#local furnace service

[furnacerepair7]

heating and furnace repair near me

Top Quality Heating and Furnace Repair Near Me: Keep Your Home Warm When the cold season sets in, having a reliable heating system in your home is essential. The comfort and warmth provided by a well-functioning furnace can make all the difference during those chilly winter months. To ensure that your heating system is in top-notch condition, it’s important to have access to top quality heating…

[usairhvacservicellc]

Air quality testing in West Lake Hills-Hybrid HVAC systems in Bee Cave

https://usairtx.com/portfolio Air quality testing in West Lake Hills-Hybrid HVAC systems in Bee Cave With a focus on providing a high standard of living in this affluent suburb of Austin, air quality testing services are essential. These services aim to identify and address potential pollutants and allergens in the air, contributing to healthier indoor environments. feel free to contact

[protohomeservice]

Helpful Plumbing and heating service That Help You Daily Life

Heating system repair

A broken heating system can cause a lot of frustration for homeowners. The last thing you want to do is wait for a plumber to come out and fix your heating system, so be sure to call us immediately when you notice that the temperature in your home is set significantly lower than it should be. We will come right over and take care of the problem in no time!

Heating services 24 hours

If you have an emergency heating issue, don’t hesitate to call us at any time during the day or night. We are available 24/7 for all your heating needs! Hot water heater installation or repair, furnace repair, boiler repair or replacement, air conditioning installation or repair… we can handle it all!

Emergency heating services

Sometimes, no matter how careful you are about keeping your boiler clean and free of debris, things still go wrong. If this happens to you, don’t worry! We are here to help! Our emergency plumbers will show up at your home within 30 minutes with all the tools they need to fix whatever problem has occurred within seconds. Needed: A new boiler? No problem! Emergency plumbing repairs? No problem! Emergency plumbing installation? No problem!

Here are some tips that you can use to improve your heating system:

1) Make sure that you have the right size furnace for the room. If your home is too large or too small, then the furnace will not be able to do its job properly and you may end up with an underperforming heating system.

2) Make sure that there is enough ventilation in your home. The vents should be located away from any heat sources, such as radiators and fireplaces, so that they will not be affected by heat.

3) Have a professional check your heating system at least once every year. This will ensure that everything is working properly and there are no problems with it.

Heating and Plumbing Service Tips and Idea

A reliable heating and plumbing service should be able to provide you with the best services at a very competitive price. However, many people are not even aware of the fact that their home is equipped with an efficient heating system. They do not know how to use it properly, what parts need replacement or how it can be repaired. If you have any questions regarding your home’s heating system, it is important to find out what services are available in Quincy and how they can help you get more value out of your investment.

Heating System Repair

If you are experiencing problems with your heating system, there are various types of repairs that need to be done. A professional can determine whether or not all the necessary parts are present and if they have been properly installed by checking for loose connections or other problems that could lead to a breakdown in performance. Heating systems will require regular maintenance so that they continue functioning properly over time as well as regular repairs when something goes wrong with them. An effective heating system should last for many years without any problems which means that it requires regular maintenance before there is any sign of failure from wear and tear or other factors such as low temperatures outside or humidity levels inside your house keeping

Whether you need a plumber for your home or business, Quincy is the place to call. Our team of experts will provide you with everything you need for a successful plumbing and heating service.

We offer a wide range of services that can help you repair your plumbing system, install new equipment, install water heaters, and more. We are dedicated to providing the best possible service at affordable rates.

Our goal is to provide our clients with high-quality workmanship at affordable prices. We specialize in repairs and maintenance on all types of plumbing systems including gas lines, electric lines, garbage disposals, faucets, tubs and showers.

At Quincy Plumbing & Heating we believe in giving our customers value for their money by providing quality workmanship at reasonable prices. We are fully licensed and bonded so you can rest assured that your investment will not be compromised by unqualified personnel.

Home heating and plumbing systems are essential to keep your home comfortable in the winter. When they fail, you will have to deal with the cold air coming out of your vents and no hot water coming out of your faucets.

Heating system repair is a service we offer to all our customers who have heating problems at their house. We are able to diagnose the problem and fix it quickly so that you can get back to enjoying your home again.

Our technicians will be able to tell you more about what needs to be done and how long it will take for repairs to be completed. It is important that you contact us if your furnace or heater has broken down or if you notice any unusual noises coming from them.

We offer 24-hour emergency heating services so that we can respond quickly when needed. Our plumber will come over right away so that we can make sure that everything gets fixed properly as soon as possible. It is very important that you contact us in case something goes wrong with your heating system in order for us to fix it quickly before it becomes a bigger problem.

If there's an issue with your plumbing system, we can help you out too since we know how important it is for these parts of our homes to work properly without any issues at

The best heating service near you is here.

Our team of heating and plumbing professionals are trained to ensure that your home stays warm and cozy during the coldest months of the year. We can also repair your gas or electric water heater quickly, efficiently and effectively to avoid any future problems.

Our emergency heating services are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. If you need us in the middle of the night or on weekends, we’re ready for you!

We specialize in high efficiency heating systems that use less fuel than conventional models and offer greater comfort at lower costs. Our technicians are experts at installing these systems and maintaining them properly so they work efficiently for years to come.

[bayoubashsims]

The Marsh Mansion

I've yet to make the family living there, but I plan to make it the home of a local spiritualist who lives with her caretaker and long-serving butler. It's built from killerbee's Run Down Mansion at GoS.

The front exterior and the front foyer, with the stairlift. An extensive tour below!

Turning to the right of the corridor you will be in the study, which belonged to the lady's late father, a great scholar of the occult.

At the end of the hall, you will see a dumbwaiter, and turning left will take you to the dining room, where the lady would conduct her services.

The parlor, which is not used anymore, used to host the lady's parents and brother, all deceased now. Nobody's sat on those chairs or played the piano for years...except for, well, you know, the ghosts.

The basement is where you do the laundry, store stuff, and where the furnace and the radiator is kept.

The kitchen, where the lady's nanny and the butler used to work. Many of the appliances and fixtures have not been changed in the last 50 years.

Going upstairs would lead you to the chair of the stairlift and the sewing alcove, used by the lady's late mother, who created clothing for everybody out of love.

The red room, where the father would play cards with his colleagues from the university. You can still hear their murmurs and laughter sometimes at night, with the faint smell of nectar.

The caretaker's room. She's new.

The lady's room, easily my favorite room in the house.

The master bathroom, and the attic, where the butler lives.

And finally, the exterior!

[sanctus-ingenium]

answering your asks vol 3

Full context for the Inprnt issue can be found here on this post , tl;dr my shop is closed until I receive my payments from inprnt in a timely manner and essentially won't reopen unless they clean up their act. Regarding the money they owe me outlined in that post, I still have not received it and on Friday I sent a support ticket in to inprnt demanding they send it soon. Haven't heard back since. I think where Inprnt is concerned, it's worth mentioning that they no longer send promotional emails (which used to be a regular occurrence) and there seems to be a complete lack of communication and the only thing about the site that regularly updates is the sale banner (ending soon!!! 🙄)

So honestly I'm of the opinion that the print on demand bubble has burst and that this method of selling art was a very short-lived feature of an internet that doesn't exist anymore. Think about it - I make money on a sale after having spent nothing on promotion, on materials, on postage fees, etc. It's so easy to game the system using bots or stolen art to essentially print free money that I'm shocked it even lasted as long as it did. Maybe I'm wrong but I won't tie myself to another print on demand service that's just going to pull the same old shit redbubble and inprnt have done this year, or one that requires me to constantly promo it like some kind of influencer on instagram or tiktok or whatever.

