RINGERRA
“Digger Man”
(The Ringerra Mosaic, #1)
21st of Chox, 687
“What is with all the goddess-damned secrecy?” Chorgun asks, eyeing the two stern-looking people across the empty conference room table from him.
The setting is an anonymous carpeted office in an anonymous district by the water. Light gray walls, dark gray carpet. No labels or signs anywhere. The kind of place which—if he were to disappear—wouldn’t be on anybody’s starting-point list for a search.
Not that he has any family or tight friends to show such concern. This is the way of things.
Chorgun always marked up this solitary lifestyle to work, the long months or even years on a site. His concept of ‘home’ has been reduced to a comfortable, familiar respite between worlds of dirt and grinding metal.
Not so bad, really. As of late, his workplace accommodations have become more agreeable, owing more to his obvious age. Labor unions look kindly on a manager like him.
The quiet maintained by his two hosts does not translate to nervous anticipation. The money probably isn’t that stellar. If they’re not going to give him this job, whatever it is, he’ll return to the animal vids and time-wasting nonsense of his retirement days. Forty-four years working sites on three different worlds was enough.
The planet Rhyosh was not a bad choice to finish things out. His last three jobs were here. Scenery can be had, if he wants it. No tropical beaches, but he can reach one with a distasteful three-day journey through the void.
By the course, any thoughts of returning to his homeworld of Helops during wartime are out-of-the-question. His birth planet and people have suffered mightily, but, for a half-Human like him, loyalty goes only so far. Enemy bombs will fall regardless of his presence.
No, the cosmos has no heroic plans for a grumpy old cripple like him.
Across from Chorgun are two manager types, both fully Human. First is a woman whose stringy yellow hair and pink puffy face suggest heavy drinking and sleepless nights. The cause is probably related to whatever enormous task lies ahead.
The other person is an Army officer, maybe a captain. He has a pale complexion, with blue veins showing at his shaved temples. He is wearing what they call casuals instead of military dress, but his stony expression itself is anything but casual. If Chorgun had to bet, this Army man would just as soon reach for the sidearm at his hip and end things quickly rather than argue with a construction worker.
No names for these two, by the course.
This is the third meeting regarding “Project Ve.” The first two were one-hour sessions on work history, personnel issues, and psychological games. Obviously, somehow, he passed those. They need a man who can keep his nose in the dirt and ignore the rest.
The psych questions ran the gambit. Being a half-breed of Human-Heloppikan descent, Chorgun doesn’t scare easily. On the job, he’s been burned, shot at, and had bones broken. He has faced down several kinds of thievery and threats. In all likelihood, his life has been shortened three different ways with exposure to unknown or undisclosed chemicals. Working with bunk—the collective term for soil and rock of his world—has always carried inherent risks of mystery and mass. He went in fairly warned.
And he has always finished the job.
The Army fellow finally glances up and nods at the fourth person in the room, some Pashunderran assistant standing off to the side.
She brings over a large sheet of paper and sets it in front of Chorgun.
He wastes no time studying her, a sweet-smelling functionary. Instead, there’s a clue in the plainness of the plans before him. Just a few lines and numbers, and an arrow indicating north.
“Eight thousand by four thousand legs,” he observes, looking at the simple outer rectangle. “Land type, open or hillside and forest?”
“Open, some hill,” the yellow-haired woman says. “We can’t do forest.”
The typical sarcastic retort comes to mind automatically, softness in the spirit or softness in the bunk. Forest has almost never been off-limits before. However, for once in his life—in a moment which would surprise past business associates and ex-wives alike—Chorgun holds his retort in. It is a glance at the Army man’s face which cautions him. He’d rather his life not end today.
“Overall depth?”
“Ten legs.”
He points at the core area demarcated by a smaller rectangle. “And this?”
“Varying,” she says. “Average thirty legs.”
The dimensions don’t take him long.
“So we’re displacing three hundred twenty-four million cubic legs of bunk,” he says with efficiency. The Heloppikan side of him has always been fast with calculations, to the point that he has a history of annoying people.
“Correct.”
“Bunk composition? Sand, clay, what?”
“To be determined.”
