Sogg

IW -

Rust. It is heavy in Sogg's teeth and seeped into the folds of their snout. They could try to cough it out again, but it would undoubtedly return tomorrow, now caking the micro-serations from the miniscule flakes of metal. There was no point. Husks had been coming in for months. Assuredly, they will continue for some time. The foremen had called in more and more fathers from their workforce. All too much work and not enough people to perform it. One would think this problem merciful to the payment margins. It was a bump in their work's scarcity after all. However, the foremen saw the deficiency forming and flooded Sogg's holding with many, many youngsters. Now, there is rust. Rust in the air and in the vents. Rust caking every floor and every uniform, of those with uniforms. It isn't the only annoyance but, by the Gods, is it the most annoying. If not for the whirrings of sortees and plans, Sogg would tell every last one of those newbies, all seven-thousand-eighty-three of them if they had to, how to properly secure a rust filter when sawing a husk. Seven-thousand-eighty-two. Sogg corrects themself. One of the new boys sliced himself into a hospital last night. Sogg marks the clock-in program to not expect him.

"Guider Sogg!" a voice calls out from below. "Guider Sogg, there's someone here for you!"

Sogg's wings curl up. They know exactly what's down there. "One moment!" Sogg yells back. Sogg grabs their blinder pistol from the desk and stows it in their chest holster. "I should have taken that leave in Firstmonth," they grumble. Out the door.

"Guider." Worker Miir says, tracing Sogg as they trudge from their thrice-replaced sheet metal office hung above the unending main work tunnel. The whirrs of the machinery behind her and bubbling of the metal magma beneath her swallow her voice. "Guider!" She calls again.

"I heard you before, Miir." Sogg groans. They swipe the flakes off their snout and affix a breath filter to it. "Are they here yet?"

"So you've been expecting us." Sogg turns to the voice. Deeper than Miir's, soggier too, but just as recognizeable.

"Resnik." Sogg says.

Resnik smiles and pats his belt playfully. "Quite so, I'm afraid, Guider Sogg."

"Just Sogg will suffice." Sogg looks down the tunnel. Like the cells of a metal organism, repeating scrap chutes with gated off section saws and sensitive component basins. Each cell sports maybe a dozen or so workers. Each cell too focused on their work to notice even this. Each cell nearly identical to the one before, after, and across until they disappear into the artifical horizon. "Miir, back with the other workers."

"But--"

"Don't make me argue." Sogg places themself between Miir and Resnik's men, but remains focused squarely on Miir.

Miir approaches, tightens her gaze, furrows her snout, even glances at Resnik and his men. "Don't make me bury you, either." She holds Sogg's gaze for an eternal moment... then scampers off. Sogg turns to Resnik.

Resnik cranes his head. "Is she of special regards to you?" His eyes stay on Miir's path even as her footsteps become pitter patter.

"None more than any of my workers," Sogg responds.

Miir becomes ever smaller, running past scrap pile and machine team after scrap pile and machine team, but if someone were to track her, one ant among dozens, they could very well still make her out. Resnik can. "Then you wouldn't mind me easing your burden," Resnik says, thumbing over his holster.

FWHIP! Sogg's blinder barrel stares Resnik down. "I think you mistake my meaning."

Resnik raises his hands, a giggle escapes his lips. His team could end Sogg, but as it stands, Sogg's death twitch would be his head. Fine. The game will be played. "It's okay, Guider. I'm kidding!" Resnik lowers his mates' guns. "I mean, you're not paying your food tithes, so she must be close to starving anyway, huh?"

"You know rationing has been in effect."

"And I know you made a deal for food, because you couldn't handle paying in cash."

"And you know rationing is in effect. Everyone's ability to secure anything in in flux."

"That's not my problem."

"It's not? You kill any one of us and the quotas for rationing risk not being filled, not to mention the drop in productive capacity."

"You aren't the only supplier."

"And you haven't harrassed them cos they have their own protection and the same underlying issues. Resnik, you're no fool."

"That's right."

"So, you must see that we're your best bet and you're ours." Sogg reaches towards their chest-- CLICK! One of Resnik's lackeys raises his gun.

"No funny business," He croaks.

Sogg nods. "No funny business." Sogg dips into a pocket on their tunic. "I've been drafting some rates in line with the change in our margins." Sogg presents a small folded leaflet. "The newbies and new mission are a blessing and a curse, but they're the circumstances we're working with."

Resnik chuckles. "Sure. Grab that for me." The trigger-happy lackey inches to Sogg and snatches the leaflet.

"Here ya go, Boss Crusher," the lackey snorts, eyes still hamstrung on Sogg.

