2k words. Also, artwork for this in in the pipeline.
***
They skulked between pairs of bracketed sconces, soon coming into another wider section of the tunnels. The smell of burning oil was heavy in the air here, and just like when she had first infiltrated the camp, the space was clogged with bronze contraptions that burned warpstone and transported the collected energy through thick tubes into burrows in the walls, their destination unknown. There were perhaps eight of the machine in this one gantry alone, with four to both walls. They were not unlike Ironsnout’s suit in some way, all bulk and metal and hissing fumes.
Each machine was operated by five to twelve Skaven, each working at a different task. Some stood by operating dials to make adjustments, others worked the valves, while some picked up spades and hauled fuel into the boiler hatches. Said fuel was currently in the form of chunky, green bits of crystal, and it didn’t take a genius to know what it was.
Yet more slaves were carrying backpacks of this warpstone in from other side passages, dumping their contacts in a great trough in the room’s center before rushing away, presumably to get more. The diameter of the trough was perhaps five Skyseeker’s wide, and she could not resist the urge to dive into it like it were a pool and take a soak. She had not even seen a glimpse of warpstone since she’d pulled the crystals from the rat ogre’s back, and she’d eaten all of that well before setting her paws in the dead-things desert.
She let go of Kretch’s supporting paws, walking cautiously up the trough, as though any sudden movement might cause the illusion to disappear, but it was real, a lifetimes worth of warpstone, just sitting there, and none of the other slaves were even batting an eye. She wondered why.
Her answer came into her in the form of a backhand, and her body contorted almost to the point of collapse, but she managed to hold her balance. “No looking, my newest slave,” Pinkface growled from behind her. Maybe Kretch was right, and this slaver knew what she was thinking on some level. “Ironsnout’s warpstone only for tools to touch. We see you lay a paw on a token, you get your last two or six.”
Ironsnout had other slavers beside Pinkface, other big rats dressed in dark leathers and holding whips, keeping a watchful eye over the working Skaven, and occasionally flaying one of them for slacking. Kretch was hauled off to one of the contraptions and put on valve duty, where he had to run from one side of his assigned machine to the other and turn the valves when they hissed. Kretch was a cowardly creature, but he looked especially perturbed by this task. She wondered what would happen if the valves hissed too much.
The slaves were put to work one by one until Skyseeker was one of a pawful left, Pinkface finally turning to her next. She hoped to be put to work with Kretch, if anything but to be around someone who could help her, but if she asked that he’d likely hit her, so she said: “Skaven doesn’t think I will be good fit here. Last time I was put on manual labour, I was fired.”
“Putting you in production rom would be waste of resources, slave,” Pinkface replied. He put a massive paw on her head, and for a moment she feared he would crush her skull like a grape. Instead she was pivoted on the spot and turned towards a side passage. “You like to chitter-speak, don’t you, slave?”
“Oh, yes-yes! Once, I stole this man-thing book called a dick-shone-hairy. It was big fat thing chunky with words. Shame I don’t know how to read. Bet it would have been quite the plot!”
“Then for your sake, I hope you know how to use your tongue, slave. Up in the hangar are four tanks of warpfuel. I want-need them down here yesterday, but those stupid piltos are lazy and weak. You go get them to bring those tanks here.”
“Me-Me?” she said, jabbing a finger at her face. “But I’m just slave.” For now, she thought but dared not say.
“You good at words, slave, you figure it out, or bring tanks down yourself if you have to, I don’t care. If they still in hanger by tonight, I’ll flay the fur of you body.”
That was as much convincing as she needed, not that she had any other choice. Her silver tongue had gotten her into this mess, but at least talking required less effort than working a machine or shovelling warpstone.
“Hanger is that way,” Pinkface added, gesturing to the passage he’d turned her towards. He gave her a hard smack on the back to send her away. “Keep following path and don’t deviate, even a stupid slave like you can handle that. Move-Move!”
He cracked his whip, but Skyseeker was prepared and hopped out of his reach, and she scurried away while Pinkface laughed, but that did not bother her. The ones who let themselves be perceived as weak, exposed, were actually far more cunning than those who judged them so. The Snout had taught her that lesson.
There were many snaking paths branching off from this passage, the sounds of cranking machinery and chittering voices emenating from the clefts of stone, the harsh scones casting deep shadows against the prevalent green torchlight. Her claws clicked every time she passed over a sheet of metal laying across the floor, the builders of this network reinforcing the tunnels in places with crudely-welded sheet metal.
Other Skaven walked by some overtaking her, some going back towards Pinkfaces workshop, but all ignoring her. To them she was just a slave running errands, covered in dirt and blood and bruises.
Temporary setback, she thought, dodging by a slaver marching down the passage. He gave her a cold look, but she turned her gaze away in submission, and that seemed to satisfy him. There were always cracks, even in a perfect suit like Ironsnout’s. There had to be other exit points, somewhere she could escape.
Like Pinkface told her, she did deviate from the path, as much as she would have liked to have mapped out the underground, build a mental map. She didn’t know how fast Pinkface demanded his slaves, but if she tarried she’d be in for another two or six. The ground began to incline, and after a few minutes of power-walking, a dot of light emerged from the far end of the tunnel.
The cleft transitioned into a short flight of steps, and they were a little too steep so she had to climb them with her paws. Once more the passage opened up into a wide room, only this one was more developed than the ones deeper down, with bronze walls instead of stone, far longer than it was wide, Skyseeker unable to see the far wall unless she squinted.
As she took her first step inside, she tripped and fell on her face, and she loked down to see someone had set a giant pipe on the floor. It snaked away from left to right, about as round as her torso and made form that same red-brown bronze material that Skavenkind favoured in their constructs. It curved a short distance away, where it terminated at the flank of a giant piece of rounded metal, but this was not quite a machine.
