Don't Look at Me, I'm Forging - A Quiet Return
The keycard sensor chimed from amber to so31 A Quiet
The keycard sensor chimed from amber to soft emerald, and the heavy composite door of
Unit 303 slid open with a quiet pneumatic sigh.Kae didn’t even drop her canvas gear bag onto the hallway rack.
She dragged her boots through the entryway, ignoring the clean permastone floor, stumbled three paces into her private bedroom, and fell sideways onto the unmade mattress.She didn’t take off her oversized fleece sweater.
She didn’t unlace her mud-caked boots.
She didn’t even remove her heavy, black-framed glasses, which sat crookedly against her left cheek, propped up by a smear of dried red clay from
Sector 7.Within four seconds of her head hitting the pillow, her breath slowed into a deep, dreamless trance of pure physical exhaustion.Smell came back first.It wasn’t the bitter, sulfurous stink of
Swamp or the burnt-iron odor of her portable furnace.
It was the sharp, mouth-watering aroma of braised pepper-ribs, garlic-roasted starch tubers, and rich, simmering bone broth.Kae blinked, her eyelids feeling like sandpaper.
The room was dark except for a warm, amber strip of light leaking through the crack beneath her bedroom door.
Her wrist-comm read 20:45.
She’d been asleep for over six hours.Her stomach let out a hollow, desperate growl that echoed in the quiet room.She sat up slowly, her spine popping in three places.
After unlacing her ruined boots and kicking them into the corner, she pushed her glasses back up her nose and cracked the door open an inch.In the suite’s shared central lounge, the heavy oak dining table was completely covered in stainless-steel serving platters, steaming bowls, and glass carafes.Nicolette
Ward was standing near the kitchenette counter in a faded gray
Vanguard tank top, her massive, muscular arms crossed over a ridiculous pink floral apron as she carefully arranged a mountain of seared meat slices on a platter.
Sitting at the table, calmly sipping from a porcelain cup of spiced tea, was
Chen, her dark hair pinned back, her sharp eyes scanning a floating blue holoslate.
Dubois sat across from her, idly peeling a sweet citrus fruit with a small pocket knife.”I’m telling you, she’s still out,” Nico was saying in a loud, boisterous whisper that vibrated off the walls. “I went in at five to check if she was breathing.
Girl didn’t even move when the shuttle alarm went off down in the yard.” “She forged seven custom weapons and five repulsor boards in forty-eight hours,
Nico,” Helene said dryly, setting down her knife. “Her psionic reservoir was probably scraped down to the bare copper.
Let her sleep.” Kae pulled her door open another three inches, her fleece sweater rustling softly against the frame.Soraya’s head snapped toward the hallway instantly—a
Tactician’s reflex. “She’s awake.”Nico spun around so fast the floral apron whipped against her thighs. “Kae!
You’re alive!”Before
Kae could take a defensive step backward,
Nico bridged the distance across the lounge in two long strides, grabbed
Kae by the shoulders, and lifted her three inches off the floor in a spine-compressing bear hug.”Nico, put her down, you’re going to break her,” Soraya warned smoothly, without looking up from her tea. “She just survived
Sector 7, she doesn’t need her ribs cracked in the living room.”Nico set
Kae down gently, though her boisterous grin reached all the way to her ears. “Look at you!
You look like you got dragged through an oil sump and buried in a swamp!
It’s magnificent!””I…
I brought mud onto the rug,” Kae mumbled, looking down at her socks in genuine embarrassment. “I’m sorry.
I’ll clean it.””Forget the rug!” Nico laughed, slapping
Kae’s shoulder hard enough to make her glasses slip again. “You took first place!
Nine thousand eight hundred points!
Squad 7 wiped the floor with
Drake’s heavy unit and left
Cross’s little entourage crying in the marsh!”Helene smiled, gesturing toward an empty chair at the head of the table. “Sit down,
Talk later.”Kae didn’t need to be told twice.
Her stomach growled again, louder this time.
She shuffled to the table and sank into the chair.For the next twenty minutes, the lounge was quiet except for the clatter of silver forks and the steady, furious pace at which
Kae consumed three helpings of braised ribs and a bowl of thick tuber soup.
Soraya occasionally passed a basket of warm bread, while
Nico watched her with the proud, beaming expression of a mother bear feeding a prized cub.”So,” Helene said softly, leaning her chin on her palm as
Kae finally set her fork down and wiped her mouth with a napkin. “The upperclassmen network is currently in a state of mild hysteria.” Kae paused, her hand hovering over her tea glass. “The network?”Helene pulled up her own slate, flicking a series of encrypted forum threads into the air above the table.— ASTRAEA THIRD-YEAR VANGUARD FORUM —THREAD: “Who the hell forged
Vance’s purple sabers?” REPLIES: 142— FOURTH-YEAR METALLURGY EXCHANGE —THREAD: “Scans on the
Sector 7 Ironhorn kills show zero-resistance cuts.
Bio-organic alloy matrix?
Who authorized
Rim tech in the freshman trial?”REPLIES: 289″Cassia
Sterling have been walking around
Bay 4 all afternoon showing off their new steel,” Helene said, her sharp hazel eyes glinting with quiet, amused satisfaction. “The senior engineers are calling it an impossibility.
They think someone smuggled illegal
Rim bio-salvage into the drop-shuttles.
A few fourth-year
Vanguards are already trying to trace who made the skyboards.”Kae pulled her fleece collar up past her chin, her cheeks warming. “They’re just standard repulsor loops…
I used river clay to hold the heat shields.””Standard repulsor loops don’t drift at forty miles an hour through a mangrove swamp without blowing their fuses,
Kae,” Soraya cut in, her tone dry and cool. “You built military-grade mobile tactical platforms out of supply crate scrap and river mud.
People are noticing.”Helene leaned forward, setting her slate flat on the wood.”Don’t worry,” Helene said, her voice dropping into a reassuring, protective cadence. “Nobody knows your name yet.
Rhys are keeping their mouths shut about who forged the gear—they know if they blab, every upperclassman in
Block 6 will be lining up outside
Unit 303 demanding custom weapons, and you’ll never get a night’s sleep.”Kae let out a small, quiet sigh of relief. “Good.
I don’t want people knocking on the door.””However,” Helene added, a shrewd, calculating smile curling her lips, “you have seventy-two thousand credits in your account, and news of your work is already circulating among the high-tier
When you’re ready to open a shop on the internal exchange… you won’t have to look for customers,
They’ll be begging you to take their merits.”