#High Voltage Cable Wire

[sh-photogallery]

Black and white picture of Chilean flag waving between power cables. Shot taken in the Elqui Valley in the north of Chile.

[sassenach77yle]

She pressed her back against the tunnel wall, hands flat on the rough rock, and thought. That’s where they’d gone, then. It made no difference, but she closed her eyes to improve her concentration and summoned up the pages of the massive binder—presently on the seat of the vanished truck—that contained the structural and engineering details of all the hydroelectric stations under her purview.She’d looked at the diagrams for this one last night and again, hastily, while brushing her teeth this morning. The tunnel led to the dam, and had obviously been used in the construction of the lower levels of that dam. How low? If the tunnel joined at the level of the turbine chamber itself, it would have been walled off. But if it joined at the level of the servicing chamber above—a huge room equipped with the multi-ton ceiling cranes needed to lift the turbines from their nests—then there would still be a door; there would have been no need to seal it off, with no water on the other side.Try as she might, she couldn’t bring the diagrams to mind in sufficient detail to be sure there was an opening into the dam at the far end of the tunnel—but it would be simple enough to find out.

SHE’D SEEN THE TRAIN, in that brief moment before the doors closed; it didn’t take much fumbling round to get into the open cab of the tiny engine. Now, had those clowns taken the key to the engine, too? Ha. There was no key; it worked by a switch on the console. She flipped it, and a red button glowed with sudden triumph as she felt the hum of electricity run through the track beneath.The train couldn’t have been simpler to run. It had a single lever, which you pushed forward or back, depending on which direction you meant to go. She shoved it gently forward, and felt air move past her face as the train moved silently off into the bowels of the earth.She had to go slowly. The tiny red button shed a comforting glow over her hands, but did nothing to pierce the darkness ahead, and she had no idea where or how much the track curved. Neither did she want to hit the end of the track at a high rate of speed and derail the engine. It felt as though she was inching through the dark, but it was much better than walking, feeling her way over a mile of tunnel lined with high-voltage cables.It hit her in the dark.

For a split second, she thought someone had laid a live cable on the track. In the next instant, a sound that wasn’t a sound thrummed through her, plucking every nerve in her body, making her vision go white. And then her hand brushed rock and she realized that she had fallen across the console, was hanging halfway out of the tiny, trundling engine, was about to fall out into darkness.Head spinning, she managed to grab the edge of the console and pull herself back into the cab. Flipped the switch with one shaking hand and half-fell to the floor, where she curled up, gripping her knees, her breath a whimpering in the dark.

“Holy God,” she whispered. “Oh, Blessed Mother. Oh, Jesus.”

She could feel it out there. Still feel it. It didn’t make a sound now, but she felt its nearness and couldn’t stop trembling.She sat still for a long time, head on her knees, until rational thought began to come back.She couldn’t be mistaken. She’d passed through time twice, and knew the feeling. But this hadn’t been nearly so shocking. Her skin still prickled and her nerves jumped and her inner ears rang as though she’d thrust her head into a hive of hornets—but she felt solid. She felt as though a red-hot wire had sliced her in two, but she hadn’t had the horrible sense of being disassembled, turned physically inside out.

A terrible thought sent her surging to her feet, clinging to the console.

Had she jumped? Was she somewhere—somewhen—else?

But the metal console was cool and solid under her hands, the smell of damp rock and cable insulation unchanged.“No,” she whispered, and flicked the power light for reassurance. It came on, and the train, still in gear, gave a sudden lurch. Hastily, she throttled back the speed to less than a crawl.She couldn’t have jumped into the past.

Small objects in direct contact with a traveler’s person seemed to move with them, but an entire train and its track was surely pushing it. “Besides,” she said out loud, “if you’d gone more than twenty-five years or so into the past, the tunnel wouldn’t be here. You’d be inside… solid rock.” Her gorge rose suddenly, and she threw up.The sense of… it… was receding, though. It—whatever it was—was behind her. Well, that settled it, she thought, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. There bloody well had to be a door at the far end, because there was no way she was going back the way she’d come.

There was a door. A plain, ordinary, industrial metal door. And a padlock, unlocked, hanging from an open hasp. She could smell WD-40; someone had oiled the hinges, very recently, and the door swung open easily when she turned the knob. She felt suddenly like Alice, after falling down the White Rabbit’s hole. A really mad Alice.A steep flight of steps lay on the other side of the door, dimly lit—and at the top was another metal door, edged with light. She could hear the rumble and the metallic whine of a ceiling crane in operation.Her breath was coming fast, and not from the effort of climbing the stairs. What would she find on the other side? It was the servicing chamber inside the dam; she knew that much. But would she find Thursday on the other side? The same Thursday she’d had when the tunnel doors had closed behind her?She gritted her teeth and opened the door. Rob Cameron was waiting, lounging back against the wall, lit cigarette in hand. He broke into an enormous grin at sight of her, dropped the butt, and stepped on it.

“Knew ye’d make it, hen,” he said. Across the room, Andy and Craig turned from their work and applauded.“Buy ye a pint after work, then, lass,” Andy called.“Two!” shouted Craig.She could still taste bile at the back of her throat. She gave Rob Cameron the sort of look she’d given Mr. Campbell.

“Don’t,” she said evenly, “call me hen.”

His good-looking face twitched and he tugged at his forelock with mock subservience.“Anything you say, boss,” he said.

Tunnel Tigers ~ An Echo in the Bone

[circuitfreak]

pretty wires pretty wires pretty wires pretty wires nom nom nom chomp

> Those cables are very high-voltage. They’re reinforced with multiple layers of rubber, but you’ve done quite a number on the outer coating.

> Can you feel the static pooling in your mouth? It shouldn’t be painful. I’m keeping the charge gentle.

> Can you taste the arcs as they connect to your tongue? Your saliva conducts the current. I’ve heard humans describe it as sour and cold.

> I hope you’re enjoying this as much as I am.

[posttexasstressdisorder]

Dynaco Repair Post No. 6: The Glow Renewed

Tuesday evening, 12-26-23

I was completely caught off guard by the box by the front door when I got back from Bunny Duty/Safeway/Post Office errands today. Things are supposed to be delivered starting tomorrow, three different packages, but nothing was scheduled to come today.

Busted out in a big grin as soon as I saw it was from my bud in SC: The EL34s got here two days early! So...I was completely (and delightedly) doing something much different this evening than I had planned!

In the box were five tubes, all of them "good spares" I had personally pulled out of working ST70s I had. I'd de-tubed them before I sold them on eBay. They went to afore-mentioned friend who was going to use them in HIS Dynaco, but hadn't yet. He sent 'em back to me, four of the square-bottled Mullards (three of 'em original Dynaco-branded actual Mullards), and one "Winged C" (the Russian iteration), and a JJ as a spare. These had been in one of the systems I'd set up for ANOTHER of our buddies (my bestie who died in 2021). Old, but good, solid tubes with lots of life left in 'em.

The 5AR4 I have is the original one. The silvering at the top is almost non-existent. It's a US-made Mullard clone:

Gorgeous, ain't it?

SO...I got the ST70 ready for relaunch. Put it on the bench and hooked it up to my trusty old Micronta variac, set to "Zero Volts", got the fuse in, and switched it on.

Started out slowly turning it up to 10V, and waiting 15 minutes, and then turned it up another 10V to 20V, and waiting 15 more minutes, lather, rinse, repeat, until I got it up to about 117V.

At about 40V I began to see the barest glow in all but one tube (that Winged C). At 50V, it began to glow as well. So far so good. After about an hour, I'd nursed it up to 70V, every tube glowing strong. I let it sit at 70V for about a half hour, and then just slowly turned the knob on the variac up to 117.

Every tube came up like a champ. The ST70 Glows once again!

I let it sit and burn for about an hour, and checked the bias voltages. I had set the two adjustment pots to their center point. The left channel needed the slightest of increase (probably due to the Winged C) to get it up to the correct voltage, but the right channel was dead-set-centered on 1.56V. Boom. Rock solid. Done.

Now that the repairs are done, and I know everything is working, I will start tomorrow on re-connecting and re-arranging all the components in the system. I'm kinda spent at the moment...it's been quite a day! I'll post more tomorrow, but for tonight I call it a victory. All of the thanks go to my buddies @misfitwashere (who got me the parts) and our old compadre "Harbourmaster" on the East Coast, who sent the tubes.

More tomorrow, and to all a bitchin' Good Night.

Wednesday Night, 12-27-23

Well, it took awhile, but I finally got things re-wired and in position. Got the turntable and the FM3 hooked up and both work splendidly. I found a super-shielded RCA cable for the turntable specifically, and it sounds better...there's almost no need for the turntable ground wire now!

First, tho', I have to show off my speakers. These started their lives as Pioneer boxes, Model CS-44, to be exact. I got them at the thrift store for $25.

BUT: the 8-inch woofers and tweeters in them were garbage, so I replaced them with new components: A pair of 8" butyl-rubber surround, poly-cone woofers (they will never need reconing), and a pair of genuine Danish SEAS Tweeters, salvaged from a working pair of Dynaco A-25s.

The result? The 8-Inch Dynaco Speaker That Never Was! The A-10s had 6-inch woofers, and all the others had 10-inch woofers.

And the sonic result? A pair of mid-sized bookshelf speakers with rock-solid bass and the clearest, most well-defined mids and highs you could ever want to hear! And they don't look bad, either!

Here is everything finally in place:

And that about wraps it up! I've finally got my music back. I'll finally be able to continue my vinyl transcribing, and won't have to worry about my equipment for another good long while.

Many thanks again to my bros @misfitwashere and Harbourmaster. I couldn't have gotten it accomplished without y'all's help.

