Though the war was far away it impacted on every aspect of station life. Fuel they had plenty of. Water was scarce but could be sourced from the miserably poor cometary belt of the outer system. Food was trickier to provide, grown in the enormous underground agrifarms of Trisolian A-3. Parts and machinery were in shorter supply still. Trisolian had an abundance of treasure, but a dearth of simpler materials. Flesh and metal suffered together. Organics were malnourished. Many an adept was getting by on bionics held together by jury-rigged repairs.

Whatever the privations they must suffer, Cawl said to Friedisch, others lived under worse circumstances, and the mining must go on for the good of the Imperium. Their work was important, if not particularly glamorous.

Domina Hester Aspertia Sigma-Sigma, supreme magos militara of Trisolian, was not pleased when Cawl reached the Extraction Protection Operations Centre in Quinta station.

She whirled around to face him as he hurried through the door, all six spiked, aggressive metres of her.

'Tech Acolytum Belisarius Cawl,' she augmitted in simultaneous Gothic, binaric, Ryzan-form Lingua Technis and an obscure form of Novabyte Cawl had only ever heard from her vox-speakers. 'You're late.' The noosphere around her seethed with digital animosity. Pistons and gears whined as a dozen tech-adepts tensed under the domina's wide-cast anger.

'I am late, domina,' said Cawl, with a short bow, attempting to hurry past her to his station. 'I am most sorry, I have been delayed with experiments of my own and—'

'Silence!' she blurted. A torrent of binaric invective poured out of her, so vile in nature Tez-Lar twitched. She ran at Cawl, her mechapeds rattling off the deck like stubber fire punching through a corrugated plasteel sheet. 'Tardiness is proximate to inefficiency. Inefficiency is proximate to obsolescence. Do you wish me to enact an order of decommission?'

'No, domina,' said Cawl. He hunched low and grovelled. The domina liked that sort of thing from her inferiors.

'Or perhaps you would prefer to join my skitarii, in order to serve me better. They, tech acolytum, are never, ever late!'

Cawl glanced sideways to the door where a pair of the domina's personal guard stood sentry. Resplendent in brass and grey, they were as inert as robots, with no sign of independent life. The domina's skitarii were little better than tech thralls. Rumour had it she kept their cortexes offline, operating them directly at all times. Their minds were trapped in a perpetual rapture, drugged by communion with the Motive Force. Some of the machine cult would welcome the fate, but Cawl quailed inwardly at the thought. Independence was all to him.