Will prints come back? I hope so. I am looking into local printing shops and considering the feasibility of handling the process myself but you must understand that if I do that, the price will rise. I won't have the ability to run constant discounts or eat a loss if I order 20 prints and only 7 sell. It is what it is.

And the actual worldbuilding asks below the cut lol:

(referring to this post)

Only if you want to! I've had a few people send me cool sketches and stuff via dms and it's always nice to see but you really shouldn't feel pressured to. After all it's not like I post my rough practice here lol (that goes on patreon ;)

-

I'm going to be SO real with you right now - I did not consider that at all. However I do know that tinting flames with various chemical compounds was a huge part of alchemy, part of the whole flashy show of it to impress the layperson. So sure, I bet they do throw in copper sulfate or various other chemicals to produce the coloured flames - these make a huge impression on witnesses who might not even have imagined such a thing possible, and also help identify a holy beast at a distance on a battlefield choked with smoke and dive-bombing serpents.

Fun fact, the flames come from the furnace wells, right. Each well is connected to specific systems, where it can most efficiently deliver fuel to the heart and onwards. So it is possible to 'read' the pattern of flame bursts from the furnace slits - they are not constant, but there'll be one every few seconds based on when the furnace tenders excite each well. You can tell at a distance, for example, that Leun is readying an acid spray, or rerouting power to the rear legs for a leap, or even what direction he's turning. It all runs at a slight delay, which is why the crew inside has to be SO closely coordinated.

-

@absolutely-flabbergasted Knights are allowed to reproduce but not marry, because it's sort of accepted theory that blood relatives of a knight will be 'accepted' by the knight's beast when the time comes. This is not true but it means that sometimes the knight's apprentices are their own children. The other parent is mostly another member of the church and usually not identified or considered important (unless they're a smith...). There are usually a decent number of known knight bastards running about.

Smiths are not allowed to have families or marry, because their first devotion should be to their art or their beast if they are assigned to one. If one tries, the kids are taken away, anonymised with new names, and put into the pool of potential novices in some other stable. Now, in reality some stables or churches are just not that strict and have a slightly different culture, so there's often an Open Secret about some master smith's illegitimate family or a priest's secret mistress. This is tolerated by the authorities to a certain degree but if it becomes too rampant there'll usually be a change of management and some sort of crackdown.

Families who give up their second born cannot stay in contact, but if the child becomes successful in some way (say, if the child becomes a knight) the families are sent tokens symbolising this which can be placed in the family/village shrine. This can be a huge point of pride, with some people faking the tokens just so that they can show off about their successful kids that are totally knight apprentices.

The reason they don't get to stay in touch with their children is due to the secretive nature of the church and its arts. The church has been at war with the neighbouring nations for a long time and only its mastery of engine work has kept it afloat, and nobody wants these secrets to fall into enemy hands. Particularly if your kid goes on to become a scribe, which is if anything an even more closely guarded profession than that of a knight (those engine diagrams don't draw themselves). The laity are usually quite devout and understanding of this. If they aren't, they might attempt to find their child, often without success.

If you want your church kid back: it depends. If you can prove to the church authorities that you need your child's labour to stay afloat or to carry on the family line, they might take that into consideration. Of course, the only children that return are the likes of sweepers, cleaners, altar boys, pages, etc. Nobody who might have witnessed any Secrets. The church is best understood as being in the middle of a cold war for the past few centuries (and sometimes just regular war) so it's far more closely guarded.

-

@kicks-tiktaalik-back-into-water

It's not likely. Even if the ventilation system worked perfectly, he is still from an older generation of holy beasts and no longer represents the pinnacle of the technology. Leun might have a less sophisticated ventilation system but everything else about him is head and shoulders more advanced - including the crew number he can take on. Leun only requires a single enginesmith in the heart, for example. This is because there's more automation of his systems, and he can actually manage to walk home from battle without anybody inside at all, just based on the knight's input (because the throne chamber is open to the air the knights are technically not inside the beasts). It's not preferable (it can damage the systems) but it is a huge bonus.

Think about how in the early days of commercial aviation, there could be as many as eight people working on the flight deck. In the 60s, a 3-person crew was standard; captain, first officer, and flight engineer. Today there are only two pilots needed. This is down to increased automation, and it means that it is cheaper to fly the plane - the airline has to hire fewer pilots, 'flight engineer' is a nonexistent role these days, and that means you need to train fewer people, have fewer people on call, feed fewer people etc etc. It is cheaper for the church to run Leun than it is to run Krokodilos and even though the church is wealthy, the money and resources are not infinite. Especially now, in times of plague. Leun, for all everybody sings his praises, is basically a reskinned Pantera with better systems - again, cutting costs, because now we can get all of Pantera's old enginesmiths to work on him instead of having to train up new ones on a brand new and wholly unique platform. It's as much a matter of logistics as it is innovation and technology.

[kickthecan-revolution]

Last week was a lot. I told my team that I was leaving for another experience. They are sad and processing but also very happy for me. We cried a little at the end of the meeting. The initial support structure I had in place was OK but a few parts were confusing/concerning so I adjusted those and I think they feel better. My boss isn't sure where they will officially report into yet but I just made the call and confirmed who their direct manager will be. I've let all of my partners across the company know which has been weird, but OK.

The work in the new role is SO intense, I'm learning everything as fast as I can but also have to apply new learns to what I really don't understand yet to a plan that has to be localized into multiple languages by next week. It's nuts but there's no option not to do it, so I'm working a lot this weekend. I was experiencing such a confidence crisis but a few meetings on Friday validated I am moving in the right direction. For the first time in so long, I had anxiety dreams about work which in a weird way is a good sign - I was just kind of....dead, going through the motions, not super busy, not really caring about anything. My brain is waking up. It's where I am at my best. There will be a time for another way of moving through the world but right now for this next year/last experience, I want to be driving something hard and seeing the impact. I want to push myself to take risks and not be an invisible middle manager. Shirley said that I am like a little joey (baby kangaroo) - I am mostly comfortable living my emotions through animals and I have a tendency of hiding like a little joey. I already see this job will make me deal with conflict, stand in the strength of my opinion instead of being accommodating and malleable, afraid of making someone upset. There's such personal growth here for me.

The Alki remodel continues to provide a number of surprises. After we found so many concerns in the electric wiring in the lower unit, I asked the contractor to have the electrician check the upper unit as well. He couldn't even do much given the electrical panel is over 30 years old, so I had it replaced. We also repaired some cracks in the roof and an HVAC person is coming out to assess what I should do to upgrade the 30 year furnace. It's a lot but I am comforted to know these upgrades will make everything so much stronger and safer, I'm much more confident in renting it now. Another fun thing, the contractor found an outdoor shower on the side of the house so we're going to replace it with this and create a little area with a sauna, so someone can do a cold plunge in the ocean, and then wash off in the shower and take a sauna. It's actually not expensive and the contractor can build it for us. I'm excited!