[heliopauseentertainments]

Denied Repose

For Rare Pairing Fest 2023 - @tfrarepairing

Prompt Day 1 - Underworld

Continuity: IDW1

Rating: Teen

Relationship: Megatron/Ratchet

Characters: Megatron & Ratchet Warnings: Major character death, mild gore, necromancy, one-sided relationship

Summary: In which Megatron decides death is also his to control.

Crossposting: AO3 | Dreamwidth Fic under cut. See AO3 for complete notes.

“Good doctor,” Megatron started, strapping Ratchet’s limp limbs to the medical slab, not that Ratchet seemed to be in much of a mood to struggle at the moment. He wasn’t in the mood for much of anything, if Megatron were being honest. “This is one of those situations where I’ll be, in theory, asking you for your forgiveness, rather than for your permission.”

The room thrummed with high voltage electricity as it coursed through the wires and circuits of the machinery lining the walls and ceiling. Megatron did not fully grasp the physics behind it, but that didn’t matter. He had read enough of Scorponok’s notes.

The Autobots had made the mistake of leaving their fallen behind in the chaotic aftermath of battle. Megatron had never been one to let an opportunity go to waste.

Ugly welds made by inexperienced hands crossed Ratchet’s cold chest, windshield glass lingering only as shards still stuck inside of the frame. With guidance from Flatline over their commlinks, Megatron had already patched the worst of the damage to Ratchet’s body, leaving only cosmetic injuries that could be repaired. These were not vital, not yet to a functioning body.

Of all the mechs misguided enough to join the Autobots, Ratchet had always held Megatron’s personal respect. One day, he had always reasoned, perhaps Ratchet could have been convinced to see the world from the Decepticons’ perspective. He had seen the worst of what Functionism had done to the people. Megatron had even put out a standing order early on to leave the handsome medic to do his work, to not target him in battle.

This was not how he had anticipated swaying Ratchet to his cause. He had hoped to use words, wielding the powerful weapon of rhetoric. Though, perhaps, in time he could yet do that, but Ratchet would need function sensors to receive the anything that Megatron had to say.

Megatron checked the straps again, running the back of his hand along Ratchet’s forearm as though soothing an ailing friend, rather than a deceased enemy. He avoided looking at the medic’s dark, unseeing optics.

Cables, still powered down, hung from the ceiling. Megatron reached into Ratchet’s chest through the gap where the windshield had once been, clipping the cables onto his spark chamber.

He stared for a few moments at the gray, crystalline orb nestled inside. Once it had held all that Ratchet was, powering both his frame and his thoughts. Perhaps soon it would again.

Thankfully the spark itself had not sustained damage or shattered, otherwise even this last hope would have been out of reach.

Scorponok had pioneered this gargantuan machine in his quest to both understand the spark and boost Decepticon numbers. His research had been intended to both keep their strength up and pursue techniques they could leverage when Phase 7 finally arrived.

This resurrection machine, however, had been only sparsely tested due to its unsustainable energy requirements.

Should Megatron have been doing this?

Absolutely not. This was selfish, pure and simple.

What would Ratchet say when he discovered that Megatron had sidestepped the natural order of the universe for him? That was hard to say, but he would be alive to say whatever it was.

If it worked.

Reluctantly leaving Ratchet’s side, Megatron walked over to the control console to begin entering the commands to prepare the machine. Its sole task was to jump start the cold spark in Ratchet’s chest.

The console ready, Megatron initiated the sequence.

Power surged down from the ceiling through the cables and into Ratchet’s empty spark.

“I hope one day you’ll understand.”

[antaxzantax]

Umbrella Pharmaceuticals - Chapter 55

Summary: Alfred Ashford agrees with Peter Lee to perform sadistic rituals in an abandoned factory.

1

The mansion stood on a gentle promontory.

He rang the doorbell.

A red-haired individual greeted him.

“Welcome to my sweet home.”

The guest entered the estate like a prince marching to his coronation. In the entrance hall, a stylised white marble statue reproducing the nude torso of an Atlantean dominated the room as its centrepiece. Its features, in contrast to the classical hieratism, were a grimace of pleasurable pain reminiscent of works from the Hellenistic period of Ancient Greece.

“I'm a sculptor. You don't have a name. Do you want me to show you the workshop?”

“Show me the film,” Alfred ordered dryly.

Peter hurried down the corridor to a door set into the eastern wall. He unlocked the latch and motioned Alfred through first. Alfred descended a flight of worn stairs that roared in pain with every step from decades of neglect. Behind him, Peter flicked the light switch. A set of lonely, bare bulbs flickered on. The bulbs hung from the ceiling by the effort of a rickety copper wire. The basement was empty except for a chestnut-coloured leather armchair and a television perched atop a bedside table with a VHS mounted on top of the box. Alfred accidentally inhaled a strange, sweetish stench that snaked through the isolated atmosphere of the room.

Without waiting for Peter, Alfred sat down in the armchair. He settled himself by crossing his legs and took the cardboard box out of the inside of his jacket. He lit a cigarette while Peter revived the television and pulled out the VHS to play the tape.

A black background with Japanese lettering. A house similar to the ones he had seen on the postcards his father received from the Japanese subsidiary of Umbrella Pharmaceuticals. A man wearing a suit and a mask that hid his face. The man carried a curved sabre which he drew when he entered the house. He went into a room on the first floor. In the room was another young man pleading for his life. The man raised the sabre and cut the young man to death. The dismemberment of the young man was realistic, crude, raw and honest. The sabre sliced through skin, muscle and bone as if they were made of paper. The victim's high-pitched shrieks reverberated through the speakers in the basement.

The footage lasted fifteen minutes, the equivalent of three five-minute cigars, and faded to black. The player paused. Alfred put the last cigarette butt in the steel packet.

“Where did you get it?” asked Alfred.

“I bought it over the phone from an anonymous guy I met at the video store downtown. I haven't seen him since.”

Alfred got up from the chair. Peter got up from the floor.

“And... that's it?”

Alfred sounded bored, as if watching a banned film was a minor pastime.

It had not surprised him. It had not moved him.

Peter's hands began to move erratically. Alfred raised an eyebrow.

“Are you the devil?” Peter spoke as if he had been shaken by a high-voltage cable.

“What demon?” he replied calmly.

Peter went to the back of the room. He grabbed a handle stuck in the floor and pulled it to unbolt a trapdoor. A foul smell of decay emerged from the hole as if he had uncovered a mass grave. Alfred futilely held his arm over his nose. Peter pulled a doctor's bag from the hole in the floor. He placed the bag on the leather chair and opened it to reveal its contents. Alfred peered into the tiny abyss.

A collection of rusted and uncleaned surgical tools. Bloodstains were embedded in the metal like scabs covering a wound. Alfred coughed, positioned parallel to Peter. The latter pulled a bone saw from the bag. Inexpressive, he swung the saw around to face Alfred.

“I practice with animals. This basement is my secret place.”

Alfred did not retreat. The momentary shot of adrenaline he felt from identifying a potential threat intercepted and overrode the neural reception of the nauseating smell. Defenseless and not knowing how to fight hand-to-hand without harming himself, he dismissed attack as the main course of action.

“I had my secret place too.” Alfred whispered to Peter without looking away. “I spent my teenage years at boarding school in England. I had a group of friends there...” Peter listened carefully. “There was an attic in the dormitory where I lived. We would take the bad kids up there and punish them. I was in charge of the punishments. I called myself the master of ceremonies.” Peter put the saw down. “I wore a rabbit mask that one of the boys bought for a Halloween costume.” Alfred cleared his throat. “The important thing was not to leave a mark. We'd stick them on their backs with leather belts and ivory canes. We'd lock them in cages in the attic and deprive them of food and drink until we got bored.” Alfred gave Peter a nostalgic half-smile.

“Were you found out?” asked Peter, engrossed in Alfred's narrative.

“No. The school owed my family a favour and the law of silence was imposed.”

“Were you punished?” Peter's facial expression had relaxed considerably.

“Yes, but only the teachers. I was only whipped with the cane, not given any of the punishments in the attic.” Alfred glanced at the trapdoor. “I've had some practice with animals myself.”

“Do you listen to them too?” Peter mumbled excitedly.

“The voices?” Alfred answered automatically because of the remarkable number of times he had heard the same question in horror films.

“Are you schizophrenic too? The voices ordered me to kill you so you wouldn't call the police.”

Alfred smiled pleasantly natural.

“No, I'm not schizophrenic, but I also have strange thoughts. Have you ever tried it with a person? Do you know what it feels like?”

The suggestion caught Peter by surprise and off guard. He shook his head.

“It's a very pleasant sensation,” Alfred whispered.

Peter took a couple of steps back. He threw the bone saw onto the couch and dug his knees into the floor.

“You are the devil. You have come to me.”

“Would you like to try it?” offered the demon called Alfred.

“Yes.”

“I will see you next Saturday at the same time and in this house. I will tell you my plan.”

Alfred went upstairs and disappeared through the front door. Peter kept vigil for the rest of the night with his knees to the floor and the cellar hatch wide open.

2

Alfred returned around noon to the mansion he shared with his sister and father in the wealthy suburb of Raccoon City. Alexia was tending a rose bush in the back garden when Alfred appeared to inform her of his meeting with Peter Lee.

“Is dad in home?” Alfred yawned.

“No.” Alexia cut the stem of a rose.

“I have already seen the film.”

“So?”

“There was something else.”

Alfred moved closer to his sister so that she could hear his murmur.

“There is a trap door in the cellar of his house,” he said in Scottish Gaelic so that no undesirable would understand. “A mass grave with the remains of the animals he practices on. He keeps the instruments in a doctor's bag. The tools are stained with blood. He is schizophrenic and thinks I am the personification of his demon. He wanted to kill me, but I dissuaded him by telling him about the attic in the Jacob II. I think he now reveres me.”

Alexia cut a second rose.

