Smoke in the air, burning coal and chi, solder and sparks. The chapterhouse workshops were a vast series of cocoons, connected by stone umbilicals and irises of radiating steel, contracting and dilating as figures passed through. The broad test spaces of the Munitions Sect, the warrens of the False-Lifers, the endless corridors of the Skin-Weavers. A dozen different kinds of Artificer, thousands of machines, always in motion. No daylight lived here, no windows to let in the outside world. Just the constant hum of halogen bulbs, pressing bright fingers against sticky, smoke-stained yellow.
He walked out into the main hub, into the press and swell of skin on skin. A new shipload of gaijin were being pored over by the Inochi Techs; the only real livestock left in all of Shima now that the great slaughterhouses stood empty. The techs singled out a few large, fierce-looking men for future arena games; a short, brutal life spent killing their fellows to the deafening approval of the crowd. The strong and hale were pushed into motor-wagons bound for market, and from there, some endless pollen-choked field. The rest were hustled away in chains toward the inochi pits, more fuel for the machine.
He looked at their faces. Old and young. Women and children. Bewildered expressions, thousand-yard stares roaming this hellish pit peopled with metal insectoids and burned-flower stink. He wondered what the people outside these walls would do if they knew that their glorious war against the barbarian hordes was not fought for honor, nor renown, but because almost every warm-blooded creature in Shima had already been rounded up and slaughtered. Processed in the inochi vats and liquefied for orderly dispersal among the growing fields of swaying scarlet blooms that pumped the heart of the Shōgunate. How casually would Shima’s people sip their tea or smoke their pipes if they knew the flower that birthed their empire was called blood lotus for a reason?
He stared at a skinny gaijin girl, maybe five or six, her grubby hand entwined with a tall, wretchedly thin woman. Rags for shoes. Backs of her thighs smeared with filth. Face wet with tears.
It will all be over soon, little one. The lotus must bloom.
One of the bigger gaijin yelled in his guttural tongue as the Inochi Techs pulled a woman from his arms. He lashed out with his foot, tackled one of the techs to the ground. Shatei descended from all over, a swarm of clicking brass and hissing exhaust. Fists rose and fell; a metal percussion beneath the song of the woman’s screams. Kin closed his eyes, trying to block out the sound. It was easier to take if you didn’t think of them as people. If you imagined they were just one more commodity. That they didn’t think or feel. That they hadn’t once loved and laughed and dreamed of bright and wonderful things. It was easier to take if you could manage that. Somehow.
A familiar nausea swelled in Kin’s stomach as the sound of brass pounding on weak flesh faded. He could swear he tasted chi again in the back of his throat. He opened his eyes, pity-sick, watching them drag the bleeding body of the big gaijin toward the pits, silence the weeping woman with a popping spray from the barrel of a handheld shuriken-thrower. A Kyodai barked orders to gather up her body, pointing at the gleaming pools of blood and berating the murderer for “inefficiency.” The taste got so bad Kin thought he might vomit.
He turned and walked on, quick as he could without raising attention, through the heart of the chapterhouse and onto the elevator spire at its gut. He stepped inside the chamber of burnished steel and glowing numbers, floating skyward to the fourth floor. The habitat level was austere, dimly lit, row upon row of faceless black irises radiating out from a central hub.
He pulled a lever, stepped inside his habitat. His mechabacus was relaying the latest crop report from the Fushicho quartermasters into his skull: pounds of lotus (yield), numbers of dead slaves (collateral shrinkage), deadlands still growing at an exponential rate (corruption percentile). Figures and kanji flowed in his head and in his veins. The air filtration system spat its rattle and hum into the little room. He cranked the door shut behind him with a sigh of relief, the iris contracting with the sound of metal grating on metal, pressure seals sucking closed with an intake of hot breath.
He waited a few minutes to allow the vents to cycle. The diode on the purity monitor smudged slowly from red to green, a bright silver sound indicating it was safe to take off his skin. He touched the release, neck unfolding like lotus in bloom, pulling the helmet away from his head. The rubber seal clung to his flesh as if terrified to let go.
He sloughed off his gauntlets, ran a hand over close-cropped hair, trying to forget about that little girl, the sound of the woman’s screams. He was dripping with sweat, and the thought of a cool shower was a tiny promise of momentary escape, easing the frown on his face. He inspected his flesh in the small mirror above his cot. His burns were healing slowly, gauze coming away easily from the dimpled flesh of his throat.
Not too bad. Not so ugly that no one could want him.