Editing Ghosts of Rage (Warhammer High) (section)

=== The Taghmata Familia ===

She followed her into a large service elevator and descended into the ground two floors. From there, they followed down a large hallway, this one mostly empty other than the occasional worker or servitor group conducting their duties.

As they walked by a windowed room, Furia stopped at the sight. She wasn’t sure immediately what she was looking at until the priestess walked up beside her so she could ask.

“Is this... a nursery?” Furia asked her.

The room was more natural compared to the rest of the complex, which still didn’t mean much for a Mechanicum complex. There was over a hundred ‘cribs’, each a highly complex machine that outputted all the data on the life form inside to a nearby screen. Most of them were full of tiny babies, sleeping or crying as many attendants walked by, nursing to their every need.

“Indeed. This is where we check if a baby is viable to accept augmentations or not.”

“But I thought this was the port. Why have a nursery?” Furia asked her.

“This is actually the first building that was created on the planet when the Explorator fleet had arrived. From there, we grew upon this complex until we had the working atmosphere generator created to colonize the rest of the planet. Even though we have grown beyond the use of this complex, many services still remain here for the time being, like this nursery.”

Furia nodded slowly as she watched behind the window. She was about to turn to leave when the door to the nursery opened and another techpriest came out.

“Myrn, do you have a cycle? One of the containers is malfunctioning again, I need your input.”

The female priestess nodded and turned to Furia. “I’ll only be a moment,” she announced and disappeared inside.

The teenager waited a moment outside, feeling quite alone as servitors walked by, not even glancing at her. Her curiosity urged her on as she opened the door and walked into the nursery.

The effect was immediate. It seemed that the window was sound proof as the yell of nearly a hundred babies hit her at once. The room smelled quite sterile, even with these many children to take care of. Attendants moved between the rows as they check each crib and wrote down results on their data slates.

Furia walked up to one of the cribs and looked at the small child inside. The baby was yelling, clearly displeased with something about his situation. He, suddenly stopped as he noticed the tall girl beside him. Furia glared at the baby for a moment as the small human eyed her curiously before reaching out to her, laughing.

For whatever reason, she humoured the child as she brought her hand towards him. He immediately grabbed her index finger, hanging on tightly. It seemed all he wanted was some attention, Furia thought to herself, as he continued to smile at her.

She never thought of herself to be good with children and she knew her father wasn’t either. A part of her wondered if her mother cared for her before she died. She barely remembered the woman, only a single memory with very little details. A careful hold, a smell of roses, blond hair. She remembered not much else besides that, and had seen no photos of her in her household. Maybe when she found her homeworld there would be more information.

At some point in her thoughts, the baby holding on to her had fallen asleep, and she stared at him for a moment longer. Myrn walked up beside her and looked down at the baby. “You put him to sleep? You must have a caring touch then,” she commented.

Furia grinned at that idea. “You don’t know how wrong you are,” she muttered in response.

Myrn shrugged as they both walked out, making their way past the nursery. Soon after, they approached another room, which Furia assumed to be their destination. “Data Storage,” she read off the door as Myrn opened it easily enough. The room was frigid as Furia wondered how she was sweating a couple minutes earlier and freezing now. The priestess seemed unaffected as she led the young teenager to a console and turned it on.

“You can access the registry from here. Be warned, if you are found tampering with the system, you will be terminated with no inquiry. To leave, just go back the way we came and take the elevator to the ground floor. If you need anything, I am sure there is someone around here who can help. I must be off.”

Before Furia could ask her anything, the tech priestess left, leaving the brown haired teenager alone.

“Great,” she muttered, turning to the console and going to work. The faster she could find what she was looking for, the faster she could leave the freezer she was in.