If a machine could know fear, then this place would surely be haunted. On reflex, Firenze let his hand brush the peeled wall, only to jerk it back, fingertips glossed in silver-flecked-amber. The residue clung to him like bearing grease, sticky and slippery at once. In vain, he tried to wipe his fingers clean, but only managed to streak the oil across his pants.
That grease was the only thing more pervasive than the smell.
The gunk stuck to everything. It lacquered open cups, clogged the vents of his computer, and made sanitizing his jack an absolute hell. Clausen mandated cleaning - weapons, kit, bunks - but no matter how deep Firenze scrubbed, the next morning, every exposed surface would lie coated in yellow slime.
Worse was the dust clung to it, though Firenze doubted the accuracy of the word. 'Dust' was clumpy, uneven, and gritty - the dirt blown up through dronetown deep-pipes and coughed out of the loward regulators. Kessinwey's 'dust' was silver powder, thin as fog, that stuck to everything and coated the world in a dull-gray sheen. Like the oil, it was pernicious. No matter how often he scrubbed it clean, within an hour, speckles returned. Donegan mandated filters placed on every intake, and full scouring of every board and card, twice daily. Even with that, they'd lost two boxes from cook-off in a cleanroom. At this point, Firenze wouldn't boot before a blowout.
Parvotti told him there was sand like this in Meso Hub, said he'd seen guys killed by it, from jammed guns and stuck rotors. Rutman said it wasn't dirt or sand at all. He said it was bits of metal from decades of milling, routing, and forging, trapped in the cyclers. He said it would take a full purge of the circulation system to get it cleaned out, and since that would give away their presence, they would have to deal with it. He'd told them to look on the bright side - at least they'd never get dry skin.
Firenze picked up his sippy-cup and sucked at the nipple like a toddler. He tried to focus on the taste of coffee and ignore the taint of oil. Lids were a necessity, here. He'd tried to rig up a filter from cloth and paper, but the grease had bested him, so he'd 'borrowed' a child's safety cup from the old dormitories. It was covered in cartoons and made him look like an idiot, but it worked. He'd expected to get mocked for it, and he sort of did. A couple of people laughed at him and dubbed his creation the 'Princess Teacup', but then they'd also told him 'good thinking' and sent out a foraging team.
He looked over the makeshift classroom and the assorted operators seated on gathered chairs and tables. Their teacups stood boldly atop stacks of white binders or clutched in weathered hands, cerulean blue and vibrant pink popping against the brown-tinted-green of Kessinwey's rot. Pride be damned, the cups kept out the grease.
This had once been a conference room. The paint on the south wall, glistening under its Kessinwey clear-coat, faded in a patchwork where poster-boards once hung. The west wall had housed a bank of windows, now given over to grease-slicked boards and scrambler sheets. Firenze stood at the front, wedged between the eggshell card-table and newly-scrubbed whiteboards, desperately fighting the urge to fidget.
This was a nervousness he understood, like standing before an academic board, arguing his thesis before the unblinking avatars of his professors. After weeks of dragging behind on every drill, exercise, and sim, this was his chance to be useful. Clausen had thrown the task his way almost casually, mentioned that it would be helpful for someone with an academic mindset to give a framer-course on the Bergman drives of the airship. It had been an offhanded comment, but Firenze had shown interest, only to learn afterward that such action was broadly understood as 'volunteering'.
Now, here he was, in front of the most unlikely thesis board, trying to convince himself not to panic and run screaming out the door. He took another sip from his safety-cup and wondered if caffeine was really the best choice. He drank deeper.
Through the cracks in the window-boards, he recognized the plaza monument, a dark-gray blur against the burnt brown grass and rusted benches. He knew what it was. He'd walked past it every day. The Enil. One of the mid-war airships. The old bronze-wrought destroyer looked little like the Plymouth. It was boxy and angular, where the Plymouth was smooth, composed of graceful curves and liquid spires. The delicate towers of the city-ship bore little resemblance to the angular k-gun batteries and directional launch tubes of the Enil, but these appearances masked a common heritage.
Firenze turned from the window, faced the whiteboard, and cursed himself for ever telling Clausen that Bergman drives 'weren't difficult'. That's how the dreaded phrase 'subject expert' got slapped next to his name. He was a computer guy, not a lift engineer! Still, he knew enough to get the basics, and this let him stretch some intellectual legs. He just had to pretend that he was acting as Professor's Assistant for a particularly surly (and well-armed) bunch of undergrads, and not standing under their judgment. Easy, right?
He pulled up one of the dry erase markers and tried to write on the whiteboard. The marker squeaked and slid across the grime, leaving only an off-white trail over a slightly-darker board. Firenze scowled, scrubbed the board clear with his sleeve, but it just spread, the grease built up on his cuff and weighing down the fabric. The marker, now sullied, refused to leave more than the ghost of blue.
"Fuck this." Firenze whispered. He turned back to the room, and advised, "Sorry, guys, kill the lights, we're going with the holotable."
That
