Drip—
Sweat traced a slow course down his hollow cheeks. Before him, the furnace blazed; molten adamantium cascaded in incandescent rivers, its hellish radiance searing his face. Crite, standing at the periphery, felt as though he were being slowly roasted alive.
Six months ago, the syndicates had forcibly inscribed his name upon an ledger of 'indeterminate debt' and consigned him to this underhive munitions manufactorum. Today, he had completed his transfiguration: from a mid-hive labourer of unremarkable station to a beast of burden, fully acclimated to the underhive's brutal exigencies.
Cooling... Moulding...
Crite rehearsed these procedures mechanically. Sixteen-hour shifts were the baseline — this was, in fact, considered a 'benevolent' accommodation by the factory's proprietors, who feared that accelerated attrition of their labour pool might impede production schedules.
This infernal establishment was, in certain respects, only marginally preferable to the mines.
Another wave of superheated atmosphere engulfed him. Crite's consciousness, instinctively, craved water. Relief.
And then—
The flow of cooling fluid had ceased.
He was joited into abrupt, galvanic awareness by a singular, terrible realisation:
Where was Old Jack? The foreman who always, with meticulous precision, regulated his workflow?
He remembered, now.
Old Jack had succumbed to heat-stroke the previous week. He had collapsed directly into the smelting vat. He had not left so much as a calcined residue.
It was Old Jack's expiration that had occasioned Crite's 'promotion' from apprentice to permanent operative.
DING——!
The rest-bell. A reprieve. A pardon.
Crite abandoned his implements. He staggered through the throng of workers surrendering their stations and hurled himself towards the manufactorum gates — one of the few sanctuaries from the omnipresent, suffocating thermal assault. It was also the distribution point for rations.
His constitution, comparatively robust among the labour complement, secured him priorityaccess to the victuals queue. He received his allotted 'nourishment': a slab of indeterminate composition, and several gelatinous excrescences that could, with considerable charitable interpretation, be classified as 'edible'.
"Damn it! Even direct-consumption corpse-starch is superior to this swill!"
Ralph, who had just received his own portion, voiced his discontent with undisguised virulence.
Crite recognised this youth. He, too, had been impressed by syndicate enforcers to address critical manpower deficits. It was rumoured that the serial disruption of mid-hive and underhive armaments facilities by some novel organisation had impelled the spire nobility to mandate indiscriminate conscriptionthroughout the syndicate networks.
"Lower your voice, Ralph." Crite's admonition was subauditory, urgent. "Unless you have developed a sudden craving for the lash — desist."
The youth, upon identifying Crite, immediately illuminated. He crouched and settled himself adjacent to his acquaintance.
"But this is insufferable."
"And if it were not insufferable? Do you genuinely entertain the prospect of departing this hell-state within our operational lifetimes?" Crite's rictus was bitter.
The debt inscribed upon his person, amortised at current rates of pecuniary compensation, would require multiple existential iterations to discharge.
"Agh. Cease this despondent discourse, Crite." Ralph's enunciation was compromised by his enthusiastic mastication of the unidentified comestible. "Have you received intelligence regarding the... 'Resistance'? This is the organisation whose activities precipitated our conscription."
"Such august personages inhabit a stratum of existence inaccessible to our station. My present preoccupations are more immediately concerned with the recent escalation of the 'Night Haunter' phenomenon." Crite's affect was one of studied disinterest.
"I am informed that the cranium of my neighbour's cousin's son was harvested and fashioned into podiatric apparel."
"That is nothing!" Ralph's enthusiasm was undiminished. "You are acquainted with Peter — the coward in the adjacent fabrication bay? Several months past, he enrolled in some manner of 'Blood God Cult'. At his induction, his corporeal configuration was grotesquely augmented — his entire physique was distended with superfluous musculature!"
"And thereafter?" Crite's curiosity was, despite his intentions, engaged.
"The fellow's cognitive faculties underwent progressive, catastrophic deterioration. I am informed that he ultimately acquired a battle-axe and decapitated seven individuals in a single, sustained offensive."
"And then? What was the disposition of his syndicate superior?"
"And then? He vanished. It is rumoured he was immolated in his entirety."
Ralph's vocal register subsided. His affect underwent subtle modulation; a faint, perplexed cadence insinuated itself into his delivery.
"...Crite. Do you entertain any credible expectation of our eventual emancipation?"
