Stepping into her private meditation room, Kaido presses the button that locks solid metal sliding door before pressing the adjacent button that sets the timer counting down from five hours and activates the room.
Removing her robe and hanging it on a peg, she steps down the marble tiled stair and into the thigh deep water, noting that in her haste this morning to begin her meditations she did not give the room long enough to get the water up to temperature.
It’s one fiftieth of a degree colder than it should be, but as she slowly wades to the center of the fifty metre square room that discrepancy corrects itself.
The gentle sounds of flowing water quiet as the cultivator stops at the exact centre of the room and lowers herself to a lotus position in a single smooth motion in time with the lights dimming. Closing her eyes, she slowly silences her mind in time with the almost imperceptible ripples on the surface of the water, and breathes.
Slow.
Calm.
Measured.
Soon enough she can feel her core synchronising with the room almost perfectly, as the space was crafted to do, thus she barely has to open her Qi network for the custom mixture of attributes painstakingly infused into that water to flow into her.
The first time she sat in this water it almost overwhelmed her, the liquid an infinitely better conduit for conducting Qi, such that its composition must be carefully tuned for the individual lest the asynchrony overwhelm her core and kill her as it nearly did at first.
The second time was barely better.
Kaido’s breathing hitches slightly as a small impurity in the water scrapes its way through her network. It’s processed and expelled with barely a thought, but the indignity lasts much longer,
The cultivator’s mouth twitches as the flow of Qi wavers with the rising tide of disruptive emotion.
The laziness, how dare the initiates tasked with maintenance to her chambers–
Memories of ten thousand meditation lessons, tinged in her master’s voice, press down on those thoughts, reminding her the cost of anger.
Breathe.
The Qi flows into her core, compressing further and further in on itself, ever so slowly increasing in density and growing no larger.
Breathe.
And as Kaido meditates, her entire being focused on her core, in the center of that impossibly dense amalgam gently smoldering atop her painstakingly crafted foundation, she can sense existence itself straining, giving way and, as her core presses down ever more firmly, something within flashes–
“Incoming priority call.” An electronic voice hisses from the wall mounted machine, beeping a few times before repeating itself. “Incoming priority call.”
“Damnnation!” Kaido roars, desperately wrestling against the Qi inside her body as it nearly escapes control, only held at bay by unflinching will..
She’s not had a Qi deviation since she was an initiate, to have one now is a profound insult to her personal honor.
Even if she’s the only one who knows of it.
Regaining mastery over herself even as her skin momentarily feels ten million times too small, Kaido stabilizes her Qi network before rising to her feet and glares at the beeping interruption.
Marching back across the thigh deep water with a splashing trudge and throwing on her robe, it's only her eternal drills of self control that prevents her finger from going through the panel as she punches the button to accept the call.
“Who dare– Master.” She says with a bow, rage instantly reversing to calm loyalty at the sight of her master's face on the screen. “I apologize for the delay, I was indisposed.”
There’s a short silence from the other side of the call, broken as her master sighs in the way he does whenever he’s rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“...I can see that.” He says in a slightly stilted tone. “Might I ask that you put on some clothes before we continue?”
Kaido rises from her bow and gives a sharp nod, only then realizing the dilemma that she is wearing appropriate clothes for the situation.
After a few seconds of deliberation she unties the lengths of cloth keeping the robe from falling open, then reties them in the formal manner.
“It is done master.” She states before giving another brief bow. “I am at your service.”
Rising to a firm attention, she stares at the wall mounted screen, awaiting her master to continue. But instead of talking, or rubbing the bridge of his nose again, he just stares at her. Eyes flicking between her own, one at a time, as if he’s looking for something.
Eventually, he gives a shallow nod.
“Good.” He mutters. “It has come to my attention that several client sects marshaled under sector twenty four have been reporting reduced tithes over the past three months. You are to investigate these reports and determine the truth of this discrepancy.”
Kaido nods in two abrupt motions.
“Yes Master.”
