**Lexmechanics III: Testicular Torsion**

At 2348 Station Time [0602 Martian], Lexmechanic Keyluhn saw a ghost. By the time the Mechanicus priest collapsed his telescoping legs the five meter journey to the archive’s floor, electroreceptors in his chest shocked his heart no less than three times for the purpose of correcting its arrhythmia. The tech-priest took shallow breaths in the shadows between the massive data-shelves, leaning against the lip of a dusty receptacle. Logically, there were no such things as ghosts, save what guardian spirits existed by the will of the Motive Force. Logically, if machine spirits lived outside of their blessed machine bodies, they would not be visiting his archive for artillery testing data at 2348. 

Correction: It was now 2349, according to the jittery green segments glowing from the glass tubes in his pocket chronograph.

Another two hundred volts slammed against his heart after a clattering rang out from the other side of the shelf. Keyluhn caught his chronograph with a mechadendrite before it could shatter on the floor and cast his gaze down both sides of the dusky aisle.  A row of red bulbs mounted on the vaulted ceiling lit the floor panels beneath with hazy maroon ovals, typical lighting for the station’s night-cycle. He fast-walked as quietly as his augmented bulk could convey him towards the archive’s office. Dim orange light from a sodium lamp drew a hashmarked semi-circle on the ground from a reinforced bulb above the office door. Through the door’s window shined the fluorescent white of safety.

“POKAN!” he burst out in thirty-two bits, slamming the door behind him and drawing himself up against the bulkhead, peeking out between the grills in the door’s viewport.

“WHAT!?” his fellow Mechanicus adept yelped, startled binharic wavey. “I know this is your side of the desk, but you don’t have to yell at me about it.” 

The lady lexmechanic stood up from the far side of the partners’ desk they had recently been gifted by their boss. The piece of furniture was so oversized compared to the rest of the narrow office the clerks had to toss two tanker desks and a table just to fit it in. The only archivist who could comfortably walk past the behemoth without scooting to the side was Pokan, but she also needed to set a cushion on her chair in order to work comfortably. It was a big desk for big men with broad, fancy pauldrons.

The lower-level archivists reckoned the reasoning behind this odd procurement (because it certainly wasn’t efficiency) was that anyone who entered to talk to the head archivist would now need to pass around the workplace of the lesser archivists, and if you were going to pass by them you might as well bother one of the tech-priests with your question first.

Pokan tried to peer out of the window from where she was standing when she realized Keyluhn wasn’t paying attention to her. His fleshy eye widened to the same diameter as his mechanical, and he threw his gaze back at her. “Get the luminators!” 

A pen-tipped mechadendrite whipped out from underneath her robe and flicked the switch next to their boss’s desk, plunging the room into darkness and leaving a scribble on the wall they’d have to scrub clean later. Her friend scurried behind the double desk and adjacent to her, crouching down and poking his head out to watch the door. The only things Pokan could see in the dark were the green glint of his optical lens and the outside’s orange hue reflecting off the beads of sweat that hung on his brow. They reminded her of droplets of electrolytic fluid.

“What’s going on?” the smaller lexmechanic whispered in decibels barely crossing their receivers’s minimum sensitivity. Keyluhn shushed her, his fidgeting growing still as a presence materialized inside the baleful glow of the sodium lamp and stood outside. Slowly, the office door creaked open until the tall figure floated into the room’s darkness, a cloaked shadow haloed by hellfire.

White light blinded them. An extended mechadendrite slinked across the floor to its source out of the corner of their eyes and sultry laughter floated about the room as the tech-priests adjusted their photoreceptors. 

“I’ve been looking for you, Adept Keyluhn.” The voice was like finely curving characters on a codifier screen.

“Magos Ichanra,” Keyluhn stammered. At the mention of her name, the tech-priestess laid a dainty hand on her hip and glided further into the room, each step bringing a mechanical ‘click’ from her in-built stiletto heels striking the steel floorboards. The oscillation of her hips hypnotized the male adept. 

Magos Ichanra supposed herself to be the one and only lady in the segmentum. A former coworker once confided in him, ‘Now that’s a *real* woman!’ in reference to the Magos, but Keyluhn was well aware of the extent of this claim’s validity. Every curve of Ichanra was sculpted to elicit this response. Her waist was shaved down to the exact thousandth of an inch. Her legs extended millimeters past what would have been physiologically possible. Not a single component of the woman could be said to have survived from when she was a young novitiate. She stopped short of the desk and brought a finger to her chin.

“I thought the tribunal ordered you confined to the surface of Tormenta XVI?” Keyluhn finished.

“Briefly, yes, I was reassigned to command the place.” The Magos’s rouged eyelids beat slowly on her heart-shaped face. Her eyelashes were a little too thick for a human and a hair’s breadth too long.

“Of course, Magos. But weren’t you tried for-- I mean, they said what you did with those novitiates, you were going to be--”

“--Acquitted,” the tech-priestess interrupted. “After three of the boys were found to have lied under the Omnissiah’s oath. +++Let the registers cleared / be set to zero+++.” Ichanra smiled her facsimile of a smile, but her eyes were cold in a predatory sort of way. “I would appreciate it if you didn’t perpetuate such bitter calumny, adept.”

Keyluhn bowed his head. “Of course I won’t, Magos. But why are you here?”

“Is a Magos not responsible for the progress of her flock?” she asked, acknowledging Pokan for the first time since she’d entered the room with a sweeping gesture. “Do I not have permission to visit my adepts as they work?”

Both of the lexmechanics stared at her in response. Pokan answered monotonously, “Magos Sagan is the ranking tech-priest onboard Exentarium Station.” 

“Ahh, but there has been a change in leadership, my doll. Magos Sagan is temporarily in charge of the surface of the miserable planet we orbit whilst a replacement is plucked out from wherever the Gerontocrats might find them. In the interim, this leaves me as the one leading the clergy up here.” Ichanra gestured palms-up toward her new domain.  “However, you are correct in asking about my true purpose, as I did indeed come here for a good reason, perhaps two. Lexmechanic Keyluhn, I am once again in need of your skills as my personal assistant. The one assigned to me since my involuntary confinement has been… lacking.”

Judging by the sourness of the Magos’s face, whoever she landed as an underling was completely inept. Keyluhn didn’t know how to answer. He’d never disliked his work as Ichanra’s secretary, but to give up everything he’d worked towards in the Artillery Testing Data Archive serial code: EH2924002? 

