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"We can give them a little more output," the mine foreman says, "but they have to move on the air filtration system. Have to. We're losing too many."
"Agreed," Fulgrim says, and although he's trying to give their discussion all of his attention, there's another thought bothering him which he can't suppress. He has a prodigious memory for names and faces - merely one among many aspects that make him whatever he is - but despite his strongest efforts he simply cannot place this particular man. It's maddening.
He could be anywhere between thirty and sixty, well-built and broad-shouldered but hunched and prematurely aged from a lifetime of labour. His hands are a knotwork of old scars and breaks, badly healed because you just push on and work through the pain when the alternative is slow death. You have to.
They continue their discussion, finalising the approach to the summit they're about to hold. It's a direct negotiation with the regional leadership of one of the executive clans - a chance to make a real difference, Fulgrim hopes. The mine foreman smiles at some remark of Fulgrim's, a surprisingly boyish expression on his rugged face, and for some unaccountable reason it's that small detail that finally sparks recognition.
"I'm certain that I changed your swaddling-clothes when you were a baby," Fulgrim says, and to his credit the foreman takes the conversational swerve in stride. Even if he doesn't believe it himself, Fulgrim has more than earned his people's tolerance of his eccentricities.
"Is that so?"
"Yes, and then you called me Oogim when you started to talk."
The foreman's laughter quickly dissolves into a fit of wet coughing. His voice has the same rasp of lung disease that Fulgrim has heard so many times before in so many others.
"Well, lots of us grew up calling you Oogim," he replies once he recovers. "Still do, in fact."
It's always just been part of life on Chemos. You do what you have to, like helping a dwelling-sister get some rest between shifts even if you yourself are filthy and sore and tired beyond endurance. Fulgrim knows they would do the same for him, that they did do all they could to accomodate him in their cramped quarters once he started growing far taller than any of his dwelling-mates and to feed him once his stomach started to ache with shameful hunger even after eating his personal ration. They had to.
After that it feels a little strange to go directly back to planning their diplomatic gambits and so the conversation meanders for a while, alighting on people who the foreman knows only by reputation or as vague childhood recollections but who remain, in Fulgrim's memory, every bit as suffused with strength and life as they were during their best years.
Increasingly often these days Fulgrim is the only one left who remembers them at all, and he tries to hold them that much closer to combat the loss. These are the people who built him up, he thinks, who allowed him to reach this point. All of them deserve to be remembered, to have their work mean something.
"Want a drink?" the foreman asks eventually, taking out a battered metal flask and some equally well-used cups from his shoulder bag. "It's the good homemade stuff, strips corrosion and cleans wounds too."
They share another laugh as Fulgrim graciously accepts, but he knows that it's true, has seen the miners' harsh, astringent rotgut used for a myriad of purposes over the years. They have no other choice.
Fulgrim downs the cupful of clear, strongly-scented spirit in one - better not to let it linger on the tongue - and feels it burn all the way down his throat, the warmth flaring in his stomach. His physiology filters out the haphazard mixture of intoxicants and carcinogens and prevents any actual drunkenness, but in the moment he feels enough of the sensation to understand why so many rely on it, grabbing onto whatever meagre, temporary escape they can find from the working drudgery of their lives.
They talk over a few last details but it doesn't take long at all for them to finalise their strategy, layers within layers of possible concessions, linked demands, gambits and fallbacks - in short, every item of planning that a military campaign on some other world out there among the stars might need. But instead of a mighty host of warriors or a fleet of voidships, the combat of words will be carried out by Fulgrim alone.
As though sensing his thoughts, the foreman gives Fulgrim a stout, comradely pat on the shoulder as he takes his leave. It's only possible because Fulgrim has remained sitting while the foreman stands, and the unaccustomed sensation is somehow deeply reassuring.
Fulgrim promises himself, demands of himself, that he will be worthy of his people's trust, and if he is to be their champion he must be suitably armoured for the conflict that lies ahead. Not with anything as brash or vulgar as steel or adamantium, of course - Fulgrim's battle will be a subtler one.
He sheds the simple hand-sewn undershirt he put on after he returned from the day's early shift, gritting his teeth as the burns and blisters on his hands scrape over the coarse fabric. At some stage, he notices, one of his fingernails has been torn away. His wounds will heal, of course, just as they always have, but in the meantime he'll ensure the damage is on display. The executives often seem shocked, even faintly disturbed, when they meet one of the people whose labour keeps them alive, and so this turns the undeniable markings of his work into a weapon Fulgrim can use.
He'll be aided by his reputation, too. Corrin and Tullea's beautiful titan of a son has long since grown to become a tireless worker and a charismatic leader, a genuine advocate for his people. The executive clans know of him and fear him, and privately, driven by some inchoate sinuous feeling he struggles to articulate or even admit to himself, Fulgrim finds this supremely gratifying. The executives are the stubborn rockfall blocking the path to the change he will bring, suffocating the better future he will build for all of Chemos. They should fear him.
Fulgrim's attire for the meeting is carefully chosen to tread the difficult line between evoking what the executives will construe as respectability while at the same time clearly positioning him as a worker who is resolutely not one of them.
A set of clean, undamaged coveralls and thick-soled work boots brings him as close as he can to the desired impression bearing in mind the limitations of what he has to hand, and as he puts it on he finds himself wondering if any executive knows that in the real deep excavations where the heat and humidity are almost beyond even his ability to tolerate, the men and women of the mining teams work naked except for the dirt and sweat that coats their bodies.
He doubts it. The idea brings him a pang of guilt since, in readiness for the summit, Fulgrim has used more clean water and chemical soap than usual, and simply due to the greater surface area of his body he already takes up a larger allocation of those precious resources anyway.
It will be worth it, he tells himself. It has to be worth it. He envisions Chemos as a world where there is no rationing, a planet of light and abundance where anyone of any status is able to feel fed and clean and satiated, and he knows in the twin hearts that beat unaccountably in his chest that there can be more for his people than short lives of endless toil.
Fulgrim finishes by tying back his hair and checking his appearance in a small, decades-old mirror - another guilt-ridden touch of luxury, since he knows many miners will live their entire lives without seeing their reflection in anything other than a twilit puddle of toxic runoff - and finds himself satisfied. He'll claim this victory for his people, for all of Chemos.
He has to.