"Yes sir. Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. You haven't experienced a full shift in Er'dox's Engineering yet. He's notoriously exacting with his standards." Something almost like humor entered Tor'van's expression. "Dismissed. All of you. Get to work."
We filed out of the office, and I felt like I could breathe properly for the first time since the rescue. Real positions. Real opportunities. A path forward that wasn't just survival but actual integration.
In the corridor outside, Er'dox was waiting. "Ready to see Engineering?"
"Is that a rhetorical question?"
"No. Because if you're not ready, I need to know now. My department runs on precision and efficiency. I don't have time to coddle uncertain crew members."
The bluntness should have been off-putting. Instead, I found it almost refreshing. Direct communication. Clear expectations. No bullshit.
"I'm ready. Show me everything."
Er'dox nodded, something approving in his amber eyes. "Follow me. And try to keep up. Engineering is three levels down and covers forty percent of Mothership's primary systems. If you get lost, finding you will cost me valuable time."
"I won't get lost."
"We'll see."
He set off at a pace that had me jogging to keep up, my shorter legs working double-time to match his stride. Behind me, I heard Jalina call out, "Good luck!" before she, Bea, and Elena headed toward their own assignments.
And just like that, my new life began.
Engineering was chaos organized by someone with an obsessive need for perfect systems. That was my first impression as Er'dox led me through the massive space—easily the size of three football fields, humming with power conduits and monitoring stations and equipment I didn't recognize but desperately wanted to understand.
"This is main Engineering," Er'dox announced, gesturing at the controlled madness around us. "Power distribution, propulsion monitoring, life support management, structural integrity oversight. Everything that keeps Mothership functional flows through here."
Zandovian engineers moved through the space with practiced efficiency, checking readouts, adjusting systems, responding to alerts that chimed from a dozen different stations. They all noticed me immediately, the tiny human following their Chief Engineer, but Er'dox's presence kept their stares professional.
"Your station," Er'dox said, stopping at a console positioned near his own central command station. "Standard engineering interface, scaled for your height. I had it modified this morning."
I climbed into the seat, still oversized, but manageable, and stared at the holographic displays activating in response to my presence. Data streams in Zandovian notation that my VR-uploaded language skills could read but my brain struggled to process at speed.
"This is—" I started.
"Overwhelming," Er'dox finished. "Yes. You'll learn to parse it quickly or you won't last. This station monitors secondarypower distribution across seventeen subsections. Your job is to watch for variance, identify problems before they become critical, and alert me to anything your analysis can't solve."
"That's entry-level work?"
"That's advanced work that I'm trusting you with because your assessment suggested you could handle it. Prove me right." He pulled up a tutorial interface. "You have two hours to familiarize yourself with the systems. Then you'll begin monitoring live data. Questions?"
About a million questions. But I asked the most important one: "What happens if I miss something critical?"
Er'dox's expression was impossible to read. "Then people die, systems fail, and I question whether I made the right call in recommending you for this position. Don't miss something critical."
And with that cheerful encouragement, he left me alone at my station while he returned to his own work.
I dove into the tutorial interface, absorbing information at a pace that would have given me a headache under normal circumstances. Power distribution architecture. System monitoring protocols. Emergency response procedures. Failure cascade prevention. Everything presented in dense technical notation that assumed you already understood the basics.
The basics I was learning on the fly while surrounded by engineers who'd trained for years.
No pressure.
An hour into my crash course, an alarm chimed from my station. Nothing catastrophic, just a variance alert in one of my assigned subsections. I pulled up the data, analyzing power flow patterns, trying to identify the problem.
There, a minor fluctuation in the distribution node servicing deck seventeen. Could be normal variance, could be earlywarning of regulator failure. The tutorial said to report anything uncertain to the Chief Engineer.