“At a loss for words? It’s no matter. Meditate on it and get back to me within the week. In the meantime”--the lady Magos produced a grasping mechadendrite from inside her crimson cloak and took the scroll it contained between her thumb and forefinger, letting it unravel onto the desk--”We’ve been given orders by the Prefecture Magisterium. Pending a deeper investigation into the uprising of the western promethium refineries on Forge-World Arkhan, we are to purge any and all references to the planet in writing and in our memory banks.”

Both Pokan and Keyluhn stopped listening to Ichanra after the word *orders*. Their eyes scanned the four-letter blocks of hexamathic the instructions were transmitted in until they fell upon the most terrible of words, *Heretechnica*. Their pumps clogged. That meant redaction. Lots and lots of it. Pokan ran simulations on the cost of additional black ink to the monthly budget in her braincase.

“I’m sure this will be of no issue for ones as skilled as yourselves,” the Magos opined. She laid the top of the scroll carefully onto the desk and angled up the brass medal pinned to Pokan’s chest with an extended mechadendrite. “What’s this?” 

Pokan warily responded, “The Gold Cog for Outstanding Achievements in the Field of--”

“--Oh.” Ichanra cut her off and dropped the medal, unamused. “I’m surprised *you* don’t have one, Keyluhn.” 

Before either archivist could point to his ‘most devout servant of the month’ placards hanging on the wall over her shoulder, the Magos was gone. Keyluhn collapsed into his chair and stared at the orders. 

“You worked for that woman?” Pokan vented hot air out of the exhaust ribs of her steel corset, which puffed up her habit. “How rude! And now she’s in charge of all of us? Tomorrow’s Prime liturgy will certainly be interesting. Let’s see how she likes it when her octal hymns are interrupted!”

Keyluhn couldn’t generate the energy to match his partner’s outburst. “They’ll worship the ground she walks on. The younger clergy will be enamored with any priestess who’s as righteous and beautiful as her, and the older clergy won’t even notice a change.”

The girl archivist considered how none of her colleagues ever asked *her* for *her* exegesis of *Leibowatt’s Canticle* or her dissertation on ‘*The Wandering Joule*’… She huffed and bent over, resting her elbows on the desk. They had been in the archive seven hours past when they typically closed, not even breaking momentarily for Vespers. The archivists were stuck manually translating a batch of entries from Low to High Gothic for an undisclosed, but apparently important, requester. The station’s machine translators had proven inadequate to the task. You should’ve seen the vitriol of the comments attached to the work order directed towards the auto-interpretrix’s machine spirit.

A knock, a curse and a creak came from their manager’s desk behind them. Rising above the lip of the furniture, Administratum Scribe Orob stretched her arms and stifled a yawn. “What was all the commotion about?” 

Pokan switched from techna-lingua to Low Gothic to address her secular coworker. “Where did you just come from? I didn’t see you when I checked the room earlier.” 

“I was taking a nap under Decemus’s desk. It’s actually pretty spacious down there-- same for the leg space under yours.” 

The tech-priests stared at the freckled scribe dumbfounded as she pointed at their double desk. The idea of napping on the job was not parsable by them.

“What’s so funny? I’m the one who sweeps the office, so it’s not gross.”

She was correct in that matter. Scribe Orob’s black cotton habit would pick up any dust in an instant. Save for some ink stains trying their best to hide on the coal colored uniform, her habit was clean. Keyluhn turned the knob on his personal translator up. Unlike Pokan with her organic voice box, his current augmetics could only produce the frequencies necessary for machine cant. 

“Nevermind,” the vox-box on his chest output flatly with none of the nuance of lingua-technis. “We have received new orders. Let us exit the archive and return at 0600.” 

The walk home to their cells was silent save for the whirrs and thumps of machinery present in every corner of the station. In the main arterials, servitors mutely polished the wide hallways or dusted the top of decorative ribbing high up on the bulkheads with no acknowledgement of their passage. With an exhausted ‘good night’, Orob slipped away at the corridor heading towards the Administratum berthing. When the two tech-priests made it to the mechanicum dormitory, Pokan glanced around the abandoned cloister. Its open arcade surrounded a statuary made of spent artillery shells. Polished brass was bent and soldered together with plasteel into a rippling ocean. Its high waves rose to crash against the enemies of the Imperium. 

When she confirmed no other clergy were about, she held Keyluhn’s hand and chittered Binary softly.

“Do you want to come to my cell and pray with me?”

Keyluhn continued looking at the floor, letting go of her hand and shambling off to his cell. In the dim light, glimpses of red reflected off the peaks of the curled metal seafoam. The rest of the waves were left to swallow up the dark. Pokan turned and dragged her feet to the female half of the dormitory. 

Not even compiling a single prayer for Compline, Keyluhn crumpled onto his narrow bed and fell into a fitful, restless sleep. In his dream, Ichanra lay on top of him, bare-metal and bare-flesh. He tried to escape, but she wrapped her impossible legs around his waist and held his neck with slender fingers, actuator motors ticking as he struggled in her grasp. Bringing her terracotta lips to his ears, she whispered horrid pseudocode into his soul. 

“Is *she* the one you’re with? What a joke. You should have a taste of a complete woman. Let the girl play amongst the records.” 

Keyluhn cried out for the God-Machine, but in this abyss none responded save the subject of his terror. Nipples stabbed into his skin like a mechanical press.

“Do you think He is listening?” she laughed. “Why would He listen to one who lies so blatantly? When have you ever confessed to your desire for the flesh over the machine? When have you ever told the one you love what she is to you?”

“I assumed a relationship was implicit by our actions!” he coughed out. 

“There is no ‘implied’. There is only true or false. Zero or one. Heretek or Supplicant,” the apparition hissed at him. “The only tri-state in this universe is the divine. By courting uncertainty you breed a whore. She likely sleeps with another man as you lie here with me.”

“Nay! Nay… Pokan would never.” His struggling weakened. It was becoming hard to breathe with her vice grip thighs crushing around his sides. O, Motive Force! Give him strength! Surround him, so this nightmare had not room to choke his life! “She’s not that kind of woman.”

“She isn’t? Are you yourself not previously guilty of building a woman up in your mind? Believing her to be a saint? Your salvation? Yet the pedagogue turned out to be something else…”

“...and I fixed it!” Keyluhn yelled. “Do you know how scared I was? But I saw what she was doing and I took care of it!”

“I know you did,” Ichanra answered caustically. The fingers wrapped around his neck tore painfully. His metal-fiber neck muscles bulged alongside fluid lines. “Why do you think I’m back? Do you think they altered your voice for the testimony they vox-recorded? The testimony *everyone* got to hear during the trial?”

