Chapter 92(orphan)

The impoverished Dark Eldar half born cabbage farmers gasped in open mouthed awe and wonder, as their humble instruments showed an entire TERAWATT of electrical power flowing through the brand new power grid the Ebony Stiletto had built for them!

They had never seen anything so wonderful, they would never be hungry again!

First in ones and twos the farmers cheered, and then in the thousands. This was the best day of their entire miserable unpleasant lives!

"We can do SO much with all this power!" One of the farmers cheered.

Everyone was getting extremely excited when one of the Ebony Stiletto engineering foreman slaves interrupted them.

"Woah! Hang on a second! This terawatt of additional power has to be SHARED throughout the entire Ebony Stiletto territory!" The engineering foreman informed them.

The farmer's celebration dampened noticeably at this, but they were still excited to get additional power nonetheless.

"How much do WE get to keep?," a farmer asked hesitantly.

"Let's see, a terawatt divided by 65.4 billion cubic kilometres, equals... An additional 15 watts of power," the foreman calculated.

"We each get only 15 extra watts per person?!" A farmer exclaimed.

"No, this entire local cubic kilometre of slums gets an additional 15 watts..."

The farmers all snarled in outrage and demanded AT LEAST an additional 100 watts PER PERSON, threatening to riot!

"I... I will see what I can arrange," the foreman fearfully promised as the crowd drew knives.

The farmers growled angrily, he had BETTER deliver or they would EAT him!

***...

Wendy was dismayed as EVERY district of slum territories erupted in near riots at the power being offered to them, it just wasn't FAIR! There really was no pleasing some people!

The Nightmare Asylum reactor was now plugged into the grid, providing an entire TERAWATT of additional free power to these people, but they were rioting in response!? Fucking ingrates!

These farmers were demanding 100 additional watts EACH, during a fucking WAR! The only way that would be possible would be to construct like 65 BILLION power plants, BIG power plants not small cheap ones! It was IMPOSSIBLE!

Wendy thought about the situation and her options. She needed vast electrical power NOW, these farmers wouldn't wait for the long time it would take to build local power plants.

Where would she get this power?

Ok well firstly she could deliberately reduce her territory down to a smaller size, so that each remaining slum had a greater share of the available power, that was an obvious solution. But she would rather not lose so much precious Low Commorragh territory as the Matriarch wouldn't like that.

Secondly she could attempt some sort of solution involving low tech engines powered by combustible fuel to generate power. Low Commorragh was an oxygenated environment, and the most common atomic element in the galaxy was hydrogen, which was combustible. A web way gate dropped down into the atmosphere of a small gas giant, a shit load of pipes in Low Commorragh, it was doable.

Third option was to try a perpetual motion machine, given the crazy physics of the modern universe, though so far her minions had been unable to create one. Okay maybe option three was too silly to actually work, scrap that idea... Well mostly just stick to R and D anyway...

Fourth option was to take the Nightmare Asylum home to the Matriarch, and use the entire power grid of the Matriarch's domains to provide hundreds of millions of additional terawatts of power, a vast power source that already existed ready to use.

Being a pragmatist at heart, Wendy decided to try all of these solutions at the same time.

Okay lets do this, no time to waste.

The Sevensons were finally going to go home...

***...

Franklin the living Saint glowed with golden light as he struggled hard to battle the remaining warp storm forces of Nurgle and Khorne, calling furiously on the power of the Emperor to let the Nightmare Asylum jump safely through the warp towards a distant deep space web way gate.

The Emperor was delighted with Wendy's deliverance of Temperis from the terrible famine, absolutely delighted, and was in a (relatively) favourable mood towards the Sevensons right now. The rampant death and destruction being sown in the depraved evil Low Commorragh was also very gratifying to His majesty, improving his mood even more.

Trillions of loyal Imperial citizens saved from starvation, countless dead Dark Eldar, the obliteration of Lavender Furnace and humbling of the Word Bearers. All of these things greatly pleased the Emperor, Franklin had been the catalyst for so much good in the past year.

Beside Franklin on the bridge stood the fell daemon princess TigerLily Sevenson, blazing bright blue with her own terrible power as she assisted Franklin in calming the mighty warp storm. Both had a common cause this day of wanting to get the Nightmare Asylum safely to it's destination, so both worked together as one.