“Unknown, fine. Purpose?” he asks, glancing up at the pair.
There’s a long pause. The Pashunderran lady shifts her stance, registered by the carpeted floor. An ice cube cracks in the water pitcher near his elbow.
Finally, the Army man says, “Something heavy.”
~ ~ ~
19th of Neera, 696
Chorgun limps forward with a click of his cane, off the shuttle’s cargo ramp and onto the mobile disembarkation stand. His stubbornness holds enough sway to keep him out of a wheelchair, for now. The practically robotic brace holding his left knee together is never satisfied, too restrictive or too loose. Another 60-hour flight and he might have to have his leg amputated, for all the pain it causes.
A new site welcomes him. This one is “Project Al”, shorthand for Aldahambra. It’s his fourth site for the Army, since starting with “Project Ve” for Veersh. Nine years have passed since those initial meetings and he started working with the Army. Now it’s officially the Interplanetary Armed Services. His paycheck still comes from the Shadows Company, by the course. Credits he’ll get around to using someday.
Maybe that tropical beach is still in the cards. Something far away from here. The motivations for these projects are the same. War is brewing. Anyone with half a brain knows the Mitasterites seek empire and, consequently, are preparing to fight. Bases must be built and this method is still the most efficient one.
Chorgun comes to the railing at the stand’s edge and takes in the view. He breathes deeply, as the cool air is a little thicker here. It’s a welcome change from the stale air of the long-range transport. The scents flooding his nostrils include something like cinnamon and hints of a hot mineral. Someone on the shuttle called it a ‘hot crystal’ odor due to the dong-errachydia in the compressed atmosphere, but Chorgun wasted no time trying to equate that to anything meaningful. It’s better than the marine reek he just worked through on Vanklah 12, so it’s good enough.
“So this is Ringerra,” he mutters to no one.
For decades now, people have ditched the uninhabited planet’s official name, Dysonvellha 3, in favor of the one inspired by its three orbital rings of rock. Chorgun couldn’t give two hoots about the rocky bands (two semi-equatorial, one polar, at a different altitude) provided nothing large falls on his site. He loathes the void, and he is least unhappy with his feet on solid ground.
Just like the setting on Vanklah 12, the designated site hosting “Project Al” is ready for him. To his left are the accommodation blocks, which offer housing, facilities and showers for 400, plus tents for chow and recreation. To his right is a fleet of thirty Series-4 diggers and material trucks, all painted in ‘nuclear orange’ for high visibility. There are also five containers for equipment, including lights, and the familiar bulbous silver cone of a C1-type reactor. Workers in hats are busy on its platforms, checking things against a comforting background hum.
Unlike Vanklah 12 and other planets, there’s nobody else here. The Army kept this place secret (easy to do when you’re a half-billion miles from civilization) so they could build a secret base. No known large predators or freaky electrical storms, either. These are all bonuses, as they equate to fewer headaches.
The shuttle landed, by the course, on a concrete pad erected atop a squat hill. Before him, a wide, gentle valley with a bush-lined creek spreads up toward a line of trees. Metal stakes with bright blue line mark the perimeter of the site. Since it extends beyond his vision left and right, the pad and hill he currently occupies will also need to go.
The overcast skies and hint of mist make a few distant bird calls seem closer.
His assistant Gahsarvis knows a lot about birds. He’s probably already tagged a few with his imager.
Chorgun’s second wife was nuts about birds, but he never caught the fascination bug. Just flying rodents that try to poop on him.
Probably thousands of them in the trees beyond, but nothing tagged as hazardous. For a few moments, there’s no need to do anything but let blood-flow return to his knees and take in the view. This place will be home for the next four years. When he Gahsarvis are finished here, the empty fields and orange equipment will have been replaced by military might.
“Large site,” says a woman approaching from behind.
“Same as the others,” he answers.
Promptly, a Tchushkin comes to stand beside him. She wears the gray coveralls of a worker, with bright-green visibility bands on the upper arms and knees. Her suit also has the hand-width designation patches of project rank, yellow-and-purple alternating squares. This is echoed by the flexible band holding her three crips in place high up on her lavender-hued head.