Keyluhn’s whole body spasmed upwards as the claxon rang out for Lauds. The tech-priest crawled out of the bed and kneeled on the mat in the center of his cell, bathed in the night-cycle redlight. His eye shutters were screwed tight. Reciting a psalm-code for each projection on the holy cogwheel he wore around his neck, he pleaded with the Omnissiah for protection. The click-click of a pair of plasteel heels rose down the long hallway outside the dormitory’s cells, lingering outside his own. He let go a great wheeze of relief as it resumed its clicking further into the audible unknown. When the chime to end Lauds came, Keyluhn tried to fall back asleep, but the mercy of rest was not extended to him.

-----

He was engrossed in the act of redaction, slicing black mark after black mark with his chisel-tipped appendage at machine regularity. Another 400-odd documents and the archivist would be finished with section 7C and moving onto D. Palladium heels on the riveted flooring brought him out of his trance, although his heart didn’t beat nearly as quickly as it had the night prior. 

This time, it was Pokan’s augmetic (and illogical!) heels. Keyluhn didn’t know at what date he’d been able to pick out her footsteps from all the other station dwellers. He wondered why it sounded twenty-five percent less confident than usual, but this irregularity didn’t relieve the frustration dawning on him as he came out of his trance. 

“You’re five point six-eight minutes late!” he exclaimed, pulling another record in front of himself with two mechadendrites and sanitizing pecks of it black for the good of the Infinite Intellect. 

“*You’RE FIve poINt six-eIGHt miNUtes laTE!*” mocked Pokan. “The orders we got last night can’t be *that* terrible.”

Ach! If only she paid attention each time she subjoined line revision 214d to a new arrival, then she would be taking this seriously! Keyluhn closed his eyes and breathed in a ragged breath to contain his rage. He then recited, by memory:

“Test data collected from munitions supplied by Forge-World [REDACTED]:
Earthshaker 132mm IX-HE shells - 17766 entries, +742 since 4.230.998.M41
Earthshaker 132mm VIII-AP (mkII) shells - 5921 entries, +166 since 4.230.998.M41
Manticore ‘Storm Eagle’ HE missiles - 177 entries
Colossus 620mm HE shells  - 103 entries, +3 since 4.230.998.M41
Deathstrike ‘Barrage’ missiles - 2 entries”

“Oh,” she responded, silent for a space. When she spoke again her voice was conciliatory instead of choleric. “Well, I’m sorry I’m tardy. Sister Avila was helping me with something.”

The sticky sweet fragrance of AM-C-16173 paraffinic aerosolized film hit his nostrils-- her hinges and torque tube bearings must have been feeling incredible. Realizing the irrationality of his refractoriness, Keyluhn turned to his companion to sue for peace when his own joints locked up. 

“Pok…an…”

Thick mascara was dolloped upon her eyelashes. Great liberties were taken with garnet eyeshadow and her Mars-dust lip gloss sparkled incandescent. Keyluhn didn’t know how or by whom these modifications were performed, but her cotton tunic was shortened to the point where the bottom half of her steel corset flashed out from underneath the cog-patterned hem, umbilical port peeking. She’d chosen a skirt rather than trousers today, tucked up to show a scandalous three centimeters of anodized ankle. The irregularity in her gait was courtesy of an additional two inches added to her collapsible heels; Keyluhn imagined she fit the definition of, as one of the penal worker gentlemen onboard the station might have insinuated, ‘dolled up’.

The tech-priest shook himself out of his shock before his electroreceptors did it for him and leaned in, lowering his voice and trying to keep his salt-and-pepper static from becoming too harsh. 

“Did anyone see you on your way here?” For once, he was thankful Magos Sagan wasn’t present on the station. Pokan drew her robes around her. 

“No? I don’t know?”

“Pokan”--he glanced up and down the aisle conspiratorially--”you look like a *nightwalker* right now.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” she asked, offense beginning to grow. “I like taking walks during the red-light cycle!”

“Hey guys,” Scribe Orob called from behind Keyluhn. She trundled up to the two pushing, with some difficulty, the records cart piled high with scrolls. Its bad wheel squeaked every few seconds as she made her way over to them. “What are you two arguing about?” 

The Administratum scribe had worked with her two ordained friends long enough to gauge their moods even if she couldn’t understand their language. Keyluhn fled towards her, hunched, and fiddled with his translator by twisting the volume knob as low as possible. He indicated toward the vox-speaker between his collar bones, and Orob brought an ear to it. 

“orob,” the hole output at an even level. She strained to listen. The monotone delivery made it worse, like she was listening to two feet shuffling against a carpet and this was being formed into the words she needed to decipher. “she resembles a woman of the night. how do we explain this to her?”

Keyluhn leaned forward and Orob brought her mouth to where she thought his ear would be, cupping it. “We don’t,” said Orob. Stepping rearward and smacking the laden cart, she redirected: “I collected all the records from section 8H with munitions from the Arkhan place.”

Both her coworkers froze up. Keyluhn recoiled like he’d just been slapped. 

“Don’t say it outloud!” Pokan gasped.

“Say what out loud?”

“[REDACTED],” Keyluhn’s device spit out after he depressed the reset several times. “F**g*-*o*ld A**h**.”

Orob swallowed a chuckle. “I get it. Anyway, why don’t *you* take the cart over to the office and work on these records at your desk, and *I’ll* go with Pokan to check out another cart from the Deliveries archive? We can get a rotating system going.” 

The scribe winked at her male coworker as obviously as possible. He caught her drift after try number two. Nodding quickly at first, he shambled away, dragging the cart behind him with a mechadendrite. Orob waited until he was out of view to chat up Pokan.

“Decemus says Keyluhn was already here when he came in at half-past five. I think this new task is weighing on him a bit.” Pokan joined her as she walked toward the archive exit.

“He’s acting pretty stressed,” the lexmechanic admitted. “I’m kind of stressed too.” She reached into her toolpouch-turned-envelope-purse and fished out her access wafer for the door.

“I like your nail polish.”

Pokan’s eyes lit up and she took a second to revel at her fingers as the hatch swung open to the greater station. There was tiny scripture written carefully on each nail like they were the parchment of a miniature purity seal. “Keep it a secret from any tech-priests but Keyluhn! I can show you how Sister Avila did it if we stop in a washroom along the way…”

-----

What was taking them so long? Keyluhn’s pile of unsanitized records was starting to dwindle and despair crept upon his reinforced vertebrae. If he didn’t have something to focus on, he’d think about *her*, and this caused his mechadendrites to twitch and his temples to throb and his augmetic legs to go numb at the interface junction. He was momentarily distracted by head archivist Decemus as the balding Administratum clerk got up from his desk (positioned as far away from the door as possible) and passed by. The man’s considerable bulk pushed against the edge of the furniture as he scooted around it.

