:
Oh my gosh. Any chance you could draw a Slig wearing a similar outfit (but in blue)?  Please?! |
That is the single creepiest thing anyone has ever said in this thread... Including that chapter where Skillya cannibalises her babies.
In Other News,
Dryadri, that picture is AWESOME!
You got her skin just right methinks, and her clothes are pretty cool, too. I'd say her expression is perhaps a bit too benign, but never mind
And the rings were silver, not gold, but never mind! It is very awesome! I love it!
Glad you likes, Sci
Here's
a link to the trial from the RPG (starts about halfway down that page, and goes on for a couple of pages) but you might find something else to occupy yourself before you look at that, cus it's Tuesday again...
Chapter 40
Anni was distracted for the next few days, and barely came out of her thoughts, even when Expert left. She cried as she waved him off, but soon she turned inwards again.
It took two more days for her to make up her mind. She was out in the stockyards, looking into the face of a caged scrab, doomed for the slaughter, and suddenly she felt that she couldn’t take it anymore. She had to get out, just for a while, a night, and then she would come back. No one would even miss her, probably!
She dredged up from the corners of her mind all she remembered hearing about Abe. They said that he had escaped through the stockyards, met natives living nearby, and come back.
She remembered Javi telling her (perhaps having heard it from Nick) that the stockyards used to be much smaller, filling only the space of what was now the courtyard, though the factory had then owned all of the land it did today. She wondered why the glukkons would have had all this space and not used it, and she guessed that maybe they had known the natives lived at the far end and wanted to keep away from them! She knew they said now that the natives were gone, but what did the industrials know? Surely the native mudokons could hide themselves?
Excitement thrilled through her at the thought of actually meeting a native, and she made up her mind to go to the far end of the stockyards and escape through there. She looked around and saw Javi far from her; he was busy moving animals round to the slaughter house and wouldn’t even notice if she disappeared. Grinning manically, she ran for the factory entrance. She would take some supplies from the warehouse! And maybe she could go and look for Somi, and take her with her!
She ran into the warehouse without trouble, and hurried to the back of the room where she found a crate of scrabcakes that she guessed wouldn’t be missed, and broke it open with a crowbar she found (breaking the crate into rather more pieces in the process). Five minutes later she was hurrying with laden arms towards the door (and wondering as she went if she’d thought this through properly) when the sound of voices ahead slowed her down.
A moment later, to her utter annoyance, she realised that some sligs had stopped to chat outside of the warehouse doorway. Muttering a curse under her breath, she wondered if she could go through the kitchen, but of course, then she would run into Dean and have to explain. She would have to wait for them to go.
“Dunno about Nick,” She heard as she approached the door, and she tried to put a face to the voice, “But Arnie’s gonna be in trouble if the Cartel find out about how he’s running this place.”
“Oh come on, is the Cartel really gonna be interested in a little place like this?” That, she recognised, was Groll. She reached the doorway and looked out; Razor and Stivik were with him.
Stivik (owner of the first voice) rolled his eyes, “Oh no, the Cartel will have absolutely no interest in the factory where Abe came from, where this whole stupid rebellion began. Do you really think they’ll overlook Rupture Farms? Not likely!”
Razor scoffed, “Oh come on; that was ages ago. Abe’s no where near here anymore and Arnie says he had the native land north of here looked through and didn’t find them; they’ve all cleared off.”
“Still, they don’t want the same thing happening again with another mud, do they?” Stivik said with the air of a conspiracy theorist in full swing, “Arnie treats ‘em way to soft, from what I’ve seen! You give muds too much freedom and they start doing damage.”
“Um, but didn’t the whole thing start ‘cus Mullock started killing muds?” Groll put in.
Stivik shrugged, “That’s a rumour, isn’t it? One of many about this place.”
“That girl of Nick’s is a brat though; she deserves worse than what she got,” Razor muttered, and hidden in the shadows around the door, Anni glared at him.
“Any other gluk would have given her worse,” Stivik agreed, “Any other glukkon wouldn’t have gone through with the ridiculous meeting first!”
Anni’s fists balled with rage and a scrab cake slipped from her arms. As she scrambled to grab it, most of the rest fell too, and their wrappers crackled as they hit the ground.
“Huh?” Stivik turned around and squinted into the shadows. There was a bang of a gunshot and she jumped with a squeak; Groll was firing through the doorway, “Come out,” He ordered.
Reluctantly, she straightened up and strode forwards. The three sligs glowered at her, radiating menace.
“So you’re adding spying on sligs to your list of trouble?” Razor said blithely, lighting a cigarette.
“I wasn’t spying!” She replied defiantly.
Groll and Razor were leering like this was about to become fun, but Stivik looked absolutely furious, “You’re supposed to be working, mud!” He barked, “And you’re supposed to be with one of your friends! You wanna get them into trouble, too, for letting you run off without them?”
