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She folded the goggle strap as best she could into her bandages that served as her pants. She would have to fix them later, right now she had to go back to her ‘master’, and make sure these pretentious pilots didn’t spill her fuel.
The workshop was just as busy as she’d left it, the dozens of slaves scampering over their machines in a mad frenzy of slavery, the air warm with fumes and gasses. The pilots were guided over to hoppers built along the sides of the vibrating contraptions, the engines drinking the power down and burping exhaust from the trailing vents.
“You did good-good, talkie slave,” Pinkface chimed, watching the pilots bring their empty tankers back up the passage. “Slow, yes, but good. You deserve token for that. You like warpstone, don’t you, slave?”
Skyseeker nodded her head vigorously, Pinkface scratching his rough chin with a claw.
“Maybe you get two, if you do a little more chittering for me, slave. I have message for pawleaders who work-run warp-factory – same way to hanger only you take first left. They need to turn off two production chains for rest of day, so warp reserves do not overlock. Those fools always think we have infinite power, but if one of the generators fail, big boom-booms.”
“How big?” Skyseeker asked, intrigued. A little too intrigued for Pinkface, it seemed, and he whipped her before she could react.
“No freedom thoughts in my pit, slave! Move-Scurry! Deliver my message, and don’t go forgetting, or you get a two or six.”
He tried to hit her again, but Skyseeker was already darting out of the workshop, nursing yet another stinging cut on her shoulder.
As per his instructions, she took the turn off the main passage, the air cooling as she distanced from the workshop and its sweating slaves and humming generators. The way narrowed at points where she had to turn sideways to fit through, eventually opening up into another huge space, far bigger than the hangar had been.
The ground was covered in rotating cogs the size of buildings, supported by generators and furnaces, the smell of burning warpstone stinging her nose – the most pleasant sensation she’d felt in this place. Most of the floorspace was taken up by rotating assembly lines, where bits of metal were churned out from one end to the other, starting off as simple spare parts and ending as makeshift weapons or ammo, with slaves doing the work between. Above, moving chains rattled from left to right, cargo barrels or cages or more metal parts zipping along, automated by some unseen means, disspaering into gaps in the cave into other parts of the underground camp. This factory must be where the majority of the vermintide’s supplies were created, although there could be more.
She walked alongside the closest line, watching the slaves work. They snatched up spare parts from barrels full of loose bits of technology, then picked up the things sitting on the conveyers, screwing both together before placing them into separate containers. These slaves were making globadier bombs, she saw, pumping them out by the dozens every couple minutes. She did not like how carelessly they seemed to discard them once completed, so she took a few steps back for safety.
Halfway up the line, she gawked. Between two of the skavenslaves was another servant, but he was no rat. Tall and without fur, he stood towering above the rest, pink skin covered in a film of dirt, a pair of colourless hose’s preserving his modesty. It was a man-thing, she had almost forgotten what they’d looked like.
“Man-thing?” she asked, coming up to tug on his breeches. His face was obscured by a ragged mop of hair that had once been blond but was nor layed in filth, and she was almost about to assume it was Roderick, until the human turned round.
“S-Skaven?” the human muttered, his eyes darting about. “I work, work like you told me to. See?” He held up a globadier to show her.
“Impressiveness,” she said, pushing the bomb aside. “Don’t you recognise me? It’s Skyseeker!”
“It’s Skyseeker come to beat me,” the man-thing mumbled. “I did not do it. I promise. I stayed right here, just as you told me. Screw and glue and bolt. See how many I’ve done?”
“No no no, I was on the Kessel-man’s ship,” she said. “I joined the Empire.”
“Empire’s finished, dark gods forsook the old world and the new. All that’s left is the chitters, the scratching. Only work.”
“Are you even listening to Skaven?” she demanded. She waved a paw before his face, but his eyes didn’t even flicker.
“Skaven? Skaven everywhere. Got to work, stops the scratching. Screw first, then the bolts, then the glue. Get it? Screw, bolt, glue!”
“You’re a little screwed up in the head,” she muttered, stepping away from him. Clearly captivity had driven the human into derangement. She wondered how long he’d been here. It was hard to tell if he was from Von Kessel’s men, even though she’d spent a lot of time with them, even her keen senses couldn’t remember all their faces.
If there was one human there would be more, but before she could find the next, one of the slavers found her first. His whip was already flicking through the air, but her words were faster. “I bring messaging!” she said. “Master says you got to stop two lines, you using up all the warp-fuel below.”
“Below?” The slaver lowered his whip. “Bloody oafs make a slave tell us what to do? How they expect Skaven to arm the vermintide without maximum production? You tell you master to bring up his slaves if he wants to waste-loose time.”
“I’ll let him know,” she lied. She made to leave, but he slaver held out a paw.
