“Ok! On three I’m gonna start to pull!” Lian calls up to Wei, standing at a forty five degree angle over the sheer drop, protected from falling to her death by the rope wrapped around both her wrists.
After a few seconds to do some last checks on the ropes tied at key areas, Wei takes up his own position on top of the compressor casing and tensions the vertical rope.
“Ready!”
“Alright!” Lian nods back, tightening her grip and shoving down the wave of fear that this makes her feel. “One… Two… Three!”
She pulls, throwing her entire body into pulling the blade out of the compressor as Wei pulls up to remove angular strain at the back of the rotor. For the first few seconds nothing happens, so Lian crouches down on the flat bit of metal she’s angled on and shoves as if she’s trying to throw herself off the heap to certain death.
Metal pops and groans, rope whines, and things sound as if they’re shifting all around them, but they don't pause in their effort, and after what feels like an eternity of exhausting work both scrapper’s eyes sparkle with elation as the rotor begins to slide out of its housing with a tortured shriek.
But that sudden drop of tension in the rope causes Lian to stagger, struggling to keep her feet planted on the metal beneath her feet as she’s standing near horizontally over certain death.
It’s moving…
She’s got it…
Just a bit mo–
Abruptly the rotor leaves its housing, sliding the rest of the way out of the compressor freely and slamming against the attached stop rope with a humming clang.
In a fraction of a second Lian can see the approaching wave of slack in the rope like a whipcrack.
There’s not even time to blink, let alone process what she’s seeing, before the slack hits her.
She can feel the tight loops she’d wrapped around her forearms loosen with sudden loss of resistance as the slack allows her legs to straighten.
And she’s flung into the open air.
Time seems to slow, and for a single instant Lian feels as if she’s floating.
Then pain erupts across her entire right side as she slams against the mound of jagged metal, scraping across for a second or two before the rope she’s holding onto with a deathgrip tightens.
The loops burn as they dig into her skin and it takes a second for the scrapper to regain her bearings, blinking rapidly she starts looking around to figure out what happened.
A moment later she hears an alarmed yell from above, followed by an incoherent stream of profanity, before Wei’s head cautiously pokes out over the edge.
The horrified expression on his face eases only slightly at the sight of her.
“...You alive?” He asks cautiously, easing further after she nods back..
“Yep, still kicking…” Lian groans, pushing through a slight mental fog to take a more detailed self assessment.
That was a mistake.
She winces as she realizes everything hurts even through adrenaline. “Ow.”
At the confirmation she’s not immediately dying, Wei breaks into a relieved smile.
“Lady, you've got the luck of the dead to survive that.” He says with a slightly hysterical chuckle. “Hold tight, I’m gonna make sure the blade doesn't start sliding then pull you up.”
Lian grimaces at the order of operations, but gives a shallow nod.
“Alright, I’d say no hurry but…” She says with a weak smirk, which drops immediately after his head pulls back over the ledge.
Prioritizing both their safety is more important than her own momentary discomfort, an unfortunate reality.
Her ‘hang time’ allows the scrapper to plant her feet back against the wall and check herself over more thoroughly.
It’s more than enough time to groan in frustration as she looks at the goo covering the metal she’d just scraped against and immediately recognizes the smell.
Great, not only is she going to have to buy another boilersuit from the company store, but this is the stuff that dissolves skin, which can only be good for her health.
She feels her mouth twitching into a half smile.
…On the plus side, it’s the best exfoliation anyone’s ever seen. Beauty nuts wish they knew this ‘one weird trick.’
Lian laughs at her own joke as she listens to her boilersuit pop and hiss.
To Wei’s credit, it sounds like he’s trying to work as quickly as he can, and it only takes him a minute or so before she feels the rope pulling her back up the arm's length separating her from the relatively level area they’d been working in.
Pulling herself over the ledge, she grabs the offered hand and allows herself to be helped to her feet.
“Thanks.” She says offhandedly, rolling her shoulder to work the strained muscles as she looks at the tapered compressor blade, almost as tall as her. “Ready to continue?”
