Grace smiled up at her closest coworker as she leaned back in her chair. Reetak was a ratchi female, getting on in years, but no less sharp and vicious despite that. She’d never admit to a number, but she had to be getting close to being elderly. Though her age didn’t show very well. Not just because ratchi didn’t age all that noticeably, but also because Reetak was quite fussy about her appearance.
Her yellow-green scales always gleamed brightly. She adorned herself with gauzy, sheer fabric that draped artfully over her lean, muscular body making her look like an ancient, primal goddess. She took exactly no shit from anyone, and she was Grace’s best friend.
“The saying is ‘in the zone’, Ree,” she corrected with a smile, saluting her with the cup. “Thanks for the stim shot.”
“Don’t even mention. It’s mostly for me. I don’t want to hear you complaining that you forgot to get one later. You got a new ship coming in?” Reetak asked, looking at her holodisplays over her long muzzle. In Grace’s opinion, ratchi looked like alligator people. She was long past being startled by it anymore. It had been so long since she moved to space, aliens were normal to her now.
“Yeah,” she said, sipping at the stim shot. “A pretty old one too. It’s a voard class. Owned by a specialty delivery company. Almost two hundred years old. They’re getting new subspace crystals and a few upgrades. Should be quick and easy.”
Grace relaxed into her chair, looking over her workspace with a long sigh. Partially one of contentment, because everything was neat, organized, and flowing perfectly. She put a lot of work into making sure things went smoothly, on time, and without hiccups. But it was also partially from frustration, because this was not where Grace ever wanted to end up in her life. She left her home, her family, Earth entirely because she wanted to get away from being trapped in an office, administrative kind of role.
Then, she crossed the universe and managed to end right back up in an office, administrative kind of role. Did that count as irony? Grace was never sure what counted and what didn’t. It sucked regardless.
Though, really, she was just being ungrateful. This was a great job. It paid really well, she was good at it, and the work itself wasn’t soul crushing.
Grace was one of the dock masters that managed the repair docks of Hir-Fallow Station, along with Reetak and four others. Together, the six of them controlled the forty-three repair docks.It was her job to not only direct starships in and out, but to oversee their repairs, communicate with the ship crews, and coordinate the teams and supplies each of her docks needed.
It was a role of not inconsiderable power and importance. She had a lot of responsibilities. She could even say that it was fulfilling.
But at the end of the day, she had still trekked across the cosmos to find herself back in a cubicle. Even if it was a very nice, futuristic one.
Hir-Fallow Station was shaped kind of like a flower. One of those round ones with lots of petals all branching out from the center. Dock One was the very top of the flower, and it was a dock that served the largest classes of ships. It was also the only dock run by Grace’s boss, the station master himself. Docks Two through Forty-three expanded around the largest dock in three ever widening rings, each one serving smaller and smaller classes of ships. The five dock masters each had a wedge of that circle. Grace had control over Dock Three, Ten, Eleven, and Twenty-three through Twenty-six.
She’d been here for two years now, and she’d worked her way to her position through a combination of her owns skills and the obvious favoritism of her boss. And also probably the fact that she was a human female, and having her as one of the faces of the company increased business.
It was unfortunate but true. Humans were considered highly attractive to most other aliens. Grace wouldn’t call herself any great beauty, but that hardly mattered. She was human. That was all they needed. A pair of boobs and legs to ogle over.
However, Grace chose not to be offended by that. After all, it wasn’t so different from Earth. She had been the prettypresenting face in her last job as well. As her mother would say, beauty was a tool like a pen or a wrench. If she used it correctly, it would serve her.
But it didn’t matter how good a tool was if she wielded it incorrectly or relied on it too heavily and let it hamper her. She might have been hired partially because of her pretty face, but she did not let that be the only thing that defined her work.
One of Grace’s jobs was to conduct an inspection of each ship that came into her docks. She had to go through them, document everything, and bring the final quote price for all proposed work to the ship’s representative. She also had to secure payment, ensure everything was completed on time, then she had to go through after everything was done to make sure it was all correct and to everyone’s satisfaction.
Doing that meant she spoke directly with the crews of the ships. Her humanness combined with the communication skills that had been drilled in her since birth meant that she had a lot of positive word of mouth about her skills. They might like looking at her, but no one could claim she used that fact to do a subpar job.
She was therefore pleased with her work and how well it was going. She was good enough. Her work was good enough. Her life was good enough.
It had to be.
“Want to get second meal together?” Reetak asked, oblivious to Grace’s morose thoughts.
“Can’t,” she answered, forcing herself back to reality. “Have to do the ship inspection on the incoming Dock Eleven.”
“Is it a human trait to work through mealtimes?”
“Actually, yeah,” Grace smiled wryly. “Want to grab a drink after work though?”
“I’ll take that.” Reetak grinned, the expression subtle thanks to her long muzzle and the scales covering her face. Ratchi faces didn’t move much, but after so long, Grace had learned to read them as easily as a fellow human.
Reetak stood straight and left, going over to her own desk. The other dock masters were hard at work as well. They all had their own docks to look after, ships to repair, jobs to complete. Being a dock master wasn’t overwhelming. After all, they only had so many docks to look after. In fact, the workload was more than just fair, it was satisfying and manageable. Uver Prime was an old, incredibly wealthy business. They had the proper treatment of employees to maximize profits and potential down to a science. It was steady, but not overly demanding. If things ran perfectly, Grace could just sit up here and direct people and everything would happen exactly how she wanted. It was rarely that smooth, of course. There was always some kind of problem popping up. But she had never once gone home feeling like her job was stealing parts of her soul. Which was more than could be said of a lot of Earth jobs.
Yeah. This work was good enough. She could be satisfied with this. She could. And today would be a nice, calm day. She’d get this new ship in, everything else was proceeding on schedule, she’d have a drink with Reetak after work, and nothing would go wrong.
As though the thought summoned a problem, the comm for Dock Twenty-three began flashing to try to get her attention. Grace couldn’t help but laugh at herself. She’d basically been begging for something to happen with those positive thoughts.Sitting forward, she pressed the holodisplay, connecting the earpiece on her left ear to the channel.
“This is Grace, what’s the problem?”
“Hello, Grace. You are the dock master, correct?”