There’s a slight pause before her Master nods back.
“Good.” He says, continuing after another hesitation. “...Kaido. In your investigation, do not exclude members of the Silver Firmament Sect from the domain of your search.”
Kiado’s imperfect discipline almost allows the shock at her master's words to break her composure, the thought that someone from within the sect is acting against it almost unthinkable.
But she does not break, merely nodding once more.
“I understand Master. I will leave immediately.”
Her master lightly tilts his head in acknowledgement, and the instant before her finger presses the button to end the call, says something else, so quietly it almost seems to be to himself.
“...Good luck.”
_____
_-__-_
–––––
Laying on her back, Lian squints at the ratsnest of age embrittled electrical wiring, trying to figure out what she’s looking at.
When she’s first opened the airlock for her escape pod, it was a complete mess, every access panel and console removed and thrown on the floor with unplugged cables and electrical wiring hanging from every surface.
But now, with weeks of painstaking effort, slaving over every scrap of metal, ceramic and plastic…
Lian lifts her head and looks at the interior, about the size of a midsize van.
…It’s not worse than when she found it.
The scrapper snorts and looks back at her wiring, fighting back a yawn.
She’d stayed up late installing the components ‘acquired’ from the scrapyard, but early this morning she’d been woken by a desperate thirst and, because it’s needed for the electrolyzer and actually clean water is a somewhat valuable commodity here, she’d hidden her stash of water in the pod.
Lian unplugs one end of a cable, blows into it, then plugs it back in.
And, just because she happened to be here, it couldn't hurt to do some tests to ensure the components were installed properly.
This single thought turned into two hours of tired and tedious tracing to find problems, all leading to this moment…
Flipping a switch on an unmounted control panel laying on the floor next to her and pressing a button, she’s rewarded by an almost inaudible electronic whine and the faint smell of burning plastic. Followed by yet another one of the red blinking lights across the main console to turn green.
“Yesssss!” The scrapper hisses, pumping a fist, then freezes and looks around to ensure that quick movement didn't knock anything loose.
After a second of nothing happening, she breathes a sigh of relief before reaching to remount the control panel.
For a long time she’d been unsure on if it was even possible to bring this thing back online, but as systems flicker back to life one by one, the odds of her actually managing to do this increase by the day.
In fact, the only major component she’s missing by now is a star map, a system of cameras attached to a database of star positions allowing the device to triangulate where she is anywhere in the galaxy, which is an irreplaceable component before any plan can even begin.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
In her memory there are thousands of avenues to search for power and wealth, but this station isn't unique so the scrapper has no idea where she is, and until she knows where she is, she can't know which direction to go.
Poking out her tongue as she works, she finishes stuffing the wires into the flameproof enclosure and screwing the panel back on, but as she looks away she sees the time on the blinking lock in the corner of one of the console screens.
The time isn't set, because she couldn't figure out how, but she’s been in here long enough to be able to automatically translate the incorrect time in her head, and that is saying–
“Sssshoot!”
She’ll be late!
The scrapper hurriedly tries to extract herself from the pod, fingers flying across scattered control panels and the central console to put everything back into low power mode as fast as possible
She can't be late!
Scrabbling out of the pod and remembering to pull her mask over her mouth as she enters the dusty room beyond, Lian grunts as she shoves the heavy airlock door closed and yanks the handle to the closed position with a squeak of unlubricated steel.
Scrambling through the vent, she’s forced to pause for breath as the exertion quickly drains her limited constitution, but just as quickly she’s pulling herself out into her home and sprinting through the cloth partition and down the hall.
As bad as this job is, a lot of people want it, and she’s disposable enough that the foreman has a zero tolerance policy to not adhering to company policy.
Sprinting down the hall, Lian knows the speed she’s moving at is unusual, almost no one moving faster than a brisk walk, and that speed has her almost colliding several people in the half full hallway, forced to stutterstep past one person carrying a some kind of box then half step over a small child as he’s pulled out of her path by an irritated looking mother.
