In the open-vacuum assembly bay of Dreadnought 06, five thousand former inquisitors of the Upper Void Realm sat in neat, tiered rows of aluminum bleachers, their white pressurized suits gleaming beneath the harsh glare of industrial sodium floodlights.
Every single one of them was holding an ANSI-certified Shade-14 auto-darkening welding helmet on their knee. Around their necks hung flame-retardant leather bibs, and on their hands were heavy split-cowhide welding gloves with Kevlar stitching.
At the front of the cavernous bay, standing upon an elevated steel demonstration platform, was Austin.
He had set up a heavy cast-iron welding platen, clamped with two sections of four-inch structural titanium tubing. Beside him sat a high-frequency inverter TIG welder powered by a 480-volt feed from the dreadnought’s primary busbar, complete with a pressurized cylinder of ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine percent ultra-pure shielding argon.
Behind the platen, Cerberus Pug was tethered securely to an eyelet bolt by a braided nylon lead, sprawled across an insulated neoprene dog bed. Fitted with three custom auto-darkening Shade-14 hoods contoured to his snub-nosed snouts, the hound was dead to the world, emitting a muffled, three-part chorus of wheezing snores that vibrated the deck plates while his hind legs gave the occasional zero-G twitch.
Austin unclipped his throat microphone, adjusting the volume dial on his chest.
"Listen up, apprentices," Austin’s flat, authoritative voice resonated through five thousand helmet speakers. "Welcome to Day One of the Sunset Peak Orbital Welding Academy. Over the next six months, our operation is going to erect the twenty-two-thousand-mile Geosynchronous Orbital Ring and deploy eleven thousand more parabolic collector mirrors. That requires roughly four point two million linear feet of structural full-penetration groove welds in hard vacuum."
He pointed a yellow grease pencil across the silent, intimidated crowd.
"Welding in space is not like welding in a dirt village on the mountain. In a planetary atmosphere, moving air cools down your puddle, and natural oxide layers prevent bare metals from sticking together. In orbital vacuum, you have two major physical hazards that will kill your joint before you even strike an arc: vacuum cold-welding, and zero air to bleed off the heat."
Former Supreme Grand Inquisitor Xuan Ming, sitting in the front row with his white supervisor hard hat and gleaming gold star sticker, raised his hand with solemn discipline.
"Master Chu," Xuan Ming inquired, his voice trembling with academic reverence. "May this humble crew lead ask: what is the nature of the Cold-Welding Curse?"
"It’s not a curse, Xuan Ming," Austin explained, holding up two polished titanium blocks. "On Earth, every piece of metal is coated in an invisible microscopic skin of oxide molecules and atmospheric moisture. That oxide layer prevents the atoms of one piece from touching the atoms of another. But in the vacuum of space, if two clean, mirror-polished metals with identical crystalline lattices touch each other, the atoms don't know they belong to separate pieces. They instantly share metallic valence electrons and fuse into a single solid piece without heat."
The five thousand inquisitors gasped in collective spiritual horror.
"The... the metals merge their souls upon touch?!" whispered Junior Inquisitor Bai Ze, clutching his welding gloves to his chest. "Without the fire of heaven?! It is the Forbidden Art of Molecular Possession!"
"It’s just atomic cohesion, Bai Ze," Austin sighed, tapping his pencil. "And if you accidentally bump an unaligned titanium truss flange against its mate before your bolt holes are pinned, they will cold-weld four inches out of plumb, and the only way to separate them is with an abrasive cutoff wheel. That is why rule number one of orbital rigging is: never strip the protective zinc-chromate masking tape until your alignment drift pins are seated."
Austin picked up the high-frequency TIG torch in his right hand and a three-foot length of titanium filler rod in his left.
"Now, pay attention to the arc strike," Austin said. "We are running a 6G pipe test—fixed forty-five-degree inclination, no rotating the workpiece. You have to weld uphill, overhead, and downhill while maintaining a precise one-eighth-inch arc gap. If your tungsten electrode touches the molten puddle, you contaminate the weld with tungsten inclusions, fail radiographic inspection, and you will grind out the entire joint with a pneumatic die grinder on your own time."
He pulled down his auto-darkening welding hood with a sharp nod of his chin.
*CLACK.*
Austin stepped to the foot pedal, pressing down smoothly.
*BZZZZZZZZT!*
A blinding, sapphire-blue electric arc ignited between the tungsten tip and the titanium pipe joint, humming at two hundred and fifty cycles per second.
Through their darkened Shade-14 visors, five thousand ancient cultivators watched in breathless, paralyzed wonder.
To their spiritual senses, the brilliant blue arc transcended mere electricity. This was the "True Needle of Heavenly Stitching." They watched as Austin’s gloved hands moved with the machine-like consistency of a computerized CNC lathe.
His right hand maintained a rock-steady two-millimeter standoff, weaving the blue arc across the root gap in a delicate, rhythmic crescent motion. His left hand dabbed the filler rod into the leading edge of the molten keyhole with surgical regularity—*dab, weave, dab, weave*—never hesitating, never rushing.
Behind the torch, a small trailing purge shoe flooded the cooling weld bead with argon gas, protecting the red-hot metal from cosmic atomic oxygen until it cooled below four hundred degrees Celsius.
In less than three minutes, Austin completed the circumference of the joint.
He released the foot pedal. The arc gently died with a soft electronic hum, leaving the high-frequency post-flow argon hissing softly against the glowing metal.
Austin flipped his welding hood up, grabbed an inspection mirror, and held the pipe up to the floodlights.
The weld bead was an absolute, flawless work of art.
A continuous, unbroken band of stacked golden-silver fish scales wrapped around the pipe, perfectly uniform, exactly one-sixteenth of an inch in crown reinforcement, with zero undercut, zero porosity, and zero heat discoloration.
