บท 67: 2+
I took several deep breaths and stepped towards the seated group of six men, drawing their attention and silencing their quiet conversation as I stopped a meter from their table.
The men were all average height and had dark brown hair. Their skin was white and none of them were free of scars or other signs of mundane aging and imperfections. Their chests were covered by white shirts with blue vests over them, while their pants were a similar white color. Their boots were black and made of some shiny material. At their waists were swords and pistols, which I didn't doubt they knew how to use. They all regarded me, until the unique man with a blue coat over his shoulders prompted me. "Yes? What do you want, tech-priest?"
"I have been informed by some friends of your technological woes. Specifically, you need someone to repair your astropathic relay, but you've been in line for months with no word." At their silence, I awkwardly continued. "W-well, I just wished to offer my own service in fixing it."
The captain regarded me with a blank expression.
I couldn't blame him. If you were an officer in His Imperial Navy, trying to serve even as your ship sat idle due to needing critical repairs, you still would not trust a random red-robed man telling you he could help you. Unsolicited help was suspicious to its core in the aftermath of a galaxy-shaking war.
"I'm sorry, who exactly are you?" The captain's voice was deep and slightly gravely.
Shit, shit, come up with a name…" Magos Acerak, at your service."
At that moment, a waiter approached the table by side-stepping me. In his hands were two bottles of wine, both of which he placed down and removed the cork from. "Our apologies for the wait, gentlemen."
The captain just waved him off. "So, Magos Acerak. You say you can fix our astropathic relay? I don't believe you."
"…I-I see. May I at least ask why?"
"Two reasons. Firstly, I have been asking every damned tech-priest and magos I can about how I can get my ship repaired. All of them have either told me to find someone else or disregarded my messages. They tell me that every available magos who can do that work is busy for the next decade at the least. Now some random Martian appears after several months and says he can do it? It sounds absurd."
"I had no way of reaching you until now, however."
"Or you're a thief looking to loot my ship of any technology you like. I can't be sure either way, now can I?" It was obvious he wasn't looking for an answer.
"And the other reason, captain?" I asked.
"You interrupted our lunch. My first lieutenant here is getting married and we are here to celebrate privately. It doesn't make me happy, you get my point?" He gestured to the man furthest on the left, who looked young and otherwise plain barring the massive gash on his right cheek.
Pushing this would go nowhere, I reasoned. "I'm sorry. Please forgive my intrusion and enjoy your feast."
As I turned away, I heard the first lieutenant chime in. "Hold on, Magos. Captain, it couldn't hurt to at least let the man try."
The captain's response was a loud burp, caused by the entire glass of wine he had just gulped down. The man took a deep breath. "Always the reasonable one, Ramirez. Fine, but this is on your head."
"Yes, sir." Turning back to me, he said, "Magos, do you have any way we can contact you?"
"None, unfortunately. I will wait outside until you are finished."
"Actually, I'd suggest you make your way to Agamartha Void Port. That is where we will depart from when we are finished."
++++
This was a big fucking mistake. It was nearly an hour before I even saw the damn port, and I was walking thrice as fast I would have normally.
Speaking of big, this port. It covered a vast area and towered high into the sky, The main structure was a cylindrical building that looked as if the only damage it had taken in the recent war was further rust. It's original color had long-since faded away, leaving a dull grey-white to adorn the walls. I could make out a crack along the side, and just to top it off, it was slightly tilted for some reason. Was the ground unstable? I would not want to be in here if and when it finally collapsed.
On each level of this giant building were landing pads, four in total. From the ground, it was impossible to make out if any particular pad was occupied, the only indicator being the sound of jets activating and a boxy contraption roaring into the air as it burned promethium.
There was no line for entering at the bottom. If you were flying from here, you were rich or important enough to be able to do that, which put you in a very select category.
I heard a car – yes, a genuine fuel-burning limousine – slow down as it approached me. Turning around, I saw the window open and recognized Ramirez's face sticking out. "Magos!" he yelled out, "wait for us near the entrance!"
Not waiting for my response, they drove off. 15 minutes later, the group approached me as I stood off to the side of the glass doors. I joined up with them and entered the building as the security guards held the doors open.
The inside resembled a corporate office lobby, with marble flooring and soft light that bathed the two men and one woman working as receptionists. The captain barked some words at them, and they nodded for us to use their elevators.
It became awkward in the cramped space quickly as I realized how slowly this thing would bring us to the 56th floor. Roughly 10 seconds per floor, meaning we were trapped here for 560 seconds. They didn't say anything and neither did I.
