Chapter 1: Pilot

Down in the hot, thick air of the basement, Viktor was losing an argument with a mount bolt. "Hold the wheel," he said, not looking up. The pipe wrench in his fist was slick with oil. "She comes off this mount, she takes my hand with her." Max set both palms on the heavy iron flywheel and leaned his weight into it. Red clay flaked off his boots onto the concrete. Against the far wall slumped three canvas sacks of amber, and even from across the room he could feel the cool prickle of them. One sack sagged half empty. "Then keep your hand out of it," Max said. "Twelve years I've kept my hand out of it." Viktor gave the bolt a final grunting turn and straightened, pressing a fist into the small of his back. "Twelve years, and the one day we do something worth a damn, the bench tries to eat me." He wiped his forehead with a filthy sleeve and looked at the rig he'd been coaxing together all week, the bent tubing, the patched manifold, the row of small bleed valves he'd threaded into the vent line by hand. The grin went out of him. "Triple the spin, triple the waste gas," Viktor said, running a thumb down the row of little valves. "But I cut these to breathe it out slow, a thimble at a time. We crack them one by one and let the wet air drink the smoke before it ever clears the trees. Done right, nobody sees a thing." "You sure they'll hold?" "I built them, didn't I?" He caught Max's look. "They'll hold. We feed it out gentle, we stay clean. It's the rushing that kills you, and we're not rushing." Max set both hands on the wheel and nodded…