Falling Stars by Tim Tigner

Author:Tim Tigner [Tigner, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

58

Boris

Los Angeles, California

BORIS OFTEN HEARD that he had an unusual mind, although he wasn’t sure what constituted usual. Everyone seemed unique to him. Of course, they were referencing his aptitude for engineering—which was entirely natural if not usual.

Since his single-digit years, Boris had devoured and absorbed engineering texts like so many lollypops. Laws, rules, theorems and hypotheses, all of it stuck. Now, if he studied an object in operation, be it a predatory bird or a nuclear submarine, he could deconstruct the design in his mind. Kind of like X-ray vision.

And that was only half his talent.

The lesser half.

His mind also worked the other way. If he knew what he needed, he could create a design. Plausible, if not practical.

While this struck most people as a remarkable ability, for Boris it was just there. An intuitive application of basic mechanical principles—and some advanced ones. The challenge he faced was finding projects that cranked his intellectual motor.

Most employers were looking for incremental improvements. Sleeker models. Iterations. Designs that would increase their share of proven markets. That wasn’t Boris’s thing. He wanted to break barren ground. Open new markets. Be an engineering entrepreneur. But the money just wasn’t there. Not in Russia anyway. Not until Ivan came along.

Ivan brought him the idea of Raven and the money to make it happen. Boris took it from there.

It had been a great ride, but this one was nearing its end. Ivan had brought him along for maintenance and troubleshooting as a one-man pit crew. There wasn’t much of that required, so his role had morphed into mundane things like driving.

Until today.

Today’s assignment began with boosting the truck they would use during their “Los Angeles premiere.” A generic white model the size of a UPS truck, with a roll-up door and a pullout ramp. Having him steal a car, even when it required disabling the GPS, was like having Rembrandt paint your house.

But Boris didn’t mind.

He was happy to be busy with his hands.

And the next steps would be far more exciting.

Once he had the truck, his next move was removing the roof. A clean cut that wouldn’t be noticed from the ground. One that would allow Raven to fly in and out without getting snagged.

Then the real fun started.

For Raven to fly in and out of a truck, Boris had to make two of the rotors retractable during flight. Otherwise it wouldn’t fit.

There was no weight problem, as Raven carried no cargo during those parts of the mission, but it still presented a tasty engineering challenge.

Normally Raven folded away for transport like a transformer from the movies. The rotor blades rotated to stack and the rotor housings folded in half. The rotor arms telescoped and The Claw winch flipped aside. But that all happened with the drone on the ground. Boris had just made it possible to retract two rotors with Raven in the air. It was a temporary fix, and not particularly pretty, but Ivan said it only had to work for one mission.

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