Chapter 23(OB)
Many many hours later, just after sunset, Jen and Seth eventually risked peaking over the lip of the canyon, and paused in open mouthed shock.
"Where's the house?" Jen asked desperately.
"Fuck! Sweet Emperor's BALLS!" Seth exclaimed in dismay.
Jen and Seth took it in turns trying to find something meaningful to say, but just ended up saying profanities, Jen's profanities more ladylike than Seth's, but still to the same effect.
The house was no more, it was hard to see from this far away in the darkness of dusk, but there was definitely a conspicuous lack of house where the house had been before!
"What shall we do husband?" Jen asked.
"Let's first return our supplies in the canyon to the shed before they get stolen. Then I will decide the next move," Seth said in dismay.
"Yes husband," Jen said obediently.
Jen and Seth both clearly wanted to go straight to the house, but they were too wary of their belongings to just let their emotions rule them. This was still an active war zone, and theft might still occur even here.
The pair hurriedly secured their belongings, and then drove cautiously to inspect the house.
The first sign of what had happened was debris all over the ground that hadn't been there before. The house had been a few hundred meters from the shed by the canyon, and now that entire area was flecked with bits of what looked like volcanic glass. The high beams of the quad bike glinted off this glassy material in the dark, revealing just how much of it there was.
For hundreds of meters around the location of the house, the strange glass glinted on the ground. It didn't bode well for the house.
Chunks of listening post were also scattered about, they looked like they had been partially melted and then solidified once more!
The quad bike paused 50 meters away from where the house should be, at the lip of a very shallow crater 100 meters in diameter...
The house was annihilated, not even the first few inches of the ground it stood on had escaped! The concrete slabs had completely disappeared, as had the back garden, the house water tanks, and of course the house itself...
Even though it was hours since the bombing, the crater still radiated quite an uncomfortable amount of heat. The heat was so bad that they had to back the quad bike 30 meters away from the crater as they just couldn't stand the heat!
Jen and Seth did not say much, they didn't really have words to describe just how nasty this situation was. They just gazed grimly at the crater for a long time...
"We, what do we do now?" Jen asked eventually.
"Not sure Jen, move into a shed for a while I guess. I can't afford to buy a new house this year, we have lost too much money already from those fucking eldar... We just have to move on with the farming, and make do with what we have left," Seth replied, his voice distant, as though not fully engaged as he processed this tragedy.
"Yes husband," Jen said sadly.
The sounds of sporadic gunfire and explosions could still be heard all around them, with occasional flashes of light illuminating the surroundings from explosions and energy weapons fire. It was perhaps not a good idea to be outside with electric lights shining in this active combat zone at night.
"We should go back to the shed and turn off the lights husband, we might be mistaken for combatants in the dark," Jen advised.
"Yeah, that's not a bad idea. Let's get the fuck out of here," Seth agreed.
There was little else for it but to dim the lights as much as possible to still see, and drive slowly and carefully back to the shed by the river. They would have a lot of work in the morning, and now the bliss grass harvests were more important than ever to just make a profit. This was not going to be pleasant.
***...
The next morning at the very first light of dawn, they got started with taking stock of what they had left, sorting gear and checking for damage. It was grim.
They immediately found excessive shrapnel damage to the shed by the river, the building was full of holes, as was the stuff inside the building...
"The infant oxygen tent..." Jen murmured in dismay. It was in its box, and the box was now punctured all the way through with several small holes from supersonic shrapnel.
"We can fix it with something to patch up the holes." Seth reassured her.
"I just hope that... FUCK! The chemistry set!" Seth exclaimed in dismay.
Jen came over and found a lot of broken glass in the box labeled "chemistry glassware". This was really bad...
"The hydrolysis room equipment!" Jen exclaimed with a sudden thought.
"Fuck fuck fuck, let's check... Oh FUCK!" Seth screamed.
The hydrolysis room equipment was also full of holes!
"The bliss grass shed has another hydrolysis unit," Jen said with relief.
"Thank the Emperor for that! Otherwise we would be in very deep trouble!" Seth exclaimed with relief.
They frantically checked other important belongings, searching for damage.
"The radio gear is intact?! But it got hit the most! What the heck did Wsuioo make this out of!" Seth exclaimed in wonder.
"It's military radio equipment husband, it's designed to resist shrapnel in the field. Made from ballistic plastic components designed to resist bullets. Wsuioo makes extensive use of ballistic plastic in all their gear, it's produced in huge slave labor chemical factories," Jen explained.
"Blessed Emperor, it is barely even scratched! This is good news, damn good news," Seth exclaimed.
"I think that your computer has not been so lucky," Jen called from where she was looking on the opposite side of the shed from Seth.