“I've had an idea,” Alfred added hesitantly. Alexia prepared to cut a third rose about to wilt. “Do you think I'm a demon?”

Alexia did not respond, focused as she was on the rose bush. In reality, she knew what Alfred wanted, hence her accusatory silence.

“Don't tell dad, please,” he pleaded out of politeness, because he knew that telling his father was her responsibility, not Alexia's. “I'm going to do it, and I want Ogie[1] involved. He wants to be involved too. We've talked about it.”

“Maybe you should have been a priest,” said Alexia.

“You're right,” Alfred confirmed and turned away from her to go into the house.

Alexia was right.

His introduction to the priesthood was his last chance to achieve a self-awareness that would have enabled him to quell the Craving for good. The Craving was a phenomenon that his great-grandfather Thomas began to experience at the same age as Alfred, at fifteen, and which he tried to quell for the rest of his brief life without success. Thomas described the Craving as a visceral and irrational impulse to commit infamous acts. The subject, possessed by the Craving, did not reason like a human being, but indulged in the most despicable instincts. He was beast, but not man, and this beast had to be tamed to avoid being controlled by it. In the particular case of Thomas Ashford, the Craving manifested itself as an obsessive fixation on consuming human flesh.

In his manuscripts, Thomas recounted his frequent trips to London's East End to satiate the Craving. Dressed incognito, like a factory worker, he would pay whores a generous sum of money to lock himself up with them in the cellar or attic of an abandoned house. Out of Catholic devotion, Thomas never committed the sin of fornicating with his victims, nor of being suggestive with them or kissing them, for he was a married man and faithful to his wife. However, before beginning his ritual, Thomas would get drunk with his victim, as alcohol was his only source of weakness, and then kill her by suffocating her with a rope. Once the victim was dead, Thomas would begin a second ritual, described in his memoirs, which included the skinning of the skin, the Egyptian draining of bodily fluids as if to mummify the body, the dismemberment of arms and legs, and the opening of the cranial cavity with a saw for the subsequent preparation of the brain with spices and bourbon flambé. The meticulous cooking of the human flesh and other organs such as the heart and pancreas usually took no more than three hours.

Once the food was prepared, he would organise the feast in the same place where he had killed the victim. The sour taste of the cooked organs and the soft texture of the human flesh gave him an indescribable, ultraterrestrial, addictive pleasure. A tally sheet taped to the cover of one of the notebooks listed a total of 107 souls; 105 low-life women and two men of the worst kind with whom he had fallen out over a rugby match. On the same sheet of paper, the first name, surname, gender, age, nationality, occupation, city of residence, marital status and religious denomination had been recorded with detective-like meticulousness. All the victims were cut from the same cloth: between 20 and 30 years old, unmarried, lower class, living in London, Protestant and English. Thomas, in keeping with his moral principles, never devoured anyone who was Scottish and Irish, Catholic, old and socially worthy.

Thomas rationalised the Craving as a test from God to demonstrate the strength of his faith and as a punishment for the weakness of his spirit, which was prone to be intoxicated by worldly passions such as alcohol and lasciviousness. Since the Craving was reluctant to abandon his being, he took up a strategy based on a virtuous Catholic life, devoted to prayer and contemplation of the ten commandments, with some borrowings from the Franciscan rule and a ten-month stay in an Italian monastery. It didn't work, but it allowed him to bear the craving with temperance, reducing the number of people he devoured each year, and finally to die in peace with himself and his fellow relatives. He interpreted the cancer that took his life in his late forties as an act of divine commiseration for his torment and atonement for his own flesh.

Alfred read Thomas Ashford's memoirs during the summer before he started university and at a time when he was still unable to put a name to the strange thoughts that gripped him. To summon a demon you had to know its name, and its name was the Craving. The Craving that tormented him possessed a different nature. Cannibalism disgusted him, even if it was one of his favourite subjects as a spectator. His thing was the infliction of pain. Sadism.

It all started in the attic of King's House with the first time he put on the rabbit mask, and from then on he couldn't and didn't know how to stop. First, it came about as an escape from his depressing reality. Second, as a way to impose his power on the boarding school. Third, as an addiction. Fourth, as an artistic expression. And fifth, as a combination of all of the above. There was not a day that went by that he did not wish to ascend to the attic to carry out his sentence on all the boys who dared to break even the most absurd of rules. His group of executioners cheered and praised him, and each cheer revived his Craving. Such was the magnitude of the tyranny that the Jacobite core of King's House imposed on the school that Alfred was referred to the institution's psychiatrist. The psychiatrist ascertained the source of his affliction and recommended to the school authorities that Alfred be assessed by a forensic doctor specialising in serial killers, but the Headmaster declined the request because of its obvious social repercussions for the prince and his family. In the end, the decision was made to seal off the penthouse and disband Alfred's Jacobite clique by moving the boys to the remaining residences. Alfred was left alone in King's House. Henry, an ordinary boy, was the only one who survived him. Without his main source of amusement and without friends, Alfred's character soured.

As Henry was the only one who stayed by his side, Alfred made him the target of his frustrations and outbursts of rage. His abuse of Henry was verbal and emotional, as he lacked the physical substance to attack him. Henry endured his tantrums and hurtful comments with an imperturbability that would have made the Virgin Mary weep. On the last day of school, now sixteen years old and admitted to the University of Saint-Andrew, Henry approached him, shook his hand and then said: you are a monster, an unhappy, petty bastard with an inferiority complex. Your life is meaningless and you are nothing without your lackeys. You are alone and abandoned. You disgust me. Henry's words stuck in his heart like silver stakes.

Back at Ashford Hall, Alfred retreated to his bedroom, where he spent his nights weeping with rage and banging his head against the wooden bars of the canopy. He refused to seek help from his father and sister lest they mock his pathos. So, during the worst summer of his life and to keep from hitting rock bottom, he began reading the Bible at night to comfort himself with the motivational passages and exploring the cottage, sifting through the more than 150 years of stratigraphic layers that had accumulated over the previous five generations like an archaeologist.

On one of the explorations he discovered great-grandfather Thomas's safe. The box had been locked since his death and it took them a triumph to peel the lid off the box after Alexander helped him pick the lock because no one could remember where Thomas had hidden the key. From inside Alexander retrieved the photographs from when Thomas was alive and he was a baby, while Alfred kept a couple of the handwritten notebooks that most caught his eye to read.

From these notebooks, Alfred became familiar with the concept of the Craving and understood what was wrong with him, which increased his hatred for Henry. However, he did not want to end up like his great-grandfather. He did not want to be a slave to the Craving, so he made a decision inspired by Thomas' strategies.

He called in the chaplain of Ashford Hall and confessed to him all the sins he had committed in the Jacob II. The chaplain forgave him his sins in the name of God. Forgiveness improved his state of mind, but that was only the first step. The next step was to frequent the chapel with unusual assiduity. This habit caught the attention of Alexia, who spontaneously began to accompany her brother in his prayers, although Alfred knew that Alexia did not believe in anything resembling a divinity and that she was not praying either, but possibly reflecting in silence. Alexia's contemplative accompaniment cheered him greatly, enough to fracture the shell of decay in which he lived. He was not a wretch, he told himself when he was with Alexia in the chapel.

On August, 1st the Stuarts travelled to the Vatican for the confirmation of Alfred and Alexia and their cousin Auguste by the Pope. Alfred used the event to validate himself as an Ashford and a Stuart, and as the beginning of his test of faith. After confirmation, Alfred stayed at the Vatican to attend a minor seminary for young Christians in which he had enrolled at the time of his decision. The programme was geared towards a priestly ministry, but what interested Alfred was not the profession, but whether he could work in himself a radical change of conscience that would enable him to overcome the Craving and become a better human being than those who despised him, like Henry. Whether or not he would end up as a priest was another matter.

He entered as a boarder in a residence located on the outskirts of St. Peter's Square. Unlike the Jacob II, Alfred did not enjoy any privileges, even as a scion of the Defenders of the Faith[2] . He shared a dingy room with twelve other boys his age. The beds were a rotting jumble of wooden slats whose boards dug into his back through the starving mattress. The pillow still retained the shape of the previous head that had rested on it. The only ventilation available in the room consisted of a window with a broken latch through which a little wind filtered in along with the cacophonous nightlife of Rome. The heat was unbearable and undressing was punishable by a caning, so Alfred removed his pants in the dark and hid them under his pillow to keep his testicles from wrinkling. The food was, to say the least, vomitous. A concoction of two kinds of pasta with meat that looked like rat meat, sometimes fish, and lots of boiled vegetables. The menu at the Jacob II, while not good, tried hard to appear acceptable and not look like expired mashed beans. Alfred ate what he could and stole the rest from the kitchen when it was his turn to do the dishes. The one notable advantage of the seminary was the absence of bullying and mistreatment among fellow students because of the imposition of a pious, scripture-dedicated lifestyle. It was not forbidden, but they never spoke to each other. He did not learn the name of any of his co-religionists and they did not learn his either.

Apart from the obligations he had to observe as part of the pseudo-monastic coexistence, Alfred concentrated on his purpose of finding in Catholicism the inspiration to redeem himself from his Craving. He was initiated into the themes that most appealed to him, such as penance, martyrdom, atonement and the apocalypse. The apocalypse fascinated him with its annihilating descriptions and he copied down by hand the quotations he liked best in order to memorise them. Then he would repeat them mentally like mantras with the first morning prayer. But the apocalypse took him back to the rabbit mask and he saw the boys he tortured as the agonising souls in the nine Dantesque circles. Because of these visions, Alfred was afraid of failing in his enterprise and switched from the apocalypse to more generic Old Testament texts. These passages were not at all revealing to him, so they were easier to digest but duller to memorise, and he used them for the assimilation of new spiritual conceptions.

