Herald of the Stars: Chapter Three Hundred and Twenty-Two

“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” says Alpia. “Are we done with the serious talk? I want to get started on reading Dad’s Warp Tap STC.”

I look down at Brigid and she nods.

“Alright! Send me out, Dad!”

I wave and Alpia disappears. Brigid remains with me to chat while two of my concurrent minds talk with Alpia simultaneously, one sharing the Hyper Intelligence research and the other discussing the Warp Tap STC.

It takes us 156 days to reach Scintilla’s Oort cloud where we rendezvous with one of my new Goliath Class and a couple of Moth Class vessels that were sent out in advance. We pick up large external tanks filled with water, methane, and metallic hydrogen pellets. 

Three tanks are added to each vessel, one slung from the keel and two smaller tanks fitted to the flat, armoured protrusions on the port and starboard of my vessels that shield the engines from broadside exchanges. 

Last time I embarked on a long journey we dragged along a comet and some asteroids. This time we’re better prepared and won’t have to drag so much excess mass and volume with us as everything is refined and compressed. We also fill our void ships’ storage with the excess materials mined from the Oort cloud as I left much of my material wealth at Scintilla to aid in its revitalisation.

With Quaani in the Navigator Spire, I direct the fleet into the Warp from Torchbearer’s bridge. I now have one cruiser, two light cruisers, eight Adder Class escort carriers, one Turbulent heavy frigate, one Viper Class sloop, four Carrack Class transports, three Goliath Class and four Moth Class factory ships.

The Black Ship, Whisper of the Void has finally left us behind. Much to my relief, the Jericho Pilgrim vessel is not chasing us and has long since departed towards the Shrine World of Veneris in the Drusus Marches subsector.

Force Commander Odhran has one light strike cruiser and four Gladius Class escorts.

Every new vessel has been overhauled, bringing it in-line with the rest of Stellar Fleet SOL.

Abbisine Vakul has also rejoined us after she couldn’t find anyone else risking a journey to the Lathes. 

After getting my Nova Cannon fixed, I had a small panic about someone else firing one at me. As such, the Turbulent has been refitted as an experimental, automated shield vessel, capable of protecting the fleet from a single shot from a Nova Cannon every thirty minutes, from one direction, so long as it's not something crazy like a vortex round. 

Artisan Laisren Toolin, head of A&A for Stellar Fleet SOL has also stripped the Turbulent of all its weapons, save the CIWS, and added multiple Hecatonchire missile launchers with experimental modifications intended to intercept enemy macrocannon fire and knock it off target. 

Right now, a Hecatonchire can fire atomic, Macro-Interceptor missiles that cost seven times more than a macro-cannon shell. It’s not a great trade and only worth it if a vessel’s void shields are near failure. However, the Macro-Interceptor missiles are cheaper than making repairs to a void ship. 

Unfortunately, a single Macro-Interceptor missile has an approximate 37% interception chance at 200,000km, dropping to hopeless below 50,000km, which is grox shit. With a success rate that poor, one can’t wait for near shield failure and must attempt to intercept as many shots as possible, launching three, preferably five missiles per shell. 

At that price, the risk of taking a hit on your armour instead becomes much more attractive, especially when a navigator like Quanni or I can read the future then reposition a vessel to ensure as many hits as possible strike the heaviest armour or least important areas of a ship. 

Each modified Hecatonchire missile launcher holds 144 missiles and takes an hour to reload and the Turbulent has three of them.

One would think that an atomic is enough to destroy a Macro-Cannon shell, but no. Not with the size requirements for an interceptor missile, at least. A Macro-Cannon shell is monstrously sturdy, explodes exactly when it intends to and not before, travels at least 3,000 kilometres per second, and the better versions are slightly self-guiding. 

The tricky part is knocking them off target at just the right moment so that they don’t have time to self-correct or hit a different vessel. Getting a ‘near’ hit with an atomic warhead is actually the easy part, for a given value of ‘easy’.

With the number of fights I get into, I am confident that we will have no shortage of opportunities to gather data and refine the technology.

It takes four days to reach Lathe Watch. Annoyingly the Inquisition listening post does not surrender. Instead, they blow themselves up. I leave the Viper Class sloop behind and deploy two of my two dozen relay satellites so that we can send back data to Lathe Watch the slow way once the Warp Storm’s interference becomes too disruptive. 