“I’m off to get more pastries for the crew,” he said, flakes of the previous batch dropping off his gray habit onto the stained mahogany. 

“Head Archivist. Before you exit, could I ask a question?” 

“Of course, my monotone friend.”

“If you were required to choose between happiness and an assured future, which would you pick?”

Decemus took on a contemplative cast, then addressed him. 

“Archivist Keyluhn, there comes a time in a man’s life when he feels the forces of his years root”--Decemus stopped to consider the mechanicus priest--”no, *magnetize* him to his place in life. When you reach this point, will you want to reach it with felicity or reach it with success? I will tell you a secret, my good archivist…”

The girthy Ordinate leaned forward against the tabletop. His bearing was uncharacteristically serious.

“...too many of the Imperium’s servants pick success. And why should they?! Men go to war and their lives are snuffed out in a matter of seconds! If this entire archive were to disappear, the guns sitting upon the rock we orbit would continue to fire, fire, fire!” 

Crusts flew off Decemus’s belly as he gestured this-way-and-that passionately.

“So, you ask me about an assured future? It’s already too late to choose, my tech-priest. In the end, every one of us is born to die exalting the God-Emperor!” 

He turned and stood at the office’s exit, holding open the door.

“As for me, I’ll be picking up some more of those pastries.”

Keyluhn tried to process what he’d heard as the door clicked shut. He was a Machine-God-loving man, this much was true. No matter what the tech-priest did, he was doing positive Work. Artillery testing data was his joy, he loved archiving it… His tech-priestess partner seemed to love it too, despite how much she could get on his nerves when it came to filing appendices. Sure, his corrective actions hadn’t fixed her intransigent nature, but he’d come to savor the occasional friction she provided. By the Vaults of Mars… he loved her! He was emotionally available enough to acknowledge it now. 

Manifested by his thoughts, Pokan entered and held the door open for Orob so she could push in a cart stacked with more scrolls.

“We come bearing gifts!”  

Keyluhn scrutinized his pile of unblemished papers. 

“I still haven’t finished this batch,” he said.

“I thought you were supposed to be the quickest one of us,” teased Pokan. The cart impacted the desk, and several records bounced off onto the floor. Orob spoke now that she’d gotten his attention.

“I’ll just take whatever you’ve finished on the empty cart. Pokan can help you polish off the current pile.” The scribe gave Keyluhn another one of her conspicuous winks. He studied Pokan as she unloaded the new scrolls from her cart and completely screwed up his ordering system. The makeup from before was significantly toned down. True, she wasn’t any less Pokan when her face was caked in a layer of foundation, but Keyluhn preferred it when she was *more* Pokan. Before, she’d been swathed in an ambience eerily close to a budget, two-throne Magos Ichanra. 

Orob was out the door before he realized he’d been staring. Pokan watched the exit for movement, then turned to Keyluhn with her arms crossed. 

“We need to talk. About *us*.”

The lady lexmechanic approached him from around the desk, stumbling on a floor rivet and slandering probability theory in noospheric. Folding over at the waist, knees straight, she removed a flathead from her tool-purse and adjusted a screw set in both her ankles until her heels lowered to their normal height. Keyluhn watched as her rump peeked over the desk’s edge, then sank slightly every quarter-turn until it was gone. The girl that popped back up was four percent more Pokan than before. She walked around the desk as she’d originally intended and parked her rear against the drawers. 

“I concur,” said Keyluhn. He was about equal to her in height while seated. All the better to stare right into her beautiful, doe eyes. To scan her soft, pouting lips. To admire the pasty skin on her neck where a blue vein crossed down toward her bosom. Ohhhhhh Immaculate Circuitry, he was a hopeless romantic! His internal temperature increased and the pressure in his hydraulic lines rose precipitously.

“Keyluhn, I think we should… are you listening to me?”

A cold sweat crept across his body. Keyluhn held his steel-clad gut. There was a squeezing pain in his pelvic region.

“My… nuts…”

 His breaths came labored, face ghastly. 

“Do you need my socket wrench?”

“No”--he doubled over, forehead pressed against the table--”it’s my… urgh!”

The desk already smelled like someone had spilled fake vanilla and paint thinner onto it in the past. Keyluhn looked like he was about to add the morning’s gray synth-slab from the refectory to the melange. The techpriest groped at his groin and tugged, but all his futile effort brought forth was a cry akin to the bellowing of a grox through a broken transcommunicator.

“Ah! Your balls!” Pokan said, placing a hand on his shoulder as he collapsed against the desk for the second time. If he wasn’t actively dying, he was at the very least utterly miserable. It was hard for Pokan to stand by and watch him in his current state. “Let me try, okay? Hang in there!” 

The lady adept shoved between his leather swivel chair and the desk’s underside, undoing his cincture and yanking at his pants until they were around his gyro-stabilized ankles. She took his knees in her corresponding hands and tried to pry them apart so she could get a better bulge view, but his body was locked up in agony.

“Open…” 

She wrapped some mechadendrites around the load-bearing leg of the wheeled chair and jerked it forwards.

“...Up!” 

 With a *houf!* from his chest hitting the lip of the desk, the archivist’s legs spread and Pokan wedged herself between them. 

The lexmechanic was well acquainted with Keyluhn’s genitals, so the problem was pinpointed posthaste. A bundle of hydraulic lines passing by his groin had rapidly pressurized and crushed a singular testis against his thigh with a force of roughly forty-five point three pounds, by her calculations. While Pokan (being of the womanly persuasion, and a fine example of one at that!) could never understand the feeling he was experiencing at this very moment, she could approximate it: It drew to her imagination the descriptions of barbaric torture sessions recorded for posterity in the *Admonitions*.

The tech-priestess took a delicate finger and shoved it between the waxy flesh of his thigh and the rigid hydraulic line, wriggling it around and trying to get some slack from the hose. It barely budged. She introduced more digits until both hands were digging underneath, pulling as best she could from her angle. 

One of her fingers slipped from his sweat. The line snapped back against his testicle, summoning an encoded howl from Keyluhn. How he didn’t slip into junk-code laden expletives at a time like this astounded her. Pokan wiped the lubricious sweat off on her vestments.