“Sorry!” She calls breathlessly over her shoulder, lungs beginning to burn with cold fire at the abuse.
But even as the scrapper feels her malnourished body crying out in protest at even this mild exercise she still pushes herself to be faster.
She sprints into the atrium and from there things begin to blur, and after that smear of absent time scrapper finds herself pressed against the wall of her work’s waiting room, heaving for breath, with no memory of how she got there.
Blinking rapidly, she offers a wavering smile at her coworker’s sympathetic or confused looks, then slumps as the buzzer for shift start goes off before she even has the chance to catch her breath and the foreman’s voice buzzes over the speaker.
“Right! First shift! Remember today is tithe day! If even a single one of you comes up short and makes me look bad, I swear you will have to be carried home!”
The scrapper blinks as the door to the scrap room opens and the others begin trudging through, then releases an exasperated groan.
Right, today’s tithe day.
Pushing herself off the wall, she staggers through the door and into the scrap room, pulling her cloth mask over her face as she does.
She needs to be quick, or this is gonna get ugly.
–––––
Lian breathes a sigh of relief as she pulls herself up the final distance to where she was yesterday and confirms it’s the same as when she left it.
It’s very lucky that her compressor hadn't been discovered since yesterday, it’s essentially her only hope for actually meeting her tithe for this week, since she’d forgotten her savings at home.
The scrapper grunts with effort, shoving the slab of metal off her compressor before looking down the tower of scrap she’s atop to make sure there’s no one below.
“Look out below! Dropping heavy metal sheet!” She calls, awaiting a response.
A few seconds later she hears a male voice call back from below.
“Hold!” He shouts, sticking his arm out from beneath an overhang he’d been obscured beneath. “I need to finish unspooling this copper!”
“Got it!” Lian calls back, adjusting her grip on the plate slightly. “Say when!”
She’s answered by silence for a few long minutes, and as the time ticks on she’s forced to confront and suppress her anxiety for the wasted time.
He’s on just as much of a time crunch as her, complaining or asking for him to hurry doesn't help.
Eventually, after what feels like half an hour –but is more likely somewhere between five and ten minutes– Lian hears the sound of rubberized footsteps on metal before seeing the other scrapper pull himself out from beneath her at something approximating a safe distance and giving a wave.
“I’m out!”
“Dropping!” Lian calls back, shoving the metal slab off the stack and watching it tumble and slide down the heap, coming to a rest at the bottom third.
Seeing the hazard has passed, he looks from the plate back up to her, gives another wave, then clambers back out of view beneath her.
Lian gets back to work as well, hurriedly scanning the machine for the quickest way to the compressor blade.
She really hopes it’s in the center like she thinks it is.
Grunting with effort, the scrapper picks a place to start, and throws her entire bodyweight behind the first bolt holding the casing together only to get perhaps half a millimeter of movement. But the next yank gets a little bit more, the same after that.
She needs this to be worth what she thinks it is. A turbine blade at that size, even if it’s not made of a nickel dominant alloy, would be more than enough to pay for her tithe all on its own.
As she works, with the exhaustion of her sprint faded and the fear of not making the quota alleviated with a plan, Lian allows herself to mentally grumble at the fact that she has to pay this ‘tithe’ in the first place.
She doesn't have an exact population census on hand, but she’s built and managed this kind of station before when she was in her ‘clan’ phase. For a medium sized station operated by a stock martial sect like this one, it’s looking at a population of around five to six hundred million people.
The Silver Firmament Sect, if they spec their entire elder’s council into management, loyalty, and spycraft, could have a battle ready population of maybe ten thousand. More likely they’ll have somewhere between three and four thousand, assuming the council build is how the game naturally generates sects like this one.
Lian gets the first bolt undone and moves to the second.
Four thousand cultivators, including initiates, is not enough to manage this many people, so they foster the development of smaller sects throughout the station. In the in-game menus they’re called ‘client sects,’ functionally an extension of the Silver Firmament Sect but they have their own little loyalty bar and are partially autonomous, collecting tithes and managing their own area of the station with minimal oversight.