“Better yet, you get on the line, slave. Chop-Chop!”
“I’ll chop your fingers off if you try to order me around, you nincompoop,” she snarled, darting away before he could grab her.
Her duties for Pinkface revolved around these menial and dangerous tasks, of delivering messages and orders throughout the caves to impatient and angry slavemasters. She had been whipped several times throughout, but Skyseeker was built for speed and usually got away before more harm could be done, and by the time the end finally came she was haggard and breathless. Still, she would prefer it over working the generators any day, there was something off about how they filled the caverns with their clicks and whistles that seemed to suggest imminent implosion.
The end of the slavery was marked by Pinkface’s shout to return to their cells, but before dismissal there was plunder to divide. Like Kretch had told her, there was a meal ready for each slave, and the Skaven lined up in one neat row to be given their food. When Skyseeker’s turn came, she found that her food was a bundle of root vegetables topped with the world’s smallest cheese wedge, and the latter was covered in more dirt than the former.
The slavers, meanwhile, got hard bread and even slabs of meat, with grease dribbling down their furry chins. Skyseeker ate her rations before she’d even departed the line, and she scowled over at Pinkface, who was having his full of a bread loaf the size of her head.
He even chased it up with a shard of warpstone, nibbling on the nugget like a human might savour the taste of a sweet. She was reminded of his earlier promise, when he said he’d give her a token for a job well done, and then he seemed to sense her gaze and looked over at her.
“Talky slave,” he snapped. “What are you doing?”
“Looking at you,” she replied bluntly.
“Smart rat,” Pinkface said. He went over to her. “too smart for my liking.”
She should have seen his paw, but the slaver was fast for his size, and her neck craned round as he slammed her with his paw. “You talk to me like that again, and you’ll get two and a six. Save your speak-speak for your slavery. And never look at warpstone again, what did I tell you about that?”
She wanted to scream out an obscenity, bt she dared not answer, instead turning away.
“That’s a good slave,” Pinkface called after. “You be back here in morning, slave, I have other messages you will take for me.”
She very nearly welcomed the reprieve of the pit, with its secluded doors and empty cages. Even Kreth was a welcome sight, the rat man squatting by his cage with his meal in his paws. He looked up as she sat nearby. “Bree… Skyseeker,” he said. “Not see you much today. What did master have you doing?”
She told him all about it, Kretch giving her a bewildered look. “You lucky, Skyseeker, you not have to be in shop like Kretch. Kretch has worked and worked and worked machines, and bowels are ready to burst.”
“Need elaboration,” she replied. “What are those things Pinkface has you working?”
“Is generators!” Kretch answered. “Burn warpstone, machine released fumes, fumes go into pipes and wires, power rest of camp contraptions. Without them, Snout’s tide would have no back-tail to stand on.”
“The whole camp is powered by… ten of them?” she asked, struggling to remember how many she’d seen.
“Oh, yes-yes! Generators very efficient, but there is one problem. They burn and power without downtime, and they become unstable very quick-quick. One blew up last week and took entire pack of skavenslaves with it, all because some stupid rat wasn’t paying attention to his dials. Thank the Horned Rat I’m not a slave!”
“But you are,” she corrected. “me too…”
“Oh. Right. Kretch forgot. That was probably for best anyway, Kretch would rather forget he was a slave.”
“I’d rather get the heck out of this place,” Skyseeker replied. “You see all these gashes and scratches? I’m hideous!”
“You look much the same to Kretch,” the ratman mused. He turned his eyes away when she glared. “Uh, Kretch didn’t mean to say that. You should have stayed in the Snout’s chambers, Skyseeker. There are no slavemaster there, no work, and I’ve seen him bring food for his breeders. Perhaps you could have been far more comfortable.”
“Perhaps Skaven would have been raped thrice a day,” Skyseeker snapped, pointing an accusing finger at him. “You not breeder, Kretch, you not know what it’s like to be like me, always afraid that a rat like Snout or Pinkface could do that to you whenever he wanted, and be too weak-helpless to stop it.”
Kretch recoiled from her, turning his eyes down in submission. He ate his food in silence for a while, and Skyseeker felt a little guilty about her outburst.
“Skyseeker not seem that way to Kretch,” the ratman mumbled.
“What you saying?” she asked.
“You say you’re afraid, but Kretch has not seen you flee or cower,” he elaborated. “I saw you take whip after whip from Pinkface, and you never begged or screamed. You even look him in eyes when he talks, and that bothers him, but you probably knew that already-ready. You not seem ‘always afraid’ to me-me.”
“I was plenty afraid when Snout almost killed Skaven,” she chuckled. “But it’s the image that counts, that what I always say.”
“Noted,” Kretch said, storing her little nugget of wisdom for later.