Low Commorragh Life

Chapter 1

Down in the squalor of the nasty districts of Low Commorragh a dark eldar woman named Bhirae was sitting on a bullet holed balcony watching a street battle between rival groups of Kabalite warriors. Technically Bhirae should be at work, but with the kabals fighting and all, no one was going to chase her to get back to work until the battle was well and truly over.

Bhirae feasted hungrily as warriors on both sides got hit by enemy weapons fire and cried out in pain. Like all dark eldar, Bhirae had to feed regularly on pain energy to recharge her own soul from the constant leaching caused by Slaanesh. The easiest way to get this pain was to watch the street battles that were a regular occurrence in this particular patch of Low Commorragh.

Bhirae watched, vaguely wondering which particular Kabal of warriors would rape her tonight. It personally made very little difference to Bhirae which Kabal won, either way the result was always the same. Bhirae was a slave, a lowly vat grown half-born who lacked the ability nor the will to fight her way to a higher position in life. Almost all dark eldar were vat grown slaves like Bhirae, only a select few were ever strong enough to fight their way to freedom as a Kabalite warrior.

Bhirae certainly didn't like being raped every night, didn't like the slave labor, didn't like all the horrid things that happened to her as a slave, but just as certainly she had no desire to rise any higher either. Slavery might suck, but at least no one ever murdered a slave to steal their position. She was the absolute bottom rank of the heap, and in Commorragh that was a very safe place to be.

All too quickly the forces of the Kabal of the Black Dagger defeated the forces of the Kabal of the Black Knife and captured the block that the building Bhirae lived in was situated in and Bhirae suddenly had new owners yet again. With a sigh Bhirae and the other slaves who had been watching the street battle returned to their work in the factory building they lived in, it was best to look busy when a new group of owners arrived.

Bhirae took her station and made a point of looking busy as she loaded splinter rifle ammunition off the production line into crates alongside a multitude of other fellow dark eldar slaves. Moments later over a hundred warriors from the Kabal of the Black Dagger stormed the building and surged past Bhirae to search every part of the building for enemy stragglers.

Bhirae ignored the sounds of gunfire that followed and just focused on her job, as long as she appeared to be doing something useful the Kabalite warriors would not bother her, at least not until they decided it was time for sex.

The Kabalite warriors completely ignored Bhirae as they walked past. She was unarmed, not holding or carrying anything that could be used as a weapon and she was deliberately making no sudden movements. On top of that she was in a relatively well lit area under an ultra high efficiency light and could be very clearly seen.

The warriors gathered up all of the factory production and started hauling it away to their stronghold with antigravity platforms, taking everything that the slaves had laboured so hard to produce. The slaves as always had nothing to show for their hard work, only ever given the bare minimum food and equipment required for them to keep working each day.

Bhirae did not react to anything the Kabalites did. They saw her as little more than a bit of machinery in the factory and she was very careful to maintain this perception of her. She was property that manufactured goods and profit for her owners, and that made her too valuable to murder without reason.

For long hours Bhirae endlessly loaded ammunition into easy to transport crates and the warriors took the crates away without interrupting her from her work. It was exhausting and repetitive work but Bhirae dared not stop for even a second. The moment she stopped would be the moment she stopped being seen as a machine that loaded ammo for the Kabal, and it would be the moment that she was noticed as being a sexually attractive woman.

Bhirae worked for a long time, but eventually she was too exhausted to continue and she very slowly moved from her station with her open hands raised high. A male Kabalite warrior was at her side in an instant and he led her away to the sleeping quarters.

Bhirae silently walked where she was led with her hands still raised and she offered absolutely no resistance when the warrior undressed her from the meagre work clothes she wore. When she was naked he threw her down on one of the floor mattresses and she spread her legs before then holding absolutely still.

Bhirae didn't like what happened next, but it was eventually over and the man left her without having ever said a single word to her. Bhirae didn't bother to dress, more men would help themselves to her throughout the night. She instead just lay naked on her back with her legs spread and did her best to sleep through the multiple times she was penetrated that night.

