Idris Kovac
Apportioned Foundry Slinger
The arm was right
Two people were under the drop line and neither of them was crushed, and seventy-four percent of the afternoon is entered against his name.
Overview
Idris Kovac has slung plate at the Foundry for nine years on a Grade 2 rigging certificate. Along his spine sits a Ghost Grinder Series-4 dorsal subplate, fitted in 2179 and still being paid off. He calls it the arm.
On 17 January 2184 a stack of plate slipped its choker three metres above the yard. Two people stood under it. The Series-4 drove his left arm out and took the corner before he could shout. The stack stopped. On the way out, his forearm swept Wren Abaza's hand into the pinch against the trestle. She lost three fingers.
"Left side goes before I do," he says before every lift. Then he rigs.
Appearance
Forty-one, heavy across the shoulders, Ironclad hi-vis over grey coveralls. The service port shows at the back of his collar. His left sleeve is worn shiny and the right is not. He stands square to a load, even when he is only walking past one. In his breast pocket is the actuation trace, folded until the crease went soft.
Voice
Plain, and narrower than people expect.
"The arm was right. Put that in, because everybody leaves it out."
Seventy-Four
Reading 4471-K split the act under Distributed Intent: twenty-six percent to the subplate, seventy-four to him. A component's share bills to its maker only while the service contract is current. His had lapsed nine weeks earlier over one instalment of four hundred and ten credits. Only Ghost Grinder may service a Series-4. It says so on page four.
With a current contract, the columns reverse exactly. He worked that out before the clerk did. The clerk agreed and closed the finding, because agreeing is not a ground of appeal.
Under the Corporate Compact, his certificate, his Good Fortune Score and his housing band are one document read three ways. The seventy-four went to all three. The band did not renew. The Score reads the share. It does not read the invoice date.
He wants one thing: the sheet should print the contract date beside the percentage. He has asked twice. Both replies said the date is administrative.
Relationships
Around Him
His own account of the afternoon went into the Represented Column. It was read back to him and destroyed. So he paid eleven credits at the Cathodics to print the trace.
Holding a load by hand is not on his card, so Function Scope opened a second file against him, whole. Ironclad Industries is his employer, certifier, auditor, and appeal board. He calls this the arrangement.
Four months after the finding he filed a personal apportionment with the Show of Hands. Saying it aloud makes him feel stupid. Since he started, the other slingers stand a half-step further off his left.
Dov Ferreira was cited for what he chose to do. Idris was billed for what he did not. A Cathodics tech told him Judge Dreg would say a man answers for what he carries, the whole hundred percent. Grandmother Rust would read a hundred too. Her donors have no maker left to bill.
Wren Abaza thinks the arm was right. She told him so at the ward. He has not found anything to say back that is not an argument or a thank-you.
Connections
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