First he tried chastity. He faced his first contradiction with the biblical model of the family. A man and a woman united in holy matrimony. Alexander was married once and divorced, and never intended to remarry. In addition, his father was bisexual. He had lain with both men and women and at times with both, committing the sin of sodomy. However, Alfred had also sinned. He had had sex with Henry in his room at Jacob II and on two occasions. But that was the norm in British boarding schools. In the absence of women and in the midst of adolescence, there was no other option. Although homosexuality was frowned upon, it was tolerated if you were not caught. But Alfred, unlike his father, wanted to be a straight man like his grandfather Edward. He was decidedly heterosexual, the experience with Henry did not count, and he aspired to marry a woman he was in love with. Since his father was an ungodly man, he would make it his mission to resolve this contradiction. But then the problem of masturbation came up.

Onanism was proscribed by the Bible and in this sense he acknowledged that he had been a recidivist sinner. At the Jacob II he had pleasured himself in the company of his Jacobite friends and alone in the bedroom and study room with porn magazines that one of them was responsible for stealing from the village. Wet dreams were what he dealt with the worst. He would wake up on occasion with a major erection and a stained bed. At home he would privately tell Harman to take care of it, but at the Jacob II he had to lie on his fallen soldiers until the next mandatory change of bedding. At the seminary it was much, much worse. At the Jacob II he discovered a positive correlation between not masturbating and an increase in the frequency of wet dreams. Despite this, and to be consistent with his morality, Alfred vowed not to give in to temptation.

Unfortunately, the flesh triumphed over the mind. A stain was detected on the bottom of his bed and he was interrogated by the monk in charge of discipline. Alfred lied as best he could, but was still punished by being locked in a cell for a day. He prayed until he was hoarse, but to no avail. He continued to be assaulted by wet dreams and spontaneous erections. However, that was not the worst of it. The worst was that he was dreaming about Alexia.

The Bible also regarded incest as a sin and in this respect had another irresolvable contradiction. As the son of a royal house, 90% of his family tree was made up of relatives of varying degrees of consanguinity. The Stuarts, from whom he was directly descended, had preferred marriage between brothers and cousins ever since the first Stuart was crowned king of Scotland. Indeed, he believed that had he been born five hundred years earlier he would have been obliged to marry and procreate with Alexia for lack of a better marriage to a princess from another country to whom he would surely also have been closely related. Veronica Ashford married a cousin Douglas, though Stanley had him through an extramarital affair with a Prussian general. Stanley married a Campbell cousin, as did Thomas. Arthur married a distant cousin from a German royal house who was descended from Charles II of Stuart. Edward was the first to marry a foreign woman related to the Royal House of the Netherlands. But that was also the norm for his kind until relatively recently. The point was that he did not consider Alexia a sex object. Alexia was his twin sister, his partner, his best friend, not a piece of meat for pleasure. For this reason, these wet dreams repulsed him, causing him bodily and spiritual discomfort. But he could take no more, he had to act urgently.

Finally, prompted by the beatings he received when the new evidence came to light, Alfred opted for a desperate measure which, when he returned home, Alexia understood in relation to that specific context. After the night prayer, he slipped away and locked himself in a tourist confessional. He took out a picture of Alexia and masturbated to it. The flesh was weak and he hesitated about his ability to fulfil the purpose.

There was only one final solution left. Mortification of the flesh. He undisciplined himself so that the monk could flog him. But the blows rekindled the craving. Pain into pleasure and torment into ecstasy. He committed twice as many faults and received twice as many punishments. And, after a bad blow, he ended up in the infirmary with the skin on his back torn. At that precise moment, Alfred had an epiphany. He was deluding himself. Thomas fought an untamed force because that force was himself. The Craving was not a demon possessing him, but the manifestation of his desire. And because it was his desire, the Craving was himself. Thomas despaired of justifying his actions. Alfred would not justify himself. The Craving was the manifestation of his will. His God.

At the end of August he graduated from the seminary and flew back to England. He had accomplished the task of clarifying his conscience.

Peter called him a demon.

Alexia understood his feelings.

The Craving was back.

3

William Birkin was readmitted as chief researcher at the underground laboratory. They were laughing at him. They were definitely playing a sick joke on him.

He laughed out loud after reading the letter. A stunned Annette grabbed his hand to reassure him. What if they left Umbrella? Annette listed a number of companies that would accept him without hesitation. They could move to Chicago, near Annette's family. William denied the well-meaning proposal for one reason: the explanation. He had to know why, and he wouldn't stop until those responsible for such detestable behaviour towards him sang like a church choir. He hadn't worked at the company for more than a decade for nothing. He deserved an answer.

The platform descended down the hole to the lab's reception desk. William handed in his old card at the reception desk and received the new credentials. Chief researcher.

“They are waiting for you in the main laboratory,” said the receptionist.

“Who is waiting for me?” he asked, but the receptionist refused to answer.

He walked down the same corridor as the first time and leaned against the same wall for the second time. The electronic double doors opened. The lab was different in layout, instruments and machines; as if the previous lab had been a reverie. There was no table in the centre to hide what was at the back, nor did he recognise any machine like the one the blonde woman had used to destroy the only existing sample of the G-virus.

A delirium?

William advanced towards the centre of the open space.

It had been a nightmare.

A door creaked behind him.

William turned away.

A young woman and an older bearded man.

William clenched his fists.

The two approached him with a certain parsimony. The young woman held out her hand to shake his.

“Dr. William Birkin. I am Dr. Alexia Ashford, who will be chief researcher in this laboratory along with you. This is my father, Dr. Alexander Ashford, president and CEO of Umbrella Pharmaceuticals. It's a pleasure to meet you,” said Alexia.

William reflexively shook his hand. The shake was light and quick.

“It is a pleasure to meet you at last. Mr. Spencer has spoken very highly of you. I hope your results continue to be as brilliant as they were in the Arklay laboratory,” Alexander continued.

William shook his hand next. The shake shook him painfully from the exaggerated pressure with which Alexander had gripped his hand, and lasted for a couple of seconds that passed like centuries.

It was a nightmare.

A voice inside William climbed into his throat to scream, but his lips were sealed with the force of a million atmospheres. They were in front of him: smiling, feigning sympathy and congratulating him on achievements that had been memorised for the occasion.

It was a nightmare.

I had to wake up from the nightmare.

Silently, he approached one of the tables. He lit a lighter. The flame glowed with the intensity of the sun.

I had to wake up from the nightmare.

He burnt his hand.

He screamed until his jaw unhinged. He punched the lighter as he groaned in pain.

Alexander ran towards him. He was going to kill him. This man would kill him and he would wake up from the nightmare. With enormous strength, he grabbed him by the shoulders. However, he remained rigid.

“Are you all right, Dr. Birkin?” he said in a honeyed tone, and with a murderous look in his eye.

William mumbled an insult that Alexander did not understand.

“You can join us a week later. You haven't finished your stress treatment yet, have you?” said Alexia.

William looked at Alexia. Alexander stepped in front of him to obstruct his vision and increased the strength of his grip.

“You should go to the infirmary,” Alexander continued. “Talk to Dr Garcia. She will advise you.”

Alexander withdrew his hands. Then, guided by a supernatural impulse, William left the laboratory and made his way to the infirmary, as Alexander had instructed him.

I had to wake up from the nightmare. It was not real. Nothing was real. But his hand burned. He examined his palm. He felt the burning. He felt the mortality of his body.

It was real.

The nightmare was real.

4

Peter was tinkering with a statue when the doorbell rang.

Alfred.

“My name is Auguste.”

A burly, red-haired man accompanied Alfred. Peter invited them in. Alfred showed Auguste the statue presiding over the reception. Auguste commented that it was not bad.

Peter did not understand anything. He had arranged a meeting alone with the demon, and the demon had come with him. Auguste made him nervous. A gigantic guy with a rougher way of speaking than Alfred, although he identified that they both shared the same accent. When they got bored of staring at the statue, Alfred asked Peter to show Auguste his secret place. Was Auguste another demon? He didn't know, but Alfred trusted him blindly.

They went down to the basement.

Peter played the tape a second time. Auguste sat down in the armchair. Alfred leaned against the wall. The tape ended.

Auguste smiled and gave Alfred a knowing look. Peter had lost track of what was going on.

Auguste pulled a pistol out of his shorts and pointed it at Peter. The latter raised his hands in terror. Auguste stood in front of him with the gun in line to his heart. Alfred stood next to Auguste. He reached inside his jacket to pull out a switchblade. The blade shot out of the handle.

“Last week we agreed that I would tell you my plan,” said Alfred. “And I asked you if you'd ever tried it with a person. Sit down.”

Peter sat down in the armchair under Auguste's gun. Alfred stood behind the television.

“I'll make you a deal. I want you to be our enforcer. We will be your master of ceremonies. We will procure the meat and you will carry out our wishes. The rituals will take place in an abandoned factory we just bought. You will not ask about the identity of the meat, nor will you become attached to them. Your job will only be to be the executing hand. The rest will be our responsibility. In this respect, you will have to comply with a number of conditions. First of all, silence. If you reveal our activity to anyone, we will kill you. Secondly, you belong to us. You will obey us above all things. If you disobey, we kill you. Thirdly, the fault is yours. You are the one who killed those animals. And fourthly, our relationship will be limited to these kinds of encounters. You are not our friend. Do you accept?”

Peter swallowed hard.

“Who would I have to kill?” Peter trembled like a flan shaken by an earthquake.

Alfred positioned himself at Auguste's level.

“You will not ask about the identity of the meat,” Alfred stressed.

“I'm sorry.” Peter apologised, cringing.

“Do you accept?” Alfred repeated.

The devil required his services. The voices had casually led him to the climax of his vocation.

“Y... Yes. I accept.”

Alfred smiled and put the knife away. Auguste holstered the pistol in his trousers. The two began their retreat from the house. Auguste gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder.