Wait. That was it! Lubricious lubricant was always the answer! But she wasn’t carrying any Type-III holy oil on her, and the lube she used to have hidden in the office was thrown out with her tanker desk. Desperately, she turned to the slick moisturizer Keyluhn was so rudely fond of extracting from her. Closing her eyes, Pokan shoved her nose into his thigh and drove at the cleft with her tongue, basting it in her spit. Her muscle dug in between the soft tissue of his sack and the salty metal of the hyd-line, slapping against his skin, buffeting it like his gonads were the tastiest morsel on the station. 

A groan reverberated from the desktop. She was short of breath shoved against his effluviant pelvic region. What if he lost one of his nuts? What if he *died*? It was so stuffy down there. The strain of pulling on the fluid line made her totter diminutive grunts every time she prodded the heavy pouch to coat it. Thinking was hard. Fingers grew tired. Woozy, a memory bubbled up into Pokan’s skull, percolating in the folds of her brain where Keyluhn’s coppery sweat-smell hadn’t pervaded. 

112.992.M41. Convent of the Silicon Heart, Brunzan Prime. Terraformatriarch Sonia Carrum is giving an impassioned techno-theological sermon on the dangers of differential pressure. Novitiate Pokan is dozing off, day-dreaming of the bore diameter on a Medusa Siege Gun. But she remembers the pict screen of the man getting sucked into the crack in the underwater promethium pipe. She remembers…

Pokan stopped the mindless layering of spit she’d been unconsciously affecting on Keyluhn’s scrotum and sucked. She sucked like her pride as a tech-priest depended on it. At first there was no change. She breathed out deeply, her corset fans kicking up to one-hundred and twenty percent. Burying her face to get the best suction, the girl channeled the industrial vacuum systems she read of in the liber technica of the station’s library. Her radiator fans sounded about as loud as them at their current rotations. His seed repository would be *inhaled* by her, so help her Mechanicus Deus!

Something rubbery shifted… and then plopped into her mouth as she jerked her nose away. Its friend popped in too, in her zealousness. 

A moan quaked from above with outsized emotion. “Hoooouuuuhhhh cogggggg.”

Keyluhn shook with relief and breathed in-and-out quickly. Pokan realized how dumb she looked and let go of his components with a *pwah*. She never let anyone else make her seem this daft… 

He leaned back in the chair and rolled away so Pokan could get some fresh air. Wiping the sweat off his brow with the sleeve of his robe and leaving his metallic hand to linger there, he stared at his fellow archivist with incredible relief softening his face. She cupped his balls with a hand and giggled when his knees knocked against the sides of the leg-space.

“You feeling better now?”

Keyluhn nodded, hoovering up the stale artificial air, but never letting his eyes leave hers. If he could gaze at her like *that* every day, who cared if no one else wanted to listen to her oration on the effects of tube tolerance over propellent conditions on muzzle velocity? She massaged him gently. 

“Pokan, you saved me.”

“That’s why I’m the one with the ‘Golden Cog’,” she purred. His junk twitched in response, filling gradually with thankfulness. “You should really think about adjusting your fluid hose.”

He nodded again like a puppy and brought a hand down to prop up her chin, rubbing her cheek with his thumb. 

“I don’t know what I would’ve done if you weren’t here,” said Keyluhn, forgetting she was the reason his hyd-lines pressurized so quickly. A mechadendrite with a torch on the end snaked up to his chest and flashed on. Pokan squinted past the growing shadow bisecting her face.

“What are you--?! Turn it off!” She grabbed the end of the tentacle and let it flail in her hand until the luminator end flipped around and blinded him. “Any time you get close to being right, you…”

“I just wanted to see you better,” he reasoned while thumbing the rune of sleep. 

“Stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid!” she chided. In spite of her perturbation, she used her free hand to hold his thumb against her cheek. Joyous Logic, he was difficult to stay angry at. Pokan was about to slither up onto his lap when he slammed the chair forward, half-chub slapping up against her face. 

Heels were clapping their way across the floor, and they weren’t her own.

“I have returned for your response, Adept Keyluhn.”

The meat humid against her bounced with a burst of strength at the throaty voice. The idea that this woman could draw such a reaction from Keyluhn was more of an insult to Pokan than any comment the male archivist could’ve made in any of the twelve different machine languages they knew. She drew her head back from his lap and examined the monster she shared the dark with. It looked bigger at this angle. 

“Magos, I thought you gave me a week to think it over?” answered Keyluhn with staticy surprise.

“I did. Then I woke up this morning and changed my mind. +++It is incomprehensible to us / the genius of his design+++” 

This uppity cow! If she fancied she could steal him away like this, then she didn’t know Lexmechanic Pokan. With a furrowed brow, the girl gripped the base of her partner’s shaft and kissed its circumference. Rolling out her tongue to tickle its underside, mouth tacky on his skin from the lip gloss, she brought her other hand to its apex and pumped gently. She’d never done it this way since her spit dispensing duties were usually taken care of by his fingers, but now was as good a time as any to learn. If women like this strumpet-in-charge were what enticed Keyluhn, then Pokan needed to show she was equally as much of a vixen! 

Keyluhn rested a hand on top of her head. Tellingly, he didn’t try pushing her away.

“I wish you would’ve given m-me more time, Magos.”

His tip bulged against her hand when she ran her middle finger lightly over the ridge, thumb curling around the bottom and trying to meet the other finger’s tip, but failing. Letting go of the base now that she kept a good handle on the crown, she rubbed her cheek down his length and pecked at the injured half of his sack to refresh his memory about how wonderful she was. This was fun. She could understand why he liked controlling her as he typically did. 

“The Imperial engine runs on decisive choices.” 

A creak came from the opposite end of the partners’ desk and Pokan imagined the harpy resting her fat ass on *her* workspace, brushing her heavy robe aside and revealing a side slit dress for Keyluhn to feast his ocular receptors on. Pressing her lips up against his rod, the archivist wagged her tongue along its keel and migrated her way back to the head. When she got there, she held it firmly between her fingers and flicked the tip of her teensy tongue against his hole. She was beginning to regret turning down Sister Avila’s offer of the contraband ‘*Scholam-Fresh Sororitas: Pious Throats*’. Instructions would have come in handy right around now. Pokan was unaware her anger made up for a fair amount of the skill she lacked. 

The desk creaked again as Magos Ichanra shifted. “I mean, do you really want to spend the rest of your life cooped up in this archive when you could be expanding your quest for knowledge? What does this place offer you? Your fellow tech-priest is cute, but…”

*Cute?* How about pulchritudinous, perspicacious, perfect… any of the words Keyluhn used when they finished for the night and he’s spooning her and she assumed he was just being ingratiating because he didn’t stop when she asked him to stop and now she needed to wash her rochet again. 