The five thousand inquisitors stared at the glowing silver seam.
"The Fish-Scale Dao of the Celestial Dragon..." breathed an elder in the third row, his tears fogging his visor. "Look at the alignment of the scales! Every crescent overlaps by precisely one third! Zero drafts of chaos were permitted to enter the metal!"
Austin handed the pipe to Xuan Ming. "Take this to the testing bench. Run the ultrasonic pulse-echo and the radiographic X-ray scanner."
Xuan Ming took the pipe with trembling hands, setting it into the lead-shielded inspection cabinet.
He engaged the X-ray tube.
*HUMMMMMM.*
A high-resolution radiographic film developed on the digital viewing screen.
The internal structure of the weld showed up clean, dense, and completely homogeneous—zero voids, zero tungsten slag inclusions, and flawless root penetration.
`RADIOGRAPHIC EVALUATION: AWS D1.1 AEROSPACE STRUCTURAL.` `DEFECTS DETECTED: ZERO (0.000%).` `CLASSIFICATION: MASTER GRADE.`
Xuan Ming turned to the bleachers, his voice booming with triumphant joy across the radio: "THE SEAM HAS PASSED! THE COVENANT OF THE WELD IS SEALED!"
The five thousand inquisitors leaped to their feet, cheering and clapping their thick leather gloves together until the bleachers rattled.
"Alright, settle down," Austin commanded, clapping his hands together with sharp authority. "Praise doesn't erect space stations. You’ve seen the technique. Now grab your torches. Each of you has forty-eight coupons to complete before sundown. Every coupon must pass visual, ultrasonic, and radiographic inspection before you get your certified welder’s stamp."
Within fifteen minutes, Hangar Bay 2 turned into a roaring cathedral of electric fire.
Five thousand welding booths lit up simultaneously, their blue-white electric arcs flickering against the black obsidian bulkheads like a contained supernova.
Austin walked down the center aisle with his aluminum clipboard, inspecting workpieces with a keen, unforgiving eye.
"Too fast, Disciple Liu! You're undercutting the top toe! Slow down your travel speed and let the puddle wash into the sidewall!"
"Watch that torch angle, Elder Zhang! You're pushing at forty degrees—drag it at ten to keep your gas coverage solid!"
At Booth 412, Junior Inquisitor Bai Ze was kneeling before his pipe joint, his hands trembling violently inside his cowhide gloves.
Bai Ze struck his arc—*BZZT*—wobbled, and his tungsten electrode dipped straight into the molten puddle with a loud *POP*.
A blob of molten tungsten fused directly into the root pass, instantly contaminating the joint with high-density slag.
Bai Ze dropped his torch, falling onto his hands and knees on the diamond plate, sobbing in utter, inconsolable grief.
"I have failed!" Bai Ze wept, banging his white hard hat against the floor. "I am an unworthy worm! I have poisoned the dragon seam with the impurity of tungsten! Strip my vest, Master Chu! Exile my soul to the Nether-Abyss! I am unfit to hold the Torch of Heaven!"
Austin stopped outside Bai Ze's booth.
He looked down at the sobbing inquisitor, let out a slow sigh, and set his clipboard onto the welding cart.
He reached down, picked up the contaminated TIG torch, and loosened the brass collet with a gentle twist. He slid out the ruined, mushroomed tungsten rod, tossing it into a scrap bin.
Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out a freshly pre-sharpened two-percent lanthanated tungsten electrode with a pristine thirty-degree ground point, and slid it into Bai Ze’s torch.
He locked the collet, held the torch out, and placed it gently into Bai Ze’s trembling leather glove.
"You didn't fail, Bai Ze," Austin said, his voice quiet, calm, and steady. "You dipped the tungsten. Every apprentice in history dips the tungsten on their first day. It’s not an ancient curse, and it doesn't mean your soul is rotten. It just means you held your arc too close."
Bai Ze looked up with red, tear-filled eyes through his gold visor. "Master...?"
"Grab the pneumatic die grinder," Austin instructed, patting the young man’s shoulder. "Grind out the tungsten inclusion down to bright metal, blow out the filings with compressed nitrogen, and strike the arc again. A real welder isn't someone who never makes a mistake; a real welder is someone who knows how to grind out their flaw and lay down a clean cap."
Bai Ze stared at the sharpened tungsten electrode in his hand.
A warm, golden light of pure, resolute determination ignited deep within his nascent soul.
He scrambled to his feet, wiped his tears against his shoulder pad, and picked up the pneumatic die grinder.
*SKRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT!*
The carbide burr bit into the metal, throwing bright orange sparks into the vacuum catch-cloth. Two minutes later, the flaw was gone.
Bai Ze pulled down his welding hood, struck his arc, and with slow, deliberate, unshakeable focus, began to weave his bead.
Austin stood watching for thirty seconds, nodding approvingly as the stacked silver fish-scales flowed smoothly across the joint.
By the time the evening shift horn sounded at 18:00, the inspection results were compiled on Austin's master tablet.
`APPRENTICES TESTED: 5,000.` `AWS D1.1 CERTIFIED: 4,842 (96.8% FIRST-TIME PASS RATE).` `REMEDIAL RETESTS PENDING: 158.` `TOTAL STRUCTURAL WELDERS DEPLOYED: 4,842 CERTIFIED RIGGERS.`
Austin clicked his pen, signing the master training roster.
"Four thousand eight hundred certified orbital welders," Austin murmured, looking out the hangar bay toward the twenty-two-thousand-mile geosynchronous orbit where the Dyson Swarm awaited. "Now we have the workforce to build anything in the solar system."
Inside his dantian, the binary engine hummed with a deep, rumbling surge of thermonuclear anticipation.