Tekka

Tekka is one of four Chthonari on a Federation contractor crew under Eden Space Habitat's dock ring in the spring of 2828 UCSD, and the one whose disagreements with Kattik the crew has stopped remarking on: the two agree about most things and disagree about all of them, and a crew that argues is a crew of individuals, which is what the charter requires a Chthonari to be. The name is a struck signature, a single strike held into its ring, spelled the way a human ear renders it.

The Crew

Four on one deck, on their first posting off the Undersong Belt: Kattik, who keeps the log; Tekka; Tsikk, who asks the habitat; and Tikket, the youngest. The cut was good and the habitat called it normal and the crew stayed for the snagging list — and then Tikket heard the third approach mount ring under load, and the crew divided three to one, with Tekka among the three.

What Tekka Cannot Do

Hear a voice, or read a face. Hear anything at all when not in contact with structure. See a thing as raw. Explain the Undersong to anyone who does not stand on it.

Character Notes

Tekka has memorised a great many courses and reads a structure the way a course is read: as the thing it was cut to be. That is not a fault in a cutter; it is most of the craft, and Tekka's members under the dock ring are as good as anyone's. What Tekka has not yet begun to do is the thing the Long Skitter's spectators watch for, and the crew's youngest has: hear what a tunnel is doing that its course does not say.

So when Tsikk asked the habitat's mind about the third mount and the habitat answered with the reading — approach monitoring, normal — Tekka said that settled it, and Kattik agreed, which the crew noted as one of the rare things they agree on. The record does not say Tekka was wrong. The reading was normal. What the record says is that Kattik went back to the mount alone anyway, and that the line went into the log over the objection of the two who had memorised the most.

Tekka is the crew's standing reminder that the instruments have agreed with each other since before any of the four stood on a deck, and that an apprentice who hears a fault in every strange structure will spend a career hearing faults. The season will decide what that reminder is worth.