Plumbing the Depths (1)

Skystream Station
Talentar High Orbit
Lumenna-Súnáris System
3034

The stars drifted by slowly beyond the sweeping arc of clary defining the outer edge of the bar, glittering clear and steady through the pristine vacuum of the inner system.

Seated by the window, Cathál Rian-ith-Ríëlle sipped her beer, and thumbed desultorily through the list of contracts available in her specialty, glancing up only when someone slipped into the booth opposite her.

"Not celebrating, estrev?" The blond, coppery figure of Lantár Perhedral, her once-apprentice and now long-time colleague, grinned at her over his own drink. "Another job completed before time and beyond spec. Rian & Hedral live up to their reputation once again."

"Another day, another hab," she shrugged. "On to the next, just like the last."

"Looking for the next job already?" Lantár's grin faded as he looked at the well-thumbed slate. "And without much success, it would seem."

"I've been doing this a long time. This," she flipped through the contracts, "and this, and this. On the Seléne colonies, and L-5, and ice-mining in the Belt, a brief span with oil out at Cinquané, and now here. Learned all the space-plumbing techniques -"

"Invented half of them yourself."

"Invented half of them myself. And now - well, I'm not ready to give up the work. I'm a waterwright blood and bone. But I've done every job in hab design and assembly, and done them as well as can be. I've no heart to go back and do it again."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, while the stars drifted beyond the window, and the ruddy curve of Talentar came into view, speckled with the lights of stations orbiting nearby.

"There's always that," Lantár suggested at last, nodding out the window. "If you're looking for something new."

The cageworks he nodded to was massive, its paired graving docks outstripping in both mass and volume any of the lesser yards in the system, and while incomplete, the structural trusses taking shape within them gave silent testimony to the sheer size of the spacecraft - no, the starships - coming into being. Golden letters along the nearer spine gave its name: the Destiny Ascendant.

"That would be new," Cathál laughed. "Maybe a bit too new. There's got to be something I haven't done somewhere in the world as we know it." Tipping her head back, she finished her drink. "Come on, then, lead me to the celebration. No use in getting maudlin before my time."

But as they left, she glanced back at the construction in progress, off in that massive slip.

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