Until then, the Sloop will travel back and forth between Scintilla and Lathe Watch when required and has a connection to my Astropathic Servitor network. During our voyage, we expect 7.7 years to pass for Scintilla and 4 years to pass for Stellar Fleet MANI, odd though that may seem. Interference from the Warp Storm is expected to hit us as we reach Sentanim’s Oort cloud. Sentanim is the star that the Lathe Worlds, Het, Hesh, and Hadd orbit.

I did consider fitting my vessels with Tau ZFR Horizon drives. It would get us there a year sooner, use far less fuel, and cause less wear on our thrusters. I want the extra time to work on my research and to observe the Lathes though. I also don’t know the effect of a Warp Storm on the ZFR Horizon drive and I have no records of the Tau ever testing such a thing. I don’t think they even knew the Warp existed when they designed the drive. As I am travelling at sub-light speed to avoid the Warp Storm, doing anything that might compromise that would be silly.

As we leave Lathe Watch, Alpia informs me that while she thinks she can build a Warp Tap, Alpia does not think it is a good idea to attempt such a construction alone. It must also be built in the Warp on Enlightened Self-Interest, using machinery that cannot exist in the Materium. I am impressed as that’s more than I’d figured out. Alpia estimates that it would be faster, safer, and more reliable to help me with Hyper Intelligence then work on the Warp Tap together, so that’s what we do.

Much to my delight, Alpia discovers a way to cheat our testing time by using her miracle healing upon the test subjects within the exo-wombs, comparing the before and after scans to help JK-404 and I discern any errors. This means that I don’t have to keep batches of potentially faulty experimental Humans and can recycle them once they are no longer of any use to me.

As part of my ongoing attempt to at least behave like I have more empathy than a Necron Cryptek, I do let the test subjects live one full life in a virtual environment at a vastly accelerated speed, much to JK-404’s amusement. To her surprise, it is the data we gather from them as they live that actually helps us nail down most of the problems. For me, it is a reminder that I am on the right track to restore my Humanity.

It has become clear, however, that Hyper Intelligence comes with unwanted side effects, the most common of which is megalomania. It is not suitable for mass deployment in the slightest.

By the end of our first year of travel, we are able to move on to experimenting on prisoners, learning to alter the bodies of those who aren’t custom clones of myself and other samples engineered from zygotes. This is three years ahead of schedule and I am most pleased by our progress. As we travel, we continue to drop vox relay satellites for our back up messaging system.

In the second year, ship time, we receive news that Calligos has found a world belonging to Karad Vall, though not his home world. As we believed that Karad Vall only had one world, this was most concerning. Calligos invaded the world, scoured it for data, then glassed it. The data led to the discovery of two more worlds and their destruction, but still no hints of Karad Vall’s homeworld.

Our third year is one of much turmoil and begins with news from Marius that Robute Guilliman has sent out a galactic wide message calling for every planet to send a delegation of Remembrancers to Terra as well as their most comprehensive written histories. 

There are also rumours of Ferrus Manus and Sanguinious returning from the grave as well as sightings of Lion El Johnson. As Robute was the only Primarch to send official correspondence the other sightings are considered a hoax. As I have no proof that I am willing to offer, I do not add my opinion to the debate.

Just before we are cut off by the Warp Storm messing with my Astropathic Servitors, I receive news of Black Crusades at Cypra Mundi, capital of Segmentum Obscurus; Mecharius, Shrine World of Segmentum Pacificus; Nova Terra, a rebellious world within Segmentum Pacificus; Graia, a Forge World of Segmentum Tempestus focused on Titan production; Krieg, a Death World of Segmentum Tempestus; Prospero, a Dead World of Segmentum Ultima, and Catachan, a Death World of Segmentum Ultima.

As that’s more worlds than crusades, I have no way of telling what is real, false, or slow. It is clear that the Chaos Forces are trying to cut off the Imperium from their best troops. It is unknown if they wish to take over their production or have destroyed several of the most dangerous, productive, and renowned worlds in the Imperium.

The Stellar Fleet reaches the edge of Sentanim’s Oort cloud 100,000 AU from the star as we enter the final third of our journey and our sensors return multiple anomalous readings.

