Infrastructure: Part One Hundred and Sixty Eight

Due to the constant and fairly cutthroat competition between houses and individuals the Dark Elves were not a trusting people. They were raised to be wary of the motives of their superiors and partners outside of their extended families. There were rules which restrained some of this this behavior so that their societies did not rip themselves apart from constant in-fighting, but this cultivated more subtle means of backstabbing and betrayal. Aboard the Sloop Dainve-zi'Toncalis (Dagger of House Toncalis), part of the anti-Infrastructural fleet Slave Driver Vardil zi'Toncalis was no exception and quickly worked out that his superiors had plans which were not in his best interest in June.

It started with some delays in getting new supplies, though at the time this was put down to someone at some level screwing up. The big thing that got him and a few of his shipmates talking was when four of the ship's ten cannons were volunteered by the captain for some ballistics experiment. This was a bit out of character for her, but apparently she was getting well paid for it. But his suspitions were spiked when a the slave section of the crew were taken off the ship for the time being. Apparently more than half of them had apparently contracted some disease and were taken away for quarantine, examination and treatment for the next month or so. A similar but apparently unrelated outbreak happened on a couple of other sloops as well. To keep the ships' strength up until then, some replacements were soon brought in.

Most of the fourty four slave sailors that had been infected were fairly skilled ones, drilled, possessing more technical skills like carpentry and had at least a few years sailing experience at least and were mostly in good health. What they got in replacement was a poor substitute to say the least. There was but thirty of them, but that was the beginning of the problem. Half of them were at least an eye, arm or a leg short, a fair number of them were old, many of them were badly whipped and a couple had a look which all slave drivers were trained to notice and loathe above all else, that of defiance. When he asked them what they did before they said they worked at logging camps, as streetsweeps, scrap scavengers in workshops, cobble layers, label stickers and cartloaders. The closet to a sailor in that lot was that one of the belligerent ones worked a as stevedore. Old, broken and problematic. Working in a couple such wretches into the crew during war time was one thing, but to have half of the ship's slaves replaced with this lot was insane. When he asked the captain about this, she said she did not like this but it was only a temporary measure just in case.

To get that rabble into something approaching ship shape, the captain had them doing some maneuvers with four other sloops for practice for a few days. Strangely enough, this was under the command of Lieutenant ti'Baltilos while ten of the Dainve-zi'Toncalis's senior drow crew members and all twelve of the marines were absent. Things proceeded well enough even though Vardil gave out more lashes in five days than he had done in the last three months at sea. The problem was that near the end of a week at sea, they were given an order to join up with the rest of the fleet, which was now moving out to intercept an Infrastructural Convoy.

As soon as word of this went through his mind, his suspicions were confirmed about what was planned. The lack of re-supply, the crew being reduced, the padding with unqualified slaves and the cannons being removed. This ship was not to be used as a sword to strike down the enemy, it was to be used against those ironclads as ammunition.

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