Building everything by prepared, tried and tested plans was boring. And it was what Levy usually did. But building something new was what he had thought he would do when he chose to become an engineer. He left the can of beer on the table and completely forgot about it.
"Is it for that chick?"
He still remembered how she smiled at him while he was rubbing her breasts. But he mostly remembered her breasts.
Sipping his beer, his eyes trailed the details of the blueprint body work. Without diverting his eyes from it, he replied. "Nah, for another of your operatives. Xei or something. A chink."
Finishing up his beer, he turned around and threw the can into the garbage. Turning to Levy, still looking at the blueprint, Meallan said. "Better tell your guys to rest up, Chief. We're gonna get the foundry up and running tomorrow morning and we'll be using what was gutted from that Nyx." He said, crossing his arms.
"Yeah, boss. I'll go do that right now." They shook hands. Levy made only a quick glance at Dagon's eyes, and a longer one at the door.
One could think Levy hurried because he liked rest. The guys certainly did. But he hurried out having forgotten his beer. He would normally hope to run into Ward at the door again, but it was as if he completely forgot about her. He had problems falling asleep that night, making plans and crunching equations. Tomorrow was so slow to come, because tomorrow was to bring something new to his life.
Three days later, a sweaty Dagon entered his quarters. A small automated depot was hastily built in Pennsylvania. No atmo. No shield. Just some heavy cargo robotic arms, plenty of space and systems to coordinate the whole show. It should be good for the duration of the project. The armor was more than enough to hold off any rock or debris bumping it, and the positioning thrusters were below optimal but more than enough to pin it to the relative position. Removing the space work suit, he finally relaxed, walking towards the planning table and decided to pull up the scanner images. The planning system disappeared and gave way to a big image.
"Well.. Seems decent." He said, and pulled up another.
Looking at it, Meallan went to grab a beer from his fridge. The satisfying sound of opening filled the silence followed by his thirsty first gulps. Walking back to the table, he activated the planning system once again and looked at the material list. He nodded checking it mentaly. "Well, time to give Akibara something to do." He accessed his comm link and prepared himself for another round of negotiations.
Almost a year has passed since the start of this project. Design issues appeared constantly, engineering problems were the norm. The first power core prototype exploded while Khan was collecting data on-site. Apart from a slew of scorched and soiled pair of pants, the damage to the lab was almost biblical. The small robotic foundry lost its security systems, and destroyed half of the workshop when the Revenant was hit on the port side by a Valor Forward Gun.
While there were obvious advantages to a mobile building site, capable of cloaking, the size contraints coupled with the daily operations of the Revenant made it extremely hard for Dagon to keep a steady pace on the development.
Levy called two minutes ago, forcing Meallan to kick the holo-table. There was no more iridium to finish the iridium-molybdenum alloy, neither in the Revenant as in the depot. The holo-table slowly switched back and forth between the old design and the new.
"Goddammit."He shouted in his room. He turned his back to the holo-table and looked at the fake-window display. A life feed of the sights that would normally be seen if there was an actual window there. Which at the moment was eerie and dark. The Kuryo cloud offered little support to the ones looking for hope and light. The occasional lightning usually drew the outlines of the rocks and remains of tradelanes and exploring vessels. He sighed, and returned to the holo-table, pushing the project design to the side, opening up the project credit account. Meallan grumbled. Over 1.5 billions spent. Two hundred millions remaining.
"Alright... It won't get done with me looking at the bar tab." He sent a message to Levy to ascertain how much Iridium he would need to that specific task, and to get a full list of material count both in the Revenant as the depot. Afterwards, he recorded an encrypted message and sent it, crossing his fingers.
"Let's hope this zoner hasn't bought the farm yet."
A day later, Meallan Dagon was walking towards the workshop, with a data-pad in hand to check on how the main skeleton frame was holding up to the stress tests. Looking to the side, he spotted the most curious sight. Levy and one of the outsourced specialists he asked Reeves to hire from Kishiro for the next few weeks. The kusarian man, bald as Buda, was explaining something to a very engrossed Levy that was truly fixated in that man's head. Dagon blinked twice, and resumed his walk.
Abraham Levy was a businessman in the Manhattan stock market. He was, usually at least, due to the risk of the business, very rich. He was married with an eight years younger fashion model. They were David Levy's parents and they were still together when he was born. But after a while, Abraham got bored of his courtesan, and discarded her for another. Along with her son. Living only with his mother, already a former fashion model, might have played a role in David's love for ponies. Some other things might have, too. Aging, torn from the influential connections that her ex-husband maintained, and with not much more than basic education, David's mother did not have many ways left to earn money, so David spent the rest of his childhood exposed to the lower classes of the Manhattan "citizenry". He liked to play with the urchins of the slums, to which, and most other things, his ever withering mother was casually indifferent. He managed to establish himself as the gang leader thanks to his high origin. When his mother could no longer earn enough money to support him, which was earlier than he would have liked, he had to find a job. Together with some members of his gang, he was employed in a local workshop. However, he was not used to hard work, unlike the friends of his from the slums, and as efficiency was the only thing that mattered there, he fell from the top to the bottom. Everyone ridiculed him for being lazy and overweight, and it did not look like he would keep the job. He was always given the easiest tasks and, of course, the lowest pay.
