The pause this time was shorter. Something had changed in the quality of the silence: a recalibration on the other end.
"7702, understand you're 12 years old, flying from the right seat. Can you confirm current aircraft state? Are you in control of flight?"
"Affirmative. Aircraft is level. Airspeed is—" she checked "—280 knots. Slight left bank tendency; I'm correcting manually. Left engine N2 is degrading, currently at 82% and dropping. I have a fuel imbalance. I do not yet have a source for the trim fault. Over."
Another pause. Then a different voice—older, steadier, someone who'd clearly been brought to the mic with intention: "7702, this is senior controller David Reeves. I'm on with you now. Good job stabilizing the aircraft. I'm assigning you priority handling. Give me a moment to get your options together. Stay on this frequency. Over."
"Copy that," Zariah said. "I'm not going anywhere."
Behind her in the cabin doorway, she heard a sound that might have been a short, disbelieving laugh from someone, or might have been a sob. She didn't look back to find out which.
The engineer—his name was Warren, she'd finally heard someone use it—had moved to the left seat and was managing what he could reach from there: electrical panel switches, keeping watch on the engine instruments, calling out numbers she asked for. He was good at it; he was trained for exactly this kind of mechanical assessment, even if flying an aircraft wasn't his discipline.
"Left engine is at 78," he said. "Still dropping, but slower now."
"The fuel crossfeed valve," she said. "Left side. Can you see its position?"
He looked. "Closed."
"Open it. Slowly."
He did. She felt the aircraft respond: the left engine's fuel supply stabilizing as the crossfeed equalized the imbalance. The N2 gauge stopped its descent, held at 76%—not good, but not worsening.
"Okay," she said quietly, more to herself than to Warren. She was doing the math in her head: the same calculation she'd run in simulator emergencies dozens of times, except this time the numbers had weight behind them.
"Okay, you've done this before," Warren said. It wasn't quite a question.
"In simulation." She adjusted her heading correction slightly, watching the artificial horizon. "But my dad always said simulation was 90% of reality. The other 10% is what you're made of."