Health-wise, I signed up for a service that will make it easier for me to get the updates to my health that I need. I got 16 vials of blood taken on Friday for a number of tests - a full panel including a lot of early detection stuff.

This is going to be such a good year. It already is. I trust it. I trust that good things are here, that I deserve them and I am going to meet every moment with new strength, new capability and create more silence so those that are guiding me can be heard even more clearly.

[handeaux]

Cincinnati’s Domestic Servants Endured Long Hours And Harassment For A Pittance

With the dawn of the new century in 1901, Cincinnati housemaids attempted to organize a union. That collective bargaining initiative didn’t last the year but offered some insight into the lives of domestic servants at that time.

According to Jesse Partlon, pioneering woman reporter for the Cincinnati Post [26 March 1901], the president of the nascent union was Maria “Maggie” Schuler, who was employed by the family of confectioner Samuel E. Elliott at their home on Gilbert Avenue. Nora Murphy, who boarded on Hackberry Street, was vice president. Mollie Dougherty, the treasurer, “did for” Matilda Besuden, wife of tobacconist Henry J. Besuden out on Duck Creek Road.

The union organizers were hardly inflammatory radicals. Their demands involved being treated with respect, reasonable sleeping accommodations, a fair wage ($2.50 weekly!) and permission to meet suitors indoors:

“Rule 6. Members must have an agreement with their employers about receiving company. Every girl is entitled to a beau, else she will never get married, and she owes it to her self-respect not to meet him at the corner.”

According to reporter Partlon, there were about 30 members of the Housemaids Union, a minuscule sample of the women employed locally as domestic servants in 1901. The United States Census recorded more than 8,000 domestic servants in Cincinnati in 1900, about evenly split between housemaids and cooks and almost exclusively female. A weekly salary of $2.50 was typical, with room and board included. The hours were grueling, from 5:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. at night. Partlon went undercover and got herself hired at a middle-class home. On reporting for duty, the household cook outlined her duties:

“The first thing you do in the morning is fill up the furnace and take out the ashes; then you take the snow shovel and clean the walks around the house and the front pavement; then you blacken the shoes, there are two men in this house, and then brush their coats and the Missus’ skirts – you’ll find them outside their doors. After that you dust the halls. About that time I have breakfast ready and you must wait on the tables.”

You heard right – all of that was before breakfast! After breakfast was a round of sweeping, making the beds, dusting and polishing, laundry, mending, picking up after the children and pampering the pets. Despite this backbreaking agenda, the “Missus” rarely trusted the help. According to Partlon:

“My employer insisted on following me all over the house the first day I was there, and never let me out of her sight for a moment. She locked every drawer and closet in the house right before my eyes, putting the keys in her pocket. ‘You see, I don’t know a thing about you,’ she said, in answer to my look of astonishment. ‘One can’t be too careful.’”

It is no wonder that so many young women departed domestic service at the soonest opportunity. Partlon interviewed a couple of housemaids who confessed that they would prefer to work in a factory or a store, primarily because they would have evenings off. They were reluctant to leave domestic service, however, because factory pay wasn’t much better and room and board wasn’t covered.

Partlon’s exposé touched some nerves in Cincinnati. One “Missus,” writing pseudonymously as “Nanette Napoleon,” chastised the Post for printing a series of articles supporting the grievances of housemaids who were unlikely to return the favor by buying a subscription.

“In hundreds of homes incompetent girls are taken in at HIGH wages, have to be taught how to work, are trained by careful housewives whose patience never ceases, who think all the while that for their labor they will finally have a good servant, only to find that they are met with impertinence and that they have trained them for someone else, for as soon as the girl thinks she knows it all, off she goes without a moment’s warning.”

In contrast, a housemaid congratulated the Post on the articles and complained about the tricks used by employers to undercut attempts by their servants to locate better positions.

“When one woman telephones to another about a girl who has applied for employment, this is the reference that is often heard: ‘She is all right, except for something I cannot tell just at present.’ That is worse than slander, and sends many a loyal woman to ruin or an early grave.”

In general, the housemaids told the Post, women employed by Cincinnati’s wealthier families were treated fairly well. It was the parvenus who earned the ire of servants.

“Girls in middle-class families who do general housework are subjected to treatment that makes them long for other employment. Often they have to sleep in cold rooms in the bitterest weather. Often – far more often than you would believe – they are stinted in their food.”

By 1909, changes in household management and improvements in factory conditions encouraged so many young women to find work other than domestic service that Cincinnati society women complained “no one wants to work anymore.” Carrie B. Haworth, who ran an employment agency on Ninth Street, told the Post [9 July 1909]:

“The average American girl doesn’t want positions as house servant. She has too many beaus, and, besides, she doesn’t like the work.”

Still, there were enough servants employed in Cincinnati in 1909 that new apartment houses were designed with servants’ quarters on the top floor. That arrangement led to its own unique complaints, according to the Post [29 December 1909]:

“This system was considered most ideal when started, but it is now considered the most diabolical agency for gossip ever invented, say the flat-dwellers who own servants. The result is that every family in the house knows what’s going on in every other family, via the servants, who get the news from each other when they go to their own apartments in the evening.”

Among the apartment buildings cited as the worst gossip mills was the Navarre Flats, still located today on Gilbert Avenue in Walnut Hills.

According to the U.S. Census, Cincinnati’s servant population declined from 8,000 in 1900 to 3,000 in 1920 and to just over 1,000 in 1950.

[pareidoliaonthemove]

Reason 102 to Wear Your Helmet

You would think an aquanaut would know the value of keeping their helmet on.

Warning: Rat. One rat. One very large rat.

It was hot.

No, scratch that. It was a furnace. And Gordon was stuck in the middle of it.

Australian summers had gotten steadily hotter, and bushfires had gotten larger and more frequent, all due to global warming.

After (too many) firestorms and lives lost, authorities had gotten better at forestry maintenance, a large part of which was backburning operations. Unfortunately, no matter the amount of planning, care and precautions, Mother Nature could, would, and did exert her will over humankind.

What had started out as a carefully executed hazard reduction burn had been blindsided by high winds and unseasonably hot temperatures. The local authorities and volunteer fire services had fought the blaze with everything they had, but the fire had gotten out of the control and when it threatened an unprepared town, International Rescue had been summoned and launched.

They had started with evacuating the town ahead of the inferno, and then, as it threatened to turn on a second unwitting town, the focus had shifted to fighting the fire itself.

Scott and Gordon had worked firepods on the flanks, while Alan was granted rare operational flight time on Thunderbird Two – the astronaut had yet to earn his groundfire qualifications, age apparently being a bigger barrier to firefighting than to space certification, while Virgil and his fire exosuit stood with the locals and challenged the beast head on.

It had been a hard fight, in tough conditions, but eventually the fire was contained and tamed to the point where the locals had felt confident in finishing up operations unassisted.

And not a moment too soon, from International Rescue’s point of view. They had been on the ground for over twenty-four hours, with few opportunities for rest periods, and less to cycle their equipment through a cool down. Brain’s cahelium alloy was a wonder, but even it had its limits. Thunderbird Two, spending much of her time hovering above the fire front, blasting it with both sonic suppressors and water bombing runs, had soaked up a lot of heat, and now the flying behemoth needed time to cool down and dissipate some of the stored thermal energy in her hull before she cooked her own electronics.