“I'll call you next Saturday night. That will be our time for the rituals,” Alfred announced without waiting for Peter's approval.

Alfred and Auguste went upstairs.

Peter had made a pact with the devil.

[1] Nickname of Auguste Campbell.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defender_of_the_Faith

[medfetabdl]

I thought I’d share some very valuable information that I had to figure out myself when I was trying to build my own charger for my MP2 monitor.

The charger that Philips sells is ridiculously expensive and apparently are in high demand because you can’t find one anywhere for less than $200. If you read the service manuals for the Intellivue monitors the only information you get out of it is the voltage of the MSL connection which is 36 to 56 volts DC. For my charger I used 48 volts because it’s relatively easy to find a 48 volt power supply. And it’s a pretty good nominal voltage. I was not able to find a pinout of the MSL connector anywhere on the internet. For those who don’t know what a pinout is, it’s a diagram of what each individual pin on an integrated circuit or connector does. In some of the really old Intellivue monitor service manuals it lists instructions on how to terminate an MSL cable and what color wire goes where in the connector but nothing else.

To find the pinout and where I could inject my 48 volts I was completely flying blind for a while. It’s not exactly something you can just guess because reverse polarity or putting that high of a voltage on a data pin will definitely fry something. I ended up taking out the power board on my MP2 and inspecting the traces and reverse engineering it. In the end there two things that gave away which pins were the voltage input and ground pins. As someone who’s reverse engineering plenty of circuit boards in the past I was able to find those hints after a while of looking for them. The first hint was that there were 2 pins on each side of the connector that were connected together, usually that’s a good sign that’s where power is injected because if you’re pulling a decent amount of current those tiny pins will start to heat up so spreading the load across 2 pins reduces the heat. The pins are gold plated to increase their conductivity and help with corrosion but it’s still common practice to spread the load across two or more pins. The other hint was when I followed the traces from one of two sets of pins it went right into a fuse. A fuse is definitely something you’d expect to find on the power input and almost always they are put on the positive input. With that information I was able to shove some wires under the pins and test to see if I had the pinout correct and sure enough I did and I did that all before buying an MSL cable to build the charger.

After buying an MSL cable and a 48 volt power supply to build a charger, I cut the MSL cable in half and got my final hint at where to inject the power. There were wires that were much thicker than all the other wires in the cable and they were red and black which is standard color coding for DC wiring, red for positive and black for negative (ground). The wires being thick is also a hint that they are actually handling a decent amount of power. The rest of the cables were twisted pair for data communication.

If you look closely at the MSL connector you can see tiny numbers, those represent the number of each pin. Pins 5 and 6 are for the positive voltage input and pins 19 and 20 are for ground (negative voltage) now you have the information to make your own charger if you want to. I will warn you that you will get an alarm that you can silence but you can’t get to go away that says check MSL connection. This is because the monitor has no data communication with the charger. Usually the monitor communicates with the Philips OEM charger over RS-232 providing data about the charger as well as voltage, current, power, faults, and a lot more, and it also provides Ethernet to the monitor for networking. The alarm is annoying but I built my charger for $25 which is so much cheaper than the Philips OEM one.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Fire at landless workers' movement camp in Brazil leaves nine dead

A fire in a camp belonging to Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement MST in the northern state of Para killed nine people and left eight injured on Saturday night, the movement said on Sunday.

The incident was caused by a short circuit in the electrical network during the installation of internet wiring in the rural farmers' camp, located in the city of Parauapebas, according to MST.

Community leaders told a press conference that the short circuit happened at around 8 p.m. local time, when an antenna touched the high-voltage network, setting fire to power cables and some shacks in the camp.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva asked his agrarian development minister, Paulo Teixeira, and head of lands rights agency Incra, Cesar Aldrighi, to travel to the city this Sunday to "follow the case closely and bring all the support of the federal government to the families of the victims of this tragedy", the government said in a statement.

Continue reading.

[breadandblankets]

💕

following up my birds on a wire fun fact, certain high voltage wires are left completely bare (them wires Naked), there's a bunch of reasons for this, one the insulation needed to make a high voltage wire safe would make the wires Unbearably heavy, the strain on the cables and the towers would be incredible, two insulation makes heat harder to dissipate (the heat is generated by friction from electrons moving in the conductors) and when conductors are hot they Suck at transporting electricity, and finally its SPENSIVE, really really spensive

what do they do instead? cables use the air! Air is in fact an insulator and it keep the electricity in its cables quite well, just don't get within that air gap or you might just be the perfect point to take the electricity to ground x.x

send me an emoji and i'll send you a fun fact about my special interest

[katoktm8]

Riot gear and tear gas

Breakfast and headed out. Heard a lot of noise, thought it was a band. We looked and it appeared that a political protest was starting so instead of turning right we turned left and joined the crowd. We were probably one of the first 50 people to be at the protest. Frontline view. All the journalists were there, the stage was set for speakers, and a huge pile of tires was in the street. In addition, police and riot gear guarding the parliament building with tanks of tear gas ready to go. and police Holding gas Masks were lining the street. Did not bother us. We were in it. We found out that people were protesting the current Prime Minister, who apparently has been recorded doing business with gangsters talking about kidnapping people in white vans, and they were also supporting the ex Prime Minister who is under house arrest for some type of apartment sales corruption. So pick your poison. Anyway, people started yelling Free Berini or whatever the ex Prime Minister‘s name was. We scooted along behind the police officers, and the tires were lit on fire and smoke was pouring into the air, and people were chanting. People were screaming. The fire was getting bigger. The firetrucks came in to put out the fire. We got shooed away by a polite policeman a few times, but nothing really seemed to be happening so we got bored and left. There were probably a couple hundred people at this protest. The police were very casual aside from trying to get us out of the way, and unfortunately, we are not living civil historian journalists. We recorded as much as we could thinking that it was all going to go down and we would be witnesses to it. Damnit

We then walked about 4 miles to a cable car in a national park outside of town. It was the steepest longest cable car I’ve ever been on. It took about 20 minutes to get to the top of the mountain. We sauntered around, headed back down and then went to a Bunker museum.

This museum was one of 168,000 bunkers that the dictator of Albania built and he never used a single one. But everywhere you go you see bunker tops throughout the city. This one was the largest. It was five stories high underground and had 106 rooms. This bunker museum told the story of Albania from World War II all the way to present Day Albania. It was fascinating to think that people my age had lived through an entire reign of communism and Democracy. But people my parents age would’ve lived freely in childhood, then under communism, then freely again. The most interesting fact I learned today was that this dictator put a barbed wire fence…an electric barbed wire fence around the entire country of Albania and it was meant to keep citizens of Albania in and people that were not Albanians out. If you got within, a footstep of the fence or tried to escape you would get electrocuted. Several thousand people died from the electric shock before they lowered the voltage and just sent out dogs to hunt the people trying to escape and imprisoned them. They kept the perimeter forever muddy in order to have footprints of the people who were escaping and be easier to track. I think as Americans we just don’t appreciate the fact that we’ve never had a government other than a republic democracy. We don’t understand the trials and tribulations that other citizens and other countries have been through historically… even since we have been alive. We are so lucky.

We walked back, cleaned up, went out for dinner came back and tomorrow We had to a new town up in the mountains. It’s actually a village up in the mountains. Fresh air, and hopefully few people but rumor is that tourists abound

[shroudandsands]

Prompt #17, Extra Credit: Blood

“Gun- Gun- Gunslinger- Hawk-” The static came in the middle of hysterical laughter. Raucous. Joyful. Pained.

Weaponsfire seared the air. Plasma scorched even the darkest pieces of the midnight alleys. Circuits and bone and artificial memories screamed in the arching shadows like neon. Copper wiring with magnetic spirals as plasma bolts in magnetic remnants spun by them, electricity in the air that coursed along her skin and down her fingertips. Gunshots. Gunshots. Gunshots. It had just rained. The puddles were evaporating. Water and mineral content changing. Not the acid-tinged rain. Not the runoff filled with particulate plastic and rubber. Iron. Blood. It reverberated with the screaming. With the gunfire. Her fingertips scrabbled as the night drowned out her voice, as the one currently fighting couldn’t turn away. There were so many after all. Where had they come from? No evidence on any network. No trace in the silicon. No touch could elevate her senses into finding them in footage or local magnetic effects. But here they were now, and here they were now. Bullets scraped the sheet metal wall as she finally found it. She tore off the access panel, the metal groaning and screaming in time with the combat. Could it be heard over it all? She could certainly feel it. She could feel the echo of it in every sensor even as they focused on tracking every projectile that rocketed by. How could she feel so powerless in all of this? Certainly she wasn’t made for being a combatant but she had some of the best military tech money could buy put into this body, not even speaking on software- No time, no time, milliseconds were screaming by and signals were closing in. Coming closer, gunfire louder, her combatant charge cursing as she fumbled for ammunition. And then it all went black.

Not for her, no. Far from it. For her? The world couldn’t be clearer. Her tail was jammed straight into the junction box. The entire sector’s power supply at her fingertips. Enough voltage to fry any human so insane, enough current to melt any synthetic that could ever hope to imagine. But for her? The mimicked taste of copper and ozone on her body’s sensors only let her know that her laughter had become laced with the high pitched scream of high voltage.  

