Orientation began with only a few early hitches. The mechanical braces were still a bit of a struggle to get into on my own, but what was worse was the feeling I got in my gut each time I sleepily groped at the bed table for my eye. It had become so ingrained in my routine that I froze with indecision when my hand would meet bare enamel, my sleep addled mind now unsure of which step came next. I would get used to it, but it sure put a damper on each morning.

Before the braces came clothing. After my first morning crawling across the room to the closet in order to struggle into my jumpsuit, I decided to leave one near the bed before I got out of the braces the night before. That way, I could sit at the edge of the bed and more easily put my legs through the legs of the jumpsuit. My boots were a similar story. Once I was dressed, I was able to strap myself into the braces, with some effort.

Teeth brushed. Hair brushed. Eyepatch applied. I surveyed the room to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. No personal effects just yet, but there was a market on Brock Station. It was only a matter of time. Finally, convinced that I was ready to go, I opened my door and stepped out into the corridor. Listher was already waiting for me, leaning against the opposite wall.

“Orientation!”, he said enthusiastically, spreading his arms.

“Orientation,” I agreed with a smile. 

Listher nodded, then pushed himself off the wall and beckoned me to follow him. There was that ‘new job’ feeling about today. It was hard to explain. A different quality to the air, almost. Having a clear purpose, receiving instruction, helped my mind to focus in ways it couldn’t when I was left to my own devices, so it no longer felt as though I was seeing through a fog. I drank in every detail of the walk to the engineering workshop, where the day crew was getting ready. Starting today, I belonged here.

The main engineering workshop was located in the central spire of Brock Station, on the second floor. According to maps – as I hadn’t been able to see with my own eyes yet – Brock Station was made up of seven rings stacked on one another, forming a tube, with a central spire in the middle that kept them together. There were five public rings, and two for staff, specifically Ring 2 and Ring 6. Tunnels connected each ring to the center, one in each quadrant, to allow people to move more easily through the station.

As I put on my new toolbelt and familiarized myself with the heft and feel of my new equipment, Listher explained how the crew operated. There were three shifts, running on the usual twenty seven hour Galactic Standard Day. Each shift had sixteen patrolling engineers, and sixteen mechanics, both groups split into teams of two. The mechanics all worked on Ring 3, where ships could be brought in for maintenance. Duties would rotate each standard month. This kept any one duty from becoming too stale, and ensured everyone on the engineering team would be able to handle any job.

For my first month, I would patrol. Mechanics needed to be able to work in zero gee, and due to the fact that I was still getting used to my ‘legs’, I couldn’t yet. One wrong move and I would be wasting valuable time buffing out and repainting scratches or dents on someone’s ship. Luckily, I would still be given time to practice. Twice a week, I would be performing zero gee exercises until Listher and Reggie were convinced that I could, at the very least, not embarrass myself.

Finally, I was given a partner to learn the ropes from. His name was Vulka, of a species people in the Frontier called ‘Spacewalkers’, since proper nouns are difficult to translate from a language that sounds like speaker static. They were given that name due to their atmosphere suits, which looked like EVA gear with a blacked out visor. Somehow, their long arms that bent like noodles weren’t the right naming inspiration. Vulka put me in mind of a shop-vac, but that felt rude to even think.

I was thankful that he didn’t seem too excited to be working with me. Not that he wasn’t welcoming, he just didn’t seem to be drooling at the prospect of working with the Ulthean escapee, which was enough for me. We made our way to our first position – Ring 1, dock 112 – and got to work. A visiting Hauler was unable to get into their ship due to an electrical malfunction, and no AI on their ship meant it couldn’t be done from inside either.

“I know not everyone likes AI, but they’re useful,” I said, setting down the electrical kit in front of the dock bulkhead control panel. “Taking it out of your ship just leads to problems like this.”

Vulka had his arms crossed (tied?), standing away from me to give me space. He was going to be watching as I attempted the repair, to ensure I really did know what I was doing. “Good number of haulers too suspicious of them,” he said. “Think they will get hacked or go off-leash, so, to reclamation they go.”

I just hummed noncommittally, glad Vulka couldn’t see my expression of disapproval. My own perception of AI had been altered quite heavily in a short amount of time, but I still remembered how I felt about them before. Besides, I had a door to fix. Focusing was more important than talking, either being hard enough on their own.

Yesterday, I had spent half the day poring over Frontier repair standardizations. The Spacer’s Collective had put pressure on space vessel manufacturers across the galaxy to ensure that any ship or station could be repaired with an agreed upon set of tools. Before then, if your ship broke down in deep space, the only way you could fix it was by returning to your home world, or hope a nearby station had a repairperson who had come from there. Given that there were currently nearly a hundred spacefaring civilizations in the Frontier (according to an article I had read), the chances of that were not good. So, standardizations. Keep things basic, increase efficiency, make more money, and the galaxy turns.

