Life With Heero Arc Part 107
Preparation Part 8
The first faint hints of artificial dawn had barely begun to appear when Hilde quietly dressed and tiptoed down the hall. A quick peek inside the bedroom as she passed by confirmed that Rick was still sound asleep. She hadn't really been serious when she'd threatened to make him sleep on the couch yesterday but, after spending most of the evening going a few more rounds over what he'd finally referred to as "your damn sheds full of worthless crap", she'd been quite serious about sleeping in the spare room - alone.
Continuing on through to the kitchen, Hilde rubbed her eyes and smothered a yawn. Not that she'd managed to do much sleeping; she'd been too busy wracking her brains for any memories that might lead her to some valuable salvage today. She hadn't had much luck with that, either, which made getting an early start even more important.
Bypassing the coffee maker - she didn't want to risk the odour waking Rick up - she grabbed a bottle of apple juice and a couple of granola bars on her way out of the house. Her family had stored worthwhile salvage in those sheds; she just knew they had. And she was going to find it and prove her Doubting-Thomas partners wrong. She had over three hours before the time that they were all supposed to be there; if she worked fast, she should manage to find something really good before they arrived.
After all, this time she was going to do things her way. And she was going to start with one of the small sheds, just the way that she'd said they should in the first place.
***
Checking her watch, Hilde looked around the - relatively - small shed that she'd been working in and groaned in discouragement. A whole hour of hard labour and she'd only cleared about ten square of floor space. She hadn't found anything worth mentioning; just a handful of rusty old tools and half a crate of glassware produced by the colony's short-lived glass factory that might have a bit of antique value - if the right collector could be found. The building was filled with small items that were going to take forever to inventory.
Just as Rick had predicted, annoyingly enough.
"Maybe I'd have better luck elsewhere," she muttered irritably, tossing a broken picture frame in the general direction of the 'junk' pile. "Maybe one of the big sheds that none of us have looked in yet will have something interesting to offer..."
One could only hope.
Exiting her previous worksite, she ignored the other small shed and headed for the nearest larger storage building. A quick trip around the outside confirmed that the wall braces were securely in place and an equally quick tour of the crowded interior verified the integrity of the support columns. As she checked the interior supports, Hilde kept an eye out for anything noteworthy but nothing particularly caught her eye.
Thinking out loud, she murmured, "Well, the methodical approach hasn't exactly been very productive. So, maybe it's time for a change of pace..." Closing her eyes, she spun around in a circle. "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe!" Halting, she pointed and opened her eyes. The corner of an old heating and cooling unit jutted out from a heap of smaller equipment. She grimaced and sighed; it didn't exactly look very promising but... "Oh well, guess it's as good a place to start as any."
***
"Dammit!" Hilde cursed wearily, glaring at yet another disappointing 'discovery'. Nearly half an hour wasted on uncovering a barely-visible shuttle engine only to find that the damn thing had already been stripped for parts. She was down to only an hour before the others would arrive and she still hadn't found anything worthwhile.
"Dammit!" she swore again, venting her frustration in a good swift kick. The steel toe of her boot sent a corroded piston spinning across the aisle to clatter against another pile of scrap.
Maybe the guys were right. Maybe this really was a complete waste of time. Maybe she wasn't finding anything worthwhile because there wasn't anything worthwhile to be found...
"No." Hilde set her jaw in stubborn denial. "There's got to be something..." The salvage yard had been in her family for years; at least some of this stuff had to have been kept for a reason. She just hadn't looked in the right place yet.
A brief survey of the building's remaining towering piles of scrap failed to produce any exceptionally promising areas. After shifting and somewhat haphazardly digging through several stacks of vaguely interesting-looking but ultimately disappointing crates - decade-old golfing magazines would only bring a few creds at the paper recycling station - and accidentally discovering a hidden 'room' between them and the wall - the less said about Great-uncle Johnny's illegal still, the better - Hilde decided to return to the shed that they'd been working in at the end of the previous day. There'd been a bulky, half-buried silhouette in one back corner that had been nagging her memory all morning and she'd finally figured out that it reminded her an awful lot of an early 30s Boeing Colony Hopper. Very few were built and fewer survived; even a partial hull would have considerable value on the historical spacecraft market.
'I'll let my two explosives-experts partners deal with the disposal of Great-uncle Johnny's stash of rather dubious looking and probably highly volatile potato whisky,' she thought as she left the building. At least this particular 'find' proved that, valuable salvage or not, imploding or otherwise knocking down the sheds without clearing them out first would not be a good idea.
Smirking in satisfaction, Hilde added silently, 'And Rick can take care of inventorying Great-grandma Mildred's "Playgirl" collection; maybe some of those issues actually have some collectible value.'
Before entering the partially-inventoried shed, Hilde threw a cursory glance at the nearest wall brace. It looked exactly like it had the last time that she'd checked it. With a shrug, she decided not to bother making the complete round; none of the safety braces had needed adjustments all week. Besides, Duo had just checked them all yesterday afternoon. Why waste valuable time checking them again now? She had a lot of work to do if she was going to get that possible Colony Hopper revealed before the guys showed up.
TBC...
Keep your fingers crossed, folks, the muse seems to be on a (slight) roll here...
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