Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five Part Six Part Seven
Ignorance is Bliss, Part Eight
Porcusces International Airport
Porcusces, Ceneisis
September 28, 2011
Hjalmar Carlsberg examined the pipe head that he had picked up during his second walk-around on the crash site of NQA Flight 1200. The pipe head looked just like any other pipe head in the world, and yet Carlsberg found himself strangely drawn to it. He couldn't explain why he had chosen to focus on this part instead of anything else that remained visible from the crash site. Maybe it was because it was the largest remaining piece of metal that hadn't melted in the post-crash fire which hadn't been picked up by the investigators during the first walk-around. He didn't know, and he couldn't tell even if he was asked. There were simply no words for it.
Carlsberg took a magnifying glass and looked at the pipe head through it. There was still nothing in the magnified view which told the veteran air crash investigator about why he felt that this piece was the most important piece of evidence in the investigation of the crash of NQA 1200, which had claimed the lives of most of Abanhfleft's under-21 men's and women's ice hockey teams. And yet Carlsberg was still drawn to the tiny steel pipe head, because his gut feeling was telling him that this was the one part of the plane that would make and break the case of the downing of Flight 1200.
Obviously, a simple magnifying glass probably wouldn't be enough to tell Carlsberg what exactly went wrong with the plane. So Carlsberg set aside the magnifier and instead took the piece under a run-of-the-mill microscope. As he zoomed in on the pipe head's grooves, which secured it to the turboprop engine. Based on the look of the head compared to the other myriad parts of the engine, Carlsberg determined that the pipe was most probably a fuel line connected to the engine's combustion chamber. Carlsberg increased the magnifying power of the microscope until he found something odd in the head's grooves.
Instead of a circle, the edge of the grooves keeping the head attached to the combustion chamber looked more like an oval, or more probably, an egg shape. The opening was round at one end and had a slightly elongated curve on the other. The difference between the two sides was very tiny, not enough to affect the pipe's fit to the combustor, but what if... what if...
Carlsberg walked over to his table and took out the manual for the Ivchenko AI-20, the type of engine which had powered the Antonov An-12 that had flown the doomed Flight 1200. He flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for: the part specifications. This section listed down how many parts there were, how many parts of one type there should be, and what kinds of measurements these parts should have. This part of the manual was as vital in the proper operation of an aircraft as maintenance and pilot competence, if not even more so. Faulty and mismatched parts can and have brought down other planes in the past.
Carlsberg found the proper diameter for the interior of the pipe head, the end which was supposed to be attached to the engine's combustion chamber. He memorized the proper number, went back to the pipe head from Flight 1200, and measured the inside diameter with a vernier caliper. What he got was surprising. The pipe head from Flight 1200 was three millimeters wider than the regular pipe head.
And a light bulb went on above Carlsberg's head. Bingo, he said to himself. You've found it, Hal. You've found the one piece of evidence that will make or break this case!
But he couldn't get too far ahead of himself. Right now, what he had in his mind was just a theory; nothing more, nothing less. If he wanted to prove his theory and find out how and why Flight 1200 went down, he would have to test his theory. If his theory doesn't work, then he was going to be back to square one.
First Commercial Bank Stadium
Tesnigin, Riuwiee, Abanhfleft
The crash of NQA Flight 1200, and the deaths of all of its passengers, of which many were players of Abanhfleft's under-21 men's and women's national teams, will be firmly cemented into the Fleftic psyche for years to come. Many would mourn the needless loss of all those young souls, but the mourning would be even more pronounced in the heartland of Abanhfleft, the Capital Isles, where most of the young hockey players had lived, and where most of them had planned on playing after either getting drafted or completing their studies and signing pro contracts. But now, there was no more of that happening, as most of those promising young boys and girls were now dead in a distant field in Ceneisis--well, it probably wasn't that distant, but it certainly was very far away from the heartland of Riuwiee and Releinthi.
The crash of NQA 1200 had put the Samahang Yelong Hockey ng Abanhfleft between a rock and a hard place. The World Junior Hockey Championships were just around the corner, and Abanhfleft, after having qualified for the tournament for the first time in their history, had now lost the team that had gotten them there in the first place. With just two months remaining before the start of the tournament in faraway Schutzenphalia and West Ruhntuhnkuhnland, there was only one solution that the SYHA could think of to replace its numbers: hold auditions to make up for the numbers.
There were some players from the old team who had survived the crash by simply not being on board the plane when it went down. Tracey Peterson, the small center who had the big personality of a born leader, was one of the reserve players of the men's under-21 team and therefore not included in the training sessions in Kusavang. But, seeing as he was one of the better players from the old team still left alive, he had been given a free pass into the new team, and had even been given captaincy duties. Seo Min-ah, the ruthless sniper from Releinthi, had also survived the crash by not being in Kusavang and had been handed a co-captaincy alongside Peterson. But there were still a lot more spots in the squad to fill, and the SYHA didn't know if it had enough time to create a new team and train them in time for the WJHC.