I call Logis Abbisine Vakul to Torchbearer’s Strategium for a discussion. The room is dominated by a huge hololithic projector that displays Sentanim, a fierce blue star. Het, Hesh, and Hadd orbit Sentanim and beyond the three Lathe Worlds are three asteroid belts, Yohd, Lapis Noon, and Crineta Resh. Collectively, the asteroid belts are called The Belts of Etiam.

The Belts of Etiam spin around Sentanim like the gimbals of a gyroscope. They are wide, dense, and incredibly dangerous to traverse. Just to make things even more hazardous, the Sentanim system is lousy with micro-singularities that pop up around the system almost without warning, wherever they please.

I have been told that only the Lathe Masters (Kin) are capable of navigating the Lathes with any reliability and do so by instinct as much as practice and knowledge. Knowing how the Kin were designed, I expect their ancestor core created a specific cloneskein for the ability. 

The singularities are especially prevalent around the orbits of the Belts of Etiam and some believe that they are the remnant shocks of whatever super weapon destroyed the planets that make up the Belts, far before the Angevin Crusade arrived at Sentanim. 

The Lathe Masters might have records covering the lost history, but if they do, they’re keeping them hidden within, or have lost them, in the Baltean Maze on Lathe Hadd. 

The Baltean Maze is a structure of unknown age that is rumoured to hold infotombs. The Lathe Masters kick up a fuss about said rumours when they become too prevalent, or when the Tech-Priests start sending expeditions into the Baltean Maze.

There are pockets of calm within the Belts of Etiam called the Praeculsio Anchor Points where the Magi of the Lathes like to stash their trash. This includes a ‘cleared’ Space Hulk, a wrecked Eldar World Ship, an Ork Roc, and a golden vessel of unknown origin that remains unbreached ever since it was dragged back to the Lathes.

Panopticon Station, home of the Lords Dragon and overseers of the Lathes, is supposed to be at a Praeculsio Anchor Point, though I am unsurprised that it does not appear on the Strategium’s hololith.

It is near impossible to move a large fleet through the Belts of Etiam in a cohesive manner without risking significant damage to the traversing vessels. Whoever is invading the Lathes has not gotten any closer to solving this problem than the Magi of the Lathes. 

There are 16 hostile fleets spread around the outer Lathes. Their allegiance is unclear, though they are Imperial. My augurs are unreliable from whatever ails the system and estimate that enemy forces are between 5,000 and 6,000 vessels with no distinction between warships and transports. 

The bulk of the Lathes’ vessels remain close to the Lathe Worlds and their orbiting habitats and defensive platforms. Lathe vessels are estimated to be between 1,800 and 2,600 vessels.

There are not as many wrecked vessels in the system as I thought there would be, which implies that fighting has been fairly light with neither side desperate enough to push through the Belts of Etiam in threatening numbers.

12 of the 16 enemy fleets occupy the Excipio Stations, vast void stations and exchange points for resources between the Lathe Worlds and trade vessels. There are 10 Excipio stations orbiting 50 AU from Sentanim and one at each of the poles, also at 50 AU. This is the approximate distance for where the Mandeville Points are supposed to be for the system.

One fleet orbits Cella, an artificial planet that first appeared on Lathe maps 1,500 years ago. The planet is part of the outer Lathes and looks like it’s been partially dismantled by the invading forces. It’s supposed to be a secure vault for the Lathes’ greatest treasures, though I don’t know how true that is.

Also in the outer Lathes are the remains of another shattered planet around which orbits the moon Lycosidae, the Lathe World’s armoury and home to its Titan Legion, Legio Venator. An enemy fleet shelters in the wreckage of Lycosidae’s planet, keeping clear of the Fortress Moon’s PDF lasers and other defences. There are many flares from shuttles between the fleet and the moon, implying a ground invasion. I am unsurprised it's still going on, even after over a decade of fighting.

Lycosidae is rumoured to hold Crusade Era weapons and the rumours must be convincing enough for the hostile forces to invade a Fortress Moon or they hope to capture some Titans.

The last two enemy fleets patrol the system. I suspect that they are trying to map out Sentanim’s anomalies, or are a quick reaction force of some kind, but that is nothing more than speculation.

Logis Vakul arrives and I focus the hololith on Sentanim, filling the air with data. It’s enough to stop her in her tracks and I wait in silence as she mulls over the display.