It’s useful, not just to reduce the debuff of bureaucratic strain, but client sects can follow a different cultivation path to help shore up weaknesses in the central hegemon.
So whenever tithe day comes along, the client sect in charge of her area comes calling for their cut of everyone’s weekly earnings, not the people in white.
Pausing to breathe as the fifth bolt is removed, Lian flops over to the final one and clumsily attaches her wrench.
For obvious reasons unions aren't a thing here, because collective bargaining doesn't really work if the boss is personally powerful enough to beat their underlings to death by themselves. From there it doesn't take a genius to see that the system naturally self-selects for people who are ruthless enough to actually use that power to get what they want.
She’s seen what happens to people who don't manage to get the tithe on time, it’s just coinflip odds on whether the beating comes from the cultivators or the foreman’s own mortal enforcers.
It’s that… ruthlessness that Lian needs to emulate if she wants to have even a chance of surviving in this universe.
Releasing a tortured whine with the strain, the sound transitions to a pleased hum as Lian yanks the final bolt loose and sees the panel loosening from its mounting.
No matter how abhorrent, how evil, the Unconquered managed to escape this place and become one of the most powerful people in the entire universe by sheer uncompromising will. From where Lian is right now, she beat every enemy at their own game by grabbing even the smallest chance of an opportunity with such intensity that all challengers broke. She got out of here, she lived because she understood better than anyone what it takes to survi–
“Ohhhh yea baby.” The scrapper mutters to herself as she manages to remove the thick steel backplate for the compressor chamber, revealing the gleaming metal of the compressor blades. “That’s the stuff.”
Even partially obscured by the shadow of the poor lighting, the mental calculation on how much this blade is worth causes saliva to pool under her tongue and a full body tingle to run across her skin.
This is so much bigger than she’d expected! She’d disassembled the machine from the inlet so she’s looking at the widest point of the compressor, it’s as wide as the base of a christmas tree.
This is probably worth more than everything she’d gathered this entire week. Once she gets it to the counter…
The thought trails off as she looks at this massive single piece of monocrystalline metal, the central rotor thicker than her calf, and the thought of the payout is moderated by a simple reality.
How, in the heck, is she gonna get this down?
Lian pokes her head back out of the compressor and looks down at the ground, a two story descent at an angle that ranges from seventy degrees to vertical.
After a few seconds, she reaches into her bag and pulls out the coil of rope her company sells for this very purpose, then looks between it and her surroundings to try and struggles to figure out how she’s going to do this by… herself…
Oh. Duh.
Looking back down at the ground, her eye is drawn to the sound of the other scrapper worthing away somewhere beneath her, and Lian rolls her eyes at how stupid she’s being.
…Shoot. What was his name again?
Cupping her hands around her mouth, she leans a bit more over the side and shouts down to get his attention.
“Hey… Hey Wrei!” She calls. “You got a second!?”
There’s a pause, followed by an unimpressed looking Wrei poking his head out back up at her.
“It’s Wei.”
Lian winces.
“Sorry!” She shouts back. “But I got an offer for you! I’ve got something big I need to take to the counter! If you help me out we can split it!”
Wei stares up at her for a few seconds, squinting, before slowly pulling himself further into view.
“...I’m getting half.” He states firmly, answered immediately by a nod from Lian.
“Right!” She calls back. “Finish whatever you’re doing and get up here! I need to get this done today!”
With that she ducks her head back behind the ridge of the scrap pile and starts mentally pulling apart how they’re going to do this.
As she works, some small part of her regrets losing so much of this payday because she needed to get help. But those thoughts are rationalized out of existence by the fact that if she didn't ask for help, instead of half, she’d get nothing.
And a beating.
Lian takes a loop of rope into her hands and starts trying to tie it around the sharp edges of the compressor’s blades, looking deeper to see how the other end of the rotor is attached to the casing.
Ah well.
