Author's Note: All details pertaining to Sywell Airfield are accurate; I know this because I used to work not far from there, and for the record I think the jetway is a bloody awful idea.
I also defy you to spot all the 'Lyra's Oxford' references in this chapter. Incidentally, in 'The Silver Bird', the Aurora Borealis sets down somewhere between St Thomas Street and Oxpens Road.

Justin was in the Right Dorsal turet, cleaning down the Maxim's inner workings with methylated spirits. They were moored up at some nameless little satellite town in the industrial North, and most of the crew were loading Spirit with machine tools and components bound for St Petersberg. Four of the gunners had been chosen by lot for armament-maintainence detail, a dull but relatively easy job. It was almost impossible to clean the guns when underway; skyraiders had an awkward habit of showing up when one's primary means of defence was in pieces all over the deck, being scrubbed down. Stoppages from a weapon too long between cleanings had a habit of cropping up at inopportune moments as well, but there was an element of calculated risk in these things.
Justin held the last part up to the light, and found it to wear a satsfactory gleam. With great care, he screwed it back into place and gave it a light brushing of lubricant with a ball of cotton wool, then replaced the outer casing. "Right, just the rear gun to do now, and then I'm for a quick cup of tea before we muck in with the stevedores down there," Justin remarked, picking up his cleaning kit and heading for the ladder. "I really don't envy the dorsal gunners," he said to Seraph.
"We're not a lot better off," she replied. The overhead cover in the forward gun positions was a largely psychological comfort; at speed, the rain seemed to be falling horizontaly towards them, a phenomenon easily observable to any road user. The rear guns were generally considered the more comfortable in terms of weather protection, but tended to be targeted by skyraiders more often. The waist gunners, therefore, were by general consensus the most envied. They were not begrudged their relative comfort in battle, however; the front, rear and dorsal arcs sported two guns, whereas the flanks supported only one. That made them vulnerable, and Captain Matthews assigned only the best gunners to those positions.
Once the Right Aft Maxim was rendered good as new, Justin made his way to the galley to find Jess wrestling with the urn. "Not on the blink again, is it?"
"Yep. Want to take a look?"
"It's not QUITE like stripping a machine gun, but I'll give it a go." Taking the screwdriver, he procceeded to dismantle the tea urn and prayed he'd be able to put it together again if and when he sorted it out. One look at the inner workings suggested that this would be somewhat academic.
"Bloody hell. No wonder it's packed up; the wires are almost rusted through! Bad seal somewhere, I suppose," Jess remarked, suggesting she knew more about these things than she chose to let on. Seraph suspected she had wanted Justin to feel he'd impressed her, but kept her own counsel.
"Oh, terrific. You'd better let the skipper know- no, I'll tell him myself once I get down there. Well, at least it went when we were in port. See you later."

"All guns shipshape, Justin?" the captain asked once Justin arrived at the loading ramp.
"Yes, sir. I'm sorry to report that the tea urn isn't, however." He described the state of affairs in the galley.
"Oh, hell! Well, I'd better have Hodges take a look; maybe he can jury-rig something. Grab a trolley and give Bert a hand, will you?"
"Aye, sir."

"Okay, this is a concept sketch of the Beriev-46, hopefully to be called the Marten." Dave spread a sheet of paper out on the tabletop. The Aircraft Illustrated correspondent was favourably impressed.
"Nice lines. Maritime patrol and ASW, right?"
"That's one of the possibilities. Also search-and-rescue, general transport and maybe some specialised stuff like firefighting. Anything the marketing guys can think of, I expect. I've given them free rein, so long as we get our license money."
"Smooth. What's the performance likely to be?"
"Just over the Mach with the Tumanskys, operating radius depends on the model but starts from about five hundred miles; that's not a hard number yet, by the way. We've run a few computer simulations, but we won't know for definite until we've done some real flying with the prototype. That won't be for another three months; we've barely started assembling it."
The correspondent went away with a copy of the sales brochure and the makings of a decent article. A small consortium custom-designing their own aircraft for electromagnetic physics research over the Arctic Circle would make a reasonable space-filler for next month's issue, and Dave was quietly pleased that he'd avoided directly lying to the man. Whilst his esteem for the press in general was not high -excessively detailed reports in the Falklands had placed lives at risk, something he'd not soon forgive- he found the defence media more supportive and better informed than the Ministry of Defence quite a lot of the time.
What Aircraft Illustrated had not been told was that there were TWO prototypes under construction, one of which was being fitted out for a mission that Dave hadn't listed in his sales pitch and whose specifications were rather more, how to put it... Lively. Of which more later. Author's Note: If you've read my previous efforts you'll already know most of it!

