Chapter One: The Nursery of Necessary Lives
The neonate ward contained four thousand, two hundred and sixteen children.
They slept in stacked rows beneath a ceiling hidden by cables.
Each child occupied a metal crib with raised sides and a drainage slot beneath the mattress. Nutrient lines hung from overhead rails. Brass plaques bore registry numbers. Servo-skulls drifted between the aisles, watching for fever, respiratory failure, seizure or prolonged crying.
The ward never became dark.
Light was considered necessary for observation.
It never became quiet.
Silence served no productive function.
At regular intervals, the public vox announced prayers in the harsh, clipped tones of binharic cant. The words were meaningless to the infants, but the frequencies were believed to encourage familiarity with proper devotional patterns.
Every six hours, human attendants entered.
They wore grey robes and white masks. They checked feeding tubes, cleaned the cribs, changed the children and removed the dead.
There were always dead.
A green lumen above each crib indicated life.
An amber lumen indicated irregularity.
A red lumen indicated loss.
The attendants called these children “extinguished units.”
Cael’s lumen remained green.
He survived his first night.
Then his second.
Then his first week.
His earliest world consisted of bars.
Metal bars beside his face. Metal rails overhead. Metal grilles across the ventilation ducts. Beyond them moved red robes, grey robes and mechanical limbs.
When he cried, he was fed.
When he soiled himself, he was cleaned.
When he reached toward the servo-skulls, they drifted away.
No one sang to him.
But the forge sang endlessly.
He learned its voices before he learned human speech.
The slow pulse beneath the floor meant the ore crushers were running.
The distant rolling thunder meant a macro-hauler had passed through the freight arteries below.
A rising whine followed by a tremor meant the plasma furnaces had vented.
The chime that repeated three low notes meant shift rotation.
The shrill double tone meant a pressure fault.
The children around him cried at each new sound.
Cael listened.
At nine months, a pipe ruptured in the wall behind his crib.
Superheated vapour burst through the panel, filling the aisle with white mist. Alarm klaxons sounded. The servo-skulls began broadcasting evacuation instructions to infants incapable of understanding them.
Two attendants arrived.
One attempted to seal the valve.
The other began removing children from the nearest row.
Cael did not cry.
He watched the attendant turn the red wheel.
The steam continued.
The attendant turned it the other direction.
The steam intensified.
Cael watched the wheel.
He watched the trembling linkage beneath it.
He watched a small locking pin jump inside its housing each time the mechanism moved.
He did not understand valves.
He did not understand steam.
He did not possess words for open, closed, broken or danger.
He only understood that the movement did not match the sound.
He reached through the bars and pointed.
The gesture was ignored.
He pointed again.
The second attendant lifted him from the crib.
Cael twisted in her arms, still pointing toward the linkage.
“Motor agitation,” she said.
The first attendant struck the wheel with a maintenance bar.
The locking pin dropped into place.
The valve sealed.
The vapour thinned.
The first attendant stared at the mechanism.
Then at Cael.
Cael stared back.
“Coincidence,” said the second attendant.
“Obviously.”
They returned him to his crib.
No record of the event was made.
On Alecto-Delta, what was not recorded had never happened.