Herald of the Stars: Chapter Two Hundred and Fifty-Two

Thank you to DeShaun Wideman, Alex Rerecich, Brian N Johnson, Tastfulfate, and brandon king for signing up while I was on break. Your faith that I would return from my Christmas slumber is most welcome!

Sitting in my cosy office, I continue my final review, enjoying the feeling of accomplishment I get from seeing how far I have come. The anticipation for how far we have yet to go also fills me with excitement, the images of endless voidships and the restoration of Humanity carry me away with dreams of hope and progress, the lack of which has ground me down during my time at SR-651.

The original intention behind my voidship selection was to form a partial cruiser strike group with one cruiser, one light cruiser, and four escorts. Really, it should be four light cruisers per cruiser with four escorts per light cruiser, for a total of sixteen escorts per a cruiser strike group. We don’t have enough vessels for that though.

In theory, pairing everything in fours means that each group should be able to beat one vessel of the next size up. A light cruiser strike group, that’s four escorts and one light cruiser, can fight off a cruiser and vice versa. It is loosely based on the volume of each void ship class.

For example, each Lathe Class light cruiser being worth seven point three Sword Class frigates and a Lunar Class frigate is worth twenty two point two Sword Class frigates. The goal is to have at least half the volume in smaller vessels against a larger one.

There is an odd contrast in Imperial ship design in that one needs the largest vessel possible to make it worth traveling through the Warp, abusing the tyranny of volume to ferry the most people and cargo from each harrowing voyage. Not only that, but larger vessels are far more self sufficient, so if you run into trouble, you're far more likely to have a solution on board.

On the other hand, smaller vessels let you field more guns and strike craft for fewer resources as surface area multiplies at a different rate to volume. Even if smaller vessels don’t have the same level of fire power, shields, and armour, you can rotate and manoeuvre your vessels to either take down a far larger vessel, or to easily escape.

Much of this theory goes out of the window if you come across a carrier configured battleship as their massive volume lets them field thousands of strike craft, battering down any number of smaller, faster vessels as they please. So long as a carrier doesn’t run headlong into a gun heavy battleship. These titanic behemoths can pound a carrier into scrap before the carrier’s strike craft have a chance to wear down its dozen cubic kilometres or more of armour, plasma, and metal.

One also has to consider the sheer crew numbers. Anything cruiser size or larger likely has at least a quarter million crew, not including servitors, civilians, or Imperial Guard detachments. Compared to the fifteen thousand crew on a Sword Class frigate, large vessels like the Lunar can keep sending boarding crews at smaller vessels until they are overwhelmed without significantly impacting their own performance.

This mess of design philosophy and counter-reliant combat is why I put so much emphasis on strike craft and CIWS, such as micro-laser grids, on my vessels. I also stuff them full of dedicated combatants, like Heralds, and as many automated internal defences as I can. The goal is to balance my groups so that each group is the equivalent of both a carrier and gunship.

Rather than specialising and taking a risk that I won’t have the right solution, I rely on my superior technology and crew training to carry me to victory. This is why I am so cautious around the other factions as all of them vastly outnumber me.

My tech advantage can carry the day in small scale conflicts. It isn’t going to help me if any of them really gun for my stuff in vast numbers, a strategy that Abbisine was quick to notice in her analysis.

Avoiding attention, hiding my best technology as best I can, is why I had no intention of taking Iron Crane or my Moth Class vessels anywhere near an Imperial dominant sector, such as Calixis. I still have no intention of bringing Iron Crane anywhere near the Lathe Worlds and other Mechanicus heavy systems.

Sure, Abbisine has visited Iron Crane, but it’s one thing for the Mechanicus to have some footage of a mobile ship yard in a system far from their seat of power and quite another to dangle a newly built, Dark Age of Technology mobile shipyard over three Forge Worlds who think they’re as awesome as Mars. I have relented on the Moth-Class vessels, however.

I put down my data slate, then sip on my Tanna tea and nibble some shortbread. Yes, I could review all of this in a near instant within my mind, yet I far prefer to go over something so important at a more leisurely pace as I never know when my subconscious might point out a new way of looking at old information.

After all, that’s exactly what had me scrambling to review everything in the first place.