The Nightmare Asylum was currently accelerating quite hard, picking up kinetic energy to travel even faster through the warp to their exit destination.

Without warning TigerLily snapped her fingers and strange music began to play?

"Round round get around I get around, get around round round I get around," TigerLily sang, somehow harmonising her voice with only herself.

Franklin looked at her irritably as she began singing in a loud falsetto

"Wah-wah-ooh"... "What?, I like old songs," TigerLily broke off smirking.

"Don't you at least know anything more recent?," The Emperor's holy voice complained through Franklin's mouth.

"Very well, how about... We don't want your tiny hands, anywhere near our underpants, we don't want your tiny hands, anywhere near our underpants..." TigerLily sang.

"No no by the heavens NO! Don't remind me of THAT particular era of history!" The Emperor complained.

"Come oh, all Ye who are weary, oh come, to the United States, for, our president is Bernie Sanders, and Trump, now languishes in jail. Oh how, the other inmates bum him, and spank, him with magazines..." TigerLily sang a rousing anthem of hope and solemn pride.

"MORE recent!" The Emperor demanded.

"Very well... Pay your taxes, pay your taxes, or the Ar-Bites will gut you, pay your taxes and behave, so you can earn, your salvation..." TigerLily sang.

"Ugh! LESS recent!" The Emperor complained.

"Make up your mind you old tyrant," TigerLily mocked.

"Something from the 29th millennium?," the Emperor suggested.

"The Em-Pra is a right old cunt, the fucker burned down our church, and now instead of saying "fuck", we say "oh Emperor"!" TigerLily sang mockingly.

"Very funny daemon, what about the grand anthems of the space marine legions?," The Emperor replied.

"I don't want to sing that shit, it's just propaganda sung to crap music," TigerLily bickered.

"What about this old song?," The Emperor suggested, and sang something in a language Franklin didn't know.

"Hittite songs?, NOW who is singing ancient songs?," TigerLily teased.

"At least they had better music back then,"

"You are showing your age Big E,"

The conversation ended for a while after this. TigerLily then sang a different ancient sounding song.

"Fifty-thousand lumberjacks, fifty thousand packs,

Fifty-thousand dirty rolls of blankets on their backs.

Fifty-thousand minds made up to strike and strike like men

For fifty years they've packed a bed, but never will again."

""Such a lot of devils" - that's what the papers say -

"They've gone on strike for shorter hours and some increase in pay:

They left the camps, the lazy tramps, they all walked out as one;

They say they'll win the strike or put the bosses on the bum.""

"Fifty-thousand wooden bunks full of things that crawl;

Fifty-thousand restless men have left them once for all,

One by one they dared not say "Fat, the hours are long."

If they did they'd hike - but now they're fifty thousand strong.

Take a tip and start right in; plan some cozy rooms, Six or eight spring beds in each, with towels, sheets, and brooms, Shower baths for men who work keep them well and fit, A laundry, too, and drying room would help a little bit,"

Franklin was surprised when the Emperor actually joined in with this song.

""Such a lot of devils" - that's what the papers say -

"They've gone on strike for shorter hours and some increase in pay:

They left the camps, the lazy tramps, they all walked out as one;

They say they'll win the strike or put the bosses on the bum."" TigerLily and the Emperor sang in unison.

"I do love the American communist songs of the very early 20th century, when the workers began to go on strikes. I was working as a lumberjack myself at the time, those camps really were wretched!" The Emperor said nostalgically.

"You are an Alpha Plus Psyker, you really were a twit for not simply conquering the world rather than doing odd jobs," TigerLily quipped.

The Emperor merely grunted at this.

The Emperor began to sing a new song.

"Conditions they are bad,

And some of you are sad;

You cannot see your enemy,

The class that lives in luxury,—

You workingmen are poor,—

Will be forevermore,—

As long as you permit the few

To guide your destiny."

"Shall we still be slaves and work for wages?

It is outrageous—has been for ages;

This earth by right belongs to toilers,

And not to spoilers, of liberty."

"The master class is small, But they have lots of "gall." When we unite to gain our right, If they resist we'll use our might; There is no middle ground This fight must be one round To victory, for liberty, Our class is marching on!"

