However, Grace didn’t consider him to be attractive. Her boss, Covor, had a very blocky face. To the point that he looked like he’d been roughly hewn from a rock with an inexpert hand. She didn’t know if his lack of visible scales would be enough to make up for that to a lady baemoth, but it didn’t do anything for Grace.
His eyes were solid in color, a sickly sort of yellow green. His mouth was a crude slash under his box shaped nose. He dressed in clothes that were too tight for his large frame. Which had to be a deliberate choice, because he certainly had the credz to afford properly fitting clothing.
He also had this unnerving habit of watching her. Sneaking up behind her. Hovering over her. Grace could never accuse him of anything directly, but it made her uncomfortable. And she was too well trained by her mother to bring it up to him.
Men will stare, her mother would say. Stop making a big deal over nothing, and if they stare, use their attention to get your way. An obsessed man would do anything for you.
Her mother said it like it was a good thing.
It never felt like one to Grace.
“Where are you going?” Covor asked, crossing two of his four arms over his large chest. He always managed to sound grumpy and suspicious whenever she did something. At this point, she was pretty sure that’s just how he was and it wasn’t personal against her. At least, she hoped so.
“Initial inspection,” she said, smiling despite her unease as she held up the tablet. “New cargo ship in Dock Eleven.”
His eyes moved over her head to her holo displays. He sneered. “That hunk of trash? Does it even still fly?”
“Didn’t need a tow to get in, so I’d say yes.” She chuckled, getting to her feet. She straightened her skirt with her spare hand as she did. The blue and white uniform was very pretty. It had a collar but no sleeves, and a layered, pleated skirt that she liked to swish sometimes when no one was looking. Grace, as a dock master, didn’t need to wear the uniform of Uver Prime. Her uniform could technically be anything suitably professional and well groomed, but she liked the uniform the rest of the staff wore. Besides, she was too well trained not to.
The common man likes to think they’re our equal, her mother would say. Indulge them a bit and it makes them easier to control.
Grace didn’t feel that way. She didn’t. It was just so hard to get her mother’s voice out of her head. The one that constantly criticized her. The one that had trained her all her life. The one that had literally beaten those lessons into her head until following them was second nature.
No matter how far from home she got, it was never far enough to escape that voice.
“Fine. You can go,” Covor said, like she required his permission to do her job. He was her boss, of course, and station master of Hir-Fallow – but the guy didn’townUver Prime or anything. He managedonestation. A massive station for sure, but still just one station.
Grace didn’t say anything about it though. She fixed a bright smile on her face as she said, “Thanks so much. I’ll be back soon.”
She skirted around him, giving herself plenty of room to get past his hulking body. As she crossed Reetak’s workstation, her friend gave her a look that spoke volumes. Her gleaming purple eyes moved from Grace to Covor back to Grace. The question was obvious. Grace just smiled, assuring her silently that it was okay.
A necessary promise. It wouldn’t be the first time Reetak had offered to fight Covor for her. His tone was insulting, she’d remark, hissing and growling, her tail thumping on the ground. Such insults were paid back in violence on her home planet.
But Grace would much rather take the non-violent route. And if pampering her boss’ ego and letting him give her permission for things she was going to do anyway made him feel better, then it was no skin off her bones.
Walking from the office, she went to the lift that would take her down through her section of the repair docks. The dock master offices were beneath the absolutely massive Dock One. It was a dock overseen by Covor himself, and it serviced the largest starships in existence. Ones that rivaled cities. Ones that couldn’t even get near planets for concern of disrupting their gravity. Managing Dock One was a task so large and demanding, it outweighed the seven docks she had to oversee combined.
Immediately under Dock One was Covor’s office. He had a lift in the center that let down into the dock master offices underneath him. Their office was a circular room, with their six workstations all evenly spaced within it.
Leaving the circular room through the doors on the sides let out into a ring-shaped room. That room had six lifts in it, evenly spaced along the outside, that all led down though the six sections of the remaining forty-three docks.
Grace’s was lift number two, and it opened automatically as she approached, reacting to her combot signature. The little floating device had a permanent home on her belt, as she preferred it there rather than flitting about her head.
She stepped into the lift and turned, bringing her tablet to life with a swipe of the screen. From the tablet, she connected to the scanning robot waiting in the dock down below. It was similar to her combot, but it was much bigger, and it would have to come with her during the inspection. Part of its job wasn’t just to identify problem areas that needed to be fixed, but to record everything for documentation purposes so no one could say afterwards that something had been damaged during repairs.
Even this far from Earth, a company had to protect itself from litigious scammers, just as surely as customers had to protect themselves from seedy companies. While Grace could say that she felt like, out here, things were better, safer, greedy buttheads were something that was, apparently, universal.
Humming to herself as the lift took her down, she began bringing up her lists, her notes, everything she would need for the inspection.
This was Grace’s life. It definitely wasn’t what she hoped for when she first took the chance to abandon Earth and cometo space. There was no adventure, no great romance, no sense of purpose finally fulfilling her in a way she could only have dreamed about in her terrestrial life. But it was still hers. Nothing could be perfect, right?
This was good enough.
Chapter 3
Sway
The ship was unnervingly quiet.