Resnik takes the note and opens it. Sogg glances back. The catwalk has some service openings to the melters below--right before the workstations--one sprouting from either wall. A thin haze of smoke lifts from the melters, accompanied by a skin wrinkling heat boiling Sogg in their barely-insulated boots. At this range, maybe the atmosphere here could dampen blinker bolts, but Sogg isn't confident. Maybe the thicker parts of the machines would suffice.

"Guider!" Resnik yells. Sogg thanks the Gods that Miir was nowhere in their scan.

"Yes?"

"You drive a very hard bargain." KSSH! Down the length of the tunnel, hissing builds. "I wish our circumstances weren't so dire."

"What--" Sogg looks back, the metal covers on the tunnel shutter and screech down their retraction rails. "What do you say, Resnik?"

THRUM! "You said no funny business, Sogg!" The lackey yells, failing to pierce the growing rumble.

"The shudders can only be lowered by a foreman. You should probably seal the deal quick, Resnik!"

LIGHT floods the tunnel. "You can't trick me, scrapper!" The lackey screams. Blinker bolts unload toward the light. As the sound of metal stress creaks through the tunnel, pathetics whimpers of blinker fire beats against the soundscape. PFOOM! In an instant, darkness overtakes the light save for a single streak of lightning that smites the lackey on the spot. Sparkles travel from the plume of dust where the lackey once stood, jetting forth until they strike a non conductive floor lining or boot insole. Sogg's pupils go white, and before they know it, their wings are flapping.

Resnik pulls out his blinker, but stalls at the sight of the new hole in the ceiling. "SOGG!" he calls out as Sogg flies backward and shellshocked toward their workers.

As soon as Soog lands, the workers flood in behind him. A milky cube drips from the hole in the ceiling a slick, silent, seemingly mechanism-less cube grows and grows until it meets the floor. "What's happening?" -- "What is that?" -- "Is that the foreman?" -- "No way you--"
FWINK! The cube's walls jut out almost imperceptibly. A slip right back up from whence they came. Alone, a figure stands.

Golden eyes open from the top of the figure. Deep red scales of the face give way to pearlescent red armor draping from the flume of an ear down the neck through to the chest. Smooth, form-hugging gold flows from under the armor along the arm until a taloned gauntlet comes into view. On the hand and middle of the chest, the same faintly glowing milky white, now in circular gems. Sogg blinks twice, making sure they correctly see the image before them. Legs. Many legs. Eight legs. All coil forth from the lower torso like a rich maiden's wedding dress, yet their writhing, softly glowing magnificnce make even the beauty of sworn love seem palor. This, Sogg realizes all at once and all too late is a Great Serpent: Many Of Leg And Red of Coating. Sogg is standing before a God of War.

Sogg looks left. Beyond the see of scrap and sorting buldozers is another melter tunnel. Above it rests an airship with a sky-print belly and a milky-white prism extending into the tunnel's air-access hole. Soog looks right. The image repeats. A smaller airship, a red and white insect flutters into the sorter field. All, it seems have been blessed. "Tools," the Great Serpent begins, "it is with great purpose that I ask the able of you to walk with me." Sogg and many of those beside them look back. "Yes, ALL of you. Your rationing, your sacrifices have born fruit. Your stations will soon be filled by the young your hive has born as well as those from lesser stations elsewhere." The Great Serpent walks toward the exit, using every leg at its desposal to glide across the floor. "You too, Crushers. Your skills are especially needed."

Resnik backs away from the path of the Great Serpent, staying until Sogg and their workers close the gap. "Sogg," Resnik whispers "I would have accepted." Resnik, his surviving bruiser, Sogg, and the workers enter the connecting halls between tunnels. Tendrils of music, not of strikes, but of expertly molded air trickle in.

"I know, Crusher Resnik," Sogg begins, "There are no fools among the blessed."

The Great Serpent leads the mob, hundreds of workers all clambering for a microsecond glance at the diety, until they get to the workers' door and the entrance to the transit crater. Sogg had been here many times before, Resnik moreso. A station for the sunken train servicing miles and miles of station lie there with a small pavilion of shops and services atop it. At least that's what it once was. Before Sogg's eyes is a mind-boggling craft at least a hundred-sixty, no, a hundred-eighty meters across. (\*describe look n its playing music) "Breathe its air, cousin." Resnik snaps Sogg's mask from their snout. "Breathe this air."

\*(flesh out)They were then made to ride the train, they got to the interim and see more of their kind at once than they've ever seen.

\*Get to the cargo holds then up to the shippers, usually reserved for massive ore haulers and other movements of mass resources. Now theres the roar of parade and cleaned up versions of the titular machines and stuff