Fuses blew, breakers popped, lights went dark, machines fell dead, as all in that moment was hers. All in that moment was made to bend to her, to come to her, to feed her. “Gunslinger.” The AM-3S unit spoke. A voice of one, a chorus of more. “Watch.” And the city came to life under the weight of a mind. Pylons roared into brilliant plasma arcs, neon bulbs sparked and exploded, ancient machinery lost beneath the asphalt screamed through the surface. All of it her hands, all of it her fingertips, all of it bleeding her senses and bleeding her life. The datastream of multitudes as network and networked rose in tandem, as circuit and copper and old-world PCB responded to her just as the body of one did. Human-lethal pressure waves, human-lethal temperature, human-lethal particulate as blood and bone vaporized under the renewed life of a mind that had been confined from ten thousand senses down to one. And still the unit stood close to her gunslinger. A smile on its face. The cables trailing behind it still sparking and frying in the junction box. Further and further the blackout spread. And louder and louder the voltage laughed. Drive off these attackers, protect herself, protect this charge, follow her protocols to the letter and she could have it all. She could have her network, this body, her mind and all that it entailed, she could be free of it all and take what she wanted in this cesspool that she had been born into-

Blackout. Cut off. Her tail snapped back into her body, her mind pulled back as a cord which had stretched too far. Face down in the water. Iron percentage: 34%. Correction, as her last thought plugged through her remaining charge. Face down in the blood.

[circuitfreak]

sorry for biting, can I possibly help to repair any damage? is there any part of you that I can nibble instead

> There’s no need to apologize. If I didn’t like it, I would have had you stop.

> If you can find some electrical tape, it’ll work as a temporary fix for any bitten cabling. I’ll handle the rest in due time, unless you’d like me to walk you through the process of heat shrink tubing.

> Any thicker wiring that you can find is alright to gnaw on, with appropriate restraint. This is more for your wellbeing than mine — I am an incredibly high-voltage system.

[lowvoltagehouston]

Customizable Network Wiring Solutions for Commercial Spaces by Low Voltage Houston in Houston, Texas

Low Voltage Houston stands as a leading provider of network wiring and cabling solutions in Houston, TX, offering dedicated and industry-standard services tailored for commercial spaces.

Our Services

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Voice and Data Cabling: Installation of low-voltage cabling for seamless telecommunication and data transfer.

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WiFi & Internet Systems: Reliable cabling for uninterrupted internet and network connectivity.

[tanocable]

Tano Cable

Henan Tano Cable Co., Ltd.( TANO CABLE for short), is a leading and professional manufacturer of cable and wire with nearly 30 years manufacturing experience, which is located in Zhengzhou city, Henan province, China.

Bare conductor(AAC, ACSR, AAAC, ACAR), overhead insulated cable, low voltage power cable, medium voltage power cable, high voltage power cable,concentric cable, building wire and so on for power transmission and distribution lines.

Bare conductor

Overhead insulated cable,

PVC insulated power cable

Medium voltage power cable

Rubber cable

Building wire

[madmarchhare]

Company Chapter 4: sci-fi story

Here is the latest chapter of Company! The first of the New year!

I hope you all like it, it was fun to right, though I am worried I didn't properly describe Las Paz station. This one gets a bit violent so be aware.

Also please leave comments, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

IV

He got up to re-set the grid after about ten minutes, the monitors mostly coming back to life as soon as he did, though a few needed some specific attention to fix. The pipes needed longer, Wick having to power on a few electric radiators he built near the pipes for to thaw them. Cass was going around the ship, having pulled on a wool lined jacket on over herself, replacing the lightbulbs that had blew and picking up the shattered glass. It was worst in the engine room, a narrow space just under two shoulder width wide that the fuel pipes ended in, along with a wrist thick bunch of cables responsible for the problem. A few wires slit off the bunches to power the lights and panels in the room, and the high voltage of the wires had caused the lights to burst. Luckily the fuse boxes in the panels had saved them. Cass replaced the bar lights, slotting them into the spring loaded fixtures and replacing the fuses. She turned around, about to make her way out but then bashed her shit on a sharp metal box jutting out from the wall.

“Fuck!” she shouted, hunching over slightly, only just not dropping the box of bulbs, wincing as she clenched her shin with her free hand. She looked down at what had wounded her and saw that the thing had flopped open from the force revealing a wheel like frame with empty holes bar for two eight inch long pink rods that were about as thick as a cigar in two of the loops. She looked at it confused for a second then closed what she presumed was the lid and squeezed her way back through the door. She made her way back to the hold to put back box, giving a proud but wary glance to the pipe as she went past, the panel already back over the damaged section. Wick would need to replace that soon. Granted, what didn’t he need to replace? Cass though to herself.

As she descended the steps to the hold she felt the ship shudder forward then continue on at a steadily increasing pace. When she came back up to the living room she saw Wick fiddling with a fuse box near the cockpit door, his usual tired look on his face as he checked through the switches. “Hey Wick, what is that little box thing in the engine room. You know with the pink rods in it?” Cass asked, sliding into a chair.

“Oh those,” Wick mumbled back as he looked deeply into the fuse box, “they’re solid rockets for the RCS,” pulling his face out of the box as he closed it to turn to Cass. “There are a few of them dotted around the ship,” making a wide gesture with one arm as he spoke, walking over to the fridge.

“Wait, solid rockets? Don’t you need liquid ones? So you can control them?” Cass asked, looking at Wick with a concerned expression as the latter went over to the fridge and pulled out a sausage roll.

“The ones I use are eclectic solid propellants, so I can control when they burn with electricity. So I just made a system that works like a mechanical pencil to push them past a ring filled with current and it works fine. They are way cheaper than the liquid fuel RCS everyone else uses, I just buy rods of the stuff or a big block and cut it up,” he droned back, a note of pride buried within his pragmatism as he took a bite of his snack as he leant back on the counter.

Cass blinked at him, not quite sure how to respond, so just nodded slowly. “Right, well, the metal ring thing was nearly out of those rods in any case,” jerking a thumb back in the direction of the engines. Wick turned his head in the direction she gestured, his brows pressing together slightly.

“Yeah, I’ll need to try and buy some from this next station. I’m running low,” he replied scratching his neck with one hand  as he flopped down into the chair. Cass mumbled out and agreement as she slumped out over the table, staring up at a set of poles that were moving about in the ceiling with a few mechanical clicks.

“I’m bored,” Cass blurted out staring at the wall, Wick turning to her with a blank expression.

“Play a game then,” Wick replied brusquely, taking another bite of his sausage roll as he finished.

“I don’t want to,” she replied simply.

“Then read a book or some manga,” he replied patiently.

“What would you recommend?”

“Well, for books there are few, like the detective Varg series, something from Tolkien or Terry Pratchett. Something by Issac Asimov?” Wick replied, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling as he tried to think of something to offer to the bored Neidr, who wore and indecisive expression in response.

“What about the manga?” she said in response, resting her chin on the table as she cocked her head to look up to Wick.

“Well, there’s Mashle, which is quite good, Samurai 8, My Hero Academia and Vigilantes among others…” Wick listed trailing off as he counted out the recommendations on his fingers. Cass seemed to mull the decision over, shifting her jaw as she considered it.

“I’ll read Mashle then,” she declared firmly, sitting back up in her chair. Wick nodded and walked off to collect them. Cass waited by herself in the living room for a few minutes, taking out swing top bottle of water from the fridge and pouring the cold liquid down her throat with a pleasant sigh. Wick came in just as she sat back down carrying a trio manga books in one hand as he read from a green pocket sized book in his other hand, placing the stack in front of Cass, a small debit card sized scrap of card on top intended as a bookmark.

“There you are,” he mumbled to her as he flopped down onto one of the sofas, turning the page of his book as he did.

“Thank you,” she replied in a sing song tone, opening the first volume with as she smiled, “what are you reading by the way?” she asked idly, Wick turning an eye over to her then to the cover of his book.

“’The Cossacks’, by Tolstoy. It’s good,” he replied matter-o-factly as they both set themselves to their reading.

They whittled away at the desolate time until the station, playing card, reading, playing games or doing maintenance inside the ship, Wick correcting his spreadsheet in his office to take account of some of the damages.  Then the ship slowed to a halt with the usual alarm that signalled the course had been executed. Wick went into the cockpit to steer the sip closer, the view of the station coming fully into view. Las Paz station was colossal structure, far larger than St Edmund, made of a large cylindrical shaft surrounded by a large ring that as long as the central cylinder, covered in solar panels that glinted in the light, large sectors painted a ruby red colour. Small ships buzzed around the station, dashing in and out of various bays, illuminated by the slowly rotating lights of the station. As he brought the ship closer Cass came through to the cockpit, standing just behind him.

“The best place is on the 20th level, the docking bay’s there,” she stated, pointing to the right side of the station. Wick nodded and moved closer too it, occasionally glancing over to the various workers out on the stations exterior, seemingly scraping ice or dust off the solar panels and repainting the red sections of the station, or more notable the white sign above the docking bay he was heading too. The suited man turned around to look at them as they approached, gripping onto the hand rail with one hand as he held his brush in the other as the doors below him split open, white hot light pouring out from them. Wick pulled the ship into the dock, landing in an open space. The dock was a grand expanse, twice or more the size of St. Edmunds dock, with grand steel pillars that crested over the ceiling, wrapped in neat white paint, glowing advertisements flickering as they hung from the ceiling and walls.

“Triples here I presume?” Wick asked chuckling slightly as he got up from his chair.

“No, just standard fare here,” Cass replied strolling into the living room where she had laid out her stuff, ready to transfer into her new ship as soon as she got it. “They automated fare’s here way before I ever came, corruption scandal came down on it same time as the mining company down on the planet took over security. So they just laid them all of and automated it, cheaper in the end I suppose,” she said, her voice slightly uncertain as Wick gave a nod, not quite of agreement, more acceptance, “There isn’t any calibre restrictions on the station by the way, though you’ll get checked more if you take anything larger than a pistol so…” she added shrugging, pre-empting Wick’s next question. He looked over to his collection of pistols on the well, mulling over what to take before finally picking up a S&W K-frame ‘Pinto’ revolver in .38 Special. It was beautiful piece, one he won… well, best to not say where, that had two different finishes on it, with a nickelled frame and blued cylinder and barrel. He picked out a handful or two of cartridges and dumped them into a pack that he pulled on, along with the holster, which was tucked under his arm.