I pick the dataslate back up and skim through the summary of the Moth Class escorts.

There are two different configurations for the Moth class, fuel synthesis and material synthesis, or perhaps chemical synthesis and warp infusion. They are unimaginatively labelled the Mark Ⅰa and Mark Ⅰb.

The fuel synthesis vessels (Mark Ⅰa) can create hydrogen pellets, promethium, acids, the base chemicals for explosives, and many other chemicals. They gather gasses from solar plasma and gas giants, and mine comets, asteroids, and hydrocarbon rich oceans on freezing worlds. These materials are processed through kilometres of pipes, plasma distillation machinery, condensers, vats, centrifuges, and presses into tens of thousands of tonnes of industrial goods every day.

I could buy these industrial materials from the Imperium. They’re not unique. We’ve been self-sufficient for so long though that the idea of being reliant on others for vital supplies did not sit well with anyone, including myself.

Despite the risk of revealing too much, Fleet Command and I couldn’t bring ourselves to rely on stockpiled resources. Some would argue that this was an emotional decision ill fitting of the Mechanicus. I would argue that of course it is. We are part of the great cog that moves these grand temples to the Machine-God through the void and their continued function relies on calm and content minds.

One does not mess with a Warp drive or a fusion reactor with haste and inadequate supplies!

To maintain our independence would require refitting Torchbearer and Distant Sun with far more than their current, emergency equipment. This, in turn, would mean fewer micro-factories, smaller stockpiles, and less space for upgrades like additional reactors, reinforced bulkheads, vaulted ceilings, hydroponics and so on.

Two point four cubic kilometres is a lot of space to play with in a Lunar Class cruiser. It’s less space when you need to fit quarters, amenities, and supplies for over four hundred thousand people, or twice the population of York when I died. A city that was two hundred and seventy kilometres squared.

If one divides a Lunar cruiser’s volume into twenty metre high slices, you end up with a similar amount of space, two hundred and eighty-eight square kilometres, for twice the population. This sounds like a reasonable amount of space until you remember that it doesn't include much farmland, multiple airports, guns the size of skyscrapers, and a century or two of supplies in case you get lost in the Warp. Oh, and reaction mass. There’s, like, an entire lake of compressed superfluids on board.

One needs to be efficient.

The fleet was already configured to rely on the Moth Class and it would take more delays and labour that is tasked elsewhere, such as building Charon and repairing the Receiving Yards from centuries of neglect and violence.

Even potential delays were not enough to have me scrambling for the organisation chart though, rather it was the products of the Mark Ⅰb Moth Class, the material synthesis variant.

The Mark Ⅰb is the secret of my success as it can syphon material from a star, then fuse it into any element I require. Usually a base ore, like iron, silicon, or carbon is added to the plasma to reduce the energy costs. Even so, they are still obscene and it is almost always cheaper to find a proper source. That isn’t always possible as some of the produced elements are artificial, or require rare celestial phenomena to appear naturally.

This synthesis process lets me use far better materials in everything I make. I am less beholden to locating specific elements, rather than having to make do with substitutions that degrade performance and reliability.

The design for the machinery comes from my Cargo Container STC and was originally intended to be placed in a massive voidstation. One could even scale it up to a dyson sphere if they really wanted. I put it in an escort vessel, which is why there are two variants to what was supposed to be an all in one stellar mining facility.

When I say it can make any pure element or alloy, including artificial elements, I really do mean anything, including warp infused materials. That means I can use the vessel to create the exotic matter used in my Warp drives as well as create the materials required for Warding electoos, Warpsbane hulls, Mechanical Gellar Fields, and other aetheric technologies without which the Great Enemy would rapidly infiltrate and rip apart my fleet from within and without.

This is what prompted me to bring the Moth Class along; I need to ward new crew, multiple hulls, and so on. I can’t rely on finding asteroids and Space Hulks in the Immaterium.

As far as I know, the machinery within the Mark Ⅰb is the closest Humanity ever got to creating an energy to mass conversion like the Necrons. I suspect that I might be able to use the Mark Ⅰb to create Blackstone (Noctolith) if I can find a mad or disgruntled Cryptek willing to give up its secrets.

A pleasant dream, at least.

