been left pried open rather than nailed back on. Inside, cans filled most of the space while paper boxes of hardtack biscuits filled the rest of it.
Just as he’d feared. It would be better than nothing, but he well remembered living off such field rations when they’d done their week in the field at Fort Charibert. He didn’t envy the infantry stationed at the front lines who lived off such pickings all the time.
He picked up a few of the cans, reading the labels. “Looks like we have tinned pork and tinned beans. Maybe a few random cans of beef.”
“Let me see.” Lije crowded in next to Fieran, all but pushing him out of the way. “I can whip up a pot of mountain gruel from this. I’d just need a pot and a way to heat it.”
“I can rig up something.” Pip gestured at the shelves around them. “There’s enough junk lying around.”
“I can help.” Fieran stepped out of the way as Lije picked up the crate, hugging it to his chest as if he’d found treasure. “After I break the news to the whole squadron that lunch is going to be somewhat delayed.”
At least a delay was better than no food. Assuming Lije could turn a crate full of dubious tinned rations into something edible.
Pip layon her back beneath the contraption she’d put together, fusing the last few pieces of the base together. Three coil springs for army trucks had been turned into heating coils while she’d turned angle iron into a base to hold the heating coils in place. “All set here.”
Fieran fiddled with the connections between the heating coils and the magical power cell. “This should be all set too.”
