Herald of the Stars: Chapter One Hundred and Eleven

From one moment to the next, Iron Crane transitions into realspace alongside every wrecked vessel. We appear in the middle of an ongoing battle between the Kinbriar Necrons and the Yme-Loc Craftworld Eldar.

Just when I think we’ve escaped one certain doom for another, there is a ripple through Materium that I can only detect with my third eye. Iron Crane’s sensors glitch and spew junk readings. Over a minute, they reboot and clear up, finally letting me see what’s going on.

The fearsome battlefield has turned into a mausoleum of cold void ships and spinning shards of scattered debris. As the light of more distant engagements reaches us, I see what is happening and I am left with nothing but questions.

I feel bloated and sick but brush aside my discomfort and swim over to Quanni. He is woozy, but conscious. I trigger the emergency release and the tank drains, then I carry Quaani to the first aid room right next to the Warp sextant.

Next, I pull the auspex readings from Quaani’s hyperweave suit, his implants, and the medical bed. They all show that Quaani is not in any danger and it is best to let all the systems perform their tasks and heal him, though nutrients are advised. I step away from the bed and the mechadendrites descend, plugging into Quaani’s body via his suit collar.

While the auto-doc does its work, I go over the auspex trickling into my awareness. They make little sense as the wrecks displaced from the Warp are appearing within the fighting vessels, destroying everything and cutting off the fight immediately.

The Dolmen Gate still exists and is in three broken pieces and is fully within the Materium. Each wreck, once it overlays the working vessel and destroys it, looks exactly like the wrecks as they were first observed in the Warp, despite how much damage the wrecks created when they superimposed themselves in the Materium.

None of this, however, compares to the greatest observable change in the galaxy. The Cicatrix Maledictum, the Great Rift that cut across the whole Milky Way, is gone.

During the next thirty minutes, Sadako recovers, as do the rest of Iron Crane’s systems. The solar system fills out and I discover we are orbiting a white, F sequence star, surrounded by twelve, huge rocky planets. There are no gas giants in the system. The worlds vary between frozen deserts, sandy hellscapes and suffocating rocks. All are barren.

The fifth world has a wisp of atmosphere and high gravity. Orbiting it are the cracked remains of an Eldar troop transport, three cruisers, six light cruisers, and twelve escorts. Some of the troops have disembarked and fighting has broken out around their landing zone, but they will not survive unless we aid them, for all their reinforcements are gone.

While much chaos surrounds me, it slowly dawns on me that where we are, or who is here, is not that important: it is when that really matters.

++Magos. What is your will?++

“Sadako. I am pleased you survived. What is your status?”

++Cogitator capacity is at ninety percent nominal. The prime cogitator is sixty-six percent destroyed and the secondary is caught in an unfixable loop; it is eighty-eight percent non-functional. Back ups have been reconnected and all functionality has been restored. The Warp engine is missing a critical component and also requires substantial repairs.

++Our cargo is unharmed, but this one cannot open the shipyard doors. Captain Quill is debating a full jettison of damaged sections. There are no active, detectable threats. All other vessels in this system are without power, though they possess an odd haze that prevents proper scanning. All external weaponry is offline. There are continuity errors across all time-keeping devices that are inhibiting proper operations of all machine-spirits.++

“Give me your best guess, Sadako. When and where is the Iron Crane?”

++Iron Crane is at the Rimward edge of the Cinerus Maleficum region within the Koronus Expanse. The date is between seven nine zero and eight two eight of the forty-first millennium. This vessel has regressed approximately two hundred and fifty years.++

“Well, at least we’re alive.”

++This machine remains indomitable.++

“Good work, Sadako. Thank you for updating me.”

++Platitudes acknowledged.++

I pace around the auto-doc and vox Daithí, “This is Issengrund, standby for new orders.”

“I comply, Magos. Thirty seconds, if you can.”

“Delay granted.” I wait and Daithí soon re-contacts me.

“I am here, Magos. What do you require?”

“First, assign all wrecks as no-go areas. Keep our passage as far from them as possible.”

“With pleasure, Magos.”

“Second, set a course for the fifth world. We’ll call it Kinbriar V for now.”

