Chapter 3Forge
The Ferrocrete encased dark tunnels were seemingly endless under the factory, endless tunnels and junctions and ramps up or down, an endless maze of old exhausted mine works from an age long long ago.
The worst thing about this labyrinth was not the oppressive darkness nor the vast confusing maze, but rather the worst thing was the thick carpet of dust that covered everything with a remotely horizontal surface. The dust was old and putrid, the particulate particles of ancient smog pollution that had had time to settle out of the air and sediment upon every available surface.
The Ferrocrete floor was thick with the stuff, an inch deep at least, sometimes the mats of soft dust were a foot deep or even more, with all kinds of hazards buried beneath awaiting unsuspecting feet.
Through this carpet of filth shambled the scratched and filthy heavy bionic legs of the servitor, the grimy steel feet kicking up clouds of dust behind her that rendered the air almost unbreathable. She moved unceasingly forward through the thick dust, her metal legs half wading and half ploughing through this industrial filth.
The bionic limbed naked blonde woman held her tiny newborn baby to her breast with her worn and scratched old grimy bionic hands and arms, and the filth covered newborn suckled heavily at her breast for the thin milk the servitor's famined flesh body could produce. The servitor hadn't eaten anything in days and had drank little but carbonic acid she had found in filthy puddles in some places in the endless tunnels.
Her bionic limbs were flashing yellow warning lights of low battery, she would fail soon without food and electricity, but she continued on implacably to save the life of her helpless baby.
For hours she continued through an incomprehensible maze of tunnels and dusty filth, randomly taking turns and ramps at tunnel junctions. Nothing seemed to change.
She was going to die soon. The low battery warning lights were flashing worse than ever before.
The servitor mindlessly blundered on with failing limbs, and she came upon an old wall power box covered in dust!
Desperately she opened the power box and was greeted by a blinking red light on a fuse box with active power!
Quick as blinking the desperate servitor grabbed a spool of corroded wire from the power box and stabbed two wires into the recharge socket of her right bionic leg, putting the other end of the wires into the positive and negative outlets of one of the fuse box power outlets with a spark of crackling electricity!
Weak electrical current trickled into her battery, barely enough electricity, and she sat down on the dusty ground to conserve energy as she very slowly recharged at this pitiful drip feeding level of current. The servitor gasped with relief in binary and held her baby to her chest, the air around them so thick with dust that they could barely see let alone breathe without discomfort.
The servitor found a second spool of wire in the fuse box and she lovingly plugged the live wires into Subject Wah's festering umbilical cord to let Subject Wah recharge…
Wah Wah Wah!
Subject Wah was making a lot of noise and shaking in spasms?
(Subject Wah) (action recharging) the servitor said contentedly in binary.
The fuse box then blew?
Subject Wah was no longer being charged with electricity but was still making much loud noise. The servitor removed Subject Wah's wires and inspected the fuse box, changing a fuse to restore the earlier power supply.
The servitor was so critically low on power now that she couldn't risk blowing another fuse, she reluctantly focused on recharging her own battery rather than Subject Wah's.
(Subject this servitor) (action observing) (Subject Wah). (Assessment) (Subject Wah) (state incompatible with) (action recharge by) (object this fuse box). (Subject this servitor) (status critically low power) (action unable to continue locomotion) (period until recharged). (Conclusion) (Subject Wah) (action wait until) (period fully recharged) (subject this servitor). The servitor said in binary.
Subject Wah's short blonde hair was all standing on end now and her withered umbilical cord was slightly burnt with electrical power. Subject Wah was crying and highly agitated but she was still alive after this attempted recharging.
The servitor lay down on her back and held the partially electrocuted looking Subject Wah protectively to her chest. Subject Wah quieted and nuzzled her mouth on the servitor's white chest fluid for a period of 01 hours 03 minutes and 58 seconds. The servitor and subject Wah engaged action sleep.
The sleeping mother and baby looked pitiful laying down in the impenetrably thick cloud of industrial dust, the dust slowly settling on their bodies, their nostrils turning black with dust caught in their wet snot.
The electricity gradually flowed through the wires into the servitor's leg, recharging her high performance battery cells over the course of hours. The yellow low power warning lights on her bionics switched off after a time, becoming the red light of medium charge, until finally flashing the green light of fully charged.
The servitor awoke to find herself fully recharged in her machine parts but starving and thirsty in her flesh parts. Her first action was to inspect Subject Wah, finding her to be sleeping but alive.
(Subject this servitor) (status dehydrated) (subset severe). The servitor said in binary.
(Assessment) (action seek water) (subset drinkable) (period immediately). The servitor decided.
The servitor stood up and unplugged the wires from her metal leg, gently cradling Subject Wah in her dusty metal arms. The dust in the air had settled slightly during the stillness of sleep, coating both of them in a thick grey carpet of dry filth, but the servitor's movements quickly stirred up the dust once again, reducing visibility and coating her wet eyes in black wet dust that she repeatedly blinked away.
