Chapter 5Forge
The production of factory 888B never ceased, the demand for the nuts and bolts and other humble steel parts the factory produced was eternal and insatiable. The galaxy was at war and the military vehicles and equipment of this forge world was the only thing holding back the tide of alien filth in this entire sector of space.
The Imperial Guard war effort in the local sector had an insatiable demand for fresh armoured vehicles and battle tanks, and most especially of all they required motorised artillery systems with the aiming tolerances to hit precise targets at maximum range without deviation, a level of engineering precision only possible in the production facilities of a forge world of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Motorised self propelled artillery systems like the basilisk and the griffon required a lot of nuts and bolts and screws to assemble. They required engine crankshafts and engine piston components, they required steel engine brackets. Factory 888B manufactured all of these components in prodigious quantities.
Factory 888B produced some of the most basic spare engine parts for the motorised artillery systems of thousands of Imperial Guard regiments fighting in this sector. Each regiment needed over ten times as many spare parts in their inventory as they had operational vehicles of all types just to ensure battlefield repairs and maintenance, endless numbers of spare crankshafts, spare pistons, spare screws and bolts and other components, which required Herculean output from the factory to supply this additional demand.
But the factory couldn't produce anything without steel and steel couldn't be produced without iron ore.
To this end the forge world dedicated huge labour forces and resources to the acquisition of new iron ore from deep underground to meet this insatiable demand for steel.
Down in the grubby depths miles below factory 888B the sounds of explosions and the grinding deafening rattle of stone drilling were endless as thousands of servitors and menials mined the iron ore deposits. The mines had been subdivided into sections with different functions, with only the front most sections digging and blasting out the ore, the other sections behind the work face being used mostly for logistics and accommodations and ore processing.
Huge helical ore augers in colossal shafts carried a steady stream of iron ore up to the surface for smelting and use, other smaller shafts had carefully filtered air blasted down them by huge electric fans to ventilate the worksite. Cargo elevators rose and fell down cavernous mineshafts on creaking steel cables to provide fresh supplies and other logistics to the mine.
Down in part of this cacophonous worksite was a cavern filled with grimy metal demountable personnel habitation units resembling standard model TEU intermodal containers, little more than modified shipping containers fitted with airlock doors, grimy windows, an air scrubbing system and some rudimentary plumbing and electrics. These demountable habitation units (or hab units for short) were stacked atop each other three high and interconnected with demountable steel scaffolding walkways and stairs, with grimy insulated power lines and old plastic water hoses and sewage tubes inelegantly hooked up to the hab units for basic functioning.
This ugly metal settlement was the accommodation for the Adeptus Mechanicus Menials, a place where they could safely escape the confines of their heavy rad suits and goggled gas masks to rest and wash their weak flesh bodies in between their gruelling labour shifts.
Inside one of these ugly metal hab units two women were currently talking animatedly to their four other female roommates who lived crammed together in bunk beds in the tiny interior of their shared hab unit.
"I swear that she had a baby. The servitor was carrying this crying little newborn baby." A woman named Pi said animatedly, drying her long blonde hair with a faded towel as she spoke, fresh from the shower and currently sitting on her second level bunk in the right hand three person bunk bed that pressed against the right wall of the tiny unit.
"It was definitely a baby, it was crying." Another woman named Sine agreed from the tiny table between the bunk beds and the tiny bathroom where she was sitting eating a bowl of nutrient paste.
"No you aren't serious, tell me that you're joking." A woman roommate named Cosine exclaimed in dismay from the bunk bed above Pi, leaning over the edge of the bed to look at Pi so that Cosine's long black dyed hair hung down below her upside down head.
"Why would we lie? It was a baby.", Pi insisted, rubbing her wet hair with the towel vigorously.
"I thought servitors couldn't get pregnant?" A woman roommate named Tangent said from her second level bunk on the left side of the cramped room, Tangent currently hugging her pillow in her lap as she sat on her thin mattress with barely enough head room to sit up in a slight slouch.
"Obviously they can." Sine interjected from the tiny table.
