How long I have wished to see the factories of Helleron, was the ironic thought as Totho entered one. I had not thought it would be like this. He meant as an invader, an imperial artificer, but he also meant as a master rather than a menial. As he and Drephos, and Drephos’s ragbag of other picked artificers, came in, the factory work had been totally stilled. A great crowd of workers were gathered there, the staff of three factories waiting to receive their new orders. Malkan had been quick in providing Drephos with whatever he should need and Totho knew that the general was one of a new breed of Wasp officers. Malkan was not just a slave to maps and charts and the slow movements of troop formations. He actually liked artificers and the way they could win wars more efficiently, more quickly, than ever before. Drephos was the Empire’s most gifted artificer on the western front, and Malkan was keen to see that he was kept happy.
‘My name is Colonel-Auxillian Dariandrephos,’ the half-breed announced, his voice ringing from the gantry he stood on across the echoing factory floor. ‘You will refer to me as Master, or Sir. Most importantly, you will do what you are instructed without needless question, without debate, without retort. I want you to have no illusions about your situation here.’ He cast his narrow gaze over them, the working men and women of Helleron. He had his cowl thrown back leaving them no doubts about what he was.
‘These men and women with me,’ Drephos told the workers, ‘are my elite staff. You will address them as ‘sir’ and do exactly what they instruct you. In my absence, they are my voice.’
Totho could feel the resentment boiling up from these hard-working men and women whose lives had come under new management. It was not that this was a new factory owner telling them what to do, nor even that he was a foreigner. What rankled with them was that Drephos was a halfbreed and, worst of all, a Moth halfbreed, born partly from that superstitious, primitive tribe that raided their mine-workings north of the city. Here he was, claiming to be an artificer, and appalling chance had placed him as their superior.
‘I myself will have no illusions here. You hate and resent me,’ Drephos continued. ‘I, on the other hand, have no feelings whatsoever concerning you, collectively or individually. I wish you to think about precisely what that means. It means that if any one of you comes to my notice in a way that displeases me, or any of my people here, then that man or woman shall become my object lesson. Work hard and well and you shall escape my notice, which shall be best for all concerned.’
They still stirred rebelliously, and so he smiled at them lopsidedly. ‘You may have heard from your leaders that some amicable arrangement has been reached between your people and the Wasps of the Empire. It is not so. We own you. You work at our command. I invite any of you here to dispute it.’
He signalled, and a dozen Wasp soldiers came to attention. ‘Now get these people back to their work,’ he said. ‘Bring all the foremen up here, though. I have one final thing to say to them.’ He turned to Totho and the others, seeming very pleased with himself.
‘Your comments?’
‘They will not serve you willingly,’ Kaszaat said. ‘Not at first. Surly and angry, they are.’
‘It’s only natural,’ Drephos said, not a bit daunted. ‘They are a skilled workforce, though, and only in Helleron is such skill so taken for granted. Nowhere else could you lay hands on so many trained people. We must therefore ensure that their talents are put entirely at our disposal.’ He turned again as two men and one woman were brought up to the gantry. ‘Well now,’ he addressed them. ‘You are my foremen, are you?’
Two of them merely nodded but one of them was quicker on the uptake and said, ‘Yes, Master.’
‘Master,’ Drephos echoed. ‘Such a versatile word, is it not?’ They looked at him blankly, and he elaborated. ‘Amongst your kinden, of course, it is a great term of respect. Your College scholars, your magnates, the great among you, are called ‘Masters’. Among the Wasp-kinden it is any man who owns a slave, and therefore has rights of life or death over that slave.’ His smile was thin and hard-edged. ‘So it will now be the choice of you and your workers just what interpretation we shall apply to that word. Do I make myself understood?’
He had, and they nodded unhappily, and murmured the title for him.
‘I am anticipating troublemakers,’ he told them. ‘The lazy, the impertinent, the disobedient, the talentless.’
‘Oh no, Master,’ said the woman amongst them. ‘We’ll be sure of that. No slackers in our houses. No backtalk either.’
‘You misunderstand me,’ said Drephos. ‘I am anticipating them. There are such in any body of workers, perhaps a dozen in every factory.’
The foremen were exchanging glances, approaching the point of denying it and then drawing back.
‘I am anticipating,’ Drephos explained happily, ‘that they will be singled out by you there, and reported to my soldiers. I am anticipating that my guards will have some three dozen such malcontents brought to me within the first five days of work here. Choose those who contribute least, or stir up trouble, or whom you personally dislike, whatever you will, but I will be very unhappy if my anticipations are not borne out.’
The two men nodded slowly now, looking as miserable as Totho had seen anyone in a long time, but the woman said, ‘Excuse me, Master, but… what shall be done with them, once your guardsmen have them?’
‘They will be allowed to participate in other parts of the creative process,’ Drephos told her. She paled a little at that, and then the soldiers began ushering all three away.
‘Some promise there, I think,’ Drephos mused, glancing back at his cadre of artificers. Besides Kaszaat and Totho there were two Beetle-kinden that must surely be twin brother and sister, a halfbreed that looked to mingle Wasp and Beetle blood, and a hulking nine-foot Mole Cricket whose weight made the whole gantry creak.
‘Master Drephos…’ Totho started, feeling deeply uneasy about it all.
‘Ah, Totho,’ Drephos said. He was clearly in a fine mood today. ‘You have seen the prototype?’
‘I have, Master Drephos, but…’
‘What do you think?’ Drephos began descending the stairs to the factory floor where the workers were being given their new machining projects, designs and specifications for unfamiliar parts and pieces.
‘The new loading mechanism seems to work very smoothly,’ Totho said, drawn from his original intent by the need to discuss the finer aspects of the technical work. ‘It will need to be machined very exactly on the finished version, though. There will be little room for error, to avoid jamming.’
‘That would be a problem anywhere else,’ Drephos agreed, ‘but here in Helleron the skills and the equipment have come together in glad harmony. In the Empire we would have had to compromise, but the Emperor’s generals have made their plans as if they had my very wishes in mind, because Helleron is ours, and here we are.’
‘Aside from that, I think we may have to redesign the grooving within the barrel, or at least test variations of spacing and angle.’
‘Granted,’ Drephos said. ‘Test it then. Conclusions in two days. By then we should be ready for the spiralling lathe work on the first batch.’
‘First batch, Master?’ Totho enquired.
‘You weren’t thinking of making just one of them, surely?’ Drephos grinned at him, teeth flashing in his motley-coloured face. ‘Like a showpiece? A museum curiosity? What do you think these factories are for, Totho?’
‘All for… you can’t mean it, surely?’ Totho felt weak, stumbling on the stairs so that Kaszaat had to reach out and grab his arm to steady him.
‘Explain to Master Totho how we do things,’ Drephos flung the words over his shoulder.