There were dozens of other Skaven scampering about, but none of them lent a helping paw as she got up, too busy with their own menial tasks. There were tens of other pipes strung across the floor, Skyseeker making sure she was aware of them as she made her way across. Somewhere distant she could hear the squeak of grinding gears and turning bolts, Skaven carrying large parts of metal to workbenches, where engineers began to weld them together with handheld tools. Pinkface had called this place a hangar, and judging from the amount of machinery and assembly this must be part of some factory. Ironsnout had imbedded himself deep in this place, perhaps Clan Mors planned to strike into this part of the surface-world on their endless journey to conquest. His armies and slaves must number in the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands. She had known his vermintide must be enormous, but to really appreciate it was disturbing. Defeating a tide of this scale seemed impossible, not with all this industry beneath it, but perhaps she did not have to. Ironsnout was only one rat, and Skyseeker could kill anything, be that a Skaven, a machine, or a human, nothing was beyond death.
Her task temporarily forgotten, she was distracted by the machine of which the pipe was connected to, and she came close enough o lay a paw on his rounded edge. One of the panels had been removed, and she could see the clockwork guts that churned the vehicle onwards, a mess of pipes and gears and bolts. It was rounded off with a giant circular chassis, through which the ends of a dozen blades were connected in a crescent of death that poked out from the armour plates.
“Hey! Hey you, slave! Watch the chrome!”
Skyseeker zipped about with her fists raised, and the Skaven standing behind her flinch back at her suddenness. This one wore a leather tunic over his dirt-brown fur, and a rusty helmet that bore a distinct similarity to a human metal cap, giving her the impression he was not a slave, but not far up the food chain either.
“You get filthy paws off Bessie!” the rat demanded.
“Who you?” she asked.
“Who me? Who YOU?! Scratching and marking Bessie like you own place. The audacity!”
“You mean this thing?” she asked, nodding her head at the vehicle.
“Thing! Bessie the doom flayer worth a hundred of you, slave. A thousand! Off, off!”
He shooed her away like she was an uninvited housefly, and she stepped away. He scrutinised the spot she’d touched, giving her a hateful glance. “Great! Paint was not even dry, now have to buff plates all over again! You help me with this thing.”
“I don’t answer to idiots wearing dumb helmets,” she declared. “I answer to Pinkface – until he dies.”
“Not know him and not care either,” the rat said. “You not pilot, you not touch the flayers. What you even doing here, slave?”
This was not the only doom flayer in the hanger. Maybe ten others were lined up down the factory floor, their wheels aimed at the western wall. Upon closer inspection the wall was actually a giant sheet gate, wide enough that all the flayers could launch out without hitting each other. It was only open a sliver, a thin horizon of daylight promising the outside.
“My… master, wants his warpfuel,” she explained. “he said you have three tanks to give to him.” She held up the incorrect number of fingers.
“You think I have time to haul tankers? That slaves work, not pilot’s!”
“He said you running late-late,” she added. “You holding up all productioning down there.”
“Then you do it, slave, they right over there.”
“Maybe I will!” she snapped back. She moved over to the wall where he’d pointed, intentionally deviating towards the hangar door. There was a panel with a few red buttons towards its side. Those must be the controls, interesting…
Her confidence shattered when she saw the fuel tankers. There were three, like she was told, but nobody had elected to mention they were carrying what must be five hundred litres of fuel, and were taller than she was.
She gave one a tap and the metal barely echoed. They were full, at least someone had done their job properly. She tried to shove one over but only ended up knocking herself down. Pinkface didn’t expect her to move these things, did he? Perhaps this was all a ploy, and if she went back to ask for a paw, he would give her a two or six for failing…
She scratched her head, considered a scheme, and formulated one. She returned to the doom flayer – or Bessie – and found the pilot fussing over the spot she’d scratched. “You help Skaven with tanker-things,” she said.
“There you go with the audacity again!” the pilot grumbled. “Why would I do slave work? I pilot the flayer, while you slaves do all the work!”
“I forgot to mentioning who my master was,” Skyseeker replied with a sly grin. “The Snout needs his fuel for his exosuit, it starting to chafe around his thighs with the boilers running dry-dry.”
“S-Snout?” the pilot asked, a skeptical look on his face. “I thought those tankers were for the slaves in the workshop below...”
“They were, but warlord doing tune-adjustments, and that breeder who attacked him damaged one of his incogrous flux capacitors, and his tanks emptied, just like your bowels will when I tell him it you pilot’s delayed his refuelling.”
“W-What, I was just joking about all that stuff,” the pilot laughed nervously. “Why didn’t you say it was for Snout in the first place? I’ll get the others on it quick-quick, just keep voice down!”
The pilto whistled and hollered, and after a few other pilots came over to see what was going on, the word was quickly spread. Soon almost half the rats in the hanger were working in tandem to knock the tankers over, rolling them down into the passage. Skyseeker leaned on the flayer to watch her handiwork, giving the metal another scratch just because she felt like it. Ordering others around was pretty fun, why hadn’t she done this more often?
Some of the pilots knocked over a cabinet in their haste to roll the tankers, a sea of metal parts and powered tools scattering across the floor, but none of them seemed bothered to clean it up. Skyseeker made to follow them, but something in the spilt pile caught her eye, something green and circular.
Her goggles! She scooped them up, putting the lenses over her eyes. They were a little smudged, and the strap was broken on one side, but they were otherwise intact. The floor was scattered with welding goggles, masks, patches and monocles, that cabinet must have been a spare bin for engineers, and Ironsnout must have put her goggles here, disregarding them as common rubbish.