When the doors finally opened, we headed to the left and stepped into the open environment. The wind blew strongly up here, changing direction every few moments as it flapped my robes around.
I didn't recognize the large plane in front of me, but it looked old and worn down. Not broken, just…matured. The bottom opened to let us climb inside, letting me see the spartan insides once I was fully aboard. Two pilots of indiscriminate form sat in the front, while seats lined the sides. I took an available one and strapped in like one of the men did.
The plane suddenly shook and we hovered as the winds buffeted us. Something rotated along the rear of the jet, and I felt it slowly spin. Then, it pushed forward hard and rocked us back and forth.
To their credit, the officers didn't react. They must have done it enough to not care. Me? I was just grateful I hadn't eaten anything yet to throw up, because this amount of rocking was not good for any kind of stomach.
After a few minutes, it smoothed out. We must have cleared the atmosphere.
++++
I exited the craft last, but before the pilots, once we landed and the ramp descended.
The inside of this hangar was vast to my inexperienced self. The only reference I had for a hangar was ones I had seen on Earth roughly 28,000 years ago. This was as large as an entire office building, though it would have been on the small side.
The walls were bare metal for the most part, but a few banners extolling the might of the Imperium and the Emperor. Large aircraft were lined up with only a meter or two between them, angled at 45 degrees to make launching them easier. On one side were brown four-turbine planes, each with two powerful-looking cannons directly underneath where the pilot would sit. The other side had grey two-turbine planes, but they had four cannons in comparison.
People wearing overalls were walking around inspecting the planes, some dragging hoses behind them. They noticed us but didn't react beyond saluting from where they stood.
"Are the crew not required to recognize more their captain, uh, formally?" I asked one of the officers I hadn't gotten a name for yet.
"Captain Abraxis does not want his crew to waste their time with such a thing. As long as they acknowledge his mastership over them, he's fine with their actions," the man explained. His voice was surprisingly high-pitched, almost feminine but missing some key component I could not identify.
"Ramirez, take care of the magos!" Abraxis suddenly barked.
"Yes, Captain. Magos Acerak, follow me please."
++++
Something that I had never thought about was how people were supposed to travel inside a ship this big. My only image of moving inside a spacecraft was seeing astronauts back in my own time float and push their way through.
When gravity existed and a ship could be massive with winding internal paths, what did one do? Use a car, apparently.
It wasn't anything like the cars I was familiar with, this thing looked like a slab of iron had come alive and grown wheels. It had no exhaust pipe, so I presumed it ran on electricity. The insides were uncomfortable, with hard-plastic seats and no seat-belts. A divider existed between the 10 possible passengers and driver.
Ramirez and I weren't alone in here. Two soldier-types, each wearing red uniforms akin to British Redcoat designs and carrying bulky pistols on their hips, sat towards the rear. As we climbed in, they saluted from their position. "Sir!"
"At ease," Ramirez responded. He banged on the divider once I closed the door, and we were off. "This is Magos Acerak, who has graciously offered his expertise in tending to our ship. You two will accompany him and ensure that if he needs something, his requests are passed on to me. Understood?"
"Yes, sir!"
Turning to me, he said, "I apologize, Magos, but I cannot stay with you all the time you are here. But these gentlemen will ensure you are attended at all times."
Left unsaid was that they would report anything suspicious I did as well. Not that I would, but these people weren't idiots. Letting random people mess with you ship was unacceptable. "Understood. Do you foresee any permission issues I may run into? I would hate to start a fight with an astropath who does not want me there…"
He thought about it. "I do not believe so, but they will ensure I am informed of any such disputes," he answered, jerking his head at the two guards.
++++
I had been to an Olympic swimming pool a few times in my life. The size was magnificent, allowing nearly 20 men to swim furiously next to each other and not collide at all.
The room I found myself in now was not as large as that swimming pool.
No, it was as large as the room that housed said pool.
Now, I had what felt like an encyclopedic knowledge of how these things worked jammed into me less than 24 hours ago. I knew the scale these were typically built. But there was a massive difference between knowing and experiencing first-hand.
I couldn't help but stare slack-jawed at this giant construction of which I could only make out the giant base. That base ran through the middle of the room and extended far above, easily 400 meters beyond our heads.
"Magos?" Ramirez asked.
"Oh, sorry, just…looking."