There’s a pause as Wei looks at her incredulously, but then he shrugs and claps her on the shoulder as he walks back to the blade.
“You’re the one sizzling. Let's hurry.”
Lian nods as she feels large portions of her side begin to go numb.
“Please.”
–––––
Moving the blade down from where the compressor had been stacked wasn't easy, but in comparison to the first step the hours of tedious ropework to get the thing down was a cakewalk.
Walking across the fields of metal, thinner half of the rotor resting on her left shoulder, Lian offers a smile to the surprised and envious gazes from other scrappers at the sight of their haul.
She’s not gotten to be on the other side of this interaction before.
She likes it.
Stepping off the packed scrap and into the thick rubberized plastic surrounding the desk, Lian’s eyes trail down the line of clerks behind the glass, feeling a dim sense of amusement as they try to act like they’re too busy to look at her.
Then her eyes land on the eighth clerk down the line, gaze narrowing as her amusement grows stronger and she slowly walks toward him.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Almost everyone else here is rude because they’re tired and underpaid. But this guy by contrast constantly exudes this smug sense of superiority, lording his elevated social status over literally the only people lower than him.
It’s literally just the fact that he has a family name, but with how he talks it’s like he’s nobility.
Lian’s smile widens at his irritated frown as she steps up to his booth and lowers the blade to the ground.
He doesn't speak, simply glaring at her until she raps a knuckle into the glass, leaving a smear of black tar as she does.
“Hello? I’ve got some scrap to deposit. I think it’s in the large size class?”
The clerk doesn't respond for a moment, then his eyes flick over her shoulder, to where she knows the foreman’s office sits high above, the heavily tinted windows acting as a panopticon over everything within his domain.
After a few seconds, he presses the intercom button.
“Step around to the service entrance, you’ve got ten seconds.” He growls, pushing back his chair and speedwalking out of his booth.
Lian hurriedly throws her half of the burden back over her shoulder and hustles to get through the secure door, brushing past an irritated looking clerk and relishes at the sight of him gagging at the smell.
She’s gotten used to it. But intellectually she knows it’s bad.
The service room isn't much, just a large raised scanning platform with a terminal at its base. Once the two scrappers place the compressor blade down they hurry off the platform as the clerk taps a few buttons and the room is filled with an electronic whine.
A second later the darkened floor of the platform illuminates with the outline of hexagons, glowing an iridescent blue. They sweep across the scanner as the hard drive platter inside the terminal begins to whir and chatter.
A few seconds later there's a single electronic beep and the screen is illuminated with a detailed composition analysis of the blade.
A few seconds later, the payout value flashes at the bottom of the screen and Lian almost chokes on air in surprise.
Two thousand marks!?
Immediately she cuts the amount in half but that’s still a crazy amount of money.
The clerk looks similarly shocked at the total, looking between the terminal and the two scrappers he shares the room with.
Locking eyes, she can see him consider it.
But, after a few seconds, he seems to slump in on himself, pressing the button on the terminal that confirms the amount.
“Your total has been calculated. Would you like to pay a small fee and have your earnings dispensed now or add them to your tab?” He asks in a tired monotone.
Lian winces at the eight percent fee she’s about to eat, then holds out a hand.
“Now please.”
The clerk looks momentarily surprised, but obliges, walking over to a secure door, knocking on it to be let in by a security guard, and a few seconds later he comes back out with a plastic dish full of coins.
He shoves the dish into her chest and walks back through the secure door without another word.
Looking down at the coins, she’s almost surprised to hear Wei’s voice cut through the silence.
“...How much did we make?”
Lian blinks looking up at the other scrapper and doing some quick math in her head.
“Uh… two thousand times zero point nine two is uh… eighteen fourty. Divided by two… Nine hundred twenty marks.” She says after some muttered calculation, looking back up as Wei sputters in surprise.
“There’s nine hundred marks in that thing!?” He asks incredulously.
Lian shakes her head.
“No. Nine hundred twenty each, there’s almost two thousand in this. Here.” She says, reaching in and quickly sliding fifty mark coins to the other side of the dish until they’re split evenly and holds it out. “This is your half.”