“I…” She began feebly, but Groll saved her thinking of an excuse by barking at her.
“What are you doing with that?” He demanded, pointing at a scrab cake she gripped in one hand. She was mildly surprised to find it there.
“I just wanted a snack!” She said, glad they couldn’t see the others on the floor.
Stivik glared, “I’ll give you a snack!” He hissed and suddenly lunged forward and grabbed her by the arm.
“Where’re you taking her?” Razor demanded.
“To the other girl, who she’s supposed to be working with! Arnie’d fire us on the spot if we did anything to her!” He growled this like it was a bad thing, and started dragging her away.
Evidently, he knew where Kix was working, for he took her straight to the production lines, maintaining a lethal silence all the way. When they arrived, Kix was alone and looked up in surprise when Stivik called for her attention. “Aren’t you supposed to be watching this?!” He demanded, waving Anni forwards.
Kix looked surprised, “She was working with Javi today, out in the stockyards,” She said, looking enquiringly at Anni.
“So care to explain why me, Razor and Groll caught her spying on us?”
“Spying? I don’t-”
She was cut off by an enormous blare of noise, a scream of agonised metal that made the noise Anni had heard in the grinders a few weeks ago seem like a weak whimper by comparison, going on for several seconds so the three of them in the production lines clapped their hands over their ears, and then a BOOM that seemed to make the production lines shake, so loud that it drowned out even the scream of metal and left their hearing muffled for several seconds, and then with another bang and a hiss of steam, the sound ended.
All previous enmity forgotten, the two mudokons and the slig ran as fast as they could towards the door to the grinders. Kix got there first, and then Anni pushed past.
The rail of the grinder was torn into shreds of steel for nearly ten metres of its length, finally breaking in two near the bottom. The blade itself had apparently come to pieces and several enormous blades were lodged in the walls. Steam was hissing angrily from severed pipes and the catwalk in the grinders’ middle floor was cut through and hanging from a crazy angle. Math was slowly climbing out from behind a cluster of packing crates in a corner, looking traumatised.
In the midst of all of the wreckage, standing before the grinder’s control panel, was Nick, so pale he was almost grey, a look of horror embedded on his face.
* * *
Nick was sat on his bed in the slig bunks, his head in his hands, the horrified look still deeply etched in his features. Stivik and Razor were nearby, talking quietly.
The rest of the day had played out like a nightmare before the mechanic, everyone running into the grinders, Arnie coming into the grinders, the long walk back to his office, the long, long silence that had followed, then contemplating drowning himself in the shower…
He barely registered when the door opened and Groll entered, looking hunted. He joined the quiet discussion for a few minutes at the other end of the room, and then approached, “What happened?” He asked.
Nick shook his head, without looking up. He had been asking himself the same question over and over again; what had he done so catastrophically wrong to cause the grinder to tear itself apart so massively? How could it have happened? What had he missed?
“You know,” Groll said nervously, “They say that mud, Math, was with you.”
Nick grunted. He thought if he tried to speak, he might throw up.
Razor spoke up, “You don’t reckon he could have… done something?”
Nick still didn’t move, but inside his head the gears were turning. Could Math have sabotaged the grinders? Because of the business with Anni, maybe? Oh, it was a blissful thought to imagine having a way out, a way to escape responsibility, to lay the blame with someone else. He could just see the other sligs ganging round Math, demanding to know what he’d done, Math’s hunted look, the sligs jeering.
He swallowed heavily (made difficult by a lump the size of a beach ball in his throat), “I…” He swallowed again, thinking of Javi, “I don’t know what Math could have done to cause that…” It was all he said. He couldn’t bear to say more.
* * *
Steam had been flooding from the broken pipes in the grinders and in the end they had had to turn off the factory’s two underground boilers, leaving the factory without power. Seven came up to the slig bunks that evening to talk it over with Nick. “We need to get power back on.”
Nick numbly reported on the unbearable maze of plumbing in the pumping station in the basement below the warehouse, “They’re a complete tangle; I dunno which pipes work the grinders and which do the rest of the factory.”
Seven nodded, “Well until we work them out and shut down the pipes that lead to the grinders, we’ve got no power. So no heating, no cooking, no computers, no factory production at all. How long do you think it’ll take us to work it out and get power back on?”
Nick shrugged mechanically, “If we start early tomorrow, we might get power back by evening the next day.”
Seven nodded, “Right; you, me and one of the others go down to the basement first thing, and Groll can get to work seeing what he can do with the mess in the grinders, ok? He can make a list of the parts you need to order and see what he can save.” Nick nodded, still looking traumatised, and Seven left.