In the Army’s own Shadows Company, their employer, the colors signify that she is his number two.
He stares for a sec.
“I am Throhlhayahzmandangaraya Paypehrcedysz,” she states. “I am assigned to be your mikkleekah, your second. Tchushkin names are hard to pronounce for non-Tchushkins, so you may call me Thropah.”
“Thropah,” Chorgun grunts. “Did Gahsarvis retire?”
“Yes, according to my messages.”
“Lazy bastard,” he sighs. His eyes linger on purple-yellow designation badges, like great stripes running down over her breasts and the sides of her legs—for the places most men, admittedly, look first. She’ll also have a patch across her shoulders, just like his outfit. His, by the course, are green-and-purple squares, with each green marked by a reflective metal bead in the middle.
This way, the boss can always be found during a round-the-chronometer operation. The company will insist he attach the annoying safety lights to his cane, so he will certainly be the subject of many jokes. His diminutive stature will inspire a few, as well. This Thropah must reach a height of damned near 2.4 legs, where he barely hits 1.7.
None of this matters, by the course. The job awaits.
“All right,” he says. “Tell me two things you see.”
Thropah answers as if she has anticipated these test questions. “The creek will be rerouted to the north, in the direction we look. A split would be preferable, laterally across that hillside and over here to the east. That is one. The second is that we will need a rock support zone, five legs by five legs, at that hillside.”
At this, he grunts again.
A whistle comes from one of the men on the reactor. Thropah looks, receives a signal and raises her arm in confirmation.
“We have full power, now.”
“What does our timetable look like?”
“The days here on Ringerra are set to twenty hours. We have fourteen thousand, four hundred fifty-three work hours, and a few mins, from this moment.”
Chorgun considers this. The men, and women, will work round-the-chronometer, all ten months, 355 days per year. No bull-satok vacations. Thirty diggers working constantly to move an average of 75 loads an hour at 8.17 cubic legs per load (historic averages for Series-4 scoops) can accomplish the job with a few hundred hours to spare. That is, if all the machines are fully functional. And their power cells don’t crack. And those cells are replaced with competence. And he doesn’t have some ridiculous workers’ revolt roaring up to his door.
“The men will need entertainment,” he says. When she returns a look of mild surprise, he continues. “Working men, they need drinks and companionship. Women. That means increased security and medical staff, plus separate accommodations.”
Thropah’s pretty face barely conceals mild irritation. Could Tchushkin construction guys really be that different? Not from what Chorgun has seen.
If she disagrees, his stock speech about the realities of life on a worksite is revving up in his gut, ready to be bellowed out with certainty.
Instead, after a moment of quiet consent, she says, “I believe seven-hour shifts on a staggered rotation with continual work will allow us to complete phase one on time.”
Chorgun nods in grim disappointment.
Clearly, he cannot fire her for incompetence.
“Okay, Thropah,” he says with thinly-veiled disdain, “show me the office.”
~ ~ ~
​
35th of Pele, 696
The moment Chorgun klomps into the office one morning, Thropah looks up from her undersized desk to greet him with, “There is a problem.”
He points to the small refrigeration unit. Behind him, Polly the office manager doesn’t even look up, busy on her handheld.
With one long arm, Thropah opens the fridge door, retrieves his desired beverage, closes the door with an elbow and hands him his daily fix. Her other hand holds a data pad at an angle, clearly something she has puzzled over repeatedly this morning.
The pre-made concoction in his thermos is a mud-green mix of stimulants, painkillers, vegetable matter, herbs for focus, and fruit for taste. He is already 72 and, if he chooses to remain upright—Thropah’s latest headache-inducing observation notwithstanding—he must down this drink by 0625 hours.
“Polly,” he starts between gulps, “how long have we been in operation?”
The petite, super-efficient woman replies, “This is day fifty-one for you, Boss.”
“Seven weeks,” he says, “we’re seven weeks in, plus two days, and this must be the seventh time you have come up with a problem for me to solve.”
“The problem exists with or without my observation,” Thropah returns. “If you have not seen it, yet, it means you are slipping.” She concludes this statement with a little smile.
