Nobody here was born for this.

Brecha

Face Foreman · Vantor Industrial

He was at 04-A when the arbitration reply came in. He read the paragraph out loud to the whole gang, folded the paper, put it in his overall pocket, and went down again the next cycle. Vantor always calls him back and always pays badly. He always goes.

Rebarba

Cutter · Vantor Industrial

Fourteen years cutting containment beams in orbital yards without one accident. He went down with his younger brother, who signed the same afternoon and thought the coincidence was funny. The brother served three cycles and went back up, and works a dock to this day. They write once a cycle, about nothing. Rebarba has renewed four times.

Bigorna

Face Breaker · Vantor Industrial

He carries a machine bigger than the bunk he sleeps in. In ice tunnels the pay was per tonne removed; in the Register it is per shift completed, and a shift pays even when the seam yields nothing.

Anteparo

Shift Shield · Vantor Industrial

He stood in front while the others changed the conveyor belts, and that is how it reads on the file: in front. He sends half his pay to his mother every cycle and does not mention it to the crew. He had five offers and picked Vantor for the armour, not the bonus: the Vantor chest plate is ten kilos heavier than the Kessler one, and he has worn both.

Cupim

Demolition Foreman · Vantor Industrial

Twenty-two years bringing down mining buildings, nearly all of them for the same contractor, nearly all of them preserving exactly the beams worth the freight. The contractor folded. He signed with Vantor on terms where every structure left intact paid more than a month's salary, and it took him two cycles to work out that the clause covered the rival's structures too. He calculates charges for both sides of that sum now. He keeps the calculations in a hardbound notebook because he does not trust a terminal the company can read, and the notebook stays in his quarters, in a toolbox that does not shut properly.

Baluarte

Armoured Escort · Vantor Industrial

He drove convoys and spent more time between the ore and the gunfire than in his quarters. He drove through the Withdrawal, six months of fleet leaving, and when it ended the route he had guarded stopped existing. Here the quarters are wherever the crew stops. He sleeps better in the Register than he did at home, and his sister goes quiet every time he repeats that.

Cunha

Escort Scout · Vantor Industrial

The post says clear whatever is in the way of the rig. That is the exact wording, and that is what he does. Vantor pays per route cleared and does not ask what was on it. He noticed the clause during the interview and signed. He keeps his hours, delivers a clean route, and the crew does not like him.

Alcateia

Perimeter Scout · Vantor Industrial

She knew an open-pit fence line metre by metre, which is why she marked intruders before they reached the machinery. There is no fence in the Register. She drew one in chalk around the camp on her first shift and the crew left it there; it is now the line the roster uses to say who sleeps inside and who sleeps out.

Moenda

Extraction Operator · Vantor Industrial

She sets mill pressure by the sound of the bearings, a skill that cost her a lung to the dust of 12-B. She cannot go back up: her origin gravity will not take her. So she stays, and works, and is good at it.

Bastião

Shock Unit · Vantor Industrial

He joined the mine rescue team at nineteen, because they needed somebody small enough to fit through the gap under a collapsing roof. He is still the first one in. He is thirty-one, has two children, and his wife works for the same corporation, in contract administration, on the opposite shift.

Fornalha

Blast Furnace Operator · Hélion Energia

She can hear when a furnace is about to fail, and she wrote that in a report the plant filed away. Two shifts later the furnace failed. Hélion read the filed report before it read her CV. She signs thermal assessments for three faces now, and bills by the assessment rather than by the shift.

Estilhaço

Plasma Gunner · Hélion Energia

She purged fusion chambers without shutting the line down, which is the kind of thing you only learn in a plant that cannot stop. Five suppliers interviewed her after the closure and four asked about the incident. Hélion did not ask. She is on her fourth Hélion contract and has never requested a transfer.

Reator

Core Operator · Hélion Energia

He changed fuel rods in heat enough to soften the tool in his hand. The plant had been promising a cooling team for six years. Hélion offered one in the contract, in writing, with a date, and met the date. He has no complaint about Hélion. He thinks the quarters are small and the food is bad, and says so to anyone who asks.

Represa

Containment Engineer · Hélion Energia

She knows the sound of a valve about to go, and has ordered an evacuation over it three times, right on all three. She came down because in the Register nobody above her argues when she says stop. She works with a crew of four, three of them hired on her recommendation. One is her brother-in-law.

Lasca

Assault Marksman · Hélion Energia

A power cell swap is an eighteen-minute procedure during which somebody has to stand still beside it. She stood. Hélion pays a proximity allowance and she takes it. She saves the whole allowance. She wants to buy a flat and is a little past halfway.

Âncora

Well Inspector · Hélion Energia

Every valve shutdown costs somebody money, and that somebody complains in writing. He has fourteen complaints on file and shut down on all fourteen. Hélion was the only one of the five that preferred paying for the shutdown to paying for the accident. He shuts them down at the same rate as before. He is proud of Hélion and says so out loud, which on his crew puts him in the minority.

Talho

Shift Duellist · Kessler Balística

Dock security, with a reputation for ending an argument before it became an incident. The Kessler roster gives four days groundside per cycle, and he has a daughter who only knows him in those four days. On the four days he cooks. He says it is the one thing he does better than the crew, and the crew, having eaten it, disagrees as a body.

