Another week, another chapter
We were all noobs once, Havoc. And I always liked Math's name; I guessed it was short for Matthew, but it goes with his character to use a more unique slang form of his name
Sometimes to tell a story, you've gotta say 'I was once a noob, too'.
Or s
omething.
W@RF 4!
Chapter 41
Out in the stockyards, Anni had slipped past where Javi was working and was now meandering between the cages with Somi, passing scraps of barbed wire fence and old, broken security orbs, stopping every so often to examine anything that interested her or the paramite, and generally enjoying the freedom that came with no one knowing where she was.
She was bent over, peering into a sloghut. “Would you like a house like this?” She asked Somi, who of course didn’t understand her words but responded to her voice with a happy hiss. Anni smiled and pirouetted with more enthusiasm than grace, laughing happily. “Come on; it can’t be far now.”
She and the paramite hurried forwards to the next low cliff and they scrambled up it, side-by-side. Somi reached the top first and jumped over, out of sight, and Anni reached the top a moment later, peering over, “There’s the gate!” She said with an excited yelp when a yell from behind her brought her crashing back down to earth.
“Stop right there.”
She quickly pushed Somi down out of sight, hissing at her as she did, imitating the sounds a cornered paramite made to tell her to stay. Then she turned.
Her heart sank as she saw the new slig, Stivik, hurrying towards her, scrambling over the broken ground with less difficulty than she would have expected. “Stop right there,” He said again.
“What do you want?” She asked sulkily.
“What do you think?”
She glared at him, “I’m not hurting anyone.”
He rolled his eyes, “You’re gonna hurt yourself, girl. What are you gonna do when you get out there?”
She pouted, “I just want to see something outside of the factory! I’ve never been outside of industrial ground.”
“Yeah, for good reason,” He replied stonily, walking towards the bottom of the cliff. “Do you have any idea what it’s like out there?”
She looked down on him coldly, “What do you know about it?”
“I used to work out there, mu- kid. It was my job for seven years. I know how dangerous it is.”
Anni was suddenly struck by the strangeness of the situation. The slig was trying to reason with her. She felt he ought to have been shouting at least. “I won’t go for long. I’m gonna come back tomorrow.”
He snorted, “Oh yeah?”
“Yes! I just want to see some of the world; I’m not running away.”
“Whatever you want, you’ll be dead before morning. What are you going to eat? Where are you going to sleep? How are you gonna stop yourself being some animal’s dinner?”
How could she reply? She couldn’t tell him about Somi, or about her hope of meeting natives. “I’ll be careful.”
“You’ll be dead.” He sighed, “Look, I hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” He raised his gun at last, “Come on. I can shoot you without killing you if you really make me do it.”
She glared.
“Come
on mud!”
Looking furious and with a last glance over her shoulder, she slid down the cliff.
“Good, now let’s get out of here.”
They began the long walk of shame back towards Rupture Farms. Stivik walked just behind her, his gun half-raised in a confident threat that stoked her anger. She was furious with herself for being so stupid, for letting herself get distracted. She should have known that they would come after her; she should have gone as fast as she could!
They were nearly at the part of the stockyards that she was familiar with when there was a loud, aggressive hiss from behind her and Stivik let out a yell. She spun around to see Somi diving at him. He raised his gun to shoot the animal and Anni leapt at him, crashed into him, yanking at his gun and shrieking in paramite language,
danger! Hide!
Somi went bounding away and Anni suddenly found herself standing in front of Stivik, holding his gun. Quite instinctively she pointed it at him, fingers fumbling to rest on the trigger. He was breathing hard, looking at her with hate. “What are you going to do now, shoot me?”
The world seemed to be spinning around her head; she had attacked a slig, stolen his gun, and even now she was threatening him with it! She couldn’t believe it; what was she doing?
“Let me go; get out of the way,” She said, her voice firm, inwardly horrified at what she was saying.
He sneered, “No.”
“Do it!”
“I’m not moving. You want to go; you’ll have to kill me.”
“Don’t make me!”
“I’m not making you, but I’m not moving.” His voice was cold, frighteningly calm. She hated that he was so sure she wouldn’t do it. She was holding a weapon; she shouldn’t feel so powerless!