Chorgun elicits a two-tone groan, up then down. “Ah, we have reached the part where I threaten to fire you for being mouthy. At which time, you point out how easily you could lift me one-handed and pitch me to my death in the pit beyond these walls. Make it look like an accident with water on the steps, loose bolts on the railing. You become the boss.”
“Precisely,” she says.
“All right,” he grumbles, dropping into his seat, “what is this week’s problem?”
“The density of the bunk is too low,” she begins.
Chorgun has a deep respect for all things bunk, as failure to understand it can torpedo a project faster than any shortage of financing or personnel issue. Rockslides and tilting structures are always someone’s doing. That is why he listens without interruption, for once.
In general, bunk comprises dirt, sand, rock, clay, organic materials—plus gases and occasional pockets of oil. In rare cases, bones or ordnance fragments from old conflicts.
Here at the project site, as Thropah explains, the bunk weighs in at 1.414 heaps per cubic leg. With the depth to bedrock averaging 57 legs, their desired density should exceed 1225 bars or 1.75 heaps per cubic leg. Every bar counts if the bunk is going to support 1.353 million heaps. Engineers can’t make the damned thing any lighter.
Under current conditions, any amount of bunk settling could be disastrous, with several hundred heaps of steel faltering because the bunk underneath isn’t up to the task. In that case, their problems would grow exponentially.
As it is, they already have a complicated support gridwork planned out. The physics are not so friendly, this time.
Yes, this potential problem has been gnawing at the edges of his consciousness for a few days.
“So, either we take the whole site down to the bedrock…”
“Or,” she says, “we use a cradle like you did on Vanklah Twelve.”
“Bah, that damned thing,” he mutters.
Polly clears her throat and offers a possible solution, to separate the problematic piece in orbit.
“It can’t be done,” Chorgun says with a sigh. “Physics of the void, undoing five thousand welds by hand, thick cables with hooks would take the skin right off. You’d end up losing half of it.”
He and Thropah look at each other for a full min.
There are two enormous problems with taking the whole site down to the bedrock. First, drilling out the huge pockets needed to accommodate details of the site calls for either high-pressure drills and expensive heads or special lasers. Either one would necessitate a new, stronger reactor. Second, the actual process carries a high risk of undesired cracking in the remaining foundation, which could spell spiraling disaster.
A C1-type reactor is up to supporting a foundry if they time it right, running it in early-morning hours when cooking and laundry facilities aren’t in use.
Thropah has most likely considered all these factors, as well.
At last, she says, “So, we use a cradle.”
Shaking his head in thought, he scratches his leg. Even if he’d elected to get a robotic-assist walking kit, he’d still have to solve this pending mass problem.
Back home, today, the wretched Kuyuulshahn collective and his fellow Heloppikans will sign the armistice at Seventeen Palms, a tropical blip in Helops’ primary ocean. The war that has gripped his homeworld in savagery will finally be over.
And Chorgun still has to solve this pending mass problem.
Only a cradle will work.
“Polly,” he directs, “get on the horn to General Toft. We’re going to need a quarter-million heaps of steel.”
“Quarter-million heaps, right.”
“And a foundry.”
~ ~ ~
8th of Cerrez, 697
An insistent buzzing wakes Chorgun. Irritated, he picks up his handheld, expecting to see a message about a fatal accident which can and should be handled by Thropah. She’s perfectly capable.
Instead, it’s from the husband of his first ex-wife, Via. She passed away, or fell away, as her religious friends would put it.
She was on a sightseeing excursion on Tchushkolarya’s ocean. A whale surfaced and inadvertently flipped the boat. Everyone went into the water, and Via was one of those who didn’t surface in time. She would be happy to know the 110-leg whale was unharmed in the accident. Her husband, Reiger, thought Chorgun should know about it all.
For a sec, he tries to recall how many grandkids Via would have, now. Would they be grown up?
He curtly thanks Reiger for the update and sets his handheld down.
Next is the short debate about whether he should visit the privy. But if he doesn’t do it now, he’ll certainly wake again in a couple hours with the urge to go. Then he might not be able to get back to sleep before his 0445 wakeup time.
