This post was inspired by a prompt in the Worldbuilding Community - Worldbuilding Prompt #546 - Homes
As a little bit of a spoiler, this post will tie in with the main series I'm working on, just not yet....
Image generated by AI in Wombo.art
The rain fell steadily in the pale grey pre-dawn light, rattling against the thin skin of the housing bubble.
The bubble wasn't big, about twenty feet in diameter, but it was home to the family who had been assigned to it. To say that the interior was basic is an understatement.
There was a metal stove in the centre, it's tinny chimney kinked just enough to prevent the incessant rain dousing the meagre fire within. That and the body heat of the inhabitants were the only thing keeping the cold and damp at bay.
To one side, a ragged curtain gave some privacy around the bucket that served as a toilet. It did nothing to mask the stench. That's what happens when eight people share such a small, primitive space.
Sleeping arrangements were likewise simple, just hessian mattresses on the floor stuffed with dried chaff from last season's harvest, with simple cloth sheets and thin blankets.
Strangely, the fabric of the bubble itself was far from primitive. It was one of a grid of a hundred like it extruded by a builder-craft of the Masters. They found it cheaper to house their slaves this way, with identical units fabricated down to a budget.
At the centre of the grid was a far larger, thicker-walled, more luxurious unit. It was inhabited by a squad of four Masters.
They now emerged into the grey dawn, shrouded in waterproof all-enveloping capes, also grey. In their claws they carried staves with mind-ripper tips. Going from bubble to bubble, they smacked the fabric with the staves to wake their slaves.
"Get up, you animals ! Quota is increased with immediate effect ! Get into the fields and open the irrigation trenches, you scum. Last one out gets served up for dinner tonight. Move !"
The slaves piled out of their bubbles into the steady downpour, never sure whether today was a day when the Masters threats were real. All they knew was that the working day just got longer. The tools they bore in their paws were basic; wooden spades to move the mud and control the irrigation channels, pointed sticks to dig out the perennial marshweed, and woven baskets for the tubers they had to harvest. They didn't have waterproof capes, just rags and their own natural fur to keep the rain at bay.
Margal VI was an agricultural planet, the crops grown by it's slaves being taken offworld to feed the armies of the Slaver Empire.
But even here, there were rumours. Tales whispered from one slave to another that the Masters had suffered a terrible defeat somewhere out there in the stars. That this was the reason both the quotas and the beatings had increased.
"Have hope, Mira," the mother murmured to her daughter. "A man told me yesterday that the Imperials will come to save us. While we work in the sludge-fields, pray that they come and burn all the Masters. Burn them up good, every last one."
Image generated by AI in Wombo.art