Pokan took him in her mouth. She could only make it to the rim of his stout knob before withdrawing, tongue dragging along the bottom. How did she take this thing all the way in her pussy?! Closing her eyes, she bobbed back in, upper lip cresting the hill this time around. She stayed at this length for a few strokes, savoring the cling of lip-gloss against his glans while she wet it gradually. For him to swell in *her* grasp, not from the other woman’s, made her heart’s clock cycle ratchet up.

“I know you like artillery,” Ichanra understated, sliding off the desk and pacing. “You could do more than store testing data. I could have you managing all the in-transit shells on the station in half a year’s time. Pick a forge-world and I could have you in charge of any ammunition plant as soon as I’m done with you here. You could be…”

Pokan couldn’t hear her anymore. The technique was starting to come to her through divine guidance and she dipped her head further, pumping his pillar, three fingers in sync with her lips. Pausing for a moment to wiggle off her knees and into a squat, the girl was disappointed to find she was barely half-way down his shlong. Steamy exhaust blew out her corset and her free hand wandered under her skirt’s waist so two slim fingers could service her mound. The angle was better now and Pokan blushed profusely while her little lips slid up and down over his cock. 

She was his *slut*. It was *her* pious throat keeping him seated, fingers tangling into her hair, bitter liquid oozing out onto her tongue when she recovered at the peak and teased his frenulum. 

“...make you certified as the primary sanctifier of doppler shells for Mars-pattern--”

Keyluhn’s free hand slammed onto the desktop. “No more!”

“Did I give you too many options?” Ichanra queried, taken aback by Keyluhn’s forcefulness. “You’ll come regardless, surely.”

Pokan’s jaw hurt. Tears were beading at the corners of her eyes, but she did not relent. She wanted it deeper, fuller, as if each inch gave her a greater measure of control over her life and his. Panties dug damp into her crease, fingers running back-and-forth across her clit like an industrial wiper. His pipe swelled in her mouth, scalding.

“I won’t come!” exclaimed Keyluhn. 

The first rope from his cannon was precision-guided to impact Pokan’s uvula. Consequently, the follow-up shot blew straight out her nostrils. The combination of these two events manufactured a sound best approximated in Low Gothic as *‘glurkpff’*. 

Both lexmechanics froze like servitors without their divine spark. Magos Ichanra leered at Keyluhn, nose up. 

“It’s our recirculator,” he fabricated.

Muddy mascara tears dribbled over Pokan’s cheeks as she tried not to gag on the rest of Keyluhn’s barrage. His crown jerked up and slapped against her soft-palate each time it unloaded, although any nut which managed to avoid her tongue was a mercy. The archivist discovered she didn’t have a taste for it, but she was concerned if she swallowed now the noise would get the two of them shortly decommissioned. They’d be the servitoria waxing the passage ways every midnight until their bodies broke or the red giant at the center of the system snuffed itself out.

“That noise is indicative of a stage three condenser failure,” Ichanra huffed. “I will submit a prayer-ticket to the enginseers-- it must be fixed immediately.” 

Keyluhn observed her wordlessly until she broke the silence.

“Goodbye, Adept Keyluhn. I expect to see you bearing the censor at tonight’s Vespers.”

“Yes, Magos,” he returned, hexamathic cracking. The woman turned in the door frame and glared at him.

“You should be happy your manager submitted the mountains of paperwork necessary to officially second you and your undersized friend to the Administry. Otherwise, I’d yank you both out by your collars right this instant and be done with it!”

The office door slammed shut and neither tech-priest dared move for another thirty seconds. Keyluhn braced himself and wheeled the chair away from the desk. Wisps of corset steam rose from the knee-hole. ‘A mess’ would be how he would describe his partner’s countenance, but she wasn’t an angry mess, which was relieving. The girl tilted her face back and opened her mouth, trying to keep her tongue hovering over a sea of spunk.

“Gweh.”

His protein was evidently disagreeable to her, and it showed in her manner.

“Ech!” Keyluhn cringed, then scanned the room quickly before focusing again on her. “There’s nothing to spit it out in. Just do it this one time, okay?”

Her eyes watered, but she shut them and nodded. Frowning, she gulped audibly while he untangled his fingers from her hair and cleaned up her face with his robe cuffs. Deep inside, Pokan was a good girl and she knew when she did good-girl things she got rewarded for it. These subconscious thoughts still didn’t prevent her from expressing her innate querulousness.

“Fucking gross!” she teetered out in noospheric once his jizz slimed down her throat sufficiently. Keyluhn ignored the curse word and tried to wipe up the rest of her black tears, but all he accomplished was smearing her makeup further. “I’d rather eat the homopolymer glue in the bookbinding workshop!”

The larger adept let her finish, then hiked Pokan up onto his lap like she was as light as a marionette, kissing her deeply. She shut up and appreciated him back aggressively by grinding on his resting pole. Wrapping her arms around his shoulders and fencing with his tongue, the feminine adept made clear her hyperdynamo capacitor hadn’t fully discharged. After some time, Keyluhn politely tried to pry her off. When his delicate prodding didn’t work he slid his fingers over the exhaust ribs on her waist and held them until she retreated for a breath. 

“Don’t do that,” she scolded. “It’s dangerous.”

“Because you can’t breathe?” inquired Keyluhn.

The lady lexmechanic twisted as she spoke, holding onto his arms for support and rocking her rear over his ravager, left and right. “No, because your fat fingers will get stuck in there and you’ll dent something trying to pull the scraps out.”

Choking on dick had done a number on her emotion cores. The physical act of it brought forth little pleasure for the woman, but the power she held over him during the act made her feel wanted. Later, when his tongue swirled with her own, her petals inflamed because she knew that she was. She wanted to cash in her spit shining presently. She wanted to be spoiled.

“Pokan, stop,”--although he didn’t truly want her to at the immediate moment--”you told me we needed to talk about us.”

She tugged both sides of her skirt forward with mechadendrites so her pale derriere was front-and-center, guiding his non-bionic hand to her leg. Keyluhn ran it up and down her flank, stopping at the bump on her thigh where her augmetics mated with puffy original tissue. His thumb kneaded to-and-fro between unyielding metal and warm, supple body. Ooohhhhh Omnissiah, she knew his weaknesses! Stand uncompromising, tech-priest. Think rationally!

“I need to know,” he grunted by bytes of binharic, weathering her posterior provocations. “What are you to me?”

What *wasn’t* she? She was his stupid, slutty cocksucker. His perfect, half-pint scrap-prelate. She was… working herself up!