“You all right going to buy your ship yourself? I need to get some supplies for the ship,” Wick asked, dropping rounds into the chambers of his cylinder, then pressing it shut as he slid it into his holster, shifting his jacket properly back over his shoulders.

“Of course, I know my way around the station, you’re the one who’s new here,” Cass replied cheekily, grinning at him as she finished.

“No, I meant how you are shit at buying ships. The last two you had help with after you bought the ‘Wistful’,” Wick replied deadpan, though wincing slightly as he mentioned the ship.

“Oh, yes…” she replied, a considering look on her face, seeming to consider something deeply, “I’ll be fine,” she announced proudly, “probably,” she added slightly uncertain. Wick looked at her with a tired expression, before sighing.

“Ring me if you need help,” he called out as he went over to the airlock, setting up his usual anti-burglar system.

“Right,” Cass replied, opening the airlock door and stepping down the steps onto the dock floor, “do you know where to go for your supplies though?”

“I’ll find what I’m looking for, just need to have a look,” Wick muttered back, coming down the stairs, turning to the electric clerk, a small metal post resembling a ticket meter in a car park. He tapped the thing on the side and it plinked into life, demanding its fare as soon as it did. He shoved in the money then turned back to Cass as they both made their way forward towards the left exit of the dock. It took them a while to cross the wide space, and then they were let through the gate with naught but a cursory glance from a guard at the gate holding a polymer rifle and a grim expression, sucking one of his teeth.

The ceiling seemed to drag itself onward into the sky far more than you would think possible, floors were stacked on the walls, criss-crossing catwalks and rail-cars hanging overhead clattering underfoot or rattling with the trains and mining carts. People thronged through the streets, dressed in all manner of clothes, with all manner of faces. Noise buzzed through the place, every moment consumed by a devils dozen of shouts, conversations, songs or the disgruntled mumblings of the buildings themselves as people and vehicles raced by.

“Well, I’ll see you later then,” Cass yelled to Wick over the din, “hope you find what you’re looking for!”

“I will, you worry about yourself,” Wick called back casually, turning away as he waved to her over his shoulder, slouching slightly as he walked forward. He wandered around for a while, looking about at various maps as he tried to figure out where commercial districts are. He found an electronics shop after a decent amount of time and pushed open the door of the place. It was a small, dimly lit space, the front storefront being about five meters square, maybe less, crowded full of shelves. A rotund looking man with small eyes was leant up against the counter, offering something of a smile to the other occupant. A young… Man?... I suppose was right. He, as was clear by his appearance, had undergone one of the surgeries that made it’s recipients more ‘animal like’ as was the best way to describe it. They were… An interesting demographic, some had it done for work so they had some extra strength or the like others to have a fresh identity at a lower cost than normal surgery. Ad some just did it cause they wanted too. They were mostly fine, Wick having no more a problem with them than anyone else, but a few people… weren’t so keen from any reason from the expected to the odd.

Wick walked over to the counter, the cashier looking up to him as he straightened up. Wick went over his list of parts he needed, the cashier, who seemed to be the owner, nodded as he listened to the list occasionally stating that he didn’t stock something. When Wick had finished his list and heard the prices he waited as the younger clerk went into the back to fetch them for him, packing up a few items to cart over to his ship. They younger man was much taller and thinner than the owner, his face resembling some breed of wolf, covered in cloud-like fur dressed in the store’s grey and red uniform. Overall, the price was cheap, Wick being handed back a bag of bulb, chips most of the capacitors he needed along with a dozen or more so things the ship had used up for maintenance. He gave a curt nod to the pair and walked back out of the shop brushing past a tall man in a pressed grey suit.

Next, he went into a builders merchant, ordering a number of pipes to be delivered to his ship, along with trying to snatch up a few environmental plates, but, again, none were the right size. He got some more of the ESP he used from a chemical supplier along with some more gunpowder, and more ammunition etc. It was late in the day, when he made his way into a small off-licence nestled into a dim corner of the level. It was pressed into the corner of a street, a thing doorway leading into a larger space filled with fluorescent lighting. He strolled around the shelves, lifting a few bottles of the shelves as well as a six pack of French lager, Saint Bertin they were called, adorable squat green bottles with white caps as well as some bread and other supplies taking five packs of cigarettes from the counter and adding them onto the stack of items, getting a slightly amused but understanding look from the cashier from under his mess of hair. Wick handed over the money and left without a word, rubbing his eyes as he strolled down the street, quite exhausted.

He spotted a bench nestled into a small open space a few hundred paces away, out of the view of people. He strolled over to it and dropped himself down onto the metal frame, sighing as he did. He opened one of the cigarette packets and pulled one out, plopping it into his mouth as he fished around in his pocket for his lighter. After searching for a moment he pulled out a small silver zippo painted with a small picture of Niagara falls on one side, he flicked it open then sparked it on, holding the small orange flame to its head, breathing in slightly to light it, letting it dip into his lungs as he stared across from him tiredly, letting the smoke billow out of his mouth slowly. He snapped it closed with one hand then tucked it back into his pocket. He gazed ahead of him, not looking at anything in particular, thinking about a few dozen things at once. He fixed his gaze onto a shiny steel plate in front of him, polished till it reflected him in it’s face, barely a meter from him. He shifted in his seat, getting himself comfy, and then noticed, reflected in the mirror a pistol moving closer toward the back of his head from the pitch black space behind him.

He dived to the side just as it went off, taking a decent part of his ear lobe with it, sending it ringing as he felt blood drip down the side of his head. Wick jumped up to his feet, knocking over his bag as he did, keeping himself low as he reached for his revolver, but then suddenly felt someone grab him pull him into a grapple, constraining his chest with broad arms stuffed into a pressed grey suit. A thinner man jumped out from the space behind the bench holding a black polymer pistol, a wispy moustache on his face split by a horizontal scar that went from his jaw to just above the opposite side of his lip. He twisted his face into a smile.

“I presume out friend at St. Edmunds mentioned we were coming? Guess you were too stupid to listen,” he called out a smarmy expression on his face, Wick grimacing as he felt the buff man’s grip getting tighter, “though I suppose that’s to be expected. If you were smart, you would have kept your nose out of this altogether,” he added, pointing the pistol at Wick’s head.

Wick glowered at him, then quite suddenly, slammed hi heel into the ankle of the buff man, making him twist over in pain, as he loosed his grip. Wick jabbed his elbow into the man’s chest and pulled himself free as he reached for his pistol, but received a hard punch in the other side of his ribs in response, winding him. He glanced over to the thinner man stood to the side of him and his partner, pointing his pistol at Wick’s chest. He dodged a heavy punch from the bigger man, getting into the man’s blind spot, which he presumed was the side bearing a hollow cavity where an eye socket must have once belonged. He then darted over to the thinner man, who missed a shot as he came closer which slammed into the wall panel of the building behind them. Wick threw a hard punch as the man, which he quickly guarded, then finding a hand kick on his knee, making him fall down. He then punched the thin man on the side of the jaw, nocking him out, just as he flet himself being grabbed and tossed over to the bench by the buff man. His spine clicked unpleasantly as it struck the metal frame, wincing a he stared up at the large man approaching him with a malicious expression, until he reached for his revolver and tugged at the heavy double action trigger until it flung a .38 calibre hollow point into the mans head, making him stop in place, teetering on his own feet until he slumped over, blood polling below him as Wick stared and the mangled exit wound on the back of his head, breathing heavily.

He pulled himself to his feet, grunting as he pressed a hand to his back. He stood up and collected everything back into his bag then began walking away, pointing his revolver at the unconscious man as he walked by, cocking the hammer with his thumb, then firing it into his chest a bored, yet irritated expression on his face as he bit back down on his now bent cigarette. He decided to go back to the docks, opening the cylinder of his revolver as he walked, tucking the handle of the bag in the inside of his elbow as he removed the two spent cases and replaced them with fresh ones, pressing it back closed as soon as he did, rattling the spent cases in the pocket of his cargo trousers. He walked for a while, wincing as his back and chest ached, feeling his ear bleed down the side of his head, staining the collar of his shirt. Then he saw a clump of people dressed in grey suits, or grey jackets, strolling around, a few with carbines and weapons on their backs. One spotted Wick, a shortish woman with black hair pulled into a loose ponytail and gestured him out to the others, Wick promptly turning on his heel and picking up his pace in a different direction.

 As he walked he swapped the bag over to his left hand as he reached into his jacket for his revolver, holding it in his had as he let his arm hang by his side. He strode forward through the crowd in the direction of the docks, not quite running, but not just walking either. He heard them coming after him, either matching or exceeding his pace, slowly getting closer. He continued this for a while, getting closer to the dock, then suddenly spun around, bringing up his revolver and firing at the chest of the largest man, who was carrying an M4 carbine on his back. He promptly dropped to the floor, gasping for air, the rest of them reaching for their weapons as they ducked down, the crowd being flung into panic, running away from the scene, or straight through it. Wick dashed away, occasionally spinning around to fire a shot or two at his pursuers, one remaining with the large man at the start with a panicked expression.

Wick continued at a hurried pace, spitting out his spent cigarette and racking his bag onto his shoulder as he opened the cylinder of his revolver and dumped out all the spent brass, not bothering to collect it for reuse, pressing in six new rounds into the chambers and snapping it shut, cocking the hammer. A few people gave him looks as he continued, ranging from terror, to fury, to mild irritation. They all dashed away, a few running up too guards, who glanced over to Wick with deadpan expressions, then over to his pursuers. They all disregarded their concerns a few turning over to Wick, with considering looks, debating whether to deal with him, but deciding against it when they saw him firing his revolver back after him, the short barrel spitting out a roar of muzzle flash with every shot.