"So then who's the father?" A woman roommate named Integer called from inside the tiny shower cubicle in the bathroom at the far end of the hab unit, the interior walls not soundproof and the shower spray so quiet and economical in water output that she could hear the entire conversation whilst having a shower.
"We didn't ask. Probably some sick rapist." Pi said with disgust and sadness.
"That's horrible!" Cosine squealed in distress.
"You sure it's not another servitor? Maybe she has a boyfriend servitor?" A woman roommate named Exponent suggested from the closed door of the toilet cubicle next to the shower in the bathroom.
"Boy servitors don't work that way, they castrate them and they wouldn't even know how to do that with a girl servitor even if they weren't. It's gotta be some sick disgusting man who isn't a servitor." Pi said unhappily.
"Well where is this servitor now?" Cosine asked.
"I don't know exactly. She clobbered me when I wanted to take the baby, then she stole a crate of corn powder and wandered off somewhere into the dark catacombs. I didn't want to follow after her into that dark maze, especially not when I was on duty." Pi explained apologetically.
"Did you at least report it?" Cosine asked disapprovingly.
"No I didn't have the heart to, the Skitarii would shoot her and who knows what they would do to the baby. I reported the cornmeal crate as being lost in an industrial accident, I made up that a forklift hit it and spilled it on the floor. As far as they know I swept up the mess and put the crate in recycling disposal, I found some rusty scrap metal about the same weight as an empty crate and put it in, the tech priests won't even check it." Pi explained in a hushed conspiratorial voice.
"They have turned people into servitors for less! Don't go telling us these things or we'll get in trouble too!" Tangent protested from her bunk, hugging her pillow tighter with stress.
"But she had a BABY! I couldn't just turn her in to be shot and scrapped for parts! You weren't there, you didn't see how pitiful the whole thing looked." Pi defended her actions.
"What Pi said, it was the saddest thing I've ever seen. We just couldn't bring ourselves to turn her in, not with that crying baby in her arms, it was just too pitiful." Sine concurred in defence.
"I don't want to get a baby killed but this is serious. They could turn all six of us into servitors for having any involvement with covering up food theft, especially these days with the war impacting food supplies!" Tangent fretted.
"It's barely even 'food' this new stuff, what happened to the good quality stuff we used to get?" Sine complained, grimacing disgustedly at the nutrient paste she was currently eating.
"The orks attacked the really good agri world. We now get our food from that really really shitty one with the half dead soil. We are lucky we live on a forge world and get first priority with the food too, that hive world what you call it, the one with the really weird name, they are on half food rations even with this shitty food." Integer explained, emerging from the shower wrapped in a towel.
"Well Cog damn it that really blows my fuse!" Sine protested, poking at her nutrient paste disgustedly with a metal spoon.
The six women continued their conversation along these lines in their cramped living quarters, the hab unit barely big enough to accommodate six adult women with any degree of comfort. This was the grim reality of being an Adeptus Mechanicus menial with a weak human flesh body on this filthy polluted planet, you had to live in these tiny cramped hab units any time you wanted to get out of your heavy uncomfortable rad suit and gas mask unless you wanted your health to suffer.
The air outside was so dusty, so toxic and so full of fumes that it would shorten your human life by years and give your flesh body serious health problems if you didn't have the right protective gear on. Servitors were expendable, they didn't need protective gear because they were not expected to survive into their later years anyway, more mindless meat could always be grown in vats to replace the flesh parts when they died, but Menials were less expendable, being skilled and intelligent enough to not be so easily replaced, especially not when common sense and human wisdom and experience was some of the most valuable traits a good menial possessed, traits that couldn't just be burned into a new vat grown brain with a simple wire data transfer.
Due to this fact the menials spent a lot of their off duty time crammed inside the claustrophobic interior of their hab unit with its scrubbed clean air and its protection from rads and chemicals outside. They were bored much of the time and usually passed the time in conversation with each other such as they were doing right now.
Pi finished drying her long blonde hair and looked outside through the grimy glass window in the wall beside her bunk. She got a jump scare seeing the goggled eyes of a male menial leering in at her through the window, Pi was currently topless from the shower!
Pi threw her pillow at the glass window and swore colourfully. The goggled eyes of the man looked amused and a gloved hand waved against the rad resistant glass. It was just Logarithm her boyfriend being a creep again.