“I’m your little toy!” she twittered, taking her weight off his column and smacking it rearward repeatedly. “I’m your pocket-sized puppet fuckdoll!”

“Pokan!” Keyluhn stood, shoving his thumb into her mouth and holding her chin. Where did she hear those words? Who corrupted her communication branch to commit such vulgar lines for the divine to hear? No matter how many times he heard his fellow adept swear, the crassness shocked him. “Such a… a foul mouth! You know filthy language is unbecoming of a clergy member!” He hunched over so she couldn’t press against his omni-tool and his thumb popped out of her mouth, thoroughly chewed.

“Then shut me up,” she goaded, tippy-toes trying to bump her butt into his belly. “Teach me a lesson, or I scream for that cyber-hussy and we’re *really* in trouble.” 

“You wouldn’t dare! I was being serious.” He needed to start carrying a jug of 937D heavy-duty cleaner and degreasing compound for her dirty mouth.

Pokan ceased wiggling and dropped her head. Cooling fans started to ratchet up in intensity and a sinusoidal whine grew from her center. Broadcast vectors flipped on over analogic channels, waiting for her to spill over into the digitechnic vox-bands.

His pen mechadendrites bunched her black satin panties around her knees in record time. Panicked, Keyluhn was having trouble finding the right port. The notion crossed his mind to flip it over and try inserting it right-side up, but a hand poked out from between her legs and guided the payload in. The proto-shriek ended with an expulsion of air as he pressed his present into her wet embrace.

Grabbing at the ridge of her corset where it fused with her pallid meat and holding her waist steady, he took her forcefully. The girl’s heels clattered on the paneling every thrust until they weren’t even close to approaching the ground, big hands having lifted her up off the floor save for the *clunk clunk* of her toes when they struck it.

God-Machine forgive her! Pokan knew she wasn’t as devout a servant as some of her sisters, but the Omnissiah must have known her weaknesses and understood. When she’d riled Keyluhn up and he was hollowing her out and the task list in her processor narrowed to a single objective-- to survive-- the tech-priestess knew which of the two men in her life her core logic defaulted to. Keyluhn took care of her. Always. No matter how nasty she’d been to him.

Pokan moaned, panting like a bitch since her robe, dampened from steam, smothered the input gills on her waist. The tip of his scepter made itself apparent against her walls as she stuck to him, so explicit she could measure its velocity as it drove in and out. Keyluhn slowed, peeling her carefully over his throbbing cock like he was performing a de-pinning operation on a logis-chip, and now she could sense the tickling pressure as his unit raked against the root of her clit. Stress vectors raised in magnitude as her material deformed, pounds per square inch driving her mad.

Her cunt executed a subroutine coded to cut off circulation to his rod. As he pulled out it felt like he was taking some of her with him and she leaked a little onto the floor-- just coolant from the internal heatsink, of course. Keyluhn lowered the lexmechanic and her legs wavered under her own weight. It was silly of Pokan to hold onto the edge of the desk, since his grip continued to support her. It wouldn’t stop supporting her.

His fingers rubbed along the curves of her mechanical corset as he spoke. “Are you okay?”

She creaked out like a rusted hatch hinge. 

“You must have missed a spot when you were performing your post-wash greasing,” he pointed out, hoisting Pokan up onto the desk so she faced him. The male archivist brushed a hair out of her mouth and delivered a kiss or two while holding her waist, hooking his thumbs around her shirt’s hem. His fingers ran over the bumps of her output ribs until they met skin and continued up to her armpits, exposing her chest. 

Keyluhn nibbled at everywhere *but* her stiff buds, alternating between kisses and bites, both actions set to calibrate her nipples for whatever purpose he envisioned. Eventually, his tongue twisted around and tweaked her control knobs as he muttered rites of resanctification. Data-lines connected to her core grew taut from each nip until Pokan was worried they’d catch on a heat-shield and snap. 

“I’m okay! I’m fine,” she gasped. “Don’t make me ask for it.”

“I won’t,” said Keyluhn, pulling away and smacking his member against her sex. “Foul language notwithstanding…”

He lifted Pokan’s arms over her head with his mechadendrites and pushed her back against the table. Her eyes flitted between his face and her pink button, which he’d been probing at the end of his lance. She was starting to shiver with excitement.

“...you’ve earned your treat.” 

He re-entered her crevice and the girl dropped her head against the table. A dusty rose blush spilled from her cheeks to her forehead and Pokan bit her lip, looking away. Keyluhn engaged in a methodical pistoning protocol, dick engulfed by her burning depths with ease. Great Forgelord, he was hot for her and she was hot for him in return. If Ichanra could hear them now, she’d know there was nothing wrong with the room’s recirculator. Only something wrong with these creatures of the flesh. God-Machine…

Was he doing all this wrong? Was he saying the wrong things? Performing the rites in the wrong order? They smoldered for one another, yet he didn’t know what Pokan called him in her thoughts. He’d never shared the hundred names for her he laser etched onto his long-term storage when he had trouble sleeping at night. They couldn’t keep stuffing this secret inside themselves or it would explode and scatter them about in pieces. 

She wasn’t even looking at him. Did he do something wrong? Was his intuition incorrect? Keyluhn reached out and raised her up so her face was inches from his. His non-bionic hand held her blistering skin, his metallic supporting her lumbar region and lost between her augmetic tentacles. 

“Does it feel good?” he radiated over shortwave. Pokan let a distressed moan wobble from her throat and leaned for his mouth, anointing his lips judiciously with hers. Her serpentine appendages coiled themselves up his biceps. The larger adept slowed his thrusting as she tightened, snatching a moan of his own. Their modules were mastercrafted to fit one another. 

“Yes!” his quivering companion warbled bit by bit. Her legs tried wrapping ineffectually around his waist, heels tapping at each other’s tips while his thrusts became narrower. “Tell me I’m your princess!”

“You’re my princess,” sputtered Keyluhn. Every muscle of his felt like it was clenching, trying not to fly apart and erupt. She was squeezing him, holding onto the fuse. “...but what am I to you?!”

It was all he could do to ask the question. Even if it wasn’t worded nicely, there were liquids pumping through his system calling forth a great fulmination. Pokan’s wrists broke free of his graspers and slipped around his nape. Her thoughts were so jumbled she cried out in Gothic, a convolution of High and Low.

“Oh, Keyluhn! You’re my… You’re my…!”

The strength in his muscles let out and Keyluhn burst inside her. Pokan drew him close and tried to make her spit the primary hazmat in his mouth whilst he assured his seed was the primary in hers. The pair sucked in the other’s breaths, the princess getting the better end of the oxygen deal by virtue of the intake fans on her waist. 