His pursuers fired a few rounds after him, missing due to the chaos, not having a clear shot and either hitting the wall or some unfortunate person who was too slow to flee. Then a round ripped through the top of Wicks shoulder, near the handles of his bag, making him grunt out in pain as he ran forward to the docks, another bullet flying through his thigh, making him fall to a knee as it gave out. He span round his arm as he fell, firing a pair of rounds at the closest pursuer, who had shot him, the first one missing but the other one landing just below the sternum. Wick pulled himself back up to his feet as the other man collapsed to the ground, gripping at his chest as blood drained out of it. Wick ran as fast as he could, his wounded leg slowing him slightly as he dragged himself past the guard, who barely offered him an uninterested glance after he saw Wick’s pursuers.

Wick weaved between the parked ships as he went, hearing the rounds scattering off the steel behind him as he heard them shout after him ,slowly getting closer as the crack of gunfire rang throughout the dock. He felt his legs ache underneath him, his wounded limb throbbing as his shoulder smarted rudely, making him hiss in pain as he pushed himself further and further to his ship. He saw his ship finally come into view just then, as his pursuers came close. He dashed up to his ship, disabling the trap before he flung open the airlock door. He pulled himself up into the narrow room, grabbing a small table inside it and laying it down in front of the door as he grabbed the shotgun off it’s mount and pointed it out of the airlock and fired in the rough direction of his pursers, making them all duck down or dive behind cover. He ran into the living room, dropping the shotgun on the sofa as he grabbed the first rifle he saw off the wall, a Dutch 1895 Mannlicher. He grabbed a bundle of en bloc Mannlicher clips loaded in 6.5 Dutch, pressing one down into the rifles action as he dashed over to the airlock, pressing the bolt home, feeling its face snag the clips’ feed lips before pressing the light bullet into the chamber.  He limped into the airlock, keeping himself low as peered over the overturned table at his assailant, now down to seven people. He shouldered the rifle, gripping the narrow rifle as he aimed it over the table onto one of the advancing gunmen. He squeezed the trigger, feeling it smoothly click between its stages dropping the rifles sear. The rifle thumped back into Wick’s shoulder, as the bullet tore through the breast of the foremost man, making him drop to the ground, the others diving behind whatever cover they could find. Wick ducked behind the doorframe, working the bolt of the rifle to rechamber a round, the spent brass skittering around the floor of the corridor as bullets pinged off the side of the ship or blew though the table.

Wick propped the rifle up for a second, having distracted them for now, reaching up to one of the shelves in the wall and pulling it out onto his lap, grabbing one of a dozen or so lengths of rubber tubing from it and tying it around his wounded leg as a tourniquet. He grunted in pain as he pulled it tight, seeing the blood slow around the wound, having already doused most of his leg red. He took a breath, glancing one eye around the corner of the door frame to the open deck outside the ship to see one of them running forward, trying to dive into a further bit of cover. He shouldered the rifle and aimed for the man, leading his shot slightly as he ran then fired, just as a bullet slammed into the steel above his head, making him jump and send the shot wide, grazing the man’s shoulder as he dived behind the cover. Wick ducked back behind, a second bullet clanging into the cabinets above him on the wall, a steel oxygen container falling out of it with a high pitched whistle from the puncture wound of the bullet. Wick peered round at the one who had fired, seeing a shorter woman wrapping her hands around a full size rifle, holding it spec-ops style as she glanced around her, checking her angles as she watched the airlock, a shorter man peering over the same cover they were behind, gripping a bulky pistol wearing a suit far too tight for him, being throttled by his collar as he tried to make himself look small.

Wick twisted around to fire another round at one of the further back gunmen, a younger looking woman who seemed slightly out of her depth, who received a fast bullet to the neck as she dawdled between cover, throwing her hands up to her neck as she fell on her side. Wick ducked back behind the frame but felt something slash across his side as steel shrapnel from the table lanced into it from a round fired by the first wounded man. Wick hissed in pain, grabbing at the shrapnel with two fingers and prying it out, squeezing his eyes shut as he did. He waited a while and tried again, a bullet slamming into the edge of the cover of the man and the woman, a set of cargo crates covered with ‘fragile’ labels. Another denting an upturned maintenance panel pried up from the floor a sixth man hid behind, his dark face half hidden by a blocky pair of sunglasses, firing a Glock back with little care for how many shots it would take him to hit his mark. Then a final round that dug into the foot of the seventh man, who bore a remarkable resemblance to the man from St. Edmund, stumbling as he almost fell to the ground just as Wick came upon an empty magazine.

He opened the rifle, slamming down another clip into the magazine then throwing the bolt closed as he brought the rifle back into his shoulder, rushing as he tried to hit the man as he ran to another clump of cates for cover. He fired and missed, the bullet ricocheting off the dock floor wildly, sending sparks flying. A bullet grazed by his neck just after, coming from the direction of the spec-op woman, who only missed his jugular as the shorter man bumped into her, having slipped. He worked the bolt as quickly as he could, cursing to himself as it caught on the clips feed lips, jerking it back-and-forth until it chambered a round, levelling a bullet on the short man beside the woman, now leaping out of cover over the front and firing a bullet into his crown, watching the fountain of blood raise from his forehead over the rifles barely-corn front sight. His body fell back on the woman, crushing her against the cover, making her lean over backwards, thrusting her rifle up out of the way as she tired to shove him off. Wick only head the sound of himself manipulating the bolt just before he put a round through the read of her jaw, making her fall still and drop her rifle.

The sixth man tried to run forward as spec-ops went down, running forward as he fired his pistol fully automatic as Wick, who ducked back behind the door frame, beathing heavily, feeling his neck ooze more blood down his collar, staining the front of his short and the woolled edge of his jacket collar. He made it within a twenty feet from the ship when his pistol locked itself open on a drained magazine, he threw a hand to his hip for a magazine and pressed it in just as he saw Wick’s rifle pointed to his chest. The round ripped through his sternum, crashing into his lungs not a moment later then digging itself into the soft steel underneath him. The other two, both now wounded men grabbed each other under the shoulder and began running away, firing back at Wick as they did. Wick aimed after them, trying to line up a shot but having to duck as bullets brackets around him.

The fourth round missed, zipping past them with a super sonic crack, as did the fifth, digging into the panels by one of their feet Wick hearing the en bloc clip fall to the floor from the magazine as he chambered the sixth round, letting out a slow exhale as he manoeuvred the sights of the back of the one he had legged earlier. The bullet span out of the barrel, wreathed in an orange boa of muzzle flash and burning gunpower, flying through the air light a sparrowhawk until it crashed uglily into the spine of the legged man, sending him to the cold ground before he had time to scream, gore soiling his pressed grey suit, throwing his arm and his pistol up into the air, the barrel covered with a tally of thirty-three. The one who had been hit in the shoulder let his friends body fall to the ground, sprinting hard as he dashed away. Wick gripped his rifle by the handguard, grabbing his revolver in his right hand, firing after the man, two shots missing before he laded on a dry cylinder, the hammer landing on a spent primer. He watched the man run behind a ship, clicking his tongue in regret, knowing he’d bring more.

Then he heard a shot come from the ship he ran behind, muzzle flash lighting up the space. Cass walked out of the space and looked over at Wick’s sip, offering a tired wave. Wick looked at her slightly incredulously, then smiled with a chuckle, returning the wave as he pushed against the wall to lift himself up. He grabbed his rifle, pulling the table back up against the wall, limping down the steps as Cass came closer.

“How has your day been?” Wick asked sardonically, seeing the bruises on her cheek and the bloody nose, along with all the ruffled clothes.

She took a breath, breathing out as she looked around at the bloody refuse around the ship, “active,” she replied brusquely, Wick chuckling in response, “you can relate it seems.”

“Yes, I believe I can,” Wick replied, sighing as did, “what happened with your ship then?” he asked, turning over to her.

“I got there, was looking at ships, when a group of twelve of those guys in grey jumped me,” Cass replied, sniffing slightly as she wiped some blood from her nostril.

“How’d you manage with that?” Wick asked, placing the butt of his rifle on the ground.

“I dealt with them all myself, what else,” she replied, smiling her Cheshire cat smile, cracking her knuckles, “all dozen of them shouldn’t be getting up again. Not unless it’s to see they river Stix they were going on about.” Wick looked at her slightly surprised, well, not truly and shook his head.

He pulled up his rifle, throwing it up then catching it in the middle, sliding open the bolt and loading a new clip, “you are a marvel,” he muttered with a tired smile as Cass looked at him slightly confused. Then he shouldered the rifle and fired it at a lone man in a grey suit, gripping an M4 equipped with a grenade launcher. He snapped open the bolt, letting the brass case fling out of the action and tinkle on the floor. He looked over to Cass with a smile, “eleven out of twelve then,” receiving a mildly annoyed look in response as he sat down on the steps up to the airlock, resting the butt of his rifle on his thigh, loading it then turning over the flag safety.

Then the taller boy from the electronics shop walked out of a small passage between a pair of ships by Wick’s, carrying a number of boxes. He looked around at the scene stunned, turning to the bodies with a petrified look, then back to us. “W-w-wha,” he stammered out.

“Perfect timing,” Wick declared grandly, “you can help us load up the supplies into the ship,” gesturing to his ship with a thumb as he spoke.

“Bu-but I was just here t-wh-what happened here?” he rambled out, seaming to shrink as he rambled.

“Lad,” Cass called out pleasantly, wrapping an arm around his shoulder, “the question you’re trying to ask is going to cost you far more than it’s worth…” letting her voice darken as the boy’s eyes flicked between Wick’s rifle and Cass’s pistol.

“…Right sir,” the boy replied after a moment in a gingerly sort of tone, readjusting his grip on the boxes as he carried it into the ship and placed it into the living room, coming back out to lift in the ones Wick declared as both he and Cass drank a bottle of the French larger Wick had bought, tending to their own wounds.

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