"Quite. Anyways, I will leave you to your task. You may ask these men for whatever you need, and I will try to reasonably accommodate you."
"Actually, I do have one thing in mind. Well, three actually. Firstly, I need a way of getting up inside the structure itself. Secondly, a set of enginseer's tools. Thirdly, I'd like any reports that were made about the relay's performance or any issues."
"I'll get you those, then. You can expect them in 20 minutes."
With that, the first lieutenant walked out of the room, leaving me with the two minders…who were already leaning against the wall and talking quietly amongst themselves.
I decided to start doing some preliminary work based on whatever I could see, but that wasn't much. The inside was entirely dark and that was where most, if not all, of the problems would be. The part of the exterior I could see seemed fine, but it was just a set of four thick adamantium walls.
Roughly 20 minutes later, Ramirez's gifts showed up in the form of a manned anti-gravity platform with an area the size of a bedroom while being about a meter tall. An old chocolate-skinned woman in a long, gray, and patchy skirt stood next to the control panel, her hands holding the short sticks that moved the platform.
On top of the platform was a red duffel bag. I stepped up while avoiding the safety railing and looked inside, digging my hands through the various tools inside. But along with those was a small iPad-looking tablet. Turning it on, I was shocked to see a very familiar logo that consisted of a stylized apple with a similarly stylized bite taken out.
iOS had survived this long, who knew?
There was only one app, one for reading documents. I didn't go into them immediately, that could come later.
I turned to the woman. "Can you bring this up so I can open the service doors there?" I pointed towards where the walls of the relay approached the ceiling. A large sliding door was our entry into the relay itself. Next to it was a button that would open it.
"Aye, sir."
Just before we took off, the two guards jumped on. They leaned against the railing itself for support as the platform jerked upwards before moving slowly up to the entrance. Once I pressed the button, the door slowly moved to the side.
The inside of this structure was mostly hollow, and the only thing I had to light up the dark was a pair of floodlights with short tripod legs attached. I angled them to avoid blinding anyone. "Bring me closer to that wall."
As it came into touching distance, I ran my hand along the vertically laid wires that were stretched taut across most of the wall. There were easily 40 of them, but this was clearly a patch-job. You wouldn't do this conventionally. Looking up and squinting showed me what looked like a set of wire-splitters that turned 10 wires into the collection before me.
I had a feeling I knew one major issue immediately here, but to confirm, I decided to check the tablet.
Sure enough, the latest complaint confirmed what I thought.
astropath says power not coming on through relay, need tech-priests to confirm and solve
It read like a scribble taken during a meeting as an afterthought, but the cause was indeed related to the infrastructure.
I gestured to the woman. "Take us up slowly, please."
++++
Two hours later, I was in touch with Ramirez via the communicator the guards had. They were resistant at first to give it to me, but my explanation for them to pass on quickly overcame that.
"Magos, what do you want?" I heard his crackly voice.
"I've completed my analysis of your relay and determined its primary problem."
"Which is?"
"Simple overloading problem. There are various places along the wiring that use substandard wires. While this is fine if nothing is going wrong, it breaks down very quickly otherwise. I suspect whoever made those repairs did not have the material available. That, or they didn't know what they were doing."
"…So, you just need to replace the wires and it will work?"
"Yes, that would make it theoretically functional. If there are additional problems, we will know once we turn it on."
"And what about the wires themselves? Where do we get those?"
I tilt my head. "The Mechanicus would be a guarantee, but I have no way to tell you when you might get them. The other option would be checking your own vessel's stores for these materials. There is a place where the tech-priests kept their stock, yes?"
"There is such a place. Hand the radio back to the men, please."
I did so. What Ramirez said to them wasn't audible to me.
The man nodded and put his radio back on his hip. "Magos, come with us, please. The First Lieutenant has ordered us to take you to the tech-priest lodgings."
++++
The first indication that something was off was the fact that the door to the lodgings was literally removed with what looked like explosive force and then propped up against the wall.
"Why…" I started, waving my hand at it.
"No idea, Magos. I think it must have been locked and the captain tried to get inside," Ramirez explained. He'd been waiting for us when we arrived.
Right. It would have been thoroughly locked to ensure no one interfered. "I take it you don't have any tech-priests who could have opened the lock?"
"We don't have any tech-priests or magi in general. Our small complement was snapped up and ordered to report to Mars once the siege ended."
We stepped through the opening, and I took in my first view.
It was…messy.