This was just Bhirae's life, every night Kabalite warriors of whatever Kabal helped themselves to her body. It happened to all the female slaves, indeed the men too, but more so the women. Every night Bhirae was penetrated at least once, and after over 100 years of life in this factory Bhirae was used to it.

For 8 hours Bhirae slept through rape after rape, so used to it that she didn't even wake, and her sleep was peaceful and untroubled. She woke the next morning to find that the Kabal of the Black Dagger had lost control of the factory some time during the night and Kabalite warriors in a different Kabal uniform were eagerly raping all the sleeping female slaves.

Bhirae waited until the man she had woken up to find penetrating her finished and she then very carefully gathered up her clothes, changed the cum stained sheet on the mattress and then very slowly held the dirty sheets and clothes high above her head and walked naked to the cleaning room that acted as both bathroom and laundry room for the factory.

Bhirae put all the dirty things in a communal automated washing machine and got into the communal shower for a well needed wash.

The communal shower had both hot water and cold, but only the Kabalite warriors got to use the hot water as it "wasted power" for slaves to use it. Bhirae didn't fancy a cold shower so she joined a group of other female slaves who were having group sex with a male warrior in one of the showers. The warm water felt glorious on her skin as she soaped herself all over and did her best to ignore the penis that entered her.

Once she was clean Bhirae discretely took her leave of the group sex and used a toilet before then changing into a fresh set of work gear and helping the other slaves with sorting the laundry. The slaves all had to share the sheets and work gear, so laundry was a surprisingly communal affair.

Once the laundry chores were done, Bhirae finally walked to the slave mess hall for her daily meal. The slaves only got one meal per day, and it was usually the cheapest thing the Kabals could find to feed them.

The mess hall was a cheap and nasty affair of dilapidated ancient metal benches, an equally dilapidated kitchen, and a lot of scratched and worn aluminium bowls. Utensils were not allowed, these could be used as weapons after all, and the slaves had to eat with their bare hands.

Bhirae joined the end of a line of people waiting for food and stood hungrily, her stomach growling. It took a few minutes but eventually she was at the front of the line and she was given a large bowl of slave food and her name was marked off to show that she had been given her quota of food today.

Bhirae took a seat at one of the crowded benches and looked at her meal dubiously. It was a mixed stew of various cooked ingredients, predominantly meat from the dead bodies of the Kabalite warriors killed in the recent battles over the factory. It also contained a thin distasteful sludge of synthetic nutrients to ward off nutritional deficiencies and more than a few boiled ork mushrooms that kept growing in every undisturbed bit of dust in the entire city of Commorragh.

It was all in all a revolting meal, but Bhirae was so ravenously hungry that she wolfed it all down after a brief pause.

A quick bit of cleaning up later and Bhirae returned to the production line for yet another 15 hour shift in her continual slave labor. Such was life.

***...

Dracon Arzogahn of the Black Dagger Kabal glared angrily at his warriors' continual failure to keep hold of Zasbak factory district of Gahastorest level at the edge of Black Dagger territory. The Archon was getting frustrated by the continual failure of Dracon Arzogahn to secure the Zasbak district and this was extremely dangerous for his continued survival.

Dracon Arzogahn was utterly sick of this ongoing street battle over the factory districts, he should be conducting raids in real space not mucking around with factories like some flunky. This task was beneath a man of his ambitions and the situation was now getting desperate for Arzogahn personally.

Arzogahn brooded bitterly from where he sat surrounded by slave women, trying to think of a solution to this problem. The real problem was that he didn't have enough men to hold the factory long term. The entire Zasbak factory district of Gahastorest level was that it was extremely poorly defensible and easily retaken every time he took it.

The district had been designed with industry in mind not defence and it was all very open, easily accessible from many different directions and quite well lit to facilitate deliveries and logistics. It would work great if it was right in the centre of the Black Dagger's territory but where it was it was bordered by 12 rival Kabal territories and changed hands constantly.

