The engine room of the Forge-Crawler ‘Perun’ was a place of heat and noise. The air was thick with the smell of hot metal, ozone, and the sharp, clean scent of leaking energy. In the center of the cavernous space, the Mnemonic Anchor sat like a wounded god, a cylinder of dark steel and thick conduits pulsing with a low, painful hum. The sound was wrong, a discordant thrum that spoke of a machine fighting its own purpose. Its integrity was failing, holding at a bare 45 percent. Irina Pavlenko, the lead engineer of Union 9, led Sineus into the heart of her machine, her face a mask of grim determination. The silence that had fallen outside was a memory; here, the only reality was the anchor’s agony.
She stopped before a heavy steel workbench, the anchor’s dissonant hum vibrating through the deck plates under their feet. She, a master of her craft, had been forced to accept help from a man who fought the world with ideas.
— If you want my trust, you earn it with this.
Irina’s voice was sharp, cutting through the noise. She picked up a heavy, oil-stained wrench from the bench and slapped it into his hand. The steel was solid, its weight familiar. It was a challenge, a demand that he prove his worth in her world of tangible things. He accepted it without a word, his grip firm on the handle. He saw a faint maker’s mark near the head, a worn, three-spoked gear, an old industrial sigil of a world long dead.
She turned to the anchor’s main diagnostic panel, her movements economical and precise. — We begin with the Mechanist’s Litany. It is a diagnostic. It is a reminder. You will learn the response. Do not fall behind.
Irina placed her hand on the anchor’s casing and began the chant, her voice a clear, steady contralto that seemed to impose order on the chaos. — Primary field coil, check for resonance decay.
Sineus knew this kind of ritual. The Eurasian Federation had its own litanies, the Mnemonic Chorus that held Monolit together, but those were cold, impersonal recitations of data. This was different. This was a conversation between a worker and her machine. He listened, learned the rhythm, and when her call came again, he was ready.
— Secondary conduits, check for energy bleed.
— Bleed is within tolerance, — Sineus responded, his voice finding the rhythm, falling into place beside hers. — Conduits holding firm.
They worked, their voices weaving together in a steady, rhythmic chant of call and response. It was a language of function and purpose, a shared act of remembering that pushed back against the anchor’s pain. With every verse, the dissonant hum lessened, the violent vibrations in the deck plates smoothing out. The machine was listening. It was remembering. Their shared focus, a fusion of her knowledge and his will, was a balm applied directly to the anchor’s wounded memory. The great machine began to stabilize.
After an hour of the litany, the anchor’s hum had settled into a less painful, though still unsteady, rhythm. They moved from the main console to the physical components, checking seals and tightening bolts in a practiced silence. Irina worked with a fierce, focused grace, her hands sure and certain. Sineus followed her lead, his own inherited knowledge of machines rising to meet hers. He saw how she moved, how she trusted the physical feedback of the tools in her hands.
He stopped at a large bearing assembly, a thick ring of steel designed to handle the immense torque of the anchor’s rotational field. He placed his hand on its casing, closing his eyes. The litany had stabilized the larger systems, but here, at a smaller level, he could feel a faint, grinding friction. A memory of weariness.
— Here, — he said, his voice quiet.
Irina looked up from her work, her brow furrowed with suspicion. — The seals are tight. I checked them myself.
— It’s not the seals, — Sineus said. He gestured for her to come closer. — Listen. Not with your ears.
He guided her hand to the bearing’s casing. The steel was warm beneath her callused palm. — Close your eyes. Feel for the memory of its spin. A perfect spin has no friction. It is a clean, quiet circle. This one… this one remembers a piece of grit from a thousand cycles ago. It remembers the flaw.
She scoffed, her skepticism returning like a shield. — That’s mysticism. A bearing is steel. It has tolerances, not memories.
— Try, — he said simply.
For a long moment, she resisted. Her entire life was built on the foundation of the measurable, the provable, the tangible. To entertain his idea was to admit a crack in that foundation. The price was her certainty, the one tool that had never failed her. Yet, she had seen him turn away a swarm of Vultures with a thought. Her world had already cracked. Slowly, reluctantly, she closed her eyes. She focused, pushing past the hum of the engine, past the feel of the warm steel, searching for what he described.
Then, her eyes flew open. Her face, a landscape of hard-won knowledge, was suddenly a map of pure shock. — I feel it.
It was a whisper, a confession. She had felt it. The ghost in her machine. A tiny, grinding imperfection that was not physical, but mnemonic. A flaw in the idea of the bearing. She looked from her hand on the machine to Sineus’s calm face, and saw not a mystic, but an engineer who worked with a different set of tools.
They worked in a new kind of silence after that, a silence born of mutual respect. While Irina recalibrated the energy flow to the bearing, Sineus picked up one of her specialized wrenches, a heavy, custom-forged tool. He saw the grime in its joints, the dullness of its edge from years of hard use. He took a small file and a cleaning cloth from his own kit and began to work. He cleaned the tool with a patient, methodical care, sharpening the worn edges, oiling the joint. It was an act of service, a quiet acknowledgment of her craft. He was honoring the tool, and by extension, the hand that wielded it.
Irina watched him for a moment, her expression unreadable. She said nothing, but when she turned back to her console, her movements were less sharp, her shoulders less tense. A short time later, as Sineus finished his work on the wrench, he found a small metal cup sitting on the workbench beside his kit. It was filled to the brim with clean, clear water. In the wastes, a ration of water was a gift of life. It was a gesture of provision, a silent return of respect. It was a promise.
With the bearing’s memory soothed and the final adjustments made, they stood back. The Mnemonic Anchor, once screaming in agony, now thrummed with a deep, steady, and powerful note. The painful dissonance was gone, replaced by the sound of pure, contained purpose. Its integrity was at 100 percent. The machine was whole again, its memory restored not by one method, but by two. Their two methods, fused into one.
The air in the engine room was still hot, still thick with the smell of metal and ozone. The light from the main console cast their two shadows long against the far wall.