The layout of the room was one of communal construction but private rooms. What we stood in was a very long, rectangular space with a tall ceiling. Along the walls were racks with countless shelves that reached up to the top and extended the nearly the entire length of the room. Near each one was a ladder the types of which I had only seen in libraries, capable of rolling on the ground while locked in against a rail that ran on the ceiling itself. Closer to the bottom, three lines of work benches extended the same length. Each bench was a few meters long, with waking space for two people at a time to pass by between them. The rest of the room was lit a bit dimly in my opinion. Enough to see, but not enough to hide the central attraction of the Mechanicus symbol. A massive metal disc adorned the far wall, holding the image of a half-skull, half-robotic face surrounded by a cog, lit by powerful spotlights even now. I could only guess how large it was if it was that clear from this distance.
The benches themselves were covered with torch cutters, spools of wire, wrenches, pliers, and the occasional breadboard. The shelves were filled with all the same materials and more. Presumably, one would take what was needed and stand at a bench to do their work. Everything needed for repairs was kept here, provided it could be carried by hand. Anything too large would need the tech-priest to go where needed instead.
"Well, Magos? Do you see what you need?"
"I have no idea how long it may take to find what I need. Hopefully, this is organized so that we don't need to search everywhere. I'll check it all regardless."
"I'll leave you to it, then. I will not be available at all for the next…four hours, I think. We have important meetings occurring."
"I understand."
As he left, I turned to the two guards. "Hey, can you two help me? It would make it faster."
They looked at each other before one of them nodded. "What do we need to do?"
"You remember those thick wires we saw inside the relay? The ones that were twice the size of your fists?"
"Yes."
"We need to find those. Start looking through these walls and see if you find any. If you think you have, call me over and I'll check."
Even with three people, this was no easy task. I suspected that the magi and tech-priests had some internally maintained map of where all the parts and materials were, but they never shared it outside themselves. Why would they? It didn't really concern the ship's command staff since they had no one else who could repair the ship, and the secretive nature of the Mechanicus when it came to speaking with outsiders tended towards being territorial over any and all knowledge they might have.
There were parts for everything, and while I couldn't recall all of it, I made note of some possibly useful materials and tools for the future. The minutes turned to hours as I walked up and down the ladders countless times. There were some false promises, but I didn't blame the two helpers I had. They weren't able to differentiate various cables that seemed like what I needed.
But at last, easily two hours of searching later, I found the cables I needed. Tucked away in a storeroom was a gigantic spool of wire, easily the size two Astartes standing side by side with another of their kind standing on their shoulders.
"Will that be enough wire?" One of them asked.
"I hope so. It seems to be enough, but if not, I'll have to improvise like the previous technician and inform the first lieutenant about that," I answered.
"Cool. Also, it's nearing dinner time, so we're being relieved. There should be two more guards to help you soon, Magos."
Just then, my stomach gurgled. Loudly.
"…Can I join you for dinner?" I asked sheepishly.
++++
After dinner, I returned to work with another pair of guards. My focus was on keeping all the thick wiring I had taken from falling off the anti-grav platform as we floated inside the relay. It had barely fit, leaving the feet of my three new minders (even the platform operator had been replaced at some point) covered with the heavy material.
They didn't complain much, thankfully, leaving me to focus on my task.
First, I removed the many-to-1 connector, leaving those thinner wires to dangle while I connected the thicker ones.
Second, I detached the thin wires at the top of the patch and let them fall to the ground while I connected the thicker ones.
I had believed the hardest part would be holding the new wires in place while I connected them to the existing ones, but I seemed to have gained a steady hand recently as well. Instead, the real hard part was the scale of the task.
There was no regularity to where the patches existed. Sometimes we went 10 minutes without hitting one, other times we were stuck in nearly the same spot for an hour as I went about slowly measuring, cutting, and connecting upwards of 20 wires. The strain on my muscles was felt strongly, but equally felt was a sense of purpose, or perhaps righteousness.
While I powered through my pain, the other three eventually started talking, then playing simple games, and at one point even asking if they could help me make this faster.
I appreciated the thought, but other than passing me one of the tools I might need, there wasn't much.
The minutes continued to melt into hours, and I hoped their sanity didn't melt away as quickly. We had a long time ahead of us.
Already rather industrious, are you not? That is the power of motivation, though I supposed this is no revelation to you.
Take your gifts, immigrant.
I woke up with a slightly rough shaking of my shoulder. "Huh…wuzzat?"
"Magos, wake up!"