They had another passenger, who Justin had heard was Master of one of the colleges on business up here. He was enjoying a last cigar before takeoff, having taken the lack of smoking facilities in a relatively sanguine manner; if he'd demanded passenger-liner standards of comfort he'd have paid passenger-liner prices. "Takeoff in ten minutes, sir," Justin told him politely.
"Thank you, young man. What's your name, by the way? You remind me of somebody for some reason."
"I'm Justin Fairfax, sir. If you'll excuse me, I must report to my station now."
The Master of Jordan College finished his cigar, wondering why the young man had reminded him so much of Edward Coulter. Wait a minute... He'd had a sister, who'd married a man by the name of Fairfax. A plausible enough explanation for the resemblance, up to a point. But even if he WAS Edward Coulter's nephew, why in heaven's name was he working on a rather down-at-heel cargo zepplin as an ordinary crewman? This merited some discrete inquiries, though the Master had a feeling that Justin might be reticent on the matter.
He was right. Justin refused to be drawn, no matter how carefully the Master phrased his enquiries over dinner. He briefly mentioned that he was acquainted with the Fairfaxes of Cirencester, to which Justin airily replied that it was scarcely an uncommon name. The warning look passed to one of the other crewmen as he said so -Ellis, though the Master did not realise this- did not go unnoticed, however. The Master guessed more or less correctly that there was bad blood between Sir Charles and the young man he took for his son, and feeling it was not his place to press the issue he decided to write to Fairfax's wife in confidence. Lyra deserved to know at least some family.

At this precise point in time, Lyra was sitting on the bench in the Botannical Gardens, sensing Will's presence uite distinctly. /I'm coming, Will/ she promised, not realising that he was working towards the same end from a somewhat different angle.
Once their time was done, she got to her feet and tried hard to project an air of brisk determination. "Right, we're going to Beaumont Street. Where did I put the list"
"I've still got my reservations about this," Pan warned.
"Oh, do stop worrying!"

Will stood up. "Alright, let's go."
"Okay. We've got to pick Mary up from Sywell on the way home, by the way; she's been having flying lessons," Dave explained, having timed his return perfectly. "Well, somebody's got to fly the plane when I'm in the head. You'd rather it was your mother?"
"Point taken."
"Thought you'd see it my way. Come on, let's get some lunch. I know a nice little pub round here..."

The Master decided not to mention his suspicions to Lyra until he had some proof. Instead, he spoke quietly and confidentially to a former student by the name of Deurden, who had read Classics with Fairfax and was now Permanent Under-Secretary to the Minister of War.
"Children? Not to the best of my knowledge, though I believe Elisabeth's nephew ended up foisted on them. And by all accounts Charles would have happily seen the boy end up in the workhouse instead."
"Nephew?" the Master enquired guardedly. "How come?"
"The boy's mother was carrying on with another man. Edward confronted the chap in question -forget his name now- and got himself shot. Rumour has it there was another child involved, but I never knew the truth of it. Very bad business all round, anyhow. Strictly between ourselves, old chap, I can't really blame the boy. Charles was a first-rate shit when I knew him, and I doubt he's improved with age."
The Master left the club where they'd met with a great many things on his mind. Even if Lyra did indeed have a brother, there was no positive proof that Justin was in fact said sibling. The letter to Fairfax's wife might yet offer some confirmation.
By the time a reply arrived, Lyra had returned to school. The Master read the letter, raising an eyebrow when he learned that Elisabeth Coulter -she had jettisoned the Fairfax surname as quickly and enthusiastically as her nephew- had been enjoying a cruise aboard the S.S. Zenobia with somebody she described with tongue-in-cheek discretion as 'a close friend.' When he reached the main point of the letter he nearly sprayed his tea across the room.
"So," he said to his daemon, "how best to inform Lyra?" They formed a mental picture of Lyra charging off into the wilderness in search of her brother, and winced. "Best to give that a little thought first."

