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On his second day of recruiting for the council, Cleve meets with Tenoch. The first priority that day is the rover, not the future of the colony. Tenoch is pleased to see that Cleve is back and well, but the same cannot be said about their view of the vehicle. They verbally document each difference they note as they circle it. Certainly the excavation equipment is gone, but there are also dings and scratches. Even the slight discrepancy in the angle of the solar panels is included. Takuto fixed those, but he didn’t restore them to the same exact condition as before. Tenoch’s voice isn’t judgmental, but Cleve still feels responsible. He certainly does not deny that the rover has been through a lot. After cataloging all the damage, Tenoch matter-of-factly announces, “You’ll need to repair this if you want to borrow it again.”
“That’s a fair deal,” Cleve agrees. And he’ll need to retrieve the excavator, too.
“Using it in this damaged state would not be right,” Tenoch says. They suggest making a salvage run to get some components to help get the rover back in shape. There’s another crashed section of the ship not too far away. Tenoch is getting a little old for this sort of task, but Cleve is still young and spry enough to fetch parts from it.
“Not a problem,” Cleve says agreeably. That should give Mariah more time to rest before the day’s politicking begins.
They drive over together, and Cleve crawls in on his own while Tenoch waits outside. It does turn out to be a bit of a problem, resulting in a fresh cut under Cleve’s closely shorn hair. He found some useful spare parts, but pulling one of them out caused a bit of an avalanche.
“You seem to have hit yourself on your head,” Tenoch observes when Cleve joins them back at the rover outside the wrecked module.
“I didn’t hit myself in the head. It was the iron control plate that came off the wall,” Cleve corrects.
“Ah. That is a different situation, then,” Tenoch agrees.
The tinker does most of the repair work on the rover, but Cleve lends a hand wherever he can. It provides a good opportunity for him to make his pitch. “Data Haven has a problem, and we need to put together some sort of organization to deal with it. Roze says that you’re respected among the tinkers, so…”
“What is the problem?”
“Well, the problem is that we don’t have any organization here,” Cleve says. “But the immediate problem is that Morgan Industries has a small army that will be coming through here, and we need to protect Data Haven. Ideally by stopping them from going through the pass.”
Tenoch rattles off suggestions of ways to stop the army, with no concern at all to the organizational needs. “We could attempt to block Miasma Pass in some way if we had sufficient explosives. I suppose people who are good at talking could just ask them not to come over Data Haven. You could try to encourage the growth of xenofungus across the whole pass. Or just xenofungus over Data Haven…”
“So you’ll be on the council and represent the tinkers there?” Cleve tries what he feels to be a direct approach, but it takes some time to get through to Tenoch that there is an actual obligation and there will be meetings. “You need to be the representative,” Cleve finally states explicitly.
“Oh. Okay. Why didn’t you just say so?”
“Right,” Cleve mutters.
///