"I can live without it, damn shame though," Seth called back.
The rest of the search was similar. Most gear was damaged or destroyed, but the odd bit of gear had survived. The quad bike recharge unit and spare battery had been resting behind the radio gear, and had only superficial damage. The oven was full of holes, but was so simplistic that it was easily repaired.
The more basic metal furniture had a lot of holes and dents in it, but would still function or at least could be repaired with a welder. The heroin bags were punctured, but in this high gravity the heroin inside had merely piled on the floor and didn't blow away. Jen very carefully collected all the heroin that wasn't dirty into an undamaged plastic bag, and then collected the dirty heroin into a separate bag to purify later.
It was a disaster all around, but they tried to stay positive.
"What can you do without the chemistry glassware?" Seth asked after assessing all the damage.
"I can try my best to make do with alternative gear like plastic bottles. I humbly request that you find every empty glass bottle you can around the farm sheds. Maybe we can rig up some metal bottles and metal tubes too," Jen offered.
"Will do, anything you need, just keep making heroin for me," Seth urged.
"Yes husband," Jen said obediently.
"I'm still astonished by how much damage those bombs did. How did they do it?" Seth asked apprehensively.
"I think that they were some sort of plasma bombs. Designed to destroy tanks and armoured buildings. The ground around the house looks like a lot of it was vaporised by a high energy plasma. The rock that wasn't evaporated was seemingly melted and sprayed over a wide area at very high speed. The chunks of listening post only survived being vaporised completely because they were made of military grade materials," Jen postulated.
"Is it radioactive?" Seth asked fearfully.
"It shouldn't be, plasma weaponry usually doesn't produce atomic destabilisation. I think we are safe from radiation," Jen reassured him.
Seth sighed with relief, trusting her scientific education completely by now.
"We need to start inspecting the rest of the farm for damage. That shrapnel might have damaged other stuff. I'm also scared the the electric cables might have shorted out from the damage and drained all the remaining batteries. Heck, HEAPS of stuff could have gone wrong," Seth said.
Jen agreed and they got to work inspecting the entire farm for damage. They quickly found that the wires to the house had indeed melted together at the boundary of the crater, and had completely shorted out the entire power grid. Seth quickly cut the wire, sliced open the outer cable, pulled out about a foot of the two insulated wires inside, and used electrical tape to isolate the positive and negative wires from further contact.
They then found solar panels smashed by shrapnel damage, as well as water tanks, battery banks, long ground wires cut by shrapnel, crops ripped up by shrapnel, and widespread other damage within a certain radius of the bomb crater. Military grade anti-armour plasma bombs were not good for local civilians!
Before they could manage all this damage however, Jen and Seth encountered Imperial Guardsmen moving across their land towards the crater. Seth cautiously drove very slowly towards them, ready to flee if they showed any signs of hostility.
Jen felt very apprehensive as she rode in the trailer towards them. They were a platoon of around 50 or 60 men, of a variety of different Wsuian male military lines. An S99 lieutenant was leading the platoon from the rear!
The men were all upgraded versions of the various lines, upgraded for high gravity fighting, and were monstrously muscled, even more than Seth was! They were highly camouflaged for the local terrain, with military grade breathing equipment and backpack hydrolysis units. Their little bare skin was all painted in camouflage patterns, but insignia identified the rank and line of each person.
They were all packing some serious firepower, with groups of heavily muscled men carrying 3 Sabre Pattern Gun Emplacements fitted with twin auto-cannons for anti-air defence. The men also carried some brutal Wsuian pattern grenade launchers, a lot of high caliber sniper rifles, and the rest carried high gravity adapted las-carbines and grenades.
They were all clearly disappointed to find the listening post already destroyed, especially an S5 line "combat engineer" model who probably had eldar gene upgrades to hijack eldar technology. They were spreading out to gather intelligence, and they waved Jen and Seth over.
"Ah, a 679 line baseline wife model, very good. What happened to the listening post?" The S99 lieutenant asked in one of the Wsuian languages.
"The xenos bombed it yesterday sir," Jen replied in low gothic so that Seth could understand.
"There are some chunks of the xenos structure scattered around the place. One down in the river over there. We didn't touch them," Seth added.
"Tell me everything," the lieutenant commanded, authoritative yet charming the way all S99's were.
The S99 was clearly very young for an S99 on active duty, probably only 35 years old at most. They were always excessively educated before being put on duty, but had extremely long natural life spans to cope with this, living for centuries before old age finally weakened them. This particular S99 had high gravity genetic upgrades, and was extremely heavily muscled to fight effortlessly in high gravity environments like this.