I shifted slowly, turning to my left and trying to clear away my eyes. Standing in the room with me was First Lieutenant Ramirez and one of the two men who had originally been charged with watching over me. "Hey, sorry. Just…give me a second."
I removed the blanket over my form, revealing my t-shirt and shorts. Turning 90 degrees, I planted my feet on the ground, took a deep breath, and stood up. "How can I help you?"
"I came to ask about the repairs you were doing."
I stretched and yawned. "Ah…yes, those are done, like I said in my message to you. I replaced all burnt out cables I could find and put in fresh ones. I also tested the power through it, and nothing broke immediately. I think you'd have to try sending a message with it to see if everything is good."
"We already did. It worked. Our astropaths were able to send a message to another ship's astropaths."
"Cool, cool…so, what now?"
"I think we should speak further. Do you wish to eat anything first?"
My stomach roiled audibly. "Yeah, I'm pretty hungry. I'll go to the canteen and get something."
"No, no need. I'll have someone bring some food to you here. Let us meet in one hour's time. Here, take this comm-bead, it is tuned to my own." He handed a wiry-looking headset to me.
"Thanks. Can you also send a toiletry kit? The previous magi and tech-priests didn't have one from what I found here."
He nodded and left with the guard, hand on his own comm-bead as he spoke softly into it.
The room I was in was a bedroom located in the Mechanicus quarters, tucked away between the large racks in the adjacent communal room. It was surprisingly comfortable, more like one I would find in a motel. There was a personal touch in the form of banners, symbols, and other religious items, but nothing else. The bed was soft and not too far from the bathroom.
I glanced at the red Mechanicus robes I had been given on coming to this universe, then stepped closer and sniffed them. I was surprised at the lack of sweat permeating the air, perhaps these robes had been designed by people who knew the wearers were constantly doing physical work with possibly malodorous materials.
I took a shower in the barren bathroom and exited just in time for a South Asian man offering me a covered tray, who left as soon as I took it and told me to just leave it outside the room for him to collect later.
Inside was a thin pair of what looked like chicken wings, a cup of fruity-smelling paste, a hard biscuit the size of my palm and just as brown, and some overly filtered water.
I dug in voraciously, the weak smells already much better than the nonsense they called food the first time I had eaten aboard this ship.
++++
Ramirez's office was small and filled with cabinets, bookshelves, and tablets. Light brown carpeting covered the floor, while the walls appeared to be plastic and similarly colored. His desk was as wide as he was tall and held a monitor off to one side so that if he were speaking with someone, it wouldn't get in the way.
"Take a seat," he said as he gestured to one of the cushioned chairs. He himself sat in in his much more comfortable office chair opposite me.
"So, what did you want to talk about?"
"Your work. We brought you on to fix our astropathic relay, which you seem to have done. I'm pleased by your speed, by the way. It's a refreshing pace compared to the unfortunate batch we've been forced to work with for some years now."
I said nothing.
"In any case, I saw that you left me a message after you were done that explained everything you did and what materials you used, which is good since I can explain that if anyone asks. Not that they will, but it is good to be clear about this."
"Of course."
He leaned back. "But that leaves you without any work. We only have one relay, after all. So, what do you intend to do now? Leave us?"
"Actually, I suppose I should be clearer about my skillset. My area of expertise is currently any Warp related technology. While I approached you over your broken relay, I'm actually qualified to work on other systems as well. Off the top of my head, I'm knowledgeable about Gellar field generators, navigator relays, Warp drives, and astropathic relays…" Suddenly, something poked at a part of my mind, like the faintest of slaps as if to remind me of something. "In addition, I have a high amount of…theoretical knowledge related to how starship systems and machinery work."
I took a breath. "So, if you think you need my skills for your ship, I'd be happy to stay on for a period of time that we can discuss. If you don't, then I think you or the captain must know other ships that need repairs and are also waiting. I would appreciate it if you could arrange meetings between myself and their captains so I can do my work there."
As I had explained my technical abilities, Ramirez's eyebrows had gone higher and higher until they were half-way to his hairline. "That...that is a rather useful skillset. And you aren't wrong that we'd like you to remain with us. Why don't we decide your place on this ship more formally?"
What he meant by that was deciding all of my needs like lodging, food, and work obligations. My official room now was located two decks below the entrance to the Mechanicus quarters, since it wasn't good if someone was crashing in their rooms without permission. I'd still be allowed to use their stuff.
