Maddie led them down a flight of stairs and onto the floor of the workshop.

"This larger shop can hold three cargo shuttles, and as you can see we have two in for repair currently. This first is being stripped for parts then scrapped. The second is in for an engine check, nothing major, " Maddie started.

James looked around the workshop confused. "How do you get them in here? I can't see a hanger door," has asked.

"Ah, you noticed," Maddie smiled. "Since we are directly below the main hanger bay, they land on one of three specific pads and get lowered down to us. If you look up there above the first bay, you can see the ceiling door seals."

"Very clever, that's a great idea."

Walking along the large workshop, Maddie pointed out the areas where tools and spare parts were kept, as well as the mechanisms for the shuttle lifts. Escorting them towards the far end of repair bays, Maddie took them through a set of air-locked doors.

"In this area we have techs that take calls for maintenance requests and engineers that go out and repair those requests. Its like a big call centre, but staffed with people that actually know the ins and outs of the station, we have the entire station blueprints on our data pads, so we can find and fix faults quickly.

Walking through James could it was split in two. Half of the room was people taking calls and remotely fixing faults. The other half had a dozen or some people picking up tools or parts for jobs they were about to attend to. He could see people stopping to turn and look at him. James waved a hello and smiled.

Moving through another air-lock and into a long curved corridor that ran the edge of the station, Maddie announced that after one more air-lock next stop is grounds keeping main office.

* * *

"Ulmus, how you doing? I have a visitor for you."

"Maddie, I was just about to come see you. A visitor you say?"

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

A tall muscular man appeared from behind tool rack holding several data pads.

"Ulmus, this is Special-Ambassador James Wallace of Earth. He is here to have a tour of the station."

"James, hello and welcome to my small part of the world. How are you, Sir?" Ulmus said holding out a free hand.

"Thank you," said James shaking his hand. "I am well thank you. Can you tell me a bit about your small part of the world?"

"Yes of course, come in to my office."

Leading the way into a large office, Ulmus sat down behind a large desk and motioned for them to sit.

"From here we manage the entire gardening and grounds keeping crew of the station. Over 100 people are employed to keep the gardens and what-not tidy. We ensure that the trees and shrubs are well tended too and that everything is properly watered."

"How is everything watered?" James asked.

"We use the grey-water from the station and feed it through pipes under the surface of the main deck. It's then released from sprinkler heads in the small hours of the morning. Quite clever really, but it's why we work closely with Maddie and her maintenance teams to ensure the pipes are working correctly."

He continued, "We carefully calculate the correct amount of water required, but if there is any run-off that is collected in gullies and fed back into the system. Everything is monitored and accounted for."

"That is quite clever," agreed James.

"Here, I'll show you our monitoring interface where we can see the health of the gardens."

Ulmus flipped a data pad around, top-down image of the station was shown on the screen with most park areas covered in green. A small patch in sector three was flashing orange.

"This orange section is what I was coming to see you about Maddie. One of the underground pipes has burst and water was leaking everywhere. We've turned the supply off to that pipe but it needs to be fixed or replaced."

"OK, I'll get one of my guys on it now," said Maddie typing on his data pad.

"James, from here we can monitor everything we need to," Ulmus continued. Pressing options next to the station image, he ran though a few of them. "We can see the hedge, flower and soil health, water usage, patron throughput for grass wear, and lots of other metrics. When the team notice something starting to wear down we can fix it before it becomes a problem."

Ulmus showed him a few more screens of monitoring graphs and data analytics.

"I am impressed," said James. "That looks like a powerful system. From what little I have seen so far, you and your team are doing a great job."

"Thank you for saying so. That means a lot to me, I imagine you have seen quite a few different planets and gardens."

James laughed, "Not as many as you may think. Lots of meeting rooms though."

"We best leave you both to your work," Msizi said, "We appreciate you giving up your time."

"Yes, thank you for having me," James said, shaking both their hands.

"No worries at all, we hope you enjoy your time here," Ulmus said.

...