Logarithm walked around the scaffolding walkway outside the hab unit and knocked on the door hopefully.
"Go away Logarithm, we are not dressed to receive you breed crazy man." Pi shouted tauntingly into an intercom microphone after pressing a button.
"The flesh is weak for your fine behind." Logarithm replied cheekily through the intercom with a gas mask muffled voice, making the entire room full of women squeal and laugh.
"It's not our scheduled breeding time yet, you are breaking the sex segregation curfew." Pi teased back playfully.
"But you have such a breed worthy body that I can't wait that long. Let me in, I promise you will have a good time." Logarithm said hopefully, making Pi erupt with giggling.
"This isn't the fertilisation unit, how are we going to get the fertilised egg out of me to grow in the vats without the egg extraction servitors? You know that the tech priests will be enraged if the egg dies." Pi playfully taunted her boyfriend.
"You ain't even ovulating yet Pi, you won't get fertilised, this will just be practice." Logarithm pined hopefully.
"You get to breed me for the entire night in the fertilisation unit if you just wait." Pi reminded her overly eager boyfriend.
"But that's only once a month, I need you now Pi, I gotta breed your beautiful body or I'll have psychiatric issues, your behind is just too fine!" Logarithm shamelessly propositioned her.
"I'm sorry but you will just have to wait Logarithm. Now get out of the female hab unit section before the Skitarii catch you." Pi told her disappointed boyfriend.
Logarithm wasn't happy to leave unsatisfied but he did depart reluctantly after a few more failed attempts at talking his way inside the hab unit. Pi chuckled and sighed as he left, the silly man.
On this particular forge world romantic intimacy between menial couples was strictly controlled and regulated. The tech priest rulers of this world placed no value on sexual intimacy, seeing sex merely as a means of acquiring fertilised human eggs to then grow in a vat to create new generations of mostly servitors. The couples were permitted to mate only one day a month when the woman was ovulating, and special servitors would painlessly find and extract the fertilised ova from the woman's fallopian tube. The couple would have no further contact with their offspring and never found out what happened to them.
Pi and Logarithm had been romantically involved for slightly over two Terran years and three Terran months now and they had together produced fertilised ova on 27 occasions in the fertilisation unit. It would take almost two decades for their fertilised eggs to grow to full size in their amniotic birthing vats, it would be a long time before their offspring became either servitors or something higher like menials, maybe some of their offspring might become Skitarii or even tech priests if they were exceptionally gifted.
This thought made Pi think about the poor servitor with the baby.
Babies were rare on this forge world but not unknown. Sometimes an especially amorous menial couple would be unable to contain themselves and engage in unauthorised breeding, resulting in an unharvested ova implanting in the woman's uterus in a natural biological pregnancy. The woman would typically try to hide her pregnant state from the authorities and give birth to the baby in secret, keeping the baby in her hab unit with the help of sympathetic roommates to care for the infant on a constant basis.
Sometimes the child would survive to adulthood undetected, more often they would die of some disease or be discovered by authorities and whisked away to a fate unknown. Those who survived to adulthood could become colourful individuals existing on the fringes of society, becoming career criminals or catacomb treasure hunters or black marketeers or other such unregulated career paths. A few were even recruited into the ranks of the Skitarii for their highly honed skills at stealth and survival if the tech priests deemed them worthy.
The menials in Pi's hab unit all knew what a baby was and what one looked like and sounded like from rare encounters with forbidden children, but none had any real experience with them. Pi had been grown to early adulthood in a vat, everyone had. She had no idea what breeding pair had produced the ovum that grew into her and she had never had a family.
Pi had been deemed intelligent and wise and healthy enough to be turned into a menial rather than a servitor, but not so remarkable to see her turned into a Skitarii soldier or a tech priest of the ruling class. She had had huge quantities of information burned directly into her brain by a cerebral wire, and she had been further educated in study programs designed to build wisdom and common sense and social skills to let her work as efficiently as possible.
Pi looked out of the grimy window again and wondered how the mother servitor was fairing somewhere out in the dark catacombs beyond the authorised work area.
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