With full electrical power she moved quickly on her bionic steel legs, moving through the blinding dust in a random direction down the filthy dust choked tunnel. She was desperate to drink something and she instinctively smelled the air for the slightest hint of dampness through the overpowering stench of dust in her nostrils.
The servitor moved a great distance in great haste, stumbling through the knee deep dust and tripping multiple times down into the dust when objects hidden beneath the dust caught her worn old steel feet. Each time she tripped into the dust she carefully retrieved the dropped Subject Wah from the soft dust, Subject Wah soon so filthy that she was completely grey all over.
The servitor was grey all over with dusty filth as she continued to plough through the dust of the tunnel floors, but her mind was implacable as were her mechanical limbs, she just continued on relentlessly.
After hours of randomly taking tunnels at junctions and going randomly up and down sloping tunnel ramps, the dust grew thinner (though still oppressive). The dust went from knee deep to ankle deep, then from ankle deep to a thin coating of dust on the rock and Ferrocrete tunnel floor.
Without warning the thin dust turned black with damp, the ground became slippery underfoot and the servitor slowed down. She continued on carefully, and the red light of her bionics reflected back off liquid surfaces coating this part of the tunnel!
The servitor came upon a few tiny puddles of filthy carbonic acid on the floor!
The servitor desperately crouched down and put her mouth to the nearest puddle, slurping the acid into her mouth desperately.
Her mouth hissed and stung as the acid boiled in contact with her moist saliva, water being a powerful catalyst to carbonic acid, breaking down the H2CO3 into CO2 and H2O in prodigious reactivity. She swallowed the stinging acid into her stomach, her stomach swelling up rapidly with gas and she burped out an enormous belch of pure CO2 (carbon dioxide).
According to file caches in the servitor's brain H2CO3 (carbonic acid) was a common liquid on this particular forge world due to the high air pressure, lack of water and the abundant carbon dioxide. The ash wastes outside the factories were heavily irradiated and the coruscating rads unleashed a storm of charged particles including free high energy protons. Proton radiation naturally converted some of the abundant carbon dioxide into carbonic acid, which accumulated in huge clouds in the smoggy air outside, occasionally drenching the land in rainstorms of this acidic filth.
The atmosphere of this particular forge world was approximately 6 standard atmospheres of pressure, high enough for carbonic acid to form a liquid at room temperature, and the surface was so devoid of water from the Adeptus Mechanicus pumping up every drop for their own use that the carbonic acid rarely decomposed, forming a revolting acidic "water table" of sorts in the rock layers. Occasionally some of this acid leaked out of the rocks into the tunnels, forming puddles like these ones.
The servitor desperately used her stinging mouth to slurp up every puddle of carbonic acid she could find, her throat belching out gas as the carbonic acid decomposed rapidly inside her wet stomach. Despite the pain and eructation she was left with a small amount of water in her stomach as a decomposition byproduct of the carbonic acid decomposition reaction.
The servitor found steadily more puddles of acid as she slowly continued down the tunnel, slurping dry every puddle she encountered. Her stomach was rapidly filling with water byproducts until she vomited up much of her water. She paused for a period of 30 minutes 02 seconds, then she continued drinking carbonic acid much more slowly to prevent vomiting after a binary conversation to herself.
The servitor was fully hydrated now. She was still hungry for food however and she continued down the acid damp tunnel. The puddles got bigger and more frequent until she was wading through a flooded tunnel up to her upper legs.
The tunnel ahead was just an endless pool of carbonic acid around a bend up ahead. The servitor took another step and her urinary system dipped down into the surface of the carbonic acid.
The effect was instantaneous. The slightest moisture in her urinary opening reacted with the carbonic acid in a stinging burning decomposition reaction. The decomposition process produced more water as a byproduct which then mixed into the huge pool of acid!
The entire pool of acid was boiling with heat and gas!
The servitor stood stupidly watching this process boiling around her. Her lower body was stinging in agony standing in this boiling acid pool, her steel legs were unharmed but for very mild acid corrosion.
Alarm lights suddenly flashed all over the servitor's bionics, signalling dangerously high carbon dioxide levels in the air!
The servitor looked down at Subject Wah in horror and turned tail and fled back the way she had came through the violently bubbling acid, seeking nonlethal air.
The warning lights were flashing more rapidly, the carbon dioxide levels were rising higher.
The servitor ran as fast as her bionic legs could move, sloshing through acid in great leaps that were sapped by the liquid tugging at her legs.
Subject Wah was hyperventilating in response to the carbon dioxide in her lungs and body, she would die in this air!
The servitor ran clear of the deep pool, running splashing through the outlying puddles setting them boiling too with the wetness of her feet.
She ran away down the tunnel, relieved to encounter dry dust. Her bionic warning lights flashed slower and slower, then stopped as she entered a draft of smoggy dusty filthy air at a tunnel junction. The air was polluted here but the pollution level had dipped below lethal.
The servitor observed Subject Wah, seeing dust clogged wet eyes blinking back at the servitor. Subject Wah was breathing normally now and apparently alive and well.
The servitor was still starving for food but after the encounter with the carbonic acid at least she wasn't thirsty anymore.
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