Jen and Seth told the lieutenant everything they could remember about the listening post and the eldar in general, the lieutenant asked questions to quickly get to the point and then charmingly said that he had enough information.
"The Imperial Guard has need of you two fine imperial citizens, We need this vehicle, we need your food, we need your electricity, and we need your money to buy more supplies," the lieutenant said with so much charm that Seth would have agreed if Jen hadn't been there.
"LIES! Complete and utter CRAP!" Jen exclaimed.
"What are you doing!?" The S99 asked in the Wsuian language.
"I'm doing what I was programmed and ordered to by Wsuioo. I'm an imprinted 679 line wife, I am protecting my imprinted husband as my unbreakable genetic programming compels me to. My husband has already paid 50000 credits to Wsuioo to buy me, he has given enough to Wsuioo without you robbing him!" Jen snapped in low gothic.
"JEN! This guy's an Imperial Guard officer! He will shoot us if you talk to him like that!" Seth exclaimed.
"No he won't husband, you are a customer of Wsuioo, it's bad for business to shoot the customer. This S99 is programmed to protect the financial interests of Wsuioo, shooting someone who has purchased a slave from Wsuioo is not going to encourage our neighbours to finalise the purchase of all the slaves they have ordered," Jen insisted.
The S99 was looking at Jen with obvious anger, but did not order his men to shoot her or Seth, just as Jen knew he wouldn't.
"I will not rob your husband, 679, you can relax." The S99 said in the Wsuian language so Seth couldn't understand.
"He said that he won't rob you," Jen translated.
"You are growing illegal drugs," the S99 accused in low gothic.
"The growing of illegal drugs provided the money to buy me. The money from these drugs flows into Wsuioo. Do you propose to stop this flow of money? At the moment my husband is saving up to buy books from Wsuioo, should he stop growing drugs to get the money to buy these books?" Jen asked.
The S99 paused at this mention of commerce to Wsuioo. He was bound by his programming to do nothing to hinder Wsuian commercial interests, Jen had him trapped by his own control genes.
This was the truth of Wsuioo, NO ONE was free, not even the governor of Wsuioo himself was anything other than a slave to his own genetic programming. On Wsuioo, even the ruling caste were slaves, EVERYONE was a slave!
"Very well 679, buy the books. But if you EVER stop buying things from Wsuioo each year, I will inform local law enforcement that you are growing drugs. I will check every year, you stop buying, you start dying," the S99 said in low gothic.
Seth winced in fear but nodded enthusiastically.
The platoon radioed their superiors in a code language, and were apparently given new orders to inspect the next eldar structure. They continued on their way without stealing anything from Seth.
"We have to radio everyone we know as soon as possible, they will rob everyone they meet if we don't warn them," Jen said gravely.
"We can't till we fix all this damage to the grid. The quad bike battery is getting low, we need to restore power before we can warn anyone." Seth said gravely.
They hurriedly got to work fixing the wires, disconnecting broken batteries that were shorting out, and saving what solar panels were still intact. It took two hours before the grid stopped shorting out and started retaining power from the solar panels.
They were only just finished doing this when the 3 Plowman brothers arrived, looking the grimmest Jen had ever seen them.
"Oxygen!" The brothers pleaded.
Seth instantly let them use 3 half full backpack bottles from the quad bike trailer. They frantically used them.
"We had only 5 minutes of air left! The Imperial Guard stole EVERYTHING!" Bobbie Plowman exclaimed in panic.
***...
The Plowman brothers were merely the first of a large number of refugees to arrive. Everyone who was not either trying to order or already in possession of a 679 line or other Wsuian product was being robbed of everything of value, including oxygen supplies and power supplies.
Only Wsuian customers were being spared of losing so much as to be unable to pay for their purchases, but even they were being robbed a little bit.
News of this was spreading fast, and Z8C's radio frequency was now so jammed with frantic pleading to buy slaves that it was just constantly garbled voices talking all at the same time. The Wsuian 302nd light infantry regiment had addressed this by commandeering hundreds of local radio frequencies in the towns around the space port and using off duty guardsmen to "volunteer to help this important local business" by manning the radios themselves and taking orders for Z8C.
Z8C was going to have a VERY good year this year!
Jen was actually the last of the imprinted 679 line wives on 1D8V-44 to realise that the only way to save the planet was to flood it with imprinted 679 line wife models that would then try to protect their husbands from the S99 line officers. Jen was not special for a 679 line, all had advanced IQ's and severe education, these women were mass produced almost exactly the same as each other.