Risco

Rail Gunner · Kessler Balística

She inspected magnetic rail on a freight line and signed the tolerance reports the factory usually filed unread. Kessler read them. It built the gun inside the limits she had written and invited her to be the one who fires it. She asked to review the design before signing, found two tolerance errors, and the correction put the production run a full cycle behind.

Obus

Site Artillerist · Kessler Balística

Siege fire on a variable-gravity moon is a speciality almost nobody can do and almost nobody needs. It was hers. Then 23-K opened, where the rock floats. She was hired in nine days, on a salary band she did not negotiate because she did not know it could be negotiated.

Agulha

Marksman · Kessler Balística

She worked a colony tower sight, where every shot had to justify itself in the monthly report. She still counts ammunition out of habit, even now that Kessler sends more than she uses, and logs the balance in a notebook. The notebook is on its eleventh volume.

Repetidor

Machine Gunner · Kessler Balística

He changed the barrel before the rate of fire warped the weapon, and never lost a convoy in nine years on the route. The route was decommissioned in a two-line memo. He spent four months in a city not knowing what to do with the mornings, and went down.

Broca

Hull Driller · Kessler Balística

Hull driller. Eleven years in dock maintenance, inspection drilling on general and bulk freighters, no recorded incident in any of the eleven. Certified for double hull, single hull and internal reinforcement structure; certified for reduced-atmosphere work, expired and never renewed because she never needed it. She knows by heart where the hull of each series runs thin, and that is on the CV because she wrote that it was. Kessler hired her to say where. The following cycle it rewrote the contract so that she would also shoot, at a forty per cent premium and the same hours. She accepted. Asked why, she says it was forty per cent, and does not usually add anything.

Estilete

Infiltrator · Kessler Balística

He inspected weapon depots and opened locks without leaving a mark. He took things, also without leaving a mark, for years. He mentioned it in the Kessler interview thinking it would pass for a joke.

Ácido

Hull Stripper · Meridiano Biotec

He stripped hull coating without puncturing the tank underneath, which is steady-hands work and a trained nose. Meridiano turned that skill into a field licence. He stopped asking what each new solvent was for somewhere around the third.

Corrosão

Field Chemist · Meridiano Biotec

Her kit is a disposal-lab kit, assembled to neutralise whatever leaked on a platform. She carries the same kit today. Sometimes she uses it in reverse, and Meridiano records both applications on the same form. The form has a field for it.

Sutura

Field Medic · Meridiano Biotec

She closed wounds with sealant on mining platforms so the injured would reach hospital in one piece. She came down to the Register knowing what she would find: here there is no hospital afterwards. There is only her.

Quarentena

Contagion Officer · Meridiano Biotec

She isolated contaminated equipment without waiting for administrative approval, and was reprimanded on every occasion. The last reprimand describes the case in four lines: at three in the morning she sealed an entire wing over a tray of instruments that had come back from the incinerator with the seal broken, held the seal through the following shift, and administration took eleven days to confirm she had been right. The eleven days are in the file. The reprimand was not withdrawn. Meridiano asked for the reprimands along with the CV, read the reprimands first, and sent her to 31-M. She had asked for 31-M. She keeps the copy of the request with the copies of the reprimands, in the same folder, in date order.

Enxerto

Augmented Operator · Meridiano Biotec

He left the implant clinic when the maintenance contract expired, and a prosthetic without maintenance stops being a prosthetic within months. Meridiano renewed the maintenance. He pays in service, and the service has no end date.

Defasagem

Signals Analyst · Órfico Sistemas

On prospecting satellites the job is deciding whether a signal is noise or somebody asking for help. She decided that for years. She classified one wrong, and the correction arrived too late to be a correction. At Órfico the terminal is hers and nobody reviews anybody's classification. She reviews her own twice, which puts her about an hour behind on the shift, and nobody has raised it.

Vazio

Network Infiltrator · Órfico Sistemas

Four jobs, four dismissals, always for the same thing: he recovered production reports supervisors had deleted and handed them back to the shift the reports incriminated. He was fired for it four times. Órfico hired him for exactly that and was the first to say so out loud. He is on his sixth contract cycle. Órfico always renews at the last possible moment, and he complains about it at every renewal.

Pauta

Shift Coordinator · Órfico Sistemas

She turned vague orders into work anyone could execute, which made her indispensable at the exchange and never got her promoted. Her team hit every deadline and did not like her. She knows, and considers the outcome satisfactory.

Régua

Throughput Analyst · Órfico Sistemas

She measured link performance at exchanges where a fraction of a second turned into cost. She realised the number was worth more than the salary for producing it, and sold that realisation to Órfico. She measures the same thing today for three times the pay.

Pastor

Drone Handler · Órfico Sistemas

He ran inspection swarms in a mine where losing one drone meant losing the map of that level. He calls each of them by a name only he uses. He lost two at 27-P, on the shift the radio never came back, and he still says both names at the exit check.

Vazamento

Sector Runner · Órfico Sistemas

He diverted cargo between stations along routes the official maps do not record, and some of those routes date back to the first wave. Órfico never wanted the cargo; it wanted the maps. He delivered eleven routes in the first year and has delivered fewer every year since, which Órfico puts down to age and he puts down to the price.