"How long?" Victoria asked.
"The recovery and the dry test, once the team is ready? Five minutes, maybe a little more," Caleb said. "The inspections afterward take however long they take. Please don't confuse the two."
She looked at him in disbelief. "Five minutes to correct something that has grounded my aircraft for eight days?"
"Five minutes for the part we've been searching for. Eight days were spent proving other parts weren't broken. They weren't wasted entirely, but they were aimed at the wrong question."
As the authorized technicians prepared the procedure, Caleb walked to his rusted toolbox and opened it. Victoria watched him select a small inspection mirror and a flashlight, ordinary tools that looked almost out of place beneath the aircraft's polished skin. He used them only to confirm that a relevant connector and access area were undisturbed before the licensed team began work. It would have been easy for him to make a ceremony of touching the machine. Instead, he asked for a clean work surface and handed his tools to Noah when he no longer needed them.
"Your father really taught you all this?" Victoria asked.
"He taught me how to start learning it. That's different." Caleb replaced the inspection mirror. "He used to say the day you think you can't learn anything from a younger person or an older machine is the day you become dangerous."
She folded her arms. "I could use that sentence in a board meeting."
"You'd need to make sure the board heard it."
She looked at him sharply, expecting sarcasm. There was none. Caleb was examining the maintenance checklist, entirely unaware that he had given her the most accurate criticism of her leadership she had heard in years. She turned back to the technicians, who had begun the approved recovery with Noah documenting every stage.
The five-minute window began at 11:47. Caleb called out the time, and Noah confirmed that the original records had been preserved. A certified technician initiated the approved procedure. The first validation returned successfully.
Then the second check paused long enough to make Victoria's hands tighten around the chair arms. Caleb did not speak. He watched the raw status events, searching not for reassurance but for the evidence that the initial stage had truly changed.
The missing acknowledgment appeared. Noah made a sound that was almost a laugh. "There it is. It actually completed."
"Don't celebrate yet," Caleb said. "We still need the next handoff."
The next transition came through, then another. The initialization sequence continued farther than it had in any of the failed attempts. When the final stage returned readiness in the controlled maintenance test, Caleb asked for a second, independent validation before anyone considered the result reliable. The second test also passed.
"Five minutes and fourteen seconds," Noah said, reading the timestamp. His voice shook. "From the recovery start to the verified sequence."