The expectation was simple. I was in charge of handling maintenance over all "Warp-related systems" aboard the Sanguine Spear, which just meant the four systems I had mentioned. However, on an ad hoc basis, I could be asked to look into other mechanical or technology-related issues and see if I could do something. If I was dismissed for whatever reason, then the ship's leadership would do a good-faith search to find another job for me aboard another ship, or a nearby world if that wasn't possible. This would only not apply if I severely violated the laws aboard the ship.
"Well, I think that about covers everything. Do you have any questions for me?"
"Yes, what happens if your normal complement of Mechanicus personnel returns and insist I not stay?"
"That would qualify as a case in which we would try to find you another position on another vessel. But we would obviously try to resolve that without losing anyone."
"Alright. This seems good to me."
"Excellent. I'll ask you to sign this contract that just makes this all explicit." He turned his monitor towards me and handed me a digital signing pad from behind his desk. I read the contract on the screen to confirm it said all that we had discussed, then took the digital pen and put my initials on it.
The moment my hand hit the interface, I froze and concentrated deliberately now. My old name made no sense here, and since Magos was a title…
The word "Acerak" appeared in curved letters on the screen. If he noticed my hesitation, he didn't comment on it.
"Thank you," he said, and clicked the print button. Two copies shot out of a printer I hadn't seen behind the chair. He handed me one. "Keep this for yourself if you wish."
Before I left, he gave me a tablet that I could use to read and send messages to other people with email addresses on the ship's own network. "Talk with Shipswain Singh once you leave, she'll get you sorted out on all the smaller details."
++++
It was somewhat useful that I hadn't come into this universe with anything but the clothes on my back (the red robes, understanding of High Gothic, and passable Terran Low-Gothic being a secondary gift), as it meant I had nothing to move between my temporary room and my newly assigned one.
I was slightly taken aback when I exited the elevator to the floor I needed to go.
The elevator room was entirely public as expected, but the class and elegance seemed…too familiar? Yes, too familiar.
Marble tiles covered the floor, while paintings of important people (obviously including the Emperor) adorned the red, wavy walls just out of reach from any hands. A wrought-iron chandelier extended down from the ceiling; convincingly fake flowers hung around it instead of any lighting. Two semi-circles of bulbs were arranged on the ceiling itself to give an impression of natural light.
As I made my way past the dozen or so people trying to crowd into the elevator, I was stopped by a bald black man wearing a black robe similar to mine, but with short sleeves and the bottom ending at his knees, revealing what looked like jeans beneath. The robe itself had the twin-headed eagle upon its shoulders and looked a bit crumpled.
"Hold-oh, never mind. Sorry, Magos," he said with what sounded like an American accent, but from where, I couldn't tell.
"I'm sorry?"
"You're good, Magos, I'm sorry for holding you up."
I walked on, confused by what I had heard.
The hallway itself was covered by tile-pattered carpet, navy-blue and bright orange squares alternating against each other. Doors were spaced out every few meters and the hallway large enough for two people to comfortably avoid talking to each other if they exited opposing rooms. Sign hung above that indicated where batches of rooms could be found, along with specific locations. I looked up at the two hanging near me.
Rooms B1-B30
Public Librarium
Cafeteria Sigma
Those were all located up to my left, but none were what I needed.
Rooms C1-C30
Cafeteria Delta
Work Office
Ah, there it was. I headed through the hallway around a few people, all dressed in various colored knee-length robes on the outside, though a few wore different things that occasionally revealed themselves when the robes shifted.
As I walked, I noted the paintings along the walls, some of which even seemed to mark specific crew members who were important or performed "incredible service in the name of the Emperor". That second one seemed like a marker of people who died. Still, whoever did those paintings was good. Social recognition was always a valuable reward.
Eventually, I reached the vaguely named "Work Office". Its name was written in vermillion on a blood-red banner that curved along the doorway, the banner itself held down with ropes that ran behind it.
There was only a bored East Asian woman behind a desk as I entered. She had her head down in some magazine she was reading. The office itself was surprisingly sparse in decoration, with only what looked like a tapestry depicting something too abstract for me to recognize that hung over the desk from the wall.
She looked up as I approached. "Can I help, Magos?"
"I was told by First Lieutenant Ramirez to report to…Shipswain Singh," I explained, showing her the tablet with my details.
She glanced over it slowly, then stood up. "Stay here just a moment." It actually took 120 moments for her to come back, but who was counting? "She'll see you now. Follow me, please."
