Kendrick "Shade" Sullivan's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

The call came before Shade had finished his coffee. A woman on the other end said her brother's racing rig had blown a stabilizer two nights before the desert circuit. She would drop it off by noon. Shade said yes, hung up, and walked the length of his bay to measure the door. He already knew the answer. Dusty's bike had been slim, stripped for speed. A full racing rig with side fairings would clip the frame by half a foot. Word had traveled fast after the mining-vent repair, and the shop that had earned that word could not fit the next machine through its own front door. He drove out to the site where George Beetlesby was patching a fuel pump for a delivery hauler. George set down his wrench and listened, antennae twitching. "Well shoot, that's a fun one," George said. "You want the wall gone or you want a whole new mouth on the building? I can cut you a taller bay by the end of the week if the landlord signs off. Steel header, roll-up door, wide enough for anything on two thrusters or four wheels." Shade named a number. George named a smaller one and stuck out a green hand. They shook on it in the dust. That afternoon Shade drove to the industrial lot on the west edge of town and paid cash for a magnetized lift platform, bright orange, shaped like a knot of tumbleweed wire around a central plate. The seller warned him it drew more current than a standard jack and needed open sky above it to vent heat. Shade had the delivery crew set it on the concrete pad outside his shop, beside the bay door, bolted flat to the slab. He powered it up. The plate hummed and rose a hand's width, steady, holding his full weight when he stepped on. A racing rig too tall for his door could sit on that platform in the open air while he worked. Until George finished the new bay, the desert itself would be his garage. The racing rig arrived at noon, low and long, fairings flared like a fish. Shade guided it onto the orange platform and locked the mags. He cracked the side panel and found the blown stabilizer coil in under a minute. Behind him, George's crew was already chalking lines on the shop wall for the cut. Shade wiped his hands and looked at what he had made in a single morning: a bay in progress, a lift under open sky, a rig waiting for him. The ringing in his left ear kept its steady pitch. He picked up his tools and went to work on the coil while the sun climbed over Sunspin Autoshop.