Read Troy Rising 2 - Citadel for Free Online

stuff,” Nate said, gesturing at the fridge. “You're going to want to have something in the room. There's times I don't want to take time to go to the vending machine. And speaking of which . . . I've got homework to do.”
    Shit, Butch thought. High school never ends.
    “What you're looking at is the Mark Four Grosson Optical Welder,” Mr. Methvin said, holding up what looked a lot like an oxy-acetylene welder head. “And you're all thinking ‘That thing ain't nothin' but a fancy OA rig.' And you're all wrong. If you keep thinkin' that you're gonna be dead wrong.”
    The first time Butch saw his gay shop teacher in school he'd been bothered by the fact that Mr. Tews was missing about half the fingers on his left hand. But he'd learned that was pretty much where you got shop teachers. If they weren't missing bits, they'd still be working in the field not teaching shop.
    Mr. Methvin had run into the same press or welding rig or jack or whatever that every other shop teacher ran into at one point or another. Except it had taken off half his left hand and he had some sort of funny stubs on that hand for fingers. They looked a hell of a lot like toes.
    “Tell you one thing's different right off,” Mr. Methvin continued. “You, Allen, what's the maximum distance of an efficient flame on an oxy torch?”
    The course had started with fifty-three guys and two chicks. After the first three weeks, it was a six week course, they were down to thirty-seven guys and both chicks. And it was just getting harder.
    Hand laser welding was done almost exclusively in space. There was a good bit of it in robotics on earth but most of it was in space. So a good bit of the eight hour a day course was about how to work in space. Which, it turned out, meant a good bit of math and a lot of attention to detail.
    Then there was the lasers themselves. Optics was a whole branch of physics, one that Butch's high school teacher had barely touched on.
    The course was a lot of skull sweat. But fortunately it was the sort of skull sweat that Butch was good at. He'd stuck with it. He'd avoided going to the titty bars pick-up joints along the Cocoa Strip to do homework. He'd read optical laser manuals until his eyes bled. He'd worked harder than he ever had in school. There were two big reasons. The first was that he really didn't want to join the Navy. The second was that he just didn't want to tell Papa Allen that he'd failed.
    There were some little reasons, too. The training he was getting worked just about as well on the robots being used in every part of industry. When he was done with his five year hitch with Apollo, he could just about set his salary. Laser robotic technicians, which was a short course in robotics from what he was learning, earned over a hundred grand a year groundside. More in space.
    That was the other part. He was currently being paid twelve bucks an hour and the course had dormitories for “probationary” technician trainees. When he passed the course that jumped to eighteen buck an hour which wasn't chump change.
    The rate for space work was time and a half when you were in atmosphere and double time in EVA. Overtime was time and a half up to forty-eight and double time after that. If he was working EVA on overtime over forty-eight hours, he'd be making seventy-two bucks an hour. As a probationary tech. And there was a bump in pay each year he stayed rated during his first hitch.
    Rate for full tech, base, was twenty-four bucks an hour. A fully qualified technician made nearly a hundred bucks an hour on OT in EVA, and the provided room and board so you weren't even out that.
    Butch wasn't planning on getting hooked to a wagon any time soon, but like most guys he figured he'd get married someday. Even if his wife had full blown Johannsen's, he'd have an easier time supporting a family on a hundred bucks an hour than his dad did working in the mill.
    Then, hell, it was space. Butch had enjoyed the astronomy portion of his