Meanwhile, Dean was having troubles of his own, trying, with increasing despair, to explain to Arnie that without main power and only a useless backup generator in the kitchen, he could no more cook a meal for every person in the factory than fly them all to the moon. In the end he said, “I can manage a cold breakfast, but for an afternoon meal, we’ll have to stagger it over the day. First people eat at midday, and we work through until about the time work ends. But I can’t cook for more than a few people at a time with that thing.”
Arnie relented and Dean left.
Not very much happened the next day. Without main power the production lines couldn’t run, the conveyors that carried crates to the station couldn’t run, the station itself couldn’t be used; Arnie was able to use his fone for an hour to cancel the trains and hire another mechanically minded slig to help with the repairs, who would arrive in a week with the other two sligs he was hiring to replace Bela (he had made the decision to hire seven sligs in better days when the factory was running to its potential, but at least he would only have one big-bro now, which meant he should be able to afford all seven and the short-term mechanic for the time it took for the grinders to come back online – he was more worried about paying for the other new employee who would be arriving soon).
In the evening Stivik was the first slig to emerge, greasy and exhausted, from the factory’s basement and stumble into the cafeteria, where he overheard Dean having a mild-to-serious tantrum in the kitchen. “What’s up?” He asked, leaning over the counter, too tired to be aggressive to the mud.
“This stupid, stupid generator has just shut off again! And every time it cuts off, it takes me half an hour to get it working again! And I’m supposed to be making dinner for all the sligs down there and I haven’t have a minute’s rest all day, and this thing is stinking out my kitchen, and-”
“Hey, is that one of the old ScarCo generators?!” Stivik interrupted with rather uncharacteristic enthusiasm.
“You know how to work this thing?” Dean put in hopefully.
“Sure, I used to have one of these. Never worked, but it’s a great, old thing!”
Stivik hurried into the kitchen and a minute later and with no bloody fingers (to the envy of Dean, whose hands could barely be seen for improvised and worryingly unsanitary bandages), he had the generator chugging along happily.
“Thank Odd!” Dean muttered, “Now can you stop it turning itself off every hour?”
* * *
The next day was much the same for the mudokons, except colder. There was only so much work that could be done with no power and inside the factory Anni was feeling very useless. What was the point of her being here? She wasn’t even doing anything half the time! Kix, meanwhile, was somehow finding ways to be busy and wasn’t paying her any attention, and so she decided to slip away. No one would miss her; probably no one would even notice she was gone for ages!
So, sneaking away from the other mudokons who were clearing half-finished paramite pies from the dysfunctional production lines, she made her way to that little passage that led back into the factory to look for Somi.
She reached that old place where she had hidden the baby paramite so long ago and waited. There was no sign of the paramite and her continued absence lowered Anni’s mood. However, just as she was thinking that she probably ought to return to work, she heard a hiss and looked up, “Somi!”
The paramite came bounding out of the shadows and into her arms.
Half an hour of play later, Anni was lying back with the animal beside her, thinking over the last few days, remembering her attempt to escape. “If those sligs hadn’t gotten in the way, I reckon I could have gotten out,” She said aloud, and Somi, hearing her voice, squeaked a little in response.
“I could still do it,” She said. “I could go out, just for a night, and come back.”
A few minutes later, she added, “It’d be so much fun – better than staying around here for a day! It’s not like anyone’s working that hard today anyway.”
Five minutes later, with Somi close against her heels, she ran through the factory and out the front door. Laughing madly and hugging the paramite, she ran through the courtyard and out into the stockyards.
* * *
Kix had noticed that Anni was missing.
For the first ten minutes, she thought the girl had probably just hidden herself away somewhere to avoid work, but then she remembered her conversation with Anni from a few days before. She tried to push the thought out of her head, but when nearly an hour passed and Anni failed to reappear, she could no longer contain her worry.
It was worse because of the conversation she had had with Anni, when Anni talked about running away. Of course she should have told Javi and Dean about it, and now she thought of going to them and telling them she was worried Anni might have tried to escape because of a conversation they had had, which she should have told them about before. She hated having to confess to them that she had kept her talk with Anni a secret, especially as it may now be causing so much trouble.
But who else could she go to? She couldn’t tell Seven because he would go wild, but with Expert gone the only other slig she respected was Nick. She tried to imagine how Nick would react to the news; he would be angry, but he would see that bringing Anni back was the most important thing, and he wouldn’t want to frighten her into just running faster.
She stood and stewed for a little longer, but in the end she crept away from the other mudokons and made her way down to the basement.
The space under the factory had once contained a production line that was no longer used, and storage space, as well as the pumping controls above the boilers and the tangle of pipes that distributed steam-power around the factory. Since Arnie had reopened the factory he had had the boiler pumps and the waste disposal pit beneath the production lines restored, along with a corridor between them, but otherwise had left the space untouched. Some of the mudokons suspected that wild animals had moved in down there but no one had ever been attacked and as far as Kix cared, if any animals left them alone, they could stay.
