The Stargazer's War - Chapter 3.8

Chapter 3.8: Back to Work

Lucy’s lower deck felt lonely the next morning.  

I didn’t lack for company, as Lucy and I amicably chatted while I nibbled away at a plate of eggs over easy, but lovely as I always found Lucy’s presence, she couldn’t replace Charlotte thinking over a plan aloud or Xavier boisterously gloating about achieving a personal best against the combat sims or even Micaiah quietly reading on the sofa. Ariel remained, but they spent most of the day sleeping, and while I enjoy their companionable presence, they didn’t make for much of a conversationalist.

There was an emptiness to the place that felt at once familiar and unwelcome.

In the weeks after the disaster on roofie, Lucy’s gentle reassurance had been exactly what I’d needed.  She’d always been there, ready to talk about it or distract me or leave me to my own devices without ever imposing expectations upon me—other than the avoidance of foul language, of course.

Perhaps returning to just the two of us reminded me of that period of grief.  Perhaps I’d grown too accustomed to a fuller house and lamented its absence.  Perhaps I just wished Micaiah had stayed the night.

I told Lucy how close we’d come to kissing just before Austin’s death had derailed the surprisingly enjoyable evening.  She said I should be patient, that it’d happen when it happened.  Some couples, she explained, began explosively, and frequently remained explosive for however long they lasted.  Others required more deliberate choice, more careful consideration.

She likened it to a trade off between passion and stability, and while I had certainly seen the downsides of too much passion in the dynamic between Charlotte and Xavier—and in most cultivators to be perfectly honest—and while I had to admit the desire for at least some stability in my life, impatience tugged at my normally ironclad heartstrings.

I decided then and there that at least some good would come of our arrival at the right eye.

“Thank you for breakfast,” I bid Lucy as I stood.  “I’m off to work.”  Damn, it felt good to say that, normal, like I wasn’t some fugitive or poacher or mysterious outsystem cultivator, but a regular human being for the first time in years.  

That feeling promptly vanished as I stepped foot off Lucy and found one of Jeremy’s underlings waiting for me.

She greeted me with a salute.  “Good morning, sir.  Your transport is waiting for you.”

“‘Morning,” I replied.  “I’m Cal.”

“I know who you are, sir.  Please, right this way.”

I held back a scowl at her rejection of basic friendliness.  If she wanted to remain purely professional I wouldn’t demand otherwise.  Still, I snuck a peek at her name tag in spite of her refusal to actually introduce herself.  Actually bothering to learn it seemed like the least I could do.

“A number of messages have arrived for both you and the venerable one in the past several hours,” ‘Cindy’ told me.  “With your permission I’ll forward them to your holopad to be read at your convenience.”

“That’d be great, thanks,” I replied.  I spared a glance at my holopad as I felt the buzz notifying me of the transfer, and spotted no fewer than thirty seven inbound messages.  Threads, I was glad Cindy or Jeremy or whoever had intercepted these.  The last thing I wanted as a notification every few minutes for missives from strangers.  Better to lump them together and reserve my actual holopad details for people whose messages I particularly cared about.

I gave the subject lines a cursory glance once I’d settled into the transport, discovering the majority of them to be invitations to dinners and cocktail parties and various events I found myself extremely disinclined to attend.  A handful did cast aspersions in regards to my fight with Austin and departure from last night’s party, but I discarded those just as readily.  If they wanted to challenge me, they could come and do it with Lucy staring them down.  Even then I’d probably decline.  I wasn’t a part of their sect.  Their inane ideas about honor held no sway over me.

Most amusing were the three messages to Lucy begging for tutelage.  Those I actually read in full, taking joy in the different approaches they all took.  One had dared imply that their daughter with her heirloom techniques and—ew—prestigious bloodline, would make a far more suitable student than the common folk Lucy had run into thus far.

I forwarded that one to Lucy so she could get a laugh out of it too.

While Lucy absolutely had instructed me on all manner of things—primarily how to behave in a room full of cultivators—it was clear from the messages that at least a portion of the local sect members considered her responsible for my push to ‘bronze’ and Charlotte’s far more impressive jump to iron.  In a way they were right—Micaiah and I would be dead and Xavier and Charlotte still stuck grasping for bronze on Fyrion were it not for Lucy, but if they expected to find some great master to teach them the secrets of cultivation, they were sorely mistaken.

Threads, I couldn’t even manage to get Lucy to teach me the secrets of her paella recipe.  What hope did these cultivators have?

That said, most of the cultivators I’d come across could really use Lucy’s tutelage, though I doubt after being exposed to it any of them would agree.  Basic empathy seemed in short supply around here, and however little Lucy knew about human cultivation, I had faith she could at turn at least a few of the locals into genuinely decent people.

I hoped we’d never have to test that theory.  The folks who needed that kind of instruction tended to be extremely unpleasant to be around, and actually imparting it would require Lucy—and therefore me—to spend a significant amount of time with them.  I shuddered at the thought.

I flicked my holopad shut as the transport finally came to a stop, depositing me at a terminal clearly designed for large public transports as opposed to the luxurious private craft I’d arrived on.  My footsteps echoed though the empty station as I crossed it, the morning shift apparently already underway.