"Workingmen, unite! We must put up a fight, To make us free from slavery And capitalistic tyranny;

This fight is not in vain, We've got a world to gain. Will you be a fool, a capitalist tool, And serve your enemy?" The Emperor sung.

"Ah, the 1919 trade union song "Workmen Unite", it's amazing how pervasive communism actually was in America before the Cold War mass purges of trade unionists, multitudes of men used to openly sing this stuff from coast to coast in the 1920's," TigerLily chuckled.

"Yes, I wanted mankind to be free, without class stratification, without oppression, just free and happy. The whole point of the Imperium I created was to make men free, oh how much it has fallen," the Emperor replied bitterly.

"It was your own damn fault, you broke your half of the bargain. The Chaos Gods would have gladly let you have your communist utopia, had you but let us have the souls of all the humans. You have only yourself to blame," TigerLily retorted.

"Eternal damnation for all mankind?! Of COURSE I wasn't going to let that happen!" The Emperor spat distastefully.

"Well then, stop complaining. You got to save their souls, the Imperium of today is the price," TigerLily said sardonically.

"I have not failed yet, there is still hope," The Emperor countered.

"Tzeench admires your hope old man, never lose that hope, no matter how vain a hope it is," TigerLily said with a hint of actual respect.

"Grab em by the pussy, grab em by the pussy.

We don't want your tiny hands, anywhere near our underpants,

We don't want your tiny hands, anywhere near our underpants.

Grab em by the pussy..." TigerLily sang jubilantly.

"Enough, we are about to arrive," The Emperor interrupted.

"Oh very well you old killjoy," TigerLily allowed indulgently and stopped singing.

The Nightmare Asylum abruptly dropped out of the warp a moment later, in deep space. Ahead of them could be seen a faint grey circle, only just visible in the surrounding star light.

"The rogue planet up ahead is our destination, it has many names in astronomical charts, mostly code names of letters and numbers. I personally prefer to call it the planet "Frigid Nun", as it is colder than one of Franklin's nuns," TigerLily said cheerfully.

"The planet is a deep space gas giant, well more technically a Neptune-like ice giant. It was ejected from it's home star system billions of years ago, and just floats in the freezing empty void of the galaxy, the way rogue planets do."

"The cloaked web way gate orbits the planet, it is a big gate, big enough for us to fit through. But before we do, Wendy wants us to drop a few hot air balloons into the Frigid Nun," TigerLily explained.

The Emperor had gone dormant now, so Franklin answered. "Hot air balloons?, what for?"

"To hold up small web way gates in the atmosphere, to mine the hydrogen gas it predominantly consists of. The local air temperature is below negative 200 degrees centigrade, so a balloon heated to positive 50 degrees centigrade will produce a LOT of Newtons of upward lift per cubic meter of balloon volume!" TigerLily explained excitedly.

"Newtons of lift?, what are you talking about daemon?," Franklin asked confused.

"Well the hot air balloon equation says that Lifting Force (F) is equal to V times (Pc-Ph) times Ag. V is volume of balloon in cubic meters, Ag is local acceleration of gravity, Pc is the density of colder air outside the balloon, and Ph is the density of hotter air inside the balloon. Now given the values we know..." TigerLily explained mockingly.

"WHY are we dropping hot air balloons in the atmosphere of this planet?," Franklin clarified.

"To hang small web way gates on them. The super cold hydrogen gas can be passed through a huge series of Stirling Engines to generate free power, using the ambient air temperature of Low Commorragh as a temperature gradient to generate work to spin a generator. This will continue until the hydrogen is nearly room temperature, at which point it will massively increase in pressure, which can then be harnessed to generate yet more work to spin yet more generators. The hydrogen can then finally be combusted in an engine to generate yet more power. It's really a neat system," TigerLily said with childish enthusiasm.

Franklin nodded slowly, almost understanding.

"The balloons will be given power through the web way gate they each carry," TigerLily added despite not being asked.

"So it is to generate power..." Franklin said slowly.

"That's right Einstein," TigerLily mocked him.

Franklin merely nodded uncertainly.

