Xenoverse origins / R-066
Nova NastyOrigin story
Nova Nasty: Six Spaces, Seven Promises
A technician who promises each department priority must negotiate a shared shortfall when Council cargo consumes most of a waste barge's capacity.
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Nova Nasty had promised six departments that their waste would leave first. She considered this efficient reassurance. Unfortunately, all six representatives arrived at the dock to hear her repeat it.
Nova's competing priority promises collide with a six-space cargo limit, forcing the station to decide which work can genuinely wait.
Behind them, a loading goblin chalked six rectangles on the barge deck. Then he crossed out four and wrote COUNCIL DAIS.
Nova checked the departure clock. It was working perfectly. She would have preferred a fault.
We can share the shortfall. We can't vote it smaller.
From the dossier
Prologue — First Means Something Different to Everyone
The Space outpost's disposal barge called once per collection cycle. Its charter allotted six standard cargo spaces to station business. Nova, the Zero-Gravity Waste Technician, had booked every one for the six departmental crates scheduled for collection.
She had known about the inspection. She had not known that the Goblin Council's travelling ceremonial dais would leave on the same barge.
The Council knew Nova well. Its facilities delegate, Scrip, addressed his requests to her personally because she had once cleared a reception passage before he finished complaining about it. Nova knew his habits too. He called an instruction minor when he wanted somebody else to absorb its consequences.
The dais required four spaces. Scrip's amended order left two for waste. Beside the amendment, he had written PLEASE ACCOMMODATE.
Nova could have warned the departments immediately. Instead, she asked each to send a representative, saying their particular difficulty would receive priority. She expected to negotiate privately, extract a concession from each and present the final arrangement as a completed service.
She liked being the person who fixed things before anyone noticed the work. Asking six departments to disagree in the same room felt like admitting that she could not.
Now the laundry porter, kitchen steward, workshop fitter and three other representatives stood around her loading board. Their sealed crates floated in numbered retaining hoops. Each representative had brought Nova's note.
The laundry porter read hers aloud.
The kitchen steward read hers.
Nobody needed to read the remaining four.
Above the board, the departure clock removed another minute with excellent impartiality.
Act 1
The Price of a Clear Floor
Act I — The Price of a Clear Floor
Nova explained that priority did not necessarily mean first.
The workshop fitter asked whether it meant anything at all.
She ranked the crates herself. Kitchen discards would go; laundry remnants would wait. The laundry porter objected that returning her crate would occupy the only receiving space for the next linen delivery. The kitchen steward refused to surrender a slot to dirty curtains. They were not curtains, the porter said, with dangerous precision.
Nova offered to keep the four delayed crates in her own bay. Everyone brightened.
Her assistant, a goblin named Tass, set the next collection schedule beside the board. If she stored today's shortfall there, tomorrow's work would have nowhere to arrive.
“You can borrow floor space,” he said. “You can't borrow the same floor twice.”
The departments had all counted on an empty place, just as she had counted on six barge spaces. Her private assurances had let them make incompatible plans. Moving the obstruction into her bay would conceal the dispute until the next shift inherited it.
Scrip arrived with the dais attendants. They carried a polished lectern, rolled carpets and the hollow ceremonial base on which councillors stood to appear taller.
Nova asked him to leave the dais behind.
“The receiving committee expects an elevated address.”
“Then speak from the stairs.”
He did not laugh.
The barge captain inspected the six rectangles. She would carry six cargo units, leave at the appointed bell and accept no speeches as substitutes for either. Nova asked for an extension. The captain pointed toward the other station stops on her route.
Their deadlines existed too.
Nova put away the private ranking. She asked everybody to remain while the dais attendants opened its packing plan. Scrip objected that this was Council business.
“So are these six crates,” she said. “You just don't stand on them.”
Act 2
A Bargain with Four Corners
Act II — A Bargain with Four Corners
The dais base took two spaces by itself. The lectern and carpets took the other two. Nova proposed leaving the base at the outpost and borrowing a stand at the receiving hall.
Scrip said the Council could not arrive looking underprovided.
The kitchen steward knew the receiving hall. It had a stone speaking step. She offered to arrange its use, provided Scrip put his own name on the request instead of hers.
He agreed only after the barge captain asked whether he intended to travel with the base. She had no seating booked for either.
Four waste crates could now leave. Two still had to stay.
Nova reached for her pencil to decide which. Tass caught her eye. She put the pencil in the middle of the board instead.
Each department explained what delay would actually interrupt. The laundry needed its receiving bay. The lighting crew could stack replacement globes elsewhere but lacked staff to move them. The workshop expected to recover fasteners from its scrap and had counted the disposal crew's unpaid sorting time as available help.
The fitter admitted that last part reluctantly.
Nova admitted that she had promised recovery rates she could not achieve before departure. Opening the workshop's return tray revealed why: fine brass pieces had become embedded in hardened packing foam. Some could be reclaimed. Others were lost to this collection.
The representatives wanted a decision, not an explanation.
Lighting could lend two hands now. The kitchen steward offered a porter after service to help Lighting move its replacement globes and make room for its delayed crate. Laundry would lend its transport frame once its own crate had gone. The workshop would keep its scrap and supply the next sorting shift.
The fitter asked why his department should absorb the loss.
“Because I can't recover what's already damaged,” Nova said. “And because your crate isn't more important merely because you're better at arguing.”
He proposed that Nova share the sorting shift. She agreed.
The plan had costs beside every name. That was why it finally resembled a plan.
Act 3
A Departure with Remainders
Act III — A Departure with Remainders
They worked while the clock ran. In the weightless bay, a loose packing ribbon wound itself around the lighting foreman's hat. He continued carrying a hoop with the ribbon trailing behind him, furious at how festive cooperation had become.
Nova and the fitter separated the recoverable brass pieces from the ruined ones. They disagreed over several. She stopped promising a perfect result; he stopped calling every rejected fragment a failure of effort.
One return tray was scarcely half full when the captain rang the loading bell.
Nova asked the fitter whether to take the recovered pieces back to his department now or wait for a fuller tray. He took them. The workshop needed usable stock more than it needed an impressive percentage.
Four waste crates crossed to the barge. The lectern and carpets occupied the remaining two spaces. The ceremonial base stayed behind, making Scrip look considerably smaller as he dictated his complaint beside it.
The barge departed on time.
Two crates remained at the outpost. Some brass was unrecovered. Several people had given up parts of their next shifts. Nova's board could not honestly display CLEAR, so she wrote where the remaining work would happen and who had agreed to do it.
The laundry porter requested a copy. Nova handed her the pencil rather than promising to remember.
Scrip offered to describe the shipment as a successful trial of reduced disposal capacity. Nova called the representatives back before he finished. The fitter placed the ruined brass on the ceremonial base.
“We can share the shortfall. We can't vote it smaller,” Nova said.
Scrip withdrew the word reduced.
After the dock emptied, Tass brought a new notice. The receiving hall had agreed to lend its speaking step. In exchange, its caretaker expected the next returning barge to carry away an ornamental fountain.
The fountain required five spaces.
Nova looked at the two waiting crates, then at the contact list on her board. Her first impulse was to promise an answer by morning.
Instead, she sent the fountain's dimensions to every department with one plain question: what could they genuinely postpone?
The workshop fitter answered first.
Nothing, he wrote.
Nova pulled up a chair. At least this negotiation had begun with an answer she could use.
A departure that cannot carry every promise
At the Space outpost, waste collection shares limited cargo space with departmental returns and Council freight. Nova's work depends on people agreeing who will store delayed crates, supply sorting time and accept material that cannot be recovered.