I emerged into a staging room not at all unlike the one we’d fought Elder Lopez in last year, complete with suits and kit hanging on the walls, benches with cubbies beneath them, and a large airlock.  Where it differed was in scale—it was nearly twice the size—and in a singular addition.

Just in front of the airlock, the remains of a fleet of four-seater no-ats sat in waiting.  I supposed it boded well for me that so much gear was sitting around unused.  Vac welders tended to always be in demand, but I'd figured there’d fewer openings this close to the capital.  In hindsight I should’ve assumed the opposite.  Every cultivator wanted to live and work near the seat of the sect, but that crowded out the mortals.  They probably had to pay extra to convince mortals to commute all the way here to do all the jobs cultivators refused to.

At least I could work conveniently close to home.

I climbed a set of stairs along the back wall to an upper level, finding a railing overlooking the staging room on one side and a line of offices on the other.  The one at the very end bore the title I sought.

Head of Exterior Maintenance

I glanced at my holopad.  I was two minutes early.  I knocked.  I heard a shout from inside.

“Open!”

My immediate impulse as I stepped inside was that either the gray-haired man in front of me was an avid decorator, or that he’d worked from this office for a very long time.  Shelves of various trinkets and holos lined the walls, each unintelligible to me but doubtless of some sentimental value to their owner.  What would’ve otherwise been a bland aluminum desk stood similarly adorned, capstoned by what appeared from the back to be a genuine framed photograph.

“Lisa told me I had a sect brat coming in today,” he grumbled.  “Alright, let’s hear it.”

I blinked.  “Hear what?”

“Your demands.  It’s simple, really.  You tell me which of your family’s focus rooms you don’t think is getting enough qi, I tell you I’ll do my utmost to look into the matter so you don’t turn me into red paste, you leave, I waste man-hours I don’t have sending a crew out to confirm the enchantments are working as mandated, then I report this whole affair to the sect master’s office so the proper authorities can stop you from coming back and turning me into red paste.”

“Does that… happen often?”

The man shrugged.  “‘Bout every year or so.  You secties are predictable.”

“Well, the good news is I’m no secty.  My name’s Cal, and I’m here to apply for a job.”

That seemed to break through the man’s dismissive demeanor.  “A job?  That’s a new one.  Tell me, what’s your background in gravitic flow warping?”

“None whatsoever.”

“Torrent displacement?”

I shook my head.

“Manifestation negation?  Low impact throughput monitoring?  Material reinforcement tolerance?”

“I don’t even know what those are.”

The man turned his hands up.  “Then what good are you to me?”

I pulled up my holopad and forward him my resume.  “I’m a vac welder, sir.  As you can see I earned my certification in low, zero, and mixed gravity out in New Heravia before joining a long haul freighter out this way.  My mixed grav skills are a little rusty, but I’m not due to re-certify for another few years, so I’m sure I can manage.”

The man sat back in what looked to be a rather comfortable office chair, his eyes scanning through my resume as we sat in silence.  Two seconds later, he broke it with a wheezing laugh.

“A vac welder!”  He slammed his fist on the desk as his laughter ramped up.  “They sent me a vac welder.  I can’t fucking believe it.  Thirty-two years I’ve been behind this desk and this is the first time our benevolent overlords have actually done something useful.”

I let out a laugh of my own.  “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“You want to vac weld, you can damn well vac weld.  Gods know we’re understaffed.  You’ll make the same rate as the others, unless those sect friends of yours also deigned to bless me with more budget?”

I chuckled.  “If only.  Standard rates are fine.  I’m not here for special treatment.”

“Like hells you aren’t.  Most welders just send us a resume.  Even the senior staff we hire go through Foreman Lou.  That you’re in my office at all is special treatment.”

“My bad,” I said.  “I should’ve realized what going through sect resources would do.”

“Don’t apologize.”  He huffed.  “If I had access to sect resources, I’d use ‘em too.  Can you start today?”

I grinned.  “I can start right now.”

“That’s what I like to hear!  Head on down and suit up.  You’ll have to stay local—the no-ats need at least two people to use safely.  Tomorrow you can join Bill and Ursula, get a lay of the land.”

I stood and, by force of habit more than anything, saluted.  “Yes, sir.”

The man’s face darkened, and I realized I’d just greeted him as a superior cultivator rather than as a mortal employer.  “I’m no sir,” he muttered.  “The name’s Harold.”

“Harold,” I repeated.  “It’s nice to meet you.”

He scowled and flicked open his holopad.  “I'm sending you some books.  I’d like you to read them and let me know when you’re finished.”

I raised an eyebrow at him.  “Books?  I’m just here to work.”

“And I won’t have some young master storming in here pissed I didn’t teach you anything.  You know how they get.”

“I can assure you that won’t—”

“Just read the damn books, son,” Harold snapped.  “You don’t live as long as I have working this close to the sect without learning how to cover your ass from angles no sane person could predict.”

“Right, right, red paste.  I’ll read them.”