He was still spasming inside her when she withdrew, eyes locked in with his like a retinal scanner. 

“Keyluhn, you’re--”

“--in trouble,” a gravelly voice boomed out from behind her. “In *big* trouble.”

Head Archivist Decemus stood at the door holding a brownply tray of pastries and looking very, very angry. 

-----

“Sorry,” Orob apologized, setting her tray down at the galley table. “I tried to play interference for you two, but I could only delay him for so long.”

Pokan prodded with her spoon at a bowl of gray gruel she’d taken from the mechanicum refectory. It was currently St. Pavlovych’s Fast and the tech-priests were supposed to consume only synth-slab for forty-two Martian Standard days. Reflecting on it, Pokan had already broken the fast with protein, but one could never overcorrect on devotion.

Sister Avila trotted over to the table and seated herself next to Orob. She enjoyed a perpetual smile on her wide mouth, which no doubt assisted her in her duties at the station’s ministorum shrine. 

“So, did you dazzle him with your beauty?” asked Avila. Pokan ignored her and swirled the chunky, homogeneous compound. Orob got to appreciate the visual journey of the synth-slab’s preparation the past few lunches and today’s oatmeal-like attempt was not doing the food any favors.

“No,” Orob answered for Pokan. “Or yes. It’s complicated. And where did you learn to do makeup like the kind on Pokan, Avila? Your technique was… novel.”

“I traded for a Necromundan beauty magazine a few months back.”

Right. It was an open secret among almost all women on the station: the good Sister had whatever you needed. Whether the ship docking was a free trader stopping in for supplies or a supply vessel completing an ammo run for the planet below, Avila was ready to trade with the mariners for any of their… under the table goods. Simply put, she was the lady for all things romance, and a fair amount raunchier. Come to think of it, she knew everyone’s fetishes by virtue of her underground operation. In a roundabout way she protected the purity of the station’s women by acting as the arbiter of what smut was or was not shared onboard. Orob shuddered to comprehend any of the unimaginable fetishes crawling blindly outside of the Emperor’s Light. 

It was mildly annoying that the Sister rented out her transonic nubbers for a throne a night, but nobody wanted to get caught with contraband in their rack when a berthing inspection was performed. Besides, you could consider the cost-of-business a donation to the station’s shrine, and it wasn’t like anyone else found the time to haggle with station visitors for their coveted material. 

“So if the makeover sort of worked,” Avila asked, taking the time to chew on a piece of breaded reconstituted meat-medley, “and you definitely didn’t lose Keyluhn to-- what did you call her last night? The chief techni-skank?-- then why are you moping?” 

Orob nudged at a steamed yet raw coin of vegetable while thinking of the least offensive word to use. 

“The two of them got written up for *congress* during work.”

Avila covered her mouth and began a hearty laugh until an errant chunk of breading transformed it into a coughing fit. She appeared to be only partially apologetic as she sipped some water and tried to dislodge the lump from her throat. Pokan was holding her spoon white-knuckled. Coughing lightly from the residual scratching tickles, the ministorum Sister spoke.

“Then it sounds like the plan worked?”

“If getting caught was your plan all along!” Pokan fumed, finally taking a spoonful of gruel into her mouth grouchily. 

“Now, holy Sister, let’s think about this,” Sister Avila consoled, brushing a curly black lock from her forehead. “Was your Administratum disciplinary write-up only omega-level?”

Pokan jammed another peeved spoonful into her mouth and glowered. Avila turned to Orob. “Was it omega-level?”

“As far as I know,” the scribe responded.

“*Only* an omega-level write-up?” Avila prodded tellingly, ”The kind of write-up where you need to get disciplined for the same thing three times in a row before the issue rises above the level of your supervisor? The kind of write-up which gets removed from your record after six months of good behavior?”

Orob watched as Pokan’s face lightened with each sentence.

“How do you know so much about Administratum disciplinary actions?” grilled the scribe.

“Just as our beloved tech-priestess tends to the Imperium’s body,” Avila proposed with a wave of her spork in the air, “so do I tend to the Imperium’s spirit.” 

Her smile possessed a disarming quality to it. There was no doubt she’d been privy to all manner of conspiracies, or, at the very least, the station’s inhabitant’s constant venting. Somewhere inside the mixture, someone or another ran into disciplinary problems of their own and came to Avila for spiritual advice. What they didn’t know was this advice wasn’t free but an exchange, one of spiritual direction for earthly knowledge. 

“So you’ve got nothing to worry about when it comes to your behavior,” promised Avila, leaning forward and resting her chin on her knuckles, giving a commiserating look. “Since you’re such a *good girl*.”

Pokan pulled her hood further over her face and shoveled gray goop into her gullet. Orob had half a mind to tell Avila off, but the Sister was the one who controlled her access to *I Can’t Handle My Commissar’s Enormous Bolt Pistol*.

“I’m just ribbing you, Pokan,” Avila giggled. “I apologize, really. It wasn’t fair game-- Keyluhn is far more fun to tease. Speaking of him…”

“He’s skipping lunch to visit our polytechnastery’s library,” the lexmechanic answered, setting down her spoon and fidgeting with a band on her left ring finger. “He needs to memorize the rites for partially deconstructing a recirculator.”

Avila took hold of Pokan’s ringed hand and released a puff of air out her nose. The thin metal band was weaved together out of paperclips.

“What’s this?” she inquired semi-earnestly. 

“It’s called a chastity ring,” shared Pokan. “The head archivist said Keyluhn and I were required to wear them during work hours as part of our corrective action. Oh!” The girl abruptly stood up and took out a liter-sized translucent polymer bag from her tool purse.

“Leaving already?” Avila asked.

“My thirty minutes are almost up, and it takes five to transit back to the archive,” explained Pokan, pouring the room temperature gruel from her bowl into the bag and sealing it up at the top. “Besides, Keyluhn might need an extra mechadendrite or three.”

Pokan pocketed the slop bag and took off, the two other women muttering their good-days to her. Avila could try to assist her with matters of love, but it was moments like these she saw the divide between the mindset of the mechanicus and the ecclesiarchy. Could they ever truly claim to understand their tech-priestess friend? More importantly, in what manner did she intend on finishing the gruel later? As Orob would discover when she returned for her shift: by ingurgitation with a straw. For the time being, the two of them jabbed at slippery vegetables and wondered. Avila recovered faster.

“I hope those rings work out for them,” she remarked. “If not, then I have a belt she could borrow.”