The hangar’s most pervasive quality was the unrelenting smell of machinery: aviation fuel, oil, ozone, grease. Even with the air system that dutifully cycled away exhaust, the room itself retained an inseparable memory of every single time the Aerowing was brought to full thrust. The ceiling loomed somewhere far above in the darkness, a tangled mass of steel beams, tracks, and structural support for the stadium over them. It was not an unpleasant place, rather it was one of those rooms, like medical bay, or the ready room, that was there purely for the mission, and being within its walls meant they were there to carry out duties. 

Mallory stood with Wildwing under the Aerowing, appraising a stress fracture at the joint of the starboard wing.

“When do you think that appeared?” he mused, pondering it from below.

“During the time you were missing, I guess,” she sighed, flipping through a checklist, and then back a few pages. This normally would not have been her purview, but with Tanya occupied with more immediate survival concerns, Mallory was the second most qualified person to inspect any of their equipment.

He left unsaid that the last time they had needed to conduct an inspection, they had possessed the ability to simply stand on the ground and let the Mask do most of the work. Without it, things became much more difficult. Rather than having problem spots flagged and worked on individually, they were going to have to address the wear and tear on the Aerowing in the traditional manner: the entire craft would have to be dismantled down to its bolts, each part individually inspected, and then reassembled once every piece was addressed. That process would have to repeat regularly, every couple hundred hours in the air.

In theory, anyway. That was how an inspection should have gone, if there were a fleet of aircraft waiting to the side to take its place while it was spread out on the floor. The ducks didn’t have that option. Any time the Aerowing was not able to fly at a moment’s notice was perhaps the difference between saving the world and repeating past failures.

Wildwing was unsure they would have been able to carry out a full inspection in any case. The Aerowing was a specialized piece of tech, from the fuselage down to the programming, there was little that he could directly do to it with confidence. It was some small luck that its onboard computer contained its own manual and maintainance record, which they now looked through with increasing agitation. It was work that they had to do, because they could not, yet again, trust anyone else on the planet to do it. They would just have to be extremely mindful about it.

“We’re going to have to take that entire panel off,” he said.

“You’re going to want to look for cracking and sheering under it too,” Mallory said, trying her best to draw a diagram for later. “It’s probably not just on the surface.”

“Might as well do the same for the other side,” he looked back at her. “Anything else you noticed? You were the last one to fly it.”

“I don’t have....pilot instinct?” she shrugged. “It seemed the same, to me.”

Wildwing walked around the landing gear, giving it a cursory once over. “How’s your instinct with hydraulics?”

Mallory raised an eyebrow, and he could not tell if she were amused or annoyed. “I can tell you if the thing flies or if it doesn’t,” she said. He smiled, with just a hint of pity. Mallory may have technically been the most qualified at hand to survey the military equipment, but that did not make her adept at it. 

“Since we’re on the underside anyway let’s see if we can look at those systems too,” his hand came away with a layer of dirty fluid, where there should have been none. “There’s definitely seepage. You let Nosedive land too hard.”

“Oh, sure, he listens to me,” Mallory made an exaggerated note on her checklist, with flourish.

Wildwing considered what else he could do. The Aerowing would likely be a never-ending project now. If they were able to put one of its systems back together to satisfaction, they would immediately have to move on to the next.

“Why didn’t he recruit an aircraft mechanic?” Wildwing complained aloud.

“Because most of them died in the first four hours,” came the response. Canard walked from the dim of the doorway to meet their improvised workspace. “Air fields were one of the first targets.”

Mallory’s considered this, before agreeing. “I’m actually not sure we had any on site the day we left.”

“You have maintenance drones, don’t you? You said that’s what built this place to begin with,” Canard said, pointing at the ceiling.

“That’s right?” Mallory said, cautiously.

“Seems like it would make sense to reprogram some of those to keep the bird flying. Can’t be too much more complicated than whatever is pumping air through here.”

Wildwing took this into consideration, and gave a slight nod. “Not a bad idea.” It would take some of Tanya's time again, as all problems seemed to at the moment, but the time saved later on would likely make it worth it.

Canard paused at the edge of the light that shone down on the aircraft, fidgeting there, and giving a sideways glance back at the hallway he had just come from. Wildwing followed his gaze reflexively, but saw nothing concerning there, beyond the implication that he should have.

“I think I owe you an apology,” Canard said, haltingly, as his attention refocused on them. “I’m not-I don’t want to be here, and I don’t want to be doing this again because I already did it, I did it for months and it still wasn’t enough.”

Mallory shifted uneasily, caught between the two of them, unsure if she was supposed to stay or leave.

