Engineer's Lover

Manzi

You were born on Gattpatt, a planet that was ruled by the humans for generations. The humans eventually found it unmanageable, and left, leaving their ideas and technology behind. Now it is a planet of engineers. You were of high caste, and privileged to go to a good school. Your mother had been a healer, and you had learned a bit of her trade, but, like many Gattpattians, you became an engineer, and left for human space. You got a post on a ship with your beloved, Anish. Anish was low-caste, and you could never marry on Gattpatt, but you hoped to do so in human space.

You were happy together and had both had some success. In addition to your success as an engineer, you were able to sell some traditional remedies from Gattpatt to Contenta for a nice chunk of stock. It's amazing how badly humans use their amazing technology. After generations of diagnostic computers, you would think that they would have better remedies than your mother's tea, but humans don't do anything systematically. If only Gattpatt had a little more money and power it could outpace them quickly.

After a few years, you were offered a position as chief engineer on a small human research vessel. You wanted to stay with Anish, but he told you not to give up a perfect chance. You wish you hadn't listened to him. First off, the new ship was a mess! All human ships are, but this was worse than usual. For the first six months, you barely caught your breath. The only moments you stole to yourself were the moments when you were writing to Anish, or reading his letters.

Apparently, the ship you were on was studying space anomalies. You never had enough time to pay much attention. One day it had a little too much success and fell through a wormhole. From what you have learned since then, it never should have survived the trip without unobtanium, and it almost didn't. On the other side of the wormhole, the ship was a wreck. More than half the crew died within a day. You patched the ship up enough to limp around, and then the Trigrits attacked. They killed the rest of the remaining crew, and took you, the sole survivor, back to their homeworld.

They put you to work as an engineer on the harem world. You keep things working, but you try to keep the weapons from working too well, and you always have a store of easy passcodes. If you ever found a ship to escape on, you could. Also, if anyone tried to storm the harem and release the captives you would help them. You have done it before, but, so far, no group has succeeded.

Corporate Allegiance: Contenta Stock Owned: 10% of Contenta