“Anni!” She looked over Stivik’s shoulder; Nick was running towards her. “What are you doing?!”
She affected the sobbing face she had used on Javi, “Nick, he said he was going to kill me! He found me where I was working and dragged me out here, and-”
“Nice try, mud,” Stivik spat with hate, “Nick sent me out here to stop you leaving.”
Anni looked at Nick, horrified, and his expression confirmed it. “Put it down, Anni,” He said softly.
“No,” She said, because she was terrified now. She had gone too far; how could she get away with this? If she handed in the gun they would stop being nice. They would be so angry! And every second she hesitated, it was getting worse.
“Put it down, Anni,” Nick said calmly, “No one’s going to hurt you.”
“Hell to that!” Stivik sneered.
“Stivik!”
“She’s threatening to kill me, Nick. Should she walk away from that?”
“She’s just scared. Come on, Anni.”
“Yeah, come on; shoot me!” Stivik sneered.
Anni felt a tingle in her finger, the one on the trigger, and for the first time it occurred to her that she actually could; she had the power over this slig’s death! One twitch of a finger and he would be puffed out like a candle flame.
“Come on, Anni; if you’re so tough! I’m not going anywhere! You want to leave, you’ll have to kill me.”
‘
Do it, kill him.’ Said a voice in the back of her head, ‘
It’ll be so easy. Just do it.’
“Calm down, Anni.”
“Do it, kill us, if you think you can.”
‘
Do it, or you’ll never be free.’
She whispered, so softly that the sligs wouldn’t hear, “No.”
She began to lower the gun, but then there was an enormous
BOOM to her side; she leapt into the air and spun around. Nick yelled and also turned. Then Stivik’s fist hit her in the side of the head and she was falling backwards. He caught his gun, wrenched it from her hands and kicked her in the stomach. She fell back and he was suddenly stood over her, pointing his gun at her head.
“What was that?” Yelled Nick.
“Grenade. Chucked it when she was looking at you,” Stivik said mechanically, and then with acid in his voice, “Get up.”
There was only one grenade at his waist and she mentally kicked herself for not seeing. Then she pushed herself slowly to her feet, her legs trembling with her terror; what would they do to her now?
“Right, now we’re going to go up to the factory, and-”
“What’s going on?”
She turned; it was Javi, evidently drawn by the explosion, and she sobbed and ran to him, fell into his arms, crying into his chest, genuinely this time, shaking with terror and sobbing with fear. He fell to his knees to be closer to her, “What’s happened?”
“I attacked him!” She sobbed, “I stole his gun, I-I…”
He looked with shock into her eyes and then hugged her tight, “It’s alright, it’s alright.”
She was trembling, her cheeks wet, but she sniffed back her tears and turned her head to face the sligs, “Go on then,” She stuttered, “What is it? I threatened a slig; what are you going to do to me?”
Looking the wrong way, she never saw the expression Javi shot Nick. Nick looked stunned, then uneasy, “Look…” He said slowly, “She was scared, wasn’t she? I mean, she wasn’t really going to shoot you.”
Stivik stared at him.
“Come on, you wouldn’t have egged her on like that if you thought she was really going to do it.”
“She stole my gun!” Stivik roared, “She tried to threaten me! You’re just going to let her off?!”
Nick was looking increasingly flustered, “Come on Stivik; no harm was done, was it?”
“Odd! This place has made you soft as scrab-
chkhur, mud-lover!” And with a snort he stormed off back towards the factory. Nick sagged with relief and turned back to the mudokons.
For the first time in months, Javi was looking at him with a thin smile. Anni looked doughy-eyed, and he realised their private little war was now firmly over.
* * *
Nick, Groll and Seven worked late into the evening and, just as everyone else was retiring to their beds, Seven unlocked the boiler control room and restored power to the factory.
Nick spent the next two days sorting through the trash in the grinders, and sorting through Groll’s poorly written notes of his own sorting of the grinders, and ordering machine parts in bulk. Repairs were going to take weeks; he was glad that Arnie’s three new sligs would be arriving within the week; one of them was a big-bro whose strength would be helpful, one of them was a mechanic hired specifically to help in the grinders, and the last was a guard who would probably be useless, but at least would mean he and Groll wouldn’t have to do any guarding and could get on with the job.