Suddenly, a door I hadn't noticed opened on my left and I could see into the rest of this area. I followed the woman down a few turns past other important offices, like one belonging to the Quartermaster and another to the Medicae Master.
We stopped after a minute and she opened a wooden door on our left. "Madame? He's here…Go ahead, Magos."
"Thank you," I replied. She shut the door behind me.
Shipswain Singh was a wrinkled old woman, her raven-colored hair bound in a tight bun. A small red smear ran vertically across the center of her forehead, and a gold ring pierced her left nostril. Her eyes looked hazy behind her thick orange-red glasses. She didn't wear a robe like everyone else, instead opting for a light-blue sari that contrasted her brown skin. "Hello," she said, looking up but not getting up from her chair.
"Hello. I was told to report to you by First Lieutenant Ramirez."
"Ah, okay. Sit, sit, and show me what you have."
I dragged the chair from its position against the wall to face her across her white plastic desk. Nearly all her furniture was plastic, for that matter, just painted with differing colors. The cabinet to my back-left was red-brown, the one behind her was teal. I wondered if she just wasn't considered high enough in position to get more expensive equipment.
She took the tablet I offered from my hands and adjusted her glasses slightly. I could see that her hands shook just a bit as she set it down in front of her. For 30 seconds, she read it in silence. "So, you are to look over some ship technology as your duty, but I can ask you to look at other problems as well."
"That sounds correct to me."
"Good, good. Okay, I expect some kind of report from you regarding your work. Everyone has to give those to me. I will send an example to your tablet, and you just follow that."
"I understand," I said with a nod.
"Then I think we are done here. You can go about your work, just keep your tablet in hand."
++++
My new room was towards the dead-center of the ship from what I gathered, with the command deck above us by a few hundred meters. Thus, the closest of the systems officially under my stewardship was the gellar field generator, found in the engineerium. Not that the others were farther away, they were all located nearby. But the generator was the closest of them all.
Getting there was easy enough, it was two elevator rides down and both were located near each other. The first would bring me to the bottom of some hab level below my own room's level, the second would bring me to the engineerium itself.
Confirming my route, I headed back to the Mechanicus quarters first to grab the bag of diagnosis and quick-fix tools. After that, I took the elevators down to where I needed to be.
Another pair of guards in black robes stood by the entrance, roughly checking everyone who came through along with any belongings. I was thankfully spared that level of searching, my red robes once more showing the privileges of the Mechanicus as people allowed to go where they wanted.
The engineerium was itself a giant chamber with sub-chambers for its various systems. I saw dozens of people on each floor, but each floor here was mostly a light-brown walkway that connected at their center to two staircases.
Along the walls, I saw pipes and air ducts snake their way from top to bottom. If there was any air filtering being done here, it wasn't strong enough to remove some stench I hadn't ever been exposed to. The closest I could describe it as was burning rubber somehow mixed with the feeling of being near electricity.
"Excuse me," I asked a tall, lanky ginger man who looked a bit underfed, "where is the entrance to the gellar field generator?"
"Uh, four floors down, I think. Sorry, I don't work with that."
"No problem, thank you."
The man's directions were not correct, and instead of the generator, I found myself now closest to the Warp drive. Well, I could start here, I supposed.
…
Massive. Blindingly bright. A literal electrifying presence.
The machine before me was all those things and so much more. Its top looked like a pawn from chess, but instead of just a circular base, it had four metal "legs" that stretched towards the walls. The entire thing was easily 50 meters tall. Cables as thick as an entire person emerged out of the legs and wound their way up into the main body.
God, the light emanating from its glassy walls was absurdly bright. I reached into my bag for my welding faceplate and that helped quite a bit, but not enough to dim the light completely.
I could now make out walkways connected to the main energetic core of the drive itself, red lights attached to the sides so as to guide anyone on them. In the circular walls at the same level as the core, I could see a ring of similar energy. Part of the core was exposed completely, meaning you could step inside and probably die if you wanted as energy pulsed and stuttered from the core to the ring around it. This opening was aligned with the length of the ship.
I turned to my left and descended the curved staircase to enter the chamber properly, the electric feeling growing stronger as I did, along with a stagnant and uncomfortable heat. Sweat now formed beads on my forehead. I wiped it away, but it regenerated instantly. Damn.
It was now that I encountered for the first time a thing that truly marked the Mechanicus as inhuman in morality.