After taking care of business, he opens his almost-soundproof quarters door and steps out into the noise outside. Among the lights and rumbling trucks and scraping of metal-on-bunk, he can remain anonymous. Most of the guys wouldn’t even notice a solitary figure standing under a shallow porch awning not fifty legs from the active work-zone.
Chorgun’s eyes hover on the closest rib of the cradle, a gigantic length of steel which stretches toward the distant fence. For a moment, he’s struck by the sad irony of a nature lover like his first wife Via being killed by a whale. The sightseeing boat he’s picturing was probably a fourth of its length, a twentieth of its mass.
Life happens, death happens.
He waits until a warm breeze makes his scalp itch. Then he goes inside in pursuit of more sleep in quiet.
Behind him, the work chugs along.
~ ~ ~
20th of Junza, 697
Four months to go. “Project Al” is shaping up—a transformed world—Chorgun notes from his porch. Under a blue-violet afternoon sky, the cradle ribs are all set. The far hillside is secure. The creek has been split and rerouted. New trees provide shady protection for watery residents who have already returned. There should be some peacefulness thrumming along with the military base’s operations.
“Say ‘big fish’,” Polly says, aiming her handheld to take images.
Chorgun and the young woman seated sideways across his lap both comply.
“Don’t post that, if you please,” he says, grateful that his voice no longer resembles a wheezing frog, as Thropah put it. Too much yelling at stubborn Derrick, the zone-four head.
“Why not?” Polly asks. “Big day. First rails are in and pit twenty is done.”
The woman reclining across him is a Pashunderran about one-third his age. She goes by Wissht, like the tenth month. This, like the motivations which brought her to Ringerra, like the reason her hair is dyed silvery-green as opposed to its natural red, is a small mystery he’ll never know the answer to. He doesn’t want to.
Wissht is sweet on him. Fortunately, here in front of Polly and Thropah and the engineer Jib, she doesn’t ask why he doesn’t or can’t return her affection. He doesn’t want to explain how a work accident in 679 robbed him of more than a functional knee and pelvis. It took some of his spirit, too.
How many decades has it been since a woman was this close to him? It seems like ancient memory.
All those primal urges belong to ‘yesteryear.’
Instead, saving him from embarrassment, Wissht asks, “So what happens when this phase is complete?”
“When the site is all ready?”
She turns sparkly eyes on him and nods. By the course, she doesn’t know. Very few of them do. Their job is to prepare the site to specifications. By and large, so long as the weekly credits have flowed into bank accounts, the collective curiosity has been robust but not riotous. In the bar, they often sing work songs and pop music.
Chorgun has decided to make the announcement on the morning of 31 Neera next year, the day the event begins.
“Nothing dangerous,” he tells her. “It’s quite a spectacle.”
“You have seen it?”
“Three times. You’ll want to be awake.”
“Fine,” she says, tapping his nose with a slender blue finger. “You keep your secrets.”
Below them, two workers are arguing about the gap width between steel plates of a pit retaining wall. The issue is minor. Someone else will see to it.
Thropah’s handheld buzzes, and she glances at it.
“Come come, you two. Dinner is ready.”
~ ~ ~
32nd of Neera, 698
The day has arrived.
Early in the morning, having given up on the idea of sleep, Chorgun steps up the ramp to the mobile viewing platform. He is careful not to let items stuffed in his coveralls pouch fall out.
Workers are here, quietly talking or just staring.
Others, he knows, have come and gone, drawn by the quasi-historic spectacle which first appeared around dinnertime the day before. They, too, had trouble sleeping, knowing that a slowly approaching moment would signify success or failure. All types of people would be compelled to watch, he reasons. Even the Kuyuulshahn with their monstrous ships.
Yesterday, when Chorgun made the announcement, those assembled responded with awe and bewilderment. A few cheered, their guesses confirmed. Wissht came to hold his hand with a child’s, or granddaughter’s, excitement.
After years of planning and digging, the long-awaited event initially showed as a faint dot of light high above to the north. An hour later, the single dot split in two, one brighter than the other. By 1900 hours, the brighter dot had separated into multiple ones, glowing pink, and the outline of a dark shape began to show.
