Mara stepped back down the air stairs and told Vivien plainly that she could not fly the aircraft without a signed return to service authorization, confirming the completion of every safety requirement. Vivien dismissed the concern as pointless bureaucracy and ordered her co-pilot to take the controls instead. The co-pilot reviewed the same binder, reached the same empty box, and gave Vivien the same answer Mara had. Two additional pilots from the Blackthorne roster were summoned, and each one, after a brief look at the paperwork, declined for identical reasons, unwilling to accept personal responsibility for an aircraft that had not been formally cleared for operation. Dorian, growing desperate, phoned a contract pilot service, and offered a fee five times the standard rate to anyone willing to fly the jet.
That same evening, two pilots arrived within the hour, reviewed the maintenance log, and walked back to their car without a word of negotiation. One of them paused just long enough to explain that if anything went wrong mid-flight, it would be his license, his career, and potentially far worse resting on his shoulders, not the companies. Vivien, increasingly convinced that Rowan had somehow orchestrated a coordinated mutiny among her flight crew, accused him of turning her own employees against her out of spite. Mara corrected her firmly, insisting that Rowan had never once contacted her and that every pilot's decision had been made independently based solely on an unsigned document sitting in an otherwise completed binder. The situation escalated further when the insurance carrier sent formal notice that the aircraft did not qualify for operational coverage without a completed return to service authorization and that any unauthorized flight would void protection entirely, potentially removing every pilot involved from coverage under the fleet's broader policy.
Vivien finally understood that this was no longer a disagreement with a single stubborn vendor, but a structural problem threatening the entire fleet's insurance standing. She tried calling Rowan directly, but he did not answer, sitting instead in his aging pickup truck outside the airfield, listening to Avery describe how her exam had gone that afternoon. He never mentioned that an entire flight crew was quietly refusing to fly for one of the most powerful women in private aviation, saying only that his workday had run a little longer than he expected. Dorian suggested finding another certified engineer willing to sign the authorization in Rowan's place, hoping to sidestep the entire dispute with a simple substitute signature. Vivien declared in front of her assembled pilots that before the sun set, she would prove that any contractor, no matter how skilled, could be replaced without consequence.
Mara glanced down at the small card Rowan had left behind on the table, then looked back up and told her quietly that not everyone had the authority to sign that particular document, regardless of how much money was offered. Dorian spent the following morning contacting three major maintenance facilities across California, Arizona, and Texas, hoping one of them would agree to certify the aircraft in Rowan's place. The first facility declined outright, unwilling to put its name behind repair work it had played no part in overseeing from the beginning. The second offered to take the project, but only if the crew disassembled large sections of the airframe and rebuilt them entirely from scratch, a process that would take at least four additional months and cost several million dollars more. The third facility initially expressed interest until its lead engineer discovered that the repair method used throughout the aircraft belonged to a proprietary structural process developed specifically by Rowan Hale, at which point the facility withdrew from consideration almost immediately.