Flesh and Steel (Warhammer Crime: Warhammer 40,000) by Guy Hayley

Author:Guy Hayley [Hayley, Guy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Warhammer Crime
Published: 2020-10-02T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A master of flesh and steel

Djelling led us back down the rich corridor, onto another corridor, and to a door inset with a round of green glass. The skulls trailed us.

‘The manufacturing floor,’ Djelling said. He put his hand to a palm lock, and the door opened.

The cold smell hit me like a brick. Like a meat store, where astringents can’t hide the smell of incipient rot. There were notes of faeces to go with the blood and decay.

The sound was the worst. Shouting, screaming, praying, weeping, all the cries of human terror and misery.

I’m not a squeamish man, and nor do I spare tears for those who deserve punishment, but what I saw in that processorium haunts me still.

Naked human beings were standing in a switchbacked line between high fences. Outside the fences Adeptus Mechanicus menials in environment suits stood guard with shock goads in hand. The people, all mature men and women, were shepherded down the caged walk like livestock. And they were food beasts being led to the slaughter, meat for the ravenous appetite of the Machine-God. I grew up lucky enough to eat real meat. I was unlucky enough to see where it came from – another gift of my father on another damn tour of my family’s various businesses. The manufactorum produced servitors, but it was more akin to an abattoir than a workshop. Every surface was easily cleanable. Large plastek flaps divided areas from each other. Servitors with spray units surgically attached to their backs prowled about, hosing filth into slit drains set into the perfectly smooth, slanted floors. We walked above all this, past sentry pods on spikes occupied by galvanic rifle-armed snipers. Our path went from one end of the hall to the other, and I could see pretty much the whole sorting process, beginning to end.

As the line slowly advanced, the people were passed through various scanning devices, most of them mounted in ugly, functional arches that let out a constant series of acceptance chimes. Occasionally, one would let out an angry blare, and the indicator lumens would flash red. The rejected person was then swallowed up by a trapdoor opening beneath their feet. From these pits wafted a hideous stench, and the grinding sounds of industrial mincers. One rejected man grabbed on to the lip and hung there, arms and hands bloodied, shouting a stream of defiant profanities. Guards lined the grating either side of him and shocked him until he fell. The adepts wouldn’t even waste bullets on these people.

The trapdoor flipped up, and the next terrified person was ushered forward.

A number of pneumatic gates separated the people from each part of the process, snapping open and shut with bone-crushing force.

Violent metal arms snatched them up and spread-eagled them in the air, and a servitor shearer shaved them all over. At another they were subjected to a high-pressure counterseptic wash whose chemical stink made me choke from a hundred feet away. More scanners, more rejects winnowed out. Machines forcibly dressed them in the heavy rubberised garments common to all mono-tasked servitors.

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