The basement corridor was dark and dirty, lit by dim electric lights that the sligs had evidently set up from a small generator while they worked. Kix had never been down there before, but managed to find her way to the pumping area where the sligs were working, passing a huge, heavy looking security door locked with a glukkon voice-lock on the way, jumping as it switched on and croaked 'hey!' at her as she passed.
At the end of the corridor was a door propped open by one of the electrical lamps, sat on the floor. From inside came the sounds of sligs calling to one another and Kix approached it cautiously, slipping through quickly and into the shadows of the room beyond.
The room was indeed a mess of tangled pipes, crisscrossing through the room, twisting and weaving. Pipes divided all over the place, valve wheels and handles and pressure gauges seemed randomly placed and the sheer messiness of the pipes in the room turned walking from one side to another into an Olympic event. Nick was there, with Seven and Stivik, and they were all greasy and sweaty and covered in dust and dirt as they fumbled their way along the pipes, trying to make sense of the maze, attempting to work out which pipes carried steam where, and suddenly Kix understood why the simple task of turning off the pipes taking steam to the main grinders was taking them the best part of two days.
She slipped through the room until she was in the shadows near Nick and whispered his name. He turned around.
“It’s Kix,” She hissed before he could call out, “I need your help!”
He came closer to her under the pretence of checking the plumbing in her corner, “What’s wrong?”
She bit her lip and answered, “It’s Anni. She’s disappeared and I’m worried she might be trying to get out.”
He grunted.
“Nick, I don’t know what to do. If I tell Seven, he’ll go crazy; you’re the only slig here I still trust.”
He looked mildly surprised, “I thought all you muds hated me now.”
“Don’t be silly. You were going to apologise, weren’t you? Anni’ll calm down soon, but if she leaves the factory I don’t know what’ll happen to her.”
Nick turned his back on her and ran his hands along a pipe but muttered, “If I leave here, Seven’ll be suspicious. Hang on; Stivik’s pretty sensible. I’ll talk to him; go back to work.”
Kix nodded, “Thank you,” She whispered and crept away.
“Stivik, give me a hand over here,” Nick called as she reached the door. She stopped in the shadows and listened. They were close enough for her to hear their quiet conversation. “Listen, I’ve just been told the mud girl might be trying to escape.”
“The one who caused all the trouble before?” Stivik asked.
“Shh! Listen, this is half my fault so I need to deal with it, but I don’t want Seven going crazy about it. I don’t want her getting scared or she’ll just try and get away again, later. If I leave now, Seven’ll want to know what’s up, so I’m gonna have to wait twenty minutes before I can leave. It might be too late by then, so can you go and watch the gate by the back of the stockyards? She’s easily distracted, this mud, so you should get there before her unless she has a massive head start.”
“Alright; you gonna tell Seven I’ve gone to the grinders or something?”
“Exactly. If you see her, don’t frighten her. Just try and get her to come back.”
“Will do,” Stivik replied and hurried past Kix and out the door. She heard Nick call to Seven, “Just sent Stivik to the other side; I’m gonna try a valve and see if it does anything.”
She slipped away.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
THERE'S THE EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM!!!!!
Guess how long I've been waiting for a chance to say that?
Nick = Bad judge of character. How will Stivik's quest to stop Anni escaping end? You'll have to wait and see!
Bad shizzle is coming down.
Again.
But it's ok, cus Kix still appreciates him.
When the grinders went boom in the RPG, Math was there.
Is he a part-time saboteur? You decide! (Is sabotoueour a really hard word to spell? Yes!)
As a result, power got turned off (the steam escaping was my work) but that never really got resolved. It seemed to turn back on randomly at some point. So I worked on that here. I loved that talk between Stivik and Dean; I think it really pulled Stivik back to his good ole' days and helps everyone remember who he used to be, and how that compares to how he is now, and especially in the next chapter.
Stivik
is sensible, but he has ardently hated mudokons since Stack died. And he's better at his job than he was when he met Dionysia. So what will win out; his cleverness and secretiveness, or his hatred of mudokons and all things native?
We have now reached the end of W@RF 3 (ish): next chapter begins telling the tale of W@RF 4. Also, remember how I said this Part could be split into three little sections? (Hint: section 1 was about Reg.) Well this chapter marks the end of section 2, which was about Nick. Section three begins next week, and if you can't guess which slig that one will be about...
If you don't reply, Stivik will get angry and the chances of Anni surviving the next chapter, well...
Once I've started, it's pretty hard to stop!
It suddenly doesn't feel like very much.