“Orders assigned, Magos.”

“Good. Can the shipyard fix its doors before we get to Kinbriar V?

“No, Magos.”

“Then cut them out, release the fleet, and prepare for a planetside deployment. Don’t let all that metal escape though.”

“Yes, Magos. What are our aims at Kinbriar V?”

“Total destruction of all Necron facilities. A ceasefire with the Eldar will be offered.”

“We haven’t even fired a shot at them yet!”

“Well, no, but I doubt they see it that way. We turned up at the same time they were wiped out. They won’t be happy.”

“Are they ever?”

“Only where the Monkeigh can’t see them smile. They fear we might copy them.”

“That would be terrible, Magos. How should we prepare?”

“For a siege. The aim is to keep the Necrons from rebuilding while protecting against Eldar perfidy. Our goal is not to inflict casualties on the enemy, but to preserve as much of our forces as possible while we construct the means to destroy the planet. We will perform focused assaults on specific facilities, like we did with Operation Sea Mither, and bombard them wherever and whenever they appear.”

“We do not have exterminatus weapons, Magos. What do you plan to do? Throw a moon at Kinbriar V?”

“That wouldn’t actually work as a moon would break up before it hits from all the gravitational stress. I have something different in mind. The worst case scenario is eighteen months. Place priority on getting the shipyard prepped and repaired.”

“I will, Magos.”

I eye my kill count, four million, six hundred thousand, and ninety two demon souls. There is a lot I could do with that, but nothing in my implants or part of my Warp Infrastructure would be immediately useful because of the learning and demonstration requirements in place. Instead I turn to an idea I’ve been considering for a long time, but never had the capital to pursue or a reason beyond a desire to return a grand favour. Now I find myself in dire need of a powerful strike force, one far beyond what I can field at this time.

“E-SIM, I’d like to purchase five Resurrection Serums please and a null box.”

E-SIM sends me a long list of rare elements and fabrication machinery, ++Please provide the following resources and tools, then bring them to the Warp.++

“Can’t you make the serums with Warp and Weft?”

++I could, but then you’d be carrying around a box for weeks. It is better to build within my domain.++

“Fair enough.”

Quaani groans and I stop pacing and rush over to him. He blinks slowly and yawns, then sits up and turns, putting his feet on the floor.

“Feeling better?”

“Urgh, give me a moment to catch my thoughts will you?”

I nod and fold my arms, “It has been quite the ordeal.”

“Can you get me a recaf please, with extra sugar?”

“Sure.”

“Oh, and one of those cyborg food bars. My implants are yelling at me.”

I send the order to the food printer installed in the wall, or as they were first introduced to me, the Nutritious Ooze Module (N.O.M). In under a minute, it has turned on and produced Quaani’s recaf and nutrient bar. I open the glass covering and pick up the items, then bring them to Quaani.

Quaani takes the recaf from my hand and sips it, then takes a bite of the nutrient bar and grimaces, “Thanks Aldrich. How can something take foul yet still be satisfying to eat?”

“That’s your implants messing with your perception, rewarding you for eating something you need. It amplifies the ‘gut feeling’ that you get from normal food. It doesn’t mess with your taste as too many of those bars can be poisonous and would overfill you with calories. When paired with the bad taste, this prevents you from seeking that artificial satisfaction when it is unneeded without discouraging you from following the instructions when required.”

“You have an explanation for everything, don’t you?”

“I do try!”

“Well, I won’t argue with you there. Is Bad Penny dead?”

“Almost certainly.”

“Thank the Emperor for that. At least we won’t have to see him again.”

I wince.

“What?”

“He’s dead, but we’ve gone back in time as much as three hundred years before he died, but probably less. Sadako is having trouble calculating it. While demons are somewhat outside of time, it is difficult to know exactly how Bad Penny’s existence, or non-existence, might affect us. We might even discover the time anomaly is only relevant to this system, or an area around it.”

I didn’t get a crown kill for him either, but that might just be because the Dolmen Gate ate him.

“Bugger. So no changing history.”