With great ceremony and deference to local preference -not to mention the impossibility of getting hold of champagne this side of the Iron Curtain, however rusty it was these days- Mary smashed a bottle of vodka against the nose of the Aurora Borealis. "Right, all hands man the alehouse!" Dave called. There was a general stampede for the nearest bar as soon as their interpreter translated this into Russian for the thirty-strong assembly team. Nobody your chronicler was able to question can remember much of the next few hours, and the start of the intensive crew-training programme Dave had planned was delayed by 48 hours on account of nobody being fit to fly.
"Important life leson, Will," Dave remarked over a cup of very strong coffee the next morning, as they compared hangovers. "Never, ever mix Old Speckled Hen with vodka. Especially not in the same glass!"

Lyra bent over the copy of J.C.B Carborn's By Zepplin To The Pole, an invaluable reference tool for what she had in mind, though she wasn't going QUITE that far. Smith & Strange Ltd's direct-sales outlet had been a treasure-trove. The notepad beside her was covered with jottings, and the margins of the book itself sported several comments. Her teachers would have been amazed.
"We're going to need an awful lot of kit," Pan remarked. "It's going to cost a fortune, too."
"So I save up," Lyra replied. Being a day student rather than a boarder, she had secured a job in the Library. The pay wasn't especially good, but between it and the monthly income from Asriel's estate that she had acquired more or less by default -no other descendant could be found and he'd left no will, which Lyra suspected was because he thought he'd live forever- she probably had more ready cash than the bunch of snobs she was cooped up with at St Sophia's.
"Pan?" she said after a few minutes. "I've just realised something. Midsummer's Day falls on a Monday next year. We'll be at school."
"Well, we'd better get our skates on, then!"

Spirit was berthed in London, which was registered with Lloyds as her home port. The zepplin was currently in 'drydock', having the engines and steering gear overhauled. It was a three-week job, and gave the majority of the crew a much-needed break from the usual routine. The actual maintainence work was largely the perogative of dockyard workers, with the Chief Engineer keeping an eye on them, so the crew were turned loose upon the fleshpots of Soho or whatever else in London took their fancy.
It was also an opportunity to collect any accumulated mail from the Aerodock's post office, which dealt largely with Royal Mail charter zepplins but also provided a post-holding service for crews. Justin found a single letter, from his aunt. He decided to read it later, and put it in his cabin before taking an omnibus to the Imperial War Museum for the afternoon. After much deliberation he decided to retain his revolver for fear of being accosted by footpads.
It was early evening when Justin returned, having been accosted instead by an irate museum attendant who thought he'd stolen the revolver. Justin had politely suggested he check the manufacturer's serial number against those listed as museum property, but apparently the curators had not troubled themselves to write them down. Only once the museum's collection of service revolvers had been checked by hand was a by now fuming Justin allowed to leave, albeit with a magnificent apology.
He lay on his bunk, and opened the letter with his penknife. Turning on the rather feeble anbaric light above his pillow, he began to read. Two paragraphs in he stopped reading abruptly and exchanged looks with Seraph, who was all but laying an egg. "I think," Justin said in a measured and precise tone, "that we had better catch a train to Oxford in the morning."
Leaving the Greater London area required the captain's permission, but was generally granted if he felt the requestee was fairly sensible. The next morning, Justin boarded the 11:35 to Oxford on 'urgent personal business.'