All through the warm, clear Ringerran night, it has approached.
The tricky part of “Project Al” is beyond his control. He could thank the goddesses, and the Army, for that. Slow-motion madness.
Chorgun takes the lone reclining chair—which others have courteously left vacant for him—so he doesn’t have to crane his neck. He contentedly sips his drink. The items are still in his pouch.
His eyesight is going, he knows—things are fuzzier than they used to be—but it still seems like this must be a bizarre illusion rather than reality.
The decommissioned Orca-class frigate Aldahambra fills a good part of the sky, now.
Thrust from seven heavy lifter modules spew pink-white flame from points resembling a ‘Y’ configuration, matching the form of their impossibly heavy load. In orbit, engineers removed the flight pods, as their separate-but-attached design spelled structural failure during atmospheric entry. Those chunks are now magnet-locked to freighters in distant orbit. By getting all non-essential people and a couple more pieces of equipment off, engineers have reduced the Aldahambra’s mass to 941,858,000 bars. Still the heaviest damned thing in recorded history to try this.
For thirteen hours, the ship has been descending at a constant, achingly-slow rate of 0.907 legs per sec. Chorgun used to walk faster than that on his way to scream at an underling. But he understands why they’re using utmost caution.
The physics of it all are enough to rattle the mind. To do their collective job, each of the seven heavy lifters was bolted to the frigate’s frame. Their power is supplied by the frigate’s own reactor. In this way, the ship is basically borrowing attached muscles to ease itself down from orbit.
Somewhere in the recesses of his memory are the ranges of power output and thrust force necessary for this enormous task. It takes 0.5 narinjays to keep a one-person air vehicle in hover, so the thrust he’s looking at must be a couple million times’ that. To be sure, not even ten million Humans and Heloppikans working as one body could carry the frigate.
Yet, here she is.
The ship is now close enough that he can hear the constant roar of the thrust. He imagines he can make out the individual nozzles, three per lifter, whose true outlines are obscured by intense flame. On the belly of the shape are the remains of the auxiliary communications array, parts of it too tricky to move in the void. Up there is a defense cannon, watching over what could be considered the portside wing. Not far from it is the scored, shallow bowl of engine one.
With the goddesses’ favor, the Aldahambra is coming down as planned.
According to the countdown timer on his handheld, she will touch down in 89 mins.
Below him, the massive steel ribs of the cradle await their bloated child. Each one is 3.2 legs across and 13.4 legs deep, anchored to bedrock, with their respective lengths matching the changing beam of the ship. These are connected by perpendicular plates welded at either end, and all gaps are filled in with bunk and stone. Great pockets cut to tenth-leg precision, the pits, will receive the heavy lifter units and comms array, allowing for access and retrieval on lubricated rails.
The whole thing should fit together like two enormous puzzle pieces.
Then they’ll take it all apart. The engineers and heavy lifter crew have a couple days for cooldown and to put the reactor into a dormant state. Then a new countdown begins, heralded by the arrival of Army heads and their demands. Within a year, this massive ship will no longer resemble a ship.
For now, it is enough to simply enjoy the amazing spectacle, his fourth time.
This is the fifth time this so-called Phaeldrahn Process was attempted. On the first run, the crew didn’t get the ship utterly locked in geostationary position. Lateral atmospheric forces were too great, and the stress caused the ship to break in half just forward of the reactor block. The heavy lifters couldn’t do anything about the off-balance loads, and the whole thing came down in ruinous pieces. Hundreds perished, including the visionary namesake engineer, Phaeldrahn.
The day after this catastrophe (Chorgun would later learn) his handheld buzzed with an interview request.
He was younger and surlier then. Utterly demanding, utterly successful. Nothing to tie him down.
He was perfect for this job.
“Good morning, Chorgun,” Thropah says, joining him.
“And to you,” he responds cheerily. “Did you sleep?”
“No, I was too excited. Happy year-round, by the way.”
“Thank you. Seventy-four laps around the sun.”
This expression to mark time has always amused him. Which sun doesn’t really matter, as all intelligent beings have been taught to think of passing the years this way.