“And it doesn’t matter, does it?” Canard asked rhetorically. “No one wants to be here still doing this.”

Wildwing had to ask again.“What did you see in limbo?” 

He could not quite read Canard’s face, if that was annoyance, or fear, or something else.

“Something very old and very angry,” Wildwing prompted.

“I’m not sure ‘see’, is the right word. I’m...I think a lot of words don’t quite work, in there.”

This was a problem that Wildwing had not considered, but now that he was faced with it, he realized that he should have. Tanya’s conception of the place they called limbo was something completely outside the rules of space and time. In Wildwing’s limited imagination and understanding, this held little meaning. Much like her question about solid ground, it had never once occurred to him in his life to consider that basic things—the floor, time, and words—could be subverted. These things were supposed to be constant and knowable.

It was perhaps an extra cruelty to ask someone that had glimpsed a breakdown of basic axioms to describe the observation.

“You said it was angry at us, specifically,” Wildwing pushed on, just the same, because the mission required it. “That implies we did something to anger it.”

“It does, but I don’t know what you did,” Canard agreed.

“Tanya is concerned that the fusion generator is disruptive.”

“No, I don’t think it cares about that,” Canard shook his head, took another glance into the dark, and then finally stepped across the threshold into the floodlight. “It doesn’t care about whatever you’ve got in here. It hates you. All of you.”

Mallory gave an exasperated cluck, “Maybe we could tell it to take a number and stand in line.”

“I don’t understand how we’ve upset something that doesn’t even exist in this reality,” Wildwing said, suddenly aware that he still had grime on his hands, and searched for a cloth to wipe it away. “Tanya says the barrier between here and there is supposed to be impenetrable. Nothing we do should affect it. If it’s angry at anyone, it should be Dragaunus.”

Mallory looked to Canard “Is it angry at you?”

“Me?” he asked, perplexed.

“You’re the only one that’s seen it, you were right there,” she explained.

“It was… There’s something very familiar about it,” he stared up into the light above them, hanging from the high ceiling, with the same reverence one might when enjoying the sun on a warm day. “It’s like, it’s like trying to remember the house you grew up in. Something you knew and forgot.”

“Sure,” Mallory remarked, and said nothing more.

Canard nodded absently, “I don’t want to see that place again.” Then, he seemed to remember them, “I don’t want any of you to have to see it either. So, I will try to help, if I can.” Perhaps Wildwing hesitated just slightly too long, or he saw an expression of distrust on Mallory’s face, so Canard added, “If you’ll let me.”

“I’d feel better having you along than my volunteer,” Wildwing confided. Thus far, Emily had been adhering to Mallory’s schedule and training. Mallory tried her best to be objective, and view her as she would any other recruit, separated from whatever it was Dragaunus had added. Emily’s aim was not terrific, her physical fitness reflected someone who had lived comfortably and sedentary for the last year, and she became frustrated too easily. She was normal, except for the things that made her not normal. In the time Mallory spent in close quarters with her, Emily did nothing that would have been considered out of the ordinary, but Wildwing could not decide if that was because there was nothing to be seen, or because Emily chose not to share it, as before.

"I don't know much about these,” Canard said, pointing up to the Aerowing, “but my memory is they were notorious for failing fuel injectors." He began walking around the aircraft, scrutinizing its rivets and joints as they had been for the past hour.

"Tanya's had to fabricate a few," Wildwing agreed.

Mallory stood silently as the two drakes passed back and forth suggestions, until she was satisfied she would not be overheard, and approached, talking under her breath. "Wildwing? Who's supposed to be watching him?"

 "What?"

 "He came in alone."

 "I…don't know," Wildwing admitted.

 "You have that schedule memorized down to the minute," Mallory said.

 "Who is it then?" he asked, annoyed.

 "I don't know either," she said, urgently. "I can't remember-I, why can't I remember?"

She must have realized that she had distracted Wildwing beyond the point of a plausible irrelevant question, and looked beyond him to Canard.

Canard had not noticed the exchange at all. He stood below and behind the crafts starboard wing, looking up at it silently, and did not respond when they called to him. Wildwing cautiously walked to his side, trying not to betray anything beyond concern. Mallory stood rigidly still, ready to drop her clipboard in favor of a firearm. Wildwing pretended not to notice.

"Canard?" he asked as he came up beside his friend, and when there was sill no answer, he followed the line of sight. The starboard hatch, closed now, but the very last thing he would have seen of the aircraft, of any of them, before falling into infinity.

"Tanya's right," Canard said at last, "I did something really stupid."