Free-Wrench

n

h places of savagery and debauchery. A long stretch of choppy sea between them made for good peace of mind. As the name would suggest, Caldera wasn't so much an archipelago as a set of volcanoes that one by one peeked their heads up ou

bustling hive of activity day and night. It supplied the bulk of the power for the island and sat at the heart of a cluster of factories and facilities that did the dirty work for the whole of the nation. The steamw

s lanterns dangling from the belts of each worker. The walls had the texture of a cheese grater, still jagged from the day the tunnel had been roughly carved through the lava rock. Making it even more treacherous was the walkway, which was a warped catwa

reman, a stout man with his face hidden behind a

goggles. Even with lenses carefully designed to keep from fogging, the moistur

oved herself to be an asset. In most situations it might have been difficult for a woman to find a place among the primarily male workforce, but, truth be told, the steamworks was so short on staff they were happy to have anyone willing to take up some

of pipe toward the boiler. I want to

doleer of assorted wrenches and other tools, and an array of pouches hanging from her belt, along with two holstered rods. Most men wore a reinforced back-support belt with suspenders to take the edge off of the heavy lifting so frequently a part of the job, but Nita had found that a lightly modified corset did muc

an his thigh, turned into a worrying rumble. Clumps of the sooty crust that tended to cling to every surface lik

r a breech!" th

foot-long fault in the pipe, filling the tunnel with a thick fog and a deafening whistle. Nita fought her way to her feet. Acting on raw training, she grabbed a wrench and began to tap on the pipe. Since a good hard rap on the pipe could be heard throughout half of the mountain, the workers had dev

that she might be heard. "We've got to reach the bypass,

Finally she came to a point where the pipe was half as tall as she was, with a massive wheel set into it and a branching shunt pipe leading straight up through the stone above and into daylight. Her leather gloves sizzled against the whe

heavy as it was, she always brought it with her. Her very first foreman had drummed it into her that she would never know what tool might save some time, save some work, or save her life, so best to bring them all. The sheer size of it made this tool the only one she'd considered exclu

w for the hard part. Holstered like twin swords at her belt were a pair of cheater bars. She unsheathed one and slotted it into a hole on the head of the monkey-toe, then threw her weight against the freshly installed lever. It didn't budge,

had last been used. Three more steamworkers rushed into the tunnel from the boiler side and spotted her working at the valve. One grabbed the end of her bar to lend a hand while the other two inserted a bar of their own

h of relief and wiped away the coating of gunk that w

a pouch on her belt and wiping at her goggles. "There's

pte

wait until it was unoccupied and post a sign one of the other workers had made for her stating that the showers were Reserved For Nita until she was through. It was one of the reasons she'd switched to the less popular night shift. Regardless of the wait, though, she always hit the shower. Stewing under a layer of mar

aid the foreman, a man name

p her gear in her locker. "I'm going to

n had punched out at the very same moment he had. She likely could hav

etal cubbyholes aligned along the front. Each cubby had a lever at its side, and in the back of the empty ones could be seen a hexagonal socket slowly rotating. Most of the cubbies were small, holding palm-sized boxes, but those nearest to the groun

it

ied a large bag of salt on one shoulder and a canvas messenger bag over the other. Since the steamworks generated its energy by piping seawater into boilers warmed by the volcano's heat, an inev