His regard was fixed upon the perpetualdarkness beyond the manufactorum gates. His pupils were dilated with liberty-fever.
Within Nostramo, however, the distinction between internal and external carceral environments was, in all meaningful respects, elided. To be conscripted today as a beast of burden was functionally indistinguishable from being apprehended upon the thoroughfare tomorrow.
"Consider, however," Crite attempted, with charitable intent, to assuage his companion's existential distress, "it is not inconceivablethat the Resistance may, at some future juncture, intervene directly at this decrepitfacility."
CRACK——!
The lash shrieked as it bisected the atmosphere.
Its terminal extremity struck the mess-tin directly from Crite's grasp. Its passage excoriated the dorsal integument of his manual extremity, leaving an immediate, tumescent, sanguineous impression.
"What insubordinate colloquy is this?!" The overseer — his vestments identifying him as a syndicate enforcer — glowered at the two youths with undisguised malevolence.
"You constitute the least productiveoperatives within this entire establishment! Have you developed an appetite for the lash's acquaintance?!"
They were silenced — as cicadas before a winter tempest.
Within this jurisdiction, exculpatory discourse was futile. The overseer possessed comprehensive discretionary authority to administer corporal correction. Should his ministrations conclude the recipient's existential trajectory, the corpus could be conveniently consigned to the furnace. No interment formalities were required.
"Were it not for the spire-master's insistence upon operational continuity, you would both be precipitated into the smelting vats immediately!"
The overseer's expectoration did not, however, assuage his irascible humours. He administered several additional applications of the lash, until both youths' dorsal surfaces were comprehensively denuded of intact integument.
"REMOVE yourselves from my perceptual field! Should I hereafter detect any recidivistindolence, your correction shall not be limited to this modest chastisement! "
Upon the cessation of their punitive regimen, the two youths fled to their respective operational stations with the alacrity of condemned prisoners receiving an unexpected reprieve.
Their wounds were combustive, agonising. The manufactorum's omnipresent, suffocating thermal effluent amplified their distress. Crite registered, with cadaverous certainty, that his vital essences were undergoing progressive, irreversible depletion.
An indeterminate interval elapsed. His visual faculty attenuated. His somatosensory cortex assailed him with a comprehensive catalogue of torment.
BOOM——!
A detonation.
This was immediately succeeded by a cacophony of proximate and distal clamour: screams, the percussive report of weapon-discharge, the ferrous impact of blade upon blade.
"The Resistance has arrived!"
An anonymous voice elevated itself above the tumult.
Crite could no longer process this intelligence. His inferior extremities failed. His corporeal mass commenced an involuntary, irresistibleanterior translation.
He was descending — towards the incandescent liquefied adamantium directly before him.
In my next existence... I shall decline reincarnation as a sentient organism...
At the terminal instant of his existential trajectory, however, a pair of superior extremities intercepted his descent.
Ralph.
The youth had, at some unperceived juncture, translocated himself to Crite's immediate vicinity. His own punitive injuries were less severe than Crite's.
"Crite! Remain conscious!" Ralph's delivery was urgent, desperate. He dragged his companion into the perimeter of a support column.
"The Resistance is here! We possess an aperture for emancipation!"
Crite, with considerable exertion, retained his tenuous grip upon consciousness. He regarded Ralph's agitated countenance. His interiority was saturated with the conviction of his companion's incurable naivety.
"...Ralph. Abandon me." His enunciation was laboured. "Whatever... 'Resistance'... The spire-master shall ultimately suppress it... You possess a credible prospect of survival if you immediately evacuate the hive in isolation..."
He genuinely entertained no further aspiration towards continued existence.
Even should he survive this incident, his future would consist of relocated suffering. Termination appeared, from his present existential vantage, preferable.
"Consign him to my care, young one."
A deep, unfamiliar vocalisation.
Ralph pivoted with alacrity. His regard encountered a towering giant, arrayed in immaculate argent war-plate, who had, at some unremarked juncture, materialised from the ambient shadow.
"You... Who are you?!" Ralph's protectiveposture towards Crite intensified.
"Chestnut... Resistance Medicae." The giant's delivery was composed, absolute. "I am competent to effect his restitution."
Ralph's regard traversed from the moribundCrite to the argent colossus.
His hesitation endured for precisely oneinstant.
He then transferred his companion to the white figure's custody.
At this moment, the youth could not have anticipated that he had just executed the most consequential determination of his entire existential trajectory.