To Jen's shame, she had been the LAST to figure out this solution to the S99 problem. She had apparently not even been the first 679 line to come up with the idea of fermenting alcohol during the grain famine, she had been merely the one to get the credit for coming up with the alcohol idea. With the way gossip travels, it was very easy for one 679 to be mistaken for another.
Well, in this current incident, the other 679 line wives were already leaps and bounds ahead of Jen before she and Seth even got the radio to work. The other 679 line wives had already been spreading crazy rumours ever since the Wsuian regiment arrived, telling everyone that anyone who didn't buy a 679 line wife would be shot by the Wsuians.
This lie was close enough to the truth that it was being believed by thousands, reinforced by the current predatory Wsuian behaviour, and the population of 1D8V-44 was in full scale panic to somehow buy a 679 line wife before they were shot, even men who were already married to normal women!
Colonel A1A had of course been in no hurry to publicly deny this highly profitable rumour, and had neither confirmed nor denied that he was preparing firing squads to execute anyone who wasn't a Wsuian customer. Jen knew for a fact that the Colonel would not simply execute the free slave labor that was the planetary civilian population, but the theft of people's belongings was still going to kill thousands at this rate.
Jen and Seth currently had 13 people taking sanctuary on the farm, their own farms completely robbed of everything of value to send back to Wsuioo. The regiment was like a line of army ants, utterly stripping everything before them and sending it back to their bloated nest!
This was what made the military lines so profitable for Wsuioo. They sent them to the Imperial Guard in massive numbers for a fraction of what they cost to produce, but made up for it when the military lines started stripping planets and mailing the plunder home to Wsuioo. They were superlative soldiers, they achieved victory more than most Imperial Guard regiments, so the Imperium usually tolerated their kleptomaniac behaviour as long as they got results.
In the instances where the Imperium did take issue of the Wsuian Kleptomania, the offending regiment was merely killed or sent to penal servitude, and replaced with a new regiment of mass produced soldiers. The Wsuian soldier lines did not hesitate to throw away their own lives to make more money for Wsuioo like this, a genetic imperative compelling them to behave like this.
But the victims of this policy were still heartbreaking...
Jen and Seth now somehow needed to find some way of supporting 13 extra people with their very limited power infrastructure. These people needed air, every single moment, air that could only be made with a lot of electricity...
Jen and Seth did not have a lot of electricity, and the 13 refugees were only surviving at the moment because of the pre-filled air bottles in the storage shed. It was now a race against time to find a solution before the air started running out.
***...
Sparks crackled as Joe Plowman connected cables to Jen's latest makeshift chemical battery, providing extra precious watts to run the hydrolysis unit in the bliss grass processing shed. It wasn't much, but might add another hour of oxygen to the supply bottles.
It had been days now, and Jen had been working nonstop using her knowledge of chemistry to keep generating power. She had used everything she could find to make every type of battery she could to keep the air flowing.
"I need more metal, anything galvanised, or lead, just get me SOMETHING metal," Jen told the men around her.
"Steel?" Joe Plowman suggested.
"That's one thing I don't have a shortage of, I need stuff other than steel," Jen explained.
"We still have some spare copper wire, these aluminium odds and ends, and whatever the hell this stuff is," Bobbie Plowman offered.
"Show me... Ah good yes, I need more of this," Jen said, pointing to a pile of shiny metal screws.
Jen immediately got to work making the next battery to keep the air flowing.
The sound of the quad bike approached, and Jen looked up expectantly to see what they had for her. Dean Plowman and Seth were on the quad bike, and the trailer contained a box full of stuff the refugees had dug up from the ground.
"Found almost a hundred spent auto-cannon rounds embedded in the clay a mile away," Seth said triumphantly.
"Oh that's WONDERFUL! I can make a lead acid battery!" Jen said excitedly.
"You boys, get scrubbing, I need that lead all scrubbed clean, this will give a few more hours!" Jen excitedly ordered her pit crew of refugee assistants.
Jen would never presume to order Seth around, but as a 679 line wife she was perfectly able to order around male "servants" of her husband's household to get things done. She was treating these men as honorary servants to keep everyone alive.
Jen immediately continued working on the current battery, but multitasked to create some more sulphuric acid for the lead battery she was making next.
With 13 extra people to provide labor, things were actually getting done around the farm. The men were divided up into groups. 3 men assisted Jen at all times in the shed's "lab" area, 4 men constantly harvested food and especially bliss grass during the day, 5 men spent the day combing through the farm from anything Jen could use for making batteries, and the remaining 1 man assisted Seth as he constantly travelled around between the various people to provide logistics.
The shed Jen was in was piled high with sacks of bliss grass from the 4 men working the fields, the biggest harvest Jen had ever seen for such a short time, as the men's way of earning their keep.
To be continued