He also had his own business to attend to; his contract with Arnie was expiring in another month, and he was seriously considering seeking employment elsewhere, though he wasn’t sure if he could find anywhere that would pay a slig mechanic more than Arnie did. But he felt like he needed a change of scenery.
“I took the mechanic’s training at my last job,” Groll told Stivik and Razor later that week as the sligs were eating in the cafeteria, “Because it was an easy ticket to a promotion. You know, the training was a pain, but in the end it was easy, and the mechanics thing isn’t too hard once you know what you’re doing. But then when the refinery where I worked went bust I had to get a new job, and this mechanics thing made it really hard! I think most glukkons think a slig trained as a mechanic is gonna be pretty arrogant, so even when I advertised to work as a guard it was still in my way. It’d probably be less difficult to get employed if my CV said I had a virulent, flesh-eating disease.”
Razor laughed at that, while Nick looked the other way, glad that at least he was more qualified as a mechanic than Groll, which might make him look better rather than worse, plus he would be taking Math with him if he moved, which might help his chances, too.
Anni seemed slightly happier again now, though more reserved and less playful; she was keeping out of the way of the sligs more, which was in some ways a relief, though she kept grinning at him when he passed her. But she kept out of the way of the new sligs when they arrived. Arthur was a worker-class slig and nothing special, though rather non-violent, which was a relief compared to Razor and Stivik. And Boogie was a huge big-bro with a rather unfortunate name. Boogie was quite quiet and mostly kept to himself, though he worked when and where he was told to work, and he got on with everyone fairly well; he was simple, but not in a stupid way. Nick had a long conversation with Seven about having Boogie help him with the grinders, but Seven was quite insistent that they would need him to guard the factory, too. “You’ve got Groll and Sev, and that mud.”
Sev was the other slig who had come, a mechanic who was here for a couple of months to help with the grinders. He was a friendly slig (as sligs went) and Nick got on with him well. And the mudokon, Floyd, was one Seven had picked out to help them with the grinders. Floyd confessed to having a minor interest in mechanics himself and was willing to be helpful.
Still, Nick really wanted Boogie’s brute strength, and eventually Seven relented to let him have him on odd occasions, which was useful. A good number of parts had arrived and the mechanics were busying themselves with various jobs by day; they were still detaching smashed parts of the machinery, and Nick was spending far too much time inside electric motors trying to find faults in kilometres of wiring.
Nick’s newest worry was Stivik, who was causing him far too much distraction. Stivik was something of a mystery; he seemed quite intelligent and sensible, but he shared that thuggish sense of humour that was the mark of sligs like Razor and Reg, who weren’t overly endowed in the brains department. The most obvious thing about Stivik was that he passionately hated mudokons. Nick had asked him about it, but he had just shrugged him off.
In the end, curiosity made Nick check out his staff record. In a way this felt very much like cheating (though he wasn’t sure what the game was) but his curiosity had been aroused by the puzzling slig.
* * *
Anni was with Math, working in the packaging lines on the top floor (which, much to Dean’s glee, was currently producing ‘New and Improved Paramite Pies’), talking and joking as they did. Anni was having a minor celebration of the fact that she, Javi and Dean had now been at Rupture Farms over a year. The subject of the first year of her life without any vykkers in it had come up, and Math was entertaining her with a series of crude vykker-impressions when Nick came in.
“Can I have a word?” He asked.
This sounded rather ominous, so Anni said, “Can Math stay in?”
Nick shrugged, “I suppose. It’s about Stivik.” Anni’s expression soured, “I was wondering if he seemed strange to you, if you’ve caught him doing anything odd. Math, how about you?”
Math shook his head.
“What about you, Anni?”
Anni glowered at nothing in particular, “Since the stockyards, he’s been really… He keeps trying to frighten me, to scare me. You know, not jump out at me, but follow me around and glare… It makes my skin crawl.”
“Unfortunately, being a
brzstrk to muds isn’t that unusual.” He shook his head, “It’s probably not anything. I mean he just seems a bit strange.”