Dracon Arzogahn sighed and said, "nothing else for it, I need to do something drastic."

An hour later Dracon Arzogahn stood in his battle armour before all the warriors under his command with a gleaming in his eyes.

"Good news Kabalite warriors, you are all going to get a promotion. As of now every warrior is promoted to the rank of Sybarite. Old Sybarites will remain in their current ranks. Each of you Sybarites is to select 20 worthy recruits who will make up the new warriors of your squads. I expect my new army to be ready to move in 12 hours time. You may go now." Arzogahn told them all arrogantly.

The newly promoted Sybarites all smiled greedily and ran off to build their squads. The veteran sybarites looked less impressed but also left. Arzogahn didn't care, the new recruits were all nothing but cannon fodder anyway. He didn't care if it diluted the Black Dagger with riffraff, with his own life and reputation on the line, Dracon Arzogahn cared only about taking and holding the factory district, no matter how many people it took.

***...

Bhirae watched yet again from the balcony as another street battle took place in the bridged streets outside.

The Gahastorest level that Bhirae's factory occupied was mid level in Low Commorragh, countless miles above the ground far below and serviced entirely by sky bridges that branched out between every building. The streets had perilous drops to either side and were connected to every building only at the doorways and loading bays by bridges that connected to the branching sky bridge roadway.

The factory Bhirae lived in was not a building in its own right, but merely one section of a massive starscraper that extended from the ground miles below to the open sky miles above. Stairways and elevators had once connected every floor in the massive building but long ago these had been blocked up with welded metal plates that reduced Bhirae's factory to a mere 100 floors that could actually be reached.

Bhirae had been fresh from the vats when she arrived here at this factory and in her over 100 years of life she had never ventured out of sight of the building. This factory was her home and was pretty much all she knew first hand.

It was seemingly in the absolute middle of nowhere, too far above the ground to enjoy the resources of the ground level but too far below the sky to get any sunlight nor any of the spoils of raids that flowed into the space ports of the sky levels. This entire district was too far away from any source of materials or resources to be much value and was pretty barren to be honest.

The surrounding areas offered nothing except space inside buildings for people to occupy and most of the buildings were in a sorry state of urban decay. The Zasbak factory district of Gahastorest level was one of few factory districts in the immediate area that could actually scrape some useful profit out of what little the Gahastorest level had to offer, which was why everyone kept fighting over it.

Zasbak district was basically a communal community of slaves like Bhirae who worked together for mutual survival. The factories that made up the district at this level all shared electricity, water and other resources. They pretty much ignored the Kabals that constantly conquered them, self governing as a group since they could not rely on any one Kabal sticking around in charge of them long enough to provide leadership.

The factories used huge intake fans to extract dust from the outside air, dehumidifiers to extract water from the air and atmosphere mining machinery to extract useful gases from the air. They regularly scavenged the detritus of war from the streets outside and collected everything they could find and recycled ruthlessly.

The floors of the buildings as well as all the sky bridges in the district were covered in piezoelectric sheets that generated power from every footfall. Small wind turbines on the side of the buildings also harnessed the rising thermals from the heat of industry far below to generate most of their power. They of course had many plasma generators, but fuel was in very short supply here so they mostly could only used these sparingly.

They actually got quite creative at times in methods of power generation, using the gas from their sewerage to provide a few extra watts of power and even at times using muscle power to turn wheels and generate electricity if all else failed. The factories remained viable by being ruthlessly efficient with energy, always finding ever more ingenious ways of cutting power requirements.

From the little power and material the district could scrounge, they were able to produce a range of products that the Kabals coveted. The Kabals in turn imported "slave food" to the district, mostly in the form of dead bodies, and this provided food for all the slaves who lived in the district. It was a nice system that benefited everyone.

Bhirae and the other slaves liked living here. It was one of the better places a slave could be, a place where you could actually live to reach the age of 100 relatively easily if you didn't do anything stupid. The almost daily street battles provided all the pain energy they needed to quench the thirst of their souls and this also gave the added bonus of giving them unscheduled time off work (and entertainment).