“There’s no point worrying about it too much. Anything we do or do not do has already happened because while it is the future for others, it is the past for us. We should act like we would anyway. Like steering clear of temporally displaced wrecked void ships, even if we don’t know how they will end up in the Warp and save us in the future.”

“I’m missing some context there, but you can fill me in later. Time travel is horribly messy. I hate it.”

“As do I. No one likes time travel, but then, that’s exactly what we do every time we traverse the Warp and transition between two systems faster than light. For some reason it's cool when you travel fast, effectively going forward in time, but the opposite is viewed with luddite suspicion.

“I am not happy about being cut off from Marwolv either. In three hundred years I was hoping I’d be on my third return visit and they’d be well on their way to becoming a forgeworld. Now I have to wait twice as long!”

Quaani goes through another sequence of chewing on his bar, grimacing, then drinking the extra sweet recaf and scrunching up his face. I hold back my laughter. No one likes to be mocked while they’re recovering.

“You’re hovering, Aldrich. I can tell you’ve got stuff to do. I’ll be fine. Go and play with your fire extinguishers.”

I tut, “Cheeky brat. Tell me what you were about to say before we were attacked, then I’ll go.”

“Ah! Yeah, that is important. The warp passage between this system and the next is destroyed and likely won’t recover for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Problem is, that’s our way out. Good news is the next system is only nine light years away. Distant Sun could make the journey in one point three years, shipboard time, at maximum velocity, or the whole fleet in four point six eight one years, at one gravity.”

I nod slowly, “We would need to refuel when we got to the other side, but yes, that is doable.”

“Yeah, yeah. We’ll talk more tonight, OK? Then you can tell me what is actually happening once you’ve had a chance to find out. Invite Brigid over, she makes you less annoying.”

I sigh, “Yes, do actually have something important to do. See you later, Quaani.”

“Bye bye, Uncle.”

I leave and travel to my workshop where I start dismantling machinery and collecting materials, then wheelbarrow it into the Warp where I reassemble it inside a shed made from a data structure. Following E-SIMs instructions, I slowly create an assembly line, manned by mechadendrites and servo arms, all piloted by E-SIM. I leave behind four litres of nanites for the machine-spirit too.

The assembly is a delicate process and I can’t do it all at once as I am needed elsewhere in meetings with Flag Command and other officers, as well as Ylien, whom I have had to pay for additional liaison duties as it is outside our original agreement. While Ylien is unable to forge a cease-fire, a few surviving Eldar officers do agree to meet once we are in orbit.

Five Space Marine corpses are transferred from stasis beneath Distant Sun’s auto-temple and brought to the private navigator’s chapel on Iron Crane. With great care, I remove the power armour they were laid to rest in and place it on stands along the wall.

The marines lie naked on metal slabs, covered in a sheet and kept cool to keep them as well preserved as possible. Their bodies, despite my restoration efforts, are scarred and pitted with many lighter patches where I cloned their skin and muscle to make them look as whole as possible. I intended to return them to the Barghest chapter, now I have another use for them. All of them have at least one silver stud embedded in their skin above their eyebrow.

In my hand is a null box. This one is the size of a large, hardback book and vantablack. These boxes are, to my knowledge, indestructible and self-powering. They are used to contain vital documents and irreplaceable archeotech within the Imperium. They cannot be hacked either, so if you lose the code to it, you won’t be getting back what’s in it either.

No one knows how to make them and they can only be found. I bought the null box from E-SIM to sell the idea to the marines, should they wake, that this is something I found and I am using on them. I don’t want it known that E-SIM can make Resurrection Serum.

I open the null box. The five syringes inside are unassuming and filled with a silver liquid that swirls within, as if agitated by heat, yet my auspex tells me it is a consistent thirty seven degrees celsius throughout. The syringe is tough and shaped from armourglass and the needle is pure adamantium.

Placing the box on a side table, I grab a syringe and insert it up Sergeant Odhran’s nose, doing my best to focus on the operation and not skip about gleefully quoting Total Recall. With a slow and steady push, I depress the plunger until the syringe is empty, then remove the needle.

I repeat the process on the other four marines, reset the environment from a fridge  one degree to a comfortable twenty-one degrees, then wait.