Anni gritted her teeth at being called a ‘mud’ but knowing Nick didn’t mean any harm by it, she let it drop. “He said he used to work out in the wild,” She suggested, “He said he had for a few years.”
“That doesn’t really mean anything,” Math said.
“How long’s a few? Five years would be a quarter of his whole lifetime,” Nick said pointedly, but then went on, “Look, I looked up his record on the computer, ‘cus I thought he seemed strange. Apparently, he was a scout for his first seven years or so after basic training – that’s out in the wild, a pretty extreme lifestyle compared to factory work – then he was injured and started a more normal job. And since then he’s been jumping through jobs for the last five years. I don’t think he’s had any job for more than a year. It might be he’s just having trouble adjusting, but… well, a few of the places he’s worked have shut down or had management changes after he’s left.”
Math shrugged, “Meaning what?”
Nick also shrugged, “It’s a bit of a wild guess and maybe I’m just trying to paint him blacker than he is, but I keep feeling that there’s something strange about him,” he lowered his voice, “I’m half beginning to wonder if he might be a Cartel inspector, like, undercover.”
Math looked sceptical, “Seems a big conclusion to jump to.”
“But…” Anni said, looking excited, “There was a time I accidentally overheard a conversation he was having with Groll and Razor, and saying he thought the Cartel would want to shut this factory down!”
“Doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Math stated.
“Yeah, but then he caught me, and he seemed way angrier than the other two. Then he dragged me off and I was half-scared he was gonna hurt me, but he just took me to Kix. I dunno, it seemed strange.”
Trying to sound unconvinced, Nick muttered, “Well he might have been upset about you listening in on him because he has secrets he doesn’t want you hearing…”
“He seemed pretty firm on keeping Arnie’s rules; maybe he didn’t want to draw attention to himself.”
“Or maybe he didn’t want to stir up trouble, just see what trouble there already is.” Nick seemed to go through some internal dilemma before deciding, “Maybe we should tell Arnie about all this, just in case. And he can decide what to do about it.”
Anni nodded, “It might be good.”
Fifteen minutes later, Nick knocked on Arnie’s office door, Anni and Math behind him. “Come in,” Came the boss’s voice.
Nick opened the door and looked surprised. Behind him, Anni looked horrified, her eyes wide as she took in the creature standing this side of the desk.
“Nick,” Arnie said, “Can I help you?”
“Uh, maybe this isn’t the best time,” Nick said, eying up the boss’s guest who was looking at him with contempt.
“Come back in an hour,” Arnie advised, then added to the other person in the office, “This is Nick; he’s our head mechanic, in charge of getting the grinders fixed at the moment. Nick, this is Dek. He’s our new doctor, and scientist.”
Nick recovered himself and nodded politely to the vykker.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Arthur belongs to Munch's Master (I promised to make sure Arthur was in here, as he mentioned Dionysia in his fanfic).
Boogie belonged to Big Bro Boogie.
Sev was created by Jarnww.
Floyd the mudokon was the creation of Boogie.
And Dek the vykker was also created by Munch's Master.
Man, that's a lot of new characters! Though actually Munch's Master and Boogie arrived a little earlier, and Sev arrived a little later. W@RF 4 will be covered in just a few chapters; Lots happened that Anni and co weren't involved in in this part of the RPG.
Been waiting awhile to say that bit about Groll and his mechanics. And we finally got to see that other side to Stivik!
And that bit I put in about Nick betraying Javi turned out very useful indeed!
And I loved that moment where Anni tried to use old fake-tears trick for Nick, and it failed. Then when Javi arrived, she realised she couldn't manipulate her way out of this, and decided to accept whatever the sligs were going to do to her. Some characterisation by T-nex - our little girl's growing up!
Anni's fun times are pretty much over, now.
I'm gonna take next week off for Christmas, so no more chapters until the fifth of January. So see you in two weeks!
this chapter was so amazing!!!
I really look forward to seeing it.
) (lol his w@rf profile is not really detailed xD ) and I haven't even started with Nick but the one with Nick will be different from the others 
...I mean, all good things must come to an end, yes.
Nice chapter!