***...

The freezing hydrogen rich atmosphere of the planet Frigid Nun was dark and cold, the same as it had been for over a billion years, too distant from any star to have much kelvins of heat beyond the radioisotope heat of the deep core. Nothing at all exciting, just dull and utterly unremarkable.

Without warning a bright light filled the sky, the glow of many objects entering the atmosphere at high speed, glowing bright hot from the friction heat of savage reentry.

For a while these objects blazed across the sky, bringing light and heat to this extremely cold place, gradually changing from white hot to orange, and then to dull red.

With loud bangs, explosive bolts inside the objects jettisoned the glowing red outer heat shields, revealing strange rings with energy glowing inside them.

With a sudden snap, huge long parachutes opened behind the rings, at the end of vacuum sealed long sheets of some synthetic fabric material.

The rings slowed down in their descent from the parachutes, and the vacuum seal broke on the sheets, billowing as small heater fans began blasting heated local atmosphere into the sheets, expanding them to reveal them as vast mighty balloons.

Megawatts of heat poured into the balloons, and they began to level out, no longer just dropping. Controlled burns of the balloon heaters carefully lowered the balloons down to quite high pressure depths, several atmospheres of pressure but nothing too dangerous for machinery to endure.

The individual rings were now hundreds of kilometres away from their closest neighbours, dangling a full hundred meters below their balloons, on the end of long lightweight cables wrapped in insulated electrical wires. This length was needed, as the rings were about to cause a rather DRAMATIC low pressure zone, not something you want too close underneath your buoyant gas bag if possible.

Without warning, local atmospheric gas began screaming into the centre of each ring, howling with hurricane force as it tried to equalise pressure with a far lower pressure environment on the other "side" of the ring.

In far off Low Commorragh, vast networks of crude gas works rumbled to life, as extremely cold high pressure gas blasted through them with hurricane force.

The local air temperature plummeted as ravenous Stirling Engines greedily consumed ambient air heat, and ice began to form around heat exchangers as the temperature became subzero.

A huge column of freezing dense air dropped like a stone to the slum levels below, and warm surrounding air gusted in to replace it, spinning a multitude of wind turbines from the movement of both the hot and cold air.

Half born slaves in heavy winter clothing roasted heat exchangers with plumes of burning hydrogen from metal nozzles at the end of hoses, melting away freezing cold ice to keep it from fouling the heat exchanger fins.

Hundreds of huge generators spun from the thermal expansion raising the gas pressure more and more, generating gigawatts of power from this alone, and gigawatts more from the heat-greedy Stirling Engines.

With every last practically available watt of power extracted from the temperature and pressure gradients, the warm low pressure gas flowed along thousands of different pipes, entering into hastily manufactured crude combustion engines to generate many terawatts of additional power.

This power flooded the grid... But it wasn't enough!

More and more gas works came online, as more and more web way gates on hot air balloons dropped down into the atmosphere of Frigid Nun.

But it STILL wasn't enough!

100 terawatts... Still not enough.

1000 terawatts... STILL not enough!

The gas works and engines couldn't be constructed fast enough to meet demands, no matter how many THOUSANDS of hot air balloons were deployed, it was STILL not enough for this insane power demand.

It was IMPOSSIBLE to give EVERY slum farmer an additional 100 watts each! Not with billions of cubic kilometres all crammed with people, a terawatt was barely even noticeable on this stupidly large scale.

Wendy was really trying her best, but even if she halved her volume of territory it would still be impossible. The power demands were simply too big.

The Nightmare Asylum dropped down tens of thousands of tiny web way gates on hot air balloons, but it hardly seemed to make a dent in the demand. The gas works couldn't be constructed fast enough anyway, they already had twice as many gates as they could actually use right now with current gas works.

The perpetual motion machine research had been a dead end so far, all power generation methods were already being used to the maximum, and the Nightmare Asylum needed at least half of it's power just for itself to function properly.

The only remaining option was to return to the dreaded Sevenson Matriarch.

With grim fear the Nightmare Asylum entered the huge orbital web way gate, taking a massive short cut to reach the Maelstrom in a matter of hours...

The Sevensons all gulped fearfully, dreading the wrath of their terrifying Matriarch...

This would be NASTY!

***...