It was easier said than done when the ambient atmospheric temperature was creeping dangerously towards the 50deg Celsius mark.

John had found safe location for the transporter to land, without risking starting off a new fire, and the pods had hared off cross country to meet her, Virgil clinging tiredly to the side of Scott’s pod with his exosuit.

Gordon was thrilled to be able to extract himself from his pod, the opportunity to stretch out, and get some blood flow back in his legs, temporarily distracting him from the other issues.

He and Scott had both been forced to resort to their full uniform rig inside the pods, sealing themselves away behind their helmets as the pod’s air filtration and temperature regulation had started to fail from the onslaught. Sealing themselves behind the ‘double-bubble’ as John had termed it, had allowed them more time on the ground, but it did have its drawbacks.

Gordon was – first, foremost, and last – an aquanaut. It was his primary role in International Rescue, and all his personal equipment was geared towards that particular role, and the deep sea environment that was his element. Including his uniform. Especially his uniform.

The deep sea was cold. Very cold.

And fire was not.

Gordon Tracy was a fish, not just out of water, but in the frying pan.

He was, he decided, going to have to speak to Brains about a uniform variant for high temperature work. Like all the IR unforms, his was intended to be used in all temperature conditions – it was even space-rated – but, out of necessity, it was more efficient at maintaining a temperature in deep cold water, an environment that Gordon was most decidedly not currently inhabiting.

Blood flow adequately restored, he surveyed his new surrounds.

John had directed them to a grain storage facility, twenty kilometres as the Thunderbird flies on the western side of the firefront. Less than optimal growing conditions had produced a poor harvest, and the blue-tarped bunkers were clustered on one side of the facility, leaving plenty of open bare ground for Thunderbird Two to settle on her extended struts between the concrete walls of the empty bunkers. Alan had quickly powered her down, and exited via the cockpit floor elevator to join Scott and Virgil near a star-struck cluster of the site’s employees.

Gordon looked around. There was a train parked in a siding, a discharge chute from overhead garner bins still pointing into an open wagon, loading operations abandoned when the company had granted International Rescue permission to use it as a temporary parking facility, and Gordon sought temporary refuge in the scant shadow of the wagons.

It wasn’t just the pods and Thunderbird that was worked to straining point in the heat. Gordon’s uniform wasn’t up to the sustained task, and with his helmet still clamped firmly over his head, he felt like he was trapped in his own personal sauna. Gordon looked around, the wind had died down, so there was no risk of smoke inhalation if he breathed unfiltered air. There were signs on the infrastructure surrounding him warning him that the loading facility was a hard hat area, but all operations had ceased, and there was definitely no one in the gantry above him.

Gordon risked it, pulling off his helmet, and feeling a slight breeze that felt like a slice of heaven after the stifling confines of his uniform helmet.

A youngish man in a sweat soaked hi-vis shirt, shorts and safety boots unzipped at the sides, a hardhat sliding over his skull as he walked, was hurrying up to him, clutching a large bottle of what looked like chilled water. He looked horrified as Gordon removed his helmet. “Sir, please, don’t …”

Something heavy landed on Gordon’s skull, small sharp blades seemed to rake the top of his head, before the whatever-it-was leapt off him, rocking his head back slightly with the force of its propulsion, passing briefly in front of his face to land on the ground and disappear under the train wagons. Gordon had a brief glimpse of long whiskers, dirty yellow fur, and a long naked pink tail before the monstrosity disappeared.

Gordon stared at the ground where he had last seen the creature. “Wh-what …?”

“Sir, are you all right? How’s your neck?” The young man had reached Gordon, forcing the bottle into his hands, before reaching up to gingerly touch the side of Gordon’s neck.

His hands were ice cold, and Gordon started a little. “Shit, sorry! Did that hurt?” The man snatched his hand away and grabbed at a little handheld radio clipped to his belt, speaking before Gordon could reply. “Boss. Over at the train spout. IR guy took his helmet off…”

An expletive crackled back over the radio, as an older man split away from the gaggle surrounding his brothers, who were quicky in pursuit, the remainder of the onlookers, trailing after them like curious ducklings.

The ‘boss’ skidded to a halt in front of Gordon. “Are you alright?” He turned to his underling before Gordon had a chance to answers. “Is he alright? What happened?” He glanced up at the wagon. “Shit, did Canola …?”

Virgil and Scott arrived, Virgil had a medscanner out, and was passing over Gordon, even as he was sliding to a stop, and Scott started snapping out questions, demanding to know what had happened.

“Uhh, he had an encounter with … local wildlife?” the young man offered reluctantly, as Virgil frowned at the medscanner results.

“No injuries flagged, except some cuts on the top of his skull …” IR’s medic reported.

Scott frowned, before turning to face the site employees. “Local wildlife?” he asked.

The boss nodded, and gestured to the hardhat signs. “Yeah. It’s a known hazard, but we can’t trap the damn thing …”

“What was it?” Gordon asked, as Virgil tried standing on tiptoe to examine the top of his skull. “Because it looked a lot like …” he trailed off, and shuddered.

There was a lot of shuffling of feet. “Um, what would you like it to be?” the young man asked, sheepishly.

Gordon glared. “I can only think of two things have long pink furless tails, and it was too freaking big for either of them.”

“It could be a possum, if you want it to be?” A young woman asked. “You know, a possum with, um, fashion opinions?”

Scott sighed, and turned to the site boss. “You said ‘Canola’. Canola is a grain, how could canola cause multiple lacerations on to the top of his head?”

The site manager flushed. “Um, we call it ‘Canola’, ‘cause we always see it over by the canola bunkers, and it’s about the same colour as the pulp when its crushed.”

“Stinks like canola, too,” offered up a voice from the cluster of employees standing back watching the show.

Scott stared. “What exactly are we talking about?” he asked, mystified.

“Um, well, it’s a … uh, rat?” The site manager seemed embarrassed.

Alan stared. “A rat?”

“A really big rat?” offered another voice. All the site employees nodded, embarrassedly, as if understanding exactly how bizarre the explanation was.

Another man in long trousers was bending down and peering under the wagons with a torch. “Ah, here he is, if you want to see him for yourself.”

The four Tracy’s moved forward, Virgil keeping a firm hold on Gordons’ arm, and as one, they crouched down to look under the wagon.

Scott and Alan recoiled, while Virgil, eyes wide, let go of Gordon’s arm to pull out a small camera from his baldric, and capturing a few images, before setting it to record a short video. Gordon glared at it, reaching for a nearby chunk of rock.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t do that,” the man beside him said, bemused. “There used to be cats all over this place – easy hunting, plenty of mice, y’know? Canola there saw ‘em off. He fights nasty.”

Gordon recoiled, and looked back at the rat clinging to the metal rigging under the wagon. Now he had a good look, from nose to tail, the beast was easily two foot long. Gordon had seen fully grown dogs smaller than Canola, never mind cats.

Gordon’s mind flashed back to the old movie Lady and the Tramp, suddenly the rat attacking the baby didn’t seem so farfetched.

