Chapter Text
Heimat Orbital, Weltraumwerft 06
WMPR-Hw06476 “Zigse” pushed off of a bulkhead, sliding down an unfinished hallway, pipes bare of paneling, the only indicators of direction scrawled arrows, size indicators, and notes from her fellow Wimples. Grabbing a thick pipe at a dimly lit intersection, Zigse came to a stop with a light jolt to her shoulder. Zigse reaches into the thick bag velcroed to the side of her AVA suit, pulling out a binder of folded plastic sheets. Rifling through the sheets, she pulls out the blueprint to her current section and brings it into the light of her helmet lamps.
Shit
She was at least seven intersections away from the stretch of hallway she was supposed to be laying electrical wiring in; worse, the most direct route there required her to head through cramped maintenance tunnels. If she went the indirect route, there was no way she could finish this job in her allotted time, and her overseer would punish her again. A nearby entrance to the maintenance tunnels yawned nearby, its shadowy depths boring into Zigse’s photoreceptors. Unable to look away from the hole, her shaking hands unbuckled the clips holding various bulky equipment to her suit, until only her spool of wire and tool pouches remained.
Achtung! Erhöhter Sauerstoffverbrauch festgestellt!
The warning from her suit’s oxygen monitor did little to slow the panicked breaths filling her helmet as she grabbed onto a grip handle bolted next to the steel orifice and pulled herself towards it. The darkness welled up around her, staved off only by her helmet lamps, the walls pressed against her head, her back, her shoulders, her hips. Pulling herself deeper, the only sounds Zigse could hear were the whine of her oxidant pump and her rapid, panicked breaths. Pulling herself along, arm over arm, Zigse continues maybe six meters towards her objective before she feels something tug at her waist. Continued tries fail to dislodge whatever had gotten caught, and she tries to twist around to address the problem. Her shoulders wedge against the narrow walls, and her helmet hits the ceiling. I’m going to die here she thinks, and can no longer control her panic. Her breathing becomes wild, and she starts thrashing around, pressing against the entrapping walls, trying desperately to find a way out.
Im WMPR-Kern-DOS wurde extremer Stress festgestellt
Bitten Sie einen Techniker um Hilfe
Deaktivieren
…
verminderter Stresspegel festgestellt
laufender Bootsektor
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dBPdBPdBP dBBBBBBb dBBBBBb dBBBBBb
' dB' dB' dBP
dBPdBPdBP dB'dB'dB' dBBBP' dBBBBK'
dBPdBPdBP dB'dB'dB' dBP dBP BB
dBBBBBBBP dB'dB'dB' dBP dBP dB'
WMPR-KERN-DOS Ver. 2.33
jetzt aktiv
…
Zigse opened her eyes to the familiar pitted metal surface that was the underside of her bunk mate's bed. She took a moment to collect herself, and to remember… Oh, Revolutionary… She was going to be decommissioned for this one, for sure. Rolling her head to the side she caught sight of another Wimple sitting at one of the desks, reading a starship identification guide.
“Hey… Fünf… How am I here? ” Zigse spoke in the halting almost whisper common to her model.
WMPR-Hw06555 “Fünf” looked up from her magazine “Overseer Achtzehn’s office… immediately… once you awake”
Zigse rolled back onto her back, putting her forearm across her eyes, and let out a small mix between a groan and a sigh. I am going to be so incredibly deactivated. She rolled out of bed and tried to freshen up, running one hand through her messy hair and trying to brush splatters of paint and grease off of the hard plastic that was her skin from the neck down with the other. Eventually, she gave up and went to the door, which opened with an oiled hisss, revealing a waiting Starling.
“Hello, Zigse, you’re really in it now” the much taller Protektor grinned down at her “I will escort you to the Overseer now, who by the way, is in an incredibly bad mood”
Zigse kept her eyes firmly on the floor plating and her footless legs “Always… bad mood… Storch… not suited for… shipbuilding oversight”
The Star guided Zigse down the plain metal hallways of Weltraumweft 06, towards the office of Shipyard Overseer Achtzeen, passing some Eules, but primarily Aras and other Wimples, as well as the occasional Star standing at their posts who the Starling escorting Zigse would nod to as they passed.
“Well, here we are, try not to get eaten alive in there” The starling opens the door and steps beside it, a smile on her face”
Achtzeen sits at her desk, framed by the national flag hanging behind her. “Hello 476, please… have a seat” she gestures to a flimsy sheet metal and plastic chair. Zigse’s eyes keep their vigilant watch on her legs as she sits in the chair and folds her hands in her lap. “476, thanks to you an entire section of the project is an entire cycle behind on progress. AEON command will be incredibly unhappy with me.” Zigse kept her eyes down and didn’t respond. “Once we realized you were missing, the entire section had to be searched. Eventually, an Ara found you deactivated in a maintenance crawlway somewhere distant from where you should have been.
Zigse looks up slightly, just enough to see the top of Achtzeen’s desk “If I had… taken long way… I would have been late”
“So instead you shut down the worksite for an entire cycle. Don't cry yet 476. I’m not going to decommission you. Instead, I will transfer you to a new cadre I have been instructed to assemble, where you won't be able to disrupt my worksite anymore.” The Storch gets to her feet, towering over Zigse. “Now of course, for your transgressions, punishment must be applied” She walks to the door and raps on it with her knuckles. “Jagdvogel, please lend me your baton for a short while and go on a patrol” The Star on the other side opens the door and hands Achtzeen her baton, snaps a salute and walks away as the door closes. The Storch walks up behind Zigse and places the bare metal of the stun baton against the plastic skin of her neck. “Seeing as you’ll be transferred elsewhere soon, I promise to try to not break any bones, just as a kindness to your next overseer.
Zigse breaks into short sobbing for a brief second before the Storch depressed the button on the grip of the electric prod, sending arcing electricity through the smaller Replika’s systems. She falls to the ground as every myomer and biomuscle in her body contracts violently, unable to shield herself from the following blows from the heavy baton, or the heavy kicks and stomps of Achtzeen’s footplates.
Zigse woke up, for the second time that cycle. This time, instead of the familiar steel of her bunk, she found herself looking up at the grey tile and fluorescent lights of the medical wing. Every nerve in her body ached like she had never experienced before. As she twisted to try and find a more comfortable position on the thin mattress, something shifted on her lower chest and she froze, eyes wide, as a diagnostic window reported that, in fact, several of her ribs were broken.
“Liar” she muttered, only to be shocked by a response from behind her.
“Liar?” the voice of a Replika echoed.
“My… former overseer… promised to… not break any… bones”
“Oh, well it's good to see you awake” the unknown Replika replied. Zigse rolled onto her back, clutching a bruised hand to her broken ribs and groaning with pain. A shadow darkened her vision, and she was shocked to see a Star standing over her. “I am STAR-HSB013, but call me Schrott. And we’ll be working together from now on”
“Schrott…? Why… are you called… that?”
“Because” Schrott grinned down at Zigse “I’m a member, and I guess you are now too, of the 1st Heimat Orbital Combat Shipbreaker experimental unit”
For the first time in her life, Zigse’s voice reached above a mezzo-piano “What?”