Bhirae's own factory produced a variety of things, but it specialised in growing the ammunition crystals of splinter rifles. Basically the crystals consisted of crystallised hyper toxins with just enough magnetically aligned iron particles suspended throughout it to let splinters of the crystal be magnetically launched down the railgun barrel of a splinter rifle at hypersonic speeds. The hyper toxins this factory used were easy to brew compounds made from atmospheric gases and elements extracted from dust and sewerage. The iron was more difficult to obtain in quantity and it mostly came from the dust or from local battle detritus on the sky bridges.

Bhirae had over 100 years of experience in making viable ammunition out of nothing but dust, air and ambient energy. She had worked in every single role in the factory at one time or another and had the hands on equivalent of an extremely advanced education in her field of employment. This made Bhirae difficult to replace if killed and was the thing that would help keep her alive for centuries to come.

Bhirae returned her attention to the battle on the sky bridges far below. She was currently about 30 floors above the sky bridges, peaking over the side of a balcony. A bullet dinged wind turbine was spinning just below her, giving her a flickering view of the action, and this also provided some meagre extra cover from weapons fire that might happen to fire in her direction.

Tiny ultra high efficiency lights on the outer walls of the buildings illuminated the entire district with a cold white glare, giving a clear view of the entire battle. The piezoelectric sheets on the sky bridge road surfaces provided all the power for these lights, meaning that they only turned on when someone was walking on them, giving away enemy movements instantly.

At the moment the entire district was lit up brighter than Bhirae had seen in years. Tens of thousands of Kabalite warriors from the Kabal of the Black Dagger were marching over the sky bridge sheets in a seething mass that was giving them a glut of free power. This was very unusual.

In fact everything about this particular battle was extremely unusual. Usually the Kabal forces numbered only a few thousand at most and used every available bit of cover to avoid casualties and retreated quickly if casualties got too high. Also usually the Kabalite warriors could actually hit stuff that they aimed at...

The warriors of the Black Dagger Kabal were surging forward in a seething mass in numbers never before seen, firing wildly at the cover hugging warriors of the Kabal of the Tangerine Splinter with appalling accuracy. The Black Dagger were taking hundreds of casualties without fleeing, providing Bhirae and the rest of the watching slaves with an absolute feast of pain that would last them over a week before they felt thirsty again.

The few thousand warriors of the Tangerine Splinter gazed in horror at the roughly 50 thousand Black Dagger warriors that were barreling towards them oblivious to casualties and a moment later the Tangerine Splinter fled for their lives unable to triumph when so heavily outnumbered. No matter how poor quality these Black Dagger warriors were, they still outnumbered the Tangerine Splinter more than ten to one.

Bhirae balked at the huge number of mostly male Black Dagger warriors. Every single one of them would expect sexual rights to the slave women. Bhirae was not sure how she would cope with this many men.

Bhirae and the others quickly busied themselves as the unprecedentedly large army started entering the buildings of the district. Men surged past Bhirae in endless droves as they secured her factory building, but they moved a lot differently than most warriors usually moved. Usually warriors were cautious hard eyed veterans of many wars who carried themselves with great care. But these ones seemed... well arrogant was the best way to describe them. These were not experienced fighters humbled by the fires of war, these were arrogant young fools who thought that they could conquer the world without taking a scratch.

The warriors unprecedentedly started grabbing women off the production line to take away for sex. It was only the angry shouts of the Sybarite officers that allowed the workers to return to their stations before production was significantly affected. Bhirae was shocked, the warriors of all Kabals had more sense than to do anything to hinder production like this.

It quickly became apparent that the Black Dagger had recently flooded their ranks with any two bit wannabe slave that wanted to join their ranks and had then simply deployed them without any real training. From the talk it became clear that this army had been raised for the sole purpose of capturing Zasbak factory district of Gahastorest level and holding the district PERMANENTLY.

This was bad, really really bad Bhirae thought as she frantically worked on the ammunition production line.