Gordon started away, was the rat suddenly noticed them, whipped up to clamber along the wagon, clinging to the metal undersides, before leaping off and scampering away towards the blue-tarped ridges on the far side of the train.

“Wow!” Virgil’s eyes were huge. “I’ve never seen a rat so big, I mean you hear about giant New York Sewer Rats, but …” he shook his head.

Gordon reached up to scratch his head, wincing at the pain it created, and pulling a way bloody fingertips. “Damn!”

Virgil frowned, and glanced worriedly at Thunderbird Two, still emitting a thick heat haze. He turned to the site boss. “Um, we can’t access our medical facilities until my ‘Bird cools down some. Do you have a first aid kit we can use?”

The man nodded vigorously. “Sure thing!” Before his eyes went wide. “Um, we kinda need to …”

Scott sighed. “You need to create an incident report.” His head dropped down. “For an on-site injury to an International Rescue employee.” He stared at the signage, then glared at Gordon’s helmet, still hanging forgotten in his left hand. “Because he removed his helmet in signposted hardhat area.”

The man gulped. “Nothing like that! Work was suspended, he should have been right to remove it. It was just … a local knowledge thing …” He pointed eagerly to a transportable building standing on short cinderblock piers, with an ungodly number of air conditioning units, hanging off the sides. “First aid kit’s here, and you can wait as long as you want for your equipment to cool down. Feel free to use the kitchen facilities, and we’re just about to put in our food order for delivery, so you’re welcome to order whatever you want.”

His spiel went on, as he led the way, tired IR operatives, and awed employees trailing in his wake.

Gordon sighed. It was going to be a long wait to head home.

He hoped it was an equally long wait before they had to launch again.

John’s hologram popped up in place of their movie, with no warning. “Scott, I’ve had a very odd incident report forwarded to me from that Grain Receival site you parked up at in Australia.” He frowned. “Gordon apparently sustained an injury requiring first aid treatment from,” he glanced at a display near the camera, reading, “‘canola landing on his head’? Is that correct?”

Alan sniggered from the safety of his perch in his launch seat. “Yup. 100% correct.”

John’s frown intensified. “Canola is an oil producing seed. It is approximately the size of a mustard grain. How did canola cause lacerations?”

Virgil fiddled with the tablet he had abandoned, shooting a file into orbit. “Because this is Canola.”

They watched as John watched the video recording, an expression of horror growing on his face. “Is that … Is that a rat?”

Gordon smirked. “It could be a possum with fashion opinions, if that makes it better for you.”

John stared in horror. “Eos?”

“Yes, John?”

“Please add, ‘Giant Rats’ to my list of reasons why I stay in space.”

“Of course.” A pause. “You now have three-hundred and seventy-five official reasons why you prefer to live in space.”

The earthbound brothers stared, “You have a list?” Alan blurted.

“Am I on it?” Gordon demanded.

“Oh yes,” Eos responded brightly. “You’re reason number one.”

John cut the connection.

Notes:

I had to listen to a 20 minute rant from one of our little newbie assistant drivers complaining about having to wear a hardhat at some of our loading sites, and how ineffective they would be if anything actually fell on them from one of the silos (true, a bog standard plastic hardhat is gonna do very little if a silo lets go), and I was reminded of my encounter with an abnormally large rat that decided I would make a suitable step on their descent from the top of a wagon, way back when I was a little baby train driver.

Luckily I was wearing my hard hat; that site had the hardhat rule because of Canola the Rat (so named because he lived near the bunkers storing canola, which is apparently steroids for rodents. He was enormous, and beat up on the cats that used to live on-site for the easy mice hunting to the point they up and moved away), who had caused some nasty lacerations requiring stitches when he pulled the same manoeuvre on people who didn’t wear hardhats.

Took a while to live down. The loading site reported it to my company as a ‘near miss’, and it went out on the monthly safety briefing. Nationwide. No names were mentioned in the briefing, but it didn’t take long for people to figure out who it was locally, and there was a lot of comments about me being afraid of mice.

Until one of the old hands had an encounter with Canola.

The standard disclaimers, I do not own Thunderbirds, either the Original Series, the Movies (both Supermarionation and Live Action), or the Thunderbirds Are Go Series. (Although I do own copies on DVD.)

I do not do this for money, but for my own (in)sanity and entertainment.

[bestiarium]

The Ovinnik [Slavic mythology; Russian myths]

Slavic and Russian folklore has several domestic spirits, such as the Domovoi and the Bannik. They could be either kind or malicious, but the most dangerous of them was the Ovinnik.

This creature resided in threshing barns, which is where the straw is separated from the edible grain. These buildings were highly flammable and therefore associated with danger and death, which is possibly where the idea came from that a dangerous spirit lives there (or perhaps, and this is just conjecture, the Ovinnik was made up by parents to dissuade children from playing there). In northern Russia, the threshing barn was located a good distance away from the rest of the farmstead, to prevent it from lighting the other buildings on fire should the barn’s furnace accidentally ignite the straw (note: the furnace was used to dry the grain).

Usually, an Ovinnik took the form of a particularly large black cat. Its eyes were red and glowed like burning coals. Other times, these spirits appeared as large wolves. In other sources, the Ovinnik is often portrayed as a human-like creature sitting close to a furnace.

It was the Ovinnik spirit who oversaw the use of the furnace: he forbade the people from lighting it on certain holidays, as well as days with a particularly strong wind. If the people ignored his warnings, he would burn the entire thing to the ground. One story, for example, is about a woman who beat flax on a sacred day and was burned to death as a punishment. In another tale, a farmer outsmarted the spirit and cast it into a burning fire, giving the Ovinnik a taste of its own medicine. But the creature survived and returned years later. Out of vengeance, it killed the farmer’s son.

Aside from burning farmstead to ashes, the Ovinnik had the ability to see into the future and could be consulted at the start of a new year. The spirit received offerings from the people, such as roosters that were decapitated and their blood sprinkled over the corners of the barn.

Although these beings were undoubtedly dangerous, they weren’t always evil. In one story, the spirit found a child who was being chased by the undead ghost of an old woman. The Ovinnik fought the ghost to protect the kid, and the two spirits clashed until the sun rose. In other versions, the spirit is sometimes called Rigačnik and this version offers protection from evil wizards. While this is a different version of the same being, its appearance differs a bit: a Rigačnik appears as a man with short, curly hair dressed in stained, torn clothing. He actively helps the owners of the farmstead.

Eventually, Christianity influenced the local folklore and mythology and the tale of the Ovinnik was among them. The Christians tried to change the public opinion of the Ovinnik by making it into a bogeyman that could only be seen during the morning service on Easter Sunday. However, people kept making offerings to the Ovinnik as a spirit of the furnace. Eventually, the Ovinnik was changed to a kind of Christian protective spirit, and that is why he forbids people from using the furnace on (Christian) sacred holidays, such as Saint Thekla Zarevnica’s holiday, which is the 23rd of September. Eventually, the Domovoy (which is possibly the most popular and well known Slavic household spirit) adopted the traits and functions of the Ovinnik and other similar spirits.  