They watch the approaching ship, almost hypnotic in its crawl toward home.
“Did you hear about our governments, yours and mine?”
“I missed it,” he admits.
“They sign the agreements next week. They are calling the new country the Trieste Union.”
He kicks the name around for a min. Is the city Trieste named for the Triestarra flower or the nebula which can be seen from the core worlds? It probably doesn’t matter, though he wouldn’t mind seeing all three before his time is up.
He glances up at her and remarks, “There have been worse names, I suppose.”
She nods.
Polly returns to the railing, fizzy beverage in hand. There was nothing for her to manage overnight. She, like everyone else, will probably go to bed once the ship is down.
The office manager’s presence encourages Chorgun toward a mental accounting of this monumental event. These things have never been far from mind.
In the two-plus years since he arrived, his crew has moved 384,000,000 cubic legs of bunk, give or take, for various re-dos and the heavy lifter pits. There have been 73 injuries, two non-work fatalities, 51 cases of sex diseases, two unwanted pregnancies, fourteen arrests and two workers permanently lost to incarceration. Combined, the worker camp has consumed untold heaps of food and enough alcohol to fill a resort-worthy lake. Cost overruns on the project turned out to be minimal, only 1.63 million credits, thanks to shovel-and-chute in place of more heavy equipment.
They finished with days to spare. Once again, Chorgun has done it.
No, not he. They. He and Thropah and Polly, and the division heads, and the diggers, and the cooks, and on down to the sex workers like Wissht and the 20-year-old who sweeps the floors and restocks the booze every morning.
All so this big mother could come down and have a home.
After a moment, he asks, “Are we fools?”
“You asked me that question three weeks ago,” Thropah points out. “My answer is still the same. We are not fools. This will work.”
He raises wispy eyebrows in response.
She offers a reassuring smile and admits, “Quite a sight. Is that not how you Humans put it?”
“That’s correct. In Heloppikan, the word is…something, I forget.”
“Once it is down, then I can sleep,” she says.
For once in his life, he smiles back. “You know, all my life, I just wanted to be really good at one thing. Guess this was it.”
“’Was’, or ‘is’?”
At this question, he removes the items from his coveralls pouch. Long patches. They show the green-and-purple squares, with beads, of site manager.
“Once they power down the engines, Polly can have the seamstress sew these onto your coveralls. We’ll swap roles, get a new second trained up,” he says. “It’ll be your show, then.”
Tchushkins, he knows, rarely show surprise, as if wide-ranging anticipation is supremely encoded in their genetic makeup. However, he’ll accept her narrowed eyes and slightly open mouth as such.
“I…um, thank you.”
She accepts the patches with a nod.
“Bigger for you than for me, by the course,” he adds.
“Are you sure, Chorgun?”
His focus, or what remains of it, returns to sharpening details of the Aldahambra. Not a pretty vessel, by any stretch. But it’ll do the job.
“I’ve been at this a very long time,” he muses. “My seventy-fifth year-round, I will be relaxing on a tropical beach with a view of the nebula. All that’s left for me.”
Thropah’s shoulder radio chirps. She presses the button and listens.
“Eight hundred legs,” a woman reports. “We need to withdraw the platform now, per safety guidelines.”
“Understood,” she says.
Chorgun holds onto his drink. With a soft vibration, he feels the platform pulling back to safety.
“Polly, hang on,” he cautions. Safety is always necessary, by the course.
“You got it, Boss,” she slurs. Then she asks, “How can it still be half-a-mile up? It looks huuuuge…”
Abstractly, as the countdown continues, he thinks back to the unnamed pair of people who interviewed him back on Rhyosh, the stressed-out woman and that Army captain. Their first go-round at this type of project failed disastrously. People, including the site manager, died.
But somebody gave them his name and they looked him up.
He wonders where they are now.
He wonders if they’ve ever felt their cheeks warmed by thrust, or a satisfaction such as this.
​​
​
-fin-
Thanks for reading!
The Ringerra Mosaic will continue with "Seven Pink Candles."
For more information on "Digger Man" and the Ringerra series, you can visit my blog here.