Each Moth Class the Mark Ⅰa requires the same quantity of rare materials as a light cruiser. The the Mark Ⅰb is even worse consuming a cruiser’s worth of rare elements in its exotic machinery.

Both variants are horribly volatile for multiple reasons and quite likely to explode if their hulls are breached. If the Adeptus Mechanicus suspects they are anything other than a small factory ship based on a modified Sword Class, with oddly thick armour and overpowered shields, they will try and capture them, likely resulting in their destruction.

My original design had no ship to ship weapons to discourage firing at the Moth-Class and encourage boarding assaults. I have since learned that the galaxy is full of fools, including myself, and given them a prow lance and a spinal plasma macro-turret. They can still outrun most vessels, have extensive CIWS and a small complement of Heralds and Sagitta Class strike craft.

I manipulate the datapad and bring up the final tally of voidships.

Stellar Fleet Sol has twelve vessels. One Lunar Class cruiser, Torchbearer; one Lathe Class light cruiser, Distant Sun; four Adder Class escort carriers, Erudition’s Howl, Red Wasp, Delta Sting, and Sol Faithful; two Carrack Class transports, Ortelius Libertas and Ortelius Licencia; and two Mark Ⅰa and two Mark Ⅰb Moth Class factory ships, Hazy Meditations, Lunar Lion, Voracious Light, and Last Breath.

Accompanying us is the strike cruiser, Red Knoll, led by Captain Leith Madra. Before he departed, Chapter Master Lir fully restored the company and added more serfs to Red Knoll. The newly appointed Force Commander Odhran leads a full company of one hundred Battle Brothers and fifty support marines as well as eight hundred and fifty auxiliaries of failed Space Marine conversions.

Each Space Marine in the strike group now has their own cyber mastiff. The Barghest Chapter has an uncanny attachment to the cybernetic dogs. I suspect that they’ve found a way to use the pack bond they have with their Battle Brothers on the Cyber Mastiffs.

I would love to ask for details. it is none of my business though and I know my prying would not be well received. The chapter’s supernatural bond and viral bite got them hunted by the Inquisition the last time someone looked into it.

New additions to the strikeforce include four Dreadnaughts and six Thunderhawks, with a return of Mr Cygnus. There are many other supporting vehicles too including Scout Bikes, Rhinos, and a Land Raider Crusader. I didn’t ask how Lir acquired the Land Raider Crusader and can only hope that the Black Templars don’t turn up to try and take it back.

Tech-Marine Balor Roan remains the head of their technical department. He’s started taking lessons from me, although it’s more like a consultation where both of us learn from each other.

It has been a great privilege and joy to converse with Balor. It is fascinating to see how quickly he learns, memorising information and making connections at a speed equivalent to those with a Savant implant linked to Remembrancer cybernetics. He does have some blindspots though, his hypno-conditioning and personal experiences pushing him to weaponize everything on an almost subconscious level, even when it shouldn’t be.

A toaster is for toast. Just because it can be turned into an IED does not mean it is a good idea. Still, I dare say I may have made a new friend.

Much to the irritation of the Tech-Priests and more technically minded serfs on board Red Knoll, I have assigned two Battlesmiths, two dozen Tech-Adepts, and a couple hundred Servitors to assist Balor. These individuals are terribly insulted by the presence of new support staff, seeing the additions as proof of their inadequacy, rather than me boosting their wholly inadequate numbers.

One does not do good work with an eighteen hour work day with a single day off a month. A Space Marine can do it, yet Emperor forbid those fools see failing to emulate His angels’ work ethic as a matter of faith!

I had to spend hours diffusing a diplomatic incident after Imperial Tech-Priests became particularly huffy at my Battlesmiths’ requests to see the chapter relics. In his final message, Lir informed me that he had added multiple, no doubt outrageous archeotech weapons, to the strike force to honour the gratitude of the rehabilitated Dreadnought pilots.

Balor just smirked at me when I asked what they were, the prick. I’ve seen their armoury, dammit! I need to know what they are in case those trigger happy marines fire something they have an improper understanding of and send us spinning into the void!

I can only pray that the Barghest’s Tech-Priests eventually mellow out and see reason. Machine-God knows logic isn’t going to work on them.

The irony is not lost on me.