Getting the door working turned out to be pretty simple. A capacitor in the control panel circuit board had burned out, which was a simple replacement job. In short order, I had disconnected the board, removed the capacitor, cleaned the circuits, found the correct capacitor in the kit, and soldered it in. Before I could reconnect the board, Vulka placed a hand on my shoulder. From about five feet away.

“Mind if I inspect it?” he asked.

“Go ahead,” I responded, passing him the board. 

Vulka took the board and brought it close to his visor, turning it over to inspect both sides. I wasn’t worried, I had repaired more circuit boards than I could count at this point. After a moment, he passed it back to me.

“Good,” he said as I took the board back. “You handle tools easily, solder is clean. You really are experienced.”

As I reconnected the board and sealed the panel back up, I considered pushing back against that comment. Of course I was, I had already said how long I’d been working, and it had to have gotten around. However, this could also be a test. I was the new girl. Getting pissy at every little jab wouldn’t win me any points here. Might as well play along.

“I should hope so,” I said. “I’d never get my ship off the ground if I wasn’t.”

A few short bursts of static came from Vulka. Laughter? “Yes, would be great waste of money, and great shame, too, keeping such engineering from us and doing nothing with it.”

I packed up the electrical kit and stood. “Are Ulthean ships really that good? They don’t seem that different from other ships I’ve seen here.”

“Yes, very good,” Vulka said, checking his tablet, likely for the next work order. “I have heard them compared to Pasci ships.”

“Pasci?” I asked.

Gesturing for me to follow, Vulka headed for the closest lift. “Yes, maybe you have seen one or two. Floppy fins, small scales, always slightly damp. Many kinds of Pasci. Very old civilization. Their ships are next to none, but Ulthea comes close. Most ship standards are based around their designs, as well.”

I rubbed my right horn as I thought. There had been a couple people I had seen like that, but not many. They had big eyes, too. Now I really wanted to take a look at what the Pasci had. Never had I considered Ulthean ships to be particularly good or bad, but knowing now what I had in dock, I was a little pleased. Even if I had to replace or repair a lot of the systems inside, the base I was working from was one of the best.

The day continued. A broken ventilation fan, a haywire drink dispenser, cosmetic repair to a wall (bounty hunters sometimes make for belligerent drunks). I was taking to it so well that orientation day was just turned into my first shift. It felt nice to work again, but working in such a public role exposed me to… the public. 

More than once, Vulka had to play defense for me while I was trying to work, or would have to extricate me from a group of interested visitors. My ‘celebrity’ on Brock Station was hampering my ability to work efficiently, and my mood was clearly darkening. I tried to be polite at first. I really did, but so many questions were the same. 

“What was living in Ulthea like?” It was fine.

“Are the Blessed real?” Of course.

“Do you like it better here?” Not right now.

“Why did you run away?” That one I refused to answer.

“If you need to take break, you can,” Vulka told me after driving off a particularly insistent Hauler. “I can tell you are struggling.”

My grip tightened on my screwdriver for a moment, then relaxed. I returned to securing the electrical panel I had just finished working on. “No, we have work to do,” I said.

“Work suffers if worker suffers,” Vulka said, simply. 

“And what about later?” I dropped my arms to my sides and looked at him. “Once I’m done resting, then I come back and there’s more. What about tomorrow? I just need to deal with it. Eventually they’ll get used to me, and I’ll get used to this.”

Vulka was silent for a moment, then held up his tablet to his visor. “Only few work orders to be done. Rest of team can handle them.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “What are you talking about? We’d be letting them down.”

“They will understand,” Vulka said. “You would pick up slack for coworker who is getting overwhelmed, yes?”

“Well, yeah,” I said, starting to understand where he was going with this. “But I’m new, I don’t want to put a bad foot forward.”

“Bad foot forward is punching next hauler who asks you if there are ‘more cute girls like you in Ulthea’,” Vulka countered. “I saw your face.”

In embarrassment, I gripped my right horn, twisting my hand around it. “I wasn’t going to punch him,” I said, which wasn’t a lie. What I wanted to do was headbutt him. “But I get your point.”

“Good,” Vulka said, gripping my shoulder from a distance. “Better to ease you in. Maybe you will get used to it, but take it in small steps. Rest if needed.”

I took a deep breath, then let it out. “Okay. That’s reasonable.”

Vulka let go of my shoulder and nodded. “Of course it is. Now, in Brock Station tradition, can I buy you drink to celebrate your first shift?”

With a grin, I nodded and packed up my tools. “That’s the best question I’ve heard all day.”