Sources: Ivanits, L. J., 1989, Russian Folk Belief, M. E. Sharpe, 249 pp. Haase, F., 1939, Volksglaube und Brauchtum der Ostslaven, Georg Olms Verslag, 428 pp. Лисина, Е. A., 2020, ТРАДИЦИОННЫЕ РИТУАЛЫ В СОВРЕМЕННОЙ РОССИЙСКОЙ МЕНТАЛЬНОСТИ, ЕВРАЗИЙСКИЙ ЮРИДИЧЕСКИЙ ЖУРНАЛ, 2(141), p.491-492. (image source: Ivan Bilibin)

[vossprime]

Blackwater Days - Chapter 1

Fandom: Warhammer 40K, Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader

Pairing: Original Character / Original Character

Rating: Mature

Tags: Military Campaign, Backstory, Astra Militarium, Supply Chain Issues, Canon-Typical Violence (Spoilers for later chapters: Chaos Corruption, Superior/Subordinate Relationship, Mutiny, Dehydration)

Summary:

There are no heroes among Commissars, only bastards and traitors. A tale of two Commissars trying to navigate a mission that quickly turns out to be a bigger test of faith than anyone had bargained for.

Author's Notes: A bit of backstory to my Rogue Trader, who later becomes Zlatko von Valancius. Set some years after Dog Days, though having read it is not at all necessary to understand and enjoy this fic!

Ao3 Link

Chapter 1: One local year before the Blackwater Incident

In a clearing between the rising city of tents, the Lord Commissar stalks the rows of those selected for this campaign. 

They stand lined up like trees ready to be felled, looking straight ahead but not at her. Most of them have only become full Commissars quite recently, their faces still largely devoid of scars or augments. 

They’re not children, barely, not fresh out of the womb of the Schola Progenium, but they’re also not ready to stand on their own just yet. It makes them easy to predict, all baked into more or less the same mindset, both their biggest strength and fatal flaw.

Dust stains their boots red. The sun burns down bright.

A servoskull rattles down her introduction.

Lord Commissar Mayrie, hero of Cestus Sekundus, in service of the Imperium and this campaign, and she withstands the urge to shake her head. There are no heroes among Commissars, only bastards and traitors, and once again she’s proudly one of them. They are all dogs of the Imperium with her to let them off the leash, the bitch in charge of quite a meager litter.

Ten of them have been given to her, plus plenty of rats in the soldier’s ranks. Three women, seven men, all with the same straight backs and black storm coats.

They’ve all come in from different corners of the Galaxy, some from previous deployments, some in tow with their regiment. She’s been here since a few days before all of them. 

When she first landed, she thought they had sent her to hell. Salazar VI is a cacophony of red, orange and murky brown. Parts of it are poisonous, other parts burn with fires that never go out, and the rest of it is unremarkable and desolate. Most vegetation has been razed in favor of expansion, heating furnaces and accessing the ground below, and now only a dry wind reigns.

“Commissars-” she begins once the servoskull has finished its tirade, “Welcome to Salazar Six, your home for the next few months. You see those Hive cities on the horizon?”

Indeed, against the wavering heat and dusty air, three pyramid-like structures flimmer against the sky. They’re small for their kind, and far from usual- instead of flocking together and clustering, they stand singular in the middle of the expanse before them, cone-shaped and alone. Their edges bleed out into the empty wasteland.

Around them, a city is being erected in real time. Thousands and thousands of soldiers, places to eat, sleep and train, structures for protection, waste, and water. Everywhere you go, the noise of construction and the sparks of the metal workshops follow.

“Those are either full of heretics or have them camping in front of their gates. We’ll have a crucial role to play in assisting the Miliatrium in taking them back without razing down the planet, because what this planet has-” She stamps a boot into the dirt, and dust flares up. “is much too valuable to risk. We’re in the beginning stages, with more and more forces arriving by the day, so most of the next few days will be spent familiarizing yourself with the conditions, your regiment, and with each other to guarantee effective and effortless cooperation. Do not think this any less crucial than your work out in the field.

"I don’t think I need to explain to any of you how to do your jobs. You’ve received your stations and have been assigned your regiments ahead of time, so there should be no uncertainties. You’ll be taken to our part of camp, but don’t expect to spend much time there.

"If you do what you’re told and speak up when necessary, I will be honored to command you. That will be all, for now.”

They’re going to be here a while. It's a nowhere-corner of the Imperium, far away from the grace of the Emperor or anyone. If not for the riches in the ground, this place would live and die to fend for itself. They’re not here to save any people but their own or be heroes. No switch-team coming, no set end-date, and if one of them dies, they’re not getting any more. 

It’s the usual, just a larger scale. Listening in on vox comms, shadowing, joining the fray. It’s gonna be exhausting, but it always is. To be a good commissar, you need to thrive on that at least a little.

Mayrie looks through the data-slate in her hand. The names are all throwaways given by the Schola that identify you to anyone in the know as a bastard son or daughter of the Imperium, differentiating by the year and specific school. Ages, places, strengths, weaknesses, and the people in front of her arranged like pawns on a regicide board. 

“Sirois and Xanathaw, you’re coming with me to survey unloading the cargo. The rest, dismissed!”

One is a hulking man with a white-blonde buzzcut whose eyes are gray and dead like that of a fish. He carries a standard M36. The one next to him has slung a sniper rifle over his shoulder, missing eye replaced with an augment, long brown hair. She calls, they follow.

It takes a short ride across the seemingly endless expanse of landing fields until they’re standing in the cargo bay. The breeze blows over the rockcrete, moving the air at least somewhat. Workers make sure every last bit of freight is accounted for, with the Commissars to watch the transfer and make sure no one tries to secure more for themselves than they deserve.

Only one of the landing zones is occupied while the others are being readied, and so there is nothing left to do but for three people to do the task of one.

Men unload boxes from the belly of the shuttle. All goes as it should.

She leans against a stack of crates, her bitten-down nails thrumming against the sigil of the Empire emblazoned on them.

“You-” she addresses the two men standing next to her, but keeps her eyes on the shuttle. “Where were you stationed before?” 

It is info she could very well extract from her data-slate, but that isn’t why she asks. 

“Small planet in the Chiros Sector, Lord Commissar.” Sirois responds, momentarily looking at her. “Both of us.”

“How did you do?”

Sirois pauses, probably debating if to give an honest answer or one that will make him look good.

“Not too bad.” That is in accordance with her records. Both of them performed as expected.  “But we’ve been told the orks went easy on us.”

Diminishing his own achievements. Interesting.

“The heretics won’t.” Mayrie says, but with something resembling a smile.

“Wouldn’t expect it, Lord Commissar.”

They’ll see no combat for now, only receiving medical checks, briefings on the current situation, and gear. Then come endless rows of checklists, soldiers, supply lines. 

By the time the chaos starts, they’ll already have been swaddled into the warm waters, so they won’t notice it going past the boiling point.

Xanathaw looks ahead as if he assumes she’s not talking to him. Doesn’t respond. She’s seen both those who do it because they have something to hide, and those who simply do their best work when they keep their mouth shut.

He is either suspicious or merely peculiar.

“And you came here directly from Cestus?” Sirois asks, distracting her from profiling his comrade.