The four of them relaxed in comfortable armchairs around a small table in the lounge bar of the Aviator Hotel, adjacent to Sywell Aerodrome. Sywell isn't an especially large or elaborate airfield, largely supporting private and light commercial aircraft despite the current owner's determined efforts to add a paved runway and full business-jet capacity. Residents of Sywell village were steadfastly resisting the idea, and who can blame them?
Dave glanced up from his sheaf of documents with professional curiosity as a vivid yellow Augusta-Bell 222-series helicopter (as seen heavily disguised as Airwolf) lifted from the field and roared off at considerable speed. "That's stuffed up everybody's takeoff clearance," he remarked. The local air ambulance was normally stabled at Northampton General Hospital's own helipad, but for any maintainence more elaborate than topping up the oil it had to be sent over to Sywell, and for obvious reasons it jumped the queue in the event of a medical emergency. Dave was disinclined to complain about the delay to his own schedule, but occasionally worried that some inexperienced pilot would be unable to cope with being forced to assume a holding pattern at a moment's notice and do something stupid.
"So, we're more or less on track for the first full systems test in a year's time," Mary told the others. "What about the weapons trials?"
"Almost finished; I'm just waiting for the Sidewinders to arrive." Dave's insistence on the NATO-standard equipment he'd used in battle, despite the ready availability of Russian ordinance from airbase commanders forced to auction it off just to settle the back-pay account, had held up the project more than once.
"Good. One year to go, people." They clinked glasses.

The Master of Jordan College read the telegram with some amazement. "Well, I'll be damned!" he said quietly. "I wonder how Lyra will react?"
Justin reached Jordan College at around four o'clock, having allowed time for his sister to return from school. He took the time to stroll through Oxford, admiring the achitecture and general air of learned dignity, and getting somewhat lost in the process. He found Jordan more or less by accident, and addressed himself to the head porter.
"Excuse me? Can you let the Master know that Justin Coulter is here to see him, please?"
"One moment, sir." Shuter picked up the telephone. "Sir, a master Justin Coulter wishes to speak to you. Oh? Yes, sir, I'll find her as soon as I can." He replaced the reciever, wondering what was going on. With a mental shrug, he turned to give Justin directions to the Master's office. As he did so, Lyra happened to appear from somewhere down the corridor, a copy of Verity's 'A Phrasebook For The Nordic Lands' and a couple of Smith & Strange's 'Globetrotter' series of maps under one arm. Lyra devoting herself to the academic study of anything like that could mean many things, Shuter reflected, none of them good. He'd have a word with the Master about that later... His train of thought encountered a set of points maintained by Jarvis Rail as his gaze passed from one to the other. It was fairly subtle, but there was a definite likeness. The eyes, the cheekbones, the overall face shape all suggested a fairly close family relationship. /So THAT's what this is all about/ he mused. "Lyra? The Master wants to see you in his office. Far as I can make out, you've not done anything wrong he's found out about yet, so don't worry. Would you mind escorting this young man up there as well?"
"Certainly. Follow me please, Mr..."
"Coulter. Justin Coulter." Lyra raised her eyebrows. "Mean anything to you?"
"I'd rather not talk about it. Follow me, please."
"I wholly sympathise with you if you have any issue with Marissa Coulter," Justin remarked once they were safely out of Shuter's earshot. "She's more or less directly responsible for getting me stuck with my uncle for fourteen years!"
"How come?"
"Look, I assume you're aware that Edward Coulter attempted to kill Asriel on account of him shagging Marissa, and there was a child involved."
"I bloody ought to. That child was me!"
By truly Herculean effort, Justin kept his face utterly expressionless. "I see. There's something you should know, Lyra. Edward and Marissa Coulter had an elder child, a son. That child is me."
Lyra stared at him in perfect, open-mouthed amazement. "Are you trying to tell me that you're my half-brother?" she said slowly.
"At least. Somehow or other -nobody seems to know how, which might be just as well- it comes to Edward Coulter's attention that Marissa's second child is not in fact dead, but under the rather dubious guardianship of the man she believes to be your real father. Perhaps understandably, he takes exception to this and hares off to give Asriel a right kicking and retrieve you; he was pretty convinced that he was your real father, insofar as you're supposed to inherit a very large amount of money from him."
Lyra gave this some thought. "Bloody hell," she concluded.
The Master could add little to Justin's account. "I'm honestly amazed that they were able to bury the truth so deeply," he admitted. "A remarkable achievement."
"Remarkable, yes. I'd hardly call it an achievement, though; that would imply some good coming of it."
"I see your point."
A couple of hours later, they found themselves sitting on the roof watching the sunset. "Well, I've done most of the talking up until now. What have you been getting up to over the last fourteen years?"
"This may take a while," she warned. It took two hours, and had Justin well and truly dumbstruck.
"It's just incredible," he admitted. "I've heard every sea story and wild rumour going about what happened up North, but..." He just shook his head, and stopped for a few minutes to set his head in order.
"It sounds crazy, I know."
"That it does. Anyway, I'm going to leave that to one side for now. How do you feel about meeting Aunt Elisabeth?"
"I think I'd rather like her, actually. How much more shore leave have you got?"
"Couple of weeks. I'll send a wire and sort something out with the captain, and we can get the train out there in the morning. I'd better get to the Post Office and let him know."
"Yeah. Come on, I know a shortcut!" Lyra leapt across to another roof and headed along it at speed. "Come on! You're not scared of heights, are you?"
Justin exchanged looks with Seraph. They shrugged, and jumped.