Annie Alvarez had gone to the First Commercial Bank Stadium expecting to train with her fellow varsity hockey players alongside the Central Riuwiee Ice Sharks, but she found inside the stadium a very large number of boys and girls fully kitted out in ice hockey gear, alongside a bunch of people in black and gray suits that could only mean that they were from the government. Annie, who at 5 feet and 8 inches was certainly one of the shorter teenagers milling about in the stadium, tried to tiptoe over their heads of the teens in front of her and see what was going on inside the stadium, but she just couldn't get a look in. Annie threw up her hands in the air in frustration and walked away, just in time to see her friend, classmate and fellow varsity player Nora Sharp. "Nora!" Annie said. "What's going on? Why are there so many people here?"
"Don't you remember the announcement from Coach Brandon yesterday?" Nora asked back at Annie. "He totally told us that the SYHA is holding auditions for hockey players to, quote-unquote, fill up the ranks of the under-21 national team after the horrible events in Porcusces! You probably don't remember it because you were busy daydreaming about Ted Kawakami!"
"I was not daydreaming!" Annie retorted. "And even if I was, I wouldn't daydream about that Kawakami creep. He's a fucking Jaeger, Nora! Lotharstadt and Tesnigin don't mix!"
"Yeah, right," Nora said, trying very hard to stifle a laugh. "I could literally see the hearts popping out of your eyes when Kent traded you his Kawakami card for your spare Antonin Pokorny!"
"Will you please just shut up, Nora?" Annie said through gritted teeth. She now regretted telling Nora about her greatest, most closely guarded secret. "We're in the heartland of the Ice Sharks now, okay? I'm toast if someone finds out I've got a crush on Ted Kawakami of the Jaegers?"
"Who's got a crush on who now?" a male voice asked from behind Annie and Nora. If it was humanly possible, Annie would have jumped right up to the roof of the stadium.
"Goddamn it, Kent, don't scare me like that!" Annie said to Kent Gutierrez.
"What? I wasn't scaring you, girl," Kent said. "I just saw you two pretty ladies talking all by your lonesomes and decided that they needed some company."
"Go practice your cheesy pickup lines somewhere else, Kentucky," Nora said, referring to Kent by his original Christian name. "Now is neither the time nor the place."
"Dang it, Nora, why do you always have to bring up the K word?" Kent asked as he shook his head, even thought he couldn't stop a smile from forming on his lips.
"So, why are you all here?" Annie asked. "For the tryouts?" The word auditions just didn't seem right for a sporting contest, at least in Annie's opinion.
"No, we're here to play basketball," Kent replied. "Of course we're here for the auditions! Sometimes, Annie, you really make me wonder how you got into the team with that kind of brain."
"Well, I had to be sure, Kent. Okay, guys, let's be honest. Do you think you can get into the national team?"
"OF course not!" Kent said. "I mean, under ordinary circumstances, none of us would probably even be considered for even a spot in the reserves, but after that crash in Porcusces... Well, I guess desperate times call for desperate measures."
"Yeah, right, Mr. Benchwarmer of the under-15 national team," Annie said.
"Okay, boys and girls!" someone shouted. "Everyone who wants to try out for the national team, get in line in front of me! Whoever doesn't want to have a chance at joining the national team, go back to the sidelines and just watch!"
Annie shook her head and followed Nora and Kent to the back of the line. "Seriously, Ann?" Nora asked. "You're trying out?"
"I'm Tesnigin through and through, Nora," Annie said. "Someone has to represent Central Riuwiee if you and Kentucky over there don't make the cut."
"Hey!" Kent said at the mention of his full name.
"Besides, this is probably the only chance I'll get to impress!" Annie continued. "You know how women's hockey is in this country. You have to do super-duper extraordinarily well to get noticed, or else you'll just end up rotting because you're playing what's basically a fringe sport here anyway. And I've got an uber-big family. You know that, right? All of us have to pull our weight to support ourselves!"
"You know, Ann, that's what I like about you," Nora said, putting an arm over Annie's shoulders. "When you put your mind to something, you're gonna do it come hell or high water."
"You're a woman of convictions and principles, Annie," Kent added. "You're a real Fleftic gem now."
"Thanks for the pep talk, guys," Annie said, a little sarcastically. "I really needed to get pumped today."
But it was true. This was Annie's one chance to impress and become famous, and she will be damned if she wasn't going to take the opportunity.