“No, I went to the Commissariat beforehand,” Mayrie watches him, seeing recognition in Sirois’s eyes. He knows what happened on Cestus. The whole galaxy knows, it seems at times. Her glorious triumph, the stuff of legends for the average soldier. She can’t wait for people to stop asking her about it in the mess hall, for it to fade into the back of their minds and be replaced with yet another anecdote of some other unlucky specimen. “I had to accept the title, the-”

The loading hatch of the current shuttle closes with a dull thud. Engines spring into roaring action. Her eyes drift to the head dockworker, who is seemingly ready to leave and turn his attention to other tasks.

“Done already?” she calls out, and he briskly walks over in an effort to hear her over the sound of the shuttle leaving. 

She repeats herself, and the man nods, pointing at the list in his hand, as if using it as an excuse for his early end-of-day. Mayrie scans it, dock numbers and volume measurements, until her eyes narrow and lock onto what she sees before her. 

“Give me that.” 

She rips the board from the startled worker, flips the page over, flips it a second time. There are no further pages.

“This-” she points at the numbers sprawled in front of her on yellowed paper, “is all?”

“Yes, Lord Commissar.”

She rotates the numbers in her head. Then again, then once more. It doesn’t fit on either end. If there were a few zeroes more, maybe, but not like this. That’s not enough water for thousands of men on a thirsting planet.

“The entire shipment of water? For the entire campaign?”

“Yes,” the worker grows smaller and smaller under her gaze. “There are more shuttles coming. But as far as water goes, that was the last shipment, Lord Commissar.”

The paper says what it says - even under scrutiny it does not change. Big tanks of water stand outside of camp, flown in and placed by aircraft, but that doesn't change the amount of liters they hold. And those are just not enough.

Mayrie rubs the space between her eyebrows. Her forehead is thrown into wrinkles, frustration likely written on her face. It’s fine, she tells herself. This could have been an error low on the chain of command, the numbers wrong, the amount they’re going to receive right.

The vox on her shoulder sparks to life on her request, confirming minutes later and after being passed back and forth that no, this is not a mistake.

“Shit.” she says, unceremoniously.

The two Commissars stand by her side, unsure what to do. She’s in no such state. She knows what to do and needs to see it set right before this campaign suffers the same fate as her homeworld.

“Commissar Sirois,” the man straightens himself into alertness upon being addressed, “you stay here and supervise until the unloading on all sites is finished, then sign off and head back.”

He seems good enough to be trusted to stand around and watch some crates. 

“Commissar Xanathaw,” she commands, “you come with me.”

Normally she’d make another vox call now, but the information is too sensitive, and she needs the certainty of looking into someone’s face when she explains the situation.

The General’s headquarters are close to the Commissars’, but the landing zones are on the outskirts, and so they have to head the entire way back in. 

She leaves Sirois the vehicle they came with, instead waves one of the soldiers going into the inner camp over and hitches a ride. 

On the backseat of the armored truck, they awkwardly sit opposite each other, eyes on the ground. The newly forming pathways are rough, shaking them both in their seats. Her initial aggression has somewhat passed, but she’s still on edge. It hits just a bit too close to home.

She watches him, given there’s not much else to do.

He’s a man like all others, somewhere in his early twenties, not much younger than her. Straight brown hair is tied into a ponytail behind his head, laying free his face. What remains of it is handsome, but the eye gets pulled to the golden plate of metal over his nose and the augment sitting in his left socket. His skin is scarred, less than hers, but there’s a gap running across his cheek that only a well-placed blade could have made.

His hand rests on his lap, holding his weapon with a gentleness most people wouldn’t even afford a lover.

“You’re staring.” He says without meeting her eyes. His tone is matter-of-fact, neither accusing nor displeased, before he seems to remind himself who he’s speaking to. “Lord Commissar.”

“You’re right.” She freely admits, “I was.”

“It's the augment.” He nods. “I got it before our deployment to Chiros, still haven’t gotten used to it. It is a little jarring, isn’t it?”

She looks at it again. It’s a red disc of glass surrounded by several rings of metal, connected into the skull on the side towards the ears by several plates. It bathes half his face in an eerie red glow, only visible due to the darkened interior of the vehicle.

“It’s fine work. Looks expensive.”

“Mechanicus craft, specifically for sniping. Works similar to a scope if twisted, plus a few extra readings.” He touches the skin around the augment faintly, almost appreciative. “I just still can’t get used to seeing out of two eyes again.”

“It’s not why I was staring.” She leans back against the wall of the truck, “it’s just that you never really get the opportunity to observe people up close here.”

“And did I pass your inspection, Lord Commissar?” He speaks without a hint of cockiness or provocation.

“That’s yet to be decided.” 

“So,” he casts a glance at the man driving the truck, who is shielded from them through both a wall with a small panel and headphones connected to the communications, “where are we heading?”

“General’s camp.” She answers, “when we arrive I’m gonna need you to make sure we stay undisturbed and no one is listening in.”

She leans in, beckons him to come closer.

“If I am right, which I hope I am not, this needs to be fixed before it can have any consequences that would impact morale.”

Their eyes meet, both nod in understanding.

“No words to the others, either, until we have orders from above. But you can keep a secret, can’t you, Xanathaw?”

“What gives you the idea?”

“You’re not much of a talker.”

The truck comes to a stop, almost throwing their heads against each other in a braking maneuver that makes her question the happiness of the machine spirit encased in the vehicle.

They hop out back into the unrelenting sun. The middle of camp stands, and it is as busy as the center of any city. Chatter, machine noises, someone barking orders.

They’re in the process of putting up actual buildings - or a mockery of ones, going by their durability - but for the time being, the General houses in tents like everyone else.

Mayrie makes her way with her head held high. She’s not as tall as the man behind her, not physically imposing, but she’s lived long enough to know how to command authority, something nobody naturally possesses. It is the fine balance of suggesting you can protect or destroy depending on which way you fall, and communicate that purely through the way in which you move. People make way for her all the way to the General's tent.

Xanathaw waits outside, while she waits for whoever came before her to finish up their business with the General for the next half of an hour. She spends the one after that fighting tooth and nail with the damned old man, who then makes a call to the Lord General on the voidship up above. All return with the same verdict: Administratum error. 

The worlds around Salazar VI are either as barren as this one or refusing trade, and supplies requested now would take a long time to reach them. Every single solution bears the same problem: Too little arriving too late. The hives have water by virtue of having drilled deep into the ground, and the General helpfully suggests that as soon as they take them back, that burden will ease. 

Mayrie loses her composure.

“People are going to die because of this.”

Maybe not directly because of dehydration, but there will be the madness that sets in once the thirst makes itself known, and that will claim the first victims. They won’t be able to fight anyone then, reduced to nothing more than animals.

She’s seen it before. Suddenly, Salazar VI feels a lot more like home than she’d like.

The general finds no reply. She knows he is only a man, and doesn't want to come to terms with the death sentence he’s been served. He doesn’t have the strength to face what she has known since the age of seven.

And so she dismisses herself, walks out of the camp with nothing but an unrelenting rage in her stomach. Xanathaw catches up to her, walks next to her in silence while she doesn’t even know where she’s going. For the first time she appreciates his presence and the way he doesn’t ask questions.

“Moments like this-” a strand of hair from her tight bun comes loose, and she wipes it out of her face with hasty exasperation, “are when I hate to be Lord Commissar, or a Commissar at all. Someone in the Administratorium fucks up, and then it’s up to us to fix it, and you try and fix it, but no one listens, or it’s too late.”