Elaine burst out laughing, nearly spilling her wine; the fourth glass she'd had that evening. "Look, Mary, let's just assume I really am interested in finding a boyfriend right now. Why on Earth would I choose Dave?"
"You share the same sense of humour," Mary replied, ticking a list off on her fingers. "He puts up with your temper without batting an eyelid. He possesses charm, wit and surprising good looks for a twenty-a-day man in his forties. Will likes him. And last but not least, he'd loaded." This last wasn't strictly true, though Dave jointly owned a very successful small business and had few demands on his income besides a mortagage and the unreasonably fast motorcycle he was still paying for.
"Well, he's got a few good points. But he's not somebody I'd pick as Will's stepfather, frankly. You know what thse two get up to when I'm not keeping an eye on them! And besides, I will never, EVER sleep with a man who owns the complete set of Airwolf DVDs!"
"Okay, so he enjoys playing the indulgent batchelor uncle just a little bit too much, but it's all pretty harmless."
"Harmless? HARMLESS? When I picked Will up from Dave's flat last week he was drinking Kronenberg and watching Reservoir Dogs! A fouteen year-old boy! You call that harmless?"
"Yes, Ellie, I do. Will's fourteen going on about thirty; he's WAY past the point where some senseless violence on TV can do him any lasting psychological damage. On the other hand, I'm sort of with you on the Airwolf DVDs." They collapsed from wine-induced giggling. At this point two grubby and bruised individuals let themselves into the house with Will's key, singing an old Royal Marines marching song I choose not to reproduce here lest this be read by the young and impressionable. They'd been paintballing, and had evidently had a good time.
"What're you two giggling about?" Will asked, slurring his words only slightly; they'd gone home via Dave's flat.
"Girl stuff. You don't want to know."
"Fair enough. I'm going to bed. 'Night, folks." Will headed for the stairs, swaying a little.
"How much as he had?" Elaine enquired sharply.
"Less than you two," Dave replied amiably. "Well, I'd better go; got a cab waiting. See you tomorrow!"
"See what I mean?" Elaine remarked once he'd left.
"Frankly, no. They're doing what teenagers and men of a certain age do when they're in each other's company. You need to lighten up."
"Coming from you that's saying something!" Cue more giggling.