Wei stares at the coins, then quickly begins grabbing them from the dish and stuffing them into the collar of his boilersuit. A moment later Lian follows suit, shoving the coins into her bag.
Normally she’d shove a loop of wire in the central hole to turn the money into a kind of necklace, but she’ll need to pay the tithe soon, so it’s a waste of time.
In under ten seconds the tray is empty and dropped to the floor and, after adjusting her bag, the scrapper holds out a hand to her co-worker.
“Good working with you.” She says with a smile.
Wei looks… confused, looking into her eyes as if searching for something, then returns the firm handshake with a nod.
“...Sure.” He says, before turning around and leading them out the secure door to the main room again.
Stepping out and blinking in the harsher light, Lian makes one meaningful step toward the decon showers, but when she sees two security staff flanking the entrance she abruptly changes directions back out to the scrap.
She’s not technically allowed to use the decon until the end of shift, but the security is almost never at their post, why…
Out the corner of her eye, she catches sight of the clerk staring at her, an arrogant smile on his face, and all becomes clear.
Ah…
Lian turns her head to look away.
Well screw you too.
–––––
It’s another hour or so before the buzzer signaling the shift change sounds, and Lian didn't manage to find anything even close to her earlier haul. So as she drops the assorted garbage at the counter and takes her money, her attention is already focused on the procession of cultivators who are waiting at the door to the decon shower, a line already forming.
Taking her place at the end, the scrapper rummages in her bag for tithe money as the line slowly trudges forward.
About halfway through the line, Lian is taken from her blank musing by blaring claxons and flashing lights that signal another deposit of fresh scrap.
Idle curiosity has her looking at the ceiling to see which of the building sized hatches will deposit more scrap.
It’s near the middle of the room, slightly to the left, flashing orange for a few more seconds before the groan of straining metal provides an equally comprehensible warning.
Lian covers her ears and watches the sparkling metal begin to shower down, getting larger and larger as the crack in the ceiling grows.
But as she watches, about halfway through the doors opening, she catches sight of something that has her attention snap to a razor focus.
It’s a ship. A real ship.
The scrapper’s eyes trace every detail as it falls to the ground below.
It looks as if it’s been crushed, or collided with something, large sections of the metal blackened while the superstructure is warped as if hit by a redwood sized baseball bat.
But with so much damage it looks like whoever sent this here was lazy in getting usable components out.
The bridge looks almost intact.
Lian stares, burning the position of that ship into her memory as it crashes to the ground, even as it slowly gets covered in detritus still falling from above.
“Mortal!” A voice shouts, grabbing her by the jaw and wrenching her head to look at him. “Eyes front!”
Lian flinches at the sight of the enraged cultivator, reflexively tugging against the iron grip then almost staggering as it’s released.
She immediately drops into a low bow.
“Yes honored cultivator, sorry honored cultivator.” She mutters before placing her palms together and holding out the tithe. “It will not happen again your excellence.”
She feels the coins being snatched from her hands and hears them being counted off.
“You’re short. New price is four hundred thirty.” He says, these words sounding rote, as if he’s had to say them often.
Lian’s wince is hidden beneath her bow as she reaches into her bag to count off the difference.
It’s gone up almost every week since she’s been here, but this time the jump is steep.
The extra coins are taken just as quickly before she’s grabbed by the shoulder and shoved into the decon room.
The scrapper straightens up and sighs.
Nothing for it then.
Just a little longer, and if that ship has what she needs?
There’s a finish line in sight.
Stripping as she steps into one of the decon showers, Lian grimaces at the blackened mess stretching from the small of her back to her ribcage that was once her boilersuit.
It’s completely dissolved, the fabric just isn't there anymore as she removes the clothing.
Pressing the button to start the timed flow of decon water, as it washes away the blackened sludge she can see it removing burnt skin, leaving bright pink and incredibly tender flesh behind.
Lian watches as a thousand microscopic pinholes seep a tiny dewdrop of blood, stinging in the air and groans.
…This job is going to kill her.