“Good.  You’ll learn something,” Harold said.  “Now, off you go.  We’ve got dents need fixing and not enough hands to do it.”

“Will do.  Thank you.”

“Thank me by keeping the sect away from my business.”

I flashed him a final grin as I stepped into the doorway.  “I’ll do what I can.”

While it had admittedly been quite some time since I’d been given homework, I resolved to at the very least take a peek at the texts later that night.  Threads knew if they’d be interesting, but if they were the kind of thing a sect member might be sent to Harold to learn, they’d probably at least be useful.  Besides, professional development is important.  Learning and growing isn’t just for cultivators.

It didn’t take long to find a vac suit that fit, loath as I might’ve been to don the unnecessary layer.  It wouldn’t do to show off my iron body to a sect that thought me bronze, nor any qi techniques at all to a boss who thought me mortal.  For the time being at least, I was just a normal vac welder doing normal vac welding.  Once I’d strapped the necessary gear to my belt and scrap metal to my back, I slid the helmet over my head, felt the familiar press of the suit pressurizing, and strode to the airlock.

Mixed grav vac welding took some getting used to.  It was the first cert I’d earned all the way back on New Heravia, but I hadn’t used the skill since.  Unlike on Fyrion or roofie or the freighter, the location of the piece of hull I was fixing relative to the gravitational pull of the Right Eye changed, forcing the use of magnets not just on my boots but along my knees and elbows to keep myself secure.

Post iron advancement, I might’ve been able to survive prolonged exposure to the vacuum of space, but falling into a star would kill me just as dead as any mortal.

Still, it took scarcely an hour for the familiarity to return, and soon enough I was blazing through damaged spots.  It was far easier than I remembered, and while The Right Eye exerting less than an eighth the gravity of New Heravia certainly contributed to that, my cultivation contributed more.

If zero-g vac welding was boring and repetitive, mixed grav vac welding was boring, repetitive, and grueling.  Gravity practically never helped when moving pieces of scrap metal around, and working while—to my inner ear’s perspective—dangling upside down required a non insignificant amount of core and upper body strength.

My cultivation trivialized it.  I didn’t even need to cycle any meridians, the natural infusion of qi into my body over the course of several advancements more than enough to turn the normally exhausting labor into something no more strenuous than a desk job with a bit of walking around.

It was nice.  It was meditative.  It was exactly what I’d been hoping for.

I let my mind wander as I worked, pondering and acknowledge the thoughts and emotions that had popped up since our arrival.  I came to few conclusions and fewer direct paths forward, but by the time I stepped back into airlock, I felt more settled, more centered than I had in days.  

And I had, at least, come to one decision.

The staging area buzzed with activity as the current shift returned and the next one suited up.  I spotted an empty hook and moved to hang up my gear, but before I could take a dozen steps a voice beckoned me.

“Oi!  You the newbie?”

I turned to spot a pair of mortals, their suits partially off to reveal sweat-drenched clothes beneath.  The man couldn’t have been taller than five-five, but his broad shoulders and arms twice the diameter of mine spoke of years of manual labor.  The woman next to him, sharing the same dark brown hair and little else, towered over him and me both.

I extended a hand.  “That’d be me.  I’m Cal.”

The woman shook first.  “I’m Ursula, and the loud one is Bill.”

“Pleasure.”  I smiled.

“Lou says you’re riding with us tomorrow.”  Bill grasped my hand far more tightly than Ursula had, and I got the distinct impression he’d tried to crush it a little and failed spectacularly.  “Strong handshake,” he said.  “I like that.”

I didn’t comment, severely doubting the truth—that I was secretly a powerful cultivator—would even occur to him.  “I heard something similar.  Haven’t ridden on a no-at for a while.  Should be a nice change of pace.”  I nodded over to the fleet of no-ats—short for no-atmosphere vehicle—by the airlock.

“They’re a right pain in the ass is what they are,” Bill said.  “Spend half my day maintaining the damn things instead of doing my actual job.”

I laughed.  “Yeah, that sounds about right.  You have some mechanic experience then?”

“Nope.  Started here right after I earned my certs.  Don’t you worry.  Give it a few years and you’ll be fixing no-ats with the best of ‘em.”

“Did you work a half-shift today?” Ursula changed the subject as she looked me up and down.  “You don’t look too tired.”

“Believe me, I am,” I lied.  “I just don’t really sweat much.  Some kind of medical thing, I think.”

“You picked the right line of work!”  Bill slapped me on the back with a minuscule fraction of Xavier’s usual force.  “I tell you it’s a swamp down there, if you know what I mean.  The wife won’t step into the same room as me ’til I shower.”

“Would that be as opposed to the women who won’t step into the same room even after you’ve showered?” Ursula said dryly.

“Oi, no need to bring my mother in law into this!”  Bill harrumphed.  “Anyways, I’d better get a move on.  Put a pot of chili in the slow cooker this morning and I want to get back while there’s still some left.”

“Oh, one question actually, really quick,” I spoke up, taking the first step in the one definitive decision I’d made over the course of my shift.  “I’m new around here, still getting my bearings, you know, but there’s this girl, and I want to ask her to dinner.  You know any good spots?”

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