One day a colleague of his, who had injured his arm with a machine before, and was straggling behind everyone because of that, was fired. A month later, while going to the city centre for some administrative work related to his own health insurance, Levy saw him. He was sitting on a street with a bowl for charity, his arm still in bandages, which were stained with blood and dirt. It reeked of gangrene. Levy did not give him anything, but hurried away instead. That day changed him.
Tomorrow he gave himself a challenge. He did not like work, but he could train himself to labour by force. He found an old, rusty, large ball bearing that had once belonged to a space transport. Every time the team was supposed to have a break, he lifted that bearing and started polishing it. He did it every day for a year, and as shine was emerging from the rusty ball more and more, diligence was emerging from his ever dirtier hands. And muscles. A lot of muscles. The bearing was very heavy. This enabled him to move forward -- and upward.
After all the years, only one thing remained from that glorious time of Levy's. It was a reflex. For a few moments he stood in front of the talking Kusarian man, blank, as if lost in some deep thoughts. Levy had removed his sunglasses and both of his eyes were, like the aiming systems of a Bounty Hunter fighter, closely fixated on the man's crystal-bald head. Then he suddenly snatched an oily piece of cloth from his pocket and, out of random, started polishing the Kusarian's nape.
Doctor Baldezeru was a middle aged Kusarian man, with a scalp completely free of any hair and a pair of nerdy glasses with thick black frames. His once stain free lab-coat was such no more as laundry wasn't something he could currently afford. These weren't easy times for doctor Baldezeru - his career in the Science! division of Kishiru Technologies had been promptly terminated not too long ago and he was forced to look for suitable work elsewhere before whatever savings that he had in his neural net account had completely ran out. Baldezeru would have much preferred to remain in Kusari as he preferred to be surrounded by his own people but alas the only job he was accepted for was this outsourced position for an engine engineer.
So here was he, standing in front of David Levy, trying to inquire more information about this task he's been hired to do. Alas the more he talked, the more he felt he was communicating with a rather antisocial brick wall. The man in front of the scientist was mute and stared in a gaze that frankly worried the good engineer. Then suddenly something made Baldezeru's iris thin out in pure shock. The gaijin was no longer a still mountain and instead was brushing the Kusarian's nape with a dirty piece of cloth. The shock quickly turned into anger, what the hell was this man doing, Bandezeru thought as his face turned red and his face wrinkled in emotion.
Baldezeru pushed the man's hand away promptly before yelling at the top of his lungs:
"I can not work like this! I demand to see your superior!"
Having realized he let his rage slip, he quickly took deep breath before readjusting his glasses that in his fit of fury had barely remained on his face. Hopefully the brute in front of him had realized his uncultured ways and would cease this immediately. Even better, an apology would have fit quite well, the egghead of a scientist thought.
Levy's baby eyes grew up in a second. He quickly put the cloth back into the pocket, Various different feelings of confusion collided with each other in his brain, producing an explosion of chaos. He noticed the motor oil stains he had made on Baldazeru's (formerly) perfect scalp. The feeling of guilt was the only one he could understand right now. He pulled another cloth, this one rather white and much less stained, out of his other picket and, stuttering, tried to clean the man's head.
"I... errr... I'm... I'm sorry..."
Baldazeru awkwardly tried to hold off the clueless avalanche of sweat and lard that was unveiling in front of his face again. Suddenly, using a special kungrate-fujitsu move designed for snatching dangerous objects from people's hands, he snatched the piece of cloth from levy's hands and cleaned himself. Then he turned away and threw the cloth back towards Levy, who was too dumbfounded to catch it.
"I'm going to see your superior." "T-tell him that-that we have a cargo space full of beer... It should be emptied to save space for iridium... somehow...", Levy answered to him when he was already far, forgetting to inform him that he was going in a wrong direction.
He almost tripped on the piece cloth when he was going back to the workshop.
Seeing Levy's superior was easier said than done. For one, Baldezeru had no knowledge of the layout of the ship he was currently on. The corridors looked all the same and it was not too long before he found himself in Deck 3C's female bathrooms. And it wasn't too long before he became quite aware of said fact. All it took were a few screams and a slap before the clueless Kusarian was running out of the bathroom with a face red from shame and with a nice outline of a female hand on his left cheek as a compliment.
And then a brilliant idea struck the scientist - he quickly rushed to a nearby emergency comm panel on one of the walls. With a few quick taps he managed to activate the comm link and after waiting out the initial buzz sound that the device made, he quickly transmitted his S.O.S. message across the whole ship.
This is doctor Baldezeru, I'm lost. Can someone please pick me up, I'm at... I actually don't know where I am. Sorry!
Now all that was left was to wait for his rescuers to come and get him out of this most embarrassing situation.