Its face was half-concealed by a metal plate that sported a red lens over the eye. The right hand was a giant metal pincer that could spin, allowing the servitor to carry or unscrew large objects. Its entire torso and upper legs were covered with a bare metal plate, while skin or something similar was revealed from the knees down to the feet. Cables ran across its right shoulder and into the center of its torso through the plate, only to emerge where the stomach would be and wrap around the lower left of the torso back onto its back. A thick black-red bundle of wires was plugged into the top of its skull from somewhere on its back.
A servitor.
I couldn't tell if it noticed me, as it didn't react initially. But then, I saw it turn explicitly. I froze as the half-corpse, half-machine thing looked me over. It almost seemed to be waiting for me to react.
Eventually, I took a half-step. When it didn't respond, I took another, then another. The servitor stayed put.
I wasn't fully satisfied that it was dormant, but I couldn't do anything about it and not knowing what it was thinking bothered me a great deal.
Ultimately, I decided to ignore the damn thing and walked towards the doors that would lead into the innards of the Warp drive. The large doors, easily capable of letting two medium-sized sheds stacked on each other through with room to spare, slowly rolled back for me.
The inside was disappointingly barren, I supposed. Just slightly rusted metal and a circular staircase that I assumed ran along the entire vertical portion. As I stepped up, I retracted my point about it being barren.
Set upon set of glass cylinders, each as large as a man's chest, with tapered ends were placed in circles through the center. Every single one of the hundred or so was filled with the same white-blue, pulsing energy I had seen from the outside through the glass panels in the walls, and I now felt electricity so thoroughly permeate the air I thought I was being stung constantly. Strangely enough, the heat didn't feel any different despite me being this close.
My destination being at the top meant I had to walk up the steps that were less than a meter from the cylinders at any given moment. I couldn't even look at anything due to the light blinding me, relying on my hands to reach out and find the next steps.
Like a child, I crawled my way up one step at a time. It wasn't until I felt the electricity die down a bit that I opened my eyes.
Now I stood on top of the structure, as if I were a scout in a watchtower. The platform itself was circular like the drive's main housing and had a railing to prevent any falls. The actual material was steel, but certain areas were panels and marked via a slightly different color.
Raising one of those up revealed another glass cylinder, this one slightly wider than the energy-containing ones below. It was also filled with green fluid, though I knew if you ran your hand through it, it would be more like jelly.
The key point was human brain placed within and the 22 wires coming out of it to allow you to interface with it without opening the container. The brain itself had four separate containers the size of a smartphone hooked into directly. Those would be the cogitators for actually computing.
Under each of the panels, two brains would be found. All of them were linked together and connected to a very bulky panel with an inbuilt monitor that was found behind me on railing.
I walked over to said panel and tried to find a power button, but to no avail. The only thing I could see were female ports, presumably to be plugged by an authorized tech-priest who probably had to have a password or authenticator of some kind.
Doing my checks manually was now functionally impossible.
There were four components to check: the brain-cogitators, the energy cylinders, the cables with provided electrical power to the whole mechanism, and the emitter itself. Two of those were completely impossible for me to gauge correctly as the brain-cogitators were fixed in place and meant to be tested via the interface and the emitter was inside the core where energy ran freely. The cylinders could be eyed from a distance, but I needed much stronger eye-protection to do that. Only the cables could easily be tested by me right now.
It was time to go back to the Mechanicus quarters and see if I could somehow get myself access to all this.
++++
By luck, I found something only 10 minutes of searching later. I must have missed it previously.
A working terminal. It seemed to be for any Mechanicus member who didn't have implants to wirelessly work with machines and seemed to function just fine since I could power it on.
After a moment and with an annoyingly high-pitched buzz that wasn't too loud, I saw the dark screen become less dark and a cursor appear on the top left.
$
…Fuck, I didn't know what operating system this thing was using. I slapped my face in frustration before a stupid idea came to me.
$ help
GNU bash, version …
I laughed at the absurdity. A *nix system?
$ whoami
The result was a 20-character string of numbers and letters. That was meaningless, but I could check the permissions this user had. It took me 20 minutes to navigate this futuristic version of a system I knew by heart to figure out that whoever this was, they were a standard user.
However, they did have some useful data in their home directory. In particular, there was a file which detailed how to use a device that could directly interface with the machinery and provide a readable printout.
There was also location for that device mentioned.
Bingo.
Edit: This chapter originally described Singh as a woman with "mud-colored skin". This can be interpreted as racist, and while that was not my intention in the least, I've edited that to "brown skin".
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