When faced with her harsh criticism of the Imperium, Xanathaw reacts as any well-trained dog would: jumping to the defense of its master.

“There must be an explanation and solution. Leaving us stranded doesn’t seem like something the Imperium would do.”

“You have no idea.” she laughs, exasperated, “You really have no idea. Here’s our next steps: We take control, steer the ship in the right direction with no care for whoever almost crashed it. That’s all we can do.”

She’s sure the matter will be investigated in the following days, but she doesn’t see how they could come to any resolution.

“Is that what you did on Cestus?”

Cestus, yes, but also long before that. She wants to ask to please not talk about it, but she knows he won’t. Because she’s his superior, he doesn’t care, or he just is like that, it doesn’t matter. “What I did won’t work a second time. We’ve been damned. We’ve all been damned.” 

Wind sweeps through their coats, brushing them with red sand. The hive cities flimmer on the horizon.

The Emperor help them now, for their fate rests in his hands. She doesn’t have much hope for his divine intervention.

Author's Notes: Watcher in the Rain reference? Perhaps. Many thanks to my beta readers @definitely-not-iorveth and Thomas, and to you for taking the time to read this. I’ll see you in the next chapter <3

[furnacerepair7]

heating furnace repair near me

Reliable Furnace Repair Near Me: Ensuring a Warm and Cozy Winter As the winter season approaches, ensuring that your heating system is in optimal condition becomes a top priority. Finding reliable furnace repair services near you is essential to keep your home warm and comfortable. Expert technicians provide thorough inspections and timely repairs to ensure your furnace functions flawlessly,…

[arizonaacandheating]

https://www.arizonaacandheating.com/service-areas/goodyear-ac-heating/

Goodyear Arizona AC, Heating, HVAC, Air Conditioning Contractor

If you are looking for a reliable, honest, experienced, and fair-priced HVAC, Heating, and Air Conditioning Contractor in Goodyear, Arizona, you have found them! Introducing Arizona AC & Heating, your local HVAC experts for residential and commercial air conditioning and heating, including AC Units, split systems, roof-top package units, heat pumps, gas furnaces, and air handlers. We are an Authorized Trane Installation and Warranty Service company serving Goodyear, Arizona. We service all makes and models of air conditioning, heating, ventilation, and air handling systems. Find out why Arizona AC & Heating is the BEST in the WEST… Valley! Cold Air or Heat - We Can't Be Beat!

Contact Arizona AC & Heating in Goodyear, Arizona

[usairhvacservicellc]

HVAC maintenance in Kyle-Indoor air quality services in Manor

https://usairtx.com/contact

HVAC maintenance in Kyle-Indoor air quality services in Manor commercial HVAC services and thermostat installation services reflects the commitment to creating comfortable and energy-efficient environments in the greater Austin area. Businesses and residents alike benefit from these specialized services, ensuring that indoor climates are tailored to meet the unique demands of the region's diverse and dynamic commercial and residential spaces.

[billeeheatingairconditionin]

Why Choose Expert Furnace Installation Services in Edmonton?

When it comes to furnace installation in Edmonton, opting for expert services is crucial for both efficiency and safety. Professional installers bring years of experience and specialized knowledge to ensure that your furnace is installed correctly, reducing the risk of future breakdowns or malfunctions. In a city like Edmonton, where winters can be harsh, a reliable heating system is essential.

Expert installers follow strict safety protocols, ensuring that all connections are secure and the system operates efficiently. They can also advise on the best furnace type for your home, considering factors like size, insulation, and energy efficiency. Additionally, professional installation often comes with warranties, providing peace of mind that any issues will be addressed without extra cost.

Choosing a certified installer also ensures compliance with local regulations and codes, avoiding potential fines or complications. Ultimately, expert furnace installation services in Edmonton offer a reliable, safe, and long-lasting solution to keep your home warm during the cold months.

[guerrerense]

A front row seat por Kevin Madore Por Flickr: Hearing the whistle of an approaching train, a couple returning from Sunday services bring their young child to the end of their driveway for a front-row seat to witness the passage of a relic of an era that will be largely over by the time the child reaches adulthood. What was commonplace in America in the 1940s and 50s, was literally gone from the landscape within 20 years. In this frame, the East Broad Top Railroad's Mikado #16 takes a mixed train south through the unguarded crossing at Enyeart Road, just outside the borough of Rockhill Furnace, PA. This image was captured during an October, 2023 photo shoot on the East Broad Top Railroad, featuring the recently-restored Locomotive #16. Interestingly, while Enyeart Road looks like a low-traffic, back road when folks first drive through here, it's actually a rather busy thoroughfare during rush-hour each morning and afternoon, as the locals have found it to be a convenient detour to avoid delays at the traffic lights in downtown Rockhill/Orbisonia. Setting up this photo opportunity actually required flagmen in a couple of spots, to stop traffic and maintain the safety of all concerned. I suspect that the locals were glad to see us leave.

[trivialbob]

6:00 PM - Christmas party with our friends will commence

2:00 PM - Sheila tells me, after I woke up from my well-deserved nap, that the inside of the house has dropped to 63°F despite the thermostat being set to 68°F. My quilt and electric blanket had kept me quite comfortable, so I didn’t wake up cold.

2:10 PM - I look inside the furnace. Open the hood, kick a tire. That always helps, right? A solid green light and a blinking green light greet me. It’s one half of Christmas colors. Yay! Google describes error code numbers, but I don’t find a solid answer on a mixture of solid and blinking lights.

2:20 PM - Always an optimist, I think: If we have a dozen people in the house, and light a fire in the fireplace, that should keep us warm even if the outside temperature is -12°F, right? Seeing everyone’s breath might even look festive! I have a portable space heater for emergencies. I could use it, but that’s as silly as wanting to try out the fire extinguisher.

2:40 PM - It’s dropped another degree inside. Ugh. I’d better call the furnace place now. They are local guys and always have provided super service.

2:42 PM - I reach a technician who said would be over soon. My hope had been to get someone in the next four hours. He was at my home in ten minutes.

3:00 PM - The problem is a clogged air intake. Lint from a nearby dryer vent and some leaves had blocked it. This has never happened before, but it makes sense. A cover in front of the vent kept me from figuring out this on my own. The technician shows me what to do if this occurs in the future, saving me a service call. I will never call anyone else but this company for my future HVAC needs.

3:15 PM - The furnace is humming along nicely. The inside temperature has risen one degree.

3:20 PM - As I pay the modest bill I chat with the technician. With the severe weather I’m curious if the company gets many overnight calls. I assumed they had 24 hour emergency service. He said he was just getting ready to go home for a long holiday weekend when I called. They are closed tomorrow. 24 hour emergency service isn’t something they can do now, because they can’t get enough technicians. I am extremely happy I didn’t dither around for another half hour before calling.

7:30 AM - The house is toasty warm and a ceramic mug of coffee warms my hands even more. I survey the kitchen. Wow, we enjoyed a lot of wine last night. I’m pleased that I filled and started the dishwasher before going to bed last